Toaff sighed, and went inside to look at his stores.
After Nilf, there was wind. Day after day, the wind blew, strong and ceaseless. This was a roaring wind that pulled at the branches of the two firs. This was a rough wind that tore winter-weakened limbs from the maples as it raged by. Sometimes the wind spat out fat, wet flakes of snow. More often it pounded rain down against the fields and trees. Gradually, rain melted away the last patches of snow as, just as gradually, the wind blew itself out.
Toaff spent those stormy days and nights snug in his den. Not until it was quiet again did he venture out, to forage. At the entrance, he hesitated, dismayed. The scattered limbs didn’t surprise him, but he was shocked at what he saw in the woods beyond the pasture. Roots were clutching at the air, with clumps of dirt still wrapped about them. How could it be that a tree’s long roots were torn up out of the earth that held them safe?
It was because Toaff was hesitating that he saw Braff’s slow, silent approach from behind the horse chestnut. If he had been out foraging, as usual, he never would have known. But he was there and he did know so he chukked loudly, “Go away!”
Braff ran up to the tip of the pine and stopped there. He looked up at Toaff and flicked his tail. “What do you mean, go away?”
“The stores are mine.” Toaff stepped out onto the broken branch and flicked his own tail, in warning.
“They’re mine as much as yours,” Braff announced.
“Not anymore,” Toaff told him.
They stared at one another, both fat silver tails flicking fast.
Braff said, “I know something you don’t.”
Toaff kept quiet. What were you supposed to answer when someone said that?
“If I told you what I know, you’d be really sorry you stayed here.”
It wasn’t easy not to ask Braff what he was talking about.
“Or maybe I’ll come back—but not alone.”
With that, Braff turned away. After a couple of steps he looked back at Toaff to announce, “It’s something else the rabbits said. They were outside last spring, they told us what happens. The human doesn’t like branches in the drive and he won’t like this broken tree either, right in his pasture. There’s something bad he’s going to do to it and then what will you eat? With all your stores gone. Where will you live?”
Toaff didn’t stop to think. “In the apple trees.”
Braff whuffled. “How? In a drey? Have you noticed how short an apple tree is? Your drey would hang down to the ground.” He whuffled some more. “You’ll have to think of something better than that, Toaff.”
Braff started off again, but stopped again, to call, “And you better think fast. That’s all I’m going to tell you.” He was almost at the horse chestnut before he turned back a third time. “It’s called a chain saw,” he chukked, but before Toaff could ask what he was talking about, Braff said, “We’re going to cross the road into a new woods where there won’t be Churrchurrs, to start up their stealing. You can come.”
“Don’t you remember how dangerous the road is?” Toaff asked. “They warned us, don’t you remember? The road is much more dangerous than the drive.”
“You only have to make it across once,” Braff answered. “Are you going to come with us? Or not.”
Toaff didn’t have to think about that either. “Not,” he answered, and Braff started off again. This time he ran across to the nearest maple without turning around, and ran up its trunk.
Toaff raced down to the ground and over to the chestnut. He scurried up it and out onto a branch to be sure Braff really was leaving and not trying a trick to lure Toaff away. He waited there long after Braff was out of sight, on his guard, being proud of the way he’d defended his stores.
That was when he saw the fox. Maybe it was the same fox, maybe another. All foxes looked alike. The fox was on the hunt, of course.
It moved slowly, nose to the ground. Its paws landed delicately, so gently that the damp mounds of brown grass showed no trace of its passing, as it patiently tracked its prey. The prey, a creature small enough to hide under the grass, kept to the edge of the pasture, hoping to shelter among the stones of the wall that separated the pasture from the pale new grass growing by the drive. That prey must be desperately hungry, Toaff thought, to come foraging in the open, in daylight.
Toaff wanted to run to the opposite side of the chestnut and not see what was going to happen. He wanted to run back into his den and not hear anything. He couldn’t stand to watch another mouse caught in a fox’s jaws. He couldn’t stand to hear another shriek. He wished he was a dog, big enough to fight a fox, or a raptor with claws to stick into a fox’s rump. A squirrel couldn’t attack a fox. Squirrels weren’t fighters. They were quarrelers, who used voices to attack, not claws and teeth.
What if I—?
Toaff took off into empty air, mouth wide open, and his high-pitched, sharp-edged cry flew with him. Screetteeettee! Screetteeettee! He didn’t dare look at the fox or try to see the mouse. He had to keep his eyes fixed on the thin chestnut branch below him and then, when he landed, he needed to concentrate all of his attention on keeping his balance, keeping his sharp nails dug into the new, soft bark—Screetteeettee! he cried, Screetteeettee! again, and again—as the branch swayed down toward the ground, closer to the fox, then rose up before it sank down again. Screetteeettee!
When he could look, Toaff saw the fox with its ears cocked, turning in one direction after another as it tried to locate the lost prey. The fox stuck its nose into one mound of grass, then another. Keeping an eye on the fox, Toaff scampered back up along the low, swaying branch, and when he’d reached the safe place where it joined the trunk, he stopped, sat up on his haunches with his paws gathered into his chest, his tail high and proud behind him, and whuffled. He felt ready for anything.
He had never heard of any other squirrel attacking a fox. He was the only one.
Then the sun-filled air had no edge of cold to it, and the smallest of breezes blew warmth across the pasture. Rains fell as gentle as sunlight and even the kaah-kaahs of crows sounded softer. The air smelled of promises, but of what Toaff couldn’t know. All he knew was that winter was over. Quiet as snowfall, spring had slipped into the farm.
With spring came a distant, ugly noise, a whining machine noise, unlike anything Toaff had ever heard. This machine didn’t move along the drive the way machines usually did. His ears told him that this machine stayed in one place, although that place changed from day to day. Another difference was the way it started up and after not very long fell silent, waited, then started up again, sometimes right away, sometimes after a long delay. It was a stop-and-start, standing-still machine, and Toaff had no idea what that kind of machine might look like, or what it might do to a squirrel. But the thing kept its distance so he didn’t worry.
What he did worry about in those early-spring days was Braff. Toaff no longer had enough stores to share. He kept close to home those days, and on the lookout. Thus it was that one spring morning, when he glimpsed six gray shapes skittering across the pasture toward his pine, he made sure he got to the entrance first. He didn’t have to look twice to recognize the squirrel in the lead, but the other five he hadn’t seen before.
Toaff made his stand on the broken branch by his entrance, his tail held high and straight. He flicked it, warning those squirrels off, threatening them. At the same time he chukked loudly, “Stop!! Get away!” Then he thought to add, “I’ll bite!” even though he didn’t know if he actually would bite, or if he even could. In his experience, squirrels were threateners, not fighters. They chuk-chukked until one or the other backed off. Why one or the other backed off was not clear. Some fierceness in the enemy that was greater than the fierceness he felt in himself, maybe. Or maybe, one squirrel wasn’t quite as hungry as the other?
Braff halted halfway up the pine trunk and the others halted b
ehind him. Toaff waited. These were his stores.
Braff whuffled. “Take it easy, Toaff. We’re just here to give you a chance to come with us. Oh, and warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“You hear that machine?” Braff asked.
Toaff didn’t answer. Of course he heard it. He’d been hearing it for days. What kind of a question was that?
“That’s a chain saw machine. The human uses it to cut fallen trees into pieces, if they fell near the drive. He also uses it on any big branches that blew down. They”—he gave a nod of his head toward the line of squirrels behind him—“used to live on the other side of the white nest and they know all about the chain saw machine. After a storm, the human cuts up fallen trees and big branches.”
“This tree isn’t near the drive,” Toaff pointed out.
“The human doesn’t like fallen things,” Braff insisted. “He cuts them up with his chain saw machine. Which you can hear right now. That’s one of the reasons we’re going across the road where there’s nothing but woods. No humans, Toaff, and that means no cats and no dogs and no machines either. You can come, too,” he offered again.
Toaff said, “The road has a lot more machines than the drive. Everyone says. A really lot more.”
“I’m not afraid,” Braff answered. He turned to ask of his followers, “You fellows afraid?”
“Not me” and “Nossir” and “Not a bit,” they answered.
“What about you, Toaff?” Braff asked. “Are you afraid?”
Toaff didn’t answer. Of course he was, but why say it?
“So, are you coming with us? Or not?” Braff asked again, and “Not,” Toaff answered again. He kept on blocking the entrance, in case this was some trick.
Braff waited, and waited a little more, until at last he asked, “Are you going to at least give us something to eat before we go?”
Toaff didn’t say anything.
“All right,” Braff said. “Have it your way. Too bad for you, Toaff.” He waited some more but Toaff neither moved nor spoke, so Braff turned to his companions to give the order: “Let’s get going!”
“Good luck!” Toaff called to him, watching the line of squirrels run lightly back down the pine, watching them cross in a line to a maple, tails raised high and eager, then climb any which way up into its branches. “Good luck!” he called again, and he really did mean it.
For a long time Toaff watched the trees into which the squirrels had disappeared. He watched until the air grew too dark to see anything but shadows. Then he went into his den, where he curled up in his nest, wrapped his tail around himself, and fell into a warm, dark sleep.
A whole field of mice shrieked, shrieked without stopping, shrieked and shrieked and shrieked. Screeching crows flew up into the air and circled there, screeching. Shrieking and screeching: The high-pitched sounds that were pouring into the den squeezed out all the air.
Terror made Toaff stupid. He jumped back, to the wall farthest from the entrance—even though it wasn’t very far at all and certainly not far enough to escape the noise. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t see. He smelled wood, and it smelled hot. Wood shouldn’t smell hot, and there was something thick and black and nasty, too.
Run! Run! terror whispered into his ears, sliding its voice in under the shrieks and screeches.
But Toaff was in his den and the noise was just beyond his entrance. He would run right into its jaws.
Or talons— Right into its hard, sharp talons.
Toaff backed up as close as he could get to the wall, sat up on his haunches, and stared at the round, bright entrance. He struggled for breath.
Suddenly, silence. Silence fell down hard, and it was as loud as the shrieking. His ears rang with the silence and still his breath came in gulps but now fear pushed him away from the wall with its same message: Run! Run! Get out!
Toaff could no more have hesitated than he could have tunneled his way down through the long trunk to safety. He certainly didn’t take time to think, to wonder what he’d find, what he’d see, what might be waiting out there. He burst through the entrance.
What waited was something large, and alive, and bent over a big horse chestnut branch blown off by winter storms. Except the branch wasn’t big anymore, and the large living thing straightened up. It was tall. It had an orange head. And it was coming toward Toaff’s broken pine.
He fled. He skittered down to the tip of the pine, and hovered behind it, waiting, trying to think. Did he dare try to reach the horse chestnut? Was it safer to stay where he was? Was this a hunter, just waiting for him to appear in the open?
His heart pounded and he could not slow the frantic waving of his tail, but he was now outside, where a squirrel had room to run—run across, run up, run away—and squirrels could outrun most predators on the ground, for a little while at least. He took a brief look at the something-large.
It was a human, by the shape of it, a giant figure with a huge round head that now moved from the horse chestnut right up to Toaff’s broken pine. It lifted its front legs, and as soon as it did that, the terrible shrieks began again.
This noise had to be a machine. What had Braff called it? A chain saw machine? The chestnut tree was, for a squirrel, at this moment, the only safe place.
Toaff ran.
He scrambled across the stone wall and up the horse chestnut. Safely there, Toaff squeezed his eyes shut and crouched close to the trunk, nails digging deep into the branch. He heard the high shrieks and then a heavy thump and a silence, then more shrieks and thumps, then another silence. Even with his eyes closed, he couldn’t think of anything to do next. He reminded himself that he was on a branch low enough that a squirrel could jump from it down to the ground and maybe not smash himself to death and maybe have a chance to run, although probably not. Eyes shut, head down, Toaff huddled and hoped and had to hear.
Eventually the sound stopped. The loud silence that it left behind faded away into the usual daily noises of the farm, into insect conversations and bird words. A breeze whispered through the two firs. Toaff could even hear the dogs, who now came bounding up to the human, both of them jabbering away at the same time. Toaff understood very little of what they said and the little he understood had no meaning for him. “Yark gone, yark,” Angus said, and “Yarkyark loud,” Sadie said.
One reason Toaff didn’t understand was because both dogs were talking at the same time. Another was that he had opened his eyes. With his eyes open, he could see the empty space where his broken pine had been. A stump was all that remained there, a stump with a pile of wood chunks beside it. There was no broken-off tree trunk jabbing splintered wood up into the air. There was no long section of tree resting its tip on the ground. Especially, there was no hollow den where a nest and stores waited for Toaff when he returned.
There were no stores, and even if there had been, there was no place for Toaff to pile them up in. There was no nest where he could sleep. There was nothing left for him.
Toaff crept down the thick horse chestnut trunk, watching out for the dogs but not too worried. The dogs were busy snuffling at the pieces of the dead pine, which the human was making into a pile. Did humans have stores of tree pieces? Did that mean that humans ate trees?
The dogs yarked and snuffled at the same time: “Smell that?” “No, what?” “Furry meaty—” “Yark nothing, Sadie.” “I do, I smell squirrel!” “No you don’t.” “But Angus—”
Toaff ran to the stone wall and scrambled up to the top to see any possible danger, either from the dogs in the pasture behind him or the humans from the nest-house ahead. He stuck his nose down into the cracks between the stones to be sure he could squeeze into them, if he had to, then continued on along the top of the wall, crouching low, looking up for possible danger from overhead. He was heading for the apple trees, and their apples.
The two apple t
rees grew close together. The first had a slim trunk that rose straight out of the ground, with no roots showing. The second had more branches and looked older, a little bent over, rounder and sturdier. Its roots spread out a little before they dug down into the earth. But the younger tree was taller and Toaff saw a nest resting on one of its bare branches, so that was the one he chose.
When he had climbed up to it, he could see how the nest had been tucked in close against the smooth trunk. It was made of twigs and dried grass and smelled faintly of whatever bird had lived in it. Toaff reasoned that this nest had survived the storms of winter and the winds of early spring, so it must be safe. Besides, a single black crow’s feather waited there, as if to say, This is a good place. He jumped down into the nest and sat there, getting used to it.
In the afternoon Toaff climbed down to forage around the trunks of the two trees, and found no sign of even the one apple he’d left buried in the snow there. He went back to search along the edge of the stone wall. It took a while but he found enough to fill his stomach. As the sun’s light was fading, he returned to the nest and fell quickly asleep.
Until rain woke him.
There was no light. Cold drops of water fell out of the darkness onto Toaff’s head and shoulders and rump and he curled his tail more tightly around himself, trying not to wake up. But he was awake. And wet. What did birds do, out in the open like this, with just their feathers to protect them? Why didn’t birds have dens? For that matter, why didn’t Toaff have a den, to keep him dry and warm? In the darkness and alone, as a cold rain fell on him, Toaff wished: He wished the human hadn’t come around with his chain saw machine. He wished he’d gone with Braff and the others, even if it meant he had to cross the road, even if it meant being whuffled at and bossed around. He wished hardest that the dead pine hadn’t been cracked in half and blown over and changed everything. As the black night dragged itself along and the cold rain fell down, Toaff almost wished that he hadn’t been able to save himself from that machine on the drive, all that time ago.