Harold's Forest Days
Chapter 3: Looking for the right word
Epistemic status: Slow-moving fiction. Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
For the next few days, Harry took a break from writing. It was often like that, after finishing a bold new story, especially one with an exciting new protagonist like Robbie the detective. He needed a few days to rest after a long story, much like needing time to lie back and digest after a hearty meal. He wondered what Robbie might be doing now - even a heroic raccoon detective needs to take a break between cases. Perhaps he took the time until the next case to practice climbing trees, or learning to examine footprints for evidence. Yes, Harry thought, a restless raccoon like Robbie would spend his time engaged in activities even when resting.
During the day, Harry also went out to show the children of the forest his new story. They were even more excited about Robbie’s adventures than Harry himself was, as a brand new character for Harry’s stories wasn’t something that happened every day. After hearing the story, they imitated Robbie by excitedly examining footprints in the early spring remnants of the winter snows. It was a chilly day again, but the children ran around so much, jumping into snowdrifts and then challenging each other to read the prints and figure out in which direction they had jumped back out, that they warmed themselves with exercise. Harry, warmed by his great grey overcoat and his whisker-stiff spirits, warned them that they weren’t to climb trees like Robbie, as the trees were still slippery with snowmelt and they might hurt themselves falling down. Privately Harry suspected that the squirrel children could do so safely even now, but he warned every child against the climb equally, for fairness’ sake.
The next week, heartened by the the children’s’ excitement and the sight of first green buds of spring rising on the trees against the clear blue sky, Harry sat down to write the next chapter of Robbie’s adventures. He opened the window in front of his desk so he could look out at the forest - while he usually preferred to write in total solitude, on such a clear spring day he wanted to see the sky between the branches of the trees - took out the same large grey quill with which he had written the story of Robbie’s first case, sat at his great oaken desk, and began to write.
At first the words flowed smoothly, Harold writing sentence after sentence to the music of the quill’s crisp scratches on the paper. On the page, Robbie met a family of Voles with a mystery on their hands. When their son Joey had counted their acorn stash that morning, he had found five more acorns than they had had the night before. This had surprised them so much that his sister Maybelline, who had a better head for numbers, had also counted the stash herself, but she too reached the conclusion that they had more acorns than they should (though only by three by her count). But whether by five or by three, this was more acorns than they expected - how could that be? Had some other vole (or maybe squirrel) sneaked their own acorns into their stash? But how could that have happened? Father Vole was a light sleeper who surely would have heard someone bumbling around downstairs during the night.
Robbie had a real mystery on his hands! The ever-upright Father Vole, who could not bear the thought of taking what wasn’t his even by accident, insisted that they must find the culprit. If some animal in the forest had accidentally given the Vole family his acorns, the voles must give them back before they could have a breakfast of their own. While the local animals were always happy to share in food and merriment, and there were plenty of acorns to spare thanks to the forest’s bounty and the fruitful weather, Father Vole stood on principle. And while Robbie thought he might be too rigid, he was excited to grapple with the mystery of the appearing acorns.
It was at this point that Harry got stuck. No matter how he tried, he simply could not seem to come up with a solution to Robbie’s mystery that would a satisfying and inspirational story. He tried all his old habits - pacing around the wooden floor of his house, staring through the window, pawing through the beautiful items on his wooden shelves - but the ending of the story simply refused to come to him. Perhaps, he thought, it was something about the weather. This was a story for an autumn day, and it felt wrong to tell it in the early spring.
He suddenly remembered the new quill Tabby Tim had spotter on their last long walk in the forest, colored like sap-covered maple leaves on an autumn day. Of course! That was just what he needed to inspire him to find an end to the story. He went over to his bottom shelf, where he had put it down after returning from their walk, and looked at it. It still shone like the sun through the autumn leaves, even in the dim light coming through the window. The was, Harry realized, just what he needed to finish his story.
As he say down with the golden quill, the words once more flowed out onto the page. Robbie came back to the voles and asked who had counted the acorns the night before, when they thought they had five (or perhaps three) more. It had, it turned out, been Joey - and when Robbie asked him to count the acorns a third time, he once again reached a new number, this time saying there were two acorns fewer than the night before. Maybelline, eager to show off her counting skills, counted and got to the same number as before - three more than they had had the night before.
Or had they? It was, Robbie explained, simply a mistake in their assumptions. They had thought they knew how many acorns they had the night before, and had based their new beliefs on that assumption. But it had been based only on Joey’s counting, and Joey just wasn’t very good at counting this many acorns. Robbie explained that no acorns had appeared or disappeared - it was just a counting mistake all along. The family, happy and relived (except for the embarrassed Joey, who would now become the target of many good-natured ribbings by his sister Maybelline), sat down to eat some delicious acorns.
The quill poured out the words eagerly, almost like it was writing the story on its own and Harry’s arm was just along for the ride. But as he wrote the last word with a flourish, doubts began to rise in Harry’s mind. While the message of questioning your assumptions when confused was a good and important one, he wasn’t sure the story held together. Wouldn’t the Vole family already know better than to rely on Joey’s inconsistent counting? And what would this story inspire, if at the end there was nothing that needed to be done? Wasn’t it a little mean to Joey?
Still, he reassured himself, there was some message in the story. The children all loved Robbie stories and would appreciate it. And it had given him a chance to try out his shiny new quill. And so, reassuring himself despite his misgivings, Harry drifted off into an afternoon nap.
