Before coming to the Lone Island, Milton didn’t think he’d ever faced a life-or-death situation outside of Isle of Wild. Not a single one.
Boy, had that been nice.
He’d been away from home for less than two weeks, and already he’d almost crash-landed in the ocean, almost been push-pulled into oblivion, been literally eaten, and almost gotten fanged by an invisible feline.
And now he was going to climb three hundred feet into the air with only some retractable sticks to spot him.
Milton wasn’t afraid of heights, but he was most definitely afraid of falling from them. He was afraid of his entrails becoming extrails. He was afraid of becoming a Milton-shaped splatter.
Given the situation, they were reasonable fears, and he was fairly certain that everyone, even Fig the tree-climber, shared them.
They weren’t going to be gouged with toxic spines (whew!), but they could still plummet to certain death (and really, tomato, tomahto. Whether you’re stabbed or splattered, dead is dead).
Gabe, however, proved his hypothesis wrong.
“Here we go!” the youngest member of the group cried. Then he stuck one foot on a twig-hand and grabbed another higher up. Instead of remaining flat like little platforms, the twig-hands gripped Gabe’s foot and held his hands. When he shifted to take the next step, the twig-hands assisted, pushing upward and steadying him. “Looky looky!” he called down. “Helping hands.”
“Gabe, be careful! Wait for me!” Rafi yelled. He started after his brother, hollering cautions and advice.
Fig watched them, but she didn’t move. She stood next to Milton while he breathed deeply and made blergh noises (fish jerky, life-or-death situations, and a very sensitive stomach were not a good combination).
“Are you ready, Sea Hawk?” Fig asked. “The lemallabies are waiting for us.”
Milton adjusted his explorer hat. He straightened his glasses. “All right, Lone Island,” he whispered. “We’re coming up to meet you.”
With Fig next to him, he started up the Enmity-Amity Tree (which was really just an Amity Tree at this point).
Shockingly, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as he had imagined. Fig kept telling him that Little SmooshieFace was at the top and that they were almost there, which helped a lot. After a few dozen feet, he was practically jumping from twig-hand to twig-hand. He was scaling this tree like Sea Hawk fetching his breakfast mangoes or lunchtime guavas or nighttime coconuts. In fact, Milton didn’t even notice how high he was until he was surrounded by yellow, blue, and green leaves.
It was amazing, he thought, what you could do when you had a friend by your side (and also a brawny, dashing alter ego).
The leaves at the top of the tree were long and broad and crisscrossed over one another. They formed what looked like a thatched roof over Milton’s head with a small opening close to the trunk.
“Just a little higher,” called Fig from below him. “Don’t look down.”
Milton didn’t look down. He grabbed the next twig-hand, stepped up, and stuck his head through the opening.
“Great flapping falcons,” he breathed. “Would you look at that.”