Pax

The second condition for Peter staying is that Vola wants to know about the bracelet. Peter reveals that the bracelet was his mothers and that she treasured it because of the symbol of the phoenix—of something rising from the ashes. Peter says, “She [his mother] always wore it. She’d hold her wrist up so I could play with it when I was a baby.”

Peter says Pax will be dead if he has to wait 2 weeks, and he asks Vola to help him figure out what to do. He references the wall full of index cards that Vola has tacked onto the wall—each with a piece of written wisdom: “all these philosophy bingo cards? You’re supposed to be wise at least aren’t you? Or witchy or something?” (119). She says she’s trying to figure out her own life. She doesn’t have his answers. Tears threaten to form in Peter’s eyes: “I let it happen. I didn’t choose any of it, but I didn’t fight it either. I don’t know why I didn’t fight it” (123).

Vola tells him that he needs food because he’s a growing boy. She also discloses the meaning of her philosophy bingo cards: “those are just things I figure to be true about the world. The universals. The important ones are the things I figure to be true about me. I keep them somewhere else, private” (125). Vola explains that she was lost her first day as a civilian and had to rediscover the truth of who she was—her core: “I knew it wasn’t being in the war exactly. It was that in the war, I had forgotten everything that was true about myself” (128). Vola went to her grandfather’s old abandoned house and decided to live here until she found answers.

Pax travels with Gray. Pax learns to run as he never has before, becoming more and more of a true fox: “he’d sprinted around the borders of his pen or across the yard, but this running was a different thing…. He galloped faster and faster over great sweeps of grass” (131). Slowly Pax forgets what is was to be in captivity and becomes more and more wild. The only thing Pax has a firm memory of is his boy, Peter. He remembers that Peter had a specific scent: a mixture of grief and yearning. Pax asks Gray if the war that is coming will destroy all in its path, including the youth. Gray says it will destroy everything.

While they're traveling, a tawny fox comes through the underbrush and challenges Gray. Gray tells the other fox they are only passing through, but the challenger attacks and sinks his teeth into Grey’s neck. Pax charges the attacker, fueled by instinct. He leaps in front of Grey, protecting him. The challenger leaves. Pax goes to clean and survey Gray’s wound and sees that it’s deep. Pax urges Gray to go back, but Gray insists that he will accompany Pax.

Pax takes Gray somewhere to rest and keeps watch. Then he smells meat, he sees what he calls “the war sick,” i.e. humans eating around a fire. Knowing they’re distracted, Pax goes into the war tent and steals a piece of hanging meat for himself and Gray.