I JUMPED SEVERAL feet in the air and swung around. A pair of sprightly blue eyes peeped at me out of a wrinkly, gray-whiskered face. The man was lean, almost heronlike, and his head was as bald and leathery as a snake egg. It was as if all of his hair had crawled off his scalp and formed under his nose into whiskers as gray and bushy as squirrel tails. I took a step backward. I’d never seen him before but I knew in my gut who he must be.

“Crazy Crag,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

He seemed to wince momentarily at this, but it was so fleeting I couldn’t tell for sure.

“I’m Lug,” I said.

“Dinky Lug!” he chortled.

I stared at him.

“Runty Lug?” he asked, stroking his mustache. “Or … Stunted Lug?”

“My name—”

“Wait, wait, one more guess!” he said, rubbing a pair of strangely gray-smudged hands together. “Is it Little Slug?”

“I don’t like to be called that.”

“Really?”

I nodded, taking the hint. “I guess you prefer to be called just Crag, then?”

“Actually, Crazy Crag has a lot more oomph to it,” he said. “I’ve also heard them call me Cracked Crag, and I have a very special place in my heart for Cuckoo Crag.”

I gawked at him.

“Confusion is good,” he said. “It’s a sign that you might actually be paying attention.”

I inched backward, even more confused.

“Most people just don’t pay attention,” he continued, his blue eyes twinkling. “They don’t notice little changes here and there.” He wiggled his fingers toward a stand of bare gourd trees. “And then—poof!—everything suddenly changes and they discover they’ve been fools all their lives.”

I eyed the bare trees, stripped by the cold. “What do you mean everything changes?”

He grandly waved a hand toward Mount Bigbigbig and the sky. “There’s always something bigger coming around the mountain.”

I felt my eyes pulled back to the two bloody holes in the boar’s head.

“Don’t worry, my piddly pebble!” he chortled. “The beast won’t get you. Not if you stick with Crazy Crag.”

“There’s … a beast?”

“Many!” said Crag, pointing behind me toward a rustling sound.

I whipped around, fists clenched. It was just a little spotted squirrel on a branch. It chittered and scampered off.

Crag giggled.

“That,” I said, trying to regain my composure, “was not funny.”

“Come to my cave,” he said, pointing toward the mountain. “I control the storm light. Beasts don’t like storm light.”

I inched farther back. “I just want to know who killed this boar.”

“What a boring question!” he said, yawning.

“O-kay,” I said, “um, what do you want?”

“A better question. What do you want?”

I glanced at the boar’s head again. “An answer.”

“I’m afraid all I have is questions,” he said, stretching luxuriantly. “Off to my cave now. The question is, do you want to see the storm light that makes the beasts fear you? Especially in the dark.”

“I’d … love to,” I said, taking another step back, “but …”

“Late for lunch?”

“I really gotta go!” I said, taking off.

When I glanced back, Crag was smiling and wiggling good-bye with his gray-smudged fingers. “I’ll see you sooon,” he sang. “When there’s no mooon …”

For a moment, I wondered how his fingers had gotten that dark, rich gray color. It was a hue I had always wanted for my paintings, but I had never been able to find a rock that could produce it.

He turned and strolled up the slope, his song fading out as he disappeared into the foliage. “When there’s a stooorm … one must stay waaarm …”

I had an unsettling feeling that I’d be seeing him sooner than I’d like.

I ran back empty-handed and found Echo by the burbling stream. She was watching the young mammoth use his long, muscular trunk to suck up the water and dump it into his mouth. It was very similar to how a macrauchenia drank, except a jungle llama couldn’t strangle another animal with its tiny trunk. I studied his two wet, sharp tusks, gleaming bright white in the late morning sun. They looked just the right size to have made the wounds in the boar’s head.

“Echo,” I whispered, “what does he eat?”

The mammoth’s big ears seemed to perk up at this.

I took her aside and told her about finding the severed head.

“Woolly wouldn’t touch a boar,” she said. “He’s a plant eater like me.”

“How do you know? Maybe he eats other things when you’re not around.”

“Because his poo isn’t all stinky like a meat eater’s. Believe me,” she said, “we plant eaters know each other.”

I was considering whether to tell her about Crag, when Stony returned. He carried so many bananas and gourds and berries that he looked like a walking fruit basket. Froggy sat on his shoulder, squinting sinisterly at the cloud of cheeky little fruit flies that hovered around them. The frog flicked out a long pink tongue and swallowed the nearest one with a smug little gulp.

After we’d all eaten, Echo suddenly stood up. “Lug,” she said, “Stony, Froggy, and I are going to leave you and Woolly together for a while. If you’re going to ride him in the Big Game, you guys need to get to know each other.”

I shot the young mammoth a suspicious look. “I guess so,” I muttered.