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3. JAGULARS
"Look, Pooh!" said Piglet suddenly. "There's something in one of the Pine Trees.""So there is!" said Pooh, looking up wonderingly. "There's an Animal."
Piglet took Pooh's arm, in case Pooh was frightened.
"Is it One of the Fiercer Animals?" he said, looking the other way.
Pooh nodded.
"It's a Jagular," he said.
"What do Jagulars do?" asked Piglet, hoping that they wouldn't.
"They hide in branches of trees, and drop on you as you go underneath," said Pooh. "Christopher Robin told me."
"Perhaps we better hadn't go underneath, Pooh. In case he dropped and hurt himself."
"They don't hurt themselves," said Pooh. "They're such very good droppers."
The House at Pooh Corner
"The thing about telling a story," Adam said, "The thing about it, is you start out with once-upon-a-time and then you have all these choices to make."
"Tchoitzes?" Broden asked, from her perch on his right knee.
"Yes. The saying things get in the way of the not-saying things," Adam continued.
"I sthee," said Broden solemnly.
"And the more things you say, the more things you don't say, and there you are at The End, and all the not-saying things bouncing around and complaining at you for leaving them out."
"Oh," Broden snuggled into Adam's deceptively wide chest.
"Just so you know," Adam grazed his prominent nose over the top of the child's head.
Once Upon A Time--last month or one of the months that doesn't have an "r" in it--Tuesday morning, it was, Adam woke up under three quilts and a duvet.
What's a duvet?
I think it's the next one after one-vay.
Oh.
Adam, who was going under the name of Feagen--
Huh?
Like when Pooh was under the name of Sanders.
I see.
Now I'll have to start over again someplace else. Once Upon A Time Adam was walking down a beautiful country lane with his friend, Theodore Nash, who went by the name of "Teds." Teds was staying under Adam's sweater, on account of the Jagulars, just in case they should be dropping and Adam might need a strengthening hug. Also, he had his brand new tartan on and one could never tell when it might rain.
Adam had his magic book so as not to get lost. He made it all the way to Hartfield and only had to stop and ask one lory driver, "Where?"
Adam walked right up High Street and stopped at the store with The Pooh over the door.
Under Sanders?
No, this was a pretend Pooh Corner, a store for visitors.
Oh.
Teds peeked out, because of all the bears and the huney pots on the shelves. Adam picked a nice pot for Teds and put it on the counter with all his pounds and pence. "Where, please?" he said to shopkeeper and pointed with the magic book.
The lady pulled a map from the shelf, counted out his pounds, and wrapped the pot in brown tissue and put it in a box that said "Pooh Corner" on the side, even if it was only pretend. Then she pointed to the map and told Adam he must not bother the folk at Cotchford Farms because they weren't Publick and that "Wasn't Done."
(Don't despair, I am off to Missouri now, but after work tomorrow, I will finish this chapter....eng)
(So sorry, "after work tomorrow" turned into next week because they had failed to set up my phone line in the new apartment, and when they did, I found that my beloved daughter had somehow managed to incapacitate my laptop so it locked halfway through the open-windows portion of the software. Oh, Dear. Now I'll have to start all over someplace else...)Well we left the nice shop with many more pence and many less pounds and one lovely pot of huney for Teds, and we had a new book also which we read as we walked down High Street, straight out of town.
"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late."
"Before it was too late," Adam read the line again aloud, and Teds stirred from his nap under Adam's sweater just long enough to answer with an encouraging, "Hmmm." The mists of morning were still draping the path when Adam walked around the Piglet car park and onto the way that led to The Bridge. He knew it wasn't the real The Bridge, but he hoped that Bear would find it familiar enough to visit them here. He brought Teds out and straightened his bow, and he licked his own palm and smoothed over the frizz which the damp air had made of his bangs. Just in case, you know, just in case a certain Bear should be about. They stayed respectfully in the shadows while the other people finished with their game of Pooh sticks.
They were a family, you see, and Adam didn't want to bother them. He just sat with Teds on his lap and studied how they were. The Father, tried not to look too worried as the youngest, a little boy, leaned over the rail, all the while his strong arms reached out by themselves. The Mother, standing with her arms around her two daughters, congratulating the winner, consoling the loser, and laughing softly while she drew them to her in a wondrous hug.
Adam wanted to be happy for them, for what they were, for what they owned, but he only held Teds very close and he felt very sad.
When they were gone, he took Teds to the bridge, but they didn't throw the sticks he had brought, they just leaned over and watched the little stream, just old enough not to rush or sparkle anymore. "This is harder than I thought it would be," Adam said aloud. "I will leave you here, Teds," he said, "So He can find you and know I am all right."
Teds button eyes shone up at Adam, but he didn't actually ask "Who?"
"Father," Adam found himself saying, though the word sounded a little odd when he said it.
But the more Adam thought about it, the more the word rolled round his mouth and breathed over his lips, making clouds in the morning mist--the more all of this, the more--well, it was right, of course. Adam did have a father. A tall and moody Prince from the Highlands, far north of this place. A father who would come after him, who would follow him even to this little bridge, a father who would let Adam lean far over the rail and not fuss...
...even though his strong arms would be reaching for him all the while.
Adam propped Teds up near the monument which named the place something it had used to be and he went up the path for the place that Bear must be, and Christopher, too. They would know what he must do, where he would find that other thing for which he sought.
When he reached the place, Adam sat himself down and opened the new book which he had stolen from the Pooh Corner Store, because he hadn't quite enough pounds for it after getting the map and the huney. He had already marked the two important pages.
"Being enchanted, it's floor was not like the floor of the Forest, gorse and bracken and heather, but close-set grass, quiet and smooth and green. It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for somewhere else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all around the world over was with them in Galleons Lap."
"They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees in a circle: and Christopher Robin knew that it was enchanted because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of string round each tree after he had counted it." "So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."
Adam didn't count the trees. He didn't stare down at the city of Hartfield, or try to find the farm, which wasn't Publick, or any other thing did he do, but wait, very quietly. Not a prayer, exactly, just a devotion. Other families came and went, counting the trees, and there were older couples full of gentle mirth and warm memories, clear eyed and wonderfully unafraid in the face of their all-too-apparent mortality. Children and more children, all with one or both parents, laughing and giggling and getting into spats and being chastised and ducking heads down, saying they were sorry, the instant they were off rough-housing again.
And all this time, Adam sat with his back against one of the sixty-three, or sixty-four, trees and pretended he was reading his book. Several times, a small child would sit down beside him, wait quietly for a while and then demand, "Read me."
Adam complied readily to each and every one of them, solemnly reciting the happy, holy words, even though the last request was in an obscure Mandarin dialect and it was a task translating the text, but well worth the effort. The elegantly suited Father thanked him most profusely, in excellent and precise English.
Adam answered in equally precise Mandarin and bowed his head over his lap.
"Pooh," the gentleman patted the book and grinned.
Adam shrugged. "Where?" he asked for probably the hundredth time since leaving Heathrow, though this was the first time he'd asked it in Chinese.
The gentleman took his daughter's hand in his left and put his right hand over his heart. "Here, I should think, Sir," he replied.
Adam closed the book and watched them walk away. His own elegant fingers searched over his chest, but the Bear did not come, to his heart, to the glade, not in the afternoon, nor at eventide.
He waited so long in that sunny place, his long back leaned up against a friendly beech, that he fell soundly asleep.
Adam placed his hands behind him to lever up, and his left hand made a crunch and crackle. He looked down to see a small paper bag, folded over at the top with the chinese symbol for bear drawn carefully under the word, "Pooh." They must have returned while he slept and left him a present, the fine Chinese gentleman and his lovely little daughter. Or, perhaps they had sent back a servant. He thought they would have servants, several, probably.
Inside was a fine sandwich of homemade bread and thick slices of roast beef, and a bottle of cider, and a laminated picture of Bear and his Father.
For no reason, really, Adam felt his eyes filling with tears. He should be happy, he thought, munching on the delicious meal they had made for him. He shouldn't be this sad.
He was, though, very, very sad, more sad than he would have thought possible. Such a sweet little kindness this was, to make all the rest seem so miserable, but it did.
After he finished the cider and wiped his nose, Adam folded the bag and put it in his back pocket, with the photo. Then he headed for The Forest Beyond, deeper into the Ashdown Preserve, to find a place to hide for the night, away from the Forest Protectors and his own growing feeling that this quest of his was hopeless.
Adam woke the next morning, wet with dew, to find himself the central concern of a deer family. He apologized for invading their copse and rose to take up his wandering where he had left off.
He drank in the wonderful morning as if it were sacramental wine. Ashdown greeted him so warmly with harts and hinds, Fallow and Roe, hares and martens and foxes. heather and gentians. He climbed a few fences and then he was even more careful to stay out of sight of the Caretakers. Adam walked and walked. He climbed up trees and looked east and west, north and south. He stayed very still for a long while, and then he ran until he fell down from breathing so hard.
But Bear did not come, nor did it seem likely he ever would. At midday, Adam stopped and took out the picture. He pressed his lips to the photo and tried to think of a prayer, but none would come. He sat down in a heap and waited for the Preserve Officers to come arrest him.
They didn't.
After several hours and the shadows' lengthening all around him, Adam began to worry: that the preserve was insufficiently cared for, that Bear was gone for good and all...
...that he was seriously lost.
Adam turned north and began walking at a quick clip, stopping only to climb two more fences and to stand at the unfamiliar roadway, deciding to go north again.
He wasn't really sure when the notion took him entirely, but he supposed it had been building for the entire span of the sun's setting. At that moment when all the colors begin to flee and it is not day, but still not too dark to see, Adam understood why he had come this way, or been led this way, or something else, entirely.
In the eery evening light, Adam thought he saw the cottage as it had been in the Time of the Bear, but when he blinked, there it was, in the Now: Cotchford, a tidy little summer place where all the world had begun. Adam snuck around to the back of the little cottage where the garden lay sleeping in the moonlight. The waymarker was there, silent and cold, an image of the Bear Father, gazing forever toward the ground, reaching with its father arm toward nothing. No Bear about. He thought his heart might break with each next aching beat. Poor Adam was so disheartened, he nearly missed that Father Robin was pointing the way for him, but he followed the statue's gaze towards the pool, very modern and not at all a portion of the original house's history. There it lay, an invitation in the twilight, cool and deep with all the twinkling and sparkle of a baby streamlet. Adam moved carefully, without a sound, not because he feared the living--the house was empty, lightless--but because he did not want to chase the ghosts that swirled here with the fine mist that overlay the clear water of the pool. He soundlessly slipped his sweater and shirt, then he pulled the bag and the picture out of his pocket and layed them reverently on top of the two little books that had brought him this far. On these he placed the pence and the single pound note on top of these, to compensate anyone who should be inconvenienced by his intentions here. Then his jeans joined the rest and he walked to the poolside and knelt there a moment, seeing his image reflected there darkly.
Adam lifted his body weight up on his straightened arms and pushed away from the side, into the water without a splash. As he descended, he let the air go out of his lungs and his body settled softly on the bottom of the pool. There Adam lay watching the coming night through the waves and the ripples.
And he never closed his eyes until he died.
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