Toaff's Way

by Cynthia Voigt

  On his way back Toaff found a fat pinecone and carried it over to the stone wall, where he sat to dig out seeds, and eat them, and feel sad not to have found Nilf waiting, and watch anything that might happen.

  “Hello! Hello!” a dog yarked. It was Sadie, and she was running right at him.

  Toaff dropped the pinecone and squeezed between two of the stones.

  Sadie crouched down to stick her nose in at him. Her nose was black, and wet, and he squeezed back even farther.

  “Squirrel?” she asked.

  “It’s me, Toaff.” Maybe she could remember him from the summer. Maybe she would recognize his smell and not come digging after him. If she started digging, maybe a bite on that wet black nose would get rid of her.

  “What?” asked Sadie. “What? Play!” she yarked.

  This was a word he knew, even when a dog yarked it so close to his ears that it was almost too loud to hear anything.

  “Play!” Sadie yarked again. She jumped back away from the wall, and waited.

  Toaff didn’t move.

  “Run! Chase! Play!” she insisted.

  Toaff had to whuffle. He was pretty sure that dogs weren’t supposed to ask squirrels to play.

  But then, squirrels weren’t supposed to understand it when dogs did. So, still whuffling, he kept backing up until he came out on the other side of the low wall and could scramble up to the top. “Can’t catch me!” he chukked.

  “What?” yarked Sadie. Her long furry tail waved. “Play?”

  Toaff knew she wouldn’t understand much of anything he said, so he just ran. He scurried along the top of the wall and Sadie ran after him, yarking, “Chase! Catch!” He scurried in and out through the stones, while Sadie chased after him, and couldn’t catch him, and tried to jump on him, and missed. He dashed and dodged, always keeping ahead of her, making sure to never escape. She ran and twisted, jumped and yarked.

  Then Angus bounded up. “Squirrel, Sadie? Where?”

  Toaff fled up the chestnut trunk to a safe branch. Sadie waited below, looking up, her tail waving. “We play!” she told Angus.

  “Squirrels don’t play,” Angus told Sadie.

  “Play!” she yarked up at Toaff.

  With Angus there, Toaff knew better than to move.

  “You run! I chase!” Sadie reminded him, and jumped around in excitement.

  Toaff didn’t move.

  “I told you,” said Angus. “Silly Sadie. Don’t yark anything. Come! Now!”

  Sadie stared up at Toaff for a while before she followed Angus to wherever he had said she had to be, and Toaff was sorry to see her go.

  But she came back that same day, in the afternoon. Just before she returned, for the first time since winter ended three seasons ago, snow started falling through the air, and Toaff realized what that smell in the air had been. Snow coming, of course. This was too delicate a snow to do more than put a light white cover over the clumps of brown grass and the top of the nest-house, but the air tasted of more snow, coming soon. Sadie bounded up to the wall, and began to stick her nose into the narrow spaces between the stones, yarking, “Play?”

  “Here! Up here!” Toaff chukked. He ran down the horse chestnut and they began a wild run-and-chase game, up and down and around the wall and between the trees. Sadie ran—“Stop! Run!”—on the ground below while Toaff leaped from maple to maple. Sometimes he scrambled down the trunk, chukking, “Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me!” Until they both had to stop, to catch their breath and get ready for the next wild running-and-chasing.

  That was when they heard the coughing sound. Both animals turned to look.

  Missus stood in the drive with the baby beside her and they were both watching. Gha-gha-gha, Missus coughed, gha-gha-gha, and she called something to Sadie.

  “Goodbye, squirrel!” Sadie yarked before she ran off to snuffle her nose into the baby’s face.

  Even though he knew she wouldn’t understand him, Toaff called after her, “Goodbye, Sadie! Come back soon!”

  That snow didn’t last long. As soon as it stopped, Mister walked right up to the trunk of Toaff’s tree, carrying something in one of his front paws. Toaff wanted to slip back into his warm shadowy den, and hide, but what if Mister was going to start cutting down branches to drive the squirrels away? Mister didn’t have his orange head and what he carried didn’t look like the chain saw, but Toaff was ready to get out fast, if he needed to. He crouched in his entrance. If he saw the chain saw, he wouldn’t need to find out more, because once he saw the chain saw, he would know.

  Mister didn’t notice a squirrel nose barely sticking out in the cold air. All of his attention was on the thing he was carrying. He held it up against the trunk, and then Toaff could see that it was a feeder. Holding the feeder, Mister began to hit it—thwap—as if it was the garbage-nest, thwappety-thwap, hit, hit, hit. When he took his paw away, the feeder stayed up. But Mister didn’t leave.

  Was he waiting for the Lucky Ones? Toaff looked for them, coming up the stone wall from the apple trees or coming around the corner of the big white nest-house. But Mroof and Pneef didn’t appear. Instead, Mister reached into his fur and pulled out something brown from under it, something he held up over the platform of the feeder, something with a clickety-clickety sound, something he took down again after a short time. After that, Mister just went away, and Toaff was none the wiser. He waited to learn more.

  Eventually curiosity got the better of him and he climbed cautiously down the trunk to find out just what Mister had been up to.

  He approached the feeder from above, slowly. It was not on a pole, like the one near the nest-house, and it wasn’t hanging down from a branch, like the suet the Lucky Ones had told him the humans put out in winter. Maybe this wasn’t a feeder at all. Maybe it was a trap.

  The feeder had a top like a nest-house but its two ends were open, like entrances, so it couldn’t be a trap, could it? The trunk made one long side of the feeder and the opposite side was hard and clear, like an entrance into the humans’ nest-house. Toaff stood on the top, peering down and around over its edge. He could see right into it. Inside, flat gray seeds and little yellow seeds spread out all over the feeder’s floor.

  Would humans want to give a squirrel his own feeder?

  Unlikely as it seemed, Toaff guessed maybe they must, since that was what they seemed to have done. He didn’t understand humans at all. First they cut down branches if a squirrel came too close to their nest-house, then they put up a feeder and filled it with seeds as if they wanted squirrels to stay nearby.

  Toaff didn’t understand why humans would do that. It was a puzzle he hoped he’d have a seed-filled winter to think about. And if Grays couldn’t understand Churrchurrs, and vice versa, and they were all squirrels, how could a squirrel expect to understand a human?

  Winter settled gently down, all over the farm. Days were short and cold. Nights were long and colder. Toaff’s fur grew thicker, so that whether he foraged and piled up stores, or went down to the feeder for food, or played with Sadie, he was always warm. The humans, too, he noticed, had thicker fur in cold weather.

  Every now and then a human put more seeds into his feeder, but no squirrel ever arrived to share them. The dogs were often outside, and whenever she could, Sadie joined him for a game of run-and-chase, but often she couldn’t because Angus came after her, yarking about jobs. The crows flew black across the sky and came to rest on the bare branches of maple and horse chestnut trees. Sometimes they shared Toaff’s feeder. Missus and the baby no longer visited the garden and Mister no longer came out with the lawn mower. Toaff heard soft bau-bauing, sometimes, and muuh-muuhing from the nest-barn morning and evening, and there was yarking and kaah-kaahing, but no chuk-chukking and no chur-churring either, not that Toaff could hear, even when he went down to the fourth maple and found Nilf waiting. He told Nilf about the feede
r.

  “Don’t you wonder why he did that?” Nilf asked, and “Maybe because it’s winter,” Toaff suggested, and “Could be,” Nilf agreed. There was a lot of only in Nilf, Toaff decided, just like in Sadie, and could there be some in Missus, who had stared right at him? He wondered what Nilf would have to say about that idea and he was sorry not to be able to ask Sadie about it; but especially, he was glad to be exactly the squirrel he was.

  * * *

  —

  Soon the fallen snow didn’t melt away under the sunlight, because the sunlight was no longer warm. Toaff spent the long nights alone in his den, so he always chose to come outside during the day, even just to watch machines move up and down the drive. Then snow came down thickly, all one day and into the night, and turned the farm winter white.

  After that first heavy snowfall, as the last light of a cold afternoon was being sucked from the sky by early-winter darkness, Toaff had filled his stomach at the feeder and was sitting on a low branch, waiting until it grew so dark he would have to go back into his den and sleep. The air was still, and silent, and in it a voice chukked his name.

  “Toaff?”

  The word rose up clear through the dim air. Toaff moved quietly around to the side of the tree that faced away from the nest-house. He looked out over the pasture.

  “Toaff?”

  It took him no time to run out along a branch and look down into the shadows and see Soaff’s thick silver tail and round body. “Soaff!” he called down. “Up here! Come on up!” and in no time the two squirrels sat side by side on a bare branch just above the entrance to his den.

  “Hello, Soaff.” He was glad to see her, and then he said it again. “Hello, hello.”

  “I found you!” she told him.

  “You did,” he agreed. He didn’t know how long she would stay, so he took a deep breath to begin. He wanted to tell her about everything. He wanted to tell her about the feeder, and playing with Sadie, and the danger of cats and escaping the fisher and the possibility of sometime, someday, once again hearing what the mice had called singing, which he couldn’t describe with any words he knew. But she had things to tell him, too, and she started first.

  “We moved across the drive. Into the woods at the end of the pasture. There are no other squirrels living there, just us. We all moved together and nobody got lost. Braff found it for us.”

  “That’s good,” he said, and wondered how long it would be before he could tell Nilf that the Churrchurrs didn’t have to worry anymore. He remembered that he could tell Soaff about sheep and raccoons and the Lucky Ones.

  “They have guards out, but nobody has seen any danger, but they want to keep the guards because they’re afraid the Churrchurrs will track them down,” Soaff told him. “I think they like being afraid but I don’t.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, and now he remembered that he could tell her about Mister, when he wore his orange head and carried his chain saw, about how Mister had cut their dead pine into pieces and Toaff went to live in the apple trees.

  Soaff said, “Because you don’t hate them. The Churrchurrs, I mean. You don’t, do you? I could tell, last winter, that you didn’t. You’re not afraid, like Braff and everyone, so I wanted to come live in your den.”

  “Oh,” said Toaff. “You want to live in my den? Live with me?” He pictured his pile of stores and the seeds in his feeder. He pictured his nest, which was big enough for two squirrels. Then he thought about how long winter was and how fierce the winter storms could be and how much shorter the long nights would be if there was another squirrel to share them. He remembered how, when he had told Soaff about leaping, she had wanted to do it, too, and about how comfortable it was to curl up in a nest beside her, and about how she didn’t like to argue. Maybe there was some only in her, too. For sure, they belonged together. “That’s a very good idea, Soaff,” he said.

  In fact, it was such a good idea that he felt like running out to the end of the branch, and leaping, leaping out and across, and then leaping back again. He had all winter to tell Soaff about Nilf, and the Churrchurrs, and everything else that he had seen. All the long, cold, snowy season, they could tell stories, the old stories and the stories that had happened to them, in spring and summer and fall. Maybe in winter they could go see the sheep behind the nest-barn. Maybe in spring they would visit the apple trees together. Toaff hadn’t been lonely living alone, because squirrels don’t get lonely, but he was glad of this company, because squirrels like company.

  Late the next afternoon Mister and both dogs came out of the nest-barn together, just after the sun had dropped out of sight, leaving the air full of a fading light. Toaff sat on a branch near his entrance and kept an eye on them. Mister headed across the drive toward the horse chestnut tree.

  Toaff didn’t move.

  In the still air, the muuh-muuhing of cows was echoed by a soft bau-bauing from behind the nest-barn. The crows were flying back to their nests, wherever they were, finished with the work of their day, whatever that was. They greeted one another quietly, kaah-kaah, hello, hello. Soaff had already gone inside, into the new, wider nest they had made, with the two black feathers still woven into its side. Mister and the dogs were usually inside at this darkening time of day. What were they doing outside?

  Something white was curled around Mister’s neck and hung down over his front legs, but he didn’t seem worried by it, and neither did the dogs. Toaff didn’t worry either; at least, not yet. He perched on a bare horse chestnut branch and waited to see what the human was doing this time. If there was danger, he’d call to Soaff and they’d make a run for it.

  But Mister and the dogs went right by the horse chestnut tree and across the stone wall. They went right through the snow to where the two fir trees stood guard over the stump of the dead pine. Angus sat down in the snow to watch what Mister did while Sadie jumped around, biting at the snow and trying to throw it back up into the sky from which it had fallen. Mister unwrapped the white thing from around his neck to set it down on the ground, and still Toaff had no idea what it might be. Then Mister took one end and reached up, to the tip of the fir.

  When Mister started winding the white thing around the fir tree, Toaff had even less idea what was going on. He sat and watched and could only wait and see. Eventually Mister led the dogs back by the chestnut tree, dragging the end of the long white thing behind him. Sadie jumped on it and grabbed it in her teeth and shook it until Mister said something unfriendly and Angus yarked, “Stoppit! Not a yark!” She dropped it and the three of them walked back through the snow toward the nest-house, the long white thing trailing after. They crossed the stone wall just below where Toaff sat watching.

  “Squirrel?” Sadie yarked up, but Toaff didn’t like to answer when Mister and Angus were there. “Tomorrow?” Sadie yarked, but he kept quiet. “Tomorrow,” she said, and followed Angus across to the white nest-house. Tomorrow would be just fine for Toaff.

  By then it was too dark for Toaff to go find out what Mister had been doing. Besides, the wind was picking up. He didn’t think the wind was bringing a storm, but because there had not yet been a storm, he hadn’t learned how a snowstorm smelled different from ordinary snow, so he stayed where he was, sniffing the air, listening to the wind, watching. All the entrances to the nest-house shone yellow. The air lay still and dark over the pasture. The fir tree—

  All at once lights burst out in the fir tree. Lights were scattered all through it, hidden along its branches, buried in among its needles, as if the fir was growing lights, not cones. The lights gleamed white, like shining flakes of snow that never finished falling. Toaff had never seen anything like that, a tree full of lights. He stared and wondered and enjoyed and didn’t know, all at the same time.

  In not very long, he would put his head into his warm den and call Soaff out to see it; and the next time he saw Nilf, he would tell the little Churrchurr ab
out it; and if he listened carefully, he was pretty sure Sadie could tell him the word for those lights. Then all four of them, however different they all were, each one from all the other ones, could know the same word.

  Toaff ran back along the branch, to bring Soaff out to see this new and surprising and wonderful thing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cynthia Voigt is the author of many fine books for young readers. Her honors include a Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song (Book 2 in the Tillerman Cycle), a Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue (Book 3 in the Tillerman Cycle), and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults. For younger readers, her books include the Mister Max trilogy, Teddy & Co., and two other books set on the same farm as Toaff’s Way: Young Fredle and Angus and Sadie.

  Cynthia Voigt lives on an island in Maine. You can read more about her books at CynthiaVoigt.com.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Sydney Hanson was raised in Minnesota alongside numerous pets. Her illustrations and paintings still reflect her love for animals and the natural world. Her books include Panda Pants by Jacqueline Davies and How Do You Take a Bath? by Kate McMullan.

  Sydney lives in Los Angeles. You can visit her at sydwiki.tumblr.com.

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