Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Twelve

Eeyore trudged through the wood until he came to the open place in the middle of the wood, and in the middle of that place was a large tree, and from the top of that tree, a little boy had once hanged. Eeyore stared up at that empty spot, and then he lowered his head and started walking again.

He walked along the tree in absent-minded thought, like a hound who’d trapped his game, but what Eeyore hunted wasn’t there. It had been, and until then, that boy had been Eeyore’s everything. As he walked this place where all dreams had died, Eeyore knew there had been moments when he could have been braver and done something, said something. Christopher Robin talked like he would save the world, but the world wasn’t worth saving. Trouble was, Christopher Robin seemed to know that, too, but went on as if the worth of the world factored none in the working of his plans.

When Eeyore circled the tree, he stopped, surprised to have come upon another set of tracks in the grass. 

‘Humph. I was meant to be alone.’ 

He considered leaving. No one bothered him much in the boggy place, and he could be alone with his thoughts, but Eeyore didn’t much feel like being alone with his thoughts at the moment, nor could he think of anywhere he could go to be alone from them. 

Eeyore decided if there was nowhere else to go, he might as well keep walking, and when he came around the tree, there were now two sets of tracks. 

‘Perhaps, just perhaps, if someone else is out here, walking in thought beneath the big tree, then there’s another who understands as I do, another who bravely faces the truth alone. What is lost is lost and can never be found again.’

Eeyore followed the tracks and soon came upon more.

‘Our numbers are growing,’ said Eeyore, and he walked a little faster. Every time he circled the tree, the number of his brave but solitary compatriots grew, and Eeyore held his head up high, knowing he was part of a movement. He was safely alone and safely part of a drove, together carving a path through the wood like wild mustangs forging new trails in the west.

Soon, their number grew too great to count. ‘Christopher Robin’s friends must have come around to the right way of thinking, which is to say my way of thinking, This set must be Rabbit’s and that set, Pooh’s.’

Eeyore stood still in a crowd of footprints. Slowly, his head lowered. 

Slowly, his head drooped. 

‘Not that it matters. It won’t change nothing. Christopher Robin’s still gone, and there’s not much point in being anywhere where he is not.’

The tracks had worn deep places in the earth. Whoever these others were, they were digging a rut, and Eeyore remembered what Pooh had said about Owl. Not every thought you follow is the best thought to follow... to the end.

‘All thoughts find their way to an end, eventually,’ Eeyore said. ‘Some dawdle and some dash, but they all finish, every one.’

He stared up the tree past the limbs and through the leaves to the patches of sky that shown through. The light of each star seemed to end with him, consumed in the act of viewing, and yet all his friends could be looking upon that same star. That light shown on other forests and other lands, it shown on other worlds, and would keep on shining long after he was gone.

A cloud moved across the patch of open sky, and the star disappeared. ‘Everything comes to and end,’ he said.

He put one hoof in a footprint and another in the next and followed them like a bird chasing hints of a changing season. The rut deepened, and the earthen walls around him grew. The tree creaked with each passing gust of wind. Its trunk shuddered with splintering shrieks like a banshee forewarning those soon to be grieved.

The End

…of a story is where bitter words die.

And these sad thoughts tug, to Pooh Bear’s surprise, on the fluff of his heart where loneliness lies. He settles in a ditch and there he reclines among roots which pop like broken tree spines, bringing the end and closing the rhyme.

#

Hum-Hum

Hum-Hum

Hum-Hum

‘There you are, Pooh.’

Pooh looks up. ‘There you are, Eeyore, but why are you here where I’ve found you? You’re meant to be lost.’

‘Lost in thought, I suppose.’

‘I was following tracks,’ says Pooh, ‘but I grew terribly tired. So, I said to myself that I might sit and rest for a moment, and that is what I did.’

Eeyore admits he’s tired, too. 

‘Were you looking for something?’ asks Pooh.

‘I was hunting the end,’ Eeyore says.

‘Is it this way?’

‘I had a suspicion it was and that I was close to catching it up,’ says Eeyore.

‘Will it get away from you if you sit awhile with me and rest?’

‘I don’t suppose it will.’ Eeyore settles next to Pooh in the deep bed made by the rut.

‘There’s a great many of us, now, aren’t there?’ asks Pooh.

‘A great many,’ says Eeyore. ‘Why are you circling the tree, Pooh? You had your party. Christopher Robin tussled your hair.’

‘I got lost along the way, I suppose.’

‘Have you seen the others?’ asks Eeyore.

‘No, have you?’ asks Pooh.

Eeyore shakes his head.

‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘if we’re all circling this tree, then if you and I stop and rest, the others should find us.’

Eeyore thinks this a very good idea for a bear of very little brain. They sit, and the tree sways.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

'She was asleep, but when she woke up, she smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I want her to wake up again. I want her to smile and squeeze my hand.'

‘What’s that, Pooh?’ asks Eeyore.

‘Oh, I was just remembering.’

‘Remembering what, Pooh?’

'Not all endings are the same,' says Pooh. 'Sometimes we leave all at once, and sometimes it’s piece-by-piece.'

A great branch breaks with a boom and crashes into the field.

‘Not everyone can un-quickly as quickly as Owl,’ says Eeyore, ‘and some of us don’t.’

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

'Christopher Robin didn’t want other worlds,' says Pooh. ‘He wasn’t ready.'

‘What worlds are those when this is the only world we’ve got?’ asks Eeyore.

'All of life is counting backwards from ten,' says Pooh. 'Then, ready or not, there you go.'

‘Where would we go and how would we know whether it’s time or only feels like it’s time?’

‘When you’re gone, I suppose,’ says Pooh.

‘It’s time to go when I’m gone?’ asks Eeyore. 

‘And you’ll know where you’re going when you’re there,’ says Pooh, thinking of Christopher Robin in his bedroom, dancing, when the ground beneath them danced too. Towering over them all was Christopher Robin, lively and quick. His mother said it’s bedtime, but he said he never sleeps. Yes, he said, he never sleeps, and Pooh never sleeps because he’s made of fluff, and Christopher Robin wanted to be made of fluff, because Pooh, he said, will never die.

And Christopher Robin would never die. He said he’d never die.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

The wind blows, and the great tree moans like the bellowing of hell and all those in its grasp. Then, just as Pooh suspected, they hear footsteps. What sounds like footsteps. In the ditch, one sound sounds so much like another. 

Footsteps.

Roots losing their grip on the soil.

All the same.

‘Oh bother. Oh bother,’ says Pooh.

‘It’s no greater a bother than any other day,” says Eeyore.

‘I was just thinking of something I said to Owl just before there was no more Owl to say something to. I said, you’re thinking in circles and spiraling down, each step digging your grave in the ground. Get out of your head and out of your way. Don’t surrender tomorrow because of today.’

They see a shadow move about the tree–or shadows move as the tree sways. It’s all the same. The stars above come out from behind their veil, like a mother’s face appearing in the place she’s disappeared. The birds sing, and the world turns like an old man reaching again for the coffee he’d drunk down to dregs.

They wait and they watch, but the shadow comes no closer.

‘Out of what way are we to get out of, Pooh?’ asks Eeyore.

‘I’ve missed that particular train of thought,’ says Pooh. ‘Walk with me home?’

‘If you think you’d get lost along the way,’ says Eeyore.

‘The North Pole tends to be where I find it,’ says Pooh. ‘Everywhere else is far too stubborn.’

They stand, and bark falls like hail.

‘Don’t blame me if it rains,’ says Eeyore.

Pooh stands on Eeyore’s back and climbs out of the rut. Then, with a grunt, he helps Eeyore out, too.

Another branch crashes.

‘It must be Autumn,’ says Pooh. ‘The leaves are falling.’

‘So must we all,’ says Eeyore. ‘Ready to go home, Pooh?’

‘Ready or not, here we go.’

And as they walk in the wood in the cool of the morning, a great boom echoes like the closing of gates forged with all the regrets of both men and the stuffed things that live in the heart of the Hundred Acre Wood. When the rumbles fall silent, the birds sing, the same song as before, with all joy and all wonder, and all the world is blanketed with their rapture.

And Pooh’s happy hum hums along.

The End

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Eleven

Christopher Robin is out of sight, but the friends stand together, waving, until Rabbit says, ‘Well, maybe it’s time we think about heading home.’

‘I’ll go,’ says Pooh, ‘when I’m out of goodbyes.’

‘When will that b-be,’ asks Piglet.

‘Not for some time, I should think. It’s lonely enough to say goodbye, but it’s ever so much lonelier when the goodbyes are done.’

‘Then I’m never going to say goodbye again!’ says Roo.

‘Toodle-loo, Roo,’ says Rabbit. ‘Toodle-loo, Pooh.’

‘Cheers, dears,’ says Kanga as she picks up Roo.

Piglet watches the others leave. ‘What other words are there for goodbye, P-Pooh? I want to learn them all.’

‘It won’t matter, I’m afraid. Christopher Robin says loneliness keeps a thesaurus.’

‘What’s a thesaurus, Pooh?’

‘It’s like a heffalump, only scalier.’

Piglet swallows hard. ‘It’s time to be in bed.’ As he runs away to his beech tree, he calls back. ‘See you later, Pooh.’

‘Godspeed, Piglet, or very nearly so.’

Pooh still waves when he’s all alone. He’s waving when Eeyore walks up beside him.

‘What are you doing, Pooh?’

‘Waving goodbye to Christopher Robin.’

Eeyore squints into the darkness. Pooh squints, too, but the night hides her secrets behind pine pickets and black drapes.

‘There’s nobody there,’ says Eeyore.

‘But there was somebody there before.’

‘Not Christopher Robin,’ says Eeyore.

‘It looked like Christopher Robin.’

‘Of all the notions you’ve ever notioned,’ says Eeyore, ‘why would you believe Christopher Robin was walking through the wood in the middle of the night?’

Pooh scratches his head and thinks before answering. ‘Because he was the first to leave the party.’

Eeyore shakes his head. ‘Christopher Robin’s gone.’

‘He’ll always be here.’

‘Not really he won’t,’ says Eeyore. ‘At least you're not blocking the grave. Maybe I can finally say goodbye.’

‘We’ve all decided we’re not saying goodbye,’ says Pooh. ‘It attracts big scaly things.’

Eeyore plods off, and Pooh follows.

At the grave, Eeyore sticks his head in and then pulls it out again. ‘It’s the wrong hole.’

‘I don’t think so,’ says Pooh. ‘This is where we left it.’

‘But there’s no Christopher Robin.’

‘Christopher Robin went home,’ says Pooh. ‘When I popped out, he was the one to catch me, and then we had a party.’

‘Just the two of you and nobody else?’ asks Eeyore.

‘Just the two of us and everyone else.’

Eeyore’s head drops. ‘Not everyone.’

‘Oh, Eeyore. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

‘You rarely do. We have to take the world as it is, not the way we wish it to be. Christopher Robin is gone, and no one can tell me otherwise until he tussles my hair with his own two hands.’

‘He tussled my fur,’ says Pooh.

‘So you say, but you’re a bear of very little brain.’

Pooh tries to understand what his brain has to do with his fur, but he doesn't. Not one bit.

Eeyore leaves, and Pooh tries to let him go. He’s ready now to sleep in his own home and in his own bed, but Eeyore looks lonelier than usual, like a dog in a house full of cats, which is as lonely as lonely gets.

Pooh follows into the wood. 

The trees grow dense and dark, and Pooh doesn’t know which way to follow Eeyore. There’s neither sight nor sound of him.

‘Eeyore has lost himself,’ says Pooh, ‘and wherever he’s lost, it isn’t here.’

Nearby, he hears a buzzing sound. It’s a familiar sort of buzzing sound, the kind of buzzing sound a bee makes when a bee is making honey.

‘Just a bite, if you don’t mind,’ says Pooh and wanders off after it. Soon, though, the trees look strange and the ground unfamiliar. Pooh turns around twice just to be sure, but there’s not a recognizable sight anywhere. The bees are every bit as lost as Eeyore.

‘Doesn’t anyone know where they are?’ asks Pooh. ‘Even this patch of woods is out of place. I’ve certainly never seen it before.’

The electric crackle of bees fades. Susurrant sounds prick the hackles of Pooh’s hindermost fears. He eyes the trees with a squint but sees no rooster.

‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘if lost is ahead, then found is behind.’ He turns around to walk out the way he came in, but instead of finding himself back at the grave, he steps into a clearing.

‘The honey misled me somewhere I don’t want to be,’ says Pooh. He looks up, expecting to see the rooster, but only empty space stares back wherever a rooster might have been. He’s alone in the woods without honey or bees, without Eeyore, and without a rooster. He supposes somewhere in the world, roosters still exist, and if he waits until morning, he could hear one call for the dawn. Pooh doesn’t want to wait, and slowly, he realizes there’s nothing to wait for, really.

‘It never was the rooster, was it?’ asks Pooh.

‘No, I don’t think it was,’ says Pooh.

‘Then who?’

‘You,’ says Pooh.

'Me?' asks Pooh rather dolefully. ‘Oh, dear. Christopher Robin must be terribly disappointed.’

‘It really was in poor taste, you know.’

‘I just needed a little comforting.’

‘It was more than a little, wasn’t it, Pooh?’ asks Pooh.

Pooh lowers his head. ‘Maybe a littler-than-little more than a little.’

‘What will you do now?’

Pooh is just beginning to say he doesn’t know, when he comes upon a set of tracks. They look familiar.

‘These tracks,’ says Pooh, ‘could be Eeyore tracks.’

‘You’re changing the subject,’ says Pooh.

‘I’ll find Eeyore. He’s the bravest donkey I know.’

‘Brave enough to tell you the truth,’ says Pooh.

Pooh begins to answer. He wants to say that everything is right again, now that Christopher Robin is home, but he doesn’t. Christopher Robin being home doesn’t undo the past. He wants to say that he only kept Christopher Robin company through a lonely night, but he doesn’t say that, either.

Winnie-the-Pooh doesn’t say anything. He only walks. He follows the tracks, and he walks and walks.

Soon, the one set of tracks joins another.

‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘at least Eeyore isn’t alone anymore.’

But Pooh feels more alone than ever.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Ten

Piglet and Roo put a blanket over Pooh’s shoulders.

‘Kanga will be w-worried, now that it’s getting late,’ says Piglet.

Roo bounces high and throws his fists like a boxer. ‘I’m not afraid of the dark. Bring on the woozles!’

Pooh smiles to himself. He isn’t afraid of woozles either.

‘Bring on the Heffalumps!’

Pooh loses his smile. It goes hiding and won’t come out again. Heffalumps are an entirely different animal.

‘Perhaps,’ says Pooh, ‘we can leave the Heffalumps where they are. It would be rude to drag them out of bed at this time of night.’

‘Tell me where the Heffalumps are, Pooh,’ says Piglet, ‘and I’ll leave them there. I p-promise.’

‘I’ll drag them out by their tusks!’ shouts Roo. ‘And pack them in their trunks!’

‘Perhaps, it’s best that I don’t say where they are,’ says Pooh, ‘seeing as how they’ve never told me.’

Roo stops bouncing and stands very still. ‘Tigger said their eyes glow red.’

‘I s-suppose Tigger would know,’ says Piglet.

Roo’s voice lowers to a whisper. ‘Rabbit said they have claws.’

It grows later and darker with every word, and Pooh wishes his friends would stop speaking. No claws. No tusks. No eyes, burning like embers, watching from the woods.

‘We really must go,’ says Piglet.

‘I think it’s for the best,’ says Pooh.

‘Bye Pooh,’ says Roo.

‘Bye–’ begins Pooh, but his friends are already gone. Then Pooh tells himself, ‘Now, it’s time to sleep,’ but he doesn’t listen. 

Instead, he hears noises in the dark and imagines the unseen things that wear the night like a skin. There’s a SNAP and a CRASH and a very sad GROWL. 

‘Perhaps Rabbit said Heffalumps have only a happy growl,’ Pooh says to himself, yet loud enough so that someone might agree. Nobody does. 

The growl grows louder, and Tigger slinks out of the shadows.

‘Oh, Tigger!’ cries Pooh.

‘You still here?’ asks Tigger, his shoulders hunched, and his head down. ‘I thought maybe you’d have gone home by now.’

‘I would go home,’ says Pooh, ‘if I could. Only, I can’t.’

Tigger nods and draws a paw across his nose. ‘I know the feeling, Buddy Bear. I tried to go to bed, all safe and snuggly.’

‘It sounds delightful,’ says Pooh.

‘But then I think of Christopher Robin in the ground and all that snuggly feels ugly. Positively retchifying.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing good, but what, exactly, is retchifying?’

‘It means I’ll retch if I can’t rectify what I wrecked when I…’

‘Yes?’ asked Pooh.

‘What was the last thing Christopher Robin ever heard you say?’

Pooh thinks. ‘It was probably me saying I’d discovered the North Pole.’

Tigger’s head drops even lower. ‘The last thing he ever heard me say was that he’s no friend of mine.’

‘And isn’t that funny?’ asks Pooh.

Tigger tries to work himself up into a growl but sits back on his tail, deflated, wilted, and sad. ‘It’s not funny to me.’

‘That is to say, isn’t it peculiar?’ says Pooh. ‘Christopher Robin told you this would happen.’

Tigger looks up.

‘And he said that when you return, you’re to strengthen your friends. And here you are, returned.’

‘My muscles aren’t strong enough for this particular predicament,’ says Tigger.

‘Christopher Robin thought otherwise.’

Tigger rises to his feet and feels his arms. ‘He was other-wise, wasn’t he, Buddy Bear?’

‘The smartest boy of whom I know of,’ says Pooh.

Tigger punches at the air, much like Roo when Roo was punching like Tigger. Then with a meek, little voice, he says, ‘I still don’t feel strong.’

‘I’m certain you will,’ says Pooh.

They say goodnight, and Tigger bounces back to Kanga’s house. The bounces are small, timid bounces, but they’re bounces all the same.

Pooh closes his eyes to sleep and thinks maybe the night noises aren’t so loud and scary, after all.

When the sun rises, Pooh lets out a big yawn and shifts slightly in the hole, like a clock hand ticking an uncertain second. For a moment, he freezes, hardly daring to believe he’s moved at all. He yawns again.

‘I moved! Oh help!’ he cries happily. ‘I moved!’

His friends come running and talking excitedly one to the other like a gaggle of geese greeting one another at the end of a long migration. To prove his point, Pooh yawns again, and they all hug and holler and clap.

‘You know what to do!’ says Rabbit.

Tigger takes the front, saying, ‘Strengthen your friends!’

Kanga and Rabbit come behind him, and Piglet and Roo stand to the side, cheering.

‘I’ve been here b-before,’ says Piglet to Roo, ‘and got rather rolled upon. This is safer.’

‘But we’re missing somebody,’ says Roo.

Then at the back of the line comes Christopher Robin. He grabs hold of Rabbit who says, ‘Not too tight now, Roo.’

‘One!’ says Christopher Robin.

Kanga cocks her head to see behind her. ‘Who’s that counting, Dear?’

‘Why, it’s Roo, of course,’ says Rabbit.

‘Two!’ says Christopher Robin.

‘Roo doesn’t know his numbers,’ says Kanga.

‘Three!’ says Christopher Robin, and they all pull together.

Pooh strains, bulges, and pops free of the hole. He sails through the air and lands in the arms of a certain little boy.

‘Christopher Robin!’ cries Pooh. ‘You’re back!’

‘Silly bear,’ says Christopher Robin. ‘I told you I’d always be here.’

The friends gather round, clapping and shouting, and their clapping and shouting soon becomes a party. They sing and dance like moths gathered around a porch light. 

As they dance, the sun sets, and lightning bugs twinkle like constellations in the grass. Christopher Robin’s friends slow and hush, heavy with need for slumber, but no one wants the party to end.

Christopher Robin says, ‘It’s time to go home.’

‘But you’ll come back,’ says Pooh.

Christopher Robin gives each friend a hug. ‘I told you I’d always be here.’ He hugs Pooh last of all. ‘And I know you’ll understand.’

‘I’m a bear of very little brain,’ says Pooh.

Christopher Robin places his hand over Pooh’s heart, and Pooh feels big, bigger than he ever has before.

‘Take me with you?’ he asks.

Christopher Robin presses his forehead to Pooh’s. ‘All of life is counting backwards from ten, and then ready or not, there you go.’

‘Go where?’

‘Where I’ll be waiting.’

‘You’ll wait for me?’ asks Pooh.

‘I will.’

‘Then I’ll wait for you, too.’

Christopher Robin rises to his feet, but his hand still clings to Pooh’s. ‘That’s all I ask. Wait. You can’t count from ten when you don’t know all the numbers.’

‘I know a good many numbers,’ says Pooh, ‘but most turn out to be seven.’

Christopher Robin turns to all the friends. ‘I’m going to my parents’ house, and when it’s time, I’ll have a place for each of you.’

The friends wave and watch, and Christopher Robin walks out of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Nine

Eeyore stops with surprise at the sight of Pooh, like a child at Christmas finding socks beneath the tree.

‘How are you, Eeyore?’ asks Pooh.

‘Not very how,’ says Eeyore. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel very how ever again.’

‘No, I don’t suppose any of us will.’

Eeyore glances to the side. ‘You never can tell with some.’

‘No, you cannot,’ says Pooh. ‘Especially roosters.’

‘If you’re done with your visit,’ says Eeyore. ‘I’ve come to pay my respects.’

Pooh struggles. ‘It’s not that I want to be in the way.’ 

And squirms. ‘I’d very much like to make room.’

And surrenders. ‘But frankly, I’m stuck.’

Eeyore considers the situation. ‘Very poor taste, Pooh.’

‘The rooster made me do it.’

‘If the it in question was getting up this morning,’ says Eeyore, ‘then the rooster is guilty. Otherwise, the charge is facilius.’

Pooh stares. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Eeyore. I don’t speak donkey, not so much of which to speak of.’

‘Facilius means very easy.’

‘Are you sure? After all, it’s such a difficult word.”

‘What it means, Pooh, is not everyone blames others for their mistakes, and some of us don’t.’

‘I didn’t choose to be stuck,’ says Pooh. ‘I just needed a bit of comforting, and perhaps my bit became a bite too many. Still, it’s all well and good to judge, but this wouldn’t be an issue if holes were more accommodating.’

‘We all need comforting,’ says Eeyore, ‘if we can find it.’

‘Christopher Robin would say there’s comfort enough for all of us, if we share, and I did intend to share, but--’ Pooh pauses for a moment, clears his throat, and then tells Eeyore all about Owl and Tigger.

Eeyore lowers his head and stares gloomily at the ground. ‘They followed the same train of thought, but Owl followed it to the end of the line.’

‘Not every thought you follow is the best thought to follow... to the end,’ says Pooh.

‘I know that train,’ says Eeyore.

Pooh thought for a moment. ‘There are no trains in the Hundred Acre Wood.’

‘Some you carry with you until they carry you.’

‘A train would be a terribly heavy thing to carry.’

‘It is, Pooh,’ said Eeyore. ‘It is.’

‘Do you carry just one car or all, from engine to caboose?’

‘It’s a metaphor for those who understand such things, and not all of us can.’

‘What’s a meta for?’

‘Being self-referential.’

‘Ah,’ said Pooh. ‘If I’d refereed myself earlier, I wouldn’t be stuck in the hole now. Only, I don’t own a whistle. Maybe I can borrow one from the train, if I should see it again.’

‘You will, Pooh,’ said Eeyore. ‘We all see the train from time to time, and some of us more often than is convenient.’

‘So often? How should you ever afford the tickets?’

‘I ran away, and now Christopher Robin is gone from us forever.’

‘I wonder...’ says Pooh.

‘There are no roosters to blame. I ran and it was me who did the running.’

‘I was wondering something else, something about the train. Maybe this is a station. Christopher Robin could be standing on the platform in his uniform, welcoming you off before you go so far that you can’t come back.’

‘But he’s not, is he?’ asks Eeyore.

Pooh tries to look over his own shoulder, but the rock and sand stand in the way.

Eeyore looks up, straight at the sandy wall, as if he stares right through to where Christopher Robin lies. He shakes his head. ‘Wherever he’s gone, he’s not here, and where he’s gone, we don’t know.’ He lets out a low sigh. ‘And we don’t know the way. I tried to say so, but why should anyone listen to me?’

‘Because,’ says Pooh, but before he can say what cause may be, Eeyore turns and walks away.

And Pooh is left lonely again.

A little later, the littlest friends come to visit, Roo jumping and Piglet running and puffing, trying to keep up.

‘Hallo, Pooh!’ says Roo.

‘Hallo, Roo,’ says Winnie-the-Pooh.

Piglet pauses for a moment to catch his breath. Then at last, he says, ‘Oh, Pooh!’

‘Hallo, Piglet,’ says Pooh. ‘I’m sorry I’m in the way.’

‘You’re not in the way,’ says Piglet. ‘You’re the bravest bear I know.’

‘I am?’

‘You’re protecting Christopher Robin.’

‘I am?’

‘Nothing’s going to get by you, Pooh,’ says Piglet.

‘I haven’t felt very brave, out here all alone with my thoughts and my memories.’ 

‘But you aren’t alone,’ says Piglet. ‘You have Christopher Robin, and he has you.’

Roo looks up, his eyebrows wrinkled and his head cocked to one side. ‘If you have Christopher Robin, maybe you should give him back. Mamma misses him very much.’

‘I wish I could,’ says Pooh. “I miss him too.’

‘We all do,’ says Piglet.

‘Why?’ asked Roo. ‘Why can’t you give him back?’

‘Well, he’s on a shelf, you see.’

‘Ah,’ says Roo. ‘It’s like Rabbit said.’

‘Rabbit said what?’ asks Piglet.

‘Pooh’s being shelf-ish.’

‘I am?’ asks Pooh.

‘Rabbit says it’s what Pooh does best.’

Pooh feels deflated, if not any smaller. ‘I suppose he’s right, you know.’

‘I knew a shellfish,’ says Piglet. ‘He was a c-crabby fella.’

‘You’d be crabby, too, if you were stuck in Christopher Robin’s grave,’ says Pooh.

‘Do you think it’s about time to be unstuck?’ asks Piglet.

‘I don’t know, Piglet. I haven’t got a watch.’

‘I’ll keep watch,’ announces Roo, and he stands up straight and at attention and with a very hard expression.

‘Oh my,’ says Piglet. ‘Keeping time must be a very serious job.’

‘It is,’ says Pooh. ‘A train runs on time, or so I’ve heard.’

‘Where does a train run to, Pooh?’

Pooh tries to remember what Eeyore said, something about Owl and Tigger following the same train, only Tigger got off early. 

‘Where it takes you, Piglet,’ says Pooh, ‘depends on how far you ride.’

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Eight

In the morning, Pooh feels ready for a little time alone. There’s been too much ‘You promised, Bear’ and ‘Perhaps you have a problem, dear.’

‘I’m an innocent bear,’ says Pooh to himself. ‘And terribly full of honey.’

The thought does little to comfort Pooh, stuck as he is in the mouth of Christopher Robin’s grave. Rabbit and Kanga would know he’s innocent, if they saw the rooster, but they didn’t.

And that makes him think another bothersome thought. If they didn’t see the rooster, was there any rooster at all?

Pooh shakes his head. Of course, there was a rooster. This isn’t like hunting woozles where all they saw were footprints. He saw the rooster. He talked to the rooster. The rooster was real.

‘Thoughts like these,’ says Pooh to himself, ‘they all come from being stuck in a hole too long,”

Pooh waits. And though he thought himself glad to be done with Rabbit and Kanga’s visit, he’s lonely. He waits for what seems a very long time, and as he waits, a thought waits with him, just out of sight. Even worse, other thoughts wait, too, and the longer he waits, the more they walk up to say ‘Hallo.’

In that thought, and the memory it contains, Pooh promises to never forget and to remember always.

Now, Pooh feels the sandy wall outside the cave and feels the cool air of the cave on his feet, and he thinks of Christopher Robin on the shelf. In some ways, they’re not so far apart as Pooh had feared. In others, they’re farther apart than Pooh could have ever imagined.

The lonely minutes drag on, and more memories introduce themselves, Christopher Robin pecked and clawed until his once-neat shirt and britches are red with fluff, and Pooh again feels the call of Owl’s sad song. It tugs on his heart from some place deep in the earth where all bears go to hide in the end, the eternal hibernation of the once-loved and now-forgotten. 

Winnie-the-Pooh was once loved, and now alone, he feels forgotten, perhaps worse than forgotten, because if friends forget, then when they remember, that memory is joy and comfort arising from an overlooked and much-needed place. Not all memories are joy, and Pooh wonders if instead of being forgotten, he’s become something his friends would rather forget and, in forgetfulness, find the joy his memory restrains.

The quiet earth hums Owl’s song, and Pooh’s troubled heart hums with it.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Christopher Robin

Was my very best friend,

But what should I be

With Christopher’s end?

What’s that to us? 

See to it yourself. 

Your Robin is dead,

Laid out on a shelf.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Once, they were dancing, and the floor beneath them danced too. His mother said it was bedtime, but Christopher Robin said he wasn’t sleepy. Yes, he said, and Pooh never sleeps because he’s made of fluff, and Christopher Robin wanted to be made of fluff, because Pooh, he said, would never die.

And Christopher Robin would dance so death could never find him.

Christopher Robin’s mother came into the room and set Pooh on the shelf, and she sat and patted the bed for Christopher Robin to join her.

Christopher Robin stamped his foot and said he wanted to dance. He bowed to Winnie-the-Pooh and danced in the room and in the Wood, and he was a good boy. The very best boy. He danced and as long as he danced, death could never find him.

“I miss her, too,” said his mother.

The music must have stopped because Christopher Robin stopped too. “In the Hundred Acre Wood, nothing ever dies, not really,” he said.

“I know,” said his mother.

“Every day I go back, and Pooh is waiting for me.”

“I know,” said his mother.

“But she isn’t waiting for me, is she, not anymore?”

“No, she’s not,” said his mother. “She’s not coming back, and the day will come when you won’t go back to the Hundred Acre Wood, either.”

“I won’t?”

“You’ll move on to other things, worlds that aren’t even real for you when you’re only six.”

“Whole worlds?” asked Christopher Robin.

“And she’s moved on to other things,” his mother said. “We all move on, eventually.”

“Even fluff-stuffed bears?”

“Even fluff-stuffed bears.”

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

“She was asleep, but when she woke up, she smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I want her to wake up again. I want her to smile and squeeze my hand.”

“Not all endings are the same,” said his mother. “Sometimes we leave all at once, and sometimes it’s piece-by-piece.”

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

“I don’t want other worlds,” said Christopher Robin. “I’m not ready.”

“All of life is counting backwards from ten,” said his mother. “Then, ready or not, there you go.”

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Hum-Hum.

Winnie-the-Pooh sat on the shelf and watched Christopher Robin hug his mother. Now, Christopher Robin is on the shelf, and Pooh wonders if Christopher Robin is in want of a hug. He supposes it doesn’t matter. Pooh stands in the way, plugged in the hole like a cork in a bottle. 

What must Christopher Robin’s mother think?

She’d think Pooh a very poor friend. She’d think ‘You promised, Bear’ and ‘Perhaps you have a problem, dear.’

He’d ask if this is the way mothers say goodbye to their sons, and she’d say it isn’t meant to be.

Pooh hangs down his head from his place in the hole and whispers his sorrows to the boy who loved him with all his heart.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Seven

Now, down in that rut, Owl’s up to his beak, and down in that rut, Tigger’s in to his teeth. The great tree sways, rumbles and bends, and Pooh can well see where this story ends. Their train of thought travels where it wants to go, and its last station is six feet below.

‘Oh bother. Oh bother. Look up and look out!’ Pooh Bear sputters with a stuttering shout. ‘You’re thinking in circles and spiraling down, each step digging your grave in the ground. Get out of your head and out of your way. Don’t surrender tomorrow because of today.’

Then Tigger looks up and lets out a howl and bounces off far and leaves behind Owl. But Owl walks on deeper, and the dirt quivers and quakes. The house where he lives shivers and shakes, and Bear runs away, our Winnie-the-Pooh, crying for Owl to run away, too. 

But all Owl sees are his loneliest faults, self-blame spinning its sad somersaults. He won’t look up, forward, or out; his thoughts drag him down in judgment and doubt. The great tree crumbles and falls into the hole, like a runaway gopher or a shy little mole, and where once our friend Owl cried for an innocent boy, now there is nothing but that old nothing-noise. 

But a nothing-noise speaks, as a matter-of-fact. 
It’s not every day you get a nothing like that. 
Nothing... is an absence, 
a nonattendance of everything true, 
and stuck deep in that nothing is Winnie-the-Pooh.

#

For Pooh, there’s no music left, 
not even the hum he hums to himself 
as he walks in the Wood in the heat of the day. 
There’s no tune to hum with the muse far away. 
The wind whispers no secrets,
And the birds sing no song. 
It’s all gone horribly, horribly... somewhere else.
Not here. 
Oh, bother. Not here.

#

Pooh keeps walking, and as he walks, he hears something other than nothing, carried on that once silent wind. That something sounds like words.

‘Wasn't that Rabbit's voice?’ he asks himself.

He listens for someone to say he’s a silly, deluded bear, his head stuffed with fluff, which no one does, and that’s good. He listens again, very hard this time, to get past the thick nothing. Then, muffled and soft, a voice breaks through. 

‘You wrap his body. I’ll wrap his head.’

Pooh’s heart leaps. Is that Rabbit? He dares to hope so. It sounds like her. Still, to be certain, he listens harder still.

‘Oh, this isn’t right. We’ll have to start again.’

It is Rabbit! It is! Pooh would know that voice anywhere. They spent some many days together, you see, when Pooh was stuck in Rabbit’s front door.

Rabbit talked, then, of sweeter things like, ‘What about a mouthful of something?’ and ‘If you’re sure you won’t have any more.’

Even so, the sameness is just the same. This is as much Rabbit as any rabbit Pooh ever knew, and so, confident in the soundness of his sound deductions, Pooh follows his ears in the direction of the clearing in the middle of the Hundred Acre Wood.

‘We could do with some help with the spices,’ says Rabbit.

‘Pooh will be here shortly, dear,’ says another familiar voice.

‘How can you know that?’ asks Rabbit.

‘I hear his stomach rumbling.’

‘Humph,’ says Rabbit. ‘I heard that long ago, and it’s clearly more Tigger than Pooh.’

The other voice laughs. ‘Tigger never growls like that!’

And at just the moment, Pooh stumbles into the clearing where Rabbit and Kanga are wrapping Christopher Robin in cloth.

‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ says Kanga.

‘We’re short of spices, Pooh,’ says Rabbit.

‘Oh?’ says Pooh, thinking that it seems an odd time for cooking.

‘We need oil and spices to keep Christopher Robin smelling good,’ says Rabbit. ‘Get whatever you can find in the house and meet us at the cave by the sandy pit.’

‘So, we’re not cooking?’ asks Pooh. ‘It’s only, I’ve always liked a little something at eleven o'clock.’

‘It’s well after six,’ says Rabbit.

‘Oh, well, never mind then,’ says Pooh.

‘Do you think you can manage?’ asks Rabbit.

‘Hurry, dear,’ says Kanga.

And Pooh hurries off to manage as best as he can. Just as he arrives at his house, he wonders if Rabbit meant her home or his. After all, she has a garden with plenty of spices. Pooh has honey.

Still, spices are for flavor and oil is for wet. Honey will give them both. So, wanting to be generous, Pooh pulls out his wagon and loads it up with honey, every single pot he has in the house.

And that’s a lot.

The top pot wobbles as he pulls the wagon. He’ll have to pull it slow, so as not to spill, but Kanga told him to hurry. If he pulls the wagon quickly, the pot will fall, and Rabbit will say he didn’t manage so very well.

Pooh stops the wagon, pulls down the top pot and eats it clean. There. That’s better.

He pulls on, quicker now, but now a new pot sits on top, and it’s wobbly, too. Pooh stops and eats it clean.

In that manner, Pooh reaches the cave in what he thinks is very good time, but when he goes to retrieve the honey, he’s surprised to find only one pot left.

‘Bandits,’ Pooh thinks, and he carries the pot through the round hole that is the mouth of the cave.

‘There you are, Pooh!’ cries Rabbit. ‘Never mind, I got the spices, myself.’

‘I brought honey, every drop that I own,’ Pooh announces with a proud voice.

‘That would be too sticky, dear,’ says Kanga.

‘Right,’ says Pooh, feeling the stickiness on his lip. Then he puts the honey in a corner and watches Rabbit and Kanga tuck Christopher Robin away on a shelf.

#

The work goes on longer than Pooh expected, and as full as he is, the last pot of honey smells awfully good. ‘This honey is a gift for Christopher Robin,’ says Pooh to himself. ‘I won’t touch a drop.’

A little shadow appears at the mouth of the cave, and Pooh thinks maybe Roo has come to visit his mother. He gets up to check, but when he sticks his head through the mouth of the cave, it isn’t Roo but a rooster who stares back at him.

‘Pooh, the light!’ cries Rabbit.

Pooh pulls himself back inside.

‘That’s better, dear,’ says Kanga.

The rooster steps in front of the hole that is the mouth of the cave and walks inside.

‘Hallo,’ says Pooh.

The rooster nods.

‘Are you a friend of Christopher Robin?’ asks Pooh.

The rooster nods.

‘It’s all very sad,’ says Pooh.

The rooster nods.

‘What are you going on about, Pooh?’ asks Rabbit.

‘We have a guest,’ says Pooh, ‘a friend of Christopher Robin.’

‘How nice, dear,’ says Kanga.

‘Both of you stand out of the way,’ says Rabbit.

Pooh sits next to the honey pot. It’s his favorite place to be. The rooster follows.

‘I’m not very good about what people do at times like these,’ says Pooh.

The rooster pecks at something on the ground. Feathers ruffle around its thin neck like tiny skirts.

‘You’re right,’ says Pooh. ‘There’s usually food. I’m afraid all we have is this pot of honey, but you’re welcome, if you’d like.’

The rooster pecks a little farther away. 

‘No, no, you’re right. We didn’t prepare properly, and food is such a comfort. I know honey always comforts me.’

The rooster raises his head and nods.

‘You think I should have some?’

The rooster nods.

‘I do need comforting.’

The rooster nods.

‘And sometimes, when you’re sad, the very best comforting is the comforting that comes from inside,’ says Pooh.

The rooster nods, and Pooh sticks his hand in the pot and pulls out a long golden strand of honey. He isn’t at all hungry, not after all he’s eaten along the way. In fact, he’s so full his belly feels as round as the moon when the moon is both round and full. Still, the honey does look comforting.

‘It’s the proper thing to do,’ says Pooh.

The rooster nods.

Pooh takes a bite and then sucks up the strand with a slurp. The comfort squeezes in tight, filling whatever empty places it can find. Pooh smiles at the feeling and hums a little to himself. Then he dives back into the pot, and when he looks up again, the honey is gone. So is the rooster.

Rabbit and Kanga back slowly away from the shelf.

‘Well, that should do it,’ says Rabbit. ‘Come on, Bear.’

Pooh rolls onto his feet. It’s very hard to move with all that honey inside, but he follows Rabbit and Kanga to the hole at the mouth of the cave.

Kanga squeezes her way out and then Rabbit, and Pooh sticks his head through and his shoulders and his paws. But as he pushes and pushes, the honey grows in his belly and pushes right back. Soon, he’s stuck tighter than a cork in a bottle.

‘Oh, bother!’ says Pooh.

Rabbit and Kanga stare at him, Kanga, in surprise, and Rabbit, with disappointment.

‘It’s not like that,’ says Pooh.

‘Like what, dear?’ asks Kanga.

‘Like last time,’ says Rabbit. ‘Just like last time.’

‘It was the rooster’s doing,’ says Pooh. ‘I was only trying to be friendly.’

‘What rooster, dear?’ asks Kanga.

Pooh looks first to one side and then to the other. ‘Very likely the same one that got Tigger.’

‘No one’s got Tigger,’ says Kanga. ‘He’s at my house.’

‘And won’t come out,’ says Rabbit.

‘He’s very upset, poor dear,’ says Kanga.

Pooh puts a paw to the side of his mouth and says in a very loud whisper, ‘Best not tell him about the rooster.’

Rabbit and Kanga turn and walk away as the western sky burns with the color of boy fluff, the day remembering its darkest noon. Christopher Robin’s mother will be calling him home to supper, Pooh thinks, and she’ll suppose Christopher Robin isn’t coming because I’m in the way. He sighs and wishes he could explain. Whatever in the Wood happens without a mother’s knowledge happens without her permission, for a mother knows all. Usually.

Does she know this? Even this? Even now?

She knows about death, Christopher Robin’s mother. Pooh was there to hear her tell him all about it. Death was always here. Before Christopher Robin was born, death waited and now it need wait no longer, not for Christopher Robin.

Not for Owl.

Pooh’s feet kick as if he’s trying to squirm his way free, but he’s not. His feet move in a spiraling train, longing for circles and the tallest of trees, but all through the night, Pooh remains stuck.

And safe.

Unable to follow where the train would lead.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Six

Behold the boy. 

His friends beheld; they beheld from a place beyond the understanding of grownups, where bees fled from shadows so great, even the heavens surrendered nightly. Beneath this darkness, the animals of the wood peppered Christopher Robin with their insults and accusations. They called him the child of a man and thus a man-to-be; and it is man, they said, who places upon himself the charge of owning and shaping the world. He molds and defines the very space in which all creatures must exist, and by his definitions, they find their existence narrowed.

‘Pettiness and piety live in the whole breadth of this world’s creatures,’ said the European robin, ‘but it’s man who makes a virtue of his violence and a conviction of his cruelty.’

‘I’ve done you no harm,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘I’m your friend.’

The greenfinch hopped closer. ‘You’ve cleared the land of everything but our small patch of trees. Do you now claim this as your playground?’

The words fell like hailstones upon the stuffing in Winnie-the-Pooh’s ears. He shook his head, and the words rattled, echoing within that soft-walled chamber, refusing to fall out again. Defiler of nature, they said. Destroyer of worlds.

These echoes bounced off thoughts and dislodged memories. One memory looked lovely and sweet, but as it rolled closer, it made Pooh all teary inside. In it, he saw a place on the very top of the forest. From there, Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin sat and watched the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was, all the world over, was with them, there, in Galleons Lap. One by one, Christopher Robin told Pooh about all the wondrous things that filled the wide world, and it seemed an awful lot.

‘Is it a grand thing?’ Pooh asked. ‘To be king of the Hundred Acre Wood.’

Christopher Robin laughed. ‘It’s not really a hundred acres, did you know that?’

Pooh said he didn’t.

‘It’s just a clever way of saying everything,’ said Christopher Robin.

‘Oh, well that’s different,’ said Pooh.

‘How is it different?’

Pooh gestured to the world before them. ‘There’s everything, right now. You can be king without going away.’

Christopher Robin was silent as he sat looking out over the world, and Pooh wished the moment wouldn't end. Then he thought of all the things Christopher Robin would tell him when he came back from wherever he was going. 

Christopher Robin, who was looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out, ‘Pooh!’ 

‘Yes?’ said Pooh. 

‘When I'm-- when-- Pooh!’ 

‘Yes, Christopher Robin?’ 

‘When I'm gone, will you promise to love the others?’

‘Which others?’

‘Everyone who’s not you, Pooh.’

‘Oh good,’ said Pooh. ‘That’s easy to remember, as long as I don’t forget, but if I forget, you’ll have to remind me. When you’re gone, Christopher, you’ll still be here, won’t you? You’ll be here too?’

‘Yes, Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be.’

‘That's good,’ said Pooh. 

‘Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever.’

Pooh looked at Christopher Robin, and Christopher Robin looked at Pooh. How long was Christopher Robin to be away? he wondered. It had to be very long, if Christopher Robin thought there was a chance Pooh would forget.

Pooh promised never to forget and to remember always.

With his eyes on the world, Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. ‘Pooh, if I-if I'm not quite—’ He stopped and tried again. ‘—Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?’ 

‘Understand what?’ asked Pooh.

Christopher Robin never explained what it was he hoped Pooh would understand, and now that the moment had come, Pooh knew he hadn’t understood, not at all.

Rabbit and Kanga came up beside them. Kanga scooped up Roo, and Rabbit patted Piglet and told him it was time to go. 

Christopher Robin stood before a tempest of wings and teeth and claws. Red boy stuffing painted the ground. 

It took three tries to pull Piglet away, and as Kanga, Roo, and Piglet slipped through the crowd, Rabbit hesitated, her eyes on Christopher Robin and her hand on Pooh. There she stayed, moving only to wipe her eyes.

The animals pulled Christopher Robin high into the tree, like Tigger when he’d captured a toy.

‘Come on, Pooh,’ said Rabbit.

‘Is it finished then?’ asked Pooh.

Rabbit stared up long and hard at the top of the tree where they hanged Christopher Robin. ‘It isn’t meant to be,’ she said and then slipped away, her shoulders and her back bent.

She looked sad but not grumpy, Pooh thought, and he supposed it was because she no longer knew what needed to be done, and not knowing, could do nothing at all.

#

Night became morning. Morning became afternoon, and now the day approaches evening, as Pooh walks beneath that great oak. All around him, he hears the nothing-noise, and high above he sees Christopher Robin’s shoes which are tied to Christopher Robin’s feet.

‘All our friends are hiding,’ says Pooh to himself, ‘and if Christopher Robin can’t help, I shall have to find them myself.’

He covers his eyes and counts backwards from ten, in no particular order. Many minutes later, when he lands on seven, he announces, ‘Here I come!’ and climbs up out of his rut.

The first place Winnie-the-Pooh looks is Piglet’s house in the beech tree. The sofa still sits in the lane. The sign by the door still says ‘Trespassers W’. Inside, a snack bowl of haycorns is half-full of water, and upstairs the table and buckets are as they left them, which is to say, a mess.

Pooh tries to tidy, but there are no honey pots to arrange from tallest to smallest. Many minutes later, when everything looks a little worse than before, he sits in a chair and sighs.

‘This would be easier with Piglet,’ he says to himself. ‘Everything’s easier with Piglet.’

Very timidly and none-too-sure, Pooh calls out Piglet’s name. No one answers.

Next, Pooh goes down by the boggy place where Eeyore lives and finds Eeyore’s stack of sticks, but no Eeyore.

‘Someone really needs to build Eeyore a proper house,’ says Pooh. He waits to see if anyone will agree, but when no one does, he walks on again.

The sandy pit where Roo plays is empty and lonely, and so is Kanga’s house where she, Roo, and Tigger live. 

Pooh walks to Rabbit’s house and the garden behind it. There are many footprints going in many directions but nobody making new ones.

The wind whistles through the hickory tree, and Pooh whistles back. He waits a moment for someone to pick up the tune, but the tune lies where he left it and soon is gone. Pooh keeps walking.

Last of all is the Potter’s Field where Owl lives, and on the way he finds a set of tracks. At first, he hardly notices. After all, he’s just left many Other tracks behind, but these look like Tigger tracks. They aren’t bounding but walking tracks, with feet dragging in the dirt, and the tracks are headed to Owl’s house.

‘Oh, goody,’ says Pooh. ‘Maybe I’ll find them both at once, and we can sit down to a spot of tea with biscuits and honey.’ After a moment’s thought, he adds, ‘And extract of malt.’

Tigger loves extract of malt, and Pooh hopes Owl might have some in his pantry, for Owl has a very grand house in a very grand tree. As he walks, Pooh picks thistles for Eeyore and haycorns for Piglet and anything that anyone might like, just in case he finds them just a bit peckish.

He follows the tracks and finds a very sad Tigger plodding through Potter’s Field and a grief-stricken Owl nervously circling the tree where he lives. 

And as Owl walks, he mutters a sad little song.

‘I have betrayed an innocent boy, the fount of my hope, the source of my joy.’ And ‘What’s that to us? See to it yourself. The wrong is on you and nobody else.’

Tigger stops with a start at the sound of the hoot and watches a wandering Owl wear a rut through the roots.

‘My heart is so heavy,’ says Tigger, and he falls in behind, and they circle in circles in a single-file line.

‘Whatever its weight in silver troy ounces, it withers my wings...’

‘And batters my bounces!’

And as they cry about errors, failings, and wrongs, their pain weaves together in a sad little song.

They cry out in woe, and walk their circular path, until they sink to their ankles and down to their calves, and Pooh stands on the bank and calls out as they pass, ‘This rut that you’ve run is a valley by half, and if you don’t turn and walk your way out, you’ll soon be buried right up to your snout.’

‘My bestest buddy boy!’ cries a heart-broken Tigger.

Then, as if not to be beaten, Owl cries out bigger:

I was the best friend

That a boy ever knew,

And if he can’t see that.

Then the boy can’t rule.

What’s that to us? 

See to it yourself. 

The wrong is on you,

And no one will help.

We watched out for woozles

And let roosters right in.

They plucked out my heart,

When I denied he’s my friend.

What’s that to us? 

Go hunting yourself. 

Shoot the wrong from the blind,

Hang its head on a shelf.

We’re tracking our wrongs

And we’re bagging our prize,

And the wrongs that we did,

Won’t get out alive.

What’s that to us? 

See to it yourself. 

The wrongs are on you,

And nobody else.

Their words drift to the woods, and the bitter wind cries. And their sad song tugs, to Pooh Bear’s surprise, on the fluff of his heart where loneliness lies, and tempts him to take a place in their line, digging the rut beneath Owl’s great tree, bringing it down, and crushing all three.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Five

Pooh thought he was still dreaming as Christopher Robin stood over them and said, ‘It’s too late now,’ and ‘Here they come.’

Pooh uncurled from his dream and stood up from his sleep, and there was Owl, marching smartly toward them with a dozen others behind, twelve animals buried inside guard uniforms—a badger, a squirrel, a beaver, a doe, a beetle, a tree frog, a dormouse, a mole, a lynx and a wildcat, a shrew and a vole—each one identical, a part of the whole.

‘Hallo, Owl,’ said Pooh.

Christopher Robin’s friends came running—Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga and Roo, and soon the garden was full with everyone packed in, muzzle to tail.

‘W-what’s happening, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.

‘That depends on whether we’re dreaming,’ said Pooh.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Piglet.

‘I’m not, either,’ said Pooh.

Owl didn’t tell Pooh hallo back. Instead, he said to one of the guards, ‘You’ll know which one is Christopher Robin because he’s the one I’ll kiss.’

‘We know who he is,’ said the guard.

‘Just watch and see,’ said Owl. ‘You’ll understand soon enough.’

‘We understand now,’ said the guard.

‘Patience,’ said Owl. ‘You can’t expect to know everything all at once. These things take time.’ And then he squeezed his way through, saying ‘pardon me’ to Rabbit and ‘excuse me’ to Roo, until finally he stood face-to-chest with Christopher Robin.

‘Hallo, Owl,’ said Christopher Robin.

‘Hallo, Christopher Robin,’ said Owl.

‘Do you betray me with a kiss?’ asked Christopher Robin.

‘I don’t know,’ said Owl. ‘You’ve gotten rather tall.’ With no room to flap his wings and bring himself to Christopher Robin’s height, instead he took Christopher Robin’s hand and pulled him down to his knees. Now, at last, they were face-to-face.

Piglet asked Pooh, ‘Does Owl know what to watch for?’

‘If anyone knows anything about anything,’ said Pooh, ‘it's Owl who knows something about something, or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh.’ 

‘Which it is,’ said Piglet.

Owl looked into Christopher Robin’s sad eyes and said, ‘Well, the customary procedure in such cases...’ and kissed him on the cheek. (It was more of a peck, really.)

All of the friends watched in confusion but with hope. ‘Owl and Christopher Robin will get this woozle matter settled,’ Rabbit said. ‘He seems to have brought a lot of friends,’ said Kanga. ‘I want a helmet,’ said Roo. ‘Maybe for your birthday, dear,’ said Kanga. ‘Christopher Robin’s kneeling down to better hear his wisdom,’ said Rabbit. ‘He is a wise, wise bird,’ said Kanga.

‘I’m every bit as wise as him,’ said Tigger.

‘You’re a wise bird, too, dear,’ said Kanga.

Owl kissed Christopher Robin. The guards ran forward, and everything changed.

For the briefest of moments, Tigger pulled himself up tall, and with a switch broken from one of Rabbit’s plants—

‘My hazel!’ cried Rabbit.

—Tigger charged and swung, and the roach’s helmet rolled to the ground at Christopher Robin’s feet with the poor roach’s head still inside.

‘Stop!’ Christopher Robin yelled, and everybody stopped.

Christopher Robin picked up the helmet and knelt beside the roach, who held up a dagger in a threatening way but in the wrong direction, apparently not entirely pleased with having lost his head. Christopher Robin shook out the helmet and placed the empty helmet back on the roach’s shoulders. The roach patted the helmet and, content to have been made whole again, walked into a tree.

‘If you spend your life dodging the sword,’ Christopher Robin said, looking straight at Tigger, ‘you’ve missed the point.’

Now that the thoughtless moment of bravery had passed, Tigger began to think, and when he thought, he ran. The others ran with him.

A guard grabbed the towel around Piglet’s waist, but Piglet slipped free and ran away naked. Roo jumped out of Kanga’s arms. Rabbit pulled Kanga away by the tail. Eeyore charged into the crowd, following Roo, but swords flashed and shields crashed, and Eeyore was sent running, with his own tail left behind.

Pooh was so busy being surprised, he entirely forgot to run. He watched the guards tie Christopher Robin’s wrists and march him off in the direction of the big clearing at the center of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Left all alone, Pooh plucked Eeyore’s tail from the ground. He looked twice for Roo, but never found him. Finally, he followed Christopher Robin and Owl, and as he followed, he saw (now and then) Tigger following at a distance. 

Owl led the way, and when he reached the place where they were going, there were more guards waiting, guards in alders and guards in ash, guards in spindles and guards in plum. In the center of the clearing stood a tall oak tree, and squirrels and sparrows and long-tailed tits tittered together about what to do about Christopher Robin.

The guard in the willow told Pooh to leave, but Pooh was known to the European robin, who was not related to Christopher Robin but who was the High Priest of the Hundred Acre Wood. The European robin allowed Pooh to stay, and when Tigger drew close enough, Pooh asked the guards to let Tigger stay too.

Behind Tigger, Roo followed.

At the great oak, a greenfinch said to Christopher Robin, ‘Are you the king of the Hundred Acre Wood?’

But as they were talking, a relation of Rabbit’s saw Tigger huddled at the edge of the clearing. She said, ‘You look familiar. You’re one of Christopher Robin’s friends.’

Roo bounced excitedly.

Tigger waved Roo away. ‘You’re talking jibber-jabber.’

Rabbit’s relation circled around and came at him the other way. ‘I’ve seen you with him.’

Tigger scoffed. ‘Stay off them fermented wrath-berries.’

‘You’re one of Christopher Robin’s bestest friends,’ said Rabbit’s relation.

Tigger looked at the crowd of woodland creatures who looked back at him. ‘It’s preposterous. I don’t even know the boy.’

Roo bounced up into a tree and crowed, ‘Tonight, we were at Christopher Robin’s party, and when he’s king, Tigger will be Christopher Robin’s right-hand friend!’

Tigger stood very still. He looked up at Roo and then down at Christopher Robin, and when Christopher Robin looked back at him, Tigger ran.

Pooh watched him go. Tigger didn’t bounce, and he didn’t holler. He didn’t act much like Tigger at all, and Pooh said to himself that it must have been somebody else.

Roo jumped down beside Winnie-the-Pooh. ‘Where’s Tigger going?’

The animal that looked like Tigger tucked his tail between his legs and ran deep into the wood, so deep into the wood, Pooh wondered if anyone would ever see him again.

As they were watching where the Tigger-shaped animal disappeared, someone small, no bigger than Roo, came up beside them. Pooh looked down, and there was Piglet.

Piglet paused for a moment to catch his breath. Then at last, he said, ‘Oh, Pooh! You’re the bravest bear I know.’

‘I am?’ asked Pooh.

‘He is?’ asked Roo.

‘He is,’ said Piglet. ‘I was running away, and in the middle of running away, I remembered what you said about woozles.’

‘Oh?’ said Pooh. ‘What did I say? My words seem to have gotten lost among so many other things.’

‘You said Christopher Robin told us we were hunting our own tracks,’ said Piglet, ‘but Pooh, he didn’t tell us that.’

‘He didn’t?’ asked Pooh.

‘He told you, but I’d run away, Pooh. I never heard that those weren’t woozle tracks.’

‘I see,’ said Pooh, although he wasn’t sure he saw, at all, really.

‘Watch the tracks I can make!’ cried Roo, and he bounced around in circles.

‘I thought maybe Christopher Robin would say something, and I wouldn’t be there to hear him. So I came back.’

‘You did?’ said Pooh.

‘I found my towel, and I followed Roo, who followed Tigger, who followed you as you followed Christopher Robin,’ said Piglet.

‘And here you are,’ said Pooh.

‘Has Christopher Robin said anything?’ Piglet asked.

Pooh and Piglet turned to see what Christopher Robin would say, and Roo stopped jumping in circles and settled down beside them. All the woodland creatures drew in close, as the European robin and those with him circled Christopher Robin beneath the great oak tree. The clearing in the middle of the Hundred Acre Wood fell silent and dark as the stars drew in veils of cloud.

A cold wind blew and a gray light rose in the east. The fowls roosting in the branches stirred and called one to the other. A crow landed in the clearing and several more circled overhead.

‘Looks like we’ll have a murder soon,’ said Pooh.

Subscribe now

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Four

They all looked at one another—Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo—and each saw in the face of each the truth of how things end, with woozles and with Christopher Robin overwhelmed. The wind wept in the garden, and the stars hid their faces. Rabbit said she wished Owl were here, and Kanga said Tigger would know what to do.

Eeyore shook his head, ‘Sometimes there’s something to do. Sometimes there isn’t. When there’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to be done.’

‘I can touch my toes,’ said Roo, trying to be helpful.

Pooh and Piglet looked to Tigger.

‘Do you?’ asked Pooh. ‘Know what to do, that is?’

‘Keep watch?’ asked Tigger, in a very uncertain voice.

‘Keep watch for what?’ asked Rabbit.

Tigger got very quiet. ‘For woozles?’

The others nodded to one another in agreement.

‘Christopher Robin saw a woozle,’ Rabbit said. ‘He said so himself. We have to make sure it doesn’t come back.’

Roo tilted his head. ‘What’s a woozle?’

‘You’re a woozle,’ muttered Rabbit.

Roo cocked his head to one side. ‘I am?’

Kanga scooped him up in her arms. ‘She said rooster, dear, and what are you?’

Roo flashed a big smile. ‘I’m your little Rooster, Mama.’

Pooh cleared his throat in a thoughtful sort of way, which was unfortunate, because now everyone was looking at him, expecting an answer.

‘Do you know, dear?’ asked Kanga.

‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘Christopher Robin told Piglet and me all about woozles just this last winter.’

Tigger bounced closer. ‘What did he say? Describe them, Buddy Bear, and I’ll see they don’t get within a whisker’s breadth of Christopher Robin.’

‘Yes, well, you see,’ said Pooh. ‘If I understand it correctly, and I doubt that I do, we are the woozles.’

Tigger’s tail collapsed out from under him and he fell back on his bottom. ‘We are?’

‘Piglet and I were hunting a woozle in the snow, and the more we followed its tracks, the more woozles seemed to join it. Then Christopher Robin showed us that we’d been following our own tracks around the spinney.’

Tigger nodded. ‘Spinneys can be trickery like that.’

‘But dear,’ said Kanga, ‘there is no snow.’

‘And there are no t-tracks,’ said Piglet.

‘So we can’t be the woozles,’ said Rabbit.

‘And besides,’ said Eeyore, ‘we can’t keep watch for ourselves. We’re already here.’

‘I had a dream about woozles once,’ Piglet said.

Everyone turned to Piglet.

‘Can you describe them, dear?’

Piglet’s eyes grew big, his pupils shrunk small, and the accumulated horrors of all the centuries gathered in the tiny contortions of his snout. ‘I’m too s-scared.’

Tigger bounced up with a shout of joy. ‘That’s it! We’ll dream of woozles. Then we’ll know what to watch for.’

Piglet ducked behind Pooh. ‘Which of us will do the sleeping?’

Pooh tapped his head thoughtfully, and then announced, ‘I should think it would be faster if we all did.’

‘All of us?’ Piglet began to shake.

Pooh held Piglet’s hand. ‘Times like this require that we be brave, Piglet.’

‘And sad,’ added Piglet.

One-by-one, they all approved of the plan and then huddled together on the ground to sleep, all except Roo, who curled up inside his mother’s pouch.

'Goodnight, Tigger,' he squeaked.

'Goodnight, Roo, old buddy,' said Tigger.

'Goodnight, Eeyore,' said Roo.

Rabbit squirmed in her spot next to Eeyore, trying to get comfortable. ‘It’ll be morning before he’s done saying goodnight.’

‘Tell everyone goodnight, all at once, dear,’ said Kanga.

‘Goodnight, everyone,’ said Roo.

‘Goodnight, Roo,’ said everyone. Then they fell asleep, and as they slept, they dreamed.

Pooh dreamed of the group asleep on the ground outside Rabbit’s garden. A shadow crept along the edges, scurried in, spied on them sleeping, and scurried away again. When it returned, Pooh could see it was a woozle, long and thin with wiry whiskers, and the woozle carried a large sack over his shoulder.

The woozle crept in close, spread the sack over the group, tucked them in comfortably, kissed each goodnight on the forehead, ran twice around the spinney, and scurried off again.

In his dream, Pooh snuggled in beneath the warm cloth and decided he wouldn’t tell the others what a woozle looked like, after all.

#

When Christopher Robin came back, he found his friends sleeping and said, ‘Can’t you stay awake for one hour? Stay awake and pray you won’t be tested.’

Tigger rubbed his eyes. ‘We gotta watch for teachers, too?’

Christopher Robin told Tigger, Pooh, and Eeyore to follow him into the garden. When they had gone in a little ways, he left them sitting on a grassy spot. 

‘You want to do what is right,’ he said. ‘The spirit is willing but the stuffing is weak.’ Then he said to Tigger. ‘The enemy has asked that he might sift you, the way we sifted mud when we panned for gold.’

Pooh hummed happily. ‘That’s when I discovered the North Pole!’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘but this is a different sort of exposition now.’ He turned back to Tigger. ‘I have prayed for you, Tigger, that you may not fail, and when you have turned back, strengthen our friends.’

Tigger bounced so high, Pooh though he’d bounce higher than the top of the trees. ‘Christopher O. Robin, my Robin!’ he said. ‘I’ll follow you to the end!’

‘The end of what?’ asked Eeyore.

‘Probably this story,’ offered Pooh.

Once more, Christopher Robin looked both grumpy and gloomy and asked Tigger, ‘What sound does a rooster make?’

‘He crows,’ said Tigger.

‘Like you’re crowing now,’ said Christopher Robin.

Tigger stopped bouncing. ‘Rotten old rooster. A crow doesn’t rooster. It’s preposterous.’

Then Christopher went off alone, deeper into the garden, leaving Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger by themselves.

‘Did anyone get a good look at a woozle?’ asked Tigger.

Eeyore shook his head. ‘Somebody washed away my stack of sticks, but it was only the rain.’

Pooh coughed nervously. ‘Tigger, who is the enemy, exactly?’

‘Woozles, naturally,’ said Tigger.

Pooh put his paw to his head and thought. He remembered Christopher Robin saying they were the woozles, but the others hadn’t liked that idea very much. He opened his mouth to speak but shut it again. It was best only to think what others thought. Anything else led to problems.

‘Woozles, naturally,’ said Pooh.

Then Eeyore, who was brave but gloomy, said, ‘If none of us have ever seen a woozle, maybe woozles aren’t the problem.’

Pooh nodded eagerly.

‘Maybe,’ said Eeyore, ‘we’re to watch for roosters.’

Tigger sprung into the air, arms and legs spread wide in every direction. ‘That’s it, my depressed Descartes, my down-trodden Diogenese! That’s the very thing.’

‘Tigger,’ asked Pooh, ‘what’s a Diogenese?’

‘A philosenpfeffer,’ said Tigger with a proud little purr, ‘and a higher thinker than Diogefeet.’

‘Not all of us can be high thinkers, and some of us don’t think at all,’ said Eeyore.

‘No one would put Descartes before this donkey,’ said Tigger

‘I think I’m confused,’ said Pooh.

Tigger patted Pooh’s head. ‘Buddy bear, better leave the thinking to the thinkers.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Pooh. ‘I was just thinking that.’

‘Some of us shouldn’t,’ said Eeyore.

‘Shouldn’t what?’ asked Pooh.

‘Leave the thinking to others,’ said Eeyore.

‘Exactly,’ said Tigger.

Pooh sat back and scratched his head. ‘Then I shan’t.’

‘Well done,’ said Tigger.

‘Christopher Robin is facing something terribly necessary and necessarily terrible, and he’s doing it all alone,’ said Pooh. ‘What I wasn’t thinking before, but what I’m thinking now, is that friends wouldn’t leave a friend to do such a thing by himself.’

‘What thing is that, Pooh?’ asked Tigger.

‘Whatever thing he’s doing,’ said Pooh.

‘What about the roosters?’ asked Eeyore.

‘We are the roosters,’ said Pooh, ‘or the woozles, rather.’

Tigger stuck out his chin, and it was a very big chin. ‘Impracticable! There’s still no snow. The proper thing is to sleep and watch for roosters.’

‘What if we sleep too long?’ asked Pooh.

‘The roosters will wake us. It’s what they do,’ said Tigger.

They all agreed, because agreeing was easier than not, and they curled up together to sleep as the cold grew colder and the dark grew darker. Even in their dreams, they felt the ground rumble with the footsteps of an unseen but approaching troop, advancing like the denizens of a wintery hell upon summer’s end, hungry for the fall.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Three

In the upstairs room in Piglet’s house, everyone waited, the fluff of their cheeks blushing red like a star’s final gasp, like the burning distance of a low horizon which Pooh wished never to reach, no matter how brave nor how bold the expotition. Christopher Robin gestured for his friends to sit. 

‘None of you have washed your neighbor’s feet,’ he said.

‘My neighbor’s a reticulated python,’ said Tigger. ‘The very idea of washing her feet is reticulous.’

Christopher Robin went downstairs, and Pooh, thinking he might need someone to tell him where to find the honey, followed after him. Christopher Robin had just retrieved a towel for himself when Piglet stirred on the couch and gave a very big yawn with his very tiny mouth. 

‘Did I sleep through it all?’ Piglet asked. ‘I’m going to miss the very big adventure, aren’t I?’

‘My dear Piglet,’ Christopher Robin said, ‘the whole adventure is about you.’

Piglet shrank down inside his towel. ‘I don’t need to be in the adventure. I just want to s-see it, to be able to say I was there and tell my friends about all the b-brave things I saw from a v-very safe distance.’

‘Sleep for now,’ Christopher Robin said. ‘Soon you’ll see as much as you wish to see and run away to a very safe distance.’

Piglet smiled and closed his eyes. ‘That sounds f-fine.’

Christopher Robin wrapped a towel around his own waist and poured a bucket of water. Pooh returned to his chair just as Christopher Robin set the bucket at Tigger’s feet, wet his cloth, and began to scrub.

With a howl of surprise, Tigger bounced away. ‘You’ll never wash my feet! Besides, it isn’t even Saturday.’

‘If I don’t wash your feet, you have no part of me.’

Tigger stopped still. His eyes shifted prismatically, like dry hills set ablaze by lightning, and he bounded back again. ‘Then not just my feet! Wash ALL of me!’

‘Silly, Tigger,’ Christopher Robin said. ‘For those who have had a bath, the feet are enough.’

Tigger giggled and then let out a long purr. ‘I’m terribly ticklish.’

One by one, Christopher Robin washed everybody’s feet.

Kanga blushed. ‘Is it your turn, Christopher Robin?’

‘Only water, not perfume,’ Christopher Robin said. They had done this before, you see.

Rabbit rolled her eyes. ‘I still say it was a waste.’

Christopher Robin turned to Rabbit next, but Rabbit wrinkled her nose and backed away. ‘Roo’s eager, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll get some fresh water.’

She hurried downstairs, and when she returned with a fresh bucket, Roo was splashing happily in the old one. Rabbit let out a deep sigh. ‘The poor we’ll have with us, always.’

‘What’s that, dear?’ asked Kanga.

‘Never you mind.’ Rabbit gathered dishes from the table. ‘I was just noting that the trash needs taking out.’

‘Stay still, Rabbit,’ Christopher Robin said and knelt beside her. ‘Today, I wash your feet, but afterward, you will wash one another’s.’

Tigger bounced downstairs. ‘I’m first!’

Roo splashed after him. ‘I’m first, too!’

Water sloshed out and ran between the floorboards. Eeyore eyed the water, and Kanga ran after Roo.

‘Well, anyhow,’ said Eeyore, ‘it isn’t rain.’

Soon, Tigger returned with one bucket and Kanga and Roo with another. Everyone washed everyone’s feet, and water sloshed everywhere and ran between the floorboards.

Downstairs, the water rose and rose, and the sofa, rising with it, spun three times and floated out the front door with Piglet fast asleep.

Upstairs, Christopher Robin folded his towel and set it aside. ‘Rabbit, it’s time.’

Rabbit, who had been washing Eeyore’s feet, twitched her ears. ‘It’s time?’

Tigger, who had been washing all of Roo, looked up. ‘Time for what, exactly?’

‘It’s time to go to Rabbit’s garden,’ said Christopher Robin.

They jumped from their buckets and bounced from their chairs, and when they had all said 'Here we go' and 'Right behind you,' they bounded down the steps, through ankle-deep water, and out the door.

Pooh found Piglet down the lane and woke him with a nudge. There was no time to go back to the house, not when the others were so far ahead. So, Piglet followed along with his towel still wrapped around his waist, and Pooh and Piglet walked thoughtfully together in the golden evening. For a long time they were silent.

‘Was it a good party?’ asked Piglet. ‘Was there enough food?’

‘There’s never enough honey,’ said Pooh.

‘Oh, dear.’

‘It was a very good party,’ said Pooh. ‘For some things, there can never be enough, and for others, there can never be too few. I suppose it was never meant to be otherwise.’

Meanwhile, Christopher Robin’s friends argued over who should be first when Christopher Robin came into his kingdom. Kanga said Tigger would be lovely, and Rabbit gave an eloquent defense of Owl.

'Rabbit's very smart; isn't she, Pooh?' said Piglet.

'Oh yes,' said Pooh. 'I think that's why she’s so grumpy. She has a brain for what needs to be done, and when you know what needs to be done, you're often alone to do it.'

'I'm s-sure I don't understand,' said Piglet.

Pooh told him about a time they were all at Rabbit's house, and Rabbit was cooking supper while Christopher Robin told stories.

'Rabbit marched out of the kitchen and said, Christopher Robin, tell Pooh to help me in the kitchen. I was sitting and listening to the stories, you see, and Christopher Robin said, Pooh has chosen the better part.'

'The better part of what?' asked Piglet. 

'The better part of eating supper, I suppose,' said Pooh.

'I wish I were as smart as Rabbit,' said Piglet.

'Christopher Robin says we're all special in our own ways. Eeyore is very brave, which is why he's so gloomy. When you're brave enough to face your fears, you’re often left alone to face them.'

'Is he?' Piglet asked. 'Very brave, I mean?'

Pooh told how very recently and not too long ago, they were far away from the Hundred Acre Wood, safe from those who didn’t want Christopher Robin to be king, when a message came saying a relation of Rabbit's, whom Christopher Robin loved very much, was sick.

'I think Christopher Robin meant to go right away. I know I did, but suddenly it was later. Christopher Robin gathered us together and told us our friend was dead, and we must return to the Hundred Acre Wood. Tigger and Owl tried to talk him out of it, but Christopher Robin had set his face for the Hundred Acre Wood.’ 

Piglet tried to make a serious and determined face, but Pooh thought it looked more like he’d eaten a bad jar of honey.

Pooh went on. ‘That's when Eeyore cleared his throat and said, If he's going to the Hundred Acre Wood to die, we might as well go and die with him.'

'That is very brave,' said Piglet.

'And very sad,' said Pooh.

'But everyone was happy when you came,' said Piglet.

'Not right away,' said Pooh. 'Everyone was weeping, and Rabbit told Christopher Robin that if he’d been here, her relation would not have died.'

'And then even Christopher R-Robin was crying.'

'Even Christopher Robin,' said Pooh, 'but he ordered them to roll the stone away from the tomb.'

'I thought for sure there’d be a smell,' said Piglet.

'But Rabbit's relation walked out like it was only Tuesday.'

'Was it Tuesday?'

'There's no way to be sure,' Pooh said. 'Days never stay together in a line but fall every which way. It’s why we call them a Weak.'

'Oh,' said Piglet, who was very impressed. 

Then a great shout came from ahead, and Pooh and Piglet stood still. The shout had come from Christopher Robin, and what he had shouted was this:

‘Get behind me, Woozle!’

A great eldritch wind blew through the garden, carrying the distant howl of the damned, and Pooh felt a touch of dread creep along his soul.

The group gathered just outside Rabbit’s garden, but Christopher Robin and Tigger stood aside from the others. Tigger shrunk like a spring that had lost its bounce, and Christopher Robin looked grumpy and gloomy, all at once.

‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ Christopher Robin said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink?’

Tigger looked in each of Christopher Robin’s hands and then on the ground, just to be sure. ‘Your cup is still at Piglet’s. I can get it, if you want. I can be as quickly as any old Owl.’

Christopher Robin rubbed Tigger’s head. ‘Tigger, to sit at my right or my left is not for me to decide.’

Tigger squeezed one eye closed. ‘I thought being king was getting whatever you want.’

Christopher Robin turned to address them all, even Piglet and Pooh. ‘What I want is for all of you to keep watch.’

‘Keep watch for what?’ asked Rabbit.

Christopher Robin didn’t seem to hear, which didn’t seem much like Christopher Robin, at all. 

‘I am very nearly overwhelmed,’ he said and walked into the garden, alone. The mournful wind tousled the leaves behind him.

Subscribe now

Need an earlier chapter? Visit the table of contents.

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Two

That day, being yesterday, the sun came back over the forest, bringing with it the scents and sounds of gathering flocks, and in the warmth and quiet of the Wood a lamb tried out his voice and listened to see if his mother would answer; turtledoves complained gently to themselves in their lazy, comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't matter very much. On such a day as this, Pooh went down to Eeyore’s house by the river, because that was the best place to be, if one was looking for Eeyore.

'Christopher Robin is giving a party,' said Pooh.

'Very interesting,' said Eeyore. 'I suppose they’ll be sending me down the odd bits which got trodden on.’ 

‘I suppose so,’ said Pooh, ‘if you’d like.’

‘Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all, don't mention it.'

‘Owl just told me. We’re to go right away.’

‘We?’ asked Eeyore. ‘He couldn’t have possibly meant me. Odd bits are fine. Joining is for those who join, and I’m happy enough here in the mud with my house of sticks. Some of us never have to wonder if we’ll be included because some of us never are.’

‘But you are included,’ said Pooh. ‘Owl said he’s influential enough to get us into the party and kind enough to do so.’

'It’s Christopher Robin’s party,' said Eeyore. ‘I’d hate to disappoint him by showing up.’

‘Don’t you want to go?’ asked Pooh. ‘Owl says we’re invited, and that must be true because Owl is Christopher Robin’s right-hand friend, and I know Owl’s his right-hand friend because this is a truth of which Owl told me of.”

Christopher Robin had sent Owl, you see, and Owl sent Pooh.

Pooh, Owl said, Christopher Robin is giving a party.

Oh! said Pooh. And then seeing that Owl expected him to say something else, he went on to say, Will there be honey?

Owl drew himself up big. It’s rather beneath one such as I to talk about honey, especially when there’s news of a party to tell Christopher Robin’s friends the news.

What news? asked Pooh.

Why, THE news, said Owl.

And what news is THE news? asked Pooh.

The most important news, said Owl.

I imagined as much, said Pooh.

Not to worry, not to worry. I’ll put in a good word for you.

You will? asked Pooh.

There’ll be a place for you, said Owl, when Christopher Robin is king of the Hundred Acre Wood.

A place for Me? said Pooh. How grand! 

Not too grand, said Owl. Strive to be humble. Like me. I’m Christopher Robin’s right-hand friend and the humblest of them all. 

That’s a rather impressive feat.

Yes, said Owl, looking down at his talons. They are.

Owl sent Pooh to tell Eeyore while he flew off to tell the others. As Owl flew, Pooh wondered if all the other animals would know the best place was reserved for Owl. Certainly, Christopher Robin had told them about Owl’s wonderful wit and wisdom. And his wings. Owl was above the others, sometimes high above, and Pooh began to think how awful it would be if everybody had forgotten Owl’s highness, and what if nobody quite knew what the party was for? Certainly the party was to honor Owl; and the more Pooh thought like this, the more the party got muddled in his mind, like a dream when nothing goes right. 

And while this was going on inside him, he found Eeyore.

'You must go!' said Pooh, in an Owl-sounding voice.

Eeyore shook his head slowly. 'You’d be better off with Piglet, the little fellow with the excited ears. I'll tell him.'

'No, no!' said Pooh, feeling more muddled than ever. 'It's you!'

'Going is a mistake, no doubt, but still, I’ll go,’ said Eeyore. ‘Only don't blame me if it rains.'

#

Piglet had, in his upstairs room, a long table made of pieces of wood, and Christopher Robin’s friends all sat round it with Christopher Robin at the center. Pooh sat on his right, and Owl sat on his left. Then there was Tigger, Eeyore, and Rabbit, along with Roo and Kanga. 

Piglet brought, in his very small hands, very big plates of thistles, haycorns, and honey.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ said Pooh between handfuls, but as he ate, he saw the Piglet looked very tired and very dirty. ‘Piglet, you’re in need of a bath.’

‘But the food,’ Piglet said. ‘Eeyore might run out of thistles.’

‘I’ll see to the thistles,’ said Pooh. ‘You see to the bath.’

Piglet hurried downstairs, and when the thistles ran low, Pooh pushed himself up from the table and went to find more. ‘And maybe a little more honey besides,’ Pooh added to himself, just in case himself was listening, which he was.

Pooh found Piglet lying on a couch, wrapped in a towel. Piglet opened one eye and closed the other. ‘I had my b-bath, Pooh, but now I’m twice as tired and half as strong. I thought m-maybe a monent’s rest would set me right. It really is only for a moment. I won’t keep Christopher Robin w-waiting.’ And then he fell asleep.

Pooh tucked Piglet in and tiptoed back upstairs with the thistles and two more jars of honey. ‘In case my seconds want seconds,’ he said to himself in a very soft whisper.

Upstairs again, Winnie-the-Pooh saw Roo jumping in his chair. It was the first party to which Roo had ever been.

Kanga held Roo’s hand and said, ‘There, there dear.’

Christopher Robin had cast seven woozles out of Kanga, and the seventh was Roo, who was small and kind and didn’t know he was a woozle at all.

Now, as soon as Pooh sat down, Roo began to talk.

'Hallo, Tigger!' he squeaked.

'Hallo, Roo, old buddy!' said Tigger.

Roo jumped up and down for a little while and then began again.

'Hallo, Eeyore!'

Eeyore nodded gloomily at him. 'It will rain soon, you see if it doesn't.'

Roo looked to see if it didn't, and it didn't, so he said 'Hallo, Owl!'—and Owl said 'Hallo, my little fellow,' in a kindly way, and went on telling Christopher Robin about an incident involving a friend of his whom Christopher Robin didn't know. ‘The soldiers very nearly arrested him for something he very nearly didn’t do.’

When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the table with his spoon, and everyone stopped talking and were very silent, except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to look as if the noise came from someone sneaking around behind him.

'This party,' said Christopher Robin, 'is a party because of what I must do and where I must go, and you all know what and where that is, so that where I go, you can go, also.’

Eeyore coughed in a gloomy sort of way. ‘Where you go, we do not know, and we don’t know the way. Not that it matters. Don’t mind me.’

The others began to chatter this and chatter that, but Owl shushed them with a clearing of his throat and a sudden HOOT!

'Friends,' Owl said, 'it is a great pleasure to see you at my party—at our party, Christopher Robin’s and mine. What I did was nothing, gathering you all here on such short notice. Any of you—except Rabbit and Tigger and Kanga—would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My actions came not with an idea of being the subject of Christopher Robin’s big news.' He put his wing to his mouth and said in a loud whisper, 'But you can see where I’m sitting. Now, I feel that we should all——'

'H—hup!' said Roo accidentally.

'Roo, dear!' said Kanga reproachfully.

'Was it me?' asked Roo, shamefully.

‘Was what you?’ asked Tigger suspiciously. ‘Was there a dastardly deed dastardly done?’

Kanga put a hand between Roo and Tigger. ‘Roo’s far too young to do anything dastardly, dear.’

Tigger looked horror-stricken. ‘Then—’ he gulped, ‘—was it me?’

'What's Tigger saying?' asked Pooh.

‘In truth,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘someone at this very table will do me a dastardly deed.’

'Is it me?' asked Pooh rather dolefully. ‘Oh, dear. You must be terribly disappointed.’

‘Not at all,’ Christopher Robin said. ‘You are a very dear friend, and I love you with all my heart.’

Tigger let loose a growl that showed all his teeth, even the very back ones. ‘I’ll never do you dastardly, Christopher Robin.’

Christopher Robin smiled, but his eyes were sad. ‘You’ll deny you’re my friend three times before the rooster crows.’

‘Let me at that rooster.’ Tigger sank into his chair. ‘I’ll ring his neck, wattle and all.’

‘Wattle?’ asked Rabbit.

‘Tigger will,’ said Pooh.

Through all of this, Owl was hooting. This time short and high-sounding, like an all-together different sort of bird. ‘You love HIM with ALL your h-heart?’

Christopher Robin turned to face Owl. ‘What you do, do quickly.’

Owl stumbled out of his seat, with all his feathers ruffled. He stared, his beak agape–forming, in appearance, the prefiguration of man’s doom. Then he flew out the window.

‘That was quickly,’ said Pooh. ‘Well done, Owl.’

‘I could bounce quicklier than that,’ said Tigger. ‘Watch me.’

But Christopher Robin stood up, and everyone was silent.

'H—hup!' said Roo again.

‘We have a very big problem,’ said Christopher Robin, and the friends grew still, like markers in a churchyard. ‘None of you are clean.’

Subscribe now

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the Pooh.

or

The Passion of Christopher Robin

This chapter is part of Literary Salon issue #2.

You can read the serial weekly, but all twelve chapters are available now.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Behold the bear. Heavy feet and an empty head lead the bear to a quiet place in the middle of the Wood where a large tree stands, and from the top of the tree, hangs the body of a boy. The bear looks at the boy and listens, just as hard as his stuffed ears can listen, and what he hears is a nothing-noise.

He sits at the foot of the tree, puts his head between his paws, and begins to think. First, he says to himself: ‘That nothing-noise means something. You don't get a nothing-noise like that, just nothing and nothing, without its meaning something. If there's a nothing-noise, then nothing's making a something-noise, and the only reason for not making a something-noise (that I know of) is because you're playing hide-and-seek.’

Then he thinks another long time, and says: ‘And the only reason for playing hide-and-seek is so someone will come seeking.’

And then the bear stands up and says: 'And the only reason for hiding is to be found.' Having thus reasoned with himself, and finding himself very reasonable, indeed, he climbs the tree.

He climbs and he climbs and he climbs a little farther... and a little farther... and then just a little farther. And soon, he’s thought of something more to say.

‘Christopher Robin,’ he says, for this is the boy’s name. 'All our friends are hiding, and I thought to myself, if there’s a boy who can find a friend who’s lost, that boy is Christopher Robin.'

The bear’s getting rather tired by now, which is why he talks to Christopher Robin, even though Christopher Robin isn’t talking back. He stops on a branch just a little too low to reach Christopher Robin’s feet, and he listens just as hard as he listened before. Christopher Robin doesn’t answer. The bear hears only the nothing-noise and nothing else in the whole wide Wood. Even the birds have taken the brethren’s vow of silence.

The branch on which he stands is stained with the dried red fluff which flows from a boy when a boy is cut. It stains the length of the branch and much of the trunk, and down below, the fluff speckles more and more branches red. When it still flowed, it must have run like a waterfall, but it isn’t flowing now.

The bear watches the feet swing in the wind that runs through the tops of the trees, and he feels a great emptiness, as if it were his fluff that’s stained the tree. 'It all comes of being loved so much,' he says.

And Winnie-the-Pooh has been loved. Christopher Robin loved him with all his heart.

Pooh sits on the branch and begins to think again. But the first person he thinks of is Christopher Robin. Poor Christopher Robin. It’s an empty world without him in it.

Pooh climbs down that very tall tree in the middle of the Wood. In its shadow, he feels littler than littler-than-little, and when he feels littler than littler-than-little, his problems seem very very big. His friends are gone, and if there was ever a time he needed a friend, this is it. No one’s there to sit beside him and remind him he isn’t alone, and that, he supposes, is because he is alone.

Friends don’t have to know what to say. They don’t have to know what to do. They only need to be there, and they aren’t. Maybe they hide because they know the truth, a truth Pooh is only now suspecting. He’s been the bear whom Christopher Robin loved best, and without that love, without Christopher Robin, who is he? The whole world answers with all its nothing-noise. He isn’t anything at all, not anymore, and never will be again.

Pooh walks round and round the tree, and the earth beneath him becomes a rut. The rut grows into a valley, and the tree sways in the wind. Its wood moans like Eeyore. It cries like Piglet when Piglet is scared, and Piglet is always scared. The tree looms above, and Pooh can feel the threat of its weight as the roots spring free, one by one by one. He thinks he’ll walk until the world collapses and crushes all those bad feelings that burn in his chest.

Only, the very tall tree makes Pooh feel small, and when Pooh feels small, when he feels littler that littler-than-little, the person he thinks of most is Piglet. Circling the tree reminds Pooh of circling the Spinney with Piglet, and he thinks, if he has to carry these feelings of being alone and friendless, it would be friendlier to carry them with a friend. If that friend isn’t coming to Pooh, Pooh will have to go to him.

There was a party the day before in the upstairs room at Piglet’s house, a big party with food and Christopher Robin and Christopher Robin’s closest friends. After that party, and after the very long night that followed, all his friends went hiding.

‘And if Christopher Robin can’t help me find them,’ says Pooh, ‘I shall have to do it, myself.’

Subscribe now