Pax, Journey Home

Like Pax, Peter has grown and changed in the year since they were separated. Peter has moved in with Vola, an isolated but kind old woman, and is working on building a new cabin on her property. Vola’s cabin was too small for the two of them, but this new one is coming together nicely thanks to Peter’s hard work and the contribution of his neighbors. Just as Peter is enjoying the repetition and predictability of working with wood, he hits a knot with his wood planer and cuts himself.

The wound takes him back to awful memories of abandoning Pax last year. He performs a penance ritual, something he has been doing ever since he left Pax behind. Peter closes his eyes and forces himself to remember how he found Pax, the lone, weak kit alive among his dead siblings and mother. Back then, his father told him to put the fox out of his misery. He imagines himself walking away from Pax as a kit instead of adopting him and then “r[uns] the sequence two more times. He’d read it t[akes] three times to reprogram your brain” (7). If that meant Peter could think about Pax less, he would do it. He avoids looking at Vola’s pet raccoon and refuses her offer to get him a puppy. Peter will do all he can to forget he had a pet at all, despite Vola’s concerns that he’s closing himself off too much.

While Bristle prepares to give birth, Pax paces nervously outside the den. Bristle won’t let him come inside but wants him nearby. Soon, Runt, Bristle’s brother, joins him, “mov[ing] with an odd three-legged roll after losing a hind leg the spring before” (13). Before Pax can warn Runt, the brother innocently enters the den only to be kicked out immediately.

Pax dutifully stays close for several more hours. At dawn, he gets a whiff of blood and starts to bolt toward the den. However, he notices that the scent is “not from a wound, not from death. This [is] life blood, […] And it demand[s] his presence” (13-14). He enters the den to find that Bristle has given birth to three kits. Pax feels an overwhelming love for them immediately; he knows his life will never be the same.

Peter visits his grandfather to ask for his father’s ashes, planning to sprinkle them on his mother’s grave when school lets out. After some hesitation, Grandfather agrees to Peter taking them. Peter starts to tell Grandfather of his plans to join the Junior Water Warriors, but Grandfather is dismissive of the group as a “bunch of do-gooders, prancing around pretending to be the military” (17). Peter stands his ground, knowing it’s “exactly the right thing to do: repurpose the training, the equipment, and the workforce of the military to repair the damage done in the war” (18). As a Junior Water Warrior, he and other kids will be trained to help clean the water.

Grandfather then gives Peter a brown envelope from underneath a box on the mantel. He tells Peter that the letter inside discloses the nature of his father’s death and asks if Peter wants to know. Peter hesitates; he knows his father didn’t die a hero, killed by “enemy mortar a hundred miles from his base” (18). Peter decides that’s all he needs to know and tells his Grandfather he doesn’t want to read the letter.

Grandfather says that Peter needs to know how stupid his father was when he died, but Peter refuses to take it. He grabs the box that holds the rest of his father’s belongings and starts to leave. He’s about to walk out the door when Grandfather stops him and slips the letter into his backpack in case Peter changes his mind.

The kits are now old enough to explore a few steps outside of the den, and Pax is more aware than ever of the potential dangers they face. As he keeps watch over his family, he contemplates the home he’s made with Bristle on the Deserted Farm. It is a good home, especially after they had to leave their last home in Broad Valley. There, “war-sick humans had invaded and brought fire and chaos. This Deserted Farm […] [is] better, because there [are] no humans at all” (22). Here, Pax won’t have to worry about the dangers from humans and their wars.

Pax admires his three kits, now able to tell them apart. One brother is stocky and strong, and the other is lithe and quick. The most fearless of all the kits is the girl, who is curious and stubborn. Bristle tries multiple times to keep her from wandering away during feeding time, but she squirms out each time. Pax looks at Bristle and knows it’s his turn to help catch the “tiny adventurer.” Pax watches as she sniffs the ground, stopping to acquaint herself with every new smell. Eventually, Pax catches her, and she lies down on Pax’s chest for a nap. Pax is determined to keep all his kits safe, no matter what.

When Peter finishes the cabin, he leads Vola in to see it. She admires how he has done a better job than she would have with it. She says that she would have just matched up the ends of the planks: “But you matched the grain. And countersinking the nails and holes? I am impressed” (26). She is excited that he has taken so much pride in the home that will one day belong to him.

This takes Peter by surprise, and he asks what she means. Vola tells him that she intends to give him half the property so that he will always have a place to call home. Peter insists that he doesn’t want it, but Vola won’t back down. She knows how much he loves the woods and wants him to have some of it to call his own.

This upsets Peter. He cries out, “I don’t love it! I don’t need it. None of it. Not the land, not the wood, […] Not this stupid place!” (29). Vola tries to comfort him, but he pulls away more, telling her she’s not his mother. Vola stops trying to talk to Peter after this. Instead, she quietly leaves, but her silence says plenty. When the door closes behind her, the pain in Peter’s chest becomes nearly unbearable.

After a day of exploring, Pax starts his return home. He needs to be back by that evening so that he and Bristle can take the kits to the reservoir for a lesson on drinking water. As he nears the den, he notices movement and realizes that one of the kits has escaped and is outside alone. Pax knows it’s “the little vixen, of course—the only one of the litter who ever defie[s] her mother” (32). Pax sees that she’s tracking his scent, walking the same path that he did when he left the den earlier.

Pax calls out, and the vixen starts hopping toward him when an owl swoops down and picks her up with his talons. Pax leaps at the owl without hesitation, trying to pry his daughter from its grip. He clamps the owl’s leg between his teeth until he feels the bone break, and the owl finally releases the vixen.

Pax examines his daughter, but she is unharmed except for where the talons pierced her skin. He wraps himself around her and warns her to always look up, as danger can come from the sky at any moment.