Piglet was still hungover when he got to Pooh’s house. Not even the morning breeze dancing through the few remaining trees around the old bear’s place could clear away the backwash from the night before. Piglet’s eyeballs ached, his skull throbbed, his pink skin was too tight for his bones, and his mouth tasted as though he’d eaten something dead and buried. He hoped he hadn’t, but his memories of the previous night were hazy to nonexistent. It was usually like that when he partied with Roo after a job.
He couldn’t even remember the last job clearly. Kanga Corp had hired him for a long-haul pickup and delivery, and the cargo must have been something huge and heavy, because Roo had needed a big rig, and the only big rig in the Hundred Acre Wood was the CR and the only big rig driver in the Wood was Piglet.
The CR was 72 feet and 18 wheels of road-king power, red lacquer and polished chrome, with “Piglet Delivers” painted in silvery cursive on the doors by Piglet himself. Since getting his trucker’s license, he’d driven far and wide beyond the borders of the Wood almost every week, always for Kanga Corp, and no matter how messy his own life got, Piglet kept the CR spotless. On paper, the rig wasn’t his, of course, but belonged to Kanga Corp, as Roo never failed to remind him. But when Piglet sat at the wheel with all that rumbling weight at his command, he knew the CR belonged to him no matter what the deed or insurance papers said.
Piglet knocked at Pooh’s door, fidgeting while he waited. He always checked on Pooh whenever he came back from a job, making sure the old bear had enough to eat, doing his laundry and telling him to have a bath if things were dire, but this morning, Piglet had arrived with a nebulous sense of urgency. The urgency had been there from the moment he awoke, the feeling that he had something important to tell Pooh. But whatever it was, it had slipped away like a minnow in a stream when he tried to grasp hold of it.
Piglet thought of the job again. Tried to jog his memory.
He figured he’d been away for a week or so, though it was hard to know exactly how long since time seemed to pass differently when he was outside the Wood. Dimly, he recalled parking the CR on the gravel lot outside the Kanga Corp compound last night, same as he always did, but beyond that, his recall was fuzzy. Roo often slipped him various pills and powders, “samples” he called it, when they were drinking. Sometimes the buzz was good and other times Piglet woke up unable to remember his name or where he lived. This time he just couldn’t remember what he needed to tell Pooh, or where he’d been or what cargo he’d picked up. Better that way, maybe. Roo and Kanga didn’t like it if he talked about his deliveries. Privileged information, Kanga called it. You signed an NDA when we hired you, remember?
Piglet did not remember signing an NDA or even what an NDA was, but Kanga remembered and that’s what mattered. Just like she remembered Christopher Robin leaving her in charge of the Wood and “its development” when he left, though no one else did.
He knocked again but the door remained closed.
Piglet stuck his trotters into the pockets of his denim vest and encountered an unexpected object on the left. Removing it, he found it was a glass jar, no bigger than a crabapple, filled with a golden substance that shimmered in the scattered sunbeams slipping through the dark clouds gathering overhead. The label said “Clover Honey” and with sudden lucidity, Piglet remembered picking it up from a display case at a gas station. He remembered paying for it with a jumble of coins he’d grabbed from the CR. He remembered climbing back up in the cab afterward—the comforting growl of the CR’s engine, the smell of diesel exhaust and pine air freshener, and the musky smell of something else. A farm, maybe.
Piglet tried to remember more, but his mind slipped again, like a foot on wet tile. He put the jar back into his pocket and imagined the way Pooh would smile when he saw it, the way he’d cradle it in his paw, the way his eyes would glisten.
Once upon a time, honey had been plentiful in the Wood, but that was a long time ago, back when Christopher Robin … Piglet shivered and shook off those thoughts as well as the faded memories clinging to them. He didn’t like thinking about the old days. Pooh, on the other hand, would never shut up about them. According to Roo, he had that in common with Kanga, though Piglet guessed it would not be wise to make such a comparison in her presence.
Piglet knocked again, trying to shove down the tangle of worry in his stomach. Much as he’d deny it if asked, he worried constantly about the old bear. Pooh’s hearing was going, he had lost weight, and his fur was matted and dull, but he seemed to get by. At least he still had his house, which was more than you could say for Owl and Eeyore, rustled out of their homes by Kanga Corp development projects.
Piglet knocked again, then tried the handle. The door was unlocked.
“I hope you’re decent!” he called as he stepped inside.
The first thing Piglet noticed was that the place was an awful mess, even by Pooh’s standards. A broken chair. Bedsheets on the floor. A smudged, rust-red stain on the wall by the bed, as if someone had put their paw there, trying to stay upright, and slipped. Piglet’s heart sank into his queasy stomach. It all looked bad and worse, but it wasn’t until he saw the remains of a smashed honey pot on the floor, the scattered shards still covered in sticky-sweet residue, that he knew two things for sure: Pooh was gone, and he had not left willingly.
Kanga didn’t realize she was still holding the cattle prod until she was in her office, reaching for her usual cup of tea. She pondered the electrical device, its sharp tips, its plastic handle, its grip-friendly buttons. Would it need recharging after being used so many times? She would have to ask Roo. It wouldn’t do to have it rendered useless. Not today. She put the device down on the mahogany desk, cleaned her paws with a sanitizing wipe, and lifted the delicate teacup by its finely curved handle. The cup trembled as she raised it from the saucer, porcelain rattling against porcelain. Kanga closed her eyes, took a breath. Too much excitement. Too little sleep. Too much to do. She sighed. Even a small, self-indulgent party could be such a chore.
She sipped, steadying the cup with her left paw.
Through the upstairs window of her office, she looked down on the garden at the tidy flowerbeds and clipped rhododendrons, the neatly raked gravel driveway, the perimeter wall topped with razor wire, the locked front gate with its black steel bars. Roo was out there, cutting across the grass, ignoring the proper walking paths as usual, headed toward the barns. On his shoulder he balanced the long, hooked metal pike he’d brought home with the latest delivery and even from her high perch, Kanga could see the wet, red gleam of the implement’s sharp tip. She resisted the urge to open the window and yell at him to mind where he stepped. He was a good son most days, she reminded herself, and all grown up now, though there were days when she wished she could still pick him up and put him in her pouch. As Roo passed out of sight on the other side of the mansion, Kanga caught a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye, a shred of grey rustling outside the front gate, but when she looked again, there was nothing there. She stared at the gate, imagining the ways in which she might use the cattle prod to deal with this particular recurring problem, but nothing stirred.
Outside the front gate lay the wide, gravel-covered parking lot for Roo’s cars and Kanga Corp’s trucks. Beyond the gravel, the sandy landscape rolled softly toward the dark edge of the Hundred Acre Wood. Leaden rain clouds edged in black were gathering over the distant trees, but the rain hadn’t reached the compound yet, and above the parked vehicles Kanga could see glimpses of freshly laundered blue and a slender, loosely gathered bunch of sunbeams. It was the kind of weather Christopher Robin would have loved, Kanga thought and suddenly wished the tea was sherry, or even a glass of Rabbit’s horrid moonshine. On a day like this, the boy would have gone adventuring, wearing his boots and sou’wester and his goddamn umbrella, everyone traipsing along in his wake, trying to keep up, jostling to get as close as possible, hoping for a touch of his hand, or even just a look or a smile, because nothing nothing nothing, could ever, for as long as you lived, compare to the joy of being with him, of being illuminated by the light of his attention, of being warmed by his presence.
Kanga’s eyes stung, and yet she let the memories linger, turning them over and over in her mind, caressing them, gripping them tight, even though each one had long since hardened into a shard of broken glass, cutting, cutting, cutting… She bared her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain.
“Ma’am.” It was one of Rabbit’s friends and relations, trembling in the doorway, head bowed. Kanga couldn’t remember their name. They all looked the same with their frightened faces and snuffling noses.
“What?” she snapped, eyes open, back straight, chin lifted.
“The … the guest is downstairs. Master Roo said to tell you.”
Kanga put the cup on its saucer and picked up the prod. Holding it made her feel better, like she’d be alright, like she could handle anything. Even a party. The sharp pain of the memories remained, bleeding through her thoughts, cutting her heart to pieces, but that pain was familiar, even welcome. Remembering was her gift and her burden, her blessing and her curse.
“Keep him in the parlor,” she said. “And lock the door.”
Piglet needed to stop and think, but he wasn’t good at thinking, never had been. He was good at panicking though and that’s what he was doing now, shouting for Pooh as he ran blindly out of the house, thinking of all the places Pooh might go. The woozle tree. The big stones and rocks. The bee tree. But in his pounding heart, he already knew Pooh was at none of those places.
The mess and blood left behind at the house were one thing, Pooh was clumsy and disorganized at the best of times, but Piglet could not imagine what kind of calamity would have kept Pooh from licking the honey from every single one of those broken shards.
It had started to rain—the world turning slippery and brown, the sky low and grey—and nothing in the Wood seemed familiar anymore. Everything about the place had changed since the old days. Trees felled and carted off. Dells and hills leveled. Creatures big and small rousted out of nests and burrows to make room for construction projects that never seemed to materialize, and everywhere there were signs trumpeting “Another Kanga Corp Development Project!” in brash letters.
Piglet ran a wet sleeve over his dripping snout. It wasn’t just the Wood that had changed; Piglet had changed too. He’d put on more than a few inches in height and girth; he’d gotten his trucker’s license and gone to work for Kanga; he’d started drinking with Roo and seeing Pooh less and less. Meanwhile, Pooh hadn’t changed at all, not really. Whatever the years and lack of care had done to his exterior, he was still the same silly old bear, singing his little ditties about hoar-frost twinkles and cottleston pie, with no understanding of or interest in bills or work or pubs.
Tears muddled Piglet’s vision as he ran. He should have looked out for Pooh, should have gone to see him as soon as he got back last night instead of traipsing off with Roo. But he hadn’t, and now something terrible had happened and Piglet had not been there to help.
At Six Pines, Piglet tripped and twisted his ankle. The pines had been felled long ago, and treacherous rocks and stumps hid in the underbrush. Piglet swore under his breath and hobbled onwards, almost stumbling headfirst into a pit covered by a jumbled mat of ivy.
He teetered at the lip of the hole, the darkness yawning wide below, and went down on all fours in the muck, rain pouring down his neck and ears. Many years ago, he’d seen a monster, a heffalump, at the bottom of this very pit. Except, there had been no heffalump, of course. It had only been Pooh, tumbled into the trap he’d dug, an empty honey jar stuck on his head.
It was a funny story. Even Christopher Robin had laughed and laughed, but the pit, and what he thought he’d seen in it, had haunted Piglet’s nightmares ever since.
He tried to get up, but his legs would not carry him. There was a smell of wet earth and something dead creeping up from below, tendrils of darkness and stink tangling around his neck as if to pull him into the abyss. Something rustled the ivy behind Piglet, and he didn’t wait around to investigate. Squealing, he scrambled away and kept running.
Descending the stairs into the foyer, Kanga wondered what would happen when she unlocked the parlor door. Would he cower before her when she confronted him? Would he quail and quake like everyone else did? No. Kanga knew better. She knew he would look at her like he had always looked at everyone and everything. As if he had nothing to fear. As if the world was still small and safe. As if he had never wronged anyone. As if he’d never wronged her.
Kanga was about to unlock the door when a loud noise interrupted her. A bellow, then another. From outside. Her ears twitched and her hand went to the cattle prod in her cardigan pocket but before she had time to decide what to do, a klaxon blared in the hallway, accompanied by a flashing red light above the front door.
“Roo!” she shouted. “Perimeter check!”
There was no reply. Kanga bared her teeth, turned away from the parlor, and headed for the front door.
When Piglet couldn’t run anymore, he found himself outside The Rabbit Hole. Even in a wild panic, he’d found his way to the pub. Standing there, soaked to the skin, heart pounding, ankle throbbing, eyeballs still aching from the hangover, Piglet knew he needed a drink. Something to take the edge off.
Inside, the pub was almost empty, but the wood-paneled room was warm and smelled of furniture polish, beer, and wet fur. Rabbit stood behind the bar, wiping down the taps and counter as if they weren’t already gleaming. As always, his red-rimmed eyes were set with worry, thin lips straining over long front teeth.
“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” Rabbit said, and an involuntary shudder made his long ears twitch and shiver. “Figured you’d still be sleeping it off.”
Piglet said nothing to that. He deposited his rear on a bar stool and ordered a pint.
“Seen Pooh?” he asked while Rabbit poured the beer. “He wasn’t home. Wonder where he is.”
Rabbit gave him an odd, sideways look. “You know he never comes here, and if he did, I wouldn’t let him in.” He placed Piglet’s pint glass carefully on a cardboard coaster. “Be better for you if you didn’t come here either. If you headed home, right now.”
“Probably right,” Piglet agreed with a shrug and drained most of the pint in one long, satisfying gulp. He closed his eyes and felt the beginnings of a pleasant beer buzz slowly replace the ache in his skull.
When he opened his eyes, Rabbit had retreated to the far end of the counter and was mumbling into the bar’s ancient rotary phone. There was no one else around except Owl, slumped at his usual table in the back, snoring softly. Ever since Owl had been evicted from his tree by Kanga Corp, Rabbit had let him roost at the pub. Eeyore had been evicted around the same time, but while Owl had disappeared into senility and senescence, the donkey had gone feral. Piglet had seen him a few times, an emaciated ghost of his former self, scrounging around Kanga’s place while muttering nonsensical things like “Property is theft”, “No gods, no masters”, and “One solution, revolution”.
Piglet ordered a second beer. There really was nothing better for a hangover than drinking again. Another couple of beers and he’d almost feel himself again, could almost ignore the anxiety he’d felt ever since waking. Except something was still tapping away at the inside of his skull, something about that last job. Something about the CR. Something ... Piglet tried his best to grasp the memory, but whatever Roo had slipped him this time, it was good stuff.
He sipped his third beer slower. The alcohol made him feel that woozy calm and confidence he never felt when sober. It was enough that he could almost convince himself that Pooh was fine, that he’d panicked over nothing.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Rabbit hissed as he served Piglet his fourth pint.
Piglet was still trying to process the expression on Rabbit’s face—fear? guilt?—when the front door slammed open and Roo stood in the doorway. The kangaroo loomed there—a backlit, hulking silhouette—before he ducked his head to fit under the lintel.
Piglet vaguely recalled a time when he’d been bigger than Roo, back when Roo had been small enough for Kanga to tuck into her pouch, but those days were long gone. This Roo was eight feet and two-hundred pounds of muscle, sinew, and swagger.
“Rabbit tells me you’re looking for Pooh,” Roo said and grabbed Piglet’s pint, draining the contents in one gulp. There was dirt on his paws and forearms, and he smelled like … Piglet’s memories heaved uneasily as he inhaled the musky scent, and for a moment it was as if he were back at Six Pines, teetering at the edge of the pit. Roo slammed down the pint glass on the counter. “How many times have I told you and everyone else not to hang out with that bear? I specifically remember telling you that as recently as last night.”
“I …I …” Piglet felt his old stammer resurface as it often did in Roo’s presence. “See, I stopped by his house but he wasn’t there. Stuff was broken andb…”
Roo snorted. “So? His house is a dump. Always was. Ma should’ve kicked him out years ago.”
“But Roo, everything was a mess and …” Piglet kept babbling. The beer did that to him sometimes, made him spill his guts, and he told Roo about the honey and the blood, the sheets and the broken chair. He even told him about the pit. As he listened, Roo gradually went still until nothing about him moved except one long, sharp claw tapping at the counter. Piglet fell silent staring at that claw.
“Go home and sleep it off, Piggy.” Roo leaned in close and the odd, musky smell wafted off him, filling Piglet’s snout. “And don’t go looking for that bear. Understood?”
“Sure, boss, but …”
Roo clapped one heavy paw on his shoulder, claws digging through Piglet’s vest and shirt into the tender skin beneath.
“Don’t want my best driver to get in trouble. Or end up useless like that scheming donkey or this freeloader.” Roo tipped his head in Owl’s direction and Piglet nodded, heart thumping against his meaty ribs. “Anyway. I need to head home.” Roo winked. “Need to help Ma get the party started.”
“The party,” Piglet said, the pleasant beer buzz fading while something he knew he wasn’t supposed to remember began to surface in his mind.
Roo peered down at him. “You know, Ma wasn’t sure you could handle this last job. That’s why she sent me with you, but you did better than expected.” He grinned. “Because you’re useful, right?”
“Right,” Piglet echoed, voice hollow.
He watched Roo swagger out the door and all the things he wasn’t supposed to remember, all the things Roo had made him forget, slithered free like a swarm of eels released from a trap. Oh yes, he remembered now. He remembered everything.
Kanga stood on the threshold, the wide oak doors thrown open, staring into the storm. The sky was a roiling cauldron of lead, the rain rolling through the yard in ragged waves of grey, the heavy downpour running in streams and rivulets across the yard, turning her lawns and flowerbeds and paths to mess and muck.
The alarm wasn’t blaring anymore, she’d turned it off, but she knew what that klaxon meant. That someone had breached the gate, even though it was still locked and closed. She had called for Roo until her throat was hoarse, stomping through the rooms and calling out the back door, but he was nowhere to be found. Master Roo had taken his car to “check on something” the staff had told her before they scattered before her wrath, squeaking and sputtering.
Which meant she had to deal with it herself, just like she had always had to deal with everything by herself in this dismal world where no one else was capable or reliable, where no one else took responsibility, no one else cleaned up their own mess or understood the price, the cost, of anything. Not of condensed milk, tea, and toast. Not of property taxes and fuel charges, electricity, bricks and mortar. Not of duplicity and betrayal either.
The floor shook beneath her, and there was a rumble, too low, too close, too tangible to be thunder. She gripped the cattle prod. Through the rain, something was approaching. It was tearing through her flowerbeds and rhododendrons, and she pushed the button to activate the cattle prod, readying herself to meet it.
Piglet stayed at the Rabbit Hole until he was sure Roo was gone. When he finally stumbled out, he pretended he was heading home, but once he was safely out of sight of Rabbit and the pub, he veered west, moving as fast as the heavy rain and the beer sloshing in his belly would let him, his memories squirming free as he ran.
The job had been a two-day drive with Roo to a seaside town that smelled of brine and rotting kelp. There had been a ship waiting at the dock, and when the three beasts were led out of the cargo hold, they had raised their trunks skyward, giving a deafening call. How childish his fears had been all those years ago when he and Pooh had played at trapping such a monster. The real thing surpassed every nightmare, and no pit they could have dug would have held it. But while Piglet quailed in terror, Roo had been ecstatic, crooning that Ma would finally have the perfect gift for the bear.
Kanga.
It was a long time since they had pulled that cruel prank on her, him and Pooh and Rabbit. Pooh distracting Kanga while Rabbit lured baby Roo away and Piglet jumped into her pouch. They’d had some ludicrous reasons for the abduction. To put the newcomers, Roo and Kanga, in their place. To keep Christopher Robin to themselves. Pooh’s memory of those events had long since faded, and Rabbit never spoke of it. Roo always claimed he had no memory of that day, and that Kanga didn’t either, but Piglet knew she remembered, just like she remembered everything, and that she had never forgiven them.
Piglet remembered too. He remembered the suffocating tightness of Kanga’s pouch and the icy bath she’d prepared for him in her home. He remembered how she’d held him under the water while he thrashed and struggled for breath. Even though he worked for Kanga Corp, he’d done his best to stay out of Kanga’s way since then, but now …
A gust of wind soughed through the trees, lifting the rain’s tattered veil, revealing the Kanga Corp compound ahead. It was a sprawling complex with Kanga’s red-brick mansion front and center flanked by barns and barracks, all of it surrounded by a high stone wall. Around the compound, the sandy dunes that had once surrounded Kanga’s tiny cottage, had been leveled and covered with gravel to make place for the Kanga Corp parking lot, and beyond the compound, out of sight and swathed in rain, lay the paved road leading to the highway and the world beyond the Wood.
Piglet knew he ought to turn back. That he ought to go home and sleep it off. He thought of Roo’s claws digging into his skin and for a moment he almost faltered. Then, his trotter found the jar in his pocket, lingering on the smooth warmth and promise of it. He rubbed his snout, his sleeve smeared with snot and tears, and kept running.
Once he reached the parking lot, Piglet recalled the previous night with pitiless clarity. The rattle of heavy chains as the beasts threw their weight around inside the CR’s trailer. Kanga waiting at the gate with a cattle prod, telling Roo to “ditch the pig and bring the bear.” Piglet had made some feeble effort to get away, to warn Pooh, but Roo had taken him to the pub, making sure he got blackout drunk, and Piglet had let it happen. Because he was afraid. Because he was a coward. Because ever since Christopher Robin left, all that mattered in the Wood was what Kanga and Roo wanted and if you didn’t go along, if you didn’t make yourself useful to them, you’d end up like Owl or Eeyore or worse.
The gate was locked. If Piglet had still been a Very Small Animal as in the olden days, he could have easily slipped between the bars, but it was futile for a hog. He squealed for Pooh, Roo, Kanga, anyone. No one answered.
Drizzle and mist blotted out everything, but Piglet thought he saw a ghostly silhouette scuttle past inside the gate. He wanted to call out, but a distant bellow shattered the silence. The heffalumps. Piglet couldn’t see them, but their rage shook the ground. Maybe they were stomping Pooh into the mud right now, tearing him limb from limb. And all of it was Piglet’s fault.
High-pitched shrieks came from far beyond the gate and Piglet fell to his knees, shaking from snout to trotters. He screamed himself hoarse, calling out the name no one in the Wood, no one except Pooh, ever spoke out loud anymore. Again and again he called out for Christopher Robin, but he did not come. He would never come. He had abandoned them, leaving them at the mercy of each other.
Sobs wracked Piglet’s chest until a familiar gleam of red and chrome caught his eye.
It was the CR, parked where he’d left it last night—next to Roo’s black SUV and a backhoe.
The keys were in the cup-holder where he’d left them, and the engine started up with the same satisfying, throaty rumble as always. Looking down at the world from behind the wheel, Piglet’s fear and panic subsided and he felt clearheaded for the first time since waking up that morning.
Making a wide turn in the gravel and taking aim at the gate, Piglet thought of Roo and Kanga and how they had once been just two creatures in the Wood, like him and Rabbit and Owl and everyone else. He thought of Pooh, of days twinkling with sunshine and hoarfrost. He thought of the pit, and he thought of the beasts, let loose.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled to the CR as he stomped on the gas, as he rammed the love of his life into the metal bars. It took three tries to bust the gate open, and the groan of metal as the front end of the CR bent and broke smote Piglet to his core.
Once the gate was wrenched aside, he drove into the yard, left the truck running and jumped to the ground.
Above the rumble of the engine, he heard the distant roar of the beasts, and a high-pitched scream suddenly cut off. Piglet thought he heard Roo’s voice in the distance and could even make out snippets of shouted conversation: “out of the way!”, “who let it out?”, “the prod isn’t working!”
“Pooh!” Piglet shouted and ran toward the sound of mayhem, until another sound—closer, softer—reached him. It was the sound of singing and it came from Kanga’s mansion. Hobbling through the rain, Piglet saw signs of destruction everywhere: an outdoor light fixture, smashed and dangling from its wires; rhododendrons uprooted; the polished granite steps at the mansion’s entrance cracked and broken, the tall oak doors turned to kindling and slivers. Piglet trotted inside, stepping carefully around shards of glass, pieces of wood, and bits of brick, and there, in the rubble of the grand hallway with its crystal chandelier and sweeping staircase, stood Pooh.
The old bear’s fur was wet and tufty, smeared with dirt and blood, his left eye swollen shut and bleeding, but he was there, and he was singing to himself, a song without words that rose and fell in a garbled hum. Piglet couldn’t speak. He just hugged the old bear close, inhaling the smell of sweat and blood, fur and life, safety and home. Pooh returned the hug, his embrace as firm and warm as always, his husky voice cracking as he rambled:
“There you are, Piglet! Roo told me there was a Party and he wouldn’t let me sleep in, even though I was very tired, but when I got here there were no balloons or cake and there was no one here except me and then Eeyore at the window but he ran away and they haven’t even served me a little something though it must be past eleven o’clock. And then there was, there was a …bab…”
Pooh waved one paw in the air as if to draw a trunk, and Piglet nodded. He still found no words to say, but he reached into his pocket and removed the glass jar, handing it to Pooh.
“Oh,” said Pooh, his smile revealing two missing teeth and a bloodied lip.
“Oh, Pooh,” Piglet mumbled.
Outside, the sound of the rampaging beasts was getting louder, but the CR beckoned in the pouring rain, and even dented and scratched, the big rig was the most beautiful thing Piglet had ever laid eyes on. They were almost at the truck when Kanga and Roo came bounding out of the mist. Piglet’s first instinct was to hide, but neither Kanga nor Roo seemed to notice them. The three beasts were at their heels, trunks raised, tusks gleaming, flanks wet with rain and blood, their broken chains trailing behind them.
There was a moment when one of the heffalumps turned and looked down at Piglet with its small, dark eye, and in that moment, Piglet’s old life was drained away and replenished with something new, and he saw, not a monster but a kindred spirit, a creature who had lost itself in dreary days of drudgery beyond counting, until, here and now, it had found a way to freedom.
In that moment of revelation, Piglet realized that for a long time after Christopher Robin had left, it had seemed impossible to live in the Wood, impossible to go on without the boy there to narrate their existence, and everyone and everything had become twisted and bent by that loss. Roo and Kanga turned monstrous. Himself and Rabbit corrupted and diminished. And Pooh, beloved Pooh, holding onto the faded remnants of himself by living as if nothing had changed and nothing ever would. But now the beasts were tearing it all apart, setting them free.
The heffalumps stomped past, skirting the CR’s bent fender with a grace that belied their bulk, nearly trampling Roo until Kanga swerved between her son and the pursuers, knocking him out of their path. A pair of tusks came down, ripping through Kanga’s cardigan and pulling it off her back, before the chase continued, out through the smashed gate, pursuers and pursued trampling and leaping over steel and mud and gravel, into the rain.
As he helped Pooh climb into the CR, Piglet glimpsed a ragged shape following in the beasts’ wake, a shadowy ghost, cackling as it cavorted through the destruction, and if it hadn’t been for the swish of its tail, he would have never recognized it as Eeyore.
Piglet drove all the way back to Pooh’s house as a golden evening followed the rain. Smashed and dented as the CR was, its engine still rumbled reassuringly as it lumbered along the narrow dirt roads of the Wood, and Pooh sat beside him in the passenger seat, nodding off occasionally, cradling the jar of honey.
“What’s for breakfast?” Pooh asked as the CR came to a stop beside his tree and Piglet started laughing then and could not stop because whatever doom or promise the future held in a Wood where heffalumps roamed free, Piglet did not fear it. At least not today.
Content Warnings: addiction