Chapter 2 - Into the Stormy Night
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That night, the early October winds began to blow, bringing along a great deal of rainclouds. Comfortably wrapped up in his warmest blanket with a small jar of honey ‒ "borrowed" from a Rabbit too upset to object to his visit ‒ tightly held against his round belly, Winnie the Pooh blew out his night lamp and drifted off to the land of dreams almost immediately. He soon began to snore loudly, completely oblivious to the raging weather outside.
Being a creature of a much more anxious nature, Piglet, who had been living with Pooh ever since he had generously given his own beautiful tree house to Owl, was not finding sleep as easily as his careless bear friend was. Curled up into a tiny ball of pink plush and buried up to his ears underneath the sheets, he shut his eyes tightly, trying hard to ignore the howling wind that seemed to find its way through every crack in the walls, only to fall out of bed when the sudden screeching of branches against the window made him jump. Pooh mumbled something about Heffalumps in his sleep and rolled over onto his back, taking up all the space in the bed.
Understanding that he would not be able to rest anytime soon, Piglet lit up a candle and went over to the window to look out into the night, wondering if the other inhabitants of the wood were all sleeping as soundly as his peaceful roommate was. His beady eyes were still scanning the dark aimlessly when they fell upon a small water drop on the outside of the glass. Looking more closely, he noticed a second one that had landed right next to it, then another one slowly rolling down the length of the window, and soon a soft clattering sound could be heard outside.
Piglet suddenly let out a strangled gasp and his tiny hands went up to his face as he remembered something he had witnessed that morning and completely forgotten until then. "Oh no!" he breathed worriedly. "Our ball wrecked the house at Pooh Corner today. Poor Eeyore must be out there in this b-b-bad weather!" He was at a loss as to what could be done about it, but then he had an idea. "I know! I will invite him to come in for the night, the same way Pooh took me in when I had n-no place left to go."
And so Piglet hastily lit up a lantern and carried it to the door, grabbed a large rainbow-coloured umbrella in his free hand, and ran out into the forest despite his fear of storms, telling himself that he would not have to be outside for very long. He was trembling all over and panting heavily when he reached Pooh Corner, but as he passed the old fence, his biggest fear no longer had to do with the weather, for if the pile of sticks that had once been Eeyore's house still lay where he had last seen it, its owner was nowhere to be seen.
"Eeyore?" Piglet called out, his frail voice barely audible in the wind. He looked all around and listened very carefully, but got no answer. "Eeyore, where are you ? P-p-please, answer me!"
Growing more worried, he went all around Eeyore's old Gloomy Place and then to each one of Eeyore's favorite spots, but he saw no one. He searched in every possible hiding place, behind bushes, on hilltops and by the stream, turning rocks and even attempting to climb a few trees, but still there was no trace of the melancholic donkey anywhere. When Piglet came back to his starting point and inspected the collapsed house for the fifth time, he was desperate enough to look underneath the pile of wood and, this time, he did find something he had not noticed before. Pinned to the ground with a short pointy stick, there was a humid piece of paper on which, luckily, most of the horridly misshapen words could still be deciphered:
Deer frens, if U reedin dis ‒ aim no longur in ‒‒ 100 aker ‒‒‒. Wil bee beter four evry‒‒ if I leeve. Dont butter loockin four me. Nut dat U wood hav enny reesen too anniway. Sory ‒‒ cozing u trobble. Sighnd, Eor.
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Piglet, dropping his lantern in shock. "Oh d-d-d-dear! Eeyore's gone away! I'd better t-t-tell the others at once."
Piglet instinctively started to make a run for Pooh's house, which happened to be closest to where he was, but he stopped abruptly and turned back, half-paralysed with hesitation. He then started heading uncertainly toward the great tree inhabited by Owl, whose advice he considered to be the wisest, then changed his mind again and backed away in the general direction of Rabbit's home instead, before finally coming to a fitful halt, unable to decide which way to go, for all of his friends lived in different parts of the wood and it was an awfully big territory to cover for such a small animal, especially at such a late hour and under such a frightening weather. To wake them all up and to have a whole search party organised would take a lot of time, which he feared he was already very short on.
"Oh, oh what should I d-do?" moaned Piglet, his voice breaking from the panic invading him. "How I wish Christopher Robin were here. I'm sure he would know w-where to go..."
After fruitlessly pacing around in a frantic and incoherent mess of steps like an orderless ant for a few seconds that felt agonizingly long to the poor Piglet, he came to the conclusion that his missing friend might be in trouble and that the search for him could not afford to wait any longer. Striving to regain control of his trembling paws, he picked up his lantern, which had luckily resisted its fall but barely shed a ridiculously dim and hardly useful light. Bravely defying the cold autumn wind, he advanced towards...
"Oops! Not that way, little fellow."
Piglet stopped dead in his tracks. "Who... who said that?" he squeaked, nervously looking all around him in a vain attempt to identify the owner of the voice he was sure he had not imagined.
"Why, it's me. I am the narrator, Piglet, the one who is telling your story."
"Oh! Oh my. Pardon me, sir... I-I mean, ma'am? I hadn't recognised you. T-to be quite honest, I still don't," said Piglet, timidly balancing on his feet.
"Well, that's because I am not your official narrator, you see. Actually, I'm only a humble fanfiction writer, which would explain why you are currently stuck in this unpleasant situation instead of being on some exciting adventure with all your friends. I tend to get melodramatic like that. In case you are not familiar with the concept, this is the kind of thing likely to happen when an aspiring author such as myself takes the liberty of borrowing..."
"Erm..." coughed Piglet, ducking his head apologetically. "Uh, I'm sorry, I d-d-don't want to interrupt you, Ms. Unofficial Narrator, but my friend Eeyore has left home and I have to find him. Would you happen to know w-which way he went? If... if you're allowed to help me, that is."
"Hmm, well I don't see why I should not. Just turn around. A tad more on your left... There! Do you see the path that leads to the Spooky Forest?"
"I'm afraid there isn't m-much I can see," admitted Piglet, squinting furiously.
"Oh, right. I did narrate you going out at such an hour, though now that I think about it, you should at least have grabbed a raincoat or something... Anyway, the road is right in front of you. Follow it all the way through the forest and then..."
"A-all the way through the S-S-Spooky Forest?" Piglet whimpered, suddenly turning very pale.
"I'm afraid so, but take courage, little one. The main path will eventually lead you out into the neighbouring meadow. Keep going until you come to a crossroad, then turn right and walk on for half a mile or so. The Solitary Hills should be easy to find from there. I'll make sure you don't miss them, if it can reassure you."
"Solitary Hills? Is that where Eeyore has gone to?"
This time, the obvious answer to Piglet's question remained unanswered so as to allow me to go on with this already sufficiently slow-paced story.
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All animals agreed to say that the Spooky Forest was very frightening at any time of day and even more so at night, but Piglet was determined to find his missing friend. He resolutely made his way through the dark wood, perhaps hoping that shaking like a leaf would somehow help him go unnoticed among the multitude that continuously came swirling down to join the forest's natural carpet beneath his feet.
Although he kept tripping on the countless invisible rocks and roots that were sticking out of the ground, slipping into puddles the size of small lakes ‒ and losing his already extinguished lantern in the process ‒, feeling blindly for trees only to bump hard into them, falling head first into creepy bushes that stood in his way like plushivore plants waiting to swallow him whole, hearing all kinds of strange noises that made his fluff crawl, losing sight of the trail and inexplicably finding it again, his knees shaking uncontrollably all the while, still he walked on for what seemed like forever (or about the length of this sentence), until at last, the trees receded to give way to some immense fields he had no idea were on the other side, having never gone so far in that direction before ‒ and also having never had me determine the geographical details of the many stories he had partaken in.
The sky, although still cloaked in a thick layer of clouds as black as ink, was slightly clearer over the meadow, vaguely overlighting the succession of low hills that formed the landscape ahead. Piglet was able to identify the crossroad when his snout came about three inches short of colliding with the sign, but by the time he got there, it was beginning to pour. Until then, the forest had shielded him from the elements, but out in the open, he could feel the autumn gale fluctuating unpredictably, at times threatening to throw him down in a somewhat violent eagerness to introduce him to the gravelly path, only to turn without a warning and start pulling at him, seemingly insistent on offering him a free ride off the ground and away to a Whole New World of flying pigs. Holding on tightly to his umbrella, he followed the path that lead to his right, hoping he had not missed some useful hint.
Soon, the road took a smooth turn around a prominent hill, which rose up notably higher than its surrounding sisters. Looking up from its wide foot, Piglet thought he could make out an indistinct black form at the very top, like the twisted branches of a small tree reaching out despairingly for the invisible moon, barely standing out against the dark sky.
At that sight, his heart leaped inside his chest, for the view strongly evoked the hill behind his old house. So many times, through the large window facing the sunset, had he noticed the solitary donkey sitting up there all by himself. Perched on the very edge, as though waiting for a pair of wings to sprout from his back and carry him away, he would gaze intently into the evening sky, momentarily letting out the shooting stars that no one was ever able to see hiding in the depths of his pitch-black eyes, for them to freely soar up among the clouds and paint them with all the colours that could not be found in his grey world below.
Piglet had been there to see them, once. That time, he had only climbed up the hill to check on his friend and to express his regret for not being able to cheer him up as he had hoped to that day. Anxious not to disturb him, he had already begun to head back down dishearteningly, when to his surprise, Eeyore had come after him and started telling him how much he actually liked the view from up there. Leading him back to the spot where he had been sitting for the last few hours, he had pointed an ear to one particularly imposing cumulonimbus and seemed to wait expectantly. Confused as to what he was supposed to make of such a sight, but feeling that it held some important meaning for Eeyore, Piglet had stood staring resolutely into the dark formation above, only to find himself marveling at the unexpected beauty unfolding before his eyes when a radiant ray of light had pierced through the thickest of the grey, spreading out like liquid gold and illuminating the hilltop. When Piglet had instinctively reached out to touch the bright sunbeams, the way the old donkey's face had lit up had left the small pig feeling privileged, aware that he had been allowed a glimpse into a part of Eeyore's surprisingly colourful mind that was seldom seen by anyone.
Instantly forgetting his aching feet and the fact that he was literally soaked through and through, Piglet sprinted away from the muddy trail and began to climb the hillside, which appeared to be covered with grass. The escalation of the steep, slippery slope was no easy feat, for he kept sliding back down most of the distance he was managing, but he kept trying until he eventually reached a point where he could see the flat summit stretching out before him.