Fear left him. He stepped out of the crevice and he padded right up to the sleeping beast and stood up. He looked it over. He had never seen one this close up before.
He thumbed his nose at the bobcat.
He put his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers. He turned his back and lifted his tail and mooned the big animal. Mooning in the moonlight.
Then he stepped softly toward the nearest tree and scurried up and away. Not because he was afraid, but because he was not a fool.
Bobcats, of course, climb trees, too. They are excellent climbers. But sleeping bobcats don’t.
This bobcat was only napping, and momentarily, he opened his eyes and blinked. He sensed that something was different. Something had changed.
JED woke up first. He padded stiffly over to the knothole to see what was what.
“Hmmm,” he said softly. “Well.” Fewer leaves were up in the trees and a whole lot more were down on the ground, that was for sure. But the wintry storm had passed. It was an autumn beauty of a day, mild and sparkling. Denizens of the forest ventured from nook, burrow, and crevice. Birds sang.
Jed called over his shoulder to TsTs and Tchke. He went and nudged them until they opened their eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said. The three of them crawled out from the hollow and hurried on their way.
Half a mile back, the humans crawled out from their pickup truck. They breathed in the fresh air. They stretched and chatted and looked things over. Then they started up the racket.
The friends traveled faster at the sound of it. No time for stories today. They stopped, at intervals, to try to warn local residents* about the disaster coming their way. But the story was too wild. No one had ever heard of such a thing.
“Don’t we have enough things to worry about?” said a chipmunk. “Do you have to make up new things?”
“I am just so glad that storm is over,” said a hairy* woodpecker. “I’m going to enjoy this beautiful day.”
“It has to have a happy ending,” said a squirrel.
“The happy ending is if you get out of the way,” said TsTs. “You have to move.”
“How is that a happy ending?” said the squirrel.
“It’s like talking to rocks,” said Jed.
“I know,” said TsTs. “I think rocks might actually listen.”
“It’s still good to spread the word,” said Tchke. “That way, when creatures hear the rumbling for themselves, they’ll know what’s going on. They’ll have a better chance.”
By midmorning, they reached the outskirts of the Grove. Home. The branches no longer crisscrossed the buzzpaths in random, unpredictable ways, but in patterns Jed and TsTs knew by heart. Here were the fragrant popple paths and the welcoming arms of the oaks. Here was the southbound limb of the ancient beech. Up ahead of them, familiar voices scolded and squeaked. From behind came the rumbling. That was familiar now, too. Faint and muffled but ominous, it rose and fell.
The three of them stood on the ancient beech limb and looked ahead. They looked behind. They looked at one another.
“So what do we do now?” said TsTs. “Do we have a plan?”
“Maybe the squirrels who know us will believe us,” said Jed. “But I’m not counting on it.”
Tchke thought about this.
“Do we need them to believe us?” she asked. “Or do we just want them to move?”
“We want them to move,” said Jed. “Away from the buzzpaths. We want to keep everyone together and safe and not afraid.”
“Where can we all even go?” asked TsTs. “There are quite a lot of us.”
Tchke spoke again. “I think that wherever we go, we’ll be more welcome if we show up with plenty of nuts. I think that we have to convince everyone to move their nuts.”
“Right,” said Jed. “Easy-peasy.”
“It’s only the start of the idea,” admitted Tchke. “But let’s all think about it for a minute. Surely we can figure out something.”
So they tried, each in their own way, to find an answer to the riddle.
It did not seem like an opportunity for Hai Tchree, thought Jed. Maybe math would help. How much time would it take to find and move all the nuts he himself had buried so far? Was that a different number from how much time was left before the disaster arrived? How much time would be left after that, but before winter, to find more nuts? These numbers didn’t calm him down. They made his head spin.
TsTs thought about how hard it was to get squirrels to do anything. Although Jip, of all squirrels, had gotten everyone to run up trees by crying “Wolf!” What could you yell, she wondered, to get squirrels to run all together to one place, without getting scattered every which way? How could you herd them? Why were squirrels so ornery? Why weren’t they more like ants? Or bees, even?
Tchke folded her arms and paced. It was nice to have friends. It had felt good to have the idea about moving the nuts. She would very much like to have another idea. She tried to remember how she had done it. It seemed to her that the idea had come out of nowhere. Like a lightning bug lighting up the inside of her mind.
A leaf drifted past as it fell to the earth. The pattern of light and shadow shifted. Jed had been in a shady spot, but when he felt the top of his head being warmed by sunlight, he realized that valuable minutes were slipping away.
“Has anyone thought of anything yet?” he asked.
“No,” said Tchke ruefully.
“Not really,” said TsTs.
“Me, either,” said Jed.
“If only Chai were here,” said TsTs.
“Why?” asked a voice from overhead. “What could he do?”
All three of them looked up. A tall handsome squirrel adjusted his beret, then dropped down neatly to their level. Jed’s and TsTs’s mouths fell open. Their eyes registered astonishment for about one microsecond before shifting full on into joy. Then there were shouts. Then there was hugging. There were more shouts. And more hugging.
Tchke stood apart, watching. It was okay. She didn’t mind. She was new here. But Chai saw her there, and he reached around Jed and offered Tchke his paw.
“My name’s Chai,” he said. “And you are?”
“Tchotchke,” she said. “But my friends call me Tchke.”
“Tchke,” repeated Chai. “We met yesterday, briefly, but I didn’t catch your name. Very pleased to meet you again. That was a good idea you had, about the nuts.”
“Wait a minute,” said TsTs. “How long have you been up there listening to us?”
“Not that long,” said Chai. “I wanted to have a brilliant idea before I jumped down. But I don’t. I know what you mean, about no one listening. But I’m not sure I would listen, either, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. It’s not squirrel nature.”
“Squirrel nature,” said Jed, repeating Chai’s words. “What is squirrel nature? I guess it’s that we like games, and we like stories. How do you get squirrels to be serious?”
And then another lightning bug flashed in Tchke’s mind.
“Maybe we don’t have to,” she said. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t even try.”
“You mean we should give up?” asked TsTs in disbelief.
“No,” said Tchke, shaking her head. “That’s not what I mean at all. I mean instead of fighting squirrel nature, maybe we can use it. Think about it—squirrels like games. Squirrels like stories. Sometimes it works against us. Why can’t it work for us?”
Jed was the first to catch her meaning.
“Squirrels will be squirrels,” he said. “Don’t fight it. Use it.”
“What?” said TsTs, knitting her brow. “What are you talking about? Of course squirrels will be squirrels. What else would they be?”
“We’ll get everyone to move,” said Jed. “And to move their nuts, by making it a game.”
“That is going to have to be some great game,” said TsTs skeptically. “It’s going to have to be about the best game ever.”
“Wait a minute,” said Chai.
“Aren’t you the squirrel who talked me into traveling four realms to find Jed? And you think we can’t get our families and pals to play a game?”
“I didn’t say we couldn’t do it,” said TsTs. “I just said it would have to be a good game.”
“Call me a squirrel, then,” said Chai. “But I think every game is a good game.”
“You’re right, though, TsTs,” said Jed. “We should try to make this one extra good.”
Ideas flew back and forth. Maybe the game should be like Splatwhistle, or Travel the Terrain, or Bob’s Your Uncle. There could be different positions on the team. There could be rhymes.
“We don’t have time for any of that,” said TsTs.
“Okay,” said Jed a little impatiently. “So what’s your idea?” She hadn’t been helping, and he thought she was being a poop. A stick-in-the-mud. But actually, she had been thinking.
“Here’s what I think,” she said. “If we call it a game, and everyone thinks it’s a game, then it’s a game. At least for a while. It needs a name, though, and there should be teams. And a way to keep score. But the most important thing is, everyone has to believe it’s a game.”
“Why will they believe it’s a game, when they don’t believe us about the racket?” asked Jed.
“Because, like all of you have been saying,” said TsTs, smiling, “we’re squirrels. We want to believe in games.”
Tchke’s face lit up. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s brilliant. Let’s call it Move.”
“Perfect,” said TsTs. “The rest, we’ll make up as we go along.”
“Paws together, then,” said Chai. He extended his paw. A paw from each friend fell immediately on top of it.
“Nuts to you,” said Chai.
“Nuts to us all,” they answered.
It made them feel braver. They turned and headed for the Grove. The relentless whine of danger edged ever closer.
They did not notice how the relentless whine of danger lessened by one-third, for about one minute. Chai had not seen TsTs’s messages, but one of the humans, having cleared the air around a stretch of buzzpath, saw three autumn leaves suspended from the wires. It must have happened by accident. Things happen. But one on each wire? That was odd. He pulled the closest one off. Teethmarks. He studied it. He put it in his pocket.
WHEN they strolled into the Grove, the first squirrel to notice them was Jip. He nodded, uninterested. Then he did a double take: Wait—what?
He stared at Jed. He reached out a paw and touched him as he passed. Quickly. Then pulled his paw back close to his own chest.
“Jed?” he said.
Jed turned and smiled. He pretended to be surprised.
“Jip!” he said warmly. “Hello, old fellow!”
“The hawk,” said Jip. “You were snatched. I saw it.”
(The fact is, he had made quite a to-do over it. He told everyone who would listen how he had shouted, “Hawk!” but the know-it-all Jed did not listen. He left out the part about how he shouted it after, not before. “I tried,” he had said, throwing up his paws. “What more could I do? He thinks he’s so smart. Doesn’t matter how smart you are. A hawk is a hawk.”)
“Hawk, schmawk,” said Jed breezily. “I escaped his clutches. Hai Tchree.”
He did a few swift kicks and chops. “Hai-YAH!” he said. “Practice pays off! Too bad you quit after two lessons.”
Jed’s martial arts demonstration caught the attention of other squirrels. When they saw who it was, and who was with him, they rushed over. A hubbub ensued, with shouts and hugs and a murmuring running through it: Escape a hawk?
Jed shrugged modestly. Like a hero, maybe.
The families of the three returning squirrels came pushing their way through the others to embrace their Chai, and their Jed, and their TsTs, and—who was this?
“I’m Tchke,” said Tchke.
“She’s our new friend,” said TsTs. “A really good friend.”
“I’m sure she is,” said Jutta, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Come here, dear.” And she embraced Tchke, too. Everyone was embracing.
“But where have you been?” asked Chebby. “We thought we lost three at once and now here you all are, plus one more! You must have quite a story. Let’s hear it.”
He settled right in front of them to listen, and Jutta settled beside him. Like Follow the Leader (another excellent game), the other squirrels settled in around and behind them. Upturned faces waited for the story. Jed couldn’t be sure without counting, but he thought nearly everyone was there by now.
“I slipped through the hawk’s talons,” he said matter-of-factly, “and landed in a pile of leaves, in a foreign realm. I thought I might be there forever, but TsTs had climbed to the highest limb in our grove. She saw where I fell. She and Chai came to find me. I am lucky to have such friends. We encountered many dangers. But here we are. We are so glad to be home.”
It was a very brief telling. There was no time to lose.
“Oh!” he said, as if he had just thought of it. “Also—we learned a new game!”
“Let’s play a round!” said TsTs.
“Yes, let’s!” said Tchke.
“Loser has to do cleanup!” said Chai.
“Game?” said Sherette, who was sitting next to Jutta. “I thought we were doing stories.”
“It wasn’t a very good story,” said Zeck, from the back row. “Too short. Needs more details. Like, what kind of dangers? And how did you escape?”
“I’ll tell it better later,” said Jed. “After we play a round.”
“‘Round?’” said a large muscular fellow called Brk.* “Round of what?”
“Move,” said Jed.
“You move,” said Brk.
“No, no, no,” said Jed. “Move is the name of the game we learned.”
“You guys are gonna love it,” said TsTs. “It has teams.”
“Of course it has teams,” said their friend Dotty. “It’s a game.”
“Not all games have teams,” said Zeck. “In some games, we compete as individuals. And in some games, we compete only against ourselves.”
“Well, this one has teams,” said Dotty.
“How are we picking the teams?” asked Jip. “Counting off, rhymes, or tails in?”*
“Tails in,” said Chai. “Tails in, everyone!”
TsTs, who had other things on her mind besides winning, took the youngest pups for her team.
“They’re small, though,” she said, “so two count as one. That means I get all of them.”
Tchke managed to get herself on a team with Chebby and Jutta, because she liked old squirrels, and they seemed kind. Brk was also on their team. He stood a little away from them, concentrating on the rules that TsTs and Chai were laying out.
“I’m too old for such nonsense,” said Jutta.
“This doesn’t sound like a game,” said Chebby. “It sounds like we’re emigrating.”
“Shhh!” said Tchke, alarmed. She held a finger to her lips and glanced meaningfully toward Brk and the other squirrels. Chebby and Jutta looked at her, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that, well—it’s just that you’re right. But there’s a really, really good reason. I’ll tell you about it while we work. I mean, play. Can you help us make it a game? Please?”
Chai and TsTs had finished their instructions and the teams were forming huddles to assign positions and go over strategy. Brk turned around to survey his team. What a bunch of duds. He was probably going to have to do everything himself.
“So, everybody ready?” he asked.
“Wahoo!” cheered Jutta.
“Go, team!” yelled Chebby.
“Let’s haul nuts!” shouted Tchke.
“Well, at least you’re a spunky group,” said Brk.
JED watched the chattering teams bustle out of the Grove. In the quiet they left behind, he heard how much closer the rumbling was already. Would there be time to carry out the ha
lf-baked plan? No. No, of course not. But they had to try, right? He began to dig. One nut at a time. Every nut would help.
The six teams (There may have been seven. Maybe five. Definitely more than four. Probably less than eight.) made their way toward the other grove. No one knew quite where they were going, or how they would know when they had arrived. And while the rules for the game had sounded clear and simple, now there were some questions. Like, how long did the game last? How did you know when it was over? Still, everyone was psyched. Everyone wanted to win. They were all having fun.
Dotty had run ahead of her team to scout out the situation. She stepped along a bough and then stopped. Something, a sixth sense, told her she had just entered the other grove. From her out-of-the-way perch, she watched the comings and goings. Jed had said you got extra points for “moving in” without anyone noticing. You got the same number of extra points for making friends. Dotty planned to try for nobody noticing. That could be tricky because Jip was on her team. Maybe if she found something in this very tree, on the outskirts, no one would hear him yapping. She looked down the tree: nothing. She looked up: Was that an opening or just a dark spot? She scrambled up to see. Ha! It was a beautiful uninhabited hollow. Triumphant, she raced back down to where her team could see her and beckoned them to start bringing stuff over.
Brk was out ahead of his team, too. Every time he looked back, the other three were way behind, poking along, heads together, talking. When they saw him looking, they hurried to catch up.
“Come on,” he said, exasperated. “We probably won’t win, but you could at least try.”
“Sorry, boss!” said Chebby. “We got sidetracked.”
“Thanks for the pep talk,” said Jutta. “I feel so much more inspired now.”
“Me, too,” said Tchke. “Super-motivated. Lead the way!”
And amazingly, they did seem super-motivated. Even Chebby, who was older than dirt, hustled back and forth tirelessly with acorns and walnuts and chestnuts. Also, Chebby had called him, Brk, “boss.” Maybe they had a chance after all. Thanks to himself.
Nuts to You Page 6
