Wondy's Day

There was a hole in the bank, half behind a root, and everything in me wanted to be inside it.

That is not a figure of speech. My feet had already turned. My head was already in there, in the interesting dark, finding out.

And then I did the hard thing, which is the same hard thing every single time: stopped. Looked. Listened.

Looking: the hole went further back than a rabbit needs. Listening: something in there was dripping.

Newby arrived and did not like it at all. "We should get somebody."

"We should find out first."

"Those are different things," said Newby.

I was annoyed about that for a good ten minutes, and I would like it on the record that I was annoyed while doing exactly what Newby suggested, which is the most irritating way to be annoyed.

So instead of climbing in, I lay down flat at the mouth of it and called: "Hello? Is anything in there?"

Nothing. Just the drip.

Then Puzzly came along and asked the question neither of us had asked, which was dripping what, and that is the question that actually solved it.

Oil. The can, gone over the edge that morning, wedged under a root, quietly emptying into the bank for four hours. A third of it left. We got it out with a stick and Newby's scarf.

"If you'd gone in head first," said Newby, "you'd have put your paw straight through it."

"Ooh," I said. "Yes."

I want to write down properly what bothered me about that, because it bothered me all day and it is the most interesting thing that happened to me.

I know my own rule. Stop and notice before you jump in. I have it. I use it. I used it this morning, at that hole, correctly.

And Newby still wanted something different from me — not look before you go in, but do not go in at all, fetch somebody — and Newby was right too. Both answers were right. They cannot both have been the best one, and yet I cannot find the flaw in either.

I have gone round that all day and I have not got to the bottom of it, and I am aware that "I have not got to the bottom of it" is, for me, a fairly unusual place to stop.

The rest of my day was ordinary. Hooks, and carrying, and then at ten to two we all found out we had four hours instead of nine and there was no time to be curious about anything at all, which is the only cure for me that has ever worked.

At about five I was up past the orchard when Jitters came tearing back down the lane from the far end, completely unable to speak, and pointed.

I got the rest of it later, in pieces, from Jitters and from about four other fluffs. Nobody had stood far enough away to see the whole path at once. Jitters had, by accident, by going all the way to the far end of the orchard to practise where nobody could hear — turned round, looked back down the way home, and found thirty feet of black in the middle of it.

I would never have found that. I look at things. Jitters was the only fluff all day who looked at all of it from a distance.

I asked Puzzly about the hole, at the party, at about half past nine, because Puzzly is the only fluff I know who is not embarrassed by an unfinished question.

"We were both right," I said. "Me and Newby. How were we both right?"

Puzzly thought about it for longer than most fluffs would and then said: "You were right about the hole. Newby was right about you."

I have not decided yet whether that is fair.

Jitters sang the welcome twice and was asked for it a third time, and I shouted for the third one, partly because it was beautiful and partly because that is the fluff who saved the whole path by standing far enough away.

Beamy read out the envelope and the oil was in it, under my name, and I did not entirely feel it was mine.