The Fox Who Wept the Angel of Death Off the Shore

The sea was filling up two by two, and the fox knew he was next.

It had begun with a command. When God set the Angel of Death over every living thing, He ordered the angel to take one pair of each species and cast it into the water, so that the deep would hold a twin of every creature that walked the dry land. The angel obeyed. He went down the line of beasts and birds and crawling things, lifting them in pairs, hurling them past the breakers. Two lions. Two oxen. Two ravens. The marine world stocked itself, mate beside mate, until the only ones left on the sand were the fox and the weasel.

The Weeping on the Sand

The angel turned toward the fox with his hands still wet.

But the fox was already on his knees at the waterline, his whole body shaking, his muzzle pointed at the foam. He howled. He clawed the wet sand and stared into the surf as if his heart had been torn out and thrown there. The Angel of Death stopped.

"Why are you crying?" the angel asked.

"For my friends," the fox sobbed. "For the two you already threw in. Look. They are out there in the cold water, and I am left here alone." He flung a paw toward the sea and wailed louder.

The Angel of Death looked where the fox pointed. And there, trembling on the surface of the water, were two foxes, pressed close, looking back at him with wet and frightened eyes. The angel had no memory of throwing them, but the proof was floating right in front of him, and he could not be expected to recall every pair. He waved a tired hand. "Then go," he said. "Your kind is already taken." And he moved on.

The fox bolted up the dune and was gone, and the two foxes in the water vanished with him, because they had never been foxes at all. They were the fox and his reflection, doubled by the trembling surface into a grieving pair. He had wept over a mate he never had, and death had believed him.

The Weasel Learns the Trick

The weasel had watched the whole thing from behind a stone.

When the angel came for him, the weasel was already weeping at the waterline, pointing at his own shivering image, mourning two weasels that did not exist. The Angel of Death, who had let the foxes go, could hardly drown the weasels now. He let that pair go too. So of all the creatures of the earth, only two had no twin beneath the sea, both saved by the same lie, told once and copied once on the same stretch of sand.

For a year the trick held. Then the sea noticed.

Leviathan Sends for the Fox

Leviathan, who ruled the water as the Angel of Death ruled the land, took stock of his kingdom and found it short. Every beast had its double in his depths but two. The fox, whose cunning was famous from shore to shore, had no counterpart in the cold. Leviathan did not like to be outdone. He wanted that cleverness for himself, wanted to open the fox and eat his heart and take his wisdom into his own belly.

So he sent his great fish up to the shallows with a soft message. Leviathan was dying, they told the fox, and the king of the sea had named the cleverest creature alive to take the throne after him. The fox, who had once wept his way past death, now puffed up at the flattery. A crown. A kingdom of water. He climbed onto the broad back of a fish and let them carry him out over the deep.

Halfway across, the fish could not keep the truth in any longer.

"There is no crown," the fish admitted. "Leviathan means to eat your heart and swallow your wisdom. That is why he wants you."

The Heart Left at Home

The fox did not thrash. He did not beg. He sat on the slick back of the fish in the killing water and clicked his tongue, as though the only problem were a small one of manners.

"Why did you not say so on the sand?" he said. "We foxes do not carry our hearts with us when we travel. We leave them at home, safe. If I had known the king wanted my heart, I would have fetched it. Now you have brought me all this way for nothing."

The fish stared. "Is this true? You left your heart behind?"

"Of course it is true," the fox said. "Turn around. Take me back. I will fetch it, and then I will gladly come and be your king."

The fish believed him. They swung about and bore him back, and the moment his paws struck wet sand he leaped clear, rolled in the dry dirt of the dune, and laughed until his sides ached.

"Fools," he called down at the water. "If a creature could live without its heart, could it walk and breathe and laugh at you? Go tell your master the fox kept both his heart and his head."

The fish returned to the deep empty. When Leviathan heard how the fox had slipped the hook a second time, belly and wisdom intact, the great king of the sea did not roar. He spoke a single line of Proverbs, almost quietly. "The complacency of fools will destroy them." Then Leviathan ate the fish that had let the fox go, and the dry land kept its cleverest beast.

The Knife the Sage Stole

A sage could rob the angel as easily as a fox. When Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was about to die, Heaven granted him a wish, and the Angel of Death came to do his bidding. The rabbi asked to be shown his place in the world to come. "Give me your knife on the way," he said, "in case you frighten me." The angel handed it over.

At the wall of the garden the angel lifted him to see across, and the rabbi leaped down on the far side, swearing he would not come back. The knife was his. A voice from Heaven had to plead before he returned even that, since the blade was needed for everyone still living. The fox had wept his way out of the water. The rabbi had jumped a wall with the weapon in his hand. Death stood on both shores, robbed twice, holding nothing.