Willodeen

“‘Ain’t her fault,’ Pa said, coughing and sniffling. ‘They rattle easy, poor creatures. And folks is always bothering them.’

‘But why?’ I asked as I wiped stinging tears from my eyes.

‘Claim they eat livestock. Kill pets, wild game. Not a whit of truth to it. I seen ’em eat dilly bugs and the like. Mostly they live on peacock snails, grubs, worms.’”

Before the fire that kills her family, Willodeen and her pa watch a mother screecher with her young. The mother is skittish and releases the screecher stink to ward away the humans she perceives as a threat and protect her young. The beliefs the villagers hold about screechers show how people believe what they want to believe, regardless of whether there’s evidence to support those beliefs. If Willodeen’s father hasn’t seen screechers eating livestock, it’s likely others haven’t witnessed this either. Those rumors are probably stories people made up to justify hunting and killing screechers because they stink.

“I liked keeping to myself. For as long as I could remember, people had always confounded me.

I’d given it careful thought and decided that most folks had a sort of clock in their heads. It told them when it was time to laugh at a joke. When to step closer for a whispered confidence. When to start a conversation, and when to say farewell.”

Willodeen expounds on how she avoids people because they make her uncomfortable. She feels different because she doesn’t act like the others in her village act, and she also uses her difference as an excuse to push people away. The clock she refers to represents two things. First, it shows that Willodeen believes there are appropriate ways to react or act and that she doesn’t act this way. Second, she views other people as boring or uninteresting—the clock is her noting that other people seem to act the exact same way in any given situation.

“Most years, the village held an Autumn Faire to celebrate the arrival of the hummingbears, and visitors came from near and far. When I was seven, we’d had to call it off after a mudslide north of the village center. And when I was nine, smoke from a fire two ridges over had kept most visitors away.

But even without those problems, we’d all noticed that fewer hummingbears were migrating to the village. Each autumn, the willows still turned silvery-blue. The air still got a crisp-apple feel to it. And we still prepared for the onslaught of visitors. But something had changed.”

Willodeen describes the tradition of the fair and the hummingbear migration. The way she thinks of disasters as occasional events that cause problems symbolizes how problems creep up on people. While Willodeen knows something changed, she hasn’t yet made all the connections between the disasters and nature’s balance being off. It can be difficult to see something is wrong when there isn’t constant evidence of the problem. The occasional happenings signal that things are different but not necessarily that action should be taken. They are still infrequent enough that they might be attributed to bad luck or a temporary effect.

“Gray Beard held out his hand. ‘Let’s have it, then,’ he said, jerking his chin at the arrow I was still clutching.

My hands were trembling. I felt the tip, imagining the pain it could inflict. I’d handled many arrows, of course. My parents had taught me to hunt. I ate rabbit stew and chicken when I could, same as everyone else.

But to kill something for no reason, just because? Where was the sense in that?”

This passage is part of an exchange between Willodeen and a couple of screecher hunters. Before this scene, the hunters shot at Sir Zurt, and Willodeen grabbed one of the arrows to make sure it wasn’t used to inflict more damage. The arrow represents the debate between killing to survive and killing for the sake of killing. The hunters want the screechers dead because they don’t see any use for the creatures other than collecting the bounty placed on them. By contrast, Willodeen can’t fathom killing an animal for a reward, something she doesn’t consider a valid reason for death. She understands the idea of killing to eat as that’s part of the circle of life, but even so, she believes that one should only kill what they need and no more to survive.

“‘I think they killed him. An old screecher.’ My voice was low. ‘Two hunters. For no reason.’

‘For most people, money is always a reason.’” 

Willodeen converses with Connor after running away from the screecher hunters. Connor’s observation singles out the power of greed. Without the bounty, the hunters may not have gone out of their way to kill a screecher and might have opted to just scare off the creatures instead—something that requires less work. The money incentivizes killing the screechers, and that incentive leads to unbalancing nature and the subsequent lack of hummingbears. The bounty is an example of people’s good intentions (removing screechers to make the fair more enjoyable for tourists) backfiring.

“Duuzuu snored peacefully on my pillow. Everything about him was curled. He slept in a tight ball, his tail looped, wings hugging his round body.

How did he sleep so soundly? After all these years, I still woke up dreaming of fires, of screams, of helplessness. Sometimes, I’d be the one screaming out loud, and Birdie and Mae would come running in to soothe me.

Duuzuu had been through the same fire I had. Why didn’t he have bad dreams? Did animals remember things the same way we did? Or did the world just exist from moment to moment for them?”

Willodeen ponders the difference between how animals and humans perceive the world. She doesn’t use these words, but she describes the human ability of higher processing—the awareness of thought that allows people to see the past, present, and future as interconnected. While this has benefits, it also means humans can dwell on the past and let it dictate their present and future. By contrast, Duuzuu doesn’t seem burdened by higher processing. His simpler way of viewing the world means he dealt with his loss of flight a long time ago and lives in his new reality because it’s the only one he has. This passage is another example of Applegate offering insight into how animals might view the world.

“I closed my eyes and tried to recall my last birthday with my family. Pa and Ma had just finished building our home. It was made of logs and mud and time, mostly. A simple dwelling, but they were proud of it. I’d even helped a bit. Or at least my parents had pretended to let me help.

All that work and sweat. That building and dreaming. Gone in a flash, in a frenzy of flames.

What was the point in making things, if they only came to ashes?” 

Willodeen turns 11 during the story. Her birthday prompts her to think back to her family, and this is one place where she recalls her old life. Her questions and observations here speak to the theme of Change Is Inevitable. If there hadn’t been a fire, Willodeen’s life with her family might have ended another way or changed in ways she hasn’t considered. Willodeen wondering why people bother to build things if they’ll just get ruined shows she’s still growing as a person. She doesn’t yet realize that it’s worth building things and putting down roots because anything could change at any time. It’s worth enjoying what we have in the moment.

“‘But grown-ups,’ I persisted, ‘run the world.’

‘Well, we’re not exactly doing a first-rate job of it, are we?’ said Mae.

Birdie squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t stop being angry, Willodeen. It’s part of who you are. You see the world differently. You care. That’s a gift.’” 

Willodeen laments that she can’t make any kind of difference in the world because she’s only a child. Birdie and Mae argue that Willodeen is a person regardless of the number of years she’s been alive. Willodeen argues that grown-ups have all the power, and while the response from Mae and Birdie doesn’t refute this, it doesn’t agree with it either. Mae and Birdie blatantly say that adults aren’t perfect, implying that adults make mistakes and can be wrong just as much or more than children. Birdie’s statement about anger contrasts Willodeen’s helpless feeling. Rather than helplessness, Birdie says anger means Willodeen has strong feelings that can be turned into action, something Willodeen doesn’t see yet.

“‘Birdie and Mae say being different is a useful thing.’

‘Hmm.’ Connor considered the idea. ‘My father says being different makes life more difficult.’

I watched the leaves on the blue willows twirl, silver to blue, blue to silver. ‘I guess both things could be true,’ I said at last.”

This conversation between Willodeen and Connor happens while they walk to the town meeting. As a whole, the exchange shows that one thing can have multiple meanings. Mae and Birdie view being different differently from how Connor’s dad does, but that doesn’t mean either way is right or wrong. Instead, as Willodeen says, both could be true. Being different is useful because it allows for multiple perspectives. People of various races, cultures, and other identities can offer fresh takes on problems and help develop solutions that a group without that diversity may not find. Conversely, differences can make things more difficult, like in the case of disabilities; something that is simple for most people might be difficult for someone with a disability.

“The meeting finally ended, and I watched the villagers streaming out of the hall. I wondered if they’d come to any decisions. What plans could they really make? To hope with more fury? To bicker with more energy?

They were the grown-ups. They were in charge. And yet I’d seen children behave better.”

Willodeen sits outside the village hall after running out of the meeting. The meeting was full of anger and arguments that accomplished nothing, and Willodeen is frustrated by the grown-up response to the village’s concerns. Her observation about what they could accomplish shows how anger and argumentative tendencies don’t lead to solutions. Her observation that children behave better calls to the idea that children view the world more openly, while adults are stuck in their beliefs or in what they think is possible.

“Mae put her hand near her mouth and said, in a stage whisper, ‘Willodeen doesn’t believe in magic.’

Connor looked disappointed. ‘Really? Is that true?’

‘Of course it’s true,’ I said. ‘You do?’

‘I believe there are things we don’t understand,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t mean magic exists,’ I replied.

‘There’s magic in all of us,’ Birdie said. ‘Just a bit. You’re born with it, like fingers and toes and fuzzy baby hair. Some of us make use of it. And some do not.’”

This conversation occurs after Quinby comes alive. Willodeen, Connor, Birdie, and Mae are puzzling out how Quinby’s change might have occurred, and while Mae, Birdie, and Connor settle on magic, Willodeen doesn’t want to believe. Willodeen likely doesn’t want to think magic is real because if it is, it should have been able to save her family. She may not be able to handle that thought. Birdie’s observation about magic speaks to how magic impacts the story. Quinby coming to life is a visible effect of magic, but Birdie’s explanation implies that magical things are happening all the time that no one notices. The idea that there’s magic in everyone implies that people have more control over their lives than they want to admit and also that many people choose not to exercise that control.

“Connor pointed to a cleared strip of forest where a stand of blue willows had been planted a year ago. ‘Those willows don’t look like they’re doing well,’ he said.

‘I told them it was a bad idea to plant there. Blue willows crave water. Ponds, rivers, lakes.’ Mr. Burke shook his head. ‘But we were outnumbered. The train brings tourists. The blue willows bring hummingbears. Everybody should be happy. Only it doesn’t always work out that way.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘That’s what they like to call progress.’”

This conversation between Willodeen, Connor, and Connor’s father comes while Willodeen is out hunting for food for Quinby. The group met up in the village, and Connor notices the stand of willows that aren’t doing well. They were only planted there because a vote determined it would be a good place to have more hummingbear nests. The willows can’t thrive because there’s no readily available water source, but that was not a factor the voters considered. The only factor they cared about was having more willows to attract more hummingbears, and they did not consider making sure the trees were in an environment where they could survive. Mr. Burke bitterly refers to such decisions as “progress,” implying that things people believe are a step forward are often the opposite.

“I sighed with satisfaction. It felt so good to have provided for Quinby.

A memory came to me. My pa, watching the screecher and her babies, saying: She’s just doing what she’s meant to do, my girl. Caring for her own, best as she can. Like all us mas and pas.

Still, I felt for the poor peacock snails. After all, they were living creatures, too. But that was the way of things, wasn’t it? Didn’t I eat hens’ eggs and river trout and venison?”

Willodeen finally offers Quinby the peacock snails that are screechers’ main food source. While watching Quinby eat, Willodeen realizes how hard her parents worked to provide for their children. The memory of her pa is a step toward her coming to terms with the fire; she realizes that while she’ll always miss and love her family, there is still life for her to live. Willodeen also struggles with the idea of killing, even when it’s for survival. She knows Quinby needs to eat to survive, but she feels bad for the animals that have to die in the process. Her opinions reflect how we can feel conflicted about something good for us.

“We slid her out of the basket. Quinby blinked, stunned. She looked up and down and all around. She pulled on her rope to get close to the willow roots.

And then she went to work.

If you’ve ever seen a dog bury a bone, or a spotted green chipmunk rooting for a lost acorn, you will know what I’m talking about. Quinby clawed near those trees with utter certainty she’d reach her goal. Every so often, she’d stop to sniff the ground, her snout quivering. And every time she dug, she found a treasure trove of peacock snails. Dozens upon dozens.

‘She knows exactly where to dig,’ I said. ‘Their sense of smell is amazing.’” 

Willodeen and Connor bring Quinby to the secluded grove of blue willows because they realize that Quinby is much more equipped to find her food than they are. Quinby’s proficient hunting process even though she’s never searched for her own food before shows how animal instincts and senses are stronger than those of humans. Quinby is utterly confident in what she’s doing because she’s made to be confident in her ability to find the snails. Willodeen and Connor marvel at the process because they had such difficulty finding just a few snails and because human methods of finding food are not so precise or efficient.

“‘What are you looking for?’ Connor asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I never do. I just have the feeling that the looking will lead me to the right questions. And maybe even the right answers.’”

While Quinby eats at the blue willow grove, Willodeen wanders the area gathering information and observing. Willodeen’s actions here are the first step in making discoveries—becoming familiar with an area or situation. Willodeen doesn’t know what she’s looking for or even if she’s looking for anything at all. She follows her observational skills to whatever they show her and takes notes in case it becomes relevant at some point. Though it seems like she isn’t making progress, many scientific discoveries begin by finding something by accident or by simply observing changes. Willodeen’s actions here show that we don’t need to set out with a particular goal in mind to learn or find something; we just need to remain open to new ideas.

 “I looked at Birdie and Mae and asked the question. The one I’d asked a hundred times before. ‘Why?’ I sobbed, then found my voice. ‘Why did I make it out when they didn’t?’

They knew I meant my ma and pa and brother.

And I knew what they were going to say: what they always said.

No one knows why, Willodeen. But we are so glad you did.

I hated that answer.

I wanted adults to make sense of the world. I needed them to promise I would always be protected, even though I knew it was impossible. I yearned to hear ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’”

Willodeen wakes from another nightmare about fire, and Mae and Birdie rush to comfort her. Willodeen’s thoughts here call to the enduring power of fairy tales. Though she knows it’s impossible, Willodeen wants the traditional happy ending of a fairy tale. Fairy tales offer happiness and perfection that aren’t found in real life. Wanting answers is another part of Willodeen’s personality. As a researcher and observer, Willodeen seeks answers and is annoyed when she doesn’t find them. This extends to the fire that killed her family. She wants to understand why they didn’t survive while she did, even though there’s no answer to find.

“Strange, the way hummingbears were so particular about what they ate and where they nested. A lot of creatures were more openminded, it seemed to me. Take screechers. They nested wherever they could. And even picky Quinby had learned to eat more than just peacock snails.

I thought of my brother, Toby. When he was one and a half, he’d refused to eat anything but porridge for months on end. I remembered Ma groaning Give me strength as Toby turned up his nose at anything but lumpy porridge. (The more lumps, the better.)

It seemed like a bad idea, all things considered. If you were open to eating lots of different things, wouldn’t that make your life easier? If you could nest anywhere, didn’t that give you more chances to find a safe resting place?”

This passage comes when Willodeen takes Quinby to the grove without Connor. As Quinby eats, Willodeen studies the blue willows, looking for notable differences between the trees with and without hummingbear nests. As she contemplates the trees, she ponders nature’s peculiarities. Some creatures are very picky about where they live and what they eat while others are only picky about one thing but not the other, and still other creatures are not picky at all. The variation in preferences shows nature’s complexity and how it takes all kinds of creatures to populate a world. Willodeen’s observations about leaving options open make sense logically, which suggests that animals don’t think logically as humans do. Hummingbears nest only in the trees where their bubbles adhere to the leaves, which makes sense from a survival standpoint—those trees offer a safe place where their nests won’t fall. They could expand, but other trees wouldn’t be as safe, so they limit themselves to the best chance for survival.

“‘I still don’t understand what the reason is,’ I added. ‘Do the snails harm the roots? Does that affect the sap in the leaves? But if I’m right, we might fix things by luring screechers back to Perchance. They could keep the snails from getting out of control.’

Connor shook his head. ‘You are amazing. Do you realize that?’

I shrugged. ‘I feel like Quinby showed me the answer to the puzzle,’ I said, sighing. ‘And now she’s gone.’

‘You found the answer, Willodeen,’ Connor replied with a sad smile. ‘Quinby just provided the appetite.’”

Here, Willodeen shares her findings about the blue willows with Connor. Willodeen doesn’t know what exact effect fewer peacock snails have on the willows, which shows how discoveries can come in stages. For now, she figured out that the bubbles don’t stick to the leaves when there are too many snails. She can work on why they don’t stick later. The latter portion of this quotation speaks to giving ourselves credit. Even though Willodeen discovered something extraordinary, she’s reluctant to give herself credit, instead giving the credit to Quinby. Connor’s observation shows that credit can be shared and that Willodeen should applaud herself for what she did. She might not have figured out the hummingbear problem without Quinby, but her observational and learning skills allowed her to perform the experiment that brought her to her conclusions.

“‘He just wants what’s best for you, I think. The worry on his face yesterday, when he didn’t know where you were […] He loves you so much.’

‘I know.’ Connor reached up to scratch Duuzuu’s ear.

‘All that worrying. Seems like the worst part of being an adult to me.’” 

This conversation between Willodeen and Connor comes after the fire in the latter part of the book. Willodeen has a new outlook on family and love after realizing that she could have lost everything again if this fire wasn’t contained. After helping the villagers, she understands the meaning of community, and she can see caring between friends and family where she didn’t notice it before. In particular, she sees the love Connor’s father has for his son, and she isn’t afraid to point it out. Connor’s observation about worrying is one of the main differences between children and adults. As children, most of our needs are met by adults, and as we grow, we take on more and more responsibility, which leads to more worrying. Worry is a way to show we care, but if left unchecked, it can consume us past the point of usefulness.

“‘Yesterday,’ he said, his voice solemn, ‘we saw the best of ourselves. Working to fight a common enemy. Caring for each other.’ His voice cracked. ‘We’ve fought other fires, faced other problems. But this time we worked together in a way I’ve never seen before.’

The crowd murmured and nodded.

‘My grandmother, rest her soul,’ continued Thaddeus, ‘had a saying.’ He paused to blow his nose. ‘“Thaddie,” she would say—she called me Thaddie even when I was a grown man—“Thaddie, with enough whispers, you can make a roar.” Yesterday, our beloved village of Perchance managed to roar.’”

Thaddeus is one of the men on the village council, and this speech comes at the emergency meeting following the fire. Thaddeus speaks about community and coming together to face a common threat, something that has just saved Perchance and its people. The comment about enough whispers making a roar refers to the power of many; alone, a few whispers don’t do much, but if enough quiet whispers are combined, they are loud. This idea may be applied to any situation where a few of something feels insignificant. If enough similar things are combined, they can create something huge, and that huge thing can create change where the individual smaller elements could not.

“After the group calmed down, I explained, best as I could, how screechers and hummingbears and blue willows all needed each other, even if it wasn’t easy for us to see or understand.

I said they were a community, same as we were.

At this, some people stirred. I heard murmurs, shifting in seats, sighs.

‘The same as us?’ someone demanded.

I noticed a gray-templed man, nattily dressed, standing to my left. I’d seen him before. It was James McLachlan, owner of the nearby mill. ‘Are you actually suggesting, child, that a foul beast deserves the same regard as a human being?’ he asked.

‘He’s right! We aren’t animals!’ a woman yelled, and others muttered their agreement.

I gulped. I knew what was in my heart. But turning that into words—coherent, grown-up words—perhaps that was more than I could manage.

Behind me, I heard others standing. More angry folks, no doubt.

Was this how screechers felt? Cornered? Outnumbered?”

Willodeen gives a speech about the relationship between screechers, blue willows, and hummingbears at the emergency meeting, determined to make the villagers see that things need to change if they want the hummingbears and fair to come back. Willodeen is still afraid of speaking, but conviction in her beliefs gives her the courage to stand up to a room of intimidating adults. The reaction to her calling animals a community shows how humans think of themselves as above nature, rather than as part of it. People don’t want to believe they are animals because animals seem simple while humans can have complex thoughts and emotions. They fail to see that humans are alive and, therefore, part of nature as much as other animals and plants. Willodeen’s comparison to screechers being cornered may either refer to herself or the people; at this moment, she feels cornered by the growing group of upset people, but she also sees how the people feel cornered by her new ideas.

“Was I making a terrible mistake? Giving a gift was almost as bad as accepting one. It made you obliged. It created a connection. [...] But I didn’t feel beholden. I didn’t feel weighed down. I just felt glad.”

Willodeen tells Connor to take Duuzuu home since Duuzuu is so content in his presence. In the past, any kind of exchange, transactional or otherwise, made Willodeen uncomfortable, especially if it meant she might have to talk to someone again in the future. Here, though, she doesn’t feel that anxiety, a sign that her character arc is complete. She doesn’t feel like she owes Connor anything or like he owes her something; she learned that people can simply be part of each other’s lives without expectations.

 “The last day of the Faire, I promised to help Connor close up his stand. He still sold hummingbears, but he’d started making other puzzlers, too. They were wonderfully strange. Hawks with fins. Lions with wings. Screechers with smiles.

His father admitted he didn’t understand what they were. Or why Connor wanted to make them. But he didn’t stand in Connor’s way, either.

Some folks sneered when they saw Connor’s puzzlers. On the first day of the Faire, while Mr. Burke, Connor, and I were chatting, a woman walked past Connor’s stand and loudly whispered, ‘What on earth is wrong with that boy?’

To our shock, Mr. Burke responded, ‘What on earth is wrong with your imagination?’”

The year after the fire, the fair resumes. Willodeen is involved with the goings-on, rather than spending as little time at the fair as possible as she did in prior years. This passage shows her change, as well as Connor’s father acknowledging Connor’s art. Though Connor’s father doesn’t understand the creations, that doesn’t matter; he doesn’t need to understand them to support or defend them. His exchange with the woman shows how some people will judge things for being different. The woman doesn’t understand and may even fear Connor’s creations because they aren’t what she considers normal. Instead of acknowledging her feelings and trying to be more open-minded, she tears down Connor’s work to hide her insecurities.