Day 6: Differences of Opinion

The following day, Mei awoke to the sound of hoofsteps on grass. He opened his eyes and saw Greta standing right outside their cave. Toto and Riri stood alongside her.

“Good morning, Mei,” Greta said. “Would you mind waking the... Would you mind waking Gabu, preferably without alarming him?” Gabu, on hearing the doe’s voice, woke up without Mei’s intervention and looked up in surprise at Greta.

“Hello, Greta,” Mei said. “This is Gabu. Gabu, this is Greta.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Greta said with neither warmth nor hostility.

“Oh,” Gabu said, now mostly awake. “Nice to meet you too, Gabu. I’m Greta.” Mei sighed. That wasn’t the first impression he’d been hoping for, but he supposed it could have been worse.

Greta ignored Gabu’s mistake. “I am here to cordially invite both of you to a meeting of the forest, which any resident of the forest is welcome to attend, to discuss Gabu’s presence here, as well as any measures we can take to alleviate any suffering your presence may cause.” It saddened Mei to hear Greta speaking so formally, without any of the warmth or kindness she usually spoke to him with.

“It wouldn’t hurt, Gabu,” Riri said, “for more people to get to know you and hear what you have to say. If everyone knew the circumstances that brought you here, I think they’d be more inclined to accept you.”

“Um, all right,” Gabu said. “But will anyone really want to see me? I do tend to scare people away, you know.”

“Will Sagi be there?” Mei added.

“The meeting will take place at midday tomorrow in the meadow, right on the edge of the forest,” Greta said. “That way, anyone who doesn’t want to be out in the open can stay at the forest edge and listen.” Mei was reminded of the day he and Gabu ran away together, when it seemed like the entire forest was watching them from the bushes. A repeat of that didn’t sound appealing. “As for Sagi, yes, I think he will come. But you may not like what he has to say, Mei.”

“And what will you have to say?” Mei asked.

Greta paused. “I have not decided yet. I shall consult with the animals of the forest and make sure everyone’s concerns are made known. In the meantime,” she said to Gabu, “it would be best if you did not enter the forest until after the meeting.”

“But what about food?” Gabu asked. “Wouldn’t everyone feel safer if they knew I was talking to them with a full stomach?”

Greta was visibly disturbed by this. “That isn’t the reassurance you think it is,” she snapped back. “But yes, there is another forest about ten miles east of here where you may hunt.”

“That’s a long way to go for a meal. It’ll take the entire rest of the day for me to go there and come back. But if you think it’s for the best, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. I will take my leave now. See the two of you tomorrow.” As Greta turned and started walking back towards the forest, Toto and Riri approached Gabu and Mei.

“Sorry about Greta,” Toto said. “As the eldest in our little group, she sees herself as responsible for this whole situation.”

“The meeting was actually our idea,” Riri said. “The two of you have just as much right to be here as anyone else, but so long as the only things people hear about you are rumours, they’re going to see you as outsiders.”

“Thanks for standing up for us,” Mei said. “But I don’t know how much good it’s going to do. Gabu can’t just walk ten miles and back every time he needs to eat, and if we move to the other forest permanently, we’ll be back where we started.”

“Gabu isn’t the only predator in the forest, Mei,” Toto said. “There are badgers, foxes, snakes, spiders—”

“And us,” Riri said. “Just because you and Greta don’t have to worry about smaller predators doesn’t mean the rest of us can ignore them.”

“The point is that change is scary,” Toto said, “but we’ll all learn to adapt.”

When the sparrows had left, Gabu began making preparations for the trip to the eastern forest and back.

“I’m coming with you,” Mei said.

“Really? But I’ll only be gone until tonight.”

“It’s not that.” Mei tried to explain what he had been thinking for the past few minutes. “I feel like I’ve been distancing myself from the reality of you needing to hunt; I’ve never actually seen you do it.”

“You want to watch me hunt?”

“Whether we like it or not, us being here is making life harder for people. I want to believe that it’s worth it, but I need to be able to see the situation from their perspective.”

“If that’s what you want, then you’re welcome to come with me.” Gabu brightened up a little. “And hey, this way we get to spend the whole day together.”

“That’s also a good reason,” Mei said with a smile.

Gabu and Mei set off on the long journey to reach the forest Greta had told them about. The land they travelled through was mostly flat, with only a few bushes scattered here and there amidst the tall grass. They spent most of the journey in silence, speaking only to admire the beautiful scenery around them.

Mei kept thinking about Takkan’s question. What did he think of Gabu’s need to hunt? He and the other goats had been raised to believe that wolves were heartless killers, but Gabu wasn’t anything like that. He couldn’t help his need to eat meat any more than Mei could help eating grass; surely that didn’t make him a bad person? After going back and forth over the same arguments over and over again, Mei found that he could reach no conclusion.

“Gabu, do you ever wonder whether it’s right for you to eat meat?”

“All the time, Mei. It doesn’t seem fair that so many people have to die just so one wolf can live. Is my life worth more than all of theirs put together?”

“I don’t see how it can be. I love you more than anything else in the world, but the people you eat probably have people who love them just as much. Did I ever tell you that my mother was eaten by a wolf?”

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remember it happening. Grandma says it happened when I was very young. My mother and I were out alone one day when the wolves attacked; the only reason I survived was because she stayed behind and fought them, all by herself. She even bit the ear off one of them.”

Gabu stopped in his tracks and stared at Mei, astonished.

“What is it?” Mei said.

“The wolf whose ear she bit off...it can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?”

“Mei, I think that wolf was Giro, the leader of my pack. I never knew until now how he lost that ear. He never talked about it. But that means...”

“Giro killed my mother.”

They kept walking. After a while, Gabu said, “Maybe it would be better if wolves didn’t exist. There would certainly be less suffering.”

Mei thought about that for a moment. “It might make me a bad person for saying this, but...I would rather see a thousand animals die than never get to see you again, Gabu.”

“Would you feel the same way if some of those animals were your friends? Or your family?”

“I don’t know,” Mei said. He truly didn’t.

The sun had already begun its descent by the time Gabu and Mei arrived at the eastern forest. The trees here looked different, just as the trees in the Emerald Forest looked different to the trees back home.

“Well, here we are. You’re sure you want to see this, Mei?”

“I’m sure. Lead the way.”

Gabu, moving more quietly and stealthily than Mei had ever seen him move, crept slowly into the forest. Mei followed at a distance to avoid giving him away.

Rather than move in a straight line, Gabu kept curving around, peering into bushes and scratching at the ground. It was very different from how wolves normally hunted goats, Mei noticed.

Suddenly, before Mei knew what was going on, Gabu had pounced. Mei only heard a panicked squeak before the tiny animal—a mouse, Mei thought—was devoured. Mei was a little disturbed by how quickly it had happened; he’d expected there to at least be a chase. As it was, there was no way the mouse could have known what was going on in the final moments of their life. Gabu didn’t look at Mei as he wiped the blood from his mouth and carried on hunting.

The same thing happened two more times, with another mouse and a squirrel.

After Gabu had swallowed his third animal of the day, he said, “I’m having an easier time of this than usual. I think you being here might be good luck, Mei.”

It wasn’t until a few minutes later when Mei spotted a rabbit poking their head out of a burrow, whom Gabu thankfully—thankfully?—didn’t see, that Mei realised what was going on.

“Gabu, stop.”

“What is it, Mei?”

The rabbit, noticing Gabu, gave a silent gasp and retreated back into the burrow.

“You were right. Me being here is making it easier for you to hunt. Everyone’s seeing me here and assuming that means it’s safe. If there were any wolves nearby, they would be chasing me instead. It’s because of me that those mice and that squirrel are dead.”

“Mei, no, you’re not to blame for that. I am.”

“That’s not entirely true, though, is it Gabu? If it wasn’t for me, you would still be hunting goats in Sawa Sawa Mountain with the rest of your pack. It would only take one or two goats to feed the whole pack for an entire day. How many more animals have died specifically because I took you away from the other wolves?”

“You didn’t take me away from my pack, Mei. They did. If they had just accepted who I was, we never would have had to leave. Even if your herd had still rejected you, you could have lived in the forest.”

Mei was too exhausted to point out the problems with a goat trying to live alone in a forest full of wolves. “All that aside, I came here to watch you hunt, which I’ve done, not to give you an unfair advantage. I’ll wait outside the forest until you’re finished.”

It was another hour or so before Gabu met up with Mei outside the forest and they started heading home. They didn’t talk much on the way back, both of them worried that any discussion would turn into an argument.

By the time they arrived back at the Emerald Forest, the sun had long since set. Gabu, who was better at seeing in the dark than Mei, made sure they didn’t get lost and found their way safely back to the cave.

Both of them fell asleep as soon as they were inside.