THE EXPLOSION THAT ROCKED Upper Forest as the sun came up over the trees that morning frightened the town to its core. The big, black crows froze on their perches, the woodpeckers halted mid-peck, foxes and raccoons cringed upon the ground, and flies, bees, mosquitoes, and mites drained from the air. Even the little breezes that rustled constantly down Forest’s broad limb avenues stood still, and the whole wood seemed to hold its breath.
Woodbine woke with a start and lay motionless in the tulip-tree den. He was alone. Everyone else was up and away, Brown Nut to morning guard duty, the rest of the family to foraging. Outside, the forest’s silence was eerie and unnatural, and Woodbine’s first thought was that the slow-rising evil he had sensed the day before had sprouted black wings and arrived.
But then the wood began its little rushes and squeaks again. A blue jay laughed rudely, a catbird meowed, and Woodbine poked his head out of the den. A chorus of squirrel voices was coming from the direction of the alien’s oak tree. He climbed out and went to investigate, reaching the place just in time to see an angry crowd of mink-tails setting off together through the trees. Everyone was shrieking loudly.
“What is it?” he called to an old mink-tail at the edge of the throng. “Where is everyone going?”
“The invader has killed a guard!” the fellow barked back. He looked a little rattled. “A terrible explosion went off in her tree. I was right here and saw it all. Do you know the mink-tail called Woodwind? He was blown to shreds in a single instant. Many other guards are wounded. And that’s not all.”
The old squirrel launched himself shakily from a branch and jumped to a perch nearer Woodbine.
“One of the fallen guards has been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped! By whom?”
“The invader! It is all the work of the invader! And now other aliens have joined her. Many believe that the Elders were wrong to treat her so casually. They smell the makings of a plot. Do you know the mink-tail called Brown Nut?”
“Brown Nut!” Woodbine’s eyes bulged in alarm.
“The aliens are carrying her away as we speak, through the Lower Region to their dens.”
“But how…”
“But we will not give up so quickly, they will see. We will follow and take her back. Come on! Let’s hurry and catch up with the others. Never before, in my memory, has such an outrage been committed against the town of Forest!”
These passionate words left the old squirrel rather breathless. He wavered on the branch and might have fallen if Woodbine had not leapt to his side and supported him.
“Careful, old one.”
“Let me go, let me go!” the old firebrand raged, and Woodbine dropped back. He was too anxious about his sister to insist on helping, as mink-tail etiquette normally required. He scurried up several branch levels in the white oak, passed directly over the invader’s nest (it was made of some wonderful mosslike material), and set off through the forest’s topmost limbs.
That the invader had killed a squirrel, and was now kidnapping his sister, Woodbine could not begin to understand. He had read her eyes. They looked odd on the outside, but inside they were as civilized as any mink-tail’s. She was no murdering, hunting cat, he knew. If she had been, she could have finished her work long before dawn. All night her guards had snored at their posts. She might have caught five or ten of them for breakfast if that was her design.
Woodbine began to travel rapidly through the forest. Tree to tree he went, leaping from the slimmest fingers of branches across great chasms of air. Not once did his feet make a false connection. Never did he miss the places he jumped for. He went so far so fast that he soon overran the mink-tail mob below, and found himself in front. He came partway down a maple tree at the edge of a clearing to rest and wait for the others to catch up.
He had no sooner settled himself than a scuffling noise rose from the ground and three long-stemmed figures tramped into view.
Aliens! Woodbine stiffened and watched them come. Though it was not his habit to look directly at these creatures, he forced himself to examine them as they passed beneath him. One was very large. One was thin and small. The last figure in the group looked rather like the invader, though all aliens were so much the same, with their hairless noses and large, wobbling eyes, that it was hard to be sure. There was no question about the ragged clump of fur this last alien carried in its naked paws.
“Oh, Brown Nut!” Woodbine’s heart went out to his sister with a lunge. In horror, he watched her familiar body travel by. Brown Nut had never looked small to him before. She had always loomed large in his mind’s eye. For the first time, Woodbine realized how little she really was, how vulnerable. The invader was holding her respectfully, at least. (It was the invader. He could see that now.) The alien’s hands were cupped around Brown Nut, as if to shield her from further danger. The alien’s walk was slow and careful. Still, not one flicker of life could Woodbine see in his sister. Brown Nut’s tail hung limply to one side. Her ears had fallen back.
The other squirrels began to arrive. They joined him in the maple tree, filling its branches and those of other trees and shrubs around the clearing’s edge. Soon the place bristled with squirrels and every eye was fastened on the action below.
The aliens climbed a fence and marched across another clearing. They disappeared with Brown Nut into a large ground nest on the other side. At this, a wave of outrage broke out among the squirrels. Some surged forward as if to attack the nest. Others hung back and screeched fiercely.
“Do you think she is still alive?” a voice whispered by his side. Woodbine turned to find Laurel. She had seen him through the trees and come to perch near him. From the wild look of her coat, it was evident that she had experienced some violence herself. Woodbine stared at her in fright.
“Who can say! Who can say! My sister does not look very well.”
Laurel’s whiskers quivered angrily. “Brown Nut’s eyes were open, but they, saw no light, I think. It hardly matters, anyway. No mink-tail survives long in an alien den. Killers, they are. Our most ancient tales have told us. The Elders were stupid. They should have attacked this invader the minute she was discovered. A youngster she may be, but she is crafty and dangerous.”
Woodbine nodded. He could not recall such tales about the aliens, but he was young himself, just two summers in age. Was it possible that he also had been fooled by the invader? Perhaps her strange eyes masked a treacherous mind.
Woodbine turned again toward Laurel. He felt a great friendship for her suddenly, and wanted to ask if she would risk sneaking closer to the alien den with him. If they got near enough, maybe they could look inside to see what was happening. Then they could make a plan to rescue Brown Nut. Woodbine was in the middle of saying these things, and Laurel was already beginning to bend her ears, yes, when—
A tremendous explosion went off. Across the way, a branch loaded with mink-tails snapped and crashed down out of a tree. Screeches broke out among the fallen, some of whom began to writhe on the ground.
Shocking as this was, there was hardly time for Woodbine and Laurel to do more than gasp before another explosion ripped through the air.
And another, shredding leaves.
And then, while scores of mink-tails toppled to the ground, and others ran for cover, two more tree-shattering blasts smashed into the rising heat of the summer morning. The first blew Woodbine and Laurel off their perch, but not before Woodbine caught sight of something.
The biggest alien had quietly returned. It was crouched around the corner of the human nest. In front of its face it held a…what was that thing? Woodbine searched his mind and could not find a word. But as he fell, his sharp eyes saw fire flash from a long black snout, and his ears received the crack of yet another explosion. A streak of fire seemed to rush past his cheek. Then, for Woodbine, the world darkened and went dead.