We were in the mines when the world was falling apart. I remember, the earth was cracking, and the plants were going limp, and the world looked dark blue, less full of life. Everyone tried to group together—Nan, Chim, even old Robert who mostly kept to himself—but it didn’t do much. We were in each other’s company, and that was something, but we weren’t safe. We needed to be free, out of danger so we could laugh again and cry and not feel that endless everlasting tension. The one that sticks to your back and crawls up your breath so that even the ins and outs of your stomach, the sighs of your mouth feel weighed. That one that feels like a nightmare—to end that.

The world wouldn’t stop shaking. Down in our mines, babies burst into tears and nobody could do anything to sate their worries. We weren’t sure we would survive so how could we be sure that everything would be okay? That we would return back to normal?

Our leader had a solution.

“This doesn’t have to be our lives,” he said, and we all looked up, desperate. Our leader sure knew how to pick a crowd, and he did, luring us in with the promise of hope. “This nightmare in front of us—it can go away. It can.”

“How?” A woman in the front asked, and her baby burst into a fresh set of tears. Our leader smiled so bright that the darkness of the collapsing world faded behind the shine of his teeth, the cunning of his sharp whites that were as predatory as a fox’s.

“One of us has to disappear.”

The crowd broke into whispers of confusion. Disappear? What did it mean to disappear in a world where everyone knew each other—our world so collectivist and grouped together, so interconnected? I could walk to the ends of the earth and still see my mother, and still see my fathers. They’re a fluid group of roles and assignments, constant to change over time as I grow. What does disappear mean, we the people had to ask.

Our leader had an answer.

He said, “See it like this. Every good solution has a sacrifice. This isn’t the end of the world, just a stumble, a gash in the way of a beautiful, peaceful world. But it requires a ritual. I’ve consulted with the oracles, and one of you has to disappear forever in order to bring this world back to balance. Once that person is separated and isolated from this community, to be never found by anyone from our society again, then the world can be restored.”

“So they should die?” someone else inquired, and the world fell back into murmurs.

“No, no,” our leader clarified, almost breaking out into half-laugh. We the people were afraid, but he was as still as a rock. Everything he said, it was as if he prepared for this, grew confident in the words he’d use to appease us.

“No one has to die. But the person has to vanish, to never be seen again. That is what must be done.”

There were disagreements amongst the crowd, but all I could hear were the babies crying. They wailed as we heard a meteor tumble overhead us, breaking up all land on the earth. They yelled as up above, animals limped and bled. The babies continued, and their wailings were nothing but an echo chamber for their pain. Everything was dying but the world could still be new. It could still be pure, for the babies. A world to last longer than their lives. One of us just had to do that.

“It has to be forever?” I asked, and we the people looked at me. All my mothers, all my elders. The murmurs fell to silence. Our leader smiled wild and bright, then draped his hand over me. It was supposed to feel like a gesture, a comfort, but I felt pricked all over.

“Yes. Forever and ever. You can’t come back.”

The whole crowd looked at me, silent.

So, I thought: for the babies. For the aged soil on which my elders and my family, my long expansive family, used to walk on. For centuries more and more. For earth.

“Alright,” I said, and for a minute, I could hear a baby stop crying.

They took me into a chamber in the mines and grabbed all the food that they could find. Stored rice, pickled meat, fruits. Several aunties—Chika, Esie, Sase—came and brought me a bag full of dongoyaro leaves and black soaps—all the medicine I could need. All I really wanted were the memories. Paintings and smiles with people that I would never see again, but when the world is dying the goodbyes have to be quick. Our leader made sure I had my things, and he threw me into one final hug, which felt like fire against my skin.

“I hope you hide well,” he spat at me in a forced whisper. “The world depends on it.”

I didn’t think about him. He didn’t feel like warmth or even a factor in this decision, but we the people made a decision, and he was a decision too. He was family, though I had barely seen him in the community until election season, where he was flashing big teeth. Bright teeth. I didn’t want to think about him as I walked away from the wreckage. From the burning and screaming and the rage. For the world to be new, I couldn’t think. We the people had to survive, had to go on and live and thrive, so I had to be the casualty. I had to be forgotten. I went south.

• • • •

I ran past a desert plagued with falling meteors and crawled through six burning cities just to be forgotten. I trekked through a river gone to drought and fought thorny bushes to ensure that my name was never said, to keep the future of our world. I thought of my elders and home with each place I ventured, how none of these places could replicate the playfulness of children or the tastiness of food that was cooked over a spit. Nothing would be the same and nothing would make me feel that happiness, that love that home builds. But the babies would, so I remembered, and then I continued on.

I never was happy in my forgotten state, but I made peace with this new existence. The world, though temperamental still, had started to rage less, which meant my sacrifices were working. The cities had fewer meteors. The animals could walk without being killed. The forests no longer burned so brightly, although the grounds still screamed; but I could eventually settle in the low woods and make camp. And I knew how to hunt. With time, I had made spears and bear traps that were so lethal that predators wouldn’t dare come close to me, so I was content.

But this didn’t last for long. Our leader found me in a thicket one night when I was preparing my camp for rest. He came sly and smooth, out of the bushes.

“I see you’ve made a home for yourself,” he said, smiling so wide I felt his gaze gut my chest. I felt exposed; I thought I was doing the best to hide my existence.

“How did you—?” I demanded, but I choked on my words.

“It was quite easy, let me tell you. Or did you think it would be difficult?” Our leader laughed. He masked being nice, but all I could truly feel was his cold stare, piercing me till I broke. “You leave trails everywhere you go. There’s a path of your scent and your demolished homes in every place you move from. The people could easily notice you if we eventually leave the mines, and they shouldn’t be able to, should they?”

He shook his head, as though he was disappointed. I didn’t know what to say, so I just shook and stuttered, before I fell to the ground.

“I’m really trying,” I screamed. “I’m doing the best that I can. But this is so difficult, and I can’t live my life hiding my paths, covering my—”

He cut me off. “But is that not what you agreed to?”

Our leader grabbed my chin and smothered my face in the dirt. He suffocated me in the boiling hot ground, and all I could taste was death death death, the bodies of the people who had lived on this world before. I saw it clearly, what had happened to them, how the world’s destruction had torn them to pieces, what he had done to them. When he raised me out of the ground, I screamed. My face was half burnt. I could see the daggers on his fingernails and a fox-skull in place of his face.

He smiled again, but this time there was no loving kindness, only pure disgust. “I did say hide well. Consider this a warning. The next time I tell you to disappear, and I find you, you will join the leagues of those buried once before.”

I got up from the forest ground, shaken. Then he growled and I stormed off, as fast I could, taking none of my goods. I ran as fast as water from empty oceans, as fast as my ancestors, as fast as all the embarrassment that was rushing through my veins. I ran past my anger and past my shame, my shame that I had been taken away from home, that I had been deceived into not existing. I ran so long that there was nothing left but that misery, that guilt. And fear, haunting me, threatening to never let me go.

• • • •

I didn’t know what the Fox man had done to the earth or those bodies that were underneath the soil, but I had to keep on running. I had to keep going, live life away from him and his evil. So, I trekked till I was out of the forest, and I entered into the South of Earth, all the way into the giant’s world. The giant world was twice the size of all of the little things in the North, so the river flew down like a flood and the trees went up to the sky like an infinite ladder. The giants didn’t believe in staying underground when the world was rocky, so they made houses out of hard slabs that were meant to resist the tempered nature of the sky. Their world was strange, dreary compared to the little mines and life my family was comfortable with, that we Northerners insisted on for survival. Strangely, my discomfort made me more relaxed. Maybe here, I thought, nobody would find me. Maybe here, I believed, I could exist in peace.

But it wasn’t that easy. The Fox’s face was carved into all of the stone slabs of the giant’s world, captured with a sense of admiration. He was a big man here, I learned, the more I went, and he was campaigning for an election, just like he did in our world. He looked different to how he presented in our mines: more intimidating; his height matched the length of the giants. But his stare remained the same. The wide eyes, the angular nose, those sharp, bright teeth, they smiled at me. It was him. I felt it in my chest like an arrow shot as warning.

The fox man, I decided, was a shapeshifter who could move into any world and pretend to be a native. How else could he slip between communities without any kind of questioning? He was playing a long game, trying to take over every community in our endless world, but I still didn’t know what he was. Was he some kind of ancient spirit? How else did he know what our ancestral oracles required to stop the world from ending? Why did someone have to be sacrificed? Who was Mr. Fox but a great deceiver, a trickster? What exactly did he want from us?

All I knew was that every fox needs a cunning, their precious silver to chase, and so I ran as fast I could until each day went dark.

Eventually, I started moving with a small team of nomad giants who trekked across the endless world day and night. They were quiet and humble people, and they walked the land without a word or a story to tell. I followed them past deserts and shriveled bushes, past ancient disasters, lamenting to them about how I got here, and they listened to me. They became my new family, my fluid group of people. The only requirement that they had was that I did not bring them stress, so I tried to be as little of a burden as possible.

We set up camp in a low forest one night while it was getting dark. We were halfway out of the giant’s land, approaching a city that had been submerged in water since the disasters, and it was the first time since we had started walking that the Giants had taken a rest. I was anxious, paranoid, as the last time I had made roots on the soil, the Fox Man found me. I turned in my bed, restless and unsure.

My dreams were fitful. He was at my tail again, and this time he was faster. I ran quicker than lightning, swifter than hands open wide, but the Fox man was still quicker than anything expected. He grabbed me from where I stood and opened his jaw so wide it devoured me. All I could see after that was his teeth, flashing bright, highlighting my bloody remains.

I woke up screaming. The giants rustled in their tents at the sound of my voice, clearly disturbed, but only one woke up and faced me with a furrowed brow. It was Alek, who I talked to the most when we travelled, whose curly beard and round face gave me a certain kind of longing. I wanted to be him: strong, above all the world’s problems. I wanted to be more intimidating than anything that could destroy me.

I bowed in apology: I knew my presence was already causing them stress. I didn’t want to be a burden, but my trauma was so predatory it opened its mouth and enveloped the entirety of my being. I was not functioning as a human being anymore; I was the remnants and the leftovers. I could feel the Fox’s marks on my skin slowly removing me from this earth.

“Come close,” Alek said, and I flinched in surprise at the words spoken. I didn’t understand why he was acting so kind to me after I broke one of their sacred rules, so I kept mute. I sat by his side, facing his hairy stature. Alex looked straight into the moons that lit up the blue sky.

“You know, we knew your story before you started journeying with us,” he explained to me.

I stopped thinking. I scrunched up my face, not knowing what to say, but he paused me from attempting to speak. “We always notice the pain on someone’s face when they’ve been running. We’ve seen it before. I’m sure by now you should know that the running is endless, but what you may not know is that you are not the first to walk this path, and there have been many before you. Many who tried to walk with us. Who followed this same direction. He still caught them.”

My trauma picked up on instinct. I wanted to pack my things, run, but Alek stilled me. His furrowed brows softened in the moonlight.

“Let me tell you, there have been some clever ones. There have been ones who made him search for years, who resisted him at every step. There have been ones who remolded their identity just to escape—who changed their clothes, their bodies, their lives. There was even one who he never found, who we thought had escaped him for all eternity. I hoped so badly that she would make it, that she would send us a post bird one day saying she was somewhere safe. But she also never stopped running, and the last note she sent to us was the final letter.”

I choked on my words. “You don’t mean—”

The Giant looked away. “She ended it. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t pause for one minute because he was always one step ahead of her, ready to grab her. The only option was to prevent him from getting her first. We loved her so dearly, but she made me realize that there’s no point in all this. He is going to get you. And he will not stop until he does.”

I thought of the babies, their crying in the underground mines. I thought of the wails, how I wanted a future for generations below me. I remembered the reason for my sacrifice, but was it enough?

“But he told me that if I don’t leave our land, the whole world will continue to be destroyed. I’ve been running because I want to protect my family, protect this beautiful world that I’ve seen. But I don’t know what he might have said to the ones before to make them run, or if any of his words are true at this point.”

Alek thought to himself for moments upon moments. Then he put his head into his hands and shook his head. “I wish I knew. It would make things so much easier if we did, but I’m lost as well. It seems like he gives different stories to all those who he makes run, tales that vary by incident. Everyone who journeyed with us was running because they were trying to avoid a tragic fate that he promised would occur if they didn’t disappear. And it is true that the world is better these days than it was before, so I cannot say for sure that the world will end if you return to your family, if you resist. But what I can tell you after all these people is that the running does not work. I can’t stand to see it anymore. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to fight exclusion. And sometimes you have to realize when it’s best to go back, to avoid sacrifice. Because it is only when we are alone that we are overpowered. The isolation makes it harder to fight.”

The words slapped into my soul like a crushing weight. I never wanted to live this way, to be lost and traumatized, and I had been unknowingly forced into this suffering. But I had made this pain, this endless running from place to place with no roots in my life, and I didn’t want it anymore. I nodded and held the giant’s arms, trembling, on the edge of tears. He held me the whole time, comforting me like a father.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, after I had gathered myself. I didn’t wait for my new father to nod. “If you knew about what the Fox man was doing to us, why didn’t you expose him all the other times people told you about him? Why didn’t you stop him? We can’t let this go on.”

Alek sighed again. “You cannot do much to someone who constantly changes, whose appearance is temporary and limited. We did try to expose him once for all he was doing, but that didn’t do anything—he just shifts and every time he does, we forget who he was. The people who seem to remember his true face are the ones he chases.”

I nodded slowly, accepting this information. My Giant fell asleep soon after, but he kept watch over me—I could tell he did not sleep in full. I savored the kindness, his protection, but I never wanted to be a burden. Come morning I was off again and far away from his comfort, back into the world unknown.

• • • •

If a Fox is as fast as his cunning, I had to be his trickster.

I had to work quick to strategize his pattern. I ran every day, through the South and its giant world. I left my marks in the screaming soil, going past all of the giant’s districts in my effort to flee. I had to move away from him, but if I wanted get anywhere before the Fox, I could no longer take the main roads—I went West.

A trickster Fox is nothing if not sly, so I had to get him off my scent. I didn’t sleep in any place for long, but when I did, it was to leave false clues that I was there, to ruin him.

But I knew that was just a temporary fix. I had grown to know the smell of burning bodies that signified that he was close, so I knew he was coming around. His bright teeth flashed closer to me in my dreams, predatory, ready for the final devouring. I created a spear from two sticks from the tallest trees and guarded myself with the last bits of bravery and prepared myself for his attack.

He came one night out of the bushes, unexpected, as I was about to reach the submerged city and move on to my next destination. I had hoped that the rising sea levels of the Western world would slow the Fox man, as I knew his animal hated the water, but he still moved as quick as always, only with more agitation. He approached me with that nasty grin, so delighted at the thought of finally reaching his catch.

“Well, isn’t this disappointing,” he said. He shook his head and tutted in fake disheartenment. I could see the edges of his bright teeth open wide, letting me into the darkness of his inner mouth. I had to act fast. I was still shaken, but I couldn’t be ashamed.

I lunged for him with my spear and aimed for his throat.

The Fox Man was faster than me, so he dodged my parry like it was effortless. He circled behind me and reached for my spear like I was a messy baby. I made several attempts to grab my weapon back from him, to best him, but he blocked my movements and hit me at every turn. I angled myself away from him in a chance to find an exit, but before I could run the Fox slashed me with his dagger claws and I fell to the floor.

I could hear the rustling underneath the ground, the chaos. My head felt hot and my skin was already imagining the flames spreading across my face. The Fox looked down and pressed his mouth close to me, so low it was a whisper.

“I did warn you, didn’t I? But you simply weren’t good enough. Nobody’s ever good enough, and that’s the sad part. You should know, though: I like my meals burnt and blackened, but don’t worry. I’ll leave your bones for the soil so someone can know where you went.”

The Fox Man pressed my eyes into the soil, and the burning immediately overtook me. I could hear the ground in all its char, the cold that existed inside a burn, the delirium that existed long after the pain. Death was in every part of me now, in the deep roots of my flesh, calling. His Giant Fox head and dagger mouth appeared for the final time, through the soil, teeth wide and ready to devour. He opened his mouth, and in his tongue, I could see the spirits of death death death, the souls of those who had long passed before me.

But it didn’t look like they were finished.

I could see them in my hazed state, buzzing underneath the ground, rumbling, wailing, demanding. Their bones were shaking, aching for some kind of tempest. They wanted reckoning. They wanted justice. Their souls were still running, running like me, but this time it was not away from the Fox. They wanted to run to him, to come against him, to finally stop the fleeing. The escaping.

I felt it in my spirit—a sort of ancestral kinship with them, that thread of familial connection. Like my mothers, like my giant family, like Alek. But the spirits were different. These were people who understood the pressure of a life lived in the sacrifice of preserving everyone else, and what does that to you, and how that harms you. So, they floated around me in the burnt soil, and I held space with them, breathing in their consciousness.

I took in their rage, and lived. I lived.

I reached out to the spirits and called them from the ground, one by one. The ones who couldn’t fight, who got caught immediately. The ones who believed him, who thought he was their leader, their friend. The ones who made him search for years, who resisted him at every step. The ones who remolded their identity, who rebuilt their lives, just to escape. The one who almost escaped him, who did everything she could to survive. They rose with me out of the soil, past the burning, and we stood up to face our adversary. The Fox man eyed us from all angles, wide with surprise, smile gone. His teeth curved down into a snarl.

“What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be dead. You’re meant to be gone.”

The spirits and I stood. “It’s enough. It’s over.”

The Fox man stared at us before he went back to laughing. His bright teeth flashed once more, and he looked at us as though we were foolish.

“You think it’s wise to stop this? Go ahead! Don’t you remember that the world was in chaos before I sent you all to run—there is trouble like you couldn’t believe. I am a necessary, ancient force, and I am meant to lead, but you all are casualties. So, if you want to help everyone and save the world like you promised, then you’ll stay dead. You’ll stop. Or you’ll ruin everything that you’ve run for.”

The spirits murmured, and we all felt speechless. The Fox Man had put doubt into us, shame, and so we were full of endless tension. But I thought of the babies again, of how inconsolably they cried in the mines, of how terrified they were. I thought of my family, of how I wanted to keep them safe and happy, of how hard I tried to preserve everyone that existed in all corners of the world.

But I needed to breathe. I needed to be safe.

I thought of myself, ourselves, the spirits, and realized that this wasn’t enough.

The sacrifices weren’t working, and they never would.

“There’s no point,” I finally spoke up. I looked at the spirits, and then I stood against the Fox. “Whatever we do, no matter how much we run, it’s not going to prevent the world from happening. It’s always temporary, a fix, so we’ll never be enough. Isn’t that the point?”

The Fox’s face cracked, growing purple. There was no point in believing him. He could not put doubt into our spirits. He tried to protest, but we didn’t let him. We gathered together, a united front, bound by unshakeable surety, our existence past the pain, and faced him. No more running, no escaping, no hiding to sacrifice ourselves.

“It’s over,” we said.

We pressed the Fox’s head into the soil and listened as his screams faded into nothing.

• • • •

The world was falling apart again.

The earth was turning gray, and the plants were ashy and the sky was a deep dark blue at midday, turning red at night. The Fox had died, and the world had grown temperamental, into a state ever not still. It was exactly like he said. But it didn’t mean that the world had to be chaos. Me and my spirit siblings ran through each land with a bag of supplies, a heart of intention, a hand to help. Two moons ago, we visited the Giant’s land and helped them reinforce their huts, to keep them stable with new slabs for the windy seasons. We were determined to offset the damage of this world, make it livable, make it last for as long as it could.

Before we embarked on our journey, I had gone back to the village mines a few moons ago to go and see my old family. They were all still there—Nam, Chim, even old Robert, chatting and cooking food over a spit. Overhead, the world was full of tension, but they were making do, attempting to thrive. To live past the turbulence. I sat with them and shared some of my memories, the hard parts of my journey, and we all laughed and cried together. But we recovered at the end, grew stronger. That was the necessary part of living.

I remember, when we were laughing, I heard the babies wailing again. They burst into tears when they heard the screaming up above, the noise of some disaster so loud it could only mean trouble. And this time, I held them in my arms for hours that seemed like infinity, rocking them quietly till they fell asleep. I felt then that the world could still be new for them. The world could last as long as their lives. I could work for them, I could toil, I would run to the very ends of the earth just to provide that, but I would not, would not die.