Day 71: Disaster

“Gabu, Mei, wake up!”

Gabu hadn’t gone hunting that night, so the two of them had spent a nice, relaxing night curled up together. Now, though, they were awoken early in the morning by frantic hoofbeats and a desperate-sounding voice that neither of them had heard in seven days.

“Please, it’s Leo. I can’t find him!”

Mei opened his eyes. “Darrel?” he said sleepily.

Gabu, too, awoke and stared in disbelief at the stag standing at the mouth of their cave. “Huh? You’re back! We haven’t seen you in—”

“There’s no time,” Darrel interrupted. There were tears in his eyes. “Please, I think he’s gone up into the mountain alone. You two are the only ones I know who have ever survived up there. Please, you have to help him.”

Mei stood up. He had no idea what was going on, but he would never forgive himself if he caused the stags to suffer any more harm than he might already have caused. He was hungry and still sleepy, but those things could wait. “Show us where.”

Soon, Gabu, Mei and Darrel were galloping at full speed through the forest. Startled birds flew out of trees as they ran past. Ripples of confusion radiated out, adding to the sense of dread permeating the air. Something was very, very wrong.

Mei was desperate to ask Darrel where he and Leo had been, whether his wife was alive, why Leo would be up the mountain alone, but there was no time for that. Any breath they might have wasted on questions and answers would slow them down. Those things, too, could wait until they knew Leo was safe.

In minutes, they were at the foothills of the mountain. Mei, who was the best climber among them by far, showed the others how to jump from foothold to foothold to climb the steep inclines and ascend faster. Soon, they were dozens of feet up the mountain, and the slope was getting steeper and steeper.

“I don’t know where he’s gone,” Darrel cried. “Mei, can you check up there? Gabu and I will search around here.” Up where Darrel was indicating, Mei could see an outcrop of rock that looked like there might be a ledge concealed behind it. The slope was almost vertical. Darrel and Gabu would have no chance of getting up there without finding another path.

Mei nodded and leapt towards the cliff face, beginning to climb it at once. Several times, he almost lost his footing. A fall from here might send him all the way down the mountain, which was a considerable way down by now. Foothold by foothold, he pulled his way up towards the outcrop. Panting from the effort, he finally reached a flat surface, got to his hooves and looked around. Sure enough, there was a narrow strip of rock that formed a walkway to the other side of the outcrop, still hidden from view. Not daring to look down, Mei crept along it to the far side.

Standing just behind the outcrop, watching Mei approach with wide, apprehensive eyes, was Leo. Mei, now more confused than ever, didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, he heard a strange noise in the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Leo said quietly, almost too soft to hear.

Mei’s heart filled with dread. There it was again, the sound of something grinding on stone and, this time, a frantic yelp that could only have been...

“Gabu,” Mei whispered.

He turned around and scrambled back across the walkway until he could see what was going on. Darrel was standing at the edge of a craggy ledge, close to where Mei had left him. Down, much further down, Gabu was lying motionless.

“No...”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said again from behind him. “It’s only fair.”

The next few moments were a blur. Somehow, Mei was back down the cliff and racing towards Gabu’s prone form, whom Darrel was walking slowly towards. Mei arrived there first. He skidded to a halt, standing between Gabu and Darrel, and lowered his horns at the stag. He could only hope that Gabu was still alive.

“She’s gone,” Darrel said, still walking inexorably towards them. “I’ll never, ever see her again because of you.”

Mei didn’t care. “If you touch Gabu one more time, I’ll—I’ll kill you too!” He knew he could do it. Even if he couldn’t overpower Darrel on his own, he knew people who would do it for him. He was not going to lose Gabu again, not after all they’d been through.

“Mei...” a hoarse voice groaned from behind him. It sounded like he was struggling to breathe. There was still hope.

“Get out of the way,” Darrel said. “It’s better for everyone this way.”

“I mean it!” Mei shouted. “Get away from him!”

Darrel towered over Mei, whose head barely rose above Darrel’s legs. The stag’s antlers alone were as long as Mei was tall. Looking down on Mei with a look of grim determination, Darrel began to raise a hoof.

“Darrel, that’s enough,” came a voice from above them. It was Leo. “Look at him; he’s probably dying already. He’ll never hurt anyone else, ever again.”

For several heartbeats, Darrel held the hoof in mid-air. His eyes flicked back to look at Leo, and then down again to Mei. With a look of contempt, he slowly lowered the hoof and backed away.

Wordlessly, Leo climbed carefully down the slope to join Darrel. “Let’s go home,” he said imploringly. Darrel nodded once.

As the stags were leaving unhurriedly down the mountain, Darrel turned back to Gabu and Mei and muttered, almost inaudibly, “We never should have let you stay.”

When the stags’ backs were turned, Mei turned his attention to Gabu, who was lying on his side, breathing heavily. His legs were sprawled in front of him, his eyes staring fixedly ahead. Mei started to cry silently. “Gabu...” he started to say. He felt powerless.

Gabu met his eyes. “Mei,” he moaned breathlessly. “My leg...can’t stand up.”

An icy wind came down from the mountain and made Mei shiver. He remembered the freezing cold, his body so numb that he couldn’t walk, in so much pain that he could barely keep his eyes open. Believing that he had no chance of surviving the storm, Mei had told Gabu to live for the both of them.

Fuck that. They were both going to live.

“It’s okay,” Mei said as soothingly as he could between the tears. “We survived this mountain once; we can survive it again. Just keep breathing. I’ll go and—”

“Gabu!”

More hoofbeats were thundering towards them. Mei looked down the mountain and saw Greta and Mii running up the slope. Flying low above them were Toto and Riri.

The sparrows arrived first. “Oh my goodness, is he okay?” Riri said. Greta and Mii arrived a few seconds later. Still panting, Mii bent down to examine Gabu.

“He...Darrel...” Mei started to say.

“We know,” Toto interrupted.

“His leg is badly broken,” Mii said, her voice shaking. “He’s bleeding too, but not too much. We need to get him back to the forest.”

“He can’t walk,” Mei said weakly.

Greta lowered herself to ground level. “Help him get on my back.”

Slowly, and with great pain and difficulty on Gabu’s part, Mei and Mii supported Gabu as he dragged himself onto Greta, who began carrying him gently down the mountain.

“This has got to be a first,” Greta said, laughing nervously, “a wolf riding down a mountain on a doe’s back.”

“How did you know where to find us?” Mei said. He was still in shock from the events of a few minutes prior.

“We heard you running through the forest,” Toto said. “Riri followed you to make sure everything was all right. She saw everything and came back to get help.”

“It wasn’t just me. You found Greta,” Riri said to Toto.

“And you found Mii,” Toto said.

“We didn’t know if we would get here on time,” Mii said. “This is...awful.”

Thankfully, Gabu’s condition didn’t get any worse as Greta carried him through the forest and back to Moonrise Hill. Toto and Mii went ahead to prepare a bed of soft grass for him. Riri went back to their nest to make sure Hikari was safe. Mei stayed by Gabu’s side until Greta set him down gently on the grass.

“We’ll need some red clover to help the bone mend,” Mii said to Greta. “I’ll get some willow bark to relieve the pain.”

“Understood,” Greta said. She was about to follow Mii out of the cave, but hesitated at the cave mouth. Mii had already gone. “Red clover is the one with spotted leaves, right?” she asked Mei.

“Pink spiky flowers,” Mei corrected her.

“Right, of course.” Greta left in search of the herb.

“I’ll wait outside,” Toto said, leaving Gabu and Mei alone.

Gabu, who hadn’t said much but whose breathing had calmed down some, was lying on the grass bed and smiling up at Mei as if enjoying a private joke.

“What’s so funny?” Mei asked.

“It’s just nice not to be the one having to save your life for a change,” Gabu said.

“I didn’t save your life. You’ve got Greta and the others to thank for that.”

“Before then,” Gabu said, “after he kicked me off the ledge. He would have finished me off if it wasn’t for you.”

Mei’s face turned from a sad smile into a scowl. In all of the panic, it had slipped his mind who was responsible for all of this. “I shouldn’t have trusted him. How could he do this to you? We were friends.”

“He was sad and angry. Would you really have tried to kill him if he’d hurt me again?”

“He would have deserved it,” Mei said bitterly.

“Probably as much as I would have deserved it for killing his wife.”

“That’s not the same. You would never kill anyone if you could avoid it...” As he was talking, Mei realised the point Gabu was making. “Which is why I shouldn’t have wanted to kill him out of revenge either.”

“It wouldn’t make anything better,” Gabu said solemnly. “Think of how Leo would feel.”

“He was part of it too.” Mei sighed. “But I guess it’s just as much my fault that she died as it is yours.”

“We never tried to make anyone unhappy,” Gabu said. “Let’s keep it that way, okay?”

“Okay. How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been through worse. Actually, no, that’s not true, but I think I’ll be fine in the end. Mii really knows what she’s talking about, huh?”

“I had no idea she was this good at herbal remedies.”

At that moment, Mii returned, Greta following not long after. She instructed Gabu to chew on the willow bark and red clover, which Gabu said tasted very bitter. “That’s how you know it’s good for you,” Mii said in response to that.

“Since when do you know so much about herbs?” Mei asked. “You’re better at it than anyone else our age was.”

“Oh, I got interested in them after I got sick that one time. Do you remember? You got me those polka dot berries that only grow in Baku Baku...Valley.” She looked between Mei and Gabu, realisation dawning. “You can’t be serious.” Gabu smiled sheepishly. “In that case, you can think of this as my way of saying thank you.”

Anything Day was cancelled. Or, to put it another way, that day’s activity became going to see how Gabu was doing, since that’s what it seemed like everyone in the forest did at some point that day. The news of what had happened spread like wildfire. Gabu and Mei’s close friends were among the first to visit, but many people they knew less well or not at all came besides.

“Darrel did this to you?!” Sagi exclaimed. “That scheming, pretentious, double-crossing... I thought philosophers were supposed to be good people!”

“He did, but let’s not talk about him right now,” Gabu said. He still couldn’t stand up, but the pain had eased thanks to Mii’s herbs. “How are Sylvia and the kits doing?”

After the first few visits, Gabu had gotten bored of talking about himself, so he’d taken to asking his visitors about other things, anything to take his mind off the situation. On the pretence of going out to eat some grass, Mei left the cave and found a group of animals who were waiting their turn to see Gabu.

“Hey, I bet none of you can make Gabu laugh without him realising that’s what you’re trying to do. Tell everyone else who comes here to do the same.”

Before long, the game of “try to make the wolf laugh” had taken on a life of its own. Visitor after visitor told outrageous jokes and personal stories, often for several minutes at a time. Gabu loved it, even if he did have to listen to variations on “howl are you doing?” more times than he could count.

The last visitor of the day was Greta, and she hadn’t come to tell jokes. “There’s a problem. Darrel and Leo are staying in the forest, and people aren’t happy about it.”

“Neither am I,” Mei said. “They probably already know that Gabu isn’t going to die after all. If they decide to try again while he’s still recovering, I don’t know if I could stop them.”

“I’ve got birds and squirrels watching them to make sure they don’t try anything like that without us knowing. Even so, many animals have come to me saying they want Darrel and Leo to be exiled from the forest.”

“Then do that,” Mei said.

“That’s not my decision to make. And, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, it’s not yours either. As we have already established, when a significant proportion of the forest feels that someone should no longer be welcome, a forest meeting is held to determine their fate. I’m here to let you know that such a meeting will be taking place tomorrow at midday. Strictly speaking, your presence is not required, but I would strongly recommend it.”

“What do you want us to do?” Gabu asked.

“You’ll have an opportunity to take a leading part in the philosophical discussion on whether Darrel and Leo committed an injustice for which they deserve to be exiled. The two of them will be there too, but Linda from the philosophy group will be doing most of the arguing on their behalf, just as I’ll be arguing on yours.”

“Wait, Linda is taking their side?” Mei asked, shocked. “She’s a better philosopher than Takkan is. How can anyone hope to argue against her?”

“I asked her to. Ordinarily, she would never take their side over yours. It’s true that Linda is an excellent philosopher, but she’s also exceedingly fair-minded. She won’t let Darrel and Leo argue in bad faith, and she’ll concede any valid points that we make.”

“And you’ll do the same with us?” Gabu asked.

“Of course,” Greta said simply.

“Where will Takkan be in all of this?” Mei asked. “Listening to both sides and deciding who’s right?”

“Takkan won’t be taking a direct role in the discussion. He, too, is an excellent philosopher, but he does have a tendency to see any situation, no matter how serious, as a purely intellectual exercise, which I didn’t think would be appropriate here. Aside from that, the philosophical discussion serves only to provide a framework to explore both sides in a reasoned manner; it won’t have a direct effect on the outcome of the meeting. That will be determined collectively by everyone present, just as it was last time.”

“I suppose that’s fine, then,” Mei said. “We’ll be there, assuming Gabu can walk that far.”

“We’ll hold the meeting in the meadow outside, as close to here as possible.”

As Greta was just about to leave, Mei said, “Greta, why are you always the one who decides these things? I don’t mean to sound rude, but what gives you the right to speak for the entire forest?”

“I don’t speak for the entire forest,” Greta said. “I just make arrangements for the forest to speak for itself.”