Chapter 4: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh
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 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.
Tigger is both so adorable and obnoxious in this it breaks my heart (knowing how the passion story goes).