Once upon a time I lived in a house in the woods with some animals and let winters come and go. We were all animals then. It was our way. And one was a dragon, who would also come and go, a mythical beast of occasional fire who inspired disbelief. When he spoke, it was the purest of nonsense, though I would sometimes write it down. That too was my way, to put words down on the leaves of books and keep the covers closed. Then they were mine, retractable like claws, making no noise.

The main magic of the dragon was that he could fly, which accounts for his appearances and exits without consideration of those of us whose powers were more mild. But what could we do but complain? We couldn't fly, and we didn't know where he went on his flights, or whether he spoke the same nonsense when he was there. We were burning to know, but what was the use of asking him?

Once I said, for example (using my most serious voice, striving to be sincere), "why do you only talk nonsense to me here, when I would like nothing better than to hear the truth?" He only smiled. "Well," I said then, settling my frown down further over my eyes, "why don't you live here like the rest of us instead of all this coming and going? Where do you go? What is it like in this imagined place?" In reply to which he did not reply but began counting the buttons on my coat by twos, observing that if I had two more I would have the same number as a sow.

He was wrong, though, and he knew it. I wasn't a sow. I was a fox.

That was enough. I tumed away, though not before he did, for as usual he was eager to be gone. And those of us who live in the woods, the regular animals as we like to call ourselves, said we didn't care because he wasn't real anyway.

"Foxes don't care," was how I would put it, and the others would agree.

Meanwhile, time grew small in the winter there, life grew mean and small because I had not learned to cope. The cold was always just inside the door; darkness hovered close to every lamp. The faucets became plugged with ice at night, and turds remained in the toilet after it was flushed. Ashes lay on the rug. I could not bear to bathe.

Winters I could not eat except furtively, watching from the corner of my eye, sensing that I was supposed to wait, but wait for what? "This is my house,', I thought. "I live here. Everything that has happened so far ends here, and now I am at home. " But I was not convinced.

"How long will it take," I wondered, "before I can really believe: I am at home?' I went over it again and again. I was supposed to be here. There was nowhere else. And when I was here, someone was at home, even in winter. But I was never able to persuade myself that this was true, or that I was doing the right thing.

And the dragon would come and go, but that didn't change anything.

One day a visitor came, someone who was not an animal at all, regular or otherwise. In fact he didn't even like animals, and the others went quietly away when he arrived. As for me, he must have thought I could be saved, for I opened the door and let him in. I led him past the cups on the drainboard, past the black iron stove, past the onion sprouting in the wooden bowl, and into the room at the heart of my little house. He observed the cobwebs gathered in dusty shands about the rafters, and where he sat his neatly pressed trousers became touched with small hairs. I apologized, but I didn't mind. Frankly, I preferred the cobwebs and the animal hairs to his pants and would have told him so if it hadn't seemed rude. For his part he was quite polite, and so, accordingly, was I.

When he came again he brought food, a sugared pastry, which I cut into pieces to serve on the pink paper of the bakery. The same cobwebs were hanging from the same rafters, he pointed out, and his tidy trousers were soon covered with an assortment of tiny hairs, white, yellow and gray. Nevertheless he stayed until the light fell under the shadow of a distant wing, signalling the Dragon's flight, and then dapperly took his leave. This man of the times had no wish to meet that archaic beast. Next time, he said, he would bring bacon and eggs for me to prepare.

So I looked hungry to him. Well, he was wrong.

"Why no," I said. "Then I would have to wash the dishes, scour the pans, wipe the top of the stove, sweep the floor, dry the dishes, put them away, and say thank you. It would take all morning at least."

In reply to this he laughed and said, "you are too lazy. You are supposed to do things like that." But I did not agree. He looked at the cobwebs once more and brushed the material on his legs, waiting for my reply.

"Well, so I am lazy," I said with a shrug, but I was thinking to myself that in fact I had always been otherwise, active and alert, working myself to exhaustion day after day, though not in a way that he would comprehend. He laughed again and left, only to return another time with another pastry, done up in pink paper again and tied nicely with a string.

"I am your chance," he declared. "I am still a chance. You can still put out the animals and be clean."

But I wouldn't listen to that, nor would I tell him what he had failed to see for himself, so preoccupied was he with my rafters, that I too was an animal, and indeed a fox.

Who is clean? Everyone seems to know for sure except me.

One day I called a conference of the animals because I had something to announce.

"Animals," I said. "From now on there are going to be important changes in the way things are done. There are questions to answer, solutions to pursue, and I am going to devote myself more seriously to these affairs. Because of this, there will be no more waiting on you."

The dragon was the only one to object. The others looked agreeable and simply would not comply. "You," I said to him, putting my hands on my waist and assuming a stance. "You don't even live here." But then, as we have seen, I wasn't sure whether I did either, so my point blurred. And then I commanded them all out, and only I remained, sitting alone for much of the rest of the day and pondering the next step. But their indolence vexed me.

For all they cared, they could be wearing little striped shirts in a circus and earning their own way. For all they cared, I could be frying meat that was not for them and spending the rest of the day on subsequent tasks. And for all they cared, they could be diminishing to invisible points, replaced by images and replicas. For all anyone cared.

Suddenly it was all very depressing, and I put my pen aside, having written nothing. And then the animals had come back in, demanding to be waited on, which in time I did, even on the dragon, knowing that he would soon leave.

"Let him go," I said to myself. "Whatever he says that is of any interest at all, I will write down as my own. " And that is what I have done.

As time passed, the situation continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate, but I was the only one who cared. Knowing this, I felt my flesh weep, but the other animals were not concerned. "Animals, animals," I said. "You are much too kind. They are killing you, yet you go on, sitting agreeably by your plates, waiting to be waited on, and you don't see." The more I thought about it, the more I carried on.

"Look at the lions," I pointed out. "They live in zoos, mostly, and have become quite dependent on their foe. They are as bad as you. Look at the dragons. There is only one left."

But there was no response. Their eyes had gone shut, and I noticed that they had begun to get fat. Disgusted, I began furiously to write things down that they would never understand, hoping nevertheless in this way to aid and abet them, but they were doing nothing for me to abet. Very well, then, I would do it myself. But do what? How could I know?

I am only a woman. Thus I have had to be more clever than a man, yet I cannot be right. Whatever I say that is really my own, it is not the truth, not until I say yes, I will sweep the cobwebs down and cook the strips of bacon till they are wrinkled and small, and yes, I will put the animals out, and yes, I will leam to be clean.

But I will not say it. I will not be right.

I am only a fox. I am a skinny, shifty, raggedy-tailed fox, running scared through the woods, grinning as I go. My home is in hiding. My living is to steal. My companions are the animals, and even my lies are not my own but belong to a dragon, mythical for as long as I can recall, who appears only in dreams. I am only a fox who runs swiftly into the forest until she must stop. As long as the night goes on, she continues to dream, and I have been dreaming since winter began and cannot stop.

Nothing has worked out. I am back to where I began, only smaller now, and less strong, and every day there are new things to fathom and to fear. The dragon has gone to his imaginary place forever. The visitor may arrive again with another pink box, and if he does, I will not be rude. But he too must go, he and his sweet rolls, without a trace if that can be arranged.

And you may ask why it all began in the first place, in reply to which I can only say that none of this is according to plan, and there is no plan. It is only a story. It is only a dream. No one is really at home in the house in the woods. If they should happen to ask, you can tell all the animals that. Wherever they are. If they should ever return.