Toaff's Way

by Cynthia Voigt

  He even saw how a squirrel could get right up to an entrance. One branch of the oak tree reached almost all the way to the white wall of the nest-house. It stretched out so close to one of the high entrances that at night the yellow light from inside spilled out to glisten like rain on its leaves. Toaff knew that if he went to the end of that branch, he’d be able to look inside and see…see what? See what the humans did inside their huge nest-house? See why they needed such a large place to live, when they weren’t all that big? Maybe even see why they needed so many entrances? How could Toaff help but wonder?

  “I don’t think we can trust him,” Pneef said. “Look at his eyes.”

  “Toaff has happy eyes,” Mroof argued. “He does, and everyone knows that’s lucky.”

  “Lucky for who?” asked Pneef.

  Toaff couldn’t see his own eyes so he didn’t know about happy, but he knew Pneef was smart not to trust him.

  But all those entrances didn’t make sense, and when something doesn’t make sense, a curious squirrel is going to wonder about what he’s being told. That was exactly what happened with Toaff. After all, hadn’t the Lucky Ones been wrong about the chain saw? Maybe these Lucky Ones didn’t know everything about humans either, and maybe the humans wouldn’t mind at all if Toaff went up to one of their entrances, just to see what he could see. What harm could there be in him doing that, as long as none of the Lucky Ones knew about it? No harm at all. He was sure of it.

  So one hot, drizzly summer afternoon, when the Lucky Ones were all sleeping in the drey, Toaff leaped over to the oak tree and ran along the branch that came so close to the nest-house. He was anxious and excited, and frightened, too, but he reminded himself that he could turn around and disappear among the leaves, quick as anything.

  He went out almost to the end of the branch, which was near enough to jump down to where the bottom of the entrance stuck out, if he dared; but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get so close to humans, or break such an important rule. He hesitated among the oak leaves, staring, trying to see into the nest-house. He hesitated, just staring, until he heard it again.

  He hadn’t heard it for a long time, but Toaff didn’t forget the long, silvery sound Missus had made under the apple tree, talking to her baby. She was making it now, inside of her nest-house, just beyond this entrance. Toaff needed to get as close as he could to that sound, which was curling around him and making him feel as safe and glad as he had when he was himself a baby, in the wide nest in the dead pine, ready to fall asleep. The sound wrapped itself around him, and pulled him in.

  It was an easy jump onto the entrance’s bottom. Toaff landed, balancing on all four paws as he tried to move closer to the sound. But he couldn’t move forward. Something was blocking his way. He pushed his nose against it but it didn’t move. He could see that it was a thin wall full of tiny openings, too small even for a bug to get through and therefore much too small for a squirrel. All Toaff could do was stand still, right where he was, and listen. So that is what he did.

  The silver sound wound around and around him. In the shadowy inside of the nest-house, nothing moved. Peering in, Toaff saw the shape of a human. Missus, he thought, and listened.

  Then a dog yarked—a loud, sharp sound—and Sadie burst from the shadows. “Who yarkyark? What yarkyark doing?” she demanded in fierce growling yarks.

  Toaff had never before heard Sadie sound dangerous.

  With a chittering of nails on wood, Angus joined her in her yarking. “Get! Away! Out!”

  The silver sound stopped. The human inside turned toward Toaff and she saw him. As soon as Missus saw him, she stood stiff, just where she was.

  All Toaff could do was stare at her.

  She stared right back at him.

  For a long, long time that was actually a short time, they stared at one another. Missus had no fur at all on her face. She was a huge thing, Toaff realized, looking up at her. He was looking right into her eyes, unable to think of anything to say although he did want to say something, even just hello, even if she would never understand him.

  “Get it, Sadie! Get it!” Angus yarked, and he jumped up at the entrance. His teeth were long and pointy and his head was big enough to push the thin wall out.

  Toaff backed off so fast he almost fell. He caught himself just in time to find his balance and turn to leap back into the oak. He ran along the branch, back to the safety of the trunk. There he huddled, quivering with fear and amazement, trying to remember everything.

  He wished he had said hello.

  For a long time, Toaff sat quietly, thinking. He looked at the nest-house with its many entrances. Faint sounds of human voices came from inside the nest-house, but that long, silvery sound did not happen again. He began to wonder what, seeing him, Missus had seen to stare at like that, without moving, for such a long time.

  To look a human straight in the eye? Toaff had never heard of any squirrel doing that, not ever. He didn’t know that he had seen anything particular in her eyes but he did know that she had been looking right back at him. Maybe humans really did take care of squirrels, and wanted them to be warm and dry and well fed. Missus had looked right at him, as if she was waiting. Waiting for what? What was a squirrel supposed to do, eye to eye with a human?

  When Toaff at last returned to the drey, “Did you hear the dogs?” Tzaaf asked.

  Toaff didn’t know what to answer, but he didn’t have to because Tzaaf went right on, to tell him, “They must have been around the other side of the nest-house. Probably chasing off the cats.”

  Toaff didn’t dare tell them the dogs were inside the nest-house, chasing him off.

  It turned out that he didn’t have to tell them anything because late that same afternoon, the figure with the big orange head came around the corner of the nest-house and stood looking at the three trees.

  “It’s Mister,” Pneef announced, peering down over the edge of the drey. “What’s he carrying?” she asked. “What is he going to do?” She looked suspiciously at Toaff. “Do you know?”

  “It’s the chain saw,” Toaff said, “but I don’t know what he’ll do with it.” Although he had a terrible, sinking feeling that he could guess.

  “That’s a chain saw? What’s wrong with Mister’s head?”

  “Didn’t you tell us he cut things up with the chain saw?” Mroof asked. “What is he going to cut up?”

  It turned out that Mister was cutting up a branch from the oak tree, and it turned out that it was the long branch that almost touched the side of the nest-house. Mister chainsawed the branch off and then he chainsawed it into pieces and took the pieces away. The Lucky Ones watched this happen, and listened to it happen, and didn’t say a single word to one another. They huddled together in the drey, peeping over the edge sometimes, when the screeching stopped. Even though he knew he didn’t have the right to do it, Toaff crept in close between Mroof and Tzaaf.

  Then Mister returned to reach the chain saw up and cut off another branch, this one from their own maple tree, a branch that also stretched out toward the nest-house, even though it wasn’t nearly long enough to reach any entrance. When that branch lay among its leaves on the ground, the chain saw sliced off its smaller branches, then cut it up into chunks, and Mister took all of that away, too.

  After that, while the squirrels were still in a shocked silence, he came back again, took off his orange head, and stared right up at their drey.

  In a soft, frightened chuk of a voice, Mroof asked, “Is he going to cut our tree down?”

  “Why would he do that?” Tzaaf asked.

  “That’s it exactly,” Pneef said. “That’s the exact right question: Why?” She gave Toaff one of her looks, then asked point-blank, “Toaff? Can you tell us? Why would he do that, Toaff?”

  Toaff looked away. He was afraid he was going to have to tell them what had happened. He didn’t know how to
begin explaining. He knew he would be in trouble.

  As it turned out, Toaff didn’t have a chance to say anything.

  “It was Toaff,” Pneef announced.

  Mister walked away, carrying the chain saw.

  “It has to be something Toaff did,” Pneef said. “While we were asleep and couldn’t stop him.”

  “How could Toaff do anything to make the humans so angry they cut off perfectly good branches?” Tzaaf asked.

  Mroof remembered, and now she said, “Toaff was right about the chain saw,” as if that was a good argument on Toaff’s side of things.

  There was no argument on his side that would be good enough.

  “I never wanted him to stay,” Pneef reminded them.

  “Toaff?” Mroof asked.

  She was asking him to tell them he had nothing to do with it, but Toaff couldn’t say that. He knew he had everything to do with it.

  “Do you know why?” Tzaaf asked.

  Toaff couldn’t think of what words to say. He didn’t know any words that were sad enough to say how sorry he was.

  “Look at his tail,” Pneef advised the other two. “He knows something.”

  Maybe, Toaff thought, if he explained about the silvery sound, maybe they’d understand? And maybe, if they understood, they wouldn’t be angry?

  Except he knew they must have heard it themselves, at some time, living as close to the nest-house as they did, so he had to know also that they wouldn’t understand. They didn’t hear what he heard in that silvery sound, and they didn’t wonder about the inside of the nest-house, and they didn’t want him to know things if they didn’t already know them. Like the chain saw.

  The truth was that he felt as only here as he had in his old den. The truth was that the Lucky Ones were the absolute opposite of only.

  Every squirrel except for Toaff was the opposite, he thought sadly; but then he remembered Nilf, who might not be, and that made him remember how Soaff had said she wanted to try leaping, that long-ago winter night.

  Then, “Oh, Toaff,” Mroof said, in a sad, sad voice.

  “He knows it’s his fault,” Pneef announced.

  “But what could Toaff have done to make the humans so angry they cut perfectly good branches off their own trees?” Tzaaf insisted.

  Pneef wasn’t interested in that, or curious about it. She had decided. “Go away,” she said.

  When Toaff stayed where he was, too unhappy to move, Pneef’s tail flicked. “I said, go away,” she growled. “Get. Out.”

  “But, Pneef—” Mroof protested.

  “I don’t know what he did but I know he did something. Something terrible. This is all his fault. Toaff’s not a Lucky One and I said so all along. He’s un-lucky. I’m right, aren’t I, Tzaaf?”

  “The humans were never angry before,” Tzaaf said. “They never cut off parts of their own trees before. Will they be angry at us now? Will they take the feeder away?”

  “It was his eyes that fooled you,” Pneef explained to Mroof. “I can see how you made the mistake, but he’s not lucky, he’s just happy, and”—she turned to Toaff—“we don’t want you here. None of us do.” She turned back to tell the other two, “He has to leave before he ruins everything.”

  Nobody argued with her. Not even Toaff. He never had belonged here and he’d always known it. He had just hoped he did, and wanted to.

  There was no point in waiting.

  Toaff left without a word of farewell. You don’t say, Thank you, that was fun, see you soon, to a dreyful of squirrels who have announced they don’t want you around. He scrambled over the edge and went down to a branch from which he could jump over to the oak tree. He went around to the other side of the oak’s thick trunk, to where the Lucky Ones couldn’t see him and he couldn’t hear them. Then he sat up on his haunches to try and know what to do.

  If he went back to the apple trees, he would have a place to sleep and forage, but he would also have to see and hear the Lucky Ones, and maybe even have to fight to get his share of the food the humans put out. But if he went the other way, he didn’t know what to expect. All he knew about the other way was it was the direction the cats came from.

  On the other hand, he did know that if it was too dangerous in that unknown part of the farm, he could get back to a safe place.

  There was no crow in the sky, maybe telling him what he should do.

  Wondering where to go when it was late afternoon already, and wondering how he might travel safely when everything was going to be unfamiliar, Toaff noticed bushes crowding against the bottom of the nest-house. A squirrel could hide among the roots and low branches of bushes. He could run along the ground behind them until he had reached the place where he could see how to get to the stone wall that ran along this side of the farm. In a stone wall there would be openings. A hole just had to be big enough for Toaff’s soft and flexible bones to squeeze in. He didn’t mind if his nose was out in the open air. No squirrel ever died of a wet nose.

  Do I dare—?

  Toaff ran down the trunk, across the grass, and into the bushes. He didn’t stop to look, he didn’t look to see, he just ran.

  Once under the bushes, he felt safe. For the moment. No predator would want to chase him among this tangle of woody stems with thorns all over them, and stiff leaves. There was a stony smell from the wall of the nest-house, so Toaff went up close to it, to see in the dim light if it offered shelter. It didn’t. While it looked like a stone wall, all the spaces between the stones had been filled in with something white, too hard even for a squirrel to gnaw into. This wall offered no shelter. Even so, when he was under the bushes and up against the nest-house, Toaff felt almost as protected as he did perched in a tree’s leafy branches, with a solid trunk at his back.

  No more than almost, however. Because actually, really, Toaff was not up high and safe. He was down low and possibly in danger. He didn’t even know what dangers to look out for, he didn’t even know what direction danger might come from. Everything was entirely unfamiliar and he knew he couldn’t sleep there, even for one night.

  Moving silently, lightly, cautiously, Toaff crossed over and under thorny branches. Every now and then he stopped, sat back on his haunches, and listened. He passed one low narrow entrance and, not long after, another. The entrances were dark but he was taking no chances. If he was seen from inside the nest-house, who knew what might happen? Nothing good, he had learned that much.

  When he came to the end of the wall and the end of the bushes, an open space waited in front of him and he could see a stone wall across the drive. That wall disappeared behind a mound of dirt that was so unlikely, and strange, he knew it had to have been made by humans. But why would humans want to pile dirt up? Was this their stores?

  Never mind the dirt, he told himself. Never mind the humans. Two scrawny firs grew on the far side of that wall. If he made a dash across the drive, he thought he had a chance of reaching them, he hoped. But he hesitated, listening for a machine, watching for a cat, trying to see any danger that might lie ahead.

  Next to the dirt mound he saw a row of short poles, not far from one another but without feeders on top, and then, turning his head, he saw the nest-barn. The nest-barn? What was the nest-barn doing there?

  That was when Toaff understood: The white nest-house was in the middle of everything. Understanding that made up his mind for him and he scurried around the corner, hidden behind two tall, round, smooth-sided things, ready to run across the drive. But this part of the nest-house was a wooden wall that had holes in it, lots and lots of holes.

  Why would anyone make a wall with so many small holes in it? Toaff wondered. Could this be the entrance to a squirrel’s den? A dark space waited behind the wall-with-holes and, confident that no cat was small enough to squeeze in after him, Toaff stretched himself out thin and entered.

  Inside, it wa
s too dark to see but the smell would have blinded him even if he could have. Toaff had never smelled anything so horrible. His eyes burned and watered. The smell choked his nose and his throat. He spun around, to get out, to get out of that dark place with its unbreathable air. For a few panicky heartbeats he couldn’t find his way but then he saw the lighted holes and raced to get out before he had to inhale again. That was no squirrel’s den. It stank of mouse.

  Outside, Toaff retreated behind the smooth round things and then back in among the bushes. He sneezed and scratched at his throat with his front paws. He even took a little chew of the bitter bark of a thorny branch. He coughed, and took another little chew. It was dis-gust-ing, under the nest-house.

  Then he started to whuffle, quietly, all by himself. He liked mice, and he felt sorry for them, being so small and hairless, being such easy prey to any predator. He admired their ability to dart and run and try to survive. And hadn’t he once saved a mouse’s life? Mice were a good memory to him.

  But they sure smelled. Or rather, and they sure smelled.

  On the other hand, he didn’t have to share a nest with them, did he? Or a den, and besides, maybe a squirrel stank just as much to a mouse as a mouse did to a squirrel. He guessed that mice and squirrels should meet up in the open air. Then everything between them would be fine. They could admire one another and help one another out and never have to smell one another.