Day 13: Remembering

At the following day’s meeting, some of the animals who had watched the play yesterday did not return. Presumably, their curiosity had been sated and they had no wish to engage with the group any further. Some animals did stay, and a handful of others joined for the first time today, so the total attendance remained roughly the same at about twenty.

One of the newcomers, a squirrel, walked timidly up to Gabu at the start of the meeting. Gabu gave her as warm a smile as he could without baring his teeth.

“You killed my brother yesterday,” the squirrel said, not in an accusatory tone, but matter-of-factly. Gabu’s face fell. Conversations stopped around them as everyone turned their attention to Gabu and the squirrel.

“I’m very, very sorry about that,” Gabu said. “I know there’s not much I can do to make it up to you, but if there’s anything at all I can do, you only have to ask.”

That was a reckless promise to make, Mei thought. What if the squirrel asked him to stop eating meat?

“No, that’s okay. I just wanted you to know that I—that lots of people loved him, and will miss him now that he’s gone.”

“What was his name?” Mei asked. “I’d like to know more about him, so that we can properly mourn his loss.”

“His name was Lucas. I’m Ava. He liked to watch the clouds and make out shapes in them. We would sit for hours in the meadow and do that together. At the end of the day, our father would tell us stories of great animals who live in the sky, higher than any bird has ever flown, who look down on those same clouds and make out shapes, just as we did. When we were snuggled up in our tree hollow, just about to fall asleep, Lucas would whisper to me that he wanted to meet them one day, to ask them if the clouds looked different from above to how they looked from below.”

“He sounds like he was a wonderful person,” Greta said.

“He was,” Ava said.

Tanya, the hedgehog, came forward and talked about her younger sister, who’d been killed by a badger only a few weeks ago.

One by one, more and more people spoke about loved ones they had lost to carnivores. Mei spoke about the goats from his herd growing up who had gone missing and had never come back. Takkan hadn’t lost anyone to predation, but he did talk about his mother, who had become sick the previous winter and never recovered. Gabu talked about his father, who had died only a few months before his mother had.

When there were no more stories left to tell, everyone lay on their backs and watched the clouds, no one saying a word, but everyone thinking of and remembering those who were no longer with them.

A few hours after they arrived back at Moonrise Hill, when the sun was just starting to set, Mei happened to glance out of the cave mouth and saw two small birds flying in their direction. “Toto and Riri—they’re back!”

When the sparrows arrived at the hill, they were exhausted from their flight. Gabu and Mei invited them inside and waited patiently while they rested. After a short while, the birds were ready to recount their story.

“We arrived at Sawa Sawa Mountain a few days ago,” Riri said. “When we told the first goat we found that we had a message from you, Mei, they sent us to talk to the Elder.”

“And you didn’t exactly talk to him, did you, dear?” Toto said.

“I may have spoken my mind to him about how cruel and heartless he must be to have driven a young, innocent goat like yourself away from the only family he’s ever known,” Riri said. “And asked him if he knew just how many times you almost died because of his reckless decision.”

Mei was speechless. He’d never seen anyone stand up to the Elder goat in the way Riri was so nonchalantly describing. He found that he was immensely grateful to Riri for defending his actions to the Elder, something that not even his own grandmother had done.

“The Elder pointed us to your grandmother and friends,” Toto said. “They were all relieved to find out you were alive; everyone assumed you and Gabu had drowned when you went over the waterfall.”

“We delivered your message just as you asked us to: Mei is alive and living in the Emerald Forest, just past the mountain to the east. He’s living happily with Gabu, the wolf he’s friends with, and the two of them have made a number of excellent friends in the forest who support their decision. He sends his love to Mii, Tapu, and Grandma, and hopes that one day, they’ll come to understand that he made the right decision.”

“And what did they say?” Mei asked.

“The first thing your grandmother said was that she knew she’d made the wrong decision the moment you jumped into the river,” Toto said. “She desperately wants to see you again, but she doesn’t think she’ll survive the trip around the mountain.”

His grandmother really said that? All this time, if not for the wolves chasing them, could Mei have simply gone back to his herd and been welcomed there? “What about me being friends with Gabu? Did Grandma say anything about that?”

“She wishes she’d given you the chance to explain the situation fully and believed you when you said that Gabu was truly your friend. Your friend Mii had a lot of questions about the two of you, but we thought it best to wait and ask you how much you want us to tell them.”

“Thanks for doing that. What about Tapu? Is he all right?” Mei was slightly worried that the sparrows hadn’t mentioned Tapu once.

“He...” Toto began hesitantly, “...still doesn’t see eye to eye with you over your decision to leave with Gabu. I think he feels that you abandoned him and the rest of your herd when you chose Gabu over them.”

“We tried to make him understand that you only left because they were making unreasonable demands of you, and forcing you to choose between them and Gabu was the exact reason you didn’t feel welcome anymore, but...”

“It’s okay,” Mei said. “Tapu can be stubborn. It’s possible he won’t ever change his mind about me now, which is sad, but I’ve got better friends now anyway.”

“That’s right,” Gabu said, and hugged Mei.

“As for the wolf you asked us to check up on,” Toto said, “we flew over Baku Baku Valley a few times, but we couldn’t find any wolf pups who looked like him. From what the goats told us, the pack seems to be in disarray since you left. Their leader and a few other wolves—we couldn’t find out which ones—didn’t survive the avalanche.”

“Giro is dead?” Gabu said, dumbfounded. “I...killed him?”

“We don’t know if it was you who killed him, or if he was buried in the snow,” Riri said.

“It amounts to the same thing either way,” Gabu said. “If I hadn’t challenged him and caused the avalanche, he’d still be alive.”

The mention of Gabu challenging his pack’s leader reminded Mei of something, but what? He suddenly remembered. Jess, the wolf from the Gara Gara Mountain whom Gabu and Mei had helped to escape from his pack, had told them how his friend Gon had challenged their leader to a duel and had died as a result. Jess had attacked the leader in retaliation, which is how he ended up on the run from his pack.

“Gabu,” Mei said, “that doesn’t mean you’re the new leader of the Baku Baku wolf pack, does it?”

“Technically, it does. But even if I wanted to go back, there’s no way anyone in my pack would follow me.”

“We also went to Para Para Fields to deliver your message to Kuro-san,” Toto said. “He said he didn’t know what news you were referring to; he didn’t know about you and Gabu, and we haven’t told him. He says you’re welcome to visit him whenever you like.”

“Okay, that’s good to hear,” Mei said. “Thank you so much for going all that way and back for us.”

“It was no trouble,” Riri said. “We did promise your grandmother that we’d be back soon to tell her more about how you’re doing, and to ask you whether you’d consider visiting her.”

“Let me discuss that with Gabu. I’ll come and find you in the morning to let you know what I’ve decided.”