Toaff's Way, Page 2

  “I leaped!” Toaff told her. “Through the air! And a crow saw me!”

  Soaff said, “I could try to do that too. Don’t you think? What did the crow do when it saw you?”

  “It called something, but I don’t know what, then it flew off to the woods beyond.” He decided not to risk telling her about the machine and the Churrchurrs. If he told her and she made fun of him, or asked the others if that was possible, he would feel even only-er. “I’m sleepy,” he said.

  “Our mother says a storm is coming.”

  “It’s already snowing outside. But not much.”

  “There’ll be a storm for sure if Mother says so. It’ll get colder, in a storm,” Soaff warned him. “We should stay warm together. Mother said a big storm.”

  When Toaff woke, the old tree was creaking and trembling, and the den was filled with squirrels. Snow fell so thickly that when Toaff went up to the entrance to see the storm, the wind plastered his face with cold flakes. He could barely see the short, broken-off branch just over his head. The wind was so strong that even with his sharp nails dug in, he almost lost his footing. He retreated back down into the den.

  “I told you,” Braff greeted Toaff, although he hadn’t. But when you all lived in one den and everything any squirrel said could be heard by every other squirrel, you didn’t always pay attention, so maybe Braff had. Besides, even if he had, and Toaff had heard him, Toaff would still have gone to see for himself.

  The five little ones in the other litter were just weaned and had not yet been allowed outside. They lived in a constant state of uneasy excitement. Of course the storm was making them especially anxious and squeaky. Braff and Toaff and Soaff had already waited through two storms, so they weren’t worried, but the little ones kept asking, “What’s happening?” and “When will it end?”

  “This is just bad weather,” Old Criff told them. “I’ve been in a lot of bad winter weather and come to no harm, as you can plainly see, and that’s because I’ve always kept plenty of stores handy.”

  “Do we have plenty of stores?” a voice squeaked.

  “Enough,” Old Criff answered. “We have enough.”

  Toaff’s mother pointed out, “You can never have enough stores. Not in any season, not even fall. Not if you’re a squirrel, and especially a mother, with three fine babies she has to show how to survive, and grow strong and smart. Which is me,” she told them.

  “True enough,” Old Criff said. “There can be rains in spring and droughts in summer. That means not many nuts and seeds to be found and stored, when fall comes. Where there isn’t enough, someone is going to starve, so a squirrel always needs plenty of stores—not just to get him through the first of spring, but all year round.” He thought for a minute, while the wind moaned around the pine, then, “A smart squirrel never empties his winter stores until the humans start burying their seeds,” Old Criff concluded.

  Someone disagreed. “You don’t have to wait that long.”

  Old Criff had the answer. “Have you ever seen a spring-starved squirrel? I have. Nothing but bones, soaking wet with spring rains and stupid with hunger. And slow. Easy prey for any bird with talons, any hawk or eagle or owl. Or raccoons. Or cats and—”

  Frightened squeaking interrupted him. “Cats? What are cats?”

  “Can talons get into our nest?”

  “Will a raccoon eat me?”

  Toaff was wondering about that word, owl. Owl should be a friendly word, not the name of a raptor who hunted to kill. By the sound of him, an owl should be a creature who liked squirrels, not one who wanted to rip them to pieces.

  “You little ones are safe in here with us,” Old Criff promised them. “But when you’re outside? Remember this: Outside’s dangerous. When you go out to forage for yourselves, there’ll be danger from above and below, danger from any direction.”

  “Tell us a story, Old Criff,” said Swuff, and “Yes, tell about the squirrels swimming,” Duff agreed, and the dim air in the den got quiet as the squirrels got ready to listen.

  “Long, long, long ago,” Old Criff began, in his storytelling voice, but he was interrupted by squeaks.

  “I see a cat! In our entrance!”

  “I don’t want there to be cats!”

  “There’s just two of them on the farm,” Toaff’s mother’s soothing voice said. “One white, one dark.”

  “I saw another one,” someone told her. “It came out of the big white nest with the dogs.”

  “Dogs?” squeaked the babies, and now Toaff was curious, too.

  “What’s dogs?” He couldn’t imagine what would have a name like dogs.

  “Nobody has to worry about being caught off guard by a dog,” Old Criff announced. “They’re so loud, you always know where they are. Big clumsy things.”

  “Have I seen one?” Toaff wondered.

  “You wouldn’t, not when there’s all this snow in the pasture. Dogs stick close to humans and humans stay inside in winter. But you might have heard them. Yarking away to one another, although what anything as loud and clumsy as dogs have to talk about no one knows.”

  “I’ve seen a dog,” Braff boasted. “It was big. Really big. Bigger than…”

  While Braff was trying to think of what a dog was bigger than and Toaff was suspecting that Braff wasn’t telling the truth, a long, howling gust of wind silenced them all. It wrapped itself around the dead pine and pulled. The tree groaned. A few flakes of snow were blown all the way down into their den. Then the gust was gone. Where had that wind come from? Toaff wondered. Where was it going? He wondered, “How big is the farm, does anyone know?”

  “Are you going exploring, Toaff?” Staif whuffled. “What do you think you’d find?”

  “I’ll tell you what he’d find,” Duff answered. “Cats and Churrchurrs, hawks and probably even—if he’s really unlucky—the fisher.”

  Toaff had never heard of the fisher but he didn’t like being whuffled at. “There are so many trees on the farm, I could jump from one branch to another and never have to go on the ground. I know how to do that.”

  “There’s nothing special about that, Toaff,” the other mother said. “You’re a squirrel and squirrels jump.”

  “You mean he’s a gray squirrel. Everyone knows that Churrchurrs can’t jump. Not like us. Churrchurrs hop,” and Duff sputtered into whuffling. Whuffling voices echoed her, “Hop-hop-hop.”

  “Their pointy ears bobbing.”

  “The hairs on their pointy ears waving, hop-hop.”

  “Hippity-hoppity,” whuffled Staif, “all the way back to their burrows. That’s where they live, in burrows! Underground!”

  “They hop? They burrow? They can’t be squirrels—I know, they’re rabbits!” Whuffle, whuffle, whuffle.

  Old Criff’s voice cut in. “Churrchurrs are no whuffling matter. They hate us. I’ve heard it said”—and he lowered his voice, as if fearful of being overheard—“they’ll eat gray squirrels.”

  Now Soaff squeaked too.

  “That’s right,” Grief said. “They’d make short work of a little thing like you, Soaff.”

  “No Churrchurr could get me,” Braff said.

  “You’d be surprised. Those Churrchurrs gang up on their victims.”

  Toaff, who had met real Churrchurrs, didn’t disagree.

  “They’re so lazy, they’d rather steal than forage,” Old Criff announced.

  But didn’t all squirrels steal the stores of all other squirrels? That was why middens were hidden under leaves or dirt. That was why stores were kept close, in dens and dreys, wasn’t it? But Toaff knew better than to wonder out loud about that.

  “If you find a Churrchurr on his own, he’ll run fast enough,” Old Criff announced.

  But that first little red squirrel had seemed to want to talk.

  “They’re cowards as well
as sneaks. I’m proud to be a Gray,” Old Criff announced.

  At those brave words, the wind howled more loudly and the pine swayed. The floor of their den tilted away from underfoot. Stores fell out of their piles and rattled onto the floor. The squirrels braced themselves, nails dug into the soft wood. They looked around at one another. Now that they weren’t talking, they couldn’t help but hear how fiercely the wind stormed.

  The littlest ones were too frightened even to squeak, but their fear made the dim air shiver.

  One of the adults spoke, in a calm, calm voice. “A dead pine doesn’t have needles on its branches for the wind to pull at. Our den is right in the middle of a dead pine. You couldn’t be in a better place in a winter storm. We have big soft nests, lots of stores, and strong pine walls all around. Settle down now. Everyone curl up warm.”

  So they all nestled down into a sleep as dark and deep as their den.

  Until the darkness cracked.

  Until over their heads and under their nests, the darkness exploded.

  Silence woke him. The thick, dark silence seized him by the tail, jerked him up, dropped him down, hard.

  Toaff didn’t open his eyes. It was wrong enough to hear nothing; Toaff didn’t dare to open his eyes and see nothing. Or, worse, to open his eyes and see something horrible that had finished off a whole den of squirrels and was now waiting for him.

  At that thought, his eyes burst open.

  The light told him it was morning, but except for that everything was different, and wrong. There was the wrong amount of light in the den and it was coming from the wrong direction. The round entrance was in the wrong place. There were no squirrel shapes waking up all around him, and no squirrel voices chittering and chukking.

  No sounds came from outside either.

  Toaff did not move.

  Something was wrong with his nest, too. His nest wasn’t thick and soft and—he shifted, twisted to get his paws under him, but why did it hurt to move?—and then he remembered. There was a black cracking of the darkness, and he was thrown sideways, and he heard frightened chukking as he tumbled over, falling backward. But after that, nothing. Not one thing. After that, everything was as black as sleep.

  Toaff shook off crumbled leaves and began to wonder: Why was the den empty? What had happened to all the squirrels who lived there with him? Had something bad happened to Soaff? He scrambled to the entrance, and he had to go down, not up, to get outside. What could change up to down?

  Whatever it was had also moved the broken stump from just above the entrance to just below it, which did offer Toaff a good perch from which to look out over the pasture. He scrambled out onto it, and stared.

  What he saw first, and mostly, was snow. What wasn’t buried under snow was piled high with it. Even the bare limbs of the maple trees, and the horse chestnut tree, too, had thick lines of snow lying along them. Fresh snow weighted down the wide branches of the evergreens, bright white against a green so dark it looked black. A silence as heavy as the snow lay over everything.

  Toaff sat up on his haunches on the broken stump, forelegs gathered up against his narrow chest, and listened. Nothing. The storm had blown away all the usual sounds of a winter morning. Then a crow that had been perched high up in the horse chestnut kaah-kaahed and flew off. He watched the bird soar over across the pasture toward the humans’ big red nest and wondered if it was showing him where everyone else had gone. Without him.

  Branches and twigs lay scattered about, black dots and lines on the snow’s smooth white surface. Two thick maple limbs had been ripped off and tossed down onto the pasture. When Toaff looked up over his shoulder at his own tree, he understood exactly what had happened: The pine had been broken in half. The tree had snapped at a point that used to be below their entrance and now its long upper trunk, where their den was, slanted down to touch the snowy ground. This made a long path Toaff could run along to get down. Or—he looked backward and upward—he could climb the short distance up to the break, where jagged blades of wood stuck up into the icy air.

  To see more, he scrambled up to the break. He wondered if anything had happened to the humans’ big white nest, but it still had the same square shape and stood on the same spot. He was glad to see that the two apple trees were also unharmed, except that the little round fruits that had been clinging so stubbornly to their bare branches had disappeared. Blown off by the wind, he guessed, and buried in the snow. He could sniff out those apples, if he wanted to, and he thought he probably wanted to. Looking out from the ragged top of the broken pine, Toaff wondered where the others could have fled to. How did they manage it, in the storm, in the night, with those young ones to carry?

  He wondered, but he didn’t worry. Once a squirrel has learned to forage, he knows his mother is ready for him to leave her nest and forget all about having a mother. It might feel strange being alone like this but it didn’t feel wrong.

  Toaff stayed there on the stump until well into the morning, but he neither saw nor heard nor smelled any sign of squirrel. No machine moved, no human appeared, and no fox came to dig out a buried body. Just the occasional crow was up and about. Eventually, Toaff went back inside, where what had once been the floor was now the ceiling and what had once been the ceiling was now the floor.

  He ate some seeds and then tidied the scattered stores together into piles. He wove a new nest out of bits and pieces of the old ones, which was easy to do since this new nest just needed to be big enough for one. When he was satisfied that the den was in order, Toaff went back outside, to consider the best way to get to the apple trees.

  Toaff didn’t waste time feeling sad, or lonely. Squirrels are adaptable. They can live alone as easily as they can in packs or families. They are comfortable in dreys perched high up in tall trees and in dens deep within the woody hearts of trees. Some even live among tree roots or under thick bushes in burrows. They are mostly concerned with hunger. They have to be adaptable about food, too. They will eat nuts or seeds or fruits or vegetables, all with equal pleasure. They will even, if they are hungry enough, eat the bitter new buds of early spring; and if they are starving, and there is nothing else, they will eat some small creature, a lizard, a tiny snake, a bird’s egg. A squirrel needs a safe nest and food. Like any other squirrel, Toaff had adapted to all the changes without thinking much about it. What he was thinking about was apples.

  He looked at the two trees, and the snow piled around them where the last apples had probably fallen. He considered his path across the distance between where he was and where he wanted to be. It wasn’t smart to spend any more time than you had to out in the open, he knew, and it also wasn’t smart to try traveling through firs. In a fir, a squirrel could easily lose his footing and fall, tumbling, through the floppy branches until he smacked down into the snow. That’s if he was lucky, because if he wasn’t lucky he would smack down flat onto bare ground and risk serious injury. Toaff decided to risk a run along the ground, from the protection of a fir trunk to the stone wall that made a long, humped path of snow to the apple trees.

  He scurried across to the trunk of the nearest fir and climbed out onto a low branch. From there, Toaff peered out through the branches and listened. He waited until the branch stopped swaying under him and the heavy snow he’d disturbed had plopped down onto the ground below. Then everything was silent again, and still. He waited a few heartbeats more, to be absolutely sure it was safe to descend to the snow and make a dash for the stone wall.

  It was a good thing Toaff did that because just then there was distant movement on the snowy surface of the pasture. An animal. A large animal. As it came closer, he saw the long-nosed head, the white chest and rusty fur. It had to be a fox, a fox on the hunt. If a fox caught a squirrel on the ground…

  Toaff didn’t move.

  The long legs stepped delicately, the long tail was held low, and the fox’s ears were cocked forward, its n
ose lowered into the snow. The fox left paw tracks and a shallow nose-trail as it glided along the top of the snow, light as a squirrel, intent on whatever it was tracking. Toaff didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t see any creature fleeing across the snow ahead of the fox, and he certainly didn’t want to become the prey. This fox looked thin with winter. Motionless and silent, Toaff watched.

  What came next happened so smoothly that Toaff couldn’t be sure where one thing ended and the next began: The fox halted. Its forepaws dug into the snow, digging down until its head was hidden and its haunches stuck up into the air. The fox’s head came back up holding a small brown mouse in its teeth. The mouse gave one shrill, terrified shriek. The fox tossed its head up and opened its jaws and the mouse disappeared into them. Then the fox loped off.

  That mouse must have been tunneling under the snow. For an apple? For some squirrel’s buried nuts? That mouse must have felt safe under its thick cover of snow. It felt safe but it wasn’t. You were never really safe unless you were curled up in your nest in the hollow of a tree. At any other time a predator could fall on you, and snatch you up.

  Predator was a word with long dark wings and sharp talons, while prey was a quick little word, helpless as a mouse. Toaff knew that a squirrel was prey, and he didn’t question it, because what was the use of questioning something like that? But he didn’t forget the way that mouse had cried out. Remembering changed nothing and he didn’t really remember. Just, he didn’t forget.

  Toaff gave the fox time to get far, far off. He watched it jump over the mound of snow that was the stone wall at the pasture’s end; he saw it run into the woods beyond. He waited until he could no longer see even a tiny moving spot, and he was about to descend for his dash to the nearby stone wall when he was halted a second time.

  “Yark! Yark!”