Day 67: The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone

Gabu and Mei were woken the following morning by a visit from Takkan. For the first time since Mei had met him, the fox seemed visibly distressed. “I hate to bother you so early in the day, but I wondered if you two would be able to help me with something?”

“Of course,” Mei said, still sleepy. “Is it about the hunting thing?”

“Good heavens, no. It’s just...” Takkan sighed, “...have I ever told you about my lucky pinecone?”

Gabu stretched awake. “Once or twice, perhaps,” he said with a yawn. “Didn’t you tell some long story about how you found it that turned out not to be about the pinecone at all?”

“I do like a good shaggy dog story. I should tell it to you sometime,” he said to Mei. Mei wasn’t awake enough to figure out what that meant. “But regardless, the pinecone does mean a lot to me. You see, I lent it to Sagi a few days ago, and he never returned it to me. I don’t want to seem rude by asking after it, and after all, Mei, you’ve known him longer than I have. Please, could you two find out for me what happened to my lucky pinecone?”

How could they do anything but accept? After Mei had eaten some breakfast, he and Gabu went into the forest to find Sagi.

The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone: Part 1

Takkan’s pinecone? Yeah, he gave it to me about three free days ago. Let me tell you the story...

It was a dark and rainy day. An icy breeze ruffled my fur, and I knew in my whiskers that something terrible was about to happen. With a creeping sense of dread, I hopped to my sister’s burrow. At first glance, everything seemed normal. I walked up to the entrance and peered into the depths. No welcoming voice rang out; no kits—baby rabbits, you know—ran out to greet me, or invite me in out of the rain. The reason: They weren’t there. My sister, her children, vanished. Fearing the worst, I ran to the den of my good friend Takkan, who came at once to investigate.

“Atrocious! Bamboozling!” he cried. “Stolen away in the night! By these heavy tracks, it is transparently obvious to me that a fearsome creature indeed is responsible.” What do you mean? Of course he talks like that! “A bear, Sagi,” he told me. “Your sister and those sweet little nephews and nieces, with their large round eyes and soft ears, have been kitnapped by a bear.”

My heart nearly froze in my chest. I’m not exactly a weakling, but even I’m no match for a bear, or so I thought. “That is fearsome news indeed,” said I. “I must go at once to save my family from their grizzly fate. Will you accompany me?”

“Alas, I cannot,” Takkan said. “But here, take this pinecone. It will confer upon you the necessary fortune to triumph in your endeavour wherein so many others have failed. Now, go! See whether you might avert the cruel hand of fate before—dare I even suggest it?—it is too late.”

Thanking him, I set off at once. Conducting a thorough search of the area around their burrow, my eyes lit upon the same tracks Takkan had seen: great depressions in the mud, tipped with long, sharp claws that could tear even a wolf to shreds. They took me north. With the blazing sun on my back, I began my adventure.

As it turned out, I wasn’t fated to complete my journey alone. Not an hour into my travels, who should I find but Mii, grazing alone in a field of clovers. “Sagi,” she said to me, “what brings you here?”

“A quest, milady. I hunt the fearsome bear that has stolen my sister and her children from me. Such a cruel creature it must be to have snatched them up in the middle of the night and taken them who knows where. And so I venture on, unsure if I’ll ever see them again, or return alive myself.”

“Oh, Sagi, how brave you are to attempt something so dangerous. Of course I will go with you and help in any way I can.” She really said that! Go ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.

So the two of us headed north. The first hurdle we came to was a river, far wider than any you’ve ever seen, with water that roars like a fearsome beast and currents that will suck you under before you’ve had a chance to scream. “How ever will we get across?” Mii cried, clearly distraught.

“Leave it to me.” With a display of cunning even Takkan would be proud of, I spotted a rotted tree decaying by the riverbank. With one well-timed kick, it creaked and splintered and crashed down, forming a makeshift bridge to the other side. But our troubles weren’t over yet. As we mounted the fall’n log, it wobbled and spun like a dying animal. With my rabbit’s reflexes, I easily stayed atop it, but Mii wasn’t so nimble. Down the log she slid, ready to plunge into the freezing darkness of the icy water and be swept away to sea. And that might have been her fate, had I not quickly grabbed her hoof to slow her fall, pulling her with all my might back onto the log. “No need to thank me,” I said as I guided her safely to the other side.

Next, we came to a surly old badger, who stood squarely in our path and refused to budge. His eyes burned with hatred and malice. “If ye wish to pass, thou must answer mine riddle,” the badger said. While I could have sent him flying with one foot tied behind my back, I decided to let Mii deal with this one on her own.

“Tell me, badger,” she said. “What riddle would you have us solve to earn our passage? While I am not even half as gifted in the art of riddling as some of my associates back home, I dare say I could make easy work of any riddle devised by one such as yourself.”

“Thou should think twice before dishonouring me. For thine insult, mine riddle shall be twice as fiendish as that which I would otherwise offer. Answer me this: It doth live in the mouth, and on some days may bite like a tooth whilst on other days it may soothe. Answer rightly, and thou shalt pass unscathed.”

“My word, that is a tough one,” Mii said.

“Doest thou give in?” the badger said, showing his fangs. It was clear that if we failed to satisfy his despicable whims, we would instead satisfy his hunger. “None has ever solved this riddle, and none ever shall. Not even the wily Takkan, fabled to reside in the very forest from which you come, could ever hope to—”

“But I did solve it,” Mii said with a devious smile. “My word. It lives in my mouth, and it has the skill to bite or soothe as I see fit. I could not say the same of your word, of course, as it lacks the skill to do either, and with the way you insist on flinging it from your mouth with reckless abandon, it could not rightly be said to reside there.”

“Curses!” the badger cried. “Go on past. I’m sick of the sight of you.” He stepped aside.

At last, we came to another forest, and therein we found a cave. The bear’s tracks led inside, and a terrible snoring came from within. “Wait here,” I told Mii. “If I never make it out alive, tell my story.” Into the icy darkness I strode. Tap, tap, tap went my feet on the cool stone floor. Louder and louder came the snoring, until finally I was mere inches from the bear. It was only then that I noticed, held fast in the bear’s sleeping arms, the battered and bruised forms of my sister and her children, too terrified to speak. Desperate to free them, I grabbed at the bear’s huge paws and pulled, but I couldn’t move them.

It was at that moment that the bear woke up.

She opened her eyes and saw me. Roooooaaaaaar! “How dare you try to escape my clutches? Were my arms not full of your terrified companions, I would mash you into a paste for your insolence.”

“Are you truly so dull as to mistake one rabbit for another? I did not escape because I was never caught. Furthermore, I demand that you free my sister and her children at once!”

She only laughed. My sister caught my eye, silently begging for me to run, but I would do no such thing. The bear drew close to me, her horrible head mere inches from my own. “Oh, I do admire bravery. Just for that, you will be the first one I eat.”

In that instant, I concocted a plan. “You swear it? That I, Nobody, for that is what I am called, shall be the first to be eaten?”

The huge creature bellowed, “Let it be known: I shall devour Nobody first; I will feast on Nobody’s bones this day.”

“And I, Nobody, will not go free? You swear that too?”

“Why are you so eager for your own demise? No, Nobody will not go free, this or any other day.”

“Fantastic! We’ll all be taking our leave, then.” Even now, the bear failed to understand the cleverness of my trick. She looked at me in utter confusion. I almost pitied her. “You said it yourself. You will devour nobody first, feast on nobody’s bones, and nobody will not go free. Clearly, that leaves us with no other option but to depart at once.”

“You insolent creature,” she snarled. “Fine, then. Take your worthless kin and leave this place.” She released her grasp, and my sister and her children ran to me. As we left that dark and dismal place, she called after us, “Know that I release you from my captivity only out of the kindness of my heart. Spread the word far and wide: Nobody has failed to best the great bear of the northern woods!”

And so concludes my tale. What’s that, the pinecone? Ah, yes. It transpired, as all twenty of us made the long but uneventful journey back to this forest, that I had never asked Mii what she was doing in that field of clovers. “I was looking for a four-leafed clover. I need to find something lucky,” she told me. And so, as a token of my gratitude for the cleverness she displayed in outwitting the badger, I bequeathed the lucky pinecone to her. I had no more need of it.

Gabu and Mei thanked Sagi for his story and went to find Mii.

The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone: Part 2

He told you I said WHAT?

First of all, there was no bear. Sylvia and her kits had gone to visit a friend in another forest. Sagi didn’t know that and thought something terrible had happened to them, so he panicked and asked Takkan to help find their tracks. Foxes are good at that sort of thing, better than wolves, apparently. Takkan told him that the tracks led north and showed him how to follow them, which is when he met me in the clover field on the edge of the forest.

When he told me his sister and her kits had gone missing, I said I’d help. He made it sound quite serious, which I suppose it could have been for all we knew at the time. In any case, I believed him.

We didn’t encounter any surly badgers or deadly rivers either. It was a lovely day and there were no obstacles whatsoever.

After we found Sylvia, it was clear there’d been a misunderstanding. She actually thought it was quite funny that Sagi had worried so much about her. Apparently, she’d told Sagi weeks ago that she’d be visiting her friend today, but he’d forgotten.

I was glad everyone was safe, but I was more than a little annoyed at Sagi for taking up so much of my time when I was supposed to be finding a four-leafed clover for Toto and Riri. He gave me the pinecone and told me it was lucky; I didn’t know it was Takkan’s at the time. Since it was getting late, I gave up on looking for a clover and took the pinecone to the sparrows.

Hmm? Oh, they wanted something lucky for their egg. It was the same day that that horrible incident happened. Wait, you don’t know? Oh... I suppose I’d better tell you, then. It’s not pleasant.

Earlier that day, all five of Toto and Riri’s eggs fell out of the nest. I know, it’s awful. By some miracle, one of them rolled into the river and was swept downstream. They flew after it, but they would’ve drowned if they’d tried to go into the water to get it out.

I happened to be near the river when it happened. They called out to me and I jumped into the water and caught the egg in my mouth. I was scared I was going to swallow it, but somehow I managed to get it safely to the riverbank. It was cracked.

We dried and warmed it as much as we could, but there was no telling whether it was going to hatch. Toto and Riri were distraught, of course. They were desperate to save this one egg, but there wasn’t much else we could do other than wait and see what happened.

That’s why I was looking for a four-leafed clover, and why I gave them the lucky pinecone. They needed all the luck they could get.

Listening to Mii’s story, Mei was ashamed to realise that he hadn’t been to see the sparrows in over a week. He should have been there when they were going through that, like they had been there for him and Gabu. Dreading what they would find, they left Mii and went to Toto and Riri’s nest.

There was a faint rustling sound coming from the nest as they approached. It was too high up for them to see inside. Tentatively, Mei called up to them, “Toto? Riri?”

The rustling stopped and, a moment later, the beautiful grey and pink head of a young sparrow chick peered out at them.

The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone: Part 3

Gabu, Mei, it’s lovely to see you. I’d like you to meet Hikari. Yes, he is, just like his mother. She’s busy feeding him right now. Here, let me come down so we can talk.

Ah, Mii told you about that, did she? No, don’t worry about it; we actually wanted to be left alone after it happened, just until we knew whether Hikari would survive. After he hatched, we were too busy looking after him to think about telling anyone.

You see, it all started about eight days ago. Most of the time, Riri and I make do with berries and seeds. Since meeting you two, we’ve been trying to cut back on eating meat as much as we can; it seems wrong not to. But the chicks would be hatching any day now, and they would need to feed on insects to grow healthy and strong.

I went out to forage for some. I was out of practice, but I eventually found a small cluster of beetles under a rotten log. There was no way I could have known; I only found out afterwards. As it turned out, the mother of those beetles had earned a favour from a finch. She asked the finch to watch over her children and make sure no harm came to them.

What’s that? Why yes, Mei, beetles can talk. They speak in very tiny voices that you have to be close to the ground to hear.

The finch had only been gone a moment. In that time, I had swallowed six of the young beetles he had sworn to protect. By chance, I had left the mother alive. When the finch returned, he was furious, perhaps more at himself than at me, but still furious at me nonetheless. He said I would suffer the same agony that I had inflicted on the beetles. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realised: He meant the ones I had left alive.

The next day, it was Riri’s turn to find food. I was watching the eggs. When I heard an agonised chirp that sounded like my wife’s voice, I flew at once to investigate. It wasn’t her, of course. She and I returned to the nest at the same time...to see the finch pushing the last of our eggs out of the nest.

The first four had shattered on the ground. The last egg, our little Hikari, rolled into the river. It’s only thanks to Mii’s bravery that he survived. When he was safely back in the nest, and when we could do nothing but hope that the crack in his shell wouldn’t be fatal, Mii left to find something lucky.

She returned after a few hours with a pinecone. We thanked her for it, but we’d already given up what little hope we had that the egg would hatch. But perhaps that pinecone truly was lucky, because Hikari was born a healthy little chick just one day later.

Where’s the pinecone now? Ah, a couple of days after Hikari hatched, someone came to us asking for advice about something. It wasn’t the first time they had done so. We offered what advice we could and gave him the pinecone, since we didn’t need it anymore and it sounded like he did.

Oh, I see. And he wants it back? Well, in that case...you should probably ask Kuro-san about it.

Gabu and Mei stayed until Riri had finished feeding Hikari, after which she came down to talk and Toto went back up to watch over him. Eventually, they said goodbye to the three sparrows and went to find Kuro-san.

They found him on the south side of the forest, where he had taken to spending most of his days, and asked him about the pinecone.

The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone: Part 4

I don’t have it anymore. I gave it to Takkan.

“What?” Mei said. “That doesn’t make any sense. It was Takkan who asked us to find out what happened to it after he gave it to Sagi.” Had Kuro-san found out Takkan was looking for it and returned it since this morning?

“Takkan asked you to...? He gave it to Sagi-kun?” Kuro-san looked just as confused as Mei and Gabu felt, and perhaps a little bit hurt.

“He gave it to Sagi days ago,” Gabu said, “before Toto and Riri gave it to you. Can you tell us the whole story?”

Kuro-san looked hesitant. “Well, okay...”

The Tale of the Lucky Pinecone: Part 4 (cont.)

As you know, Mei-san, I met Takkan properly for the first time when I attended his philosophy group. He struck me as a deeply interesting person, passionate about what he believes in and so very knowledgable. He sort of reminds me of you, in a way. I found myself wanting to get to know him better, even though he’s a fox and I’m a goat.

The trouble is, many times when I’ve extended offers of friendship in the past, the other person hasn’t been interested in being friends with me, or they’ll be friends for a while and then stop wanting to see me. Being rejected so many times has made me wary of who I try to become friends with.

I voiced these concerns to Riri-san and Toto-san, who have been a great help in the past with...unrelated matters. They told me that I should let Takkan know how I felt. The worst that could happen is he says no, and that wouldn’t leave me any worse off than I was then. They also gave me a pinecone for luck, which I assumed was a local custom. I had no idea it was Takkan’s. Oh, they didn’t know either? That would make sense, then.

It was a couple of days ago that I finally found the courage to speak to Takkan about it. He was still a little discomforted by the unpleasantness of the day before, but talking to me about it seemed to make him feel better, which I was glad of.

He noticed the pinecone I had with me. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me it had been his to begin with. I gave it to him as a present and asked if he wanted to be friends, and...and then...

At that moment, as if by chance, Takkan himself strode into sight. He was singing a familiar-sounding melody. “...and he now sleeps in my den. Roll me over, lay me down and do it again. Oh, fancy seeing you here. Hello, Gabu, Mei, Kuro-chan.” There was a long pause where no one knew what to say. “So, did you find out how my lucky pinecone ended up back in my possession after five days?”

“We’ve got a pretty clear idea, yes,” Mei said, still dumbfounded.

“Wait,” Gabu said, “you’ve had it this entire time?”

“Ever since Kuro-chan gave it to me.” Mei could hazard a guess at what that suffix meant. “I didn’t accidentally lead you to believe otherwise, did I? What happened to it, out of curiosity?”

“Well, it helped Sagi fight off a bear, it saved the life of Toto and Riri’s chick, and...” Mei looked between Takkan and Kuro-san, “...it restored Kuro-san’s confidence in his ability to make friends.”

Suddenly, Kuro-san started giggling. Despite the mounting realisation that Takkan had engineered (or at least taken advantage of) this whole situation for sheer theatricality, Mei started laughing too. Gabu followed soon after.

Takkan only smiled. “Sounds like a fascinating tale. Adventure, heroics, tragedy, romance. Like I said this morning, I do love a good shaggy dog story.”