Bartholomew is Blown Away

It's a dangerous business…going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

"It's an odd year and no mistake," Mrs Nutty commented as the rain raced past the small window set high in the wall. "Too warm for my liking, it is. It ought to be cold and nippy for tail and toes and we ought to be throwing snow at each other, not-" and she glanced derisively at the pot standing in the middle of the floor catching drips, "trying to keep the rain out from where it don't belong."

Bartholomew snuggled deeper into his fluffed red tail. This damp cold was far worse than any deep, dry cold of midwinter. The snow that had fallen the week before had turned to slush and it had been alternately raining and sleeting ever since. The rain was rushing down now, and they could hear the steady roar of the Great River, overflowing its banks, almost flooding as high as the foot of the Nutty tree.

"A poor way to spend Christmas, I always say," Mr Nutty commented, drawing deeply on the stem of his acorn pipe. "Not enough heat to keep body and soul together, I'm thinkin'."

Bartholomew agreed and shivered when a drop of water, finding its way through a hole in the rough bark of the tree, landed cold and unwanted on his shoulders and trickled down the fur on his little, huddled back. He shivered again. He didn't have the girth of his mother, nor the height of his father, being the very youngest and smallest of fourteen. The oldest seven Nuttys, had already gone off and gotten married and started families of their own in other trees along the edge of the River, but the younger seven still lived with Mr and Mrs Nutty.

It was always hard being the youngest…and the runt. He never did anything particularly useful, as he chilled easily and his mother was always keeping him inside to turn the roasting chestnuts over the fire. His older brothers were the really rash and brave ones. To watch them leap through the trees! Why, it would make any squirrel heart beat a little faster! Bartholomew was not immune to the excitement, but he could only content himself with watching.

"Aye lad," his father would say, "But it's not yer fault you can't go dashing about with the others. Wait 'till thou's a bit larger, boy. It's nobbut a few years ahead."

In the meantime, Bartholomew had to be content with being 'Bart', and 'Mew' when the others thought he was looking particularly scrawny. It was 'Bart, get yon muffler' and 'Bart, don't fo'get to close the door behin' us," and sometimes, "Mew, stop shivering, you're givin' me the chills'.

And Bartholomew gritted his teeth and dealt with it. What else could he do, after all? His sisters and brothers weren't bad sorts, when all was said and done. They were just a bit…well…you know.

They were country squirrels, the Nuttys and never wished to be anything else, but sometimes, on long afternoons in front of the fire when Mr Nutty was reading The Adventures of Moonwood the Hare aloud, Bartholomew dreamed of greater things. His father's reading voice left much to be desired, as the elder Mr Nutty charged clear through periods and often came to full stops in the middle of sentences; it was no wonder Bartholomew's mind sometimes wandered.

Bartholomew dreamed of travel. He knew very well that he was too little and insignificant to do great deeds, but he thought, with any luck, he might be able to see things without being noticed. On lazy summer afternoons, he would sit on his special tree branch and watch the wherries and barges going down river to River's Mouth, quainted by River Otters who sang wild and seaworthy songs as they carried cargos bound for blue water.

And down at River's Mouth, there was the city of Paravel and up on the hill (and Bartholomew's little heart raced at the thought of it) stood Cair Paravel, like a great lady, he was told, high up on a cliff beside the sea.

Nobody from those parts had ever seen it, except for old Mr Ignatius, the Barn Owl, who had once flown up to view it from the sky, but had lost his best feathers in a storm that had blown up at that time and had never flown again. The castle was grand and great, he said, his great round eyes reflecting the firelight and rows of little squirrel faces during those nights when the Nutty family came to the old Owl's tree for stories (anything was better than Mr Nutty reading The Adventures of Moonwood the Hare).

The question everybody always wanted to ask was whether he had happened to see Them, the royalty, the four children who had come along one day and ousted Her and become kings and queens of all Narnia. Ignatius never gave a direct answer on that subject and the Oldest Inhabitants declared that it was because he never got as far as Cair Paravel at all and was making everything up.

But Bartholomew knew better, ever since Old Ignatius had taken him aside one night and breathed in his tufted ear, "I won't tell them, they wouldn't understand. But I think you might. You have that look about you."

Bartholomew stared up at him with wide and wondering eyes as the old owl continued his narrative.

"I did see them," Ignatius said in a soft, haunting voice. "All of them. When I came down all hurt and defeathered in a tree outside a window, that one with the gentle hands and the one with the golden hair reached out and took me inside."

Bartholomew stared with bulging eyes, "What happened next?" he breathed.

"They took care of me, they nursed me and fed me…on…on…warm milk…" the old Owl's eyes were growing misty, "and they stroked me…just here…under my chin."

To be rescued by Them, to be fed on warm milk, to be stroked…here…he almost couldn't imagine the wonder of it. The others could scoff at the Old Owl all they wanted, but Bartholomew never would. He knew.

~o*o~

The rain let up the next day, followed by a period of unusually warm, sunny weather and as Bartholomew dashed in and out of the tree through the afternoon of Christmas Eve, dark clouds were piling higher and higher in the East, like great piles of soot, constantly blowing into new and fantastic shapes.

"Dirty weather coming and no mistake," the Oldest Inhabitants commented when asked for their opinions. "Rain, hard rain and flooding, maybe. Batten down your hatches tonight. Stay low."

With these words of wisdom ringing in their ears, the Nutty family rushed to be ready. The windows were made fast, firewood was piled up, and the old hurricane lantern was found among the rafters and filled with oil in case of emergency. Mrs Nutty cooked a special dinner of chestnuts, stuffed with leftover walnuts, drowned in a hazelnut gravy. Bartholomew's nose twitched at the wonderful smell rising from the oven that sat with its cover tight on, buried among the coals.

Outside, the wind came first, rushing up the River and making the branches of the Tree creek and groan. There was a moment of silence and the Nuttys all stared at each other as the trunk shivered. It was certainly not a night for squirrels to be at large.

The rain came next, coming all at once, not slowly, to pound like mad against the door and windows. The sharp 'ping, ping, ping' of rainwater dripping into the pot in the middle of the floor turned into a steady stream. Bartholomew wrapped himself up in his tail and was glad he was indoors…and fortunately the rain was too loud for Mr Nutty to suggest reading aloud.

They ate their dinner and did not enjoy as much as they thought they would. The wind seemed to be coming harder and harder and the rain was almost a single sheet rushing past the windows, not separate drops. Often times, the talking would simply fade away as they felt the Tree sway in a particularly brutal gust.

"Not so fair a Christmas Eve," Mr Nutty commented in a lull and the rest agreed.

"It's a gale and a half," he added a moment later when the wind came again, redoubling its pummelling against the Tree.

And then, It happened.

The old door, straining at its hinges in the powerful buffeting, finally gave up. It burst open, letting in the stampeding wind. Squirrels went everywhere in a flurry of tails. Good roast chestnut was blown about and ruined. The fire was snuffed out as if it were a candle.

But in the last of the firelight, Mrs Nutty had seen Bartholomew rushing towards the door to close it again.

"Stop him! Stop him! He's too little!" she shrieked.

Those were the last words Bartholomew heard. One moment, he had both paws on the door handle, trying to pull it closed, the next moment, he was blowing out like a flag into the black, rain soaked night. He held on with all his might to the door handle as the door flapped in the wind and flapped him too; he knew very well that if he let go, he would be whisked away by the hurricane and landed he knew not where. Yet he could not hold on. His paws were slipping.

He let go.

He always wondered afterwards if he had held on a moment longer, his strong brothers and his father might have got him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back in, but he simply couldn't hold on any longer and by the time his father and brothers had reached the door, and his mother had lit the hurricane lantern, Bartholomew Nutty was blowing like a bit of thistledown over the Great River.

~o*o~

When he first blew out into the night, raw terror gripped Bartholomew by the heart and wouldn't let go. He was so afraid, he thought he might expire before anything terrible really did happen. He had a terrible fear of the wind, a terrible fear of the rain and an even more terrible fear of the blackness of the Great River that ran rushing away towards the sea below him, all breaking with white foamed caps and rushing with wreckage from a bridge that had been swept away up river.

But when minute after minute passed and the wind blew him on without much inclination to put him down, Bartholomew began to feel a strange excitement. Where would it end? What grand and wonderful places would he see? He tried not to think of the black water below him as he rushed along in the howling wind; he tried to think only of how the others would praise him when he came back, a wanderer from Far Away.

He had only been to a printer's shop once, at Watersmeet, where he had seen the sticky black inch rolled onto the type and the great press come groaning down with enough force to crush Squirrels without even noticing. How grand those books lined up in the glass window had looked, with covers imprinted with gold scrolls and writing; how wonderful it would be to write a book himself. He could see it now, black print swimming before his eyes, The Wanderings of Bartholomew: The Tale of a Very Small Animal.

But even the warmth of these happy thoughts was not enough to keep out the cold of the wind and Bartholomew's teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Something even worse was happening. The wind was lessoning and looking down, he saw that he was very much closer to those terrible black waves than he had been. In a moment he would be in them. He knew it.

At long last, the tiring wind dropped him. He fell, spiralling in the air for a moment, before the angry waves reached up to grab him. It was black…all black. Water was getting up his nose…his fur was slick to his body…he couldn't tell which way was up. There was a terrible moment when two waves seemed to be tossing him back and forth like a ball, then he washed against something solid.

It was wood, spinning in the flood; with the last of his strength, he got his claws into it and scrambled up its slimy surface to plaster himself against it like a bit of damp fuzz. Then he let himself faint from terror.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note: We seem to have written a fair number of Christmas stories. There's East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and I'll be Home for Christmas, The Unbroken Song, and now this one. Even The Once and Future King has Christmas bits in it. I really think that when all is said and done, these Christmas ones are my favorites; they're more meaningful for one thing and we hope even this one packs a punch before the end.

As many of you probably know, I love writing about animals. We grew up on Beatrix Potter, loved the Mistmantle Chronicles to death, and more recently became addicted to Richard Peck's books, The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail, and Secrets at Sea, as well as Stephen Lawhead's Riverbank Series. I don't go in for his fantastical epics, like Rose, but I love it when he writes about ducks, voles and hedgehogs. ;)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas from both of us!

~Psyche and Rose