Chapter 7: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh

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.

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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.

Chapter 8: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh