Chapter 1: The Hollow
His name hadn’t always been Stubb. His first proud name was Wave. Although all squirrels are born with wonderfully clever tails, Wave’s was longer and thicker and cleverer than most. When he’d run across a forest clearing with his tail rippling behind him, he looked just like a little silver wave bouncing in the sunlight.
He was the handsomest of all the male squirrels born in the oak passage in the last days of winter — the winter of the deep and endless snows. In the snug hollow of their tree, Wave and his brother and sister, Nutter and Streak, huddled for weeks in the circle of their mother, Graylin’s, warmth.
If you had peeked into their nest, you might have believed the young squirrels were baby mice, hairless and barely an inch long. Nursing and mewing, they listened as the bare branches whispered frozen secrets to the biting wind outside.
“Move over, I’m freezing,” squeaked Nutter, wriggling to squeeze in between his brother and sister.
“We were here first,” squealed Streak, holding off her brother with her foot as she burrowed into her mother’s belly fur.
“It’s not fair. You always get the best spots.”
“Only ’cause you’re always busy sleeping,” laughed Wave, squinching to one side so that his brother tumbled in, face first.
“Shhh,” Graylin chuckled. She drew her children close with her powerful tail. “Listen,” she whispered as she began to tell them their favorite tale — the centuries-old saga of the squirrel family and all its heroes. She told them about the family’s glorious instincts and wisdom and the wondrous traits that have been passed down through time. The children’s father, NotchedEar, added details of his own, and as night fell, he curled his body around his little family to keep the wind’s icy fingers from finding them in their bed of crunchy grass and tickly moss and dried oak leaves.
And so the children grew, their whiskers frisked, and one magical day Wave and Nutter and Streak awoke to discover they’d sprouted fur — silvery gray on their heads and backs, creamy white on their bellies. It was warm and slippery, and best of all, the three children looked like real squirrels now, not naked babies any longer.
Streak flicked her tail next to Wave’s in the dim light of the hollow. “Your tail looks funny,” she giggled.
“What do you mean ‘funny’? I like my tail,” said Wave.
“It’s too long, you could trip over it.”
“And too fat,” Nutter agreed. “It looks like you’ve got another animal following you.”
“What?” squeaked Wave.
“Nonsense,” murmured Graylin. “Of course you like your tail, Wave. It’s different from the others, but our differences make us special.”“Hear that?” Wave gave his tail a shake. A tail, after all, is a squirrel’s greatest source of pride and its most useful tool. Was his tail funny looking, he wondered? Did special really mean strange?
Snow slipped wetly now from heavy boughs. At last the thaw had begun. NotchedEar and Graylin knew that meant their young ones would soon be venturing outside the nest. It was time to teach them about the dangers they would encounter in the wide world — the raccoons and foxes and hawks.
Yes. Most especially the hawks.
“Hxaw-AWK,” the squirrels imitated the raspy gravel-voice of the raptor itself. The name of terror caught in the throat and set every hair of a squirrel’s tail bristling with fear. No lessons were necessary for the children to know that — they knew it in their hearts from the moment they were born.
Though fragile ice crystals still lingered in shadowy streambanks, the wind now carried the first stirrings of spring. If you walked to the heart of the oak passage and looked carefully, you might have seen the shiny black eyes of young squirrels, peering from dark tree hollows.
Hush! Don’t anyone move!
Prince Stalon, the largest of the red-tailed hawks was cruising high above, circling slowly in the cloudless blue, waiting for a small woodland creature to venture foolishly into the clearing.
A hawk like Prince Stalon might look tiny at that distance, but don’t be fooled. His eyes are the keenest in the animal kingdom and his wingspan is more than four feet across. Silently, in a rush of air, without even touching the ground, Stalon can swoop in, snatch an unwitting creature in his deadly talons, and rise again, carrying the animal with him.
Every squirrel knew that no one ever escaped once a hawk’s talons had clamped tight. And it was accepted, as a sign of respect for the families, that squirrels never again spoke the names of those who were carried off.
Standing in the oak passage, listening closely, you might hear a curious hing — a small but penetrating sound traveling through the treetops, answered by another hing from another tree. These are the warning calls of the sentries, the squirrels who alert the others when a hawk is near.
Sitting alone on a high limb on the iciest days, in the fiercest winds, in the scorching sun, sentries risk being snatched in a hawk’s death-grip as they keep the other squirrels safe. No one in the forest commands greater respect.
Chapter 2: Spring
“Come on!” Wave chittered, calling to his brother and sister. The breezes tickling Wave’s skin made him shiver with excitement after the weeks of itchy closeness in the hollow. “I’m free,” he thought, shaking off a tremor of fear. He was alone outside the nest for the first time, grasping the trunk of the oak, belly to the bark, tail alert, claws effortlessly holding his lightweight little body upside down high above the clearing. There were no warning hings from the treetops this morning, no hawks in sight.
Countless beads of water from the night’s rain clung to the woodland’s branches, sparkling as if every one of them contained a fragment of the sun. Wave tested a drop on his tongue and let it slide down his throat. It tasted of pollen and far-away places and spring and it was the most delicious thing he had ever swallowed.
There were puddles below, where clusters of tiny brown sparrows splashed noisily in their baths. Robins, dozens of them, had descended on the clearing to pull fat worms from the damp ground.
“Hello down there!” Wave called out. He thought the robins’ tug-of-war with the rubbery creatures of the earth the funniest thing he’d ever seen, though he wasn’t at all sure about eating worms for breakfast.
The world was full of marvelous sights. Tufts of grass greened in the sun, ferns unfurled in shady places, and the tender shoots of wild flowers were pushing their way out of the fragrant mud.
“Come on, you two. What are you waiting for?” Wave chittered again. Listening closely as he’d been taught, Wave heard the faint scratchings of other squirrels, far below, digging for food through the carpet of leaves on the woodland floor. He spotted NotchedEar among the diggers and wished his father would look up that moment and see him — Wave the Brave — holding on, all by himself.
“Whoa!” Wave squeaked. Nutter and Streak burst from the hollow, crashing into him so hard he might have toppled off the tree—but his claws held fast to the rough oak bark. “Look at that,” said a little voice in Wave’s head as he admired his claws in amazement. “Look at me! I can do this!”
He felt his muscles twitch and without warning he sprang into the air, surprising his brother and sister who dropped to the next branch and looked up. In a blur of silvery fur Wave was after them, and away they scrambled, sidling round and round the tree, squealing at their own cleverness.
Graylin watched them from above, remembering her own first spring when she and her sisters had chased each other in exactly the same way. “That’s one way to reach the ground,” she called down as the three small squirrels plopped into a wriggling heap.
Streak shoved her brothers off her tail and looked up. “You mean there’s another?”
“At least two,” said Graylin. “We can start your lessons now.”
With a blur of tails and the click of claws on bark, the young ones spiraled back to Graylin’s branch. “All right,” she said, “what’s the quickest way down?”
“Jump?” guessed Streak.
“Exactly,” said her mother.
“What?” laughed Nutter. “That’s it? What’s lesson number two?”
“Oh, you know all about it, do you?” Graylin playfully whapped him on the nose with the tip of her tail. “So, Nutter, why don’t you tell the others how to use your tail to slow down when you jump.”
“Huh?”
“Mmm. Just as I thought,” Graylin murmured. “Are you ready to find out?”
“Ready!” squeaked Nutter. “Jump,” he laughed and gave Wave a push.
“NUTTER!”
“Not yet!” squealed Graylin, diving for Wave as he dropped. But he was already falling fast, head first!
“Slow down,” whispered the little voice in Wave’s head. “Slow down,” it repeated, louder. This time, without knowing why, Wave felt his tail release behind him, opening out to either side and curling over his head like a question mark that held its position in the rush of air. His tail had turned into a parachute that slowed his fall. “I can do this,” whispered the mysterious voice.
Wave glided to a sweet landing on a cushiony tuft of grass. “As easy as falling out of a tree,” he thought, landing on all fours, then blinking in stunned silence, staring up at his family, far above.
“How’d you know how to do that?” squealed Nutter.
“I want to try it!” Streak insisted.
“No, me first.” Nutter nudged his sister out of the way.
“You wait right there,” Graylin whapped Nutter on the head again and gazed down at Wave. “Thank goodness you’re all right. That’s a very clever tail you have. I’ve never seen anyone so young slow himself so skillfully. Well done! Now, c’mon up.”
Nutter scratched his ear with a hind foot. “How come you didn’t tell me how to do that?”
Graylin inspected Wave’s tail proudly, combing it with her claws, measuring it against her own when he’d scampered back to the high branch. “What did it feel like just now while you were falling?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Wave. “I was on my way and suddenly a voice told me to slow down.”
“You heard voices?” giggled Streak.
“I did. Just a whisper in my ear. Then my tail lifted over my head. It felt like it was ten times wider than usual.”
“Who told you how to do that?” Nutter demanded.
“No one told him anything,” said Graylin. “That wasn’t someone else’s voice he heard. It was his instinct telling him what to do — using his tail and landing on all four feet. Without that little voice guiding him, he would have hit the ground with all the grace of a possum.” Graylin shuddered and pulled her children close, “Don’t ever forget,” she said, “a squirrel’s instinct and tail are its best defenses. Hawks and the others who hunt us may be bigger, but they don’t have clever tails and they can’t think like a squirrel. Now, why do you suppose you’d want to jump out of a tree instead of climbing down?”
“Quick escape,” said Streak.
“Excellent. What else?”
“To snatch nuts from the ground before someone else gets them,” guessed Nutter.
Graylin laughed. “Yes, that too. Come to think of it, I could use some breakfast. Let’s get down the quickest way. Remember what Wave just told you. Ready? Jump!”
“Is that your son with the lovely tail?” asked a soft voice.
“Oh, SilverToes! So good to see you.” Graylin welcomed the squirrel who’d joined her, sampling wood-violet buds in the birch grove. “Seems ages. I didn’t think the snow would ever end this year.”
“It does feel fine to be warm again.” SilverToes stood tall to watch a dozen young squirrels tumble and chase each other in a mad game of tag under the trees. “Those are my sassy little ones — Pounce, Bounce, Jitter, and Skitter — jumping on the branches of that sassafras.”
“Mine are the three right behind them, Nutter, Streak, and Wave.”
“Wave is the one with the splendid tail, is he?” asked SilverToes. “All the girls will be after him soon.”
“We’ll see about that,” Graylin laughed. “Right now I don’t think he has much interest in anything but games. NotchedEar tried all morning to teach the children how to sniff the quality of an acorn but all they wanted to do was play.”
“Let them play. They’ll have to be serious soon enough,” SilverToes nodded, watching as the children raced to the top of a very tall pine.
Almost immediately, Nutter’s teasing voice drifted down, “I’ll bet you don’t know how to use your tail for jumping out of trees.”
“Oh no!” worried Graylin. “He’s only made the jump once himself and that’s an awfully high branch. I hope he’s not going to start showing off.”
But Nutter wasn’t volunteering his own talents. “Show them, Wave!” he tackled his brother, pushing him off the branch.
Wave was in the air again, speeding, and then almost floating downward. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself, but — Oh! — he loved the weightless feel of the drop and he loved knowing that it was something only a squirrel could do.
“Who’s that handsome boy with the magical tail?” asked a new voice.
“Shadow!” Graylin and SilverToes greeted their friend.
Bump! Squeak! Wave landed, tumbling onto the ground and colliding with another small squirrel. “Oof! Sorry,” he jumped up, helping the other squirrel to her feet. Then he froze.
Something scared him. What was it? The other squirrel was looking right at him and her shiny black eyes were enormous. But those aren’t scary — not like talons. It couldn’t be the way her silvery fur ruffled in the wind, or the magnificent fluff of her tail, could it? She was so beautiful. Her tail was so beautiful. The way it curled at the tip made his heart ache, and he knew he was making a fool of himself staring at her, unable to think of anything to say.
“I’m Plume,” she said, taking a step toward him. Her voice sent tingles down his spine. “Can you show me how to use my tail like that?”
Wave thought he was going to faint.
“I’m fine! Don’t make a fuss.” Plume laughed suddenly, fending off her parents, Shadow and Scar, who’d leaped in to help when they saw the two young ones collide.
So this was Scar, Wave thought. He’d heard of him, of course, and would have known who he was without any introduction. One of his ears was missing — bitten off by a raccoon — and a thick scar ran the length of his jaw and across his throat, making him look lopsided and dangerous.
Wave’s skin prickled as he stood up straight and dared to look the older squirrel in the eye. Scar was one of the sentries. His bravery was legendary. Tales about the times he’d outsmarted the hawks and saved the squirrels of the oak passage had long been woven into the family saga. Stories about him were told and retold in the hollows on cold winter nights. Now the hero was standing in front of Wave, who’d landed on his daughter and forgotten how to speak.
That night Wave shut his eyes and let his mind spin. He couldn’t stop thinking about his astonishing day: his first venture out of the hollow, the little voice in his head, the way his tail had known what to do, and the awesome thrill of meeting Scar who’d complimented him on his parachute jump!
With each new experience he’d felt a tremor of fear, but he’d tried to be brave. He was proud of that and he’d made his parents proud too.
“I’m sorry I pushed you out of the tree,” Nutter whispered in the dark.
“Twice. Which time are you sorry for?” Wave gave his brother a dig with his elbow.
“Only the first time,” giggled Nutter. “The second time you got to meet a girl. Hey, stop wiggling.”
Wave couldn’t sleep. He was thinking about Plume’s eyes and feathery tail. Nothing that day had scared him like she did. Even now, snug in his family’s hollow, the thought of her made him tremble with fear.
“There are times,” began NotchedEar, standing on a branch above the hollow with Graylin and the children the next morning. “There are times when . . . Nutter?”
Nutter had spotted BentPaw, one of the other young squirrels, far below and was trying, unsuccessfully, to send him a tail signal to “wait up.”
NotchedEar scratched his ear patiently. “I was saying, there are times when you absolutely must not — are you listening, Nutter? — must NOT run across the forest clearing, no matter how desperately you need to get to safety.”
“When you hear the sentries,” said Streak.
“When there’s a hawk nearby,” said Wave.
“Exactly,” said NotchedEar. “You can outrun a fox, but you cannot outrun a hawk. And don’t ever be foolish enough to try. If you’re going to dash across the clearing when Prince Stalon is overhead, you might as well walk up to him and offer yourself for lunch.” The children huddled closer.
“When there’s a hawk overhead and you need to run for cover, you use the skyway,” Graylin said quietly.
“What’s that?” asked Nutter.
“Look. Over there,” his mother pointed in the direction with her nose. Far in the distance, treetops shimmied and two young squirrels appeared, racing to the ends of a branch, then leaping to another on a second tree, then across it, and on to a third. Branch to branch, tree to tree they leaped, high above the clearing.
HING! came a high-pitched sound.
“Inside!” NotchedEar barked, and his tail thumped, DANGER!
Down the tree. Through the hole. The family clung to each other as they peered out from the safety of their home. Then branches shook overhead and claws scrambled on the oak bark. With an ear-piercing squeal, two other young squirrels barreled down the tree and leaped into the hollow, knocking everyone down in complete confusion. You could smell the fear as the hollow suddenly went black and Prince Stalon’s enormous wing brushed by the entrance with a powerful whoosh.
No one breathed.
Stalon circled the clearing and returned.
Nearly paralyzed with fright now, the squirrels watched as the hawk’s yellow eye looked toward their hole in the tree, letting them know he knew where to find them.
“He c-can’t . . . he can’t get in here,” NotchedEar could barely get the words out. “The hole’s too small for even his b-beak to pass through.”
HING! HING! came the sentries’ warnings.
Stalon circled slowly one more time, scanning the passage for movement. Every small animal had taken cover. He was wasting his time. He shifted the angle of his wings, rose majestically into the air, and disappeared.
The squirrels were silent, waiting for their thumping hearts and shaking limbs to calm.
“Aren’t you SilverToes’s kids?” Graylin asked at last, turning to the young squirrels who’d tumbled into the hollow.
“Pounce and Bounce,” nodded the female of the pair. “I’m Pounce. That was close. Thanks for letting us in.”
“Yeah, thanks. I guess we can head out now,” whispered Bounce.
“No. Don’t go yet. Rest here until we’re absolutely sure he’s gone,” said Graylin. “I’d never forgive myself if I let anything happen to you.”
“Was that you two we saw in the skyway across the clearing?” asked NotchedEar.
“That was us,” said Bounce, falling onto the bed of leaves and making himself comfortable. “Then we spotted Stalon — and he spotted us.”
“He was sitting in the broken top of that old fir,” said Pounce. “He looked like part of the tree.”
“We’ve never traveled so far on the skyway before. We’ve only practiced on a couple of trees. I wasn’t sure we’d make it,” said Bounce.
Nutter, Wave, and Streak stared in awe at the two young squirrels who’d just outsmarted Stalon. A new tale had just been added to the squirrel family saga and the children had watched it happen. Wave thought his heart would burst with admiration.
“Wait a minute,” said Streak. “You mean the treetops are the skyway?”
“Exactly,” said NotchedEar. “And a more skillful use of it I’ve never seen!”
“You think?” Pounce asked.
“We were just about to give our kids their first lesson on how to use it,” said NotchedEar. He poked his head outside and took a careful look around. “All’s clear. We can get back to it. You two experts care to help?”
Graylin scurried down the oak to find SilverToes. The others gathered at the top of the tree. “A hawk can’t fly through dense branch cover,” said NotchedEar. “He might see you, but he can’t get at you, and it’s easy for you to change direction in the branches and lose him. So the skyway is often your safest route home.”
“Where the trees are close together, getting from branch to branch is like running across the roof of the forest,” said Pounce.
“Yeah, but where the branches are farther apart, it’s like flying,” said Bounce. “Well, minus the wings, of course, but sometimes there’s nothing but air underneath when you leap to the next tree. That’s the best.”
“Let’s fly!” squeaked Nutter.
“Hold on,” said NotchedEar. “First you’ve got to learn to steer with your tail.”
“To keep you going in the right direction,” said Pounce.
“Exactly,” said NotchedEar. “Look at the distance between the branches on this tree and the branches on the next. A squirrel can make the jump, but you need your tail to guide you so you don’t miss your mark.”
“Got it. Let’s fly,” said Nutter.
“Not so fast,” laughed NotchedEar. “We’ll practice where the branches overlap before we start flying over open spaces. Pounce and Bounce, what’s the trick to running across the treetops?”
“Gripping the new growth,” they said together.
“Exactly. A branch is always sturdy close to the tree,” said NotchedEar. “But at its outer end it won’t support your weight. Your claws must be ready to grip and hold fast when you land. Use your tail for balance and you won’t fall. Want to show them, Pounce?”
The young squirrel didn’t need any encouragement. She was in the air, bouncing across the branch to its twiggy tip where she gripped, held on, then used her tail as a springboard to propel her leap to the next branch.
Though the skyway is a squirrel’s escape route in dangerous times, it’s also the most wonderful playground in the forest. By late afternoon, all the young squirrels of the oak passage were experts, chasing each other across the treetops, flying across the open spaces, effortlessly adjusting their flight paths with the angle of their tails.
Finally they stopped to catch their breath in a tulip tree. A tangle of greening honeysuckle branches waved in the breeze just out of reach below them. BentPaws’ tail flicked the signal, straight up, for “food!”
“Watch,” he said, deftly turning a somersault on the branch to hang upside down by his tail and easily biting off mouthfuls of the tender green honeysuckle buds. In an instant, eight young squirrels were hanging upside down from the tulip-tree branches like a bunch of monkeys.
After a winter diet of stale acorns, the leaf buds tasted sweet and delicious. Wave shut his eyes to enjoy the newness of the flavor. But when he opened his eyes again, there, in front of him, on the flowering branch of a redbud tree was Plume. She was alone.
She looked up. She saw him.
Wave’s tail lost its grip.
“Every time I see her I fall on my head,” he thought, listening to the laughter above him as picked himself off the ground.
Chapter 3: Summer
“Just try to catch me!” giggled Nutter through the haze of dandelion fluff he’d kicked up, careening along a forest path. A crazed terrier was only inches behind him.
Grragh, grragh! The dog was working himself into a barking frenzy, snapping at the gray tail flicking in front of his nose. Chomp! He thought he had it, only to lose it again.
Nutter scrambled up the gnarled trunk of a crabapple tree and clung, laughing, just out of the terrier’s reach.
Hidden in the upper branches the other young squirrels laughed too, pelting Nutter’s head with a shower of tiny crabapples. Outracing dogs was a favorite sport — they all did it, but Nutter had a tendency to cut the chase a little too close.
“That terrier’s gonna get you one day, Nut,” Streak teased.
“Hee!” giggled Nutter, shielding his head with his tail to dodge the flying fruit. “A dog wouldn’t know what to do with a squirrel if he caught it!”
It was summer. It was hot. Bees buzzed and the ripening crabapples smelled tangy and delicious. Nearly every plant in the woods offered something to munch on this time of year. Sweet raspberries and day-lily buds, crunchy rose hips and wild-carrot roots warmed in the sun, waiting to be nibbled. Best of all, foraging was part of the young squirrels’ training. Their first assignment each morning was to venture out and discover where the tastiest plants grew — and sample them, of course.
The squirrels were nearly fully-grown. Soon enough they’d be finding hollows and launching families of their own. Autumn was only a few months away and there was still much to learn.
“Let’s get a move on, young’uns!” came a raspy voice. “Feeding your faces won’t teach you much about self-defense.”
It was Scar. He’d been training them to escape enemies and now, standing in his lopsided way in the shade of the crabapple, he was anxious to get started on the day’s lesson.
Plume stood with him, shoulder to shoulder. Each strand of her glorious tail glinted silver in the sun and tickled every breeze that passed by. Wave watched her, dumbstruck as ever. He knew she was already an expert fighter — her proud father’s daughter.
“We’ll go to the piney woods, follow me,” barked Scar. He ran with a limp but still out-distanced the rest of them. “Your own trees in the oak passage are too familiar to you now. You’ll need to know how to keep safe no matter where you are — even if you’re just fighting with each other,” he added with a laugh.
“First thing to remember?” the old squirrel went on, “ears always alert. You weren’t born with extraordinary ears for nothing. You’ll hear someone coming before you see ’im. Remember that.
“Next,” he said, “eyes always on the lookout — and not just for intruders. Be aware of hiding places in case you need to disappear in a hurry. Nothing too low where a fox can get at you, and nothing too large that might be the entrance to a raccoon’s den. Alright. Here we are,” he halted suddenly under a white pine oozing sticky sap.
Wave had never been to the piney woods before. The pungent scent was foreign to him, and it looked completely different from the oak passage. The summer foliage of oaks was so dense you could only see the sky in patches. Here, the trees were farther apart, their needles were slippery, and the branches didn’t overlap.
How hard would it be to jump the long distances between trees, Wave wondered? How easy would it be for a hawk to spot a squirrel on a branch and snatch him? But, he noted, looking around, there were plenty of tree holes just the right size for a squirrel.
“You’ll work in pairs,” said Scar. “Decide for yourselves which of you will be the enemy. Wave and Jitter — you’ll face off together to start. Streak and Bounce will follow. Plume, you’ll work with Nutter, and so on with the rest of you.”
“Whew!” thought Wave, relieved he hadn’t been paired with Plume. It wasn’t because of her reputation as a tough warrior. He was pretty sure he was at least as tough as her. And it wasn’t because she was a girl. All the girls were excellent fighters. Jitter was a girl, and tough, and he liked fighting with her. They were evenly matched, too. Although he had an advantage with his tail, she had extra-quick paws — he knew because she’d boxed his head a few times. Wave laughed to himself, then swallowed hard as he heard the little voice again. “But it’s Plume you’re scared of.”
Whap! Wave was jolted out of his thoughts as Jitter bounced by and hit him on the head with her tail. “You be the squirrel, I’ll be the raccoon,” she squealed and dashed off to hide in the trees.
“You might regret this!” Wave called after her.
“Not a chance!” she laughed and disappeared.
Wave took his position, pretending to sniff for food while he listened and kept watch for suspicious shadows and furtive movements. Then he heard it — a rustle of leaves overhead.
He jumped two feet straight into the air, barely skirting Jitter’s path as she dropped from a hidden branch. Without a pause, she pounced, knocking him down, and they were off — wrestling and tumbling across the ground, using their tails as shields and their teeth and claws as weapons. It might have been play but — Yip! Bite! Scratch! — there’d be a few new scars after this match.
Wave leaped for a towering pine and skittered up the trunk, faster than he’d ever climbed before. Jitter was on his tail — what if it was a real enemy after him? What would he do? “The skyway,” whispered the voice. “Raccoons can climb but they can’t fly between trees.” But from the branches, the next slippery-needled tree looked even farther away than it had from the ground.
“It’s much too far,” thought Wave. “No squirrel could make that leap.”
Far below, Streak and Bounce had started their wrestling match and Nutter and Plume were about to follow. In the tree, Wave was leaping upward now, branch to branch, using all the power he could wrench from his tail to spring higher, faster.
At first the new tactic put a little distance between himself and Jitter, but she was closing in. He had to jump to the next tree now. He could feel his heart pounding, the hair standing up on his back.
“NOW!” screamed the little voice.
One pump of his powerful tail and Wave leaped, unaware that everyone on the ground had stopped what they were doing to watch him. His moment of fear behind him, Wave was soaring. He didn’t know how beautiful his tail looked at that moment, but he knew how beautiful it made him feel. He loved the magic of it when, all on its own, his tail lifted, turning into a rudder that steered him on the breeze.
Claws out! Whoosh! He landed on a branch, gripped hard, held his position and held his breath. He could see Jitter jumping up and down on her branch across the clearing. Then he realized the others were doing the same on the ground below.
Jump! Whoosh! He parachuted down to join his friends. Jitter followed, landing on his back with a powerful hug. “That was fantastic! No raccoon is ever gonna get you, Wave! Not ever.”
Nutter jumped on top of the two of them. “Who taught you how to do that?” he demanded. “Teach me!”
“Well done, young one!” said Scar. “Now, how about the rest of you? Don’t stand there gawking.”
Scar’s eyes glittered, then suddenly, the brightness froze and his eyes narrowed. Instantly his tail began pounding the ground. DANGER!”
Hing! The sound escaped from Scar’s throat. He leaped onto a branch and faced north. Hing! Hing! He climbed higher so that his voice would carry.
The young squirrels scattered. Jitter was with Wave. “This way,” said Wave, leaping onto a pine he’d noticed earlier. “There’s a hole in this tree.”
In seconds the pair was peering out of a musty hollow. Wave scanned the treetops in the direction Scar was facing, but he couldn’t spot a hawk anywhere.
“Is there really a hawk, or is this one of Scar’s tests?” Jitter wondered.
“Probably a test,” said Wave. “But who wants to find out?”
HING! HING! The warning signals grew louder.
Wave looked out again and to his horror spotted Nutter, standing in the tall grass below, staring at the sky!
“Idiot!” screeched Wave, perching in the hollow’s opening, ready to jump.
“Don’t go down there!” Jitter hissed. “You can’t! Not even for your brother. You could both be killed. What good would that do?”
“Nutter!” Wave squealed.
There was a gray blur in the air. Bam! It was Plume. She’d leaped down, whapped Nutter, and now he was racing after her into a hole in the next tree.
“I knew it was pretend. I knew there wasn’t really a hawk,” Nutter laughed later.
“You knew no such thing,” Streak hissed at her brother and swatted him with her tail. “Scar could easily have spotted Prince Stalon. That’s what he’s trained to do. He can spot a hawk when no one else can. Don’t you ever ignore his warning, Nutter. Don’t you ever!”
“Okay, okay,” Nutter shrugged.
“She’s right, Nut,” said Wave. “If there had been a hawk, you’d be lunch by now. We would never speak your name again. You’ve got to get serious about serious things. Promise me you will.”
“Okay, I promise,” Nutter whispered. The idea of disappearing completely rattled him, but only for a moment. “What about our lunch?” he asked hopefully.
It was mid-day and it was sweltering. Survival training was over. After serving Nutter a withering scolding, Scar had stormed off and Plume left with him.
All the other young squirrels had returned to the oak passage. They were there now, cooling down, lying with their furry bellies pressed flat against the thick roots of an enormous oak. Chilled by the water they carry up from deep in the ground, the roots made a deliciously cool surface to lie on.
“I’m hungry too,” said Pounce.
“Let’s go to the stream.” Bounce jumped to his feet.
Butterflies hovered over the Queen Anne’s lace in the woodland clearings. The air smelled good. The earth smelled good. It was a delicious time of year.
The squirrels tumbled into a tangle of blackberries and devoured the sweet fruit until their chins dripped purple. By the time they stuck their noses into the stream’s chilly ripples, their bellies were full. They lay back on the cool stones at streamside and watched the darting dragonflies.
“Hey look,” said Nutter, following the buzzing sound that filled the air. “That old maple’s a bee tree. There’s a hive inside it. I can smell the honey. Wanna get some?”
“You are crazy!” said BentPaw. “Look at all the bees hovering outside the hole. You think they’re going to let us in?”
“Before we ate all those berries I’d have been tempted to try,” said Bounce.
“Me too,” agreed Jitter, shading her eyes from the sun with her tail, “but I couldn’t swallow another thing. I think I’ll just close my eyes and . . . WHAT?” Jitter shrieked and leaped into the air as BentPaw cannonballed into the eddying shallows, splashing her with chilly water.
“You!” Jitter giggled. And she was off, chasing BentPaw up and down the muddy streambank. Then Nutter was chasing Pounce, and Bounce was chasing Streak, splashing, flirting, chittering with laughter.
Everyone was chasing someone, except Wave. He wasn’t even aware that he was the only one left, sitting by the stream, laughing at the others’ silliness. He was thinking about his leap across the piney woods that morning. How had he summoned the courage? Could he ever do anything like that again?
Wave sniffed the warm air and realized that aside from his friends’ laughter and the stream’s whispers, the woods had gone quiet. He glanced at the bee tree. The bees guarding the entrance were gone. “Here’s my chance,” he thought. “Everyone will want a nibble of honey when they’re back.”
“Not wise,” whispered the little voice. But Wave was already halfway up the tree.
“All clear,” he thought, peeking into the hole. It was humming with tiny bees inside, but none were flying around his head. He stuck his face into the hole and “OW!” His nose burned as if it had been stabbed with hot needles. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Three more bees hit him with their stingers. He could feel his nose swelling even as he raced down the tree, knocking over a skunk-cabbage when he plunged his face into the stream.
Oooh! The pain, the pain, the pain. “I am as crazy as Nutter,” Wave thought. “I’m an idiot.”
“Hi, Wave,” came a voice.
“Huh?” Wave started, choking on a mouthful of water. He glanced up.
Plume was standing alone on the other side of the stream.
“Sorry to sneak up,” she said softly, “but I didn’t get the chance to tell you what an amazing leap that was this morning. Father hasn’t stopped talking about it — and he’s not easy to impress.”
Wave didn’t know what to say. He stood up straight, cleared his throat, tried to look at her eyes — and realized that the air surrounding him stunk of skunk-cabbage and that his nose had swollen to five times its normal size.
Chapter 4: Autumn
It was the busiest time of year. Silver-gray coats and feathery tails were thickening in readiness for the chill to come. As everyone knew, as the squirrel-family saga foretold, an abundance of acorns in the autumn warns of a frigid winter ahead. And — Oh! — was there an abundance this year!
There were squirrels everywhere, harvesting nuts. If you had walked to the heart of the oak passage that morning, you’d have seen other squirrels too, climbing to their hollows carrying mouthfuls of leaves and grass, even feathers and bits of fur when they could find them. They were preparing their nests with the extra warmth they’d be needing.
But it wasn’t cold yet.
The sun was toasty on Wave’s back as he leaped through the drifting, swirling leaves. The night’s wind had calmed to a gentle breeze that was warm with the mysterious brown scents of autumn. Something else had changed too. Wave stopped and looked at the sky. It had grown huge again. He stared at the newly bare branches above him and felt a shiver in his tail as he realized it would now be far easier for Prince Stalon to spot the squirrels in the clearing. “Very well then,” he told himself bravely, “it will be easier for us to spot him too.”
“Come play!” A scattering of yellow leaves whisked into the air, and Nutter raced by in a game of tag with Jitter and BentPaw.
“Later,” laughed Wave. His mind was on other things. After all, he’d just spent his final night with his family in the old hollow. NotchedEar and Graylin would be starting a new family soon — they’d need the room. It was time for Wave and his brother and sister to be on their own.
Wave was ready, though he wasn’t sure if it was the thrill of independence or the fear of it that was making him a little jumpy that morning. He’d already found a hollow of his own — a cozy hollow that a family of flickers had abandoned several seasons ago. He’d spent a day carrying out the debris of their disintegrating nest and a trove of insect carcasses, and he’d aired out the moldy dampness.
Now his hollow was clean and dry and smelled of nothing but tree.
Up and down, up and down, Wave proudly carried clumps of sweet-clover, crisp beech-tree leaves, and milkweed silk into his new home. He heaped everything in the center and leaped into it, turning round and round to shape his nest. Then, wrapping himself in his luxuriant tail, he snuggled down to test his bed and laughed out loud.
It felt just right! A snuggly bed in an excellent hollow with room enough to tuck away winter food supplies. And, he thought shyly, there was room to raise a family — someday. Yes. He could be happy here.
Wave poked his head out of the hole and looked out on his very own view of the forest. He was so high up he could see the entire oak passage and all his friends scurrying about. He could see the tree he grew up in, the grove where the violets grow, the stream and bee tree, the edge of the piney woods. And far, far off in the distance, where he had never been — where no one he knew had ever been — he could see the tallest and oldest oak in the forest.
“Wave, are you there?” called a familiar voice.
Wave spotted his parents in the leaves below, tail-fur waving in the breeze. In an instant, he parachuted down to join them.
“Ah,” laughed Graylin. “Our newest neighbor.”
NotchedEar picked up an acorn from Wave’s tree. He turned it in his paws and sniffed it for readiness. “Mmm. Excellent. What a crop you’ve got here. Let’s get busy!”
Just as squirrels have always done, Wave dug through the leaves and cleared a patch of moist ground. He put his nose to it to sniff out other buried nuts, then picked up an acorn in his teeth, dug a hole, set the acorn inside, and quickly brushed the soil back into place. Finally, he tamped the soil down firmly with his front paws and swept a scattering of leaves over his handiwork.
How exhilarating it was to be working on his own preparations for the winter. If it was going to be a cold one, Wave told himself, he’d be the best prepared squirrel in the forest. He’d spend every moment of every day getting ready. Or — almost every moment.
Wave’s ears pricked. Footsteps! He leaped for his tree, but when he peered around the side of the trunk to see who was coming, he laughed. Pounce, Bounce, and all his friends were bounding his way with Plume in the lead.
“I found a nut grove, Wave,” she called out. “Hickory nuts. On the other side of the stream. Come with us!”
Wave sprang from the tree to join his friends but skidded on the slippery leaves, crashing into his brother.
“Try not to trip on that big ol’ tail of yours,” Nutter giggled.
Wave was too happy to care — even if Plume did laugh with the others. She had invited him to come along!
The sky was clouding over by the time they reached the grove. Thunder rumbled somewhere, far away. Tiny asters nodded, wild grapes hung from plaited vines, and when the wind blew, hickory nuts dropped like hail from the trees.
Wave had never eaten a hickory nut — most of the others hadn’t either. They watched as Plume showed them how to split the bitter green hull with her teeth to get to the hard-shelled nut inside.
It was so much harder than the shell of an acorn, but with a squirrel’s sharp teeth, one well-placed crunch was enough to crack the nut in two, letting its buttery scent escape. Oh, yum! Wave’s nose twitched as he nibbled the delicious nutmeat.
If they could have, the squirrels would have carried every nut back to their hollows. But, of course, they couldn’t run with more than a single nut clamped in their teeth. That left two choices, either bury the nuts there on the spot for future use, or eat them there on the spot.
Wave looked around at his friends. He knew exactly what they were thinking. “Let’s eat!”
Whirr! They set to work, scratching through the crunchy leaves. In only a moment, nine young squirrels were lying on their bellies, too happy stuffing their faces to talk. Split-splat, the rain had started, but who cared? They had their tails in umbrella position; pressed flat along their backs with the fur spread open to either side and the tips curled backward above their heads, shedding the rain!
“I’m thirsty,” chittered Nutter at last, wandering off again to find those juicy grapes he’d noticed earlier.
Jay-Jay-Jay! A blue jay’s raucous call electrified the air.
Eight squirrels leaped straight up into the hickory branches and clung, motionless.
Jay-Jay-Jay! came the call again, and there was Nutter, barreling back into the clearing with a red fox snapping at his heels!
“Jump!” cried Plume.
“Get onto a tree, Nutter! Jump, you idiot!” Wave squealed.
Nutter jumped. He was out of the vixen’s reach. He rattled the branch and laughed as nuts fell, bouncing off his predator’s nose.
The fox bristled her tail in annoyance. She stood as still as the landscape, eyes riveted on the squirrels above.
“I don’t think she’ll be leaving anytime soon,” whispered Streak.
“That’s what the skyway is for,” said Plume. With a flick of her tail she jumped to a high branch and started across the treetops.
Flying through the branches toward the oak passage, Wave spotted it: a sapphire-striped feather from a blue jay’s tail lying on the rain-slicked leaves below. What a magnificent treasure for lining his cozy hollow.
He dove for it, snatched the brilliant blue feather with his teeth, and realized there was another nose just inches from his own.
Rain glistened on Plume’s silky whiskers. She’d spotted the feather too.
Wave’s heart turned a somersault. He took a step forward and placed the feather on the leaves in front of her, trying to think of something clever to say.
“Here,” he said at last. It was the best he could do.
Hing! Hing! A warning signal rang through the clearing.
“It’s father,” Plume gasped.
Hing! answered another sentry.
Wave and Plume scrambled up the nearest tree. It was Wave’s tree and he led the way. HING! HING! the warning grew louder. Wave stopped short, clinging to the oak’s bark.
Prince Stalon was circling in the overcast sky and each of his menacing circles grew closer. It was easy to see he had his great yellow eyes pinned on something below and was closing in for the kill.
HING! HING!
A scream burst from Wave’s throat, “Nutter!”
Wave spotted his brother zigzagging in crazed panic in the middle of the clearing. He didn’t stand a chance. Stalon was hungry and his talons were open.
“Stay in the tree. Get into your hollow!” commanded the voice in Wave’s head.
But in spite of the voice, Wave leaped, parachuting down to the forest floor. Plume was right behind him.
“I’ll get Stalon’s attention over here,” she whispered. “You go the other way. Nutter can escape down the middle.”
“Let’s go!” Wave hissed.
With a piercing squeal, the two squirrels were off, zigzagging down paths of their own.
Stalon took notice and changed direction. Wave was the closest to him now and the hawk was tight on his tail as Plume corralled Nutter and led him off.
Wave could hear nothing but the pounding of his heart, yet he felt the rush of air from the hawk’s wings. Every muscle in his body tensed, tensed even tighter, then released with a blast, propelling him toward cover. He was going to win this race. One more leap and he’d be safe. Up. Up. Leap!
There was a second when everything went black. Then Wave realized he was in the air. His ears were ringing so hard they hurt. Stalon had him and he was dangling upside down above the clearing.
“Leap!” said the little voice. “Leap!”
“I can’t leap. His talons are gripping my tail,” Wave’s brain answered.
“Leap!” the voice screamed.
Without thinking, Wave did what he’d learned in the treetops: using his tail as a springboard, he thrust his body forward with all his strength.
The talons clenched harder. The clearing below was growing smaller. Wave knew this was his last chance.
Once more he pushed hard with his powerful tail, wrenching his small body away from the enormous raptor. There was a sharp crack! that Wave seemed to feel through the length of his spine as he went flying — free-falling through the trees.
No little voice spoke. No parachute opened.
Wave landed, tangled in a bush, out of Stalon’s reach. When he opened his eyes, the hawk was gone.
The world was quiet except for the rain pattering heavily now on the thick carpet of leaves below him.
“Are you all right, son?”
Wave looked down dizzily. His head was spinning, but he recognized his parents. In fact everyone he knew was huddled there in the rain.
“Come down! I’ll make it up to you, I promise!” Nutter called out.
Untangling himself painfully from the branches, Wave dropped to the ground. Every muscle and bone in his body throbbed. Every inch of his skin hurt. And his tail. His tail. What about his tail?
He realized with a sickening bolt of horror that his tail was gone. GONE! GONE! It had broken off and Stalon had carried it away!
Wave couldn’t breathe. He knew, as everyone knew from the tales in the saga, when you lose your tail, you lose it for life. It can never grow back. Not ever.
Graylin stepped toward him. “Wave.”
“My name is no longer Wave,” he whispered, backing away in mortified silence. The jagged wound where his tail had been ached so badly now the rest of him felt numb. “Stubb,” he thought. “That’s all I am. That’s who I am.”
Horrible thoughts swirled through his head. Without a tail he didn’t even look like a squirrel. He looked ridiculous. Without a tail he wouldn’t be able to do any of the things squirrels need their tails for — not for his safety, not even to keep himself warm. What good was he?
He stared at the ground, so ashamed in front of everyone he knew, and not just because of the way he looked. He was ashamed he’d been foolish enough to be carried off by a hawk. Worse, he was ashamed that, after today, his name would never be spoken again. “Don’t follow me,” he said softly.
Thunder rattled the forest. Cold and drenching rain fell from the sky. And he was gone.
Chapter 5: Winter
The tallest and oldest oak in the forest had been home to squirrels for generations. There were enough hollows in its enormous trunk for dozens of families. But in the weeks that Stubb had lived there, he’d barely spoken to any of them.
Every morning, he crawled out of the tiny hollow he’d claimed as his own and climbed to the uppermost branches where he took his position as sentry.
It was the most dangerous spot for a squirrel in the entire forest, alone at the top of the tallest tree. But from that lofty perch, a sentry had a clear view of the sky and horizon. He would always be the first to see a hawk’s approach from any direction and — hing! — send the warning call that would be heard by the next sentry and passed along through the trees. When a sentry sat on that uppermost branch, the other squirrels could see him, too, and they knew which way the hawk was coming by the direction he was facing.
And so the squirrels of the oldest oak had great respect for their silent neighbor. They didn’t know his name had once been Wave, or that he’d had the longest, thickest, cleverest tail in the forest. They didn’t ask what had happened to his tail. It was not uncommon, after all, for sentries to be battled-scarred and missing parts: they were the defenders of the squirrels — the bravest of the brave.
When he’d left the oak passage that rainy day, Stubb stumbled through the forest for days without caring where he was going. Since he couldn’t fly through the trees without his tail, he traveled on foot along tangly paths, eating nuts and mushrooms where he found them. But each day was colder than the last. Winter’s icy bite was in the air. The little voice in Stubb’s head reminded him constantly that he would need to find a snug hollow and a steady source of acorns soon if he were to survive.
One frosty morning, Stubb looked up and realized that the enormous tree looming ahead of him was the oldest oak in the forest. He knew at once that the tree would offer him both food and shelter. And so he stayed.
He stuffed his tiny new hollow with extra mouthfuls of leaves and grass to make up for the warmth his tail would have provided. And when he wasn’t on sentry duty or looking for food, he kept himself busy every minute, teaching himself all over again how to balance, how to leap across slippery branches, how to navigate the skyway without a tail for a rudder.
If he concentrated really hard, he discovered, focusing his thoughts on his jump, he could aim pretty well and end up, more or less, where he wanted. Slowly, and despite many painful tumbles, he was recovering some of the skills he thought he’d lost forever.
It was enough. He wasn’t unhappy, not really. He loved being a sentry and outsmarting Stalon. And he loved his perch at the top of the tree. Sometimes, though he tried not to let it happen often, he would look far into the distance, all the way across the treetops to the oak passage. Only then would he allow himself to think about his family and friends and the curl at the tip of Plume’s silvery tail.
The abundance of acorns that autumn had proved a true predictor. Oh, was it cold! Branches glistened with ice, making the skyway treacherous for travel. On the ground, squirrels had to break through a thick crust on the snow to dig for buried acorns. And when the wind was at its iciest, only the hungriest ventured out.
But for Stubb one morning, viewing from his perch at the top of the tree, the forest sparkled like an enchanted landscape. A pair of cardinals kept him company, whistling their family’s ancient songs. They were the most beautiful songs Stubb had ever heard.
He’d awakened extra early that day, tense with anticipation, sure that something was going to happen. Predators? Certainly they were hungry. There were fox tracks criss-crossing the snow everywhere. And with the ground covered in white and the branches so bare, Prince Stalon could have spotted the tiniest wood mouse from high above. Yet aside from Stubb himself and the cardinals in their jaunty, pointed caps, there didn’t seem to be a creature stirring.
Then — ears pricked! — came a noisy clatter of branches and a piercing squeal. A small, gray animal had lost its grip high in the icy skyway and was hurtling headlong toward the ground. Stubb’s concern turned to awe as he watched the squirrel’s tail unfurl into an elegant parachute.
“Bra-vo!” he whispered with a homesick yearning for his tail.
Jay-jay-jay! A blue jay screamed.
Stubb jolted to attention and, in the tiniest fraction of a second, scanned the frosted landscape. Fox. He spotted it — muscles tensed and ready to pounce even before the parachuting squirrel landed on the crusted snow.
Jay-jay-jay!
Surely the other squirrel heard the jaybird too but there was no way to change direction mid-air.
The fox leaped, jaws ready to close around the silvery squirrel.
“NO!” Stubb screamed and leaped too, forgetting for that instant that he no longer had a parachute.
“What have you done?” wailed the little voice.
“This is it,” Stubb thought as he fell. All that work he’d put into finding his balance without his tail came down to this. “AIM!” he told himself, his eyes focused on the fox’s head.
“WHAP!”
“Yi-YIP!” Startled at being hit hard between the eyes, the fox dropped the silver squirrel and ran off.
Stubb was lying with his face in the snow. He knew the other squirrel was lying nearby but he didn’t dare look. “Are you alive?” he mumbled.
“Are you?” asked the other with a laugh.
Stubb held his breath. He knew that laugh.
It was Plume!
The fox’s teeth had barely grazed Plume’s skin. Stubb was only bruised and winded from his jump. They munched acorns in silence in Stubb’s hollow until Plume spoke at last. “So, did you find me, or did I find you?”
Stubb laughed, “How’d you know where I was?”
“I didn’t, not for the longest time. No one did,” said Plume. “The day you left, we thought for sure you’d be back before nightfall, so no one followed you. But you didn’t return, and by the next morning, with all that rain, it was impossible to follow your trail.”
“So how did you know to look for me here?”
“Your brother told me.”
“Nutter?”
“Yeah. He’s a sentry now.”
“Nutter?”
“Yeah,” Plume giggled. “Yeah. He’s surprised everyone. He got serious that day, after what happened. And he’s good. Did you know that Nutter and Jitter have a hollow together now? And Streak and Bounce?”
“Ah. No, I didn’t know,” Stubb said. He realized his voice sounded sad, though he didn’t mean it to. “Well that’s good, isn’t it?” he added quickly. “But I still don’t understand how Nutter knew I was here.”
“Through the other sentries,” said Plume. “Treetop to treetop. Everyone knows how important this post is, being the highest point. So when we heard that the oldest oak had a new sentry who’d lost his tail, we wondered. It’s been all anyone could talk about.”
“But my name was never to be spoken again,” said Stubb.
“What do you mean?” whispered Plume.
“I was carried off by a Hxaw-AWK!” Stubb could barely get the word out.
“But he didn’t carry you off!” Plume insisted. “He picked you up and you fought back. You won! You escaped from a hawk once he had his talons clamped around you. No squirrel has ever done that before. EVER. Wave, don’t you understand what that means?”
“My name is Stubb, now.”
“Stubb, Wave. Don’t you understand? You’re not one of the ones who disappeared. You’re a hero. Every night, in every hollow, your story is told over and over. It’s everyone’s favorite part of the saga. And you’re our special hero in the oak passage, because you’re ours. Your family is proud of you, Stubb. Father’s proud of you too. We want you back.” Then, so quietly he could barely hear the words, she added, “I want you back.”
Stubb’s heart soared, then just as suddenly fell again.
“I’d have no place to live,” he said. “By this time, woodpeckers will have moved into my hollow and started drilling the walls.”
“Your hollow’s just the way you left it,” said Plume.
“How do you know?”
“Your family and I have kept an eye on it,” said Plume. “Father too. And you know no woodpecker would dare poke his head inside with father on guard,” she laughed. “Come back, Stubb.”
Chapter 6: The Hollow
If you had walked to the heart of the oak passage and peeked into the hollow of a fine straight tree on a night in early spring when the snows still lingered, you’d have seen a cozy nest. You’d have known it from all the other nests in the forest, because it was made of sweet-clover and beech-tree leaves and milkweed silk and woven with sapphire-striped feathers.
If you’d stood and listened carefully, you’d have heard two handsome squirrels inside telling tales of the brave deeds and daring heroes that everyone knows from the centuries-old saga of the squirrel family.
If the wind outside was icy cold, the squirrels would not have noticed or cared, for they’d be wrapped in the warmth of a single magnificent plume of a tail. And at the very center of their warm circle, with whiskers frisked and newly sprouted silver fur, you’d catch a glimpse of four young squirrels named Ripple, BrightEyes, FeatherTail, and Wave.
