Hmmm, another fox becomes woman story? And it is related to a marriage as well. Is this a common theme or a fable? There was an Asian themed story a while back on Podcastle about a fox who becomes a woman to be forced into a marriage, and I believe another on Escape Pod where a monster hunter befriends a woman who becomes a wolf, until they move into the future where it transforms her into a sci fi robotic wolf.
I liked the language in the story, especially the many ways to describe a smile, lemon rinds, apple slices, sliver of moons. The men remind me of Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas, only brown and dirty. The question of who Maggie is haunts the story in the language. It did feel a bit long though, waiting for the final resolution through smaller reveals, like a kind of strip tease.
The marriage appears to be a negative force, an unwanted event. She sees the men more as the marriage gets near, so she appears to be getting more anxious about it. The language becomes more mundane where ever Fred is involved. She finds it dull, and it is so hard to say if it is not reality in her life and the rest is a fantasy in her head or real. Is she escaping one trap to replace it with another? Or is she using the marriage and Fred to make her escape. I wonder if she was choosing the adventure of her old life, despite the dangers, over what she sees a a boring safe place. In the end she is moving from one kind of need to another kind of need, neither being an ideal situation, very similar in many ways. There was a lot of hazy parts to the story, where we don't find out what certain imagery means. As Graham noted in the outtro, its a dreamlike state. You don't feel as if you ended the piece, more like you woke up from it, groggy and slightly confused, only getting the gist of the dream as it slowly melts from your mind.