KEDRIC WAS A GAME WARDEN who lived and worked on the king's hunting preserve. Though he enjoyed tending the animals, he did get lonely, for he had no family and his only companions were a dog and a cat, who had both lived with him for years.
One day, as Kedric was walking through the woods, he came upon a little old woman who was being chased by a bear. Knowing that, normally, bears don't chase people, Kedric looked more closely. A moment later he realized that somehow the woman had gotten between a mother bear and her cub; and the more the woman ran, the more the cub ran, with—of course—the bigger bear chasing after both.
Without stopping to worry about his own danger, Kedric leapt forward and pulled the woman out from between the two bears.
The mother bear grunted once as she passed them, then continued crashing through the trees after her cub.
Kedric guided the old woman to a stump so that she could sit down. "You just got that mama bear worried you were going to hurt her cub," he explained to calm her.
"I was worried that mama bear was going to hurt me," the woman gasped once she'd caught her breath. "I heard her keep saying, 'My baby, my baby,' but I couldn't see the little one, and I didn't know what she was talking about."
Kedric thought this was a strange thing to say and repeated, tugging at his earlobe as though that could help him hear better, "She kept saying...?"
"'My baby, my baby,'" the old woman repeated. Then she added, "I do believe you saved my life."
"It was nothing," Kedric said. "She kept saying...?"
The old woman reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out an acorn. "I put a magic spell on this acorn," she explained. "Whoever owns it can understand the speech of beasts." She shook her head. "Not much help, was it?" She drew her arm back, and Kedric realized she was about to throw the acorn away.
"Wait!" he cried. A moment later, when the old woman looked at him, he felt foolish, for he didn't really believe that there was such a thing as a magic acorn that let people understand what animals said.
And yet, he thought, and yet...
Sometimes he grew so lonely, with only the cat and the dog to keep him company, and during the long evenings he would watch them—sitting there, watching him—and he would look into their deep, expressive eyes and wonder what they were thinking, what they would say if they could speak. He could risk being foolish for the chance to know.
The old woman was still studying him. Holding up the acorn, she asked, "You want this?" as if the thought were incredible.
"Please," Kedric said. "If you're through with it."
"Oh yes." The woman dropped the acorn into his hand. "But that's hardly a fitting reward for saving my life. May I offer you some other spell in addition?"
Kedric shook his head, feeling very foolish now that he actually held the acorn in his hand.
"Well, but I am grateful," the old woman said. "Good-bye and good luck," and with that she stood and nodded and began walking in the same direction she'd been running, following the river that flowed through the woods, down the hill, and eventually led—so Kedric had heard—to the sea.
Kedric was glad he'd taken the acorn, because the woman was obviously poor and had just as obviously wanted to reward him for saving her from the bear. Whether the acorn allowed him to understand the speech of animals, it had already accomplished something.
Kedric turned to continue on his way, and a bird swooped in front of him to land on a tree by the side of the river.
"My tree," the bird chirped. "My tree, my tree, my tree."
Kedric almost ran after the old woman. But she knew the acorn worked. He was the one who hadn't believed.
"Don't worry, little friend," Kedric assured the bird. "I won't try to take over your tree."
"My tree," the bird called back to him. "My tree."
Kedric closed his eyes to listen better and heard other birds calling out, "My tree," or, sometimes, "My branch," or, once in a great while, "Bug!"
So, Kedric thought, birds don't have much to say. But he was sure his pets would.
As he hurried home, there was talk all around him. But none of it was interesting. The butterflies constantly murmured to themselves, "Sip, sip, I'm sipping nectar, now I'm fluttering, flutter, flutter, now I'm sipping, sip, sip, now I'm fluttering." And the squirrels were too busy playing to pay attention to him. They chirped, "Wheee!" as they jumped from branch to branch. And, of course, the birds continued to call, "My branch." Kedric stopped only once, when a chipmunk darted across his path, chattering, "Winter's coming—gotta store."
"Winter's seven months away," Kedric called after the chipmunk.
But the chipmunk only paused for a moment. Its cheeks full of seeds so that its voice was garbled, it still clearly insisted, "Winter's coming," and dashed off.
As Kedric hurried up the path to his house, the dog must have heard him. "My house," the dog barked.
"Oh no," Kedric said, thinking of the single-minded birds.
But as soon as Kedric entered, the dog began jumping up and down and excitedly proclaimed, "My master, my master."
"Well, hello," Kedric said, delighted.
"My master's home early," the dog barked. "Is it because Master loves me? Sorry I drooled on Master—it's because I'm so excited. Does Master love me?"
As soon as Kedric reached down to pat the dog's head, the dog dropped to the floor and rolled over to expose his belly.
"Welcome, Master, am I cute? Do you love me?"
"Why, yes and yes, assuredly," Kedric said, scratching the dog's belly.
While he was doing that, the cat walked into the room. "Is he here to feed us?" she purred.
Kedric was surprised at the question. "Didn't I feed you this morning?" he asked, wondering if he had somehow forgotten.
"Pay attention to me," the dog said.
The cat told the dog. "Get out of his way. He's trying to get to the food to feed me."
And for the first time Kedric realized that while he could understand animals, animals couldn't understand him.
"I was sure I fed you this morning," he said anyway, by way of apology.
As he stepped over the dog and walked into the kitchen, the cat walked back and forth in front of his feet, saying, "He is. He is going to feed us. He's going to the feeding room."
The dog said, "Hey, look at me. Doesn't Master love me anymore?"
"Yes, yes," Kedric said. In the kitchen, he saw that there was still food in the cat's bowl. "You are not starving," he pointed out to her.
She rubbed against his leg and meowed, "Are you going to feed me? Are you going to feed me now?"
Kedric gave her some fresh food, in case there was something wrong with what he'd given her in the morning, but she only nibbled. "Nothing new, nothing exciting," she complained. "You said he was home early. I thought that meant something new and exciting to eat."
"Is the master going to play with me now?" the dog said. "Ooo, I've got an itch"—he began biting at his side—"but I'll be ready to play in a moment."
Kedric pointed at the cat. "You are spoiled," he said.
"He's pointing at me," the cat said. "Do you think he's got food behind that finger?"
"Stop talking about food!" Kedric shouted. "You've got food!"
They might not have understood the words, but they knew shouting. "Good," the dog said. "Now Master's mad at you; he'll love me more. He'll think you chewed up that shoe."
"He's shouting because he's trying to tell me where there's food," the cat said.
"Stop it!" Kedric said. "Stop all this mindless chattering." Disappointed, he sat down at the kitchen table and rested his face in his hands. He was aware of the dog and the cat each looking at him with their large soulful eyes.
The dog said, "Is Master sick? Is Master unhappy? If I chase my tail, will that make Master feel better?" The dog began to chase its tail.
The cat said, "Do you really think he's sick? If he dies, do you think we should eat him?"
Kedric jumped up from his chair. He threw the acorn down on the floor and stomped on it until it broke into little pieces.
This didn't help. He distinctly heard the dog say, "I can do that, too!" Then the dog ran through the pile of crumbled pieces, scattering them all across the floor.
"I don't think he's dying," the cat said. "We'll never get to eat him."
Kedric clapped his hands to his ears. "Aaaaagh!" he cried. Maybe it wasn't too late to catch up to the old woman, to ask her to come back and take the spell off the acorn, since breaking it obviously wasn't enough, and now he could never find all the pieces.
"Fine game!" the dog cried. "Master's so clever! I can play, too! Aaa-rooooo!" But the dog couldn't run and cover his ears at the same time, and he kept tipping over.
"This is squirrel food," the cat complained, sniffing at the remains of the acorn. "This isn't for us to eat."
Still holding his hands over his ears, Kedric ran screaming out of his house and down the path. The door didn't slam behind him until he was halfway across the clearing and into the woods.
The dog and the cat looked at each other in the silence of the house.
"Was it something I said?" the dog asked, biting at his itch again. "Doesn't Master love me anymore?"
"Don't worry," the cat assured him. She began to lick herself dean. "He just went to find better food."