While Milton and Gabe stayed with the lemallabies, Fig went to get a closer look at the SunBurst Blossoms, and Rafi snapped pictures.
“Shouldn’t we ask them about Little SmooshieFace?” Fig said after watching a few minutes of the debugging with a slightly unsettled look on her face.
“I shall do it,” Milton replied. He rose to his feet slowly so as not to upset his animal companions.
Milton had always wanted a Dear Lady DeeDee—a faithful friend who would ride on his shoulder, speak to him in a secret language, and love him unconditionally. Now he was only seconds away from having exactly that. Feet planted on the leaf-floor and Sea Hawkian bravery coursing through him, Milton turned to address the lemallabies.
“Greetings to you, Beautimous Lemallabies!” he cried. “We have come seeking Little SmooshieFace.”
In response, lemallabies all over the canopy started making a honky-snorty kind of noise. It sounded like they had terrible head colds.
“Is Little SmooshieFace here?” Milton asked.
The honk-snorts grew louder. The lemallabies started elbowing one another and grinning bucktoothed grins.
“Can you ask Little SmooshieFace to come out?” Milton tried again.
Now the lemallabies were rolling on the blue-green-yellow leaf-floor. They were falling out of the branches they were perched on. They were, Milton realized, in hysterics about something. He glanced over at Fig, who shrugged in bemusement.
What was so funny about Little SmooshieFace?
He was about to ask after Dr. Paradis’s favorite lemallaby for a fourth time when he saw one of the marsupial-rodent-primate creatures making his way across the treetop clearing. This lemallaby stood out to Milton because he wasn’t laughing. He was smaller than the others, but he must have been old since his face fur was gray. He moved with resigned weariness, his eyes averted from his treemates.
On his booty was a teal SunBurst Blossom pattern.
“I know that bottom!” Milton cried (which was something he had never had the opportunity to say before). “You’re the Milton Macaw! Well, that’s what I thought you were when I saw you by Dr. Paradis’s house.” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “You led me to the field guide!”
The lemallaby held out his paw, and Milton shook it.
“You’re Little SmooshieFace?” he asked.
The other lemallabies broke into hysterics yet again.
Little SmooshieFace let his head fall in a nod, then kept it hanging low.
Fig came to stand by Milton and the teal-bootied lemallaby. “What’s wrong, Little SmooshieFace?” she asked.
Now the lemallabies had formed a circle around them. They were snorting and snickering and howling. Glancing around, Milton had an unpleasant sense of déjà vu.
And he realized, suddenly, what they were laughing about.
Little SmooshieFace was the Bird Brain of the lemallabies.
Milton didn’t know if he could fix that entirely, but he did know something that might help, at least temporarily.
“If I may ask,” he said, “did Dr. Paradis select your name?”
Little SmooshieFace nodded once.
“And I’m guessing that’s not the name you would have chosen for yourself?”
Little SmooshieFace peeked up at Milton, then gazed back down at the leaf-floor. He shook his head.
Around the Enmity-Amity Tree canopy, the lemallabies were leaning in like they couldn’t wait for another chance to break into laughter. So Milton knelt next to Little SmooshieFace. He got very close to him, right up to his furry ear. “I know about that,” he whispered. “How about we think of a new name for you?”
Little SmooshieFace studied Milton’s bespectacled eyes for a moment, then let out a soft, approving chitter.
“How about Wally?” Milton suggested. “Wally the Lemallaby?”
Little SmooshieFace let out a chitter that was significantly less approving and wrinkled his cute little nose.
“Sunny?”
Another nose-wrinkle.
“Teal-Tushie?”
Little SmooshieFace bared his oversize front teeth and growled.
Milton held up his hands. “No Teal-Tushie,” he said. “Got it. Maybe something a little … bolder?”
Little SmooshieFace nodded so hard his ears flapped.
Milton tugged his explorer hat down low as he thought. This new name had to be fierce, wild, and totally awesome. “How about Lord … um … Snarlsy?”
Little SmooshieFace’s eyes widened in his (really super adorable) face. He gave a bucktoothed grin, then snarled his approval.
“Mighty moles and voles!” Milton cried, striking a self-defense pose. “What a ferocious lemallaby this is! Little, perhaps, but definitely not smooshie in the least. No, no. I shall call him Lord Snarlsy, which I think is actually his real name.”
Every fuzzy mouth dropped open in surprise as the lemallaby formerly known as Little SmooshieFace leaped into the air and began vine-swinging his way around the canopy. Lord Snarlsy snarled and hooted. He beat his chest like a gorilla. He wagged his floral behind at his treemates. It probably wasn’t the response that Milton would have advised, but he let the teal-tushied lemallaby go for a pretty long time before gesturing for him to come back down.
Milton knew what it felt like to be given a name, after all.
And he knew what it felt like to choose a new one.
“I’m glad we settled that,” he said when the lemallaby, panting and bright-eyed, was next to him again. “Now, Lord Snarlsy, you must know why we’re here.” He pulled the field guide out of his zippered pocket and held it out.
Lord Snarlsy reached out his very humanlike hands and took the leaf-pages. He flipped through them, stopping on the Beautimous Lemallaby entry. The illustration there was of a small, shy-looking lemallaby: Lord Snarlsy himself.
Fig, who had taken a few steps back during the renaming saga, reapproached them. “The island is in danger,” she said. “Dr. Paradis wrote that you would be the one to ask questions if that ever happened. We need to find her treasure.”
Lord Snarlsy turned one more leaf-page, then studied the illustration there. It was the final entry, the Yes-No-Maybe-So Tree.
“Will you help us?” Fig asked.
The lemallaby looked up from the field guide. He met Fig’s eyes, then Milton’s. He glanced over at Rafi, who had been gawking at him since his vine-swinging performance, and at Gabe, who was practicing his own vine-swinging.
Then he dropped the guide and leaped through the tree-trunk opening.