Toaff's Way Page 14

  “What will the sheep think?” Leaf asked.

  “The sheep don’t know anything about me,” Toaff pointed out.

  “When we were lost, Say called you,” Neef argued, “and the sheep tell the dogs what to do, so they must have told her to do that.”

  From under the little pile of hay on the ground came the voice of Fiddle, to remind them, “The dogs are in charge,” and Faddle agreed, “The dogs told you to call him, because sheep can’t even talk,” while Fuddle had positive proof. “We know it,” he said.

  This diverted Leaf’s attention (“No you don’t!”) and Tief disagreed, too (“Say told us his name”), while Neef just complained (“Those mice shouldn’t say that about the sheep”).

  Toaff went off to work on the nest in his new den.

  * * *

  —

  The nights grew colder, and their darkness lasted longer. During the days, the sun warmed everything up, unless there was no sun because it was cloudy, or raining. On not-rainy days, Toaff foraged. He had been right to think there would be good foraging in the woods. Pinecones were scattered all around and occasionally he came across some squirrel’s forgotten hoard of buried acorns or horse chestnuts. He shared the food he found with the Littles and with the mice, too. He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to stay in these woods for the winter and see sheep, or if he wanted to go on to the horse chestnut tree, to get away from the quarreling.

  It seemed that even when the squirrels were sharing both territory and food with the mice, the quarreling didn’t stop. Sometimes it made Toaff whuffle, to see six little mouths all moving at once, each trio trying to tell the other it was wrong, twelve cross and impatient round black or beady black eyes glaring. Sometimes it just made him cranky. However, since he hadn’t ever seen a sheep, he was curious. “Do they have fur?” he asked.

  “It’s thick, and it’s soft. The softest part of our nest is that fur.”

  “I bet your new nest in the woods doesn’t have anything that soft in it.”

  “Do they have tails?” Toaff asked. But this turned out to be the wrong question.

  “Little fat wiggle-waggle tails. Woo-hah.”

  “They wiggle-waggle their tails and go bau-bau-bau.”

  “Silly sheep. Woo-hah.”

  “Clumsy loud dogs,” whuffled the Littles. “Yarking at everything.”

  Toaff wondered about all of it: the sheep he’d never seen and the dogs he could sometimes understand. He wondered which—if either—took care of squirrels, or if it was humans, or even crows, in charge. He wondered if he wanted to stay in the woods behind the nest-barn, all winter long. He knew that it might well be as good a place to live as a squirrel would ever find, but that didn’t make him want to keep on living there. There was too much quarreling behind the nest-barn and now another argument had broken out in just the brief time he had sat back to wonder.

  “Not true! It’s sheep that aren’t!”

  “Not true! It’s dogs!”

  “Sheep are bigger!”

  “Dogs are faster! And smarter!”

  “Not true, not true!”

  Toaff interrupted. “Can’t we please talk about something else?”

  A silence answered his question. Then all six of them turned on him. “No!”

  Maybe being told no like that by all of them together made up Toaff’s mind as much as all the quarreling. But before he left, he tried one last time to help the Littles. “You need more than just a warm nest for winter. You also need lots of stores.”

  “The sheep will feed us,” Leaf promised him from the edge of the drey.

  “Not if the dogs don’t want them to,” Fiddle called up from the pile of dry grass.

  “Dogs aren’t the boss!”

  “Yes they are!”

  Right then was when Toaff left them behind. He didn’t say goodbye to the mice or to the Littles, and none of them asked where he was going. They were too busy quarreling.

  Day was ending as Toaff slipped through the thick woods, running, climbing, and jumping, moving quickly from spruce to birch to pine, making his way back to his old territory. He was thinking about how it felt to join the crows in their sky, even if for a brief time, to be flying, almost, and he was looking forward to the long leap over the drive, and he was hoping he would find a good place for a den in the horse chestnut tree. Thinking and remembering and hoping made Toaff move fast. He scrambled down trunks and dashed along the ground to the next pine, then climbed up it to make the short jump across to a slim young beech. He raced along through the gathering dusk, happily but—and this was his mistake—not warily.

  His ears warned him first. He heard…heard something…maybe…but what? He stopped on the ground under a low pine branch and listened.

  Faint machine noises hummed in the distance, and a dog yarked sharply somewhere beyond the nest-barn. But those sounds had been in the air all afternoon. It wasn’t those sounds that made the skin on his neck want to crawl up to hide in his ears.

  Toaff stayed still as stone.

  Birds chirped to one another and the tiny voices of insects hummed steadily, and beneath that layer of noise lay the deep silence of the woods on a windless fall evening. But in that deep silence there was something quiet going on, something that troubled him. Something almost silent. Something so noiseless it made Toaff uneasy. His ears strained to hear that whatever-it-was. He huddled back against a thick pine root and tried to see into the shadows.

  Nothing moved. Even the needles on the thinnest pine branches were motionless. Toaff’s tail was up, and his eyes searched among the trunks and bushes, and nothing moved.

  But he sensed something.

  Toaff peered into the tangle of bushes and branches. He listened into the empty spaces between familiar sounds. He sniffed at the crisp, earthy air.

  He smelled nothing and heard nothing and saw nothing.

  Until a sudden, rough kaah-kaah alerted him and he saw it—no more than a quivering of shadows. Kaah-kaah slashed through the air again—a warning? What is—?

  He bolted. He scrambled up into the pine, and when he came to a high branch he turned to look. When Toaff looked, he saw that he couldn’t have identified the thing. It was nothing he had ever seen before. It was the size of a cat, but not a cat, and it was silent and quick as a cat, but a cat able to climb up tree trunks and go down them squirrel-fashion, headfirst. This thing was more dangerous even than a cat.

  Toaff jumped and scrambled and ran. He fled through the trees, sometimes on the ground, sometimes leading the not-cat up a trunk, then circling so quickly down that the not-cat was surprised, sometimes shifting directions suddenly, and sometimes he’d gain a little ground that way. But the not-cat was faster than a squirrel. It kept catching up, coming closer. Maybe this thing couldn’t leap like a squirrel? That was his only hope and Toaff raced for the drive, where a squirrel could leap out and across between maples and be safe. Maybe.

  Toaff fled. The not-cat came after him. He turned once again, just to see it. It had sharp, curved teeth. It had a little pointed face and hungry eyes. When he saw those eyes, Toaff ran even faster, even more desperately, to escape.

  Trees appeared in front of him, and some he scrambled up and some he circled, but the not-cat was catching up. It was so close behind him that if Toaff had tried to climb, it would have been close enough to sink its teeth into Toaff’s rump, so he switched direction again, to go along the ground. He had to dash out onto dirt, and across the dirt. The not-cat came after him—fast—and Toaff was past the maples and in the pasture grass before he knew it. So he ran through long grass toward where his old dead pine had stood in that long-ago winter, when he had been safe in a nest in a safe den with a lot of other squirrels. The pasture offered no shelter, no place to hide, so he had to keep running. He could hear the not-cat breathing behind him—getting too close,
and he knew it—

  He tried to go even faster, but the breathing came even closer, and it was loud as wind—

  Without any thought, without even the beginning of an idea, Toaff wheeled around—because the windy breath wasn’t the not-cat after all and he had realized it too late. The windy breath was the sweep of wings. It was a raptor. He knew this, and knew he was finished, even as he stumbled back toward the drive, running right into the teeth of the not-cat. The not-cat tore at his face.

  Toaff’s legs kept moving.

  The not-cat was on top of him.

  Then it was gone and Toaff kept going, stumbling across the drive to curl up under a bush and die. He was too weak and shocked to climb. He was trembling too hard to be able to burrow, or even look for a root to huddle behind.

  Maybe the crows had tried to save him—or maybe not—but that didn’t matter because their warning cries hadn’t come in time. He didn’t understand exactly what was wrong with him, but he knew that something had happened to his face. He knew this not just by the blood seeping down into his mouth but also by the pain. Then he closed the one eye he could still open, and dropped into the dark.

  When Toaff came to himself, he wasn’t dead and his face hurt and he could hear low, soft voices. He didn’t move.

  He didn’t want to move, for fear the pain would get worse, and he didn’t dare to move until he understood where he was. He didn’t even open his eyes. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he could open one of them, on the side of his face a raptor’s talon had ripped at. Unless it was the side of his face a hunter’s fangs had ripped at. That made no difference to Toaff. He lay motionless, and listened. Trying to figure out why the soft, chur-churring voices were familiar. Trying to stay awake.

  “Dead, I’m sure of it.”

  “If you’re so sure then you go see.”

  “Where’d he come from? Where are the rest of them?”

  “I don’t see any more. Do you? Do you think it’s a trap? Let’s get out of here.”

  “That holly bush might be protecting him. It can’t be, but is it?”

  “Hollies don’t take care of Grays. Just us.”

  “But he’s under its branches.”

  “But why is he here? Do you think they’re planning an attack?”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Some fox or maybe the fisher will smell this greedy Gray and if he isn’t dead now he will be by morning.”

  They whuffled.

  Toaff couldn’t move and he couldn’t think. He fell asleep right where he was, on the dirt ground with no more than the spindly branches of a holly bush for cover.

  * * *

  —

  It was hunger that woke him. Hunger and a crow, calling.

  Calling him? Toaff didn’t know. The crow could have been telling another crow where food was. Or the kaah-kaah could have been a warning. How could Toaff know? He just knew that the cry had woken him up and reminded him that he wasn’t safe on the ground, where any hunting animal could smell him and find him. Toaff would make an easy prey.

  He sat up. Both eyes could open and he could see clearly.

  He saw that he was in the woods, although not very far from the drive, and he saw a low-branched spruce close by. Before he had even made up his mind to do it, he began to move.

  His movements were slow, clumsy. Moving hurt. First safety and then food, he told himself. You’re alive, he reminded himself, and at that moment he heard a soft voice from behind the low bush where he’d been lying.

  “Toaff?”

  Toaff stopped.

  “Is that you?”

  Toaff turned around.

  “It is you. I thought so.”

  “Nilf? What are you doing here?”

  The little red squirrel whuffled as he came up beside Toaff. “It’s where I live. Don’t you remember?” He was plumper than he had been and looked stronger, although, being a Churrchurr, he would never be as plump and strong as Toaff.

  “Let’s get you up into this spruce,” Nilf said.

  What was Nilf doing, being the one to decide what should be done? Toaff felt a little flash of crossness. “What do you think I was doing? Before you interrupted.” He forced himself to move as fast as he could, which wasn’t nearly as fast as he would have liked, and Nilf stayed at his side, chattering.

  Toaff remembered, now, how the little squirrel had chattered.

  “Once you’re safe, I’ll find you a pinecone. I think you must be hungry. But this is our territory. Did you forget about that? Why are you here? What happened to you? Did you forget me? No, because you know my name. Aren’t you going to say anything, Toaff?”

  Toaff couldn’t move and talk at the same time. He kept moving.

  When they got to the rough trunk of the spruce, Nilf halted. He asked, “Did you sneak up from the other end of the woods to find out about us so you Grays can drive us out? I don’t think you did, but you didn’t, did you?”

  Toaff didn’t answer. He didn’t stop moving. It took all of his concentration and strength to climb as far as the lowest of the branches. But he did it. There, he crouched close to the trunk and waited to feel better.

  “You didn’t eat any of the holly berries, did you?” Nilf asked suddenly, from the ground right below him.

  “No,” Toaff said. “I don’t think I ate anything. There was—I think it was a hawk, and before that there was—”

  “Because if you did, I shouldn’t even try to help you,” Nilf said. “Because…Don’t you know that the holly bushes don’t want their berries to get eaten?”

  What did this have to do with holly bushes? Toaff wondered, but Nilf had gone off. He returned with a pinecone for Toaff, saying, “Move along, give me room,” then asking, “What got you?”

  “I don’t know,” Toaff said. “It was almost a cat, but it was a better climber, and furrier.”

  “The fisher,” Nilf told him. “He’s worse than a fox. Much worse. You’re lucky you got away. How did you get away?”

  Toaff was trying to remember more clearly. “I didn’t see the hawk, if it was a hawk. It could have been an eagle, maybe. I didn’t really see anything. I was running and I twisted away when it dove for me and it missed me and when it came back it got the other thing. The fisher? Instead of me.”

  “Well,” Nilf said, taking a good look at the side of Toaff’s head. “Something didn’t exactly miss you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Toaff said, and he knew that was true.

  “There’s something wrong with your face,” Nilf pointed out, and unexpectedly he began to whuffle. “You look—” but he couldn’t finish what he was going to say, because of whuffling.

  Crossness flashed inside of Toaff again, but then he began to whuffle, too, because he had escaped the fisher, which was a more dangerous hunter than even a fox, and the hawk or maybe eagle had missed him, and whatever Mroof and Pneef might think, he was lucky. He was alive, and eating seeds from the pinecone Nilf had found, feeling his stomach fill up. Gladness bubbled up in him. He couldn’t help but whuffle, too, waiting for Nilf to tell him, “What do I look like?”

  “Like”—whuffle, whuffle—“like…” Nilf couldn’t seem to stop whuffling and neither could Toaff.

  Toaff never heard whatever it was Nilf thought he looked like because right then a throng of red squirrels surged around the trunk of the spruce and a few even scurried up it, to hover above the branch where Toaff and Nilf were sitting. The air filled with their voices: “Get out!” “Out of the way, Nilf!” “We’ll bite!” “Ours!”

  Toaff tensed. He could jump, he reminded himself. He could outjump these Churrchurrs.

  “Hey!” Nilf chittered. Actually, he squealed it, in a high, frightened voice. He had to repeat himself several times before he got their attention. “Hey! Stop! Wait!”

  “Now what, Nilf?” one of t
he red squirrels demanded. “What’s your problem now?”

  “This is the one,” Nilf churred. “I told you about him. He saved me.”

  “He’s a Gray,” another red squirrel pointed out. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “He saved me,” Nilf insisted.

  “He’s a spy who came to find out about us.”

  “No I’m not!” Toaff cried, even though he didn’t expect them to believe him. Squirrels prefer to believe what they have already made up their minds about.

  “He saved me,” Nilf repeated. “When you just left me there.”

  “You fell and you didn’t move. You were trying one of your crazy stunts.”

  “You left me for foxfood.”

  “What were we supposed to do? We thought you were dead.”

  “But I wasn’t, was I?” Nilf pointed out. “And,” he added in the silence that greeted that fact, “Toaff taught me how to jump.”

  More silence. Then, “You know his name?” a voice asked.

  “I told you. He took me to his den, and he fed me too. So I want to let him go.”

  “We can’t do that, Nilf.”

  “Didn’t we find him under a holly bush?” Nilf asked, which made no sense at all to Toaff. “Think about it,” Nilf insisted. “Why do you think we found him under a holly bush?”

  Because that’s where I was, Toaff didn’t say out loud. He’d forgotten how irritating Nilf could be.

  But the Churrchurrs seemed to be taking Nilf seriously. They chur-churred nervously among themselves. Finally one came forward. He stood on the ground right below the branch where Nilf was sitting, with Toaff just beyond him. “All right,” the Churrchurr said. “He can go. But you have to make sure he goes all the way. And he can never come back. Understood?” He looked right at Toaff. “Do you understand?”