Wildoak

Rumpus continues playing, practicing stalking, and looking for food in the forest. He saw Maggie earlier, when she was in the tree; she caught a glimpse of him at the edge of the clearing, but since she was not carrying meatballs, he ignored her. In the afternoon, he hears a rumbling noise and scrambles into a tree to hide as two men drive by in a truck. He decides the tree in the clearing is safer and heads back. Along the way, he hears Maggie whooping as she rides the sled; he wonders if the girl is in danger. He does not see the metal trap until it is too late, and one of his paws gets trapped. He writhes in agony, but he is firmly anchored to the ground by the trap. Near evening, Rumpus finally passes out from the pain.

Back inside Fred’s cottage, Maggie and Fred warm up by the fire, and Fred tells Maggie about some of his other inventions. He tells her that his most ambitious project is a flying car that he is working on building. Maggie is excited by the idea, but gradually, she finds she is too tired to keep talking. She writes Fred a note, thanking him for the fun she had sledding and wishing him goodnight. Fred tells her how much her visit means to him, and they hug goodnight.

In the morning, she brings her snails downstairs so that Fred can look at Hurricane—Maggie thinks the snail is looking ill. Fred does what he can for the snail and then announces that he must leave for work. Maggie is uncomfortable about being left alone, especially because if she needs anything, she will have to contact Fred by telephone. She thinks about going to play in the clearing by the old tree, but then she remembers the feeling she had of someone watching her there.

Rumpus moves in and out of consciousness. A badger—a creature Rumpus has never seen before—comes close. Rumpus knows that he cannot defend himself in his weakened state, but the badger does not attack. Instead, she licks his wound as clean as she can. Rumpus passes out again.

Maggie returns to the ancient oak, which seems like an old friend. She wanders around looking for sticks, thinking she will make a fort in the tree. Suddenly, she realizes that she has wandered too far and is lost. As she desperately searches for signs of anything familiar, she spots blood on the snow. She finds Rumpus and realizes with a shock that he is the creature she saw from her bedroom window; she also sees that he is gravely wounded. She cries when she sees the steel trap his leg is caught in, and she decides she has to find a way to free the big cat. Relying on blind instinct, she runs until she finds a path she recognizes. She marks the spot and returns to Fred’s house, where she finds some large metal shears and some first aid supplies. Maggie rushes back to Rumpus, but the metal shears are useless against the trap and she cannot free him. She forces herself to calm down and think. When she eventually finds the mechanism that opens the trap, she presses it as hard as she can, and the jaws of the trap begin to open.

Rumpus is roused by cold water being splashed on his face. He finds that his paw is bandaged, and he tries to rip the cloth off with his teeth. But the girl is there, talking calmly to him, and he relaxes as she offers him water to drink. Still skittish around her, however, he awkwardly moves away when she makes a sudden movement. The panic in her voice as she begs him not to leave upsets him further, and he runs off through the woods toward the clearing and the old oak. It is difficult for him to climb up, but eventually, he manages to settle himself inside the hollow at the center of the tree and fall asleep. He wakes sometime later to the sound of the girl throwing pebbles against the tree. Maggie leaves a plate with a pheasant from Fred’s larder near the base of the tree, and Rumpus is hungry enough to risk emerging from the tree to eat.

Maggie watches Rumpus eat, amazed at the sight of him. He is too large and unusually colored to be any kind of cat she has seen before. She thinks he seems somehow halfway between kitten and cat, halfway between domesticated and wild. She decides he is out of place in this forest, lost and confused, and thinks that if she makes it clear that she is not a threat, he might be willing to trust her. She sits down and stays very still. Rumpus watches her, eventually lying down at a distance. Eventually, he goes back up into the tree hollow and Maggie stands, stiff and numb from sitting in the cold for so long.

As dusk falls, she has the strange sense of communion with the forest again, as if it is vibrating around and through her. When she returns to the house, the door is ajar, and she realizes that someone is in the house. Peeking through a window, she sees a man rifling through Fred’s papers. The man sees her, and Maggie runs. With the man chasing behind her, Maggie makes it to the lane. She spots Fred coming down the road from work, and she knows she is safe. Although it takes her some time to communicate what is happening, Maggie eventually uses a combination of speaking, gesturing, and note-writing to let Fred know what has happened. He gently squeezes her shoulder and tells her that he thinks he knows exactly who the man was.

Rumpus sleeps in the hollow of the ancient oak, dreaming of playing with Rosie in their enclosure at the Pet Kingdom. Suddenly, Rosie disappears, and no matter how he searches for her, she is simply gone.

After dinner, Fred explains to Maggie about his neighbor, Lord Foy, who owns all the land that Wildoak forest sits on. Lord Foy wants the woods cleared for a copper mine. Fred, who loves nature, is very distressed about this idea. He believes that Lord Foy broke into the cottage and stole the medical records Fred has been trying to use to rouse public opinion against the proposed mine. He tells Maggie that Lord Foy has also been starting rumors that Fred suffers from dementia. Maggie is upset that there seems to be no way to stop Lord Foy.

Then, she impulsively tries to tell Fred about Rumpus. Fred tells her that Rumpus is certainly not a leopard and that what she saw was likely a large farm cat, but he is upset at the idea of the cruel trap and agrees to come with her first thing in the morning to see what she is talking about. When they arrive at the old oak the next morning, Rumpus is not there, but Maggie shows Fred the trap and the bloodstains. After Fred leaves for work, Maggie uses an encyclopedia to look up information about leopards, and she realizes that the cat she saw is a snow leopard. She takes more meat from Fred’s larder and heads out. Along the way, she finds the broken collar. Now she knows that the big cat has a name: Rumpus.

Rumpus continues to try to explore his new surroundings, but everything is more difficult because of his injury. He is very hungry, and he is glad when he sees Maggie coming with food. She sits very still in the same spot she occupied on the day she rescued him from the trap. He watches her while he eats, and when he finishes, he is brave enough to approach her, coming close enough to smell the edges of her mittens. He sees that she is nervous, but her soft eyes tell him that Maggie is not a threat. He lays down close to her. After a while, Maggie takes off her mitten and reaches out to gently touch him.