Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

by David Benedictus

  “I’ve got a bath,” said Christopher Robin cheerfully. “And there’s some potted meat in the larder. Do you think that would do?”

  “Perhaps you should come and ask her yourself.”

  By the time they got to the oozy bit that had once been a proper stream, quite a few of the animals had gathered around the otter, who was twisting and turning in front of them like a ballerina in a musical box.

  “My name is Lottie,” she announced. “See my fine fur coat, which is the colour of silver when the sun shines upon it, and pewter when it’s cloudy. And see,” she added, “my golden eyes, and my long tail which I call my rudder. It has been much admired for its length and flexibility. And beware,” she concluded, “my red tongue and my white teeth, which are sharp enough, I can promise you, when they need to be.”

  Then, just when the animals were becoming alarmed, she rolled over a few times and slithered off to hide in the bushes.

  “Catch me if you can,” she cried. “Bet you can’t!”

  For a while the animals tried their hardest not to find Lottie, which was difficult because her tail was sticking out a good six inches. But then Tigger accidentally stepped on it and Lottie made a growling noise, so the game was up.

  “Welcome to the Forest,” said Christopher Robin quickly, before anything more disturbing could happen. “I’m Christopher Robin, and you’re welcome to have a bath at my house, if that’s what you would like.”

  Lottie reappeared from behind the bushes and bobbed her head gracefully.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Robin. Iwould not trouble you if I were not in great need.”

  Then they all made their way to Christopher Robin’s house, where Christopher Robin ran a bath and helped Lottie to climb in.

  “Colder, Mr. Robin,” she said. “I like it nice and cold; it keeps me alert.”

  She swam around for a while, tossing the sponge into the air and catching it, and curling herself into a tight ball and spinning around with grunts of satisfaction and delight. But when Christopher Robin offered her potted meat, Lottie said: “Eels and frogs are what otters eat, so that is what I shall expect for my supper.”

  “I don’t think we have any eels or frogs, Lottie, but would sardines do?”

  “Are they Portuguese?”

  “I expect some of them are.”

  “Are they in olive oil or tomato sauce?”

  “Gosh!” said Christopher Robin who was not used to being quizzed like this, not even at school, and he went to the larder and came back with a tin.

  “In the best houses,” said Lottie, “they serve both kinds and have pilchards in the servants’ quarters!”

  Christopher Robin wrapped Lottie in a yellow towel and carried her into the sitting room. He brought her sardines in olive oil on a blue dish, and she ate them hungrily, chewing up the crunchy bits and commenting: “Not bad.”

  “And now,” she said, “I shall play

  you a tune on my mouth organ.”

  She did it very prettily, so that the animals clapped and the bolder ones shouted, “Bravo, Lottie.”

  “Thank you. I believe I shall stay,” she told them, curtsying.

  And still it did not rain. Eeyore tried to lie down in his shadow, but no matter how he tried it was always too quick for him, and when that did not work he licked the dew off the blackberry brambles.

  “It’s not much fun,” he said, “especially when there are cobwebs on them, which there usually are in the mornings, but it’s better than nothing.”

  One day, when Christopher Robin turned on the taps to run Lottie’s bath, there was a sort of coughing noise and all that emerged from the pipe was a trickle of brownish water and a deep sigh.

  “Oh, la!” cried Lottie. “I’m not getting into that. I still have standards!”

  There was nothing for it but to call a Meeting. Owl drew up the Agenda, which read:

  1. Minnits of the last meeting

  2. Lak of water

  3. Any other bizness

  It was Owl who called the meeting to order.

  “Item one,” he said. “Minutes of the last meeting.”

  “There aren’t any,”said Christopher Robin, “because there wasn’t one. And even if there had been, there wouldn’t have been.”

  The animals murmured their approval.

  “Very well,”said Owl a bit grudgingly, “that’s passed. Item two.”

  “It seems to me,” said Rabbit, “that we need water and we don’t have any. Which means that we need to get some.”

  “And quickly!” Lottie added.

  “This is true,”admitted Owl. “But where will we get some from?”

  Eeyore raised a hoof. “If anyone’s interested in hearing what I have to say, which I don’t suppose they are, but I’ll say it anyway. . . . Where was I? Oh, yes, if people in this Forest thought a bit more, instead of just minuting all the time, they might remember that there used to bean old well near Galleon’s Lap. At least, I think there did.”

  “But is it still there?” asked Rabbit. “And can we find it and will there be water in it if it is and if we can?”

  “Possibly Not and Possibly Not and Possibly Not,”said Eeyore, “and three Possiblys add up to one Probably.”

  “Then we must go in search of it,” said Owl.

  They might not have found the old well had it not been for Lottie. As they approached the clump of ivy and gorse which concealed the opening, she suddenly sat up, the hair on her back bristling, her head high, her ears laid back, her nose twitching. Very softly she said, “It is here. I can scent it. Water is to an otter as air is to a bird.”

  With that, the animals set about clearing away the smaller plants while Christopher Robin hacked at the big ones. Soon a hole in the ground appeared right in front of them.

  Around the hole, which Christopher Robin called a shaft, was a circle of rotten wood crawling with wood lice, an old rusted bucket on a rickety-looking chain, and an even rustier winch.

  Piglet stared nervously over the edge. “It goes down and down,” he said.

  “It seems to me,” said Christopher Robin sensibly, “that now we know that there’s a well here, we need to make sure that there’s water in it, and the way to do that is to throw something down and listen for a splash. Does anyone have a pebble?”

  “I have,”said Tigger,“but it’s avery special one that I was keeping for my Collection of Special and Interesting Stones.”

  “Tigger,”said Rabbit severely, “what we have to consider here is the Greater Good of the Greater Number. Give me your pebble.”

  “Must I?”But even as Tigger asked, he knew what the answer would be.

  Then Rabbit took Tigger’s pebble and held it high above the shaft and called for silence and let it drop. The animals listened for what seemed like several minutes but was probably just a few seconds, and then unmistakably there could be heard a faint splosh.

  “Well,” said Christopher Robin, “that is very good news indeed.”

  “It is good news, I quite see that, Christopher Robin,” said Pooh, “but if the water is down there and we are up here...”

  “The answer is the bucket,” said Christopher Robin. “We let down the bucket, and it gets filled with water, and then we pull it up.”

  This suggestion met with general approval, and Pooh said, “What it is to have a Brain!”

  And Christopher Robin said, “Silly old Pooh!” and dropped the bucket down the well. They all watched as the chain unwound and the winch spun with a racket like a hundred saucepans being thrown onto a tin roof, until suddenly everything stopped. The bucket stopped and the winch stopped and the noise stopped.

  “Machinery!” muttered Eeyore. “Modern inventions! Never as good as they’re cracked up to be.”

  “There must be a blockage,” said Christopher Robin. “The pebble missed it but the bucket didn’t. What we need is . . .” and then he stopped and glanced around the animals, and cleared his throat, and continued, “What we need is a
Brave Volunteer to go down in the bucket to Clear the Obstruction and come back up with some water.”

  There was a long silence in Galleon’s Lap, broken only by the wind in the pine trees and a distant buzzing of bees.

  “Of course it has to be somebody who is not only brave but small.”

  There was another long silence. When Piglet looked at the other animals, he noticed that they were all staring at him.

  “Oh dear,”he squeaked.“Why is everyone looking at me ?” But he already knew why. “Oh dear,” he repeated, “oh dearie me.”

  So then he climbed into the bucket, and stood with his face just peeping over the edge.

  “I don’t much want to be here,” he said.

  Eeyore took hold of the winch. “If you want me to pull you up, little Piglet, just shout ‘Up!’ and if you want to go deeper—”

  “Deeper?”squeaked Piglet.

  “—just shout ‘Deeper!’”

  “Oh,”squeaked Piglet again. “Oh dearie, dearie me.”

  “Winch away!” cried Christopher Robin, and away Eeyore winched. The wood creaked and the chain rattled and ever so slowly the bucket vanished from sight.

  Piglet, peering over the top of the bucket, could see the faces of his friends growing smaller and smaller. He could not quite smother a squeak of alarm, which echoed around him. The rope swayed, and it grew ever darker, and Piglet clutched the edge of the bucket with all his might.

  “What if the chain breaks?” he whispered to himself. “And what if the bucket falls to bits, and what if the blockage is a Woozle, or Several Woozles, and what if they forget that I’m down here and go home and have tea and toasted buns?”

  All around him came ghostly echoes whispering “toasted buns, toasted buns,” and Piglet kept trying to think of a hum to cheer himself up, but he couldn’t.

  Then suddenly the bucket stopped.

  Piglet could just make out the blockage. It was a holly branch that was jammed in the wall.

  Piglet grabbed hold of it, and shook it as hard as he dared. It fell right away, and there was a splash, and the bucket went down very fast after the tree branch—until there was another splash, and Piglet found himself bobbing around on an ocean of dark, glittering water.

  Now he knew what had to be done.

  1. He tilted the bucket and pushed it under the water until it was half full and he was three-quarters wet. Then,

  2. He stood on the rim of the bucket and held very tight onto the chain. And then,

  3. He shouted at the very top of his little voice, “Up! Up! Up, Eeyore, UP!”

  He heard his voice echoing all around. After a while, the bucket began to rise and Piglet, balancing carefully on the rim and clutching the chain, went with it. The circle of light at the top of the shaft grew larger and lighter, and there were all the faces of his friends smiling down. Soon he could feel the sun on his face and see good old Eeyore turning the winch. He could hear the cheers and hoorays ringing out, and they were all for him, for Piglet.

  He said in his proudest voice to all his friends: “It was nothing,” but in his heart he knew that it was not nothing but Something Very Big Indeed.

  For the next few days, while the Friends and Relations dug a ditch running downhill from the well to Eeyore’s Gloomy Place, enough water was collected to run down the ditch and fill Eeyore’s tin trunk to the brim. There Lottie made her home, which she called Fortitude Hall.

  A new game became popular in the Forest. It was called Doing the Ditch, and, when the rains came, which in due course they did, as they always will, the nimbler animals would run up to Galleon’s Lap and throw themselves into the ditch and be washed all the way down the hill to Eeyore’s Place. Lottie was the quickest at it because her skin was the sleekest, and she would add little twists and turns along the way.

  “Oh, la la!” she would cry as she landed in a heap at the bottom. And then she would play a twiddly bit on her mouth organ because she was having such fun.

  Late one evening, a few days after this big adventure, when Piglet was thinking of going to bed, and thinking how nice it would be if he were already in bed, and what a bore it was that he wasn’t already in bed, and how he liked his yellow pajamas much better than his green ones, there was a knock on the door. It was Pooh.

  “Sorry to come home so late, Piglet, but it takes time, you know.”

  “What does, Pooh?”

  “Hums does. You think one is coming and it really wants to come only it suddenly decides that it won’t come until later, and maybe not even then. Like sneezing. And then, Piglet, it comes all of a sudden and you have to be ready for it with a piece of paper.”

  “The sneeze?”

  “The hum.”

  “Oh, Pooh!” cried Piglet. “Is it a very long one?”

  “Longer than most and almost as long as some,” said Pooh.

  Then Piglet got into his best listening position, which he did by burrowing down in the cushion that lay on the chair with the lilac upholstery. He felt himself getting rather red in the face, especially when Pooh cleared his throat and began.

  Oh, it wouldn’t rain and it wouldn’t snow

  And the sun shone all day long—ho!

  At this point, Pooh broke off.

  “You must join in with the ‘ho’s’ when you get to know when they are coming, Piglet,” he said.

  “I will, Pooh. Ho! Is that right?”

  “It’s just right,” said Pooh, and he went on:

  Oh, it wouldn’t rain and it wouldn’t snow

  And the sun shone all day long—ho!

  And there wasn’t a cloud in the whole of the sky

  And the river ran wet until it ran dry

  And all of the animals standing by

  Cried ho, ho, ho!

  “Ho!” said Piglet, and smiled happily.

  Oh, it wouldn’t rain and it wouldn’t snow

  And the sun shone all day long—ho!

  Then out of the river there came a—what?

  A thing called—what was it called?—an ott

  Whose name was Lottie, unless it was not

  With a ho, ho, diddle-dum, ho!

  “Ho!” said Piglet, but this time he sounded a little worried.

  Oh, it didn’t rain and it wouldn’t snow

  And the sun shone all day long—ho!

  Then Eeyore remembered there once was a well

  But where it had been he could no longer tell

  But Lottie could smell it—a watery smell,

  With a diddle-dum, diddle-dum, ho!

  “Ho,”said Piglet in arather quiet voice.

  Oh, it hasn’t rained and it hasn’t snowed

  And the sun shines all day long—ho!

  But there’s water now in our friendly wood,

  Which when it is hot feels extremely good,

  And if you don’t join in this song you should!

  With a ho, ho, diddle-dum, ho,

  With a ho, ho, ho, ho...

  “Ho,” whispered Piglet in the tiniest voice yet.

  “What’s wrong, Piglet?” asked Pooh anxiously. “Don’t you like my new hum?”

  “Yes, Pooh,” said Piglet, “I do rather like it. And all the ho, ho, hos and everything. But...but...”

  “Anyway, Piglet, I must go to bed now that you’ve heard the hum, and I was so pleased that you were the first to hear it. Tomorrow we’ll go and hum it to the others,” said Pooh, and he went off happily to bed.

  But long after Pooh was asleep, Piglet lay awake thinking about hums, and why this one had seemed a little...a little...

  “I mean the arrival of an otter in the Forest,” (he said to himself with a frown of concentration), “is certainly a big thing. And finding water when you need it is a very big thing. And nobody in the world heard Pooh’s hum before I did, and tomorrow we’re going to hum it to the others together, and that’s something too, so if the hum was a little . . . not quite . . . well, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe tomorrow there will be another adventur
e with me in it, and Pooh will write another hum about it, and then I shan’t feel quite so...quite so...”

  But before he knew exactly what he might not feel quite so-ish about, he had fallen asleep and was dreaming about a tame Heffalump and a friendly Thesaurus, and snoring a few very quietsnores,although of course there was nobody there to hear him, so you and I are the only ones to know.

  Chapter Five

  in which Pooh goes in search of honey

  ONE MORNING WHEN Winnie-the-Pooh was Doing Nothing Very Much, but doing it rather well, he thought he would call on his old friend Christopher Robin and see whether he was doing anything. If not, perhaps they could do nothing together, because there are few things nicer than doing nothing with a friend.

  “Are you busy?” inquired Pooh.

  “Asbusyasabee,”saidChristopher Robin, “which is not really very busy at all since all bees seem to do is buzz.”

  “Andmakehoney, don’t forget that. And speaking of honey...”

  “My goodness, it’s nearly time for elevenses,” said Christopher Robin as Pooh sat down. “Would you care for some toast and marmalade?”

  “I do believe I would,” said Pooh gravely. “I don’t suppose you could see your way . . .”

  “’Fraid not,” said Christopher Robin, “right out of honey. But there’s some condensed milk.”