The Littlest Bigfoot (11 page)

She cared about Bigfoots . . . and, by extension, she cared about Jeremy, too.

A
LL THROUGH SEPTEMBER, MILLIE HAD
been permitted precisely an hour of reconnaissance in the morning. After that, Teacher Greenleaf, who was almost as old as Old Aunt Yetta but considerably less indulgent, would call her into class. Millie would scramble down her tree and go to her lessons in the dim little school-burrow, which, like most Yare dwellings, was half underground. When her school day was over, she'd visit Old Aunt Yetta's, where, as part of her Tribe Leader training, she was studying herb lore.

“Ginger,” Old Aunt Yetta said, on a rainy afternoon in October. Millie picked up the gnarled beige-colored root.

“For nausea, morning sickness, and . . .” Millie paused, thinking.

“You should know this,” Old Aunt Yetta chided.

“Digestion?”

Aunt Yetta nodded, then named another herb. “Black cohosh.”

Millie selected a thin branch covered with frilly white blossoms and tiny, round green pods. “Cramps and bone-fret.”

“Tincture or tea?”

“Umm . . .”

Old Aunt Yetta sighed. “Nyeh. Smart as you are, you can't do better than this? What will you be doing when I'm gone?”

I'll be gone too,
Millie thought. She'd find a way to shed her fur and keep it from coming back. She was sure it could be done. She'd leave the forest and find her real Tribe. She would . . .

“Millie.” After all these years, Old Aunt Yetta knew exactly what Millie was thinking. Shaking her head, she set out a small snackle; the crumbly, sweet whole-wheat biscuits that she knew were Millie's favorites; a wheel of goat cheese made from the milk of her own goat, Esmerelda; and a jar of lavender honey. She piled on
scones made with chives she'd snipped from her garden; heavy clotted cream; small, sweet apples; dried cherries; and a fun-size Snickers bar as a treat. Like the rest of the Tribe, Old Aunt Yetta was forever trying to fatten Millie up, always keeping a cookie or a sweet in her pocket, putting extra sugar into Millie's tea, extra butter on her bread, and cream on top of her morning oats.

That afternoon Aunt Yetta stuck a small candle into the middle of a seed cake. “Happy Name-Night to you, happy Name-Night to you,” she warbled in her off-key, scratchy voice. “I know it isn't until tonight, but I wanted to be wishing you the best.” Old Aunt Yetta set a wrapped rectangular box with a bow on top beside Millie's plate. “For when you're done.”

The Yare didn't celebrate birthdays. Instead, they honored the seventh day after a baby was born, when the little one received a name. Millie's real name was Millietta, but she'd always been called Millie—or Little Bit or Smallfoot (which was a kind of joke about how the No-Furs called the Tribe Bigfoots), or Little Silver, because of her fur.

Millie smiled and clapped. “Thank you.”

“Nyebbeh,” said Aunt Yetta, which, in that instance, meant, “You're welcome, even though I am still a little upset with you.”

Millie tucked in, Old Aunt Yetta watching with approval. “Didn't you eat your snackle at school?”

Millie shrugged. The truth was, she'd been thinking so much about the noise and bustle across the lake that she'd barely remembered to nibble the cheese and crackers Teacher Greenleaf had served.

“Were you daydreaming?” asked Old Aunt Yetta, who was familiar with all of Millie's bad habits.

Millie sighed. “In a No-Fur book I am reading, I learned about elections. Do you know that the No-Furs pick their Leaders, and it doesn't even matter much what clan they are from?”

“What are they calling their Leaders?”

Millie crunched a bite of apple. “Presiment?”

“President,” Old Aunt Yetta corrected her.

“The name is not mattering,” said Millie. “You could be anyone, from any clan! As long as you are good and fair and the No-Furs like you, then you can be their Leader!” She kicked at the wooden chair with the heel of her small foot. It barely made a sound, which only made Millie madder. “And then the No-Fur who doesn't want to be the Leader can go and do singing!”

“Oh, Millie.” Old Aunt Yetta smoothed the soft silver-gray fur on Millie's forehead. Millie ate another scone.
The breeze that had been rustling the tree branches died down, and in the quiet Millie and Old Aunt Yetta heard a burst of laughter from across the lake.

“Will my father do the Mailing tomorrow?” Millie asked, her tone casual and her eyes on her plate.

Old Aunt Yetta sighed. She knew that Millie's interest in the Mailing, and the town of Standish and the No-Furs who lived there, was anything but casual.

“How did we get the Mailing box?” Millie asked.

“We did it on-the-line,” said Old Aunt Yetta, in a tone that let Millie know not to pursue the subject.

“But someone must have gone to the posting office. Someone must have had to talk to the No-Furs and get the key, because they couldn't have mailed us a key if there wasn't a box yet to mail it to.” Millie sat back smiling triumphantly. “Nyeh!”

“Millie . . .” Now Old Aunt Yetta was practically groaning.

Millie raised her head. Her eyes shone in her furry face. “I bet there's a way for us to un-fur ourselves and go out into the world. I bet my father . . .”

“Millie,” said Old Aunt Yetta, speaking in a sharp tone she rarely used with her young friend. “That's enough.”

“There must be a way, and if there is, I will find it.”

Old Aunt Yetta stifled another groan.

“So how is it done?” Millie asked. Her face was alive with excitement. “Is it shaving?” Millie had actually tried that on her own, but the single old razor that she'd found hadn't done much more than trim her fur short, leaving her with an oddly patchy look that the other littlies, especially Tulip, had found endlessly amusing.

“Shaving does not work,” Old Aunt Yetta said.

“Why? Why does it not work?”

“Because the fur comes back.”

“Why? How fast? And when we are un-furred, do we look like them?”

“No,” Old Aunt Yetta said, her voice stern. “No, we do not.”

Millie didn't believe her. She'd made a careful study of herself in the single mirror in her family's home. With her head-hair slicked back, she looked almost like a regular No-Fur girl, like someone who could wear regular-girl clothing and pass in the regular-girl world.

But she knew when she'd pushed hard enough. She sat up straight, brushing crumbs out of her face-fur and piling them neatly on her napkin.

“Shmeh,” said Old Aunt Yetta, which was a polite Yare word for “Let's stop discussing this uncomfortable subject.” “Open your giftie.”

Millie unwrapped the box and clapped in delight when she saw it was a collection of six episodes of
Friends
. “Can we watch a nepisode?”

“Just one,” Old Aunt Yetta said. “And it is ‘episode.' ”

Millie beamed, jumped up from her chair, and flung her arms around Old Aunt Yetta's waist. Old Aunt Yetta made sure the door was latched and no one was nearby, and Millie settled into a pile of cushions on the floor and sang and clapped along as the theme song began.
“So no one told you life was gonna be this way . . .”
It was true, she thought . . . but it was also true that no one had told her that her life would be this way forever. She could change it; she could take control of her own destiny, could learn the secrets that would let her escape her little village and go out into the great wide world.

“Millie.”

At midnight Millie opened her eyes. Her parents were standing by the side of her bed, smiling. Her father's arms were filled with wrapped gifties. Her mother carried Millie's favorite carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, with twelve lit candles standing in a ring around its edge.

“Happy Name-Night!” her parents whispered, and Millie beamed and gave her parents the biggest hug she could.

She blew out the candles, and her father handed her the first box, wrapped in pink-and-white paper, with a card from Amazon tucked under the ribbon.

Millie's eyes widened. Carefully she removed the paper and the card and tucked them away for safekeeping. Then she opened the box and gasped in delight. Nestled in a cloud of tissue paper was a pair of sparkly red shoes, No-Fur shoes, with metal buckles. “Like in the movie!” she said.

“Just so,” rumbled Maximus. (Her parents knew she'd seen
The Wizard of Oz
, because the previous winter, during a blizzard that had kept the Tribe inside for days, Old Aunt Yetta had arranged a screening and had served popcorn and hot chocolate as the littlies snuggled in piles of pillows and blankets on her floor. Tulip, Millie remembered, had refused to even watch, and Florrie had cried at the green-faced No-Fur pretending to be a witch.)

Millie swung her legs out of bed. They dangled above the floor as she slipped on the shoes, which were the perfect size for her little feet. Next she unwrapped a heavy, beautifully bound collection of Grimm's fairy tales, a boxed set of Anne of Green Gables books, and a dozen ribbons in pinks and yellows and blues that she could clip into her head-hair.

There was a box of chocolate-covered cherries, a box of sea-salt caramels, and a single, slightly battered videocassette of season ten of
Friends
that her parents told her sternly she was only to watch with Old Aunt Yetta and was never to mention to Tulip or any of the other Yare.

“I promise, I promise!” Millie said. Her father hugged her, and Septima smiled her shy smile, with one hand, as always, over her mouth. (Millie suspected that someone had told her mother at a very early age that she had ugly teeth, because every time she smiled, Septima's hand would always wander up to cover her lips.)

Millie walked between her parents down the slope that led to the edge of the lake, for the ritual Name-Night dunking . . . and there, feeling her happiness swell like a bubble inside of her, Millie started to sing: “Happy Name-Night to me, happy Name-Night to me, happy NAME-Night, dear MILL-EEEE . . .”

“Shh!” said Maximus, looking around to make sure they were alone, as Septima pinched Millie's lips together gently but firmly.

“When you are Leader,” she began, “you must be setting the example, Millie. You know how voices carry across the water.”

“I wasn't even being loudness.” Millie struggled not
to sigh, hating the petulant, babyish sound of her voice. Hating, more than that, the constant necessity for quiet, endless quiet, even with the Tribe's village in the center of an untouched forest far from the nearest human home, with thick woods on three sides and a wide lake on the fourth.

“Happy Name-Night,” said Maximus, and handed her a penny. “Do your wishing!”

Millie held the penny tightly and closed her eyes as she waded into the water until she was submerged.
I wish,
she thought, as hard as she could,
I wish I could climb into a boat and paddle myself away
.

She let the penny sink to the bottom of the lake and climbed out of the water, shaking her fur briskly, then trotting to her parents, who'd been watching from the shore. Not many Yare liked the water—their muscular bodies and dense fur didn't make it easy for them to float or swim—but Millie had always loved the lake.

“Little dreamer,” said Septima, bending to give her daughter a towel and a kiss, and her father called her his heart's delight, which made Millie's eyes prickle and her throat get tight.
I will be good,
she promised herself.
I'll do what they tell me, I'll be who they want
.

But early the next morning, Millie could hear the
No-Furs on the opposite side of the lake. Splashes and shrieks of laughter, clapping and shouting and songs. She scrambled up the Lookout Tree and through her binoculars saw that they'd tied a rope to a tall tree of their own, and they were taking turns swinging out over the water before jumping in. It was just too tempting . . .