After Nilf, there was wind. Day after day, the wind blew, strong and ceaseless. This was a roaring wind that pulled at the branches of the two firs. This was a rough wind that tore winter-weakened limbs from the maples as it raged by. Sometimes the wind spat out fat, wet flakes of snow. More often it pounded rain down against the fields and trees. Gradually, rain melted away the last patches of snow as, just as gradually, the wind blew itself out.

Toaff spent those stormy days and nights snug in his den. Not until it was quiet again did he venture out, to forage. At the entrance, he hesitated, dismayed. The scattered limbs didn’t surprise him, but he was shocked at what he saw in the woods beyond the pasture. Roots were clutching at the air, with clumps of dirt still wrapped about them. How could it be that a tree’s long roots were torn up out of the earth that held them safe?

It was because Toaff was hesitating that he saw Braff’s slow, silent approach from behind the horse chestnut. If he had been out foraging, as usual, he never would have known. But he was there and he did know so he chukked loudly, “Go away!”

Braff ran up to the tip of the pine and stopped there. He looked up at Toaff and flicked his tail. “What do you mean, go away?”

“The stores are mine.” Toaff stepped out onto the broken branch and flicked his own tail, in warning.

“They’re mine as much as yours,” Braff announced.

“Not anymore,” Toaff told him.

They stared at one another, both fat silver tails flicking fast.

Braff said, “I know something you don’t.”

Toaff kept quiet. What were you supposed to answer when someone said that?

“If I told you what I know, you’d be really sorry you stayed here.”

It wasn’t easy not to ask Braff what he was talking about.

“Or maybe I’ll come back—but not alone.”

With that, Braff turned away. After a couple of steps he looked back at Toaff to announce, “It’s something else the rabbits said. They were outside last spring, they told us what happens. The human doesn’t like branches in the drive and he won’t like this broken tree either, right in his pasture. There’s something bad he’s going to do to it and then what will you eat? With all your stores gone. Where will you live?”

Toaff didn’t stop to think. “In the apple trees.”

Braff whuffled. “How? In a drey? Have you noticed how short an apple tree is? Your drey would hang down to the ground.” He whuffled some more. “You’ll have to think of something better than that, Toaff.”

Braff started off again, but stopped again, to call, “And you better think fast. That’s all I’m going to tell you.” He was almost at the horse chestnut before he turned back a third time. “It’s called a chain saw,” he chukked, but before Toaff could ask what he was talking about, Braff said, “We’re going to cross the road into a new woods where there won’t be Churrchurrs, to start up their stealing. You can come.”

“Don’t you remember how dangerous the road is?” Toaff asked. “They warned us, don’t you remember? The road is much more dangerous than the drive.”

“You only have to make it across once,” Braff answered. “Are you going to come with us? Or not.”

Toaff didn’t have to think about that either. “Not,” he answered, and Braff started off again. This time he ran across to the nearest maple without turning around, and ran up its trunk.

Toaff raced down to the ground and over to the chestnut. He scurried up it and out onto a branch to be sure Braff really was leaving and not trying a trick to lure Toaff away. He waited there long after Braff was out of sight, on his guard, being proud of the way he’d defended his stores.

That was when he saw the fox. Maybe it was the same fox, maybe another. All foxes looked alike. The fox was on the hunt, of course.

It moved slowly, nose to the ground. Its paws landed delicately, so gently that the damp mounds of brown grass showed no trace of its passing, as it patiently tracked its prey. The prey, a creature small enough to hide under the grass, kept to the edge of the pasture, hoping to shelter among the stones of the wall that separated the pasture from the pale new grass growing by the drive. That prey must be desperately hungry, Toaff thought, to come foraging in the open, in daylight.

Toaff wanted to run to the opposite side of the chestnut and not see what was going to happen. He wanted to run back into his den and not hear anything. He couldn’t stand to watch another mouse caught in a fox’s jaws. He couldn’t stand to hear another shriek. He wished he was a dog, big enough to fight a fox, or a raptor with claws to stick into a fox’s rump. A squirrel couldn’t attack a fox. Squirrels weren’t fighters. They were quarrelers, who used voices to attack, not claws and teeth.

What if I—?

Toaff took off into empty air, mouth wide open, and his high-pitched, sharp-edged cry flew with him. Screetteeettee! Screetteeettee! He didn’t dare look at the fox or try to see the mouse. He had to keep his eyes fixed on the thin chestnut branch below him and then, when he landed, he needed to concentrate all of his attention on keeping his balance, keeping his sharp nails dug into the new, soft bark—Screetteeettee! he cried, Screetteeettee! again, and again—as the branch swayed down toward the ground, closer to the fox, then rose up before it sank down again. Screetteeettee!

When he could look, Toaff saw the fox with its ears cocked, turning in one direction after another as it tried to locate the lost prey. The fox stuck its nose into one mound of grass, then another. Keeping an eye on the fox, Toaff scampered back up along the low, swaying branch, and when he’d reached the safe place where it joined the trunk, he stopped, sat up on his haunches with his paws gathered into his chest, his tail high and proud behind him, and whuffled. He felt ready for anything.

He had never heard of any other squirrel attacking a fox. He was the only one.