Trash Mountain

by Jane Yolen

But there is need, Nutley thought. Need for a Squirrel at any rate. Everyone knew Red Squirrels were not naturally eaters of trash, not like Rats or Gulls. Besides, the lure of the nut trees was too strong. Now that he knew they were just across the road, he could even smell them over the Rats’ pongy hillock. Nothing in the fuddling place could compete with the scent of those trees. Nutley knew he would go back again that very night.

  ***

  Hurrying on, Nutley found the way to his box, where he ate one of the four nuts, and buried the rest. He buried them deep enough and secretly enough so that only he would be able to find them. Learned that from the Grays, he thought. He snarled and acted Dangerous for a minute. Then he curled up for his morning nap.

  He slept longer than he’d meant to, for when he woke, the sun had crossed over the nut trees. The Gulls were already starting to arrive back from the harvest fields, calling to one another in their coarse, indistinguishable voices.

  “Mine. Mine. Mine.” Their wing flaps got closer. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

  He wondered if all Gulls knew more than they showed or just the one Gull he’d saved. His Gull had been talkative though—if truth be told, as Mummy said it always should—the Gull had also been rather rude. But still, Nutley had been thanked for his heroism. And given presents of nuts. That counted for a lot.

  A shadow fell on him, dark and ominous. He looked up frightened. Even though it was day, not night when Owls came out, a shadow from above was never a good thing. It could be a Kite, a Harrier, a Hawk, or a Buzzard. As Mummy had taught him:

  Wings from above

  Never bring love.

  He could feel the wind from those wings and was about to dive under the box when he heard a familiar voice.

  “Yours,” said the Gull, dropping another twig with three small nuts down to him.

  This time, Nutley was far too astonished to call out his thanks. He simply grabbed the nuts and—as the Gull flew off—bit through the jacket of one, and contentedly munched on the sweet inner meat.

  Nothing better, he thought, before burying the remaining two nuts, quite close to the others.

  “Well, that’s that!” he said out loud when he was done with the burying, as if there was someone other than himself close enough to hear. “My larder for winter is certainly improving.” While that was undeniably true, he knew that five nuts would not be nearly enough to carry him through an entire season of cold. And he couldn’t count on the Gull feeling sorry or thankful or whatever it was Gulls feel for much longer. Not even once more.

  “No,” he told any unknown listeners, “I will wait until the sun is almost down and then head back to the trees.”

  Though this time, he promised himself, I will avoid going through the Rats’ space. He knew that they were sure to be up and about then, both Naw’s family and the Tatters. And that was many more Rats than he was comfortable to meet at one time, even if the majority of them were babies.

  This you should know:

  Red Squirrels are pretty straightforward about burying nuts. But Grays make fake burials to fool anyone who might be watching. Some scientists call this a form of intelligence. Others say that means Grays are devious and underhanded. Some believe that nut-burying is not food storage at all since Squirrels have warm, dry shelters where they could easily stash their winter food. For these scientists, Squirrels are the original nut farmers, carefully planting nuts so that new nut trees can grow. That may be a leap, but really—how much do we really know about Squirrels?

  Before his evening trip, Nutley unearthed one of the hazelnuts he’d buried and ate it slowly, eyes closed, savoring each bite. As he chewed, he thought about all the tastes the nut had—a musty sweetness on the outside and a tang as he got closer to the center. Then the chewy nugget that burst with hidden sunshine. Oh, how he loved hazelnuts.

  He considered unburying a second onebut then remembered that soon enough, once he was back at the trees, he’d have plenty to choose from. That was the problem with knowing where your nuts were buried. They sat in their little burrows singing the Come-and-Get-Me song that was so hard to resist. Mummy called it “the lure of the nut.” And Father said, “You mean the allure.” It was something that made them both laugh. Nutley smiled at the memory.

  “You there, Nut-Muncher,” came a familiar voice, knifing through his reverie. “Stop being a shirkster, and ope the orbs.”

  “Gull!” Nutley said, opening his eyes. “Sir, I’ve been wanting to thank you.”

  “Thanks open no banks,” said the Gull. “And besides, I’m no Sir but a Lady.”

  “You are? I’m sorry. I’m …” He was going to say embarrassed but never got a chance to because the Gull interrupted him.

  “You can tell because we female Gulls are lighter-colored and smaller. And smarter too. But I can’t expect a Squirrel to know that. Fuzzy-Tails of Little Brain, my Mum called you. Knew this right from the egg, I did, along with my two brothers. Though Mum did say Reds were nicer than the thieving Grays, them egg suckers.”

  “Well, my parents called you Gulls ‘Flying Rats.’”

  “Flying Rats. I wonder who should be more insulted, Naw and his gang or me and my kin?” She chuckled, a kind of kyee-kyee-kyee sound. “Now we’ve got the name-calling out of the way, I’ll tell you why I’ve come back.” Her yellow eyes sparkled. There was an odd orange ring around them. “If you have a wish, Nut-Boy, I’ll grant it if I can. You saved my life. Thanks a bunch. Name’s Larie.”

  Nutley trembled, furious with himself that the Gull had been more gracious than he. He couldn’t call back all that he’d said to her, but he could tell her his name. “Not Nut-Boy—Nutley,” he said.

  “Ho! Then Nutley, here’s to you. You saved me when others—who shall remain nameless though I know their names, every one—left me lying there trussed like a Christmas roast.” Larie’s wings stretched out, and she pecked at one, shaking out a loose feather. Then she snapped her wings shut tight against her sides, which sounded a little like whoosh, whap. “Gulls don’t forget their mates.” She gave a loud cry and looked over her right shoulder, calling out, “At least some of us don’t!” She stretched her wings again.

  Thinking about a wish, Nutley ventured, “Have you ever heard of Flying Squirrels?”

  “Heard of ’em? I’ve seen them.”

  “Around here?”

  Larie let out a raucous laugh. Kyee-kyee-kyee. “This is Britain,” she said. “Most Flying Squirrels live far across the sea. In the Americas, both North and South.”

  Nutley’s jaw dropped. “You’ve been across the sea?”

  She shook out her wings again. “These things. Gray with feathers? Called wings. Whadda they mean? Flight.” Kyee-kyee-kyee. She laughed again and snapped her wings shut. Whoosh, whap. “We’ve been called Sea Gulls. Sea, ocean, got it, Nutley? I mean, really—I’ve heard Squirrels weren’t too sharp, but that takes the cake.” She shook herself out again. “Tell me, really—whadda you think?”

  She sure talks a lot about cakes, Nutley thought, but didn’t say that out loud. And then he smiled. He knew what he thought. Gulls were a lot smarter than Father said. Or at least Larie was. He didn’t say that either. “Tell me about Flying Squirrels then. About their wings.”

  “Not real wings, Nutley. Not real fliers. They should be called Gliding Squirrels.” Another golden twinkle of her eye.

  “Oh,” said Nutley. He wouldn’t mind gliding either. It sounded interesting. Possibly Dangerous.

  Larie stretched her wings once more. She picked up her left leg, then set it down. She picked up her right. It almost looked as if she were dancing. “Gotta go! Gotta go! Maybe I’ll take you flying someday, Nut-Boy.”

  “Nutley,” said Nutley.

  Larie laughed. Ark, ark, ark.

  “Soon?” Nutley asked.

  “Maybe sooner than that,” Larie said, somewhat mysteriously. Then, with a flapping of her great gray wings, the black tips waving at him like flags, she was gone once again.

  “A
nd I should be gone too,” Nutley told himself, glancing at the darkening sky. He’d dillied and dallied too long talking to the Gull. If he was going to get back to the hazelnuts before night closed in, he had to leave. Now.

  ***

  Nutley crept around the outskirts of Trash Mountain, far away from any spaces claimed by Rats, Gulls, or other unnamed creatures and close to the wire fence. The light was already smudgy, that interim time before real dark.

  “Dark is Danger,” he said, quoting Father. At least in that, Father was absolutely right.

  Nutley slipped through the same hole in the wire fence he’d used before. Once on the other side, he sniffed the air carefully. This air was closer than the air at Temple’s farm, heavier somehow, compounded of the trash smell (though he had gotten used to that) and the moist thicket across the road that had its own deep, earthy, mulchy, wet odor. And the river as well. The ground beneath the fir tree had sometimes smelled that way, but only after days of soaking rain.

  He raced to the edge of the Spur Road and stopped. Ear to the Road, he heard nothing to prevent him from crossing. No unusual sounds, no vibrations. He took a deep breath and—with five big leaps and a skittering run at the end—he was over.

  With the sunset behind them, the hazelnut trees cast strange shadows, like dark Trolls with huge fingers. Mummy loved to tell stories about Trolls. As a pup she had often listened when Farmer Temple’s wife read stories to her grandchildren on the porch. That was long before the Grays had come, of course. And back when the Reds were not lumped in with the Grays as Nuisances to be kept off the porch by various means. But Mummy was always careful to say to Nutley at the end of such stories, “Isn’t it lucky trolls don’t really exist.”

  Lucky indeed, Nutley thought. He had enough trouble worrying about the Grays. And Things with Wings. And Night Creatures. “Nocturnal Enemies,” Father called them. And the dreaded People Carriers.

  He made his way to the familiar smallest tree and scrambled up.

  For a moment he sat in the tree without thinking, just loving the feel of the branch below his feet, the bumpiness of bark. Then he sniffed the crisp air. The wind was behind him and blowing toward Trash Mountain, which meant that he was getting the tang off the open fields behind instead of any lingering smell from the tip.

  “Ah,” he whispered, the sound round and satisfying as a nut in his mouth.

  Finally, he reached over and broke off two nuts. Cracking them open, he ate the nutmeat quickly, savoring them, but not lingering over the tastes as he had in the safety of his box. In the coming dark, he didn’t trust the North of the Road trees. And once the sun went down behind the hills, it would be full night.

  Night was Dangerous. Scary. Full of beaks and talons. Full of spilled blood. Munchings of meat. Crunchings of bone. One needn’t be a Squirrel to know this. If he concentrated on the nuts, maybe—just maybe—he could let go of his fear.

  This you should know:

  Not all Night Creatures are Dangerous to Squirrels. Bats, Nightjars, Moths, Fireflies, Crickets, Millipedes, Badgers, Rats, Hedgehogs, Mice, even Deer live side by side with Squirrels without any animosity. But the night has many sharp teeth and talons. No Squirrel ever feels safe when dark closes in. None.

  The wind settled. The evening air was still. Nutley had just started breaking off a branch with five nuts to take back with him, when he heard a soft sound below the tree. A scritch. Then a scratch. Then a scrabbling sound. He remembered with a shiver what Naw had warned. There’s those who consider North of Road their own.

  Nutley wondered if Naw had meant Rats. Or Gulls. Or Foxes. Or even People. People sometimes came out of their houses or stopped their Carriers. Some of them even walked along the Winding Road, and occasionally they walked with huge animals on strings. “Hounds,” Father called them. “Dogs” is what Mummy said. According to both of them, though, Hounds/Dogs liked to chase Squirrels. Nutley tried to make himself invisible in the uppermost leaves of the hazelnut tree and wondered if Hounds/Dogs also liked to climb trees. He knew Cats could.

  The sounds came again. Scritch. Scratch. Scrabble. Something was scrambling around at the base of the tree, and the noise traveled up the bark in waves.

  Startled, Nutley dropped the little branch he was holding, and it hit the tree trunk and then several large limbs, knocking off two of the nuts as it fell. Down and down and … Nutley leaned over, almost mesmerized, and watched it fall.

  Someone snatched the branch up in mid-flight. Nutley couldn’t make out who or what had grabbed it. But more important, he hoped who or what hadn’t seen him.

  He heard a loud crack as if someone had chewed through one of the nuts. Then there was a flurry of howls and chittering from below.

  It can’t be! he thought. How could they be here? How could they know?

  “Whoever you are up there, come on down ye weenie and fight like a Gray. These trees are ours!”

  Ours? Nutley felt cold all over. His ear tufts drooped. There was more than one of them on the ground below? Nutley couldn’t think what to do. How far along the Winding Road had the Grays spread? All the way to the Spur Road? Were these the same crew who’d killed Mummy and Father, or were they uncles and cousins of that lot? And really—did it matter? Grays were Grays. Mean and unsharing, uncaring and ready to fight. He didn’t dare stay any longer.

  Pulling himself back against the trunk till he all but blended in and thanking the Squirrel Gods that it was dusk and that red was a dark color, Nutley tried to make a plan. But his head was as fuddled as the trash where he lived. He had plenty of questions, but not one good answer.

  Could he leap from tree to tree faster? Being lighter than the Grays might actually be an advantage in the treetops. But what if they all started climbing? What if there were enough of them to get up into all the trees, trapping him between?

  And what would happen when he ran out of trees?

  He began to shiver with fear, cold rivers running through his skin. His tail thrashed about. His paws wrangled. Why, oh why did I ever leave Trash Mountain? He worked hard at not whimpering. Whimpering would give him away.

  Oh, Mummy, oh, Father, he thought. Suddenly he knew that he wanted desperately to live, that he was too young to die. And with those thoughts uppermost in his mind, he left the momentary safety of the tree trunk; raced to the farthest end of the farthest, bendiest branch of the tree, and leapt to the next tree and then the next.

  A People Carrier, lights blazing, turned onto the Spur Road below him, and Nutley heard the Grays scattering. One—he hoped it was more than one actually—screamed as the big round things ran over it. But as soon as the Carrier was gone, the Grays were back again, surrounding the very tree that Nutley was now perched in, chittering their threats once more.

  And then Nutley thought, Maybe they will let me come down if I promise to stay in the trash. Surely they would find it amusing that I would volunteer to stay there and …

  “Come down! Come down and meet your fate!” someone called. Nutley thought it sounded like Groundling. If it is, he realized, then these are the same Grays who killed Mummy and Father and they will never let me go. Never.

  Another voice cried, “We know you’re there, Nutley!” Soon they had all taken up the call. “Nutley! Nutley! Nutley!”

  How do they know which tree I’m in? he wondered. How do they know it’s me?

  Then he realized that he was shaking so hard with fear that the top of the tree where he perched was swaying, even though there wasn’t any wind. As for how they knew it was he—why they could smell Reds just as he could smell Grays. What other Red Squirrels were around? They probably killed any others long ago. His tail twitched. Maybe Mummy and Father and I were the very last. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  “Go away!” he started to call out, before realizing this would just encourage them more. And that’s when he heard the Grays start scrambling up the very tree he was hiding in.

  Nutley looked over at the next hazelnut tree. It was, perh
aps, a bit too far for him to jump. But still he had to try. He couldn’t go back. There were Grays in the first three trees already. They were sure to grab him, and now there were even more coming up from right below.

  He had no choice. None.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to visualize himself as a Flying Squirrel—no, a Gliding Squirrel, whatever that was. He edged out onto the thinnest, furthermost branch. Not even a branch. A twig. He held his arms wide as if they were wings and prepared to leap into the air.

  There was a quiet flap above him. How did the Grays get up above me? he wondered. The branches there are even too thin for me.

  But he had no time to wonder further. He just leapt out into the air towards the faraway tree, with hope in his teeth as if it were a nut not yet cracked.

  A heavier and faster Gray leaped after him with such speed he whizzed right past Nutley in the air, then turned and reached out one paw as if to grab Nutley. As he did so, the Gray was suddenly lifted up. Lifted! Nutley glimpsed huge dark wings and great talons above the Gray. He felt the wind from silent wings. Opening his mouth, he tried to scream but no sound came out.

  Surprised at how the scrawny Red Squirrel it had aimed for had become a different, heavier, meatier Gray, the Owl almost dropped its dinner. But giving silent thanks to the Owl gods, it grasped its prey even tighter in its talons, pumped its mighty wings, and flew off silently.

  Nutley was no longer flying through the air but rather gliding—at least he thought he was gliding—which quickly turned into falling. He had a sudden vision of Father, sprawled out beneath the tree and wondered if the landing would hurt or if it would simply kill him immediately. He started to close his eyes. He had no time for prayer.

  “Grab the stick, Nutley,” called out a familiar hoarse voice. “Time to go for that ride.”

  “Larie!” Even as he fell, Nutley peered up into the dark.

  Spurred on by the voices above them, the Grays burst through the lower leaves of the tree and stared as Nutley reached one paw up for the stick he hoped was right above him.