by Tor Seidler
But he crept on towards the water, keeping a careful watch on the sky. Three gulls were standing between him and the nearest fisherman. He eyed them warily as he drew closer. He’d never heard of a gull killing a weasel. In fact, rumor had it that gulls lived on garbage. On the other hand, he’d never heard of a weasel killing a gull, either. And these gulls certainly weren’t small. Their yellow bills looked vicious.
But when he was a few feet from them, he tried hissing and baring his teeth. The gulls looked at him, looked at each other, looked back at him. The largest then opened his impressive wings and took off. The other two followed his lead.
Relieved, Bagley made his way towards the fisherman, who was standing barelegged in the backwash, surf casting: tossing his line out over the waves, reeling it back in, then casting it out again. His gear was in a pile on the beach behind him. Bagley poked through it. There was a wicker basket, a metal tackle box, a towel, and a tin bucket a lot like the feed bucket he’d hidden behind on the night of his father’s death. Disappointed, he headed for the next fisherman, about fifty yards down the beach.
This fisherman was actually a fisherwoman, in a big straw hat. She had about the same gear, except that it included a pair of sunglasses with red frames and a tube of sunscreen. No sign of what Bagley wanted. But as he was about to dash off to the next pile, he heard a hollow splashing sound coming from the bucket.
The bucket was too tall to peer into, and the tin sides were too smooth to climb. “Hello?” he whispered. “Is somebody in there?”
“Who’s that?” said a strangled, gurgly voice.
“A weasel,” Bagley whispered. “Are you a fish?”
“I was,” came the gloomy reply. “A young bluefish, to be exact. But now I’m dinner for a human being. Unless . . . I suppose you want to eat me first?”
“No,” Bagley said. “I want to help you.”
“You’re kidding,” the fish said.
Bagley put his shoulder to the bucket and pushed with all his might. Nothing happened. It was too heavy.
He checked the fisherwoman. She was still in the backwash, casting her line out over the breakers and reeling it in. He went around to the seaward side of the bucket and tapped it.
“When I count to three, you might throw yourself against this side of the bucket,” he suggested.
“Anything you say!” the bluefish replied, sounding a little less gloomy.
Bagley went back around to the other side. “One, two, three,” he counted, and then he threw himself against the bucket with all his might.
The fish threw himself against the opposite side at the same instant, and the bucket leaned seaward and then tipped over, sending fish and water splatting out onto the sand. Luckily, the roar of the sea kept the fisherwoman from hearing.
Except for a cut in the corner of his mouth from the hook, the bluefish appeared to be in fine shape. But he didn’t make much headway flopping towards the backwash. Bagley approached and, strangely nervous, planted his front paws next to the fish’s dorsal fin. It was the first time he’d ever touched fish scales. They were smooth and pleasantly cool. He gave a shove, then another. Soon the sand became soft and damp under his hind paws.
“You better go back,” the bluefish said, gasping. “You’re a real lifesaver, Weasel.”
“Tell your friends to swim farther out,” Bagley advised. “So they won’t get tricked by the lures.”
“Thanks, I will. And thanks for helping me. Who even knew weasels cared about fish!”
Bagley scurried up the beach just as some backwash swooshed over the damp sand. The bluefish caught the wash and swam out right between the fisherwoman’s legs, disappearing into a breaking wave.
Bagley checked the sky. A few gulls were soaring around up there, but no hawks, no owls, no osprey. Continuing down the beach, he encountered a group of sandpipers. But sandpipers are small birds, and they scurried away on their quick little feet at the sight of him.
The next fisherman had a huge belly, hip boots, and a fancy belt with different kinds of lures hooked to it. Like the others, he was busily fishing away; but his gear included a large cooler and a spare fishing rod. Bagley examined the reel on the spare rod with enthusiasm. The fishing line was just what he needed, and there must have been seventyfive yards of it or more wound around the reel. But if he pulled it out, it would get all tangled up. And as for taking the whole rod, it was far too heavy. So he would have to get the reel off.
The line was strong nylon, but weasels’ teeth are like razors, and in a matter of seconds Bagley cut the line between the reel and the first eyehole on the rod. Removing the reel from the rod’s cork handle was another story, however. It was held on by two steel rings pushed tightly over the reel’s metal flanges. Though strong for their size, weasels aren’t large. Bagley tugged at the lower ring with all his strength, then at the upper ring. Neither would budge. His only hope was to loosen one of the rings by gnawing at the cork on the handle. Bagley started gnawing near the bottom ring. The cork was tough. He gnawed till his jaws ached, but still the ring wouldn’t give.
He checked the sun. It was climbing higher in the sky. Way down the beach, two human beings with tans almost as dark as weasel fur were carrying surfboards towards the water. In the other direction, there was a family of sunbathers spreading out colorful beach towels.
After a rest, Bagley’s jaws still ached, but he started gnawing the cork again anyway. He got so involved in trying to ignore the pain that he forgot to keep a lookout.
When a shadow fell across him, he froze. The rubber toes of a pair of hip boots were two feet away from him. High above loomed the gigantic fisherman. Bending right over Bagley, the man opened the cooler and pulled out a beer and some peanuts. He finished off the nuts, tossed the can aside, and popped open the beer. Then he tilted his head back and guzzled, his Adam’s apple bouncing. When he was done, he gave a satisfied belch and crushed the beer can in his hand. He dropped it and headed back to his long fishing rod, stuck in the sand just above the water line.
The crushed can happened to land right on Bagley, but since it was empty the pain was bearable, and Bagley managed to swallow his “Ouch.” It was all so unbelievable! His father had told him long ago that human beings tended to be remarkably unobservant, but this took the cake. While digging in the cooler, the fisherman could have reached down and picked Bagley up by the tail. But he hadn’t even noticed him!
Bagley started gnawing the cork again—though now only in snatches, stopping every few seconds to check the sky and the fisherman. This technique was easier on his jaw, but it made for slow progress. And with every passing minute the beach was getting more crowded with human beings.
By around noon, when the sun was high in the sky, people began to go swimming. Pausing to look back down the beach, Bagley saw the fisherwoman standing over her tippedover bucket with a scowl on her face. She collected her gear and left, as did the fisherman beyond her. It was dangerous to cast hooks out in the water when people were swimming.
Bagley gnawed the cork for all he was worth. At last, the ring slipped. The reel slid right off.
But it was heavier than he’d expected. And just then the fat fisherman started towards him, pole over his shoulder. This time, since he wasn’t busy gnawing, Bagley noticed how the sand actually quivered with his footsteps.
“Not one nibble the whole last hour,” the fisherman muttered. “You’d think somebody warned the darn things off.”
Bagley wished he was as far away as the bluefish. But there was still time to make a run for it. This would mean leaving the reel, though, and the reel was his only hope of helping Bridget. If only there was another chipmunk hole to dive into!
That gave him an idea: a hole of his own. He quickly buried the reel in the sand and burrowed down beside it, pulling the peanut can over his head so he could breathe. Then he didn’t move a muscle. He just prayed the fat fisherman wouldn’t step on him.
“What in Sam Hill?” the fisherman said.
“Where’s my reel? And how in the world did this rod get all chewed up?”
The big man clumped around for a long time, gathering up his gear and searching for his reel. Once he stepped right on the sand covering Bagley’s tail. But again Bagley managed not to cry out. And, after five minutes that seemed like five hours, the fisherman stomped away up the beach.
When the sand stopped quivering, Bagley waited another minute and then stuck his head up. The fat fisherman was nowhere to be seen, but less than twenty feet away a pale, skinny man was trying to work the pole of a beach umbrella into the sand. Intent on his progress were his pale wife, two pale boys, and a French poodle.
“Can’t you put some muscle into it, Dad?” the older boy complained. “It’s boiling out here.”
The poodle yapped in agreement. He wasn’t clipped and must have been very hot indeed.
“I guess I hit a rock or something,” said the father, panting.
“There aren’t any rocks on this beach,” his wife said testily. “Here, let me do it.”
She was considerably bigger than he was, but he shook his head, determined to get the umbrella in on his own. If he succeeded, the poodle would no doubt turn his attention elsewhere, so Bagley set out for the dunes then and there.
The reel must have weighed a pound. After dragging it only two weasel lengths, Bagley had to stop and rest. It would be impossible to get all the way to the dunes without being spotted. He checked the family. The skinny father still hadn’t gotten the umbrella in. The younger boy had become bored watching and was playing with a toy truck, rolling it along in the sand.
Of course, Bagley thought. The reel was shaped like the wheels on that truck. He set the reel on its side and started rolling it. Because of the short metal flanges, it didn’t roll as smoothly as an egg, but it bumped along.
Soon he was out of range of the poodle’s nose. But the sun was now high in the sky, and the farther he got from the water, the hotter the sand became. By the dunes, it started scorching his paws. And though he was in fairly good shape from all the egg rolling he’d done over the summer, he could never get the reel all the way up the mountainous dune. It was too steep, and the sand was too loose.
Fortunately, human beings like to spread their towels near the water’s edge, so this part of the beach was deserted. He rolled the reel along the foot of the dunes, using a prancing step that kept his paws from overheating. But he got so wrapped up in keeping his paws unscalded that he forgot to check the sky—till a heartstopping flutter exploded right over his head.
He squinted up at a huge, bloodred bird with a monstrously long tail, diving right for him. All he had time to do was knock the reel over and burrow under it, hoping against hope that the fiercelooking hawk would hit the metal first and break its beak.
Unlike the terns, the bloodred bird didn’t veer away at the last minute. But Bagley felt the impact only as a quake in the sand. He poked his head up, surprised to be still alive. The bloody bird had missed him and the reel by at least ten feet. Odder yet, the bird appeared to be wrecked in the sand.
A boy and a girl raced up to it. “Stupid thing,” the girl said, yanking the bird out of the sand. “Think we need a longer tail?”
“I think we need to get out of here,” the boy said. “A lousy kite’s not worth burning the skin off your feet.”
They ran back towards the surf, the red bird under the girl’s arm, the long tail hopping along behind them. Bagley unearthed himself and shook the sand from his fur. Now that the danger was past, he realized his paws were burning, too. He turned the reel back on its side and started off again, chanting “Ouch, ouch, ouch” as it bumped along.
After a while he came to a pathway cut through the dunes. It was invitingly level, so he started rolling the reel down it. Then a boy with a rubber raft came racing towards him, and Bagley had to dive into the dune grass.
The boy ran right by the deserted reel. Bagley crept out of the dune grass and rolled the reel on down the path, once again grateful that human beings were so unobservant.
The path led to a parking lot that was even hotter than the sand. But Bagley didn’t mind. He was just glad to be off the beach. What all these human beings saw in it he would never understand.
THE PLAN
When Bagley reached the second telephone pole, he looked up at the big nest. It was impossible to know if the terrible bird was home. Bagley peered into the ditch—the ditch of death, as it should have been called. There seemed to be a new addition: the skeleton of the fish he’d seen in the osprey’s claws that morning, only half eaten. Bugs were already crawling on it, but a patch of the poor fish’s side still clung to the bones, and there was no stripe on the scales. Please let Bridget be safe in the deep part of the pond, he prayed.
The bullfrog would probably know if she was. Bagley checked the sun. If anything, he was late for their appointment. He hid the reel under some leaves and set off for the hollow log.
Paddy was already there, huddled by his rock. Though he was in the shade, he didn’t have his usual wet gleam.
“I kept you waiting,” Bagley said. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Paddy said with a dry croak. “How are things going?”
“So far, so good. Did you manage to see your family?”
“They’re fine.”
“And did you . . .”
“See Bridge? No. I’m sorry.”
Bagley’s heart sank. “She’s not in the deep place?”
“She may well be. I just didn’t have a chance to check. You see, my wife got nervous this morning, what with the osprey out. She swam the kids over to the far end and made everybody bury in the mud. It took me forever to find them.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” Bagley said, though he wished he had news of Bridget. “You know, the osprey only ate part of the fish he caught this morning. Has he come out for lunch yet?”
“Not yet.” Paddy turned and squinted up at the nest. “Soon, probably.”
“Okay. I want you to go and tell all the fish to stay in the deep place. No matter what, no matter how hungry they get, they must stay there. We need to buy some time. When the osprey goes fishing again, I don’t want him to have any luck at all.”
“Got you. May I ask what your plan is?”
“It’s as much your plan as mine.”
“Really? What is it?”
“Remember when you said you wished you could jump high enough to knock that nest off the telephone pole?”
“Uhhuh.”
“Well, that’s it.”
Paddy’s eyes always bulged a bit, but now they bulged so much they looked as if they might come out of their sockets. “You think you can climb that pole?”
“I don’t know. There are a convenient number of spikes sticking out of it, for paw holds. I can try.”
“And then you’d knock the nest off?”
“No. I’d lower it.”
“Lower it? How?”
“With fishing line.”
Paddy blinked. “But why lower it? If you could ever get up there, why not just try and knock it off?”
“I’m afraid it would be a mistake to break it apart.”
“Why? I’d like to bust it to bits—in memory of my old granny.”
“For one thing, it would be impossible to move if it was broken.”
“Move?”
“To the bigger pond where the swans went.”
“But why?” Paddy said, astounded.
“If we break it apart here, he’ll just use the twigs to reconstruct. But if we move the entire thing it’s possible he’ll move, too, and do his fishing over there.”
Paddy nodded. This made a certain amount of sense. It took a lot of work to build a new nest, so the osprey would probably go looking for his old one, and no doubt there were more fish in the bigger pond than in this one.
“But the nest’s so huge. Even if you could get it down, how could we ever move it?”
Bagley hooded his eye, lookin
g up at the nest. “Some of my fellow weasels might lend a paw.”
“You think they would?”
“Well, my father performed quite a service for them. So they might. If I can lower the nest without the osprey seeing, I could run to the woods and try to round up some help. More than likely, they’ll be having a dance under the—”
Only then did Bagley remember the wedding. He’d been so busy thinking about Bridget and the osprey, the big event had completely slipped his mind. It had to be two o’clock by now. At three, he was supposed to be best weasel at the ceremony.
“Shoot,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“None of the weasels will be free to help us today. There’s a major affair—a wedding under the pines. In fact, I’m supposed to be there.”
“You’re not going to leave us, are you?”
“Oh, no, they’ll get along perfectly well without me. Zeke only chose me as his best weasel to keep his brothers from quarreling about it. I suppose the logical way to proceed would be for you to round up some frogs and toads to help carry the nest to the other pond.”
“Well, I could try,” Paddy said doubtfully. “But we frogs aren’t too great at carrying things, what with our short arms. And toads . . . well, toads are toads. Maybe we better put the plan off till tomorrow.”
“And give the osprey another day of fishing? Listen. It’s getting later all the time, so I think we better both shake a leg. Don’t forget, nobody’s to venture from the deep part—nobody. Unless they can bury themselves in the mud.” Bagley held out a paw. “Good luck, Paddy.”
Paddy hopped right up and shook the offered paw, hardly trembling at all. “Good luck to you, Bagley,” he said. “And thanks.”
Bagley watched Paddy hop out across the greentinged sand that used to be the pond bottom. As the bullfrog dove into the water, a flapping in the sky sent a shiver down Bagley’s spine, and he lifted his eye just in time to see the osprey rising from his nest, heading out to find his lunch.