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They say that cheese puffs taste better than mice. They say that they crunch better than bird bones and melt on your tongue. They say that The Bev is the most beautiful goddess in all the world and when you see her, you feel warm and happy and all your fleas disappear.
That’s what they say.
Dandelion wants to know. She wants to crunch a cheese puff. She wants to see The Bev. When she says this, everybody laughs because she’s less than a year old and she doesn’t even have a call sign yet.
But she will. Just see if she doesn’t.
Phase 1 of Operation See The Bev is getting a call sign, because without a call sign you can’t be on active duty, and only foxes on active duty stand a chance of being allowed near The Bev. To earn a call sign you have to be three and go to tradecraft school.
Dandelion does not plan to wait that long. She plans to make an impression and earn that call sign early. Surely if you realise that you have the World’s Greatest Spy in your midst, the sensible thing to do is give them a call sign and get them out there doing the important jobs. She just has to prove that she’s the World’s Greatest Spy.
No problem.
The Great Pigeon Plot
Pigeons are sneaky. You can tell from their beady little eyes and the way their heads bob that they’re planning something. The fact that HQ is unaware of this is Dandelion’s opportunity. When she reveals the extent of the Great Pigeon Plot, they’re bound to give her a call sign. Something important-sounding. Something with a number in it. Or a colour. Maybe they’ll let her choose it herself. Yellow Fiver. Now that’s a call sign.
There’s a square in Harrow where hundreds of pigeons meet every day. It’s bound to be the Great Pigeon Plot. In the darkness just before the sun comes up, Dandelion hides in the shrubbery in the middle and waits to eavesdrop on The Meeting.
Shortly after dawn, the pigeons gather on the rooftops around the square to wait for something. Every now and then there’s a flurry of wings as they squabble for the best positions. Soon there are hundreds of them. Any moment now, the Great Pigeon Plot is going to be revealed and Dandelion will be the one to report it. She can almost taste the cheese puffs.
A shadowy figure with a hood pulled around their face walks around the corner of an office building, looking left and right before heading for the square. Clearly suspicious behaviour. The figure reaches the shrubbery and stands right next to Dandelion. They produce a large plastic bag from under their coat, look around the square once more, then empty the plastic bag onto the ground.
Bread and seeds. So much bread. So many seeds. Dandelion squeaks as pigeons descend around her in a clatter of wings that briefly blots out the sky. They are everywhere. It is the Pigeonpocalypse. All she can hear are wings. She is surrounded by beaks and beady eyes. The stench of fresh pigeon droppings stings her nose. She huddles on the ground with her eyes closed.
Control glares down her muzzle as Dandelion delivers her report.
“So, to recap. You witnessed a figure dropping bread and seeds on the ground. And the pigeons did what?”
“Ate… them?” Dandelion falters. “But they looked suspicious!”
“That is because that human has an active ASBO banning them from feeding pigeons,” Control hisses.
“So can I have a call sign?”
“Get out of my office.”
The Great Rat Resistance
They say you’re never more than six feet from a rat in London. Which would be nice if it were true, because you’d never be more than six feet from a snack. But Dandelion has her doubts about the saying because she’s never seen that many.
So when she hears rumours of an army of rats in an old building on the edge of a park in South London, she knows this calls for the World’s Greatest Spy. If the rats are planning to take the initiative on their Fox Problem, Control needs to know.
It might not be the best weather for spying, but Dandelion is a professional. Secrets are waiting. Secrets might not wait for the rain to stop.
The building is an abandoned house just inside a big park with a crumbling roof and boarded up windows. Rain hammers down on the roof and drips off the leaves of the brambles which have grown up around it, keeping out casual visitors. The perfect hideout for a group who are planning something.
The World’s Greatest Spy is not defeated by rain, even if it’s the most rain she has seen in her life. It is entirely coincidental that the best place to listen would be in the dry of the house.
Dandelion squelches across waterlogged grass, holding her tail out of the standing water, and pushes under the bramble bush. The movement showers her with water droplets that soak through her fur. She shakes it off and starts to circle the house.
Success comes in the form of a rotting plywood panel nailed over a doorway at the rear of the house. A gap in the corner worn smooth by many bodies and the savoury smell of rats tells her that this is the way into the hideout. The gap isn’t big enough for a fox, but the fibres shred easily under her teeth and soon there’s a gap big enough for a very small fox to squeeze through.
The inside smells of black mould and damp earth and, above all, rats. Dandelion’s mouth waters, but dinner isn’t why she’s here. She pads through the house looking for the heart of the conspiracy but the house is silent. She can smell them, but she can’t see or hear them. Although it’s hard to hear anything because of the rain hammering on the roof tiles and splattering on the floor under the biggest hole; the world outside has turned to water. A normal fox would be at home in a nice, dry earth, but not Dandelion, the World’s Greatest Spy.
The silence is broken by squeaks and scurrying coming from further in the house. She follows the sound to a tiny room whose door is hanging askew from one hinge. The shattered remains of a toilet litter the floor around an earthenware pipe protruding from the ground and squeaks are coming from inside the pipe.
Rats pour from the pipe fleeing the rising water. They see her and turn around to dive back into the pipe again, but the way is blocked by the rats yet to emerge. They form a seething, squabbling mass of bodies around the entrance to the pipe.
Until one gets brave. It rushes towards her, to be followed by more and more until a stampede of rats knocks Dandelion to the ground and tramples her as she becomes a flattened part of the path to safety.
Dandelion walks into Control’s office bedraggled and wet and covered with thousands of tiny footprints.
“There are rats in the drains!” she announces.
Control closes her eyes and raises her face to the ceiling.
“Get out.”
The Great Cat Conspiracy
There are rumours of a gathering of 30 cats in Lewisham. They have to be planning something.
Dandelion is on the case.
It takes her three days to get there, travelling at night. She crosses London Bridge running so fast that her tail is a horizontal rope flattened by the wind of her own passing. By the time she reaches Lewisham she is starving. Dandelion passes other foxes but they aren’t Her Kind. They watch her pass with wary stares. She can’t ask them where there might be food. Sooner or later there will be a dropped sandwich or crumbs put out for birds. Birds. She shivers. No more birds.
The smell announces the location from the end of the street: a shabby detached house set back from the road, different in shape to the newer houses around it. They seem to lean away from it, declaring it Not Like Them. Dandelion pushes under a thick hedge of brambles to find somewhere to observe.
A tabby cat appears at a ground floor window between the glass and yellowed net curtains. It watches her with a steady gaze and mews something she can’t hear.
Clearly a guard. This must be the right place. Dandelion ignores the rumbling of her tummy and edges around the corner of the building. An overflowing gully has coated the path with grease and food scraps. She’s hungry but not that hungry. She skirts the reeking mess and continues to the back of the house.
And then, wonder of wonders, she finds food. A bowl of something meaty at the end of a wire tunnel. Dandelion is small enough to squeeze in and reach the bowl of chunks in gravy.
Something clangs behind her, and Dandelion is trapped.
The old woman wears a flowery housedress with a greying apron over it and slippers that slap her heels with every step. Dandelion cowers at the end of the trap.
“Don’t worry, kitty,” the woman croons. “All your problems are over. Come and meet the family.” She picks up the trap with Dandelion still in it and Dandelion despairs.
The ammonia in the house is a burning miasma. There are cats everywhere. The woman wades through a mewing sea of fur. Periodically she steps on cat droppings and grinds them into a carpet of uncertain colour. Her eyes water and she claws at her nose trying to escape the stench.
The tabby is still at the window of the living room. It watches as the old woman carries the cage in and puts it on the floor. It mews at Dandelion and she doesn’t speak Cat but it is probably saying, “Why didn’t you stay away?” That’s what she’s saying to herself.
The woman opens the cage and Dandelion bolts for freedom.
“Kitty!” The woman cries, but Dandelion is already halfway up the stairs and accelerating. She runs through a bathroom that will haunt her dreams later and bounces from the bath to the sink to the sill of a window with a barely open top light. She hauls herself up by her claws and scrabbles at it until the rotten wood gives with a crack and the window creaks open. She contemplates the bramble hedge before taking a deep breath and launching from the window.
She hits the hedge hard. Bramble thorns spear her toe pads and she rolls onto her side to escape the sharp stabs. As she lays in the branches gasping for breath, the hedge dips with the impact of the tabby cat landing next to her. More and more cats land until the bush shivers as if it were feverish, shaking Dandelion to the ground. She picks herself up and joins the stream of cats escaping up the street.
Dandelion limps into Control’s office, conscious of the smell following her in. “There are hundreds of cats being held prisoner in Lewisham,” she reports.
“What were you doing there? There is an interdict five miles around that house. Every active fox knows to stay away.”
“But I’ve been inside. Can I have a call sign?”
“Out.”
The Great Llama leverage
The llamas at the city farm move their mouths all the time, but they don’t say anything. They must be whispering secrets.
Dandelion spends the day squeezed under a hedge watching them. Four shaggy brown and white carpets with legs and long necks. They look surprisingly friendly for a group of nefarious conspirators. Children feed them little nuggets of something on outstretched hands and Dandelion tries not to think about food. Spying across London is hungry work. Sometimes the Llamas don’t even eat it and those tasty-looking nuggets get scattered all over the ground.
After a day of watching children throw food at animals that have had enough, all Dandelion can think of is those nuggets. They look crunchy. Maybe they will taste like mouse. The llamas trample them into the ground as if to torment her.
Finally, the children go home. Dandelion emerges from her hiding place and slips through the fence looking for somewhere close enough to listen to the secrets.
She is creeping along the fence line where the sheep pen and the llama pen join when she stumbles across a little mountain of nuggets. Her stomach will no longer be ignored and she snatches up a mouthful.
They are horrible. Dandelion coughs and splutters as the nuggets dissolve into a tasteless, gritty mess on her tongue.
The noise alerts the sheep. They gather the lambs she hadn’t noticed and flee to the other side of the paddock, baaing in loud, panicky voices.
That alerts the llamas. Dandelion looks up as one of them emits a loud, high pitched honking noise that echoes across the farm in the half light of the evening. All four of them are facing her and suddenly they don’t look friendly at all; they have a mean look in their eyes.
The biggest one speeds up its chewing and opens its mouth. Something glutinous hits her face and drips down her muzzle. Spit? Llamas spit?!
Dandelion wants nothing more than to scrape her face along the grass and wipe off the pungent mess but the llamas are advancing on her. She squeaks and runs as they charge.
Dandelion limps into HQ with the imprint of several two toed hooves engraved into her fur.
“Out!” orders Control before she can ask for a call sign.
The Great Dog Distraction
Dogs are clever. Humans take them places and tell them things. There must be good intelligence to be gained from spying on dogs.
Dandelion lurks in a park in east London listening to humans talking to dogs about their lives. Other humans, mostly. Jobs. Money, whatever that is. Susan’s affair with John in Marketing was talked about in a hushed whisper which sounded interesting until Dandelion realised it was just about mating. Who cared about that? And what’s a Kardashian, one of the fey? Dandelion makes a note to find out. Surely news that a new kind of fey is in town would secure her a call sign.
Finally, on the third day, she strikes gold. A dog meet at a stadium the following night. She might ask for her call sign to be Violet Niner. She tries it out in her mouth as she prepares for her mission to Romford. Violet Niner, World’s Greatest Spy. Take me to the Bev.
The stadium is brightly lit and loud with humans as she slinks in through an unlatched gate at the back of the stadium. She keeps to the shadows and listens to the shouts and a tinny electronic voice shouting things she doesn’t understand. But there are no dogs. Where are the dogs? Where are they meeting?
Then they appear. Six of the thinnest dogs Dandelion has ever seen, wearing coats with numbers on them. Two white ones, two grey ones, a black one and one with a colour like tiger stripes but thinner and darker. Strangest of all, they wear cages on their faces. Why? Dandelion edges out into the light to get a better look, but they disappear into a box.
A rabbit appears and rattles along the ground in a straight line. Dandelion is bewildered; it has no legs. How is it running with no legs?
There is no time to find out. A bell rings and the stadium erupts into frenzied noise as the six dogs explode from their hiding place and take off after the rabbit at terrifying speed. Dandelion freezes as they round a corner chasing the legless rabbit. As they sprint towards her faster than she has ever seen a dog move before, her nerve breaks. She bolts for the gate as six canine terminators abandon the rabbit and follow her out of the stadium and onto the streets of London.
Thank Fox for cages over faces. Dandelion crawls into Control’s office coated with dog drool, her fur sticking up in slimy tufts. Part of her tail is bald.
Control stares at her for a long moment and her muzzle twitches. “Do you know how much chaos those greyhounds caused?” she says coldly.
“There are Kardashians coming to London. Can I—”
“OUT.”
The Great Deer Diversion
The deer in Richmond Park are protected. Is it because they’re part of a protection racket? What do they have to pay, and who to? If the deer are the victims, maybe they will be grateful to tell the secret.
Dandelion crosses the wide open spaces of Richmond Park in the grey early morning in search of deer. But there are far more dogs than deer. They run around in temporary packs chasing each other for fun. Dandelion knows exactly how much they would enjoy chasing her instead and retreats to the cover of a stand of trees. She scuttles from tree to tree staying well out of the way. These dogs do not have cages over their faces.
It only occurs to her after an hour of searching that the deer are probably staying well clear of the dogs too, but finally she locates a group of fallow deer in a clearing next to a small river. She rises out of her hiding place in the bracken and announces, “I am here to help.”
Twenty pairs of eyes turn to her and one barks, a loud cough out of all proportion to its size. Too late, Dandelion spots the fawns in their midst. It’s going to be the city farm all over again. She turns tail to flee, but not fast enough. An antler lifts her from the ground and flings her through the air. She hits a tree hard, bounces away and lands with a splash.
A small fox floats down the Beverley Brook watching the trees float in and out of focus above her. Her body hurts. Her head hurts. She has no energy to swim. She just lets the water carry her where it will. She isn’t the World’s Greatest Spy and she just wants her mother but it doesn’t look like either of those things are in her future. Just water. She closes her eyes.
Dandelion didn’t think dying would entail being grabbed by your tail. This seems highly unfair on top of everything else. The hand is small and surprisingly strong; she squeaks as it squeezes her tail tight enough to hurt and drags her out of the brook and up the bank in a shower of water.
“Ock!” a voice coos as a finger pokes her ribs.
She cautiously opens the eye not pressed against grass to see a toddler with laughing eyes that pink like a cat’s at the corners and a mop of curly black hair beaming at her.
“Ock!”
Maybe… not dead?
The toddler pats her with a force that knocks the remaining air out of her, then grabs her by the tail again and drags her across the grass, bouncing her head against the ground as she goes.
“Bev!” a male voice calls from somewhere nearby. “Is Taiwo with you?”
Bev?!
“Out here!” a female voice answers from somewhere closer. That’s about all the information it’s possible to work out when your eyes are closed because your head is being repeatedly bounced on the ground.
“Who’s that?” a fox voice whispers from the bushes.
“Dunno,” another answers. “Not on active service.”
Dandelion is in trouble now.
“Ock!” the toddler announces.
“Octa? Octo?” the first one says.
“Sounds like a call sign to me.”
“Ock!” The toddler repeats, and squeezes Dandelion’s tail a little harder.
“Well done, babes,” her mother says. “Show me?”
The painful progress stops and Dandelion risks opening her eyes.
The whispers didn’t do The Bev justice. She is the most beautiful thing Dandelion has ever seen. Tall and graceful, with the same eyes as the toddler and power rolling off her in waves. Dandelion gulps and closes her eyes in shame at being caught trespassing in the garden of a goddess.
“Poor little thing. Come on.” The Bev scoops her up with one arm and the toddler in the other and carries a disbelieving Dandelion into the house.
Dandelion crouches under the high chair and snaps up cheese puffs as Taiwo and Kehinde drop them over the side for her and giggle. Better than worms, but not as good as the chunks of spicy meat she got in a bowl after being dried with a warm towel that smelled like flowers.
She will never be the World’s Greatest Spy. But she saw The Bev, who made her warm and happy, and made friends with her daughters, and tasted things even better than cheese puffs.
Maybe she’ll even get to keep that call sign.