“Hurry up. There’s food down here!”
Ereth continued to kick and pull, gradually working his way forward. Suddenly Flip appeared in his face.
“Need some help?” he asked.
“Buzz off, you bowl of burro barf!” he cried. “I never need help! Never!”
“Sorry,” Flip said quickly and retreated, leaving Ereth to struggle.
Twenty minutes later the exhausted porcupine squeezed into the den, bringing with him a shower of pebbles and dirt.
The three foxes were on their bellies, holding bones in their paws and gnawing at them.
Nimble looked up. “What took you so long?” she asked.
Ereth only said, “Did you find something to eat?”
“A lot,” Tumble enthused, with his mouth full. “A really great half-eaten rabbit.”
“Would . . . would you like some?” Flip offered.
“No!” roared Ereth. Though famished, he could only think about sleep.
He looked around the new den. Slightly smaller than the first, it was the same messy, nasty-smelling kind of a place.
Without a word, the porcupine moved as far from the foxes as possible, then lay down. “I’m going to sleep,” he announced. “And I just want you to know, this is the worst birthday of my life.”
“What’s a birthday?” Flip asked his sister in a low voice.
“It’s the day you’re born,” Nimble explained.
“Oh, wow! Does that mean that Doormat was just born today?”
“No way,” Tumble said. “He’s got to be ancient.”
Ereth closed his eyes, curled up, and tried to act as if he were already asleep.
“Really? How old do you think he is?” Flip asked in a whisper.
“From the way he’s acting,” Tumble asserted with great authority, “I’d say two hundred years, at least.”
“Does that mean he’ll die soon?”
“Probably.”
“Shut up!” Ereth screamed.
For a moment there was silence.
“Sir,” Flip said in a small voice. “Mr. Perish?”
Ereth sighed. “I’m sleeping,” he said.
“Oh.”
A few quiet moments passed. Just as Ereth felt himself drifting off, he felt a nudge. He opened his eyes. The three foxes were standing next to him.
“What is it?” Ereth asked numbly.
Nimble said, “Mr. Earwig, when we sleep at night, Mom lets us snuggle up close to her. She even wraps her tail about us. It keeps us very warm.”
“Chewed over cow cuds,” Ereth mumbled. “Will this day never end?”
“What should we do?” Tumble asked.
“Have you even looked at my tail?” Ereth snapped.
“What about it?”
“It’s full of quills.”
“Are you completely covered with quills?” Flip asked.
Ereth hesitated. “No,” he admitted.
“Where aren’t you?” Tumble demanded.
“My belly.”
“Can we snuggle there?” Nimble asked.
“No!” Ereth roared.
“But we can’t sleep,” Tumble said after a moment. “Our mother . . .”
“I am not your mother!” Ereth shouted, turning his back to the foxes. “I’m a porcupine who wants to be left alone! Beat it!”
The foxes stared at him for a while. Then Flip turned and, with head bent low, trotted off to the farthest side of the den. Sighing, he flung himself down with his back to Ereth and curled up in a ball.
After a moment the other two followed their brother. In moments they were rolled up together like a flower bud.
Despite his exhaustion Ereth could not sleep. He kept thinking of all that had happened that day. “So help me,” he muttered, “this’ll be the last birthday I ever celebrate.”
He began to drift off, only to hear a sound: a long, sad sigh. He tried to ignore it, but more sighs followed. The foxes were whimpering.
“Barbecued bear beards,” Ereth swore to himself. Heaving himself up, he waddled over to where the foxes lay.
“Move over, you piebald pooper snoopers!”
He flung himself down and tried to flatten his quills as much as possible. Then he rolled over, exposing his soft, plump belly. Within moments he could feel first Flip, then Nimble, and, after a pause, Tumble push up against him, uttering sleepy sighs of comfort.
As he lay there the old porcupine’s mind drifted to visions of his own snug, private log. He thought of Poppy and Rye’s children. Those children were a nuisance too, constantly talking, asking him needless questions. “But,” he thought wistfully, “I never had to be in charge of them. And at the end of the day they always went away.”
“Baked birthday boozers,” Ereth managed to say before he succumbed to deep and needed sleep. “I’m trapped. Completely, utterly, miserably trapped.”
CHAPTER 13
Marty the Fisher
THE MORNING DAWNED as bright as ice. New snow lay thick, softening everything jagged, even as it absorbed almost every noise. In all the landscape the only sound to be heard was the high, piping dee-dee-dee of a tiny black-and-white chickadee flitting among the tree branches along the edges of Dimwood Forest.
That small sound was enough to wake Marty the Fisher from his sleep. He had gone to bed beneath a pile of old leaves he’d found heaped against a rock by the forest rim. Before burrowing in and falling asleep, he’d vowed to wake as early as possible, promising himself that on the morrow he would catch that very annoying Ereth.
In fact the fisher was more determined than ever to catch the old porcupine. He was not going to give up now.
When Marty had last seen Ereth—beneath the light of a midnight moon—the porcupine had been moving clumsily along the bluff in the wake of three tumbling young foxes. Even as Marty watched, the whole group had suddenly disappeared—into a den, or so the fisher presumed.
Afterward, Marty spent a good amount of time trying to guess why Ereth was with the foxes in the first place. He decided it must have something to do with Leaper.
Quickly throwing off remnants of sleepiness, Marty crept silently along the forest fringe. When he saw an aspen tree with a thick branch that stretched over the open field, he climbed it, then moved along the branch as far as he could safely go. From this high vantage point he had a complete view of the field—and that included the bluff.
“Be patient . . .” Marty urged himself yet again. “Be very patient. Ereth is doomed.”
CHAPTER 14
The Kits
DEEP WITHIN THE FOX den it was not noise that aroused Ereth from his fitful sleep, but immense aggravation. “Snake-smell
