Milton let out a yelp of horror.
He dashed across the yellow-blue-green leaf-floor, but then hesitated. He didn’t want to look down the Enmity-Amity Tree trunk and see the lemallaby-shaped splatter at the bottom.
When he finally steeled his stomach and peeked over the edge, however, there was no Lord Snarlsy splatter to be seen. Instead, he saw the lemallaby skittering down the tree trunk, then flinging himself into a nearby neon-pink palm. He paused there, waving up at Milton from his perch.
“Time to go,” Milton said to Fig, Rafi, and Gabe.
They touched the tree trunk again (it was slightly less terrifying the second time around), and the twig-hands popped out. On the way down, the twig-hands lowered them from branch to branch. Milton was hardly even scared (he only screamed seven times … maybe eight).
As soon as they reached the ground, Lord Snarlsy leaped from his palm to a shrub with spiraling branches and seedpods shaped like tiny bells.
“Do you want us to follow you?” Fig called up to Lord Snarlsy. He nodded, setting the seedpod-bells to ringing, then scampered along the twisty branches and launched himself onward.
Across the jungle they went, with Lord Snarlsy pausing every few yards to wait. Never once did the lemallaby’s feet touch the ground as he led them past a few Sweet Pickle Trees, through a maze of bristly bushes that were filled with birds’ nests (unoccupied, thank heaven, since Milton suspected they belonged to Tone-Deaf Warblers) and behind a line of pine-like shrubs that had sparkly pom-poms instead of needles.
Then they came to an impossibly tall waterfall. The water wasn’t the muddy brown of the river they’d canoed in, but a bright, clear turquoise, and rainbows sparkled in the mist all around. On the far side of the waterfall, there was a clump of Truth-Will-Out Vine, and Lord Snarlsy flung himself right onto the strands. Hanging there, he chattered something in Lemallabese. Milton wondered what kind of truths a monkey-marsupial-ferret would have (I ate the last magenta SunBurst Blossom, or maybe It was me who threw poop at the Astari Night Avis last night).
Whatever he said, the vines listened. They parted to reveal a path that led behind the waterfall—a path that Lord Snarlsy swung through.
Milton, Fig, Rafi, and Gabe raced after him.
When they came out on the other side, they were in a clearing that Milton felt quite certain was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen—on-screen or in person. The ground was covered in thick, vibrantly green moss. The tree trunks were pure white with jewel-toned leaves that met high above, forming a floral dome. The light filtering through this many-hued canopy was tinted with color and aswirl with gold-shimmering insects, their wings emitting a gentle shhh.
It wasn’t just the way the clearing looked that made it beautiful though. From the moment he came through the vines, Milton felt it—that same feeling he used to get on his backyard expeditions, the feeling that had come back to him this summer, the feeling he could only find when he went out to meet the world around him.
Milton felt like he was as alive as he’d ever been in this full-of-life place, the center of the Lone Island.