The Painted Fox

Once upon a time, in a deep forest, there lived a fox called Mykyta. And oh, was he sly! There wasn’t a henhouse in the village he hadn’t found his way into, and there wasn’t a trap he couldn’t slip past.

But one morning before sunrise, Mykyta got so busy staring at somebody else’s hens that he didn’t hear the dogs wake up.

"Woof! Woof-woof!" came the roar from behind the fence.

"Oh, help!" squeaked Mykyta, and off he ran.

The dogs ran after him. The Fox shot across the vegetable patch, whoosh! He sprang over the fence, hop! And he landed in a stranger’s yard. A painter lived in that yard. He had just mixed a whole barrel of blue paint, thick oil paint, ready to paint his fence the next day.

Mykyta jumped up onto the barrel. The barrel wobbled! And splash! In he went, head and all, into the blue paint. He bobbed up, found the bottom with his paws, and kept very, very still. Only the tip of his nose poked out above the paint.

The dogs came running. They sniffed. The sharp smell made them sneeze, ah-choo! They circled the yard and then trotted back the way they had come. No fox anywhere. It was as if the ground had swallowed him up.

Mykyta stayed in that barrel all day long. He sat and he shivered until the sun went down. Then he leapt out and raced to the forest as fast as his legs would go. He reached the bushes, flopped onto the moss, and fell fast asleep.

In the morning he woke up and went to the stream for a drink, and he jumped back in fright. Looking up at him from the water was something blue, blue all over, from the tips of its ears to the end of its tail.

"Oh my, what is that?" whispered the Fox. "Why, it’s me!"

He set about washing himself clean. He scrubbed with his paws, he rolled in the grass, he rubbed his sides with sand. No use at all! The paint was oil paint, and it had dried on him overnight. It wasn’t coming off.

He turned this way and that, looking himself over from every side, and a crafty little idea began to stir in his clever head.

The first one to see him was Hare. He hopped out of the bushes and froze, his ears standing straight up.

"Wh-wh-who are you?" he stammered.

Mykyta puffed out his chest and spoke in a deep, booming voice:

"Don’t be afraid, long-ears. I am Hostromysl. I have been sent from beyond the Blue Mountains to be king of your forest."

Hare gave one leap and dashed off between the trees, his heels flashing.

"Everybody! Everybody!" he shouted. "Hostromysl is here! A king! From beyond the Blue Mountains!"

Soon the whole forest was whispering, "Hostromysl! Hostromysl!" Wolf peeked out from behind an oak, Bear from behind a fir tree, Boar from behind a stump. And the Fox strolled among them, slow and grand, with his blue tail held high.

"Who are you?" Wolf finally dared to ask.

"Hostromysl," the Fox replied. "No one has ever seen a beast like me, because there is only one of me in all the world. Whoever obeys me will do very nicely. And whoever doesn’t…"

He didn’t finish. He just narrowed his eyes. Wolf gulped in fright.

"We’ll obey, Your Majesty," the animals rumbled, and they bowed down low.

And that is how Mykyta the Fox became a king.

Bear brought him honey. Wolf stood guard outside his cave. Boar raked up soft leaves for his bed. And Hare ran all over the forest carrying his orders. On top of all that, every morning they sang:

"Hooray for Hostromysl! Hooray!"

The Fox liked that very much.

There was just one thing he was afraid of: being recognized by his own kind. So his very first order was:

"All foxes, out of the forest! I can’t stand the smell of them."

The animals were puzzled, but they didn’t argue. And the foxes went off, every which way.

Hostromysl ate well, but he never had a moment’s peace. When it rained, he hid in his cave. What if the paint washed off? He never went to the stream to drink. Wolf had to bring him water in a burdock leaf. A bath? Never! The king didn’t even wash his face.

"What a tidy king we have," Bear marveled. "Not a speck of dust on him."

"Kings don’t need to wash," Hare explained. "They’re shiny all by themselves."

And so nearly the whole summer went by. Then one evening a big round moon rose over the forest. The animals gathered in the clearing to sit beside their king and listen to his wise words. And somewhere far away, on a hill, the foxes began to bark. They were the very same foxes the king had chased out of the forest:

"Yap-yap! Ow-ooooo!"

Something tickled in the Fox’s throat. He coughed. He covered his mouth with his paw.

"Ow-ooo! Yap-yap!" called the foxes.

Mykyta clenched his teeth. His eyes started to water. But the tickle in his throat kept tickling and tickling, and his paw slid away from his mouth all by itself…

"Ow-ooo! Yap-yap-yap!" barked the king, in a thin little foxy voice.

The clearing went very, very quiet. Only an owl on a branch blinked her big round eyes.

"What was that?" asked Bear.

"The only one who barks like that is…" Wolf began.

"A fox!" squeaked Hare. "That’s how a fox barks!"

"Mykyta the Fox!" they all roared together. "That’s who our Hostromysl is!"

"You fraud!" bellowed Bear. "And I brought you honey!"

"And I carried your water in a burdock leaf!" snarled Wolf.

"And I made your bed!" snorted Boar.

"And I bowed down to you all the way to the ground!" stamped Hare.

And all together they charged at Mykyta.

The Fox leapt over a stump and into the bushes! Behind him branches snapped, Bear thundered, Boar grunted, and Wolf snapped his teeth. And Mykyta ran as he had never run before in his life: across the gully, through the swamp, through the bramble patch that scratched his sides. All you could see was his blue tail flashing in the moonlight.

For a long time afterward, little tufts of blue fur hung on the bramble thorns.

But as for Mykyta the Fox himself, no one in that forest ever saw him again. Not blue, and not red either.