It was a nice picnic, maybe the best we ever had. We took our time about everything—didn’t even start eating right away, but dozed in the sun a bit, “like bears coming out of hibernation,” Meena said. She’d brought a book of poems with her, and we took turns reading a few aloud. I can’t remember which ones now, but it was fun.
We’d skirted wide around the Hundred-Acre Wood when we came up to find a picnic spot; but by the time we were ready to start home, the late sun was shining on it at an angle that made the young new oak leaves glow like emeralds, and the forest itself look golden and sleepy and magical. Meena kept glancing over at it while we were packing up the picnic stuff, and all of a sudden she said, “It would be so much shorter to go back straight through the Wood. Let’s do that, Jenny.”
“Let’s not, how about that?” I said. “You hated the place—we all did. Very bad idea.”
Meena scowled. She doesn’t do it well, but it’s cute. “I was scared,” she said. “I don’t like being scared. It’ll bother me until I do something about it.”
When Meena gets locked in on something, that’s the end of it. She’ll always listen, she’s always polite, but you might as well not bother. Even Chris Herridge would have found that out, sooner or later.
We were halfway to the Hundred-Acre Wood, making good time on the downhill walk, when I saw the Black Dog.
He was flanking us on the right, keeping between us and the Wood. Daytime or not, he looked just as black as he’d looked in moonlight, and maybe even bigger. Not a sound out of him—no bark, no breath, no footsteps in the grass—nothing but those red, red eyes fixed on me. I stopped where I was. I said, “What do you want?”
Meena was walking a little way ahead of me. She turned around, blinking. “What? Did you say something, Jenny?”
The Black Dog had stopped walking when I did. I asked again, louder this time. “What the hell do you want?”
“Jenny,” Meena said. She came up to me, partly blocking my view of the Black Dog. “Jenny, who are you talking to?”
“The Black Dog, for God’s sake. Don’t you see him?” Because Tamsin’s one thing—I can imagine how some people might not notice a wispy, transparent ghost, even if she’s practically sitting in their laps, the way she always was with Tony. But the Black Dog looks like a solid chunk of midnight that somebody hacked into the shape of a dog. Other people have seen him, I know that, there are books. I still don’t understand how it all works.
“The Black Dog,” Meena said. She turned to look where I was pointing, and then back at me. “Jenny, I don’t see anything.” She was keeping her voice as even as she could, the way people do when they’re really worried about you. “I don’t see a dog.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll explain.” I moved her out of the way, very gently, and I asked the Black Dog again, “What? What is it?”
Nothing. I don’t know what I expected—he’d never made a sound, even to Tamsin, or told her anything useful, except to watch out for some aggravation or other. But when I started walking again (with Meena sticking close and looking anxious), so did he, always edging us away from the Hundred-Acre Wood, like Albert steering those idiot sheep. I’m not quite that dumb, so I told Meena, “The Black Dog always comes as an omen. He’s telling us to stay out of the Wood.”
Meena stopped studying me as though I were crazy and just started to laugh, standing there with her hands on her hips. “And that’s it? That’s what all this is about? You don’t want to cut through the Wood, so—voilà!—here comes the Black Dog to warn us off. Really, Jenny.” She was trying to look stern and severe, but she was giggling too much to pull it off. She said, “Well. You and the Black Dog will just stay out of the Wood, and I will be waiting for you at the Lightning Tree,” which was a storm-splintered alder where we’d veered away from the oak forest on the way up. “Just don’t take too long. I want my tea.” And she started straight off into the Wood, walking right past the Black Dog. He didn’t move to follow her, or block her path again—didn’t even look after her, any more than she looked back to see if I was coming. Just at me.
Well, there wasn’t any damn choice, obviously. I met the Black Dog’s red eyes, spread my hands, lifted my shoulders, mumbled, “Yeah, I know, I know,” and followed Meena. I looked back once, and of course he was gone. He’d done his job.
I walked a little way into the wood, along the path Meena had taken. Tamsin had only made me promise never to walk in an oak forest after sundown, and we still had plenty of daylight left. But oak forests are different from pine woods. Under the pines it’s dark and cool almost from the moment you step into their shadow; but with oaks, at first you still feel that you’re walking in sunlight. For a while. Scuba diving’s like that, I remember: warm and sparkly near the surface, with the light drifting down through the water; but the deeper you go, the scarier it gets, until it’s icecold night and going to be night forever. That’s the way the Hundred-Acre Wood is, once you’re inside.
Meena was already half out of sight, bending to duck under an overhanging branch, when I saw the red cap.Just the one, with no face under it, no body. It looked like a toadstool—no, more like a fat red thumb bobbing up from behind a scrubby berry bush and disappearing so fast I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it. I stopped in my tracks—still just on the edge of the wood, and I called to Meena, but she didn’t hear me.
I couldn’t tell if the second red cap was the same as the first or different: It popped out of a rotten log—bloodred, sticky blood just starting to dry—and gone again. I yelled then, as loud as I possibly could, “Meena! Get back here! Meena!”
To me it seemed as though the oak trees were swallowing up my voice, but a moment later Meena reappeared around a bend in the narrow path. “What? Did you call me, Jenny?”
She hadn’t seen the red caps at all. I didn’t want to scare her, so I lowered my voice a little. I said, “Come back here. Please. Now.”
Meena stared at me. “Oh, don’t tell me the Black Dog has made another appearance? Jenny, you can do what you like, but I am walking straight through this wood and out the other side. That’s all there is to that, I mean it.”
My throat was dry and tight, and I was shaking, going burning hot and then absolutely icy by turns. I told her, “Meena, if you take another step, I will drag you back out of this place by the hair. And I mean that, and you know I do.”
She did know. I spotted another red cap over her shoulder, flirting through branches, quick as a squirrel’s tail, no chance to get a fix on it. I was frantic for Meena to move, but she only stood looking at me for what felt like hours. Then she started back along the path toward me, walking slowly, not saying a word.
“Move!” I said, but she wouldn’t come any faster. I was afraid she’d stop altogether if I pushed her any more, so I just stood waiting until she reached me and stalked on past. When her hair brushed my face, she jerked her head away.
Just before we came out of the Hundred-Acre Wood, I turned and saw a face. It looked like melted candlewax, the color of bacon fat, except for the blobby red nose. The eyes were round as a doll’s eyes, and they watched us from a hole in a hollow tree with a no-color hatred that made me stumble against Meena. There was a smell, too, I remember, all around us, like a refrigerator that really needs cleaning out.