By that evening, Kona, Sirocco, and Brisa were worse than worried. They were terrified!
The three Wind Dancers were getting ready for the dress rehearsal “backstage”—which was really just an abandoned bird’s nest in one of the tall forest trees. Brisa had made mirrors out of magical jewels and propped them on the twiggy walls of the nest. Several fireflies were clustered around each mirror to give the Wind Dancers light to see by.
“I feel dizzy,” Brisa said as she peered into her mirror, decorating her mane and tail with more magic jewels.
“I feel hot, then cold, then hot again,” Kona said. She was putting on her stage makeup—berry juice on her lips and black wood-ash around her eyes.
“I think I’m going to throw up!” Sirocco said. The magic butterflies in his halo were looking a little green, too. “Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten so many apple muffins at lunch.”
Suddenly, Sumatra flew into the nest to join her friends. She was all ready, wearing a dramatic headdress of bright rainbow-colored ribbons and lots of berry juice lipstick.
“It’s not your lunch, Sirocco,” she informed the colt. “What you’re feeling is stage fright. It’s completely normal before a big show, even if we won’t have an audience until tomorrow. But guess what? I’m going to tell you something that’s going to take all your worries away.”
“Nobody’s coming?!” Sirocco cried excitedly. “The show’s off?”
“Oh, no,” Sumatra said happily. “Everybody’s excited about it. The squirrels have already said they want all the balcony seats—”
“Balcony?” Kona said. “What balcony?”
“The tree branches!” Sumatra replied, pointing at the tall trees that surrounded the dirt stage. “And lots of other bugs, birds, and animals are coming, too.”
Sirocco’s face fell.
“Well, then,” he said to Sumatra queasily, “I really don’t think you can say anything to make me feel better.”
Kona and Brisa looked just as gloomy.
“How about this?” Sumatra replied with a sly gleam in her eye. “I have an idea. An idea that changes everything…”
* * *
And that’s how the Wind Dancers found themselves—happily—in their bird’s nest dressing room again on performance day the next evening.
Just as they had the day before, they all decorated their manes and tails with jewels, flowers, ribbons, and butterflies.
But one thing was different from the day before.
The flutters in their bellies? The dry mouths and trembling hooves? All of those things had disappeared.
As Sumatra put the finishing touches on her ribbon-y costume, she peered out of the bird’s nest to the stage below.
“The audience is packed!” she reported to her friends. “It’s standing room only! Well, standing and flying and clinging to tree trunks, that is!”
“Bring it on!” Sirocco cried.
“You’re not nervous anymore?” Sumatra asked him.
“Why be nervous,” Sirocco said with a grin, “when you’ve got talent like mine?”
Sumatra grinned.
“Let’s gather for a good-luck nose nuzzle, you guys,” she called to the group. All four Wind Dancers scurried to the center of the nest and touched noses.
“Ooh, I can’t wait!” Brisa said.
“Good,” Sumatra announced. “It’s show-time!”
* * *
A moment later, Sumatra flew out over the audience, her ribbons trailing behind her. Paws, hooves, and antennae clapped together as she introduced herself and got ready to begin her performance.
This is it! she thought to herself. My big show has begun. I only wish Leanna could see me now!
And then, Sumatra began to dance. Her number was full of challenging moves—twirls and whirls, flips and flops, jumps and pirouettes. And lots and lots of jazz hooves.
As Sumatra danced, she could hear the audience oohing and aahing. They gasped when she dove and sighed when she soared. When Sumatra performed her big finale—complete with lots of big, bold kicks—the animals cheered and shouted.
Sumatra was thrilled as she took her bow.
But it was when she flew offstage that she got really excited.
Wait till the crowd sees Kona in action, she thought. She hurried over to the side of the stage, where she’d stashed a feed bucket. The bucket had a hole in the bottom. Sumatra bent her head, put on the bucket, and neighed through the hole. Her voice emerged from the other end, loud and echoing.
“Thank you, thank you!” she boomed through her makeshift megaphone. “For Act Two, we have … Kona! Doing a different kind of dance.”
Proudly, Kona flew out of the nest, looking lovely in her headdress of flowers. From the side of the stage, Sirocco head-butted an acorn toward her.
The audience gasped in confusion—until Kona kicked the acorn with all her might. It shot through the air and landed squarely in a knot in a tree. Right on target.
The audience cheered!
And loudest of all cheered Sumatra.
Sirocco tossed more things, and Kona went after them, all with a big showbiz smile: kick, kick, kick!
By the time Kona took her bow, she had punted an apple into Sumatra’s feed bucket, a dandelion into the bird’s nest dressing room, and a blackberry directly into Sirocco’s open mouth.
The crowd went wild!
“I guess I’m not talentless, after all,” Kona whispered to Sumatra as she bowed to the audience.
“Nope!” Sumatra declared. “You just had to find your talent, Kona!”
Sumatra beamed. Finally, she could say something nice—and really mean it.
Act Three was Sirocco—doing wind sprints! He circled the stage so fast, he was no more than a blur of golden wings and whizzing butterflies. Then he played a trick, plucking a nut out of a squirrel’s paw and planting it into the clutches of a nearby chipmunk so quickly, he could barely be seen.
“Ooh, you better slow down, Sirocco,” Sumatra narrated through her megaphone. “The hummingbirds are getting jealous!”
In response, Sirocco grinned and darted upward, flying so high and fast that he poked a hole in a cloud.
The crowd went nuts!
Finally, it was Brisa’s turn. She flew out in front of the audience and smiled sweetly.
“I’m going to do a dance, too,” she announced. “But mine is a little different.”
Brisa began to move. And as she did, she tossed her head.
Her movements hit her halo of gems in such a way that they tinkled out a tune! A lovely, clear dance kind of tune.
A deer was the first one to start moving to the pretty music, tapping one hoof in the dirt.
Next, a beaver began thumping his tail on the grass in time with the deer’s tap.
A chipmunk hopped in place, and several birds jumped into the air, fluttering their wings joyfully.
Sumatra—who was watching Brisa’s performance with Kona and Sirocco—gasped.
“Everybody’s having such a good time,” she realized, “they’re dancing!”
“Well then,” Kona said, smiling at Sumatra crookedly. “I guess you got your dance show after all!”
“Except that nobody’s pirouetting or dressaging,” Sirocco pointed out, with mischief in his voice. “And, ooh, look at that cardinal. He’s whirling when he ought to be twirling!”
“And the rabbits are hipping when they should be hopping!” Kona added. “And that deer’s jazz hooves are atrocious!”
“Kona!” Sirocco said with a mock frown. “That wasn’t nice. You should have said nothing at all! Or you could have said something super-nice. That’s what Sumatra would do!”
“Okay, okay, enough teasing!” Sumatra protested with a laugh. “But you know what? You guys are right. Instead of trying so hard to say lots of nice things or not say not-nice things, I should have just been honest with you. And with myself. Then I might have realized sooner that trying to make us all into dance stars wasn’t going to make us happy.”
“Lucky for you,” Kona joked, “our true talents were too dazzling to be ignored.”
“Hey, I’ll dance to that!” Sirocco said.
He held out his foreleg to Sumatra. Grinning, Sumatra hooked her foreleg around his, and they started whirling wildly through the air together. Kona began jigging on the breeze beside them, while Brisa continued to tinkle away on her musical jewels nearby.
“So,” Sumatra called to her friends as they danced, “do you forgive me for all I put you through the past few days?”
“How can we not?” Sirocco replied with a shrug and a sly grin. “In the end, we all got what we wanted. We were fabulous!”
