LATER THAT NIGHT

Outside the stockade, dozens of campfires lit up the night. Someone produced a fiddle. There was another fellow who played the fife. The voyageurs sang, and in the flickering light of the fires, the dancing began again.

As for me, I could not enjoy the party. Even though I am red, I was—how do you say?—blue. What was I doing here, so far from home? How I longed to be in my own little nest in the treetop over the Ottawa River. How I longed to see my friends. But the only way to get home was with the voyageurs, and I could not go with them knowing what I knew now.

I made up my mind about what I must do. Into my handkerchief—okay, it was a part of Jean Gentille’s pocket that I had gnawed out of boredom—I placed all my belongings:

an acorn

a small, perfect pebble

a tiny shell

a crumb of bannock, given to me by Jean Gentille and a pawful of pine seeds.

“I am going into the woods,” I chirred to my crew, “to live deliberately.”

They didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me.

“I will go confidently in the direction of my dreams,” I continued. “I shall let my whiskers grow long and leave my fur ungroomed. I want to live deep and climb high, to see far, to suck the sap from the tree of life. Or, short of that, the tree of maple. Don’t try to stop me!” I told them, holding up my paw. “I’ve made up my mind.”

None of them seemed like they planned to try to stop me. Only Jean Gentille looked up from his book.

“If this is what it means to be a voyageur, I cannot be one,” I told him, flinging my paw to my forehead. “To profit from the skins of my animal brethren—it goes against every fiber of my being, every bit of fluff in my undercoat, every guard hair, every whisker.”

“My friend,” I said, choking a little and staggering toward him, “I have always thought you to be a man of high ideals. It does not surprise me so much that these other voyageurs would engage in such brutality—they are cretins. But you—you are kind, noble, and educated. I would have expected more of you.”

“You don’t seem quite right, little one,” Jean Gentille said gently. “Are you sick?”

“I am sick at heart,” I said, then turned and trudged away, bundle in hand.