Dogs? He looked in all directions. Where?
He listened closely, because Old Criff had said the dogs were actually talking.
Did he hear jump and snow among the yarks? He thought he might have heard those words. Why couldn’t he see any dogs?
Voices were speaking together, it seemed, dogs and humans. Then the human voice said something and one of the dogs might have said in and what the other said sounded like house and all the voices faded away. Did in go with house? Was house an inside thing, the same thing as den or nest? If the humans and dogs lived together in the big white nest, they might have their own name for it, and that name might be house. It would have to be something with an in, like a tree with a den in-side. He would have liked to have actually seen dogs, Toaff thought, as he once again waited for silence, so he could continue on his way to the apple trees.
The apple Toaff sniffed out from beneath the snow below the apple trees was frozen solid. He scraped at it with his strong teeth, but he wasn’t hungry enough to make it worth all the effort. It was too big to take back to his den, so he buried it under the snow again. Then he climbed up to the safety of a branch, just to look at the humans’ nest. Was it a nest-house? He noticed bare branches peeking up over it, the tops of trees at least as tall as the maples along the drive. But he didn’t even think of crossing the snowy spaces to find out: A squirrel moving on top of snow is much too easy to see. Toaff was curious but he wasn’t silly. He retraced the path back to his den, where there were piles of stores to feed from and strong pine walls all around him.
As he stepped up onto the tip of the pine’s trunk, Braff emerged from the entrance. Toaff ran up to him. “Hello, hello!” he greeted his littermate, and at the sight of Braff’s cheeks, swollen out with chestnuts, and the furious chewing of his mouth, he couldn’t help whuffling.
Braff swallowed and glared and demanded, “What? Just because you’re not dead, you can’t keep all the stores. They used to be mine and they still are. They’re as much mine as yours, and you can stop that silly whuffling.”
“Okay,” Toaff said, and he did. “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said. “Where are you—?”
“So you agree I can take from the stores,” Braff said.
“There’s plenty and I just found—”
“It smells like you’re alone in there,” Braff said.
Toaff nodded.
“You better come back with me,” Braff told him.
Toaff shook his head and did what he always did when Braff got too bossy. He stuck his nose into the soft place just beneath his littermate’s front leg.
“Stoppit!” Braff cried, backing away.
Toaff ignored him, and kept snuffling, to make him act normal again.
“I said stop!” and Braff nipped at Toaff’s ear.
“What—? Why did you—?”
“I warned you,” Braff said.
“You bit me!”
“I told you to stop. I don’t play games anymore.”
“Well,” Toaff said, and began to circle around Braff to go in and get a few seeds for himself. “I’ve stopped.”
“Then let’s get going,” Braff said.
“I’m staying here.” Toaff didn’t want to go anywhere with Braff.
“Hunhh,” said Braff. “When you change your mind I won’t be here to show you where we are.”
“That’s all right,” Toaff said.
“We’re right behind the humans’ red nest.”
“You’re there? But it’s across the drive, where the Churrchurrs—”
“We’re not near Churrchurrs, we’re beside the sheep, which before you ask I can tell you are huge and smelly. They’re in a pen and you don’t have to ask about that either. A pen’s like a den with no top and no real walls. Some rabbits live in those same woods and they told us what the pen is and what sheep are and how the humans put out food for the sheep and we can take it. Sheep aren’t dangerous if you move fast.”
After that announcement, Braff ran past Toaff and down the broken pine trunk. Standing on the snow, tail raised, he turned to call up, “Another snow coming, everyone says. What’re you going to do when the stores run out? It’s not long until spring, they say, but still. You don’t know the half of what will happen in spring, Toaff. And I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”
Toaff remembered quite well hearing about the starvations of early spring. “Maybe you shouldn’t come back,” he called down.
“They’re mine, too,” Braff said.
“Not anymore. Not when this isn’t your nest they aren’t.”
“What if this next snow is a winter storm again?” Braff asked. “And this old dried-up pine breaks again?” He ran off without waiting to hear what Toaff might answer.
Toaff watched him go and wished it had been Soaff, not Braff, who had come back. He’d be happy to share his stores with her. Was there a storm coming? He sniffed, and did notice the smell of snow. So he wasn’t surprised when, in not very long, the air filled with fat falling flakes. This was a snow that filled the entire sky, without any windy threats. All afternoon long and all night long, too, the quiet snow kept on falling.
Toaff slept undisturbed and woke the next morning to a clear sky above and more snow below. There was now so much snow that it muffled the sound of the machine as it pushed snow up and down the driveway, changing a frightening roar into a friendly rumble. When that machine finally went away, Toaff could perch out on the broken stump below his entrance, in warm sunlight, eating a chestnut.
Looking out over the pasture, his fur warmed by the sun, peering across the two lines of maples toward the Churrchurrs’ woods and then looking the other way, to the woods beyond the pasture, Toaff wondered about spring. He had heard about one season following the other, spring after winter, summer after spring, fall after summer, and the next winter after that, but he knew little more of the other three seasons than their names. Winter was the one season he’d been alive in. How would he know it was spring? When spring had happened, would everything change, the pasture and maples and drive? Would spring come roaring in, sudden as a storm? Or did it creep in, like a hunting fox?
Toaff didn’t know anything, really, not about the seasons, or about the best ways and places to find food. He didn’t know anything and there was no one to ask. Should I have gone with Braff? he wondered, but as soon as he’d wondered that, he knew better. And as soon as he knew better, he felt better. He guessed that when spring arrived, he would find out everything he didn’t know.
The next day, much to Toaff’s surprise, what fell from the sky was not snow, but water. All day long a heavy, steady rain drummed down onto the broken pine. Curled in his nest, Toaff listened to its beat and slept. The cold didn’t come back until far into the night, but this was a cold so sharp that Toaff burrowed deeper into his nest and wrapped his tail more tightly around his body. In the morning, when he stood in his entrance, Toaff didn’t know what he was seeing. Each branch of each tree, even the smallest twigs, each needle on each pine, and the whole white sheet of snow on the ground, everything, everywhere, glimmered in sunlight, and glistened and glowed; everything was entirely different and new. After a whole rainy day of sleeping followed by a long night’s sleep, Toaff was more than ready to be outside. He jumped down onto the glistening pine trunk—
All four of his legs shot out from under him. Nails scrabbling for a grip, he slid on his belly, slithering down, going much too fast. More than once he almost flew off the trunk to crash onto the ground. His small sharp claws, clutching at the cold surface, could do no more than slow his descent.
“Yark, yark,” he heard, and “Run!” He was sure run was the word he’d heard. “Yark play!” and he recognized play, too. He heard and understood “Yark of ice!”
Ice? Toaff didn’t move. He lay on his belly where the tip of the trunk touched the gr
ound. He dug his nails in—dug them into ice?—and waited.
Two animals came onto the drive just in front of the nest-house. What might they be? Dogs, maybe? Probably dogs, Toaff hoped. They were definitely yarking. The bigger, black-splotched one held his legs stiff to keep from slipping, but they were so stiff that his back legs caught up with his front legs and he tipped over, landing on his muzzle while his legs scrabbled helplessly at the shining surface of the snow. “Sturf, sturf,” said the smaller, brown one, and “Not funny!” the bigger one answered.
Toaff could understand them! He could understand what the dogs said!
“Sorry,” said the smaller dog. “Dig yark nails yark ice, Angus,” she advised.
Was Angus a name? Or was this an angus, not a dog?
“See?” The smaller one lifted a leg to show her nails and then she slipped over sideways, crashing down onto her back. Her legs waved in the air. “Sturf, sturf,” she said, from upside down.
“Yark inside, Sadie,” said Angus.
Toaff decided Sadie and Angus could both be names. The animals were definitely yarking, so they couldn’t be anything but dogs, two dogs named Angus and Sadie. He watched Angus move back toward the nest-house, legs stiff, nose pressed down on the snow-ice to keep from falling.
“I smell yark,” Sadie answered.
“Yark, Sadie! Come on!”
“—yark smell yark. Smell furry,” Sadie said, and then turned to slip and slide back toward the nest-house. “Ice!” she yarked. “Sturf, sturf. Yark?” she called back.
Toaff had heard the word but it wasn’t until she was out of sight that he understood her question: “Squirrel?”
“Yes!” he called. “Yes! I’m a squirrel!” But she was gone, and maybe that was a good thing since he didn’t know how dogs felt about squirrels. If, for example, a dog would hunt a squirrel down, and eat him. He had a pretty good idea what Braff would say about a squirrel trying to attract the attention of a dog. What he wasn’t sure of was if this was something Braff really knew or something he just pretended to know.
Toaff understood—of course he did—that a smart squirrel would go back up to his den. He understood it as well as if his mother was right there reminding him. But he also wondered what it would be like to slide along the ice.
Slide was a word that went on and on before abruptly ending, as if its paws had gone out from under it. Toaff could imagine how it would feel to slide along the icy surface, almost as if you were a bird slipping through air. His nails could always stop him, there was no danger in sight—unless from the sky? He looked up, and around, and the sky was empty.
What if I—?
Whoosh! With one push he was away from the trunk—
And his legs were splayed wide and he was snout down on the ice. Cold, it was cold, and he needed to pay better attention, to be sure not to go too fast, and to be ready to stick his nails into it. He saw that he had already slid farther from his tree than he’d planned to go. He was so far away that he might not be safe. He spun around to—
Thunk!
Toaff lay on his side on the ice. Surprised and unhurt and whuffling. Whuffle, and he gathered his legs under him again, slowly, whuffle, moving as cautiously as Angus. He pushed off gently, gently, with his hind legs and slid forward. He was heading back to where the pine’s tip was buried in the snow, moving easily now along the ice.
But when he got there, he still didn’t want to go back into his den, back to sleep, so he turned around and slid out over the pasture again.
For a long time Toaff went back and forth, sliding away from and slipping back close to the pine. When he had finally had enough, he climbed very carefully, and slowly—because he really didn’t want to slide off the trunk and smack down on the hard, icy ground—up to his den. There, he ate three mouthfuls of seeds and a plump chestnut, then curled up in the nest and fell asleep, in contented exhaustion.
A day later, the sun began to melt the ice, and in not many days it was gone. The drive had turned to dirt. The few patches of snow that remained weren’t even deep enough for a mouse to tunnel beneath. Clumps of last fall’s grass made brown mounds on the pasture, the days seemed longer, and the nights gave up some of their cold. Was this spring? Toaff wondered. There was a thin little promise of something in the air, maybe in the smell of the ground, maybe in the color of the sky.
Whatever the something was, it made Toaff restless. It made him not want to go to sleep because then he might miss what might be happening. It made him want to run along the stone walls to explore everything—the pasture, the woods beyond, the tall trees he could just see over the top of the nest-house. It made him want to leap. He sat on the broken branch and considered the long leafless branches of the maple trees that lined the drive.
What if I—?
It wasn’t that he had forgotten Old Criff’s warnings about Churrchurrs; he just didn’t bother to remember them as he leaped through the sun-filled air from the chestnut into the first maple tree, heading along the drive.
On the long leap across, Toaff was really flying, almost. The maple branch he landed on swayed under him and he used his tail for balance as he ran along it. There were mostly pines and firs in these woods, so Toaff went along the ground. He dashed from the protection of one trunk to the shelter of the next, and it was not long before he heard those voices again, the soft chur-churring voices he remembered. Then he did climb up a thick spruce trunk, although not far. He chose a low, thick branch and crept out along it until he could see but was still hidden.
Little red Churrchurrs scurried in his direction, foraging, chattering to one another, sitting up to chew and look nervously around. Here in the shadowy woods, a few patches of snow remained unmelted. Here in the woods, there was not much light, and the air was chilly. The Churrchurrs were scratching at the frozen ground to locate the middens where seeds and nuts had been buried in the fall. “Cold,” they said, and “Hard as stones,” and “Here, I put it here, right here. I know I did.”
“Some thieving Chukchuk must have taken it,” a voice suggested.
“Could be a mouse, they’re no better than those Chukchuks,” another answered.
“Do you hear something? Is that a coyote?”
“Don’t be such a scaredy. You’re always hearing coyotes.”
“I wish you’d start hearing the fisher,” a voice whuffled. “That would at least be useful.”
“You’re back!”
This voice came from overhead and it came from too close. Toaff tensed, ready to run, but “I remember you!” the voice cried. “I’ve been practicing!”
Toaff looked up.
A little red squirrel ran out along a branch near the top of a nearby fir. Light as he was, even lighter than Toaff, the branch sank under his weight. He looked at Toaff and the white circles around his eyes made him look dangerous, possibly crazy, certainly capable of just about anything. “Watch this! Watch me!” he cried as he gathered himself to leap out, across to Toaff’s spruce.
“No! Don’t!” Toaff chukked. “You can’t see—”
The little body flew out into the air. At the same time, voices rose up from below.
“Is Nilf doing it again?”
“Never mind Nilf. I think I heard—”
“Will he never learn?”
“Look! Look there! In the spruce!”
The little squirrel had landed in the spruce, but the branch he’d chosen was too thin. The tree was so thick with needles that he couldn’t have known. In fact, there was no branch in the spruce strong enough to stop a falling squirrel. Toaff didn’t know what to do. But what could he do? And the Churrchurrs were already coming after him.
“It’s a Gray!”
“Come to steal our food!”
“Get out, Chukchuk! Get out before we hurt you! We’re not afraid!”
Toaff backed
up along his branch, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the falling squirrel. Toaff watched him—twisting and turning and reaching his paws out, trying to grab—tumbling down in a shower of needles, falling down, down—until he crashed onto the frozen ground and gave a single strangled cry.
At that sound, the Churrchurrs forgot about Toaff. They ran to the fallen body and put their noses to it. “Dead,” one pronounced.
With no snow to cushion him, the fall had to be a bad one.
“He can’t be dead. Nilf? Wake up!”
“See? Dead. I told you.”
“He doesn’t smell dead to me.”
“He looks it.”
“Wake up, Nilf!”
“Let’s get out of here. We’re not safe, I can tell, I can feel it.”
“But I see a holly bush so it has to be—”
“Look at Nilf if you don’t believe me.”
“Maybe that bush marks the end of our territory.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” they said then. “Not safe,” they were saying to one another as they disappeared in among the trees. “Should have known better.”
Toaff stayed where he was, looking down at the silent body.
But was the body silent? Didn’t he hear tiny sounds coming from it? Or was that the trees creaking? Toaff wondered if he had to go down and find out. If the Churrchurr wasn’t dead, he would go back to his nest and Toaff could do the same. But it might have been his fault that the little squirrel had tried to leap when even Grays knew Churrchurrs weren’t good jumpers. Could Toaff just abandon him?
He moved cautiously down the trunk to the ground, listening to hear if those other Churrchurrs were returning, because if they were, he wanted to get out before they got him.
The little squirrel was definitely the source of those noises, and he was moving now, too. He struggled over onto his belly, turned his head, shook his tail. He gathered his legs under himself and—“Oh no!”
“What is it?” Toaff came closer.
Toaff's Way Page 3
