Chapter 10: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh

Fear and Farewell

📖 A story for grown-up peoples.

Based upon and including sections from the works of A. A. Milne.

Begin with Chapter One
Read Chapter Two
Read Chapter Three
Read Chapter Four
Read Chapter Five
Read Chapter Six
Read Chapter Seven
Read Chapter Eight
Read Chapter Nine

The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Chapter Ten

Piglet and Roo put a blanket over Pooh’s shoulders.

‘Kanga will be w-worried, now that it’s getting late,’ says Piglet.

Roo bounces high and throws his fists like a boxer. ‘I’m not afraid of the dark. Bring on the woozles!’

Pooh smiles to himself. He isn’t afraid of woozles either.

‘Bring on the Heffalumps!’

Pooh loses his smile. It goes hiding and won’t come out again. Heffalumps are an entirely different animal.

‘Perhaps,’ says Pooh, ‘we can leave the Heffalumps where they are. It would be rude to drag them out of bed at this time of night.’

‘Tell me where the Heffalumps are, Pooh,’ says Piglet, ‘and I’ll leave them there. I p-promise.’

‘I’ll drag them out by their tusks!’ shouts Roo. ‘And pack them in their trunks!’

‘Perhaps, it’s best that I don’t say where they are,’ says Pooh, ‘seeing as how they’ve never told me.’

Roo stops bouncing and stands very still. ‘Tigger said they’re eyes glow red.’

‘I s-suppose Tigger would know,’ says Piglet.

Roo’s voice lowers to a whisper. ‘Rabbit said they have claws.’

It grows later and darker with every word, and Pooh wishes his friends would stop speaking. No claws. No tusks. No eyes, burning like embers, watching from the woods.

‘We really must go,’ says Piglet.

‘I think it’s for the best,’ says Pooh.

‘Bye Pooh,’ says Roo.

‘Bye–’ begins Pooh, but his friends are already gone. Then Pooh tells himself, ‘Now, it’s time to sleep,’ but he doesn’t listen. 

Instead, he hears noises in the dark and imagines the unseen things that wear the night like a skin. There’s a SNAP and a CRASH and a very sad GROWL. 

‘Perhaps Rabbit said Heffalumps have only a happy growl,’ Pooh says to himself, yet loud enough so that someone might agree. Nobody does. 

The growl grows louder, and Tigger slinks out of the shadows.

‘Oh, Tigger!’ cries Pooh.

‘You still here?’ asks Tigger, his shoulders hunched, and his head down. ‘I thought maybe you’d have gone home by now.’

‘I would go home,’ says Pooh, ‘if I could. Only, I can’t.’

Tigger nods and draws a paw across his nose. ‘I know the feeling, Buddy Bear. I tried to go to bed, all safe and snuggly.’

‘It sounds delightful,’ says Pooh.

‘But then I think of Christopher Robin in the ground and all that snuggly feels ugly. Positively retchifying.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing good, but what, exactly, is retchifying?’

‘It means I’ll retch if I can’t rectify what I wrecked when I…’

‘Yes?’ asked Pooh.

‘What was the last thing Christopher Robin ever heard you say?’

Pooh thinks. ‘It was probably me saying I’d discovered the North Pole.’

Tigger’s head drops even lower. ‘The last thing he ever heard me say was that he’s no friend of mine.’

‘And isn’t that funny?’ asks Pooh.

Tigger tries to work himself up into a growl but sits back on his tail, deflated, wilted, and sad. ‘It’s not funny to me.’

‘That is to say, isn’t it peculiar?’ says Pooh. ‘Christopher Robin told you this would happen.’

Tigger looks up.

‘And he said that when you return, you’re to strengthen your friends. And here you are, returned.’

‘My muscles aren’t strong enough for this particular predicament,’ says Tigger.

‘Christopher Robin thought otherwise.’

Tigger rises to his feet and feels his arms. ‘He was other-wise, wasn’t he, Buddy Bear?’

‘The smartest boy of whom I know of,’ says Pooh.

Tigger punches at the air, much like Roo when Roo was punching like Tigger. Then with a meek, little voice, he says, ‘I still don’t feel strong.’

‘I’m certain you will,’ says Pooh.

They say goodnight, and Tigger bounces back to Kanga’s house. The bounces are small, timid bounces, but they’re bounces all the same.

Pooh closes his eyes to sleep and thinks maybe the night noises aren’t so loud and scary, after all.

When the sun rises, Pooh lets out a big yawn and shifts slightly in the hole, like a clock hand ticking an uncertain second. For a moment, he freezes, hardly daring to believe he’s moved at all. He yawns again.

‘I moved! Oh help!’ he cries happily. ‘I moved!’

His friends come running and talking excitedly one to the other like a gaggle of geese greeting one another at the end of a long migration. To prove his point, Pooh yawns again, and they all hug and holler and clap.

‘You know what to do!’ says Rabbit.

Tigger takes the front, saying, ‘Strengthen your friends!’

Kanga and Rabbit come behind him, and Piglet and Roo stand to the side, cheering.

‘I’ve been here b-before,’ says Piglet to Roo, ‘and got rather rolled upon. This is safer.’

‘But we’re missing somebody,’ says Roo.

Then at the back of the line comes Christopher Robin. He grabs hold of Rabbit who says, ‘Not too tight now, Roo.’

‘One!’ says Christopher Robin.

Kanga cocks her head to see behind her. ‘Who’s that counting, Dear?’

‘Why, it’s Roo, of course,’ says Rabbit.

‘Two!’ says Christopher Robin.

‘Roo doesn’t know his numbers,’ says Kanga.

‘Three!’ says Christopher Robin, and they all pull together.

Pooh strains, bulges, and pops free of the hole. He sails through the air and lands in the arms of a certain little boy.

‘Christopher Robin!’ cries Pooh. ‘You’re back!’

‘Silly bear,’ says Christopher Robin. ‘I told you I’d always be here.’

The friends gather round, clapping and shouting, and their clapping and shouting soon becomes a party. They sing and dance like moths gathered around a porch light. 

As they dance, the sun sets, and lightning bugs twinkle like constellations in the grass. Christopher Robin’s friends slow and hush, heavy with need for slumber, but no one wants the party to end.

Christopher Robin says, ‘It’s time to go home.’

‘But you’ll come back,’ says Pooh.

Christopher Robin gives each friend a hug. ‘I told you I’d always be here.’ He hugs Pooh last of all. ‘And I know you’ll understand.’

‘I’m a bear of very little brain,’ says Pooh.

Christopher Robin places his hand over Pooh’s heart, and Pooh feels big, bigger than he ever has before.

‘Take me with you?’ he asks.

Christopher Robin presses his forehead to Pooh’s. ‘All of life is counting backwards from ten, and then ready or not, there you go.’

‘Go where?’

‘Where I’ll be waiting.’

‘You’ll wait for me?’ asks Pooh.

‘I will.’

‘Then I’ll wait for you, too.’

Christopher Robin rises to his feet, but his hand still clings to Pooh’s. ‘That’s all I ask. Wait. You can’t count from ten when you don’t know all the numbers.’

‘I know a good many numbers,’ says Pooh, ‘but most turn out to be seven.’

Christopher Robin turns to all the friends. ‘I’m going to my parents’ house, and when it’s time, I’ll have a place for each of you.’

The friends wave and watch, and Christopher Robin walks out of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Chapter Eleven

Two chapters to go in this mix of Pooh, the Gospels, and a dash of Cormac McCarthy.

The story (soon to be one chapter ahead instead of one behind) is also available to download to your favorite e-reader or to read online in an elegant web-native format.

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