“We’ll rest here until dawn,” Sensibel said. “Then we’ll run forever.”
“Where?”
“As far away from this boring existence as my tiny feet can carry me.”
“I don’t know, Bel …”
“What don’t you know? Please take your nose off my tail.”
“I don’t know that it’s a good idea.”
Bandit heard the beginning of a growl.
“Let me explain,” he said. “You’ve been living in a nice, soft place. Good hunting ground. All the clams you can eat and a cornfield nearby. Security provided by your Dad. I don’t think you know what it’s really like out there.”
“What’s it really like out there?”
“It’s like … I don’t know, it’s like climbing a tree and every second branch is designed to break under your paw. Like eating food that doesn’t taste what it smells like. Like meeting a friend and they suddenly bite you for no reason. As soon as you go out the door of your den, you’re in a world of trickery and deceit.”
“I love trickery and deceit.”
Should he go on and describe the world in more detail to her? Describing it felt good – like he was a street-smart protector. She had nowhere to go, no safe place in the world to sleep. He would provide her with security. But he had no idea where to look for it. In fact, he wasn’t able to think outside of the comfort of a den himself. He never intended to go to the Back of the North Wind; he planned to come straight to Sensibel in her paradise of bulrushes. Talk about deceit in the world! Without even venturing into that distrustful realm, he had deceived himself.
“We could swim downriver and seek out a life in the city,” he said.
“Let’s snuggle, then talk about it later.” Saying this, Sensibel immediately fell asleep.
Unable to sleep, Bandit listened for a quaver in the flow of the outside news that would justify alarming her. Only the north wind whistling through the chestnut leaves. He began to feel dozy.
A crash! Someone had fallen out of the sky! Sensibel shot to her feet. Scrambling, then …
“I knew you’d be here!” Frisk squeezed in through the hole and touched noses with her sister. “Isn’t this exciting? They’re searching for you in the bulrushes and even down where the pond drains into the Crosstown Stream. And all the time you’re up here in our hideout – with your First Cousin, no less. Hi, Bandit! I knew you two were planning to elope.”
“We are not planning to elope. I intend to go out and make a world for myself.”
Frisk checked Bandit’s face for affirmation of this bizarre desire. No expression behind his implacable mask.
“I think you should go to the city,” Frisk said. “It’s a free community and you meet people easily. You can live alone and not be regarded as an Old Maid and you don’t have to mate. People respect you as an individual, or so I’m told.”
“Come with me, Frisk. We can live together and go out on dates and talk about them afterward.”
Bandit felt his heart sink. Being with Sensibel certainly was an experience. It was like walking along one of those heavy wires that buzz under your feet. Such a high! Any second, you’d miss your footing, and you’d be traversing the wire upside down, all your weight pulling at your shoulder muscles.
“I can’t go to the city,” Frisk said. “Not right away. Maybe I can join you later. If Mama loses two of her children, she’ll turn the world upside-down and shake it till we tumble out. One lost child is okay because she can think of someone else to blame for it besides herself.”
“She has no one to blame but herself,” Sensibel said.
Bandit had no trouble identifying who the blameworthy party was in Aunt Pawsense’s mind. It was him. He wondered if he felt guilty about abducting her daughter. No – she had abducted herself. “I think it might be a good idea to go back to your mother in the morning and explain your feelings to her. You might appear at least to be an unreliable bride. That would get the burden of marrying the Tosh off your back.”
Sensibella was examining him in the dark. He felt her withering contempt.
“Because, if you go to the city,” he said quickly, “your Mother will decide that you have left her family for good. You’ll be the most desolate thing in the world. A raccoon without a clan.”
“You don’t seem all that desolate,” she said.
He looked to Frisk for support. The energy had drained away in Sensibella before his eyes. He had called her dream into doubt and substituted tactical deceit in its place. The romance adventure was over. He had just ended it by being realistic. He was only trying to be practical for her sake, but he had questioned her outlook, her romantic dream of escape. Her dream was gone. Maybe not gone, but retracted into her interior. And with her sense of enchantment in doubt, she had no means of imagining her own freedom. Bandit felt a sourness in his mouth. It was in his gut. It was coming out on his breath. He had betrayed Sensibel. Betrayed the wild hope to which all her beauty was tied.
“I shall sleep on it,” Sensibel mumbled.
Frisk touched noses with her sister, then squeezed out the hole without speaking. Everyone understood the situation. He tried to put it in its best light. He had done some good. He had saved Sensibel from headlong flight. Maybe a crisis had been averted, or at least postponed. It had been a long day. They could discuss things in the morning.
Bandit listened in his sleep to the pattering of rain on the chestnut leaves.
Dawn brought a clear, purposeful day. He stretched out, feeling for Sensibel’s body beside him. Nothing. He felt suddenly, starkly alone.
Sensibel had gone.
21
During a restless night, Touchwit wove a mental map of the island from the sounds that came to her in her sleep. When she awakened fully, she knew the location of every significant person. She discarded the background noise of the city – the subdued roar of vehicles, the rhythmic clanging of the factory, the train that rumbled over the bridge and on into the countryside, making lonely calls to other trains that went unanswered. These sounds had been the constants of her childhood. In contrast to that busy world, the island was a place of repose, its few sounds clear and distinct. The splash beside the riverbank during the night. A Muskrat. The Owl flying out and back to a tree on this side of the channel dividing the north and south islands. The nightlong scurrying of Mice. On the toe of the southern island, the Geese maintained their nervous vigil. At dawn, the Beaver at the top of the north island started to gather branches and float them up to his house. The important thing was that no one had arrived on the island during the night. Not even the Stranger. That meant he’d be hungry and would come back to the island this evening.
Touchwit left the safety of her tree. A long day to fill. After exploring a little, she would fill it with her missed sleep.
New to her since the day before were the scents of vegetation. Strange exotic plants had taken root here during the various spring floods. She knew them as the ornamental flowering shrubs and ground-covering vines that the Primates cultivated on their front gardens. As she nosed among them, she found out-of-place surprises: this huge, many-petalled pink flower that burst out of its pod because of the ministration of ants. What was it doing here? And the dark-green crawling vines with tiny blue flowers whose sharpness went to the inner eye. These and other curiosities must have grown from cuttings which lazy gardeners had thrown into the river. And look! Here were mushrooms. She tried them too.
Better save some room for her main meal. She knew what that would be from the Stranger’s scat. He visited the island to eat fish which he caught in the shallow channel. A good idea. She would do that. Slide into the water and wade until a juicy fish swam into her paws.
But first, she took some long, soft marsh grass, and some high, flaxen grass. And she found some grapevines and some of the dark-green vines with the pretty flowers that ran along the ground. She braided the grasses deftly and tied them with the vines. A Making. The Stranger who visited from the west would be here tonight. Because it was rude to track someone who guarded their privacy, she’d leave a message for him. She left it at the base of the tree where he came ashore. I exist too!
