CHAPTER XI
In Which
Reznib Is Assigned a Mission, and Eeyore's Gloom Is Slightly Dispelled.
It was the goblins that Mauhúr sent into the tree and the darkness beyond the little patch of light that extended perhaps a foot past the open door. Goblins, although they do not like the sun and blink a great deal in the light of open day, nonetheless have keen eyes and terrific vision in the dark. Although the Uruk-hai were never going to acknowledge any sort of edge that their punier counterparts might possibly possess, that did not prevent them from taking advantage of it.
Of course, had Mauhúr and his fellows really wanted to go into the tree themselves, there was nothing to prevent them from making some form of torch to light up the interior, but nobody suggested this. The short green door did not promise much room within for the four hulking Uruk-hai to maneuver. In any case, they had all had enough of fire for one day.
Inside the goblins found a little bed, neatly made with sheets, pillow and quilt. The quilt and pillow were both gray with dust. There was a big beautiful kite hanging somewhat to the right of the door, and under the kite there leaned a large umbrella, a pop gun with the cork hanging out of it, two Big Boots (big, at any rate, from the perspective of a small goblin-Orc or a six year old boy), and a rain hat resting on top of them.
Aside from the boots and the rain hat, which were respectively boot- and hat-like, the goblins were mystified as to the nature and purpose of these other items, ignoring them in favor of pawing through bed sheets and rootling around the boxes under the bed. The boxes contained jacks and marbles and Useful String and other sundry items. Not knowing what jacks were, the goblins took them for a crude sort of caltrops and pocketed them thoughtfully, along with the marbles and the string. Other objects that they found and by which they were wholly baffled included:
- A big, red india rubber ball
- Two old train tickets, much creased and gone yellow with age
- An empty pot with "THE FLOATING BEAR" painted on it
- A collection of cherry stones
- A short jump rope with cracked blue handles
- An old matchbox with "BEETLE" on the lid and nothing inside
- A Special Pencil Case
Reznib and Jashit had been taking the more promising things they found to Mauhúr, waiting just outside; Shagrub brought some as well, but the third time that he entered the tree he got up onto the bed and lay back on it, giving in to the weariness pressing down on him.
"Hey Shagrub-mate, chop chop, eh? You don't want Mauhúr to catch you lying down on the job," Reznib whispered to him as he stopped by the bed for a moment.
"He can't see me in here," said Shagrub in an uninflected voice. "And I don't feel that well, so…"
"That Grishnákh would be able to, if he takes a notion to look. Only saying, friend: I wouldn't rest here if I were you. Getting on to dark, those Uruk-hai will want to get some kip, and then we should be able to bunk down as well." Goblins tend to err on the more nocturnal side, for obvious reasons, but subject to the preferences of their larger fellows these past weeks, they had all been forced to adapt to an Uruk's schedule: run-sun-fight-run in the day, and get what sleep they could after sundown.
Shagrub's exhaustion had been a long time in the making, no different than Reznib's or Jashit's, but that already-weariness and the battle and the beating earlier, together with the other traumatic experiences they'd had in Fangorn and after, combined now to just about do him in. His ribs ached almost beyond fathoming. It was clear at this point that Noglash had not cracked them after all, or Shagrub would not have been getting by nearly so well, but he was still terribly bruised. He wondered what his poor sides looked like under their crude bandages.
"Let them kill me," he muttered with self-pitying abandon. "I don't care. It's worth it, not having to move for a little while." His eyes closed.
Someone else got up on the bed as well, and he opened his eyes just long enough to make out who was lying down next to him, before they closed again. That's right. Jashit had to climb all those awful trees earlier, didn't he? Not to mention he too had suffered from the wrath of Noglash.
"You're both going to get in trouble," said Reznib.
"Just cover for us, Reznib, eh? We'd do it for you," Shagrub murmured sleepily, but as he said it he had no idea what it was that they would do or why. He was too far gone to even remember what he was talking about.
Reznib stood frowning at the other two goblin-Orcs, then sighed. Piling together a few more items, he emerged into the cursed afternoon light outside of the tree.
He was trying to concoct an excuse for Jashit and Shagrub in his head, but it didn't appear that one was going to be necessary. Noglash and Durzlip were squatting on their heels, looking through the strange artifacts that they had spread out over the grass. Grishnákh was standing a little distance off, with that queer look on his face that all of them had noticed him wearing from time to time: part bored, part distracted, and very far away. Meanwhile Mauhúr stood with Warrung, looking down into the valley.
"We should still go all the way back, I think," he was saying, "but unless we find some fresh insight as to how we entered this place, or are able to easily find a way back through Fangorn, I think we should come here again. What are your thoughts, Warrung?"
"I think," said Warrung, "that this spot is of much the same elevation as the place we were going back to, and that was fairly high. Look. You can see down into the valleys and the Forest below. It offers a good vantage point, and it's more easily defended if it should come to that. We can see and hear and smell up here for miles."
"That place we first found ourselves, I do think it was higher," said Mauhúr. "But from what I recall, the ground was very bad there, all loose gravel and shifting stones. Not territory I'd want to hold if I was in a tight spot." He looked at Reznib. "Oi. Mountain rat. What's your name?"
He said it in such a matter of fact tone that Reznib realized, with some amazement, that Mauhúr wasn't actually looking to insult him: he was using it purely as a descriptive and probably didn't realize how disparaging he was being at all. Typical Uruk, Reznib though to himself. "Sir, it's Reznib, sir," he said out loud.
"Reznib," repeated Mauhúr. "And those two snaga friends of yours sleeping in the tree – what were their names again?"
"Shagrub and Jashit." Registering what Mauhúr just said: "Er, but they aren't…they're not actually – "
Warrung snorted, and Mauhúr laughed. "So you really thought the two of us couldn't hear you from outside, eh? A lesson for you, then. Even whispering may not be effective at close range." His tone shifted from amused to brisk and authoritative. "Reznib, I don't care if your little friends are taking a nap. It's probably all to the good they are doing it now, when we're not on the run and can afford to stay in one place long enough. If they try to take advantage of my good nature later, though, we will have a problem."
Reznib nodded quickly, feeling relieved, and also a trifle envious of Shagrub and Jashit. He wouldn't have minded a little nap himself just then.
Mauhúr smirked, evidently guessing at his thought. "But you, little Reznib, are awake right now, and so you get the shit work. Here is what I want you to do…"
-.-.-.-
Rabbit had taken pity on Pooh somewhere around his fifteenth drawing of an Orc. "That's enough, Pooh Bear. I think that fifteen is a Highly Respectable Number for us to start with."
"Oh good," said Pooh rather dreamily. Although his paw was tired, he had begun to get into a sort of Rhythm, and some of the effects were still with him. Then again, it was possible the funny feeling in his stomach was playing some part in that as well. "But if you did want me to draw some more, perhaps a little smackerel of something would help to Sustain me," he told Rabbit. It was some time now since those biscuits of Kanga's, and the pangs of deprivation were beginning to tell on him.
Kanga looked under the tea cloth covering her picnic hamper and said that there was more cake left, which cheered Pooh up immensely. "Should I leave the hamper?" she asked the rest of them. "It is time that Roo and Tigger and I be getting along, and we have plenty to eat back at our house.
"You will be very careful, of course," said Rabbit sternly.
Kanga, who might otherwise have answered him sharply, recognized the same protective concern she so often felt herself, so she only told him that she would. "But it's you I'm really worried about, Rabbit," she told him. "Wherever are you going to stay tonight? We never talked about this in your Meeting. You can't be going back to your burrow: not with your door gone and those Fierce Bad Orcs around."
Of course Rabbit had been perfectly accustomed to living without a door once upon a time, as was true of many other animals in the Hundred Acre Wood, but the image of Rabbit's ruined door, broken and burning in front of his burrow, was a distressing image and had become a kind of Symbol in all of their minds.
"I say, Kanga," said Owl immediately. "Let's not have any doubts on that score. Rabbit will be staying with me, of course, and Eeyore as well." Owl had been disappointed not to be Chairperson of the (now finished) Meeting, and he had been anxious about the business of hosting so many people in his quiet bachelor stronghold. Nonetheless, a keen Civic Spirit burned within him, and he knew that offering two of his friends a place to stay would not be nearly so taxing as inviting all of them.
Rabbit thanked him very kindly for the invitation and accepted it immediately. Eeyore spoke up, but when he did so, it was to Kanga instead of Owl, repeating Rabbit's question of earlier. "You'll have a care then, going home again?" he asked Kanga, lifting his head and looking at her out of one eye. His other eye was hidden by the striking black eye patch she had made for it.
While Pooh had been drawing more pictures, and the mother field mouse had finally left with her babies, promising to carry news of the meeting with her, the squirrel and the hedgehogs following soon after (Rabbit's two little cousins remaining, for now) and each of them carrying one of Pooh's drawings, Kanga had finally prevailed on Eeyore to let her look beneath his bandages, which he assented to with bitter grace. Along with more bandages, Kanga had also brought along her little sewing kit, and after she looked at the damage to Eeyore's face she decided that it wasn't more bandages he needed but some snipping and stitching instead. Once she had pruned away the worst of the burnt bits she was able to find his eyes beneath them.
This was better than Eeyore himself had been able to do, and the simple discovery that he could see out of one of them had shocked him into a state of nearly speechless gratitude. The last time anyone remembered seeing Eeyore remotely like this was once, a long time ago, when Christopher Robin had reattached Eeyore's tail after it had gone missing. Eeyore (EEYORE!) had actually gone frisking through the Wood, waving his tail behind him in a manner disquieting to anyone who knew him. That was the first time, and the only time, that Pooh had ever seen Eeyore Wildly Happy.
No one could have described this burnt, bandaged creature as frisking or gay, but Pooh still recognized the Stunned Relief that Eeyore had found in the lopsided return of his sight.
Rabbit, for his part, had been with Eeyore at another extreme. Alone with him in the beech tree a bare few hours before, his arm across the donkey's back, he had sat with Eeyore through a Darkness and a Trembling so powerful it had actually made Rabbit's body shake as well. When he heard Eeyore telling Kanga, with Simple Amazement, that he could See, it sent a kind of pang through Rabbit's chest, happy and painful at the same time, as he watched Eeyore gazing about him: first at Kanga, then at Rabbit, then at every other animal in the room, with the wonderment of someone seeing people he has expected never to see again.
Now, when he spoke, Eeyore's voice was much as it usually was: heavy and a trifle gloomy, but there was an Emphasis and a Questioning in it that they were not accustomed to hearing. "You will take care, then? All of you?"
"Of course we will," Tigger immediately informed Eeyore, not waiting for Kanga to reply. "That's What Tiggers Do Best."
Eeyore turned his good eye toward Tigger and stared at him.
Kanga, who must have detected the thing or things that Eeyore was not saying, spoke up. "Tigger dear," she told him mildly, "perhaps you would like to go and play with Roo and Rabbit's little cousins."
Once the young ones were safely removed to another area of the room, with Owl hovering anxiously nearby in the anticipation of Damages, she addressed Eeyore. "Now then, Eeyore. You heard what I said to Rabbit. I promise you, we can take care of ourselves."
"I don't doubt that you can, Kanga," Eeyore told her in a lowered voice. "But Tigger, and his – Bouncing" (he shuddered a little) "isn't going to get him very far with these Orcs. And little Roo – he's only a Bit of Fluff, you know, no bigger than Piglet. It may be – it's possible, mind you, that I have been very…Fortunate. Me, and You and Tigger and Pooh: we're all much Bigger than Roo is. We can Withstand more. But Roo, he'd only go up like a sort of candle…"
"Eeyore," Kanga told him firmly, "Roo is my baby. Tigger is like my other baby. Nothing is going to happen to them, because I Won't Let it, any more than you would allow those Orcs to burn Rabbit.
Eeyore didn't say anything, but putting his nose against her knee, he sighed. She patted him reassuringly.
"When I get home," she said as she was leaving, "I will look in my felt bag and see if I have any nice scraps to patch your face and back with, Eeyore. Paisley maybe, or scarlet, or robin's egg blue. You can't go around in bandages forever."
"Oo! Could we make him look like a pirate, Mummy?" Roo squeaked from her pocket. Hanging precariously over the edge to address their companion: "He does look a pirate now, Tigger, doesn't he?"
"I like the idea of Patchwork Eeyore," remarked Pooh in a stuffy voice through a mouthful of cake.
"I Don't," Eeyore said.
-.-.-.-
When Kanga and Tigger and Roo left, Rabbit's cousins went with them, along with four more Circulars about the F.B.A. That left Owl with his two guests, Eeyore and Rabbit, along with Piglet and Pooh. It was still light out when Pooh and Piglet finally left as well, although the sun, in anticipation of supper and bed, was starting to hang lower in the western sky. The shadows of the nearby trees stretched away east like long black arms, pointing in the same direction where, Piglet knew, the wicked F.B.A. were doubtless lurking. Unless they had gone.
He Hoped They Were Gone.
He and Pooh were both heavily laden: Pooh with Kanga's hamper, and Piglet with a great sheaf of Circulars, which had a disagreeable habit of flapping back at the slightest pretext and smacking him across the face, or covering his eyes so that he could not see. It served as a Helpful Distraction, at any rate, because he was so busy shifting them in his arms or blowing them away from his eyes that he had less time to be afraid. Still, it felt like a Long While before they reached Pooh's home under the name of Sanders.
Pooh stumped into his little den and put Kanga's hamper down next to the table. "And now," he said, "we can settle in for the night. It might," he said thoughtfully, "be a good idea for me to go to my larder and count all of my honey pots. Just in case any are missing."
"Missing?" Piglet was just putting down his papers, and his ear flicked as he turned apprehensively toward Pooh. "Why do you think any of them would be missing?"
Pooh shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. There are those Orcs out there, and it might be possible that some of them like honey."
"But we would know if someone had been in here while we were out, surely?" Piglet, who had anticipated feeling safe when they reached home, found himself growing more anxious.
"You're probably right," said Pooh. "They didn't break down the door, at any rate. I expect we would have noticed that. Would you like me to bring you some Haycorns, Piglet, while I am in my larder?"
"Oh, not just now, Pooh. I'm not hungry." He was still well stuffed from all of Kanga's provisions, but even if he hadn't been, it is likely that Pooh's Ruminations immediately previous would have turned his stomach.
Maybe we should have offered to go with Kanga and Roo and Tigger…or maybe it would have been better to remain behind with Owl, and Rabbit and Eeyore, he thought unhappily. It would have been strange to sleep on the floor of his old house, but perhaps they would have been safer there.
"Piglet…" Pooh looked at him. "Are you afraid?"
"No," said Piglet. "Perhaps a little," he hedged. "A good bit, actually, yes," he confessed. "But aren't YOU afraid, Pooh?" he asked earnestly. He didn't see how anyone could fail to be, at least a little bit.
Pooh scratched his ear. "I suppose," he said. "But it doesn't do to dwell on it. D'you remember, Piglet, when we were tracking those two Woozles 'round the spinney by your old tree, and it turned out to be our own tracks all along?
Piglet's pink face turned rather pinker at the memory. Nonetheless he nodded: "Yes, Pooh."
"And when I thought there was a Heffalump in our Heffalump trap and he had eaten all of my honey (but he hadn't), and you came along and saw me and thought I was the Heffalump (but I wasn't)?"
"Yes Pooh, I remember that."
"And the time when we – "
"Pooh," said Piglet, "what are you trying to tell me?"
"Only that you can Worry and Worry and It May Not Happen. I think," he said thoughtfully, "that was what Rabbit was trying to say at the meeting, about Not Living In Fear."
"But Pooh," said Piglet, "the bad things did happen this time, didn't they? Rabbit's door, and Eeyore's poor face and back…"
"But good things happened too," said Pooh. "Eeyore saving Rabbit, and us saving Eeyore, and Kanga patching Eeyore's face, and all of us Coming Together to take care of each other."
"But none of those things would have had to have happened, if it weren't for the bad things happening first!"
"But isn't that how it always works?" asked Pooh.
Piglet started to say something, and then he thought about it, and then he didn't say anything after all. Pooh went into his larder to count his honey pots, and Piglet sat at the table, listening to Pooh Bear's gentle hum.
-.-.-.-
Disclaimer: Tolkien's works, characters and concepts are copyright J.R.R. Tolkien. Milne's works, characters and concepts are copyright A.A. Milne.
Fangorn Wood and all original characters therein are copyright The Lauderdale (cartoon6 at hotmail dot com). "Chapter XI" published January 25, 2015.
