by Tor Seidler
A blue jay swooped down over the crowd of weasels. As the flash of blue vanished among the tree trunks, Zeke coughed twice, trying to clear his throat. Even then he only managed “I love you, Wendy Blackish” in a hoarse, froglike croak. But at least he got it out. And when Wendy lifted her eyes to his, he grabbed her and kissed her.
A great roar rose up from the weasels, then everyone started to clap. The applause grew and grew, for the kiss was a long one. As far as Wendy was concerned, it more than made up for Zeke’s little lapse.
That was all. The instant the kiss was over, the catbirds and mockingbirds, who had been watching the whole thing from up in the pines, burst into glorious song. They were very fond of the weasels, as are all musicians of those who appreciate their music.
Mr. Blackish danced the first dance with Wendy, but as soon as he handed her over to his new nephewinlaw, Zeke was his old self again. There hadn’t been any dancing for a whole, wet week. He was so glad to be back on the pine needles—and so relieved to have the ceremony over with—that he finished the first song with a double back flip. He didn’t do doubles often, and for a moment he lost his bearings, standing there feeling dizzy. But then someone took his paw, and as his eyes came back into focus, he saw the wonderful weasel who’d just become his wife.
“Another dance, honey?” he said, feeling like the luckiest weasel on earth to be able to call her “honey.”
“May I lead this one?” she asked.
“Why not?” he said, not even making a face.
Only a couple of weasels had trouble entering into the spirit of the festivities. These were Sally Spots and Mary Lou Silverface. Behind Wendy’s back, they called her “that hussy from the North Fork.” Wendy had heard this, for the Wainscott woods wasn’t a big place, but she was too happy to mind. In fact, she’d hatched a plan for Sally and Mary Lou, one that involved Ben and Bill Whitebelly. But today she just wanted them to have a good time. So after three songs she suggested to Zeke that he ask both his old girlfriends for a dance. At this he did make a face, but he dutifully obeyed, and as soon as he bowed in front of Sally, her scowl vanished.
Wendy had another motive for asking Zeke to dance with someone else. She wanted a chance for a few more words with Bagley, who was now standing off by himself near the stump. She walked over to him and said, “Do you feel up to dancing?”
It was a question she would never have been able to ask in the past. But now that she was a married weasel, some of her shyness was gone. Or perhaps it had to do with leading the way to the pond that day.
“Thanks,” Bagley said. “But I think it might be a mistake to dance my first day up.”
She smiled. “You don’t like to dance, anyway.”
“True—but with you I’d make an exception. I can’t get over you sitting up all those nights.”
“It was nice and snug, with the rain pounding on the brook outside. I never sat up all night before. I kept thinking—here I am in the den of Bagley Brown Sr., who made the Double B, and Bagley Brown Jr., who got the osprey nest off the telephone pole.”
“Not quite matching accomplishments, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Did you go through all that just to help your friend the frog?”
“Well, er, not exactly. I have another friend in the pond. Or, I should say, just an acquaintance, but . . . anyway, things seem to have worked out beautifully, thanks to the rain—and all of you.”
Wendy suddenly felt so fond of Bagley that she took his paw. “Thanks for helping Zeke with his line,” she said, thinking how exciting it had been to hear them both say it.
But at the sound of throatclearing nearby she dropped Bagley’s paw. Zeke was dancing only a foot away with Mary Lou Silverface. Mary Lou was no longer scowling—but Zeke was.
“Husbands!” Wendy said, her eyes sparkling.
A PILE OF BUGS
The lower the sun sank, the louder the birds sang, and the more animated the dancing became. Soon Zeke sauntered over to reclaim Wendy. She went to whisper something to Ben and Bill, then joined her husband on the pine needles. In a minute or two, Ben drifted over and asked Sally Spots to dance. Not to be outdone, Bill asked Mary Lou. More and more weasels joined in. Even Mr. Blackish got into the party mood, waltzing Mrs. Blackish out among the younger couples.
Before long, there were only two creatures under the pines who weren’t dancing: a rabbit peeping out from behind a sapling, and Bagley. Bagley slipped away. He’d done his duty as best weasel, and since he was still recuperating, nobody would be offended by his early departure.
Having just slept for a whole week, he doubted he would sleep very soundly that night. But he dozed off as soon as he got home, and when he woke up, it was the next day. There was sunlight—and an egg—in the entrance to his den. He walked outside, rubbing his eye, and found the sun already high in the sky.
After a late breakfast, he sat down on the bank. But staring at the brook just brought back his old envy of the water. If only he, too, could wind his way down to the pond! After all the rain, the end of the hollow log might be out over the water again.
But now that he knew everything was all right down there, he had no excuse for going. It would be a mistake to fall back into his old ways. And really, he had no right to mope. His great wish—that Bridget should be safe and sound—had come true.
After a while he lifted his eye to the dead limb over the brook. The dewdrops on the spiderweb had dried up hours ago. Now the only things caught in the silk were dead insects, over a dozen, it looked like. He crept out onto the limb and complimented the spiders on their recent handiwork.
“Mm, we’re pleased with the new web,” one of the spiders said. “We made the weave a little tighter this time. Seems to trap more bugs.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I took a few?”
“Help yourself,” said the other spider. “Just be careful of the silk, if you don’t mind.”
Bagley carefully plucked out five dead bugs: a horsefly, a deerfly, and three houseflies. He stored them in his den, figuring he’d toss them into the brook an hour before the fish liked to feed. But that wasn’t until late afternoon.
To pass some time, he went for a walk in the woods. There wasn’t a soul around. At last, on the far side of the pines, he saw an old lady weasel carrying bits of eggshell out of her den.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
She gave a little curtsy. Though he’d lost a bit of weight during his illness, there was no mistaking Bagley Brown, and she remained, like most weasels, in awe of the name.
“Well, sir,” she said, “that wedding dance went on the whole night. At sunup a bunch of them went off to the Double B—bless your good father’s memory, sir—and there was a big egg breakfast under the pines. I don’t sleep so good myself, being old. But I don’t expect many other weasels’ll be up today at all.”
The mere mention of sleep made Bagley drowsy again, and he returned to his den for a nap. He didn’t wake up till late afternoon, almost time to drop the bugs in the brook. But when he took the five bugs out to the bank, he noticed some little white wildflowers on the opposite bank, flowers that weasels call wedding bells, and they made him think of Zeke snuggled up somewhere with Wendy—the sweetest, prettiest, bravest weasel imaginable. And here he was with a pile of dead bugs!
While brooding on how pathetic his life was, he heard a splash, and something inside him trembled open, like one of those wildflowers at the first touch of sunlight. Was it possible a fish might swim up the brook from the pond for a visit?
But, of course, this was absurd. It wasn’t a fish. It wasn’t even a bullfrog. It was a turtle, crossing from the opposite bank.
“Oh, hello,” Bagley said politely, swallowing his disappointment. “How are you?”
“Not too bad,” the turtle said in his slow drawl. “You?”
“I’m . . . I’m . . .” For some reason, Bagley couldn’t seem to find any words for how he was.
“S
ick?” the turtle ventured.
“Actually, I wasn’t feeling too well. But I seem to be on the road to recovery.”
“I’m afraid I’m intruding. I was just passing this way, and I remembered you said to drop by.”
“Of course! In fact, I happen to have some nice, juicy flies for you. Which do you prefer—horseflies, deerflies, or house?”
“Hm. I wouldn’t mind a horsefly, if you really have one handy.”
Bagley got the horsefly, and the turtle came up and ate it right out of his paw.
“Delicious,” the turtle said. “Thanks.”
“How about a plain old housefly for dessert?”
“I’ve got a ways to go before dark, so I better not overeat. That’s the great thing in life, you know, to travel light—especially when you have a heavy shell. But, well, maybe just one . . .”
After gobbling up a housefly, the turtle bid Bagley goodbye and started slowly up the bank of the stream. When he was out of sight, Bagley tossed the remaining three bugs into the water. He watched them float downstream. Two of them snagged on a stick poking out from the bank. One made it by the stick, but a little farther downstream a toad hopped from behind a stone and snapped it up.
Bagley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
A LITTLE LANTERN
The sun sank even lower, and the rays filtering into the woods tinged the rainwashed leaves of the oaks with gold. The silk of the spiderweb caught some of the gold, too, and so did a small cascade up the brook. The Wainscott woods had never looked more beautiful. But none of the weasels appreciated it. Most of them were still sleeping off last night’s festivities, and Bagley, slumped outside his den, was feeling too depressed to notice his surroundings. This time he didn’t even hear the splashing in the brook.
The spiders did, however. “Will you look at that,” said one of them. “Must have heard it’s buggy up here.”
“Weasels, turtles, and now fish,” said the other. “Where will it end?”
Arriving just beneath where the weasel was sitting, the fish poked her head out of the water. “Bagley?” she said in her sweet, bubbly voice.
This he heard. But when he looked down, the slanting rays bounced off something shiny into his eye, blinding him for a second. He moved his head to one side. The shiny thing looked just like Bridget’s head, her scales resplendent in the sun. But how could it be Bridget? She didn’t even know his name.
“Bagley?” she said again—in what was unmistakably Bridget’s voice.
“But . . . how—how did you get here?”
“Swam.”
“But . . . isn’t that dangerous? I mean, couldn’t someone grab you out of the brook? Like a raccoon?”
“Well, I suppose. But not half as dangerous as climbing a telephone pole in broad daylight.”
“How’d you know about that?” Bagley asked, more surprised by the moment.
“Everybody knows.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody in the pond. Paddy spread the news, I imagine. Bullfrogs aren’t known for keeping secrets.”
“But how did you know my name?”
She laughed her bubbly laugh. “Everybody knows your name. You’re first in everybody’s bedtime prayers. When Paddy told me this morning you were feeling better, I just had to come see you. He gave me directions.”
Bagley wanted to shout for joy. But instead he asked politely, “How are the kids?”
“They’re fine—thanks to you.”
“It wasn’t all me, believe me. And how is your, um, your husband?”
“Oh. You didn’t know?”
“What?”
“The osprey got him. Two weeks ago.”
“Oh, no!” He thought in horror of the heads he’d tossed out of the nest. Had her husband’s been one of them? “I’m so sorry, Bridget. You must be devastated.”
“Well, it was pretty awful. But so many were lost. We’re just happy to have the whole thing over with.”
“But your husband. You must be in mourning.”
“Well, yes. Though I have to admit, we were never in love.”
“You weren’t! But you started a family and everything!”
“Maybe I should explain to you something about the way we striped bass have babies. We find a shallow place in the reeds, and the female sort of flops up on her side to force the eggs out, then a male comes along afterwards and fertilizes them. It’s not all that romantic.”
“Really,” Bagley said, fascinated—and rather pleased. “So you weren’t in love?”
“Not with him.”
“Oh. With . . . someone else?”
She looked down at the water.
“You once told me that fish are meant for fish,” Bagley said. “Do you still think that?”
“Well, I’m not really sure any more,” she confessed, looking up again. “The truth is, I was just spouting what I’d always heard. It’s the inside of things that matters, not the outside. I see that now.”
Bagley glowed inside. “Maybe . . . maybe we could start seeing something of each other again?” he suggested.
“Well, that’s another reason I wanted to come up here, Bagley. Partly to thank you, with all my heart, and partly to say goodbye. Now that the pond level’s up again, the human beings will be cutting it through to the ocean. They usually do it twice a year, to clear it out—once in the spring, and once later in the summer. Now that the kids are growing up, I’ll be going out to sea.”
“What? But you can’t!”
“I’m afraid I have to. It’s what we do.”
“But if you’re out at sea, I—we won’t be able to . . .”
As his voice died away, the light began to dim. The sun had set.
“Uhoh,” Bridget said, glancing downstream. “I better be getting back. It’ll be scary in the dark.”
“You’re—leaving?” Bagley almost choked on the words.
“I’m afraid I have no choice. But . . . are weasels better with secrets than bullfrogs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll risk it. Could you come here a moment?”
“What?”
“Come here. I have a secret for you.”
Bagley stepped down to the edge of the brook. As he put his face close to hers, Bridget swam an inch or two forwards and kissed him, a cool, tender touch on his cheek. Then she shimmied backwards and sank beneath the surface.
Crouching there on the bank, Bagley experienced the peculiar sensation of being warm and cold at the same time. Bridget’s going out to sea was the worst blow he’d suffered since his mother’s death. Yet her kissing him was a miracle.
But the cold soon won out over the warmth. She was gone! And he’d let her go without saying a word of farewell, just as the other time he’d failed to introduce himself.
“Bridget!” he cried. “Watch out for surf casters and their shiny lures!”
Could she hear him? He raced downstream along the edge of the brook, trying to catch up to her. But all sorts of stones and twigs crowded in on the little stream, forcing him to hop and scramble along.
Things were smoother once he broke out of the woods—and prettier, too. The potato field and the pasture were lush from the recent rain, and the brook between them caught the sunset so it looked like a rosecolored ribbon on a big, dark green package. But Bagley was running much too hard to appreciate the scenery. The sky and the brook were darkening by the moment, and there was no sign of Bridget. She was a fast swimmer in still water. With a current behind her, a weasel hardly stood a chance of catching her.
A truck was parked on the edge of the potato field, ready for the harvesting of the crop. As Bagley neared the giant thing, his legs buckled and he did a somersault, landing in a sitting position against one of the tires. For a moment the darkening sky turned jet black, and a roar like the ocean filled his ears.
Little by little, things returned to normal. He’d just been faint from overexertion. He must not have quite recovered from his
week in bed after all. He sat there breathing slowly in and out. Off in the distance, beyond the potato field, an orange sliver of moon hung over the dunes. To the right, the Big Dipper showed up against the darkening blue.
After a while he felt strong enough to head home. But he moved only as far as a tuft of grass by the brook. It was a curious thing. Here he was, under the open night sky, but his heart wasn’t pounding. Had the day on the beach and the telephone pole somehow cured him of being skyscared? Maybe it was just that he had nothing much to live for, now that Bridget was going out to sea. Would she come back to lay more eggs when they cut the pond through next spring? It was possible. But, tonguetied fool that he was, he hadn’t even asked. Chances were, he would never see her again.
In his weakened state, the thought of this got the better of him, and a tear spilled out of his eye. First his parents. Now his dream.
Then something bright appeared before him, almost as if the sun had decided to pop back up for a moment. He wiped a paw across his face. Floating in the air less than a foot away was a tiny lantern, throwing off a greenishgold light. It was a firefly—a lightning bug, as his father used to call them. Bagley had run across them before, but never from this close up. He could actually see the dirt on his paws by its light.
The magical lantern floated away and went out. Bagley stared after it. The firefly didn’t come on again. It must have drifted around behind the potato truck.
Deserted again, Bagley watched the stars bud in the sky. It wouldn’t be so bad, he decided, if the next creature to happen along was an owl, swooping out of the sky. But before long he heard some splashing down in the brook and got an unmistakable whiff of muskrat.
“I told you we wouldn’t be able to make it home by dark,” a voice complained.
“Because you’re so slow,” said another.
“No, it’s because you’re so greedy. You just had to go back for seconds.”