Migo turned and ran as fast as he could. The plane zoomed toward him.
“Aaaaaah! Stop it! Get away!” Migo yelled, looking over his shoulder as the creature chased him.
Wham! The plane hit the ground behind Migo, sending up a blast of snow in its wake. Migo jumped down into a ravine to hide, but his feet hit a sheet of ice, and he slid up and launched into the air! He landed right on top of the plane and rode it like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. Then the plane hit a bump and flung him forward, headfirst into the snow.
He popped out of the snow to see the nose of the plane skidding toward him. It stopped inches away.
Migo sighed with relief. “Whew!”
Then the cockpit burst open and the pilot shot out of the plane. His parachute opened up, and Migo watched, wide-eyed, as the pilot slowly fell back down to the snow. The parachute covered him.
Curious, Migo slowly approached the pilot. The man crawled out from under the parachute. Migo had never seen anything like the pilot before. He was so small! And where was his fur?
“Ahhhhhhhh!” the pilot screamed. Startled, the man jumped back, slipped, and landed on his back with his feet facing Migo. The Yeti was amazed.
“Look at your small foot,” he said, which to the pilot sounded like growls and snarls. Then it hit Migo. “Smallfoot” was a word he knew—a word from the stones. “Oh my gosh, it’s a Smallfoot!”
Excited, Migo leaned in to take a closer look, but a blast of wind filled the parachute and sent the pilot flying away from Migo into the clouds.
“No! Come back!” Migo yelled.
The pilot was gone—but the Smallfoot’s craft, the airplane, was still there.
Migo made his way to the village as fast as he could, heading right to Main Street, yelling, “Everyone! You gotta see this! Come here!”
He stopped in the middle of the market stalls to catch his breath. Some of the Yetis noticed him, and a group of kids ran up to him.
“I. Saw. A SMALLFOOT!” Migo announced.
The Yetis all began to chatter excitedly to one another.
“What did he say?”
“He can’t be serious!”
“That’s impossible!”
“Just follow me and see for yourselves!” Migo said. “Come on, everybody!”
Curious, a group of Yetis followed him. Thorp, who was the Stonekeeper’s son and Meechee’s brother, was patrolling the village while riding on his mammoth, when he spotted them leaving. He turned toward the palace.
“Dad!” he called out.
Migo, meanwhile, couldn’t wait for everyone to see the craft of the Smallfoot. But before he could get there, a hungry yak tugged on a piece of greenery near the plane. The ice cracked, and the snow underneath the plane loosened. This sent the plane tumbling down the hill, but then it stopped at the edge of the cliff, teetering.
“It came at me from the sky in some sort of hard, shiny, flying thing!” Migo was saying as he led the villagers toward the crash site. “It made a sound like—eeeooooowwww! It’s right this way.”
Migo crested a hill—just in time to see the plane fall over the cliff and disappear into the clouds.
“No, no, no!” Migo wailed. He watched helplessly as a wind blew away the tracks that the craft had made in the snow.
He turned to the other Yetis. “It was right here!” he insisted. “Look, I swear! The shiny flying thing, that’s what the Smallfoot shot out of. It was like, poof!”
He made a parachute shape with his arms.
“And then a big fabric thing landed on top of it, and it was like, whaaaaa! And when it saw me, it sang the most strange, beautiful song, like, aaaaaaaaaah!”
“Ahh!” the Yetis repeated.
“Almost,” Migo said. “It was more like, aaaaaaaaaaah!”
He looked around. “It’s probably still around here somewhere,” he said. “Let’s look for it!”
One Yeti got a look of panic on his face. “Still around here?”
“It could be in the village!” someone else cried.
“It could be at my house!” someone yelled.
“GET THE CHILDREN!” another Yeti shrieked.
The Yetis started freaking out, all talking at once.
“Wait. Hold on, everyone,” Migo said. “The Smallfoot didn’t seem all that scary. It was kind of cute.”
At that moment Thorp entered the scene, riding his mammoth. He blew on a large horn. “Everyone! Make way for my dad! I mean—the Stonekeeper!” he announced. “Sorry, Dad—uh, Stonekeeper.” He shook his head. “I blew it.”
The murmuring of the crowd calmed down, and the Yetis fanned out as the Stonekeeper arrived, followed by Meechee.
“Good morning, everyone. How are you?” the Stonekeeper asked.
Dorgle came running up behind them, and his stomach dropped when he saw Migo at the center of attention. This could not be good.
The nervous Yetis fired frantic worries at their leader:
“Stonekeeper! He saw a Smallfoot!”
“He said it might still be out there!”
“He said it fell from the sky.”
The Stonekeeper smiled calmly. “Now, I know that Migo has gotten you all very anxious with his little ‘story,’ ” the Stonekeeper began. “But there’s nothing to fear, because it isn’t true.”
“But I saw one,” Migo insisted.
“No you didn’t,” the Stonekeeper replied.
“I did,” Migo pressed.
The Stonekeeper smiled. “You couldn’t have seen it, because it doesn’t exist.”
“I know, I know. Because a stone says, ‘There’s no such thing as a Smallfoot,’ ” Migo replied.
The Stonekeeper pointed to one of the stones on his robe. “Yep. Right here. Clear as day.”
“I know, but it was right there in front of me!” Migo said.
Thorp climbed down from his mammoth. “Hey, Migo. How did you know it was a Smallfoot?”
“Because . . . it had a small foot,” Migo replied.
Thorp looked at his father. “Dad?”
The Yetis began to murmur. Migo sounded very sure of himself.
“Daddy, clearly he saw something,” Meechee said.
“Oh, I’m not denying he saw something,” the Stonekeeper said. He walked through the crowd, making eye contact with the villagers. “Most likely he slipped, fell on his head, got confused, and saw a yak.”
The Yetis nodded in agreement.
“Because if Migo is saying he saw a Smallfoot, then he’s saying that a stone is wrong,” the Stonekeeper continued.
“Oh no,” Migo muttered. Nobody was allowed to say that the stones were wrong.
“Is that what you’re saying, Migo, that a stone is wrong?” the Stonekeeper pressed.
Before Migo could answer, his father did it for him.
“Nope!” Dorgle said loudly, pushing his way through the crowd. “He is not saying that.”
He turned to the Stonekeeper. “Let me talk to him. Kids, right?”
The Stonekeeper nodded, and Dorgle pulled Migo aside.
“Migo, what are you doing?” Dorgle asked in an urgent whisper. “Challenging the Stonekeeper? In front of the whole village?”
“Dad, what piece of advice have you always given me?” Migo asked.
Dorgle’s eyebrows furrowed. “Don’t eat yellow snow?”
“The other one,” Migo said.
“Never pee into the wind.”
Migo shook his head. “Dad, you raised me to always tell the truth.”
“But if it goes against the stones, then it can’t be true,” Dorgle pointed out.
“If I say I didn’t see a Smallfoot, then I’m lying,” Migo said.
Dorgle looked at his son. He knew Migo believed what he was saying. Dorgle had no idea what to say.
The Stonekeeper approached them. “Migo? I thought you wanted what was best for the village,” he said.
“I do!” Migo replied.
“Then are you still saying that the stone is wrong?” he asked.
The Yetis all focused on Migo, waiting for his answer.
“If saying I saw a Smallfoot means that a stone is wrong, then I . . . I guess I am,” Migo said bravely.
The Stonekeeper shook his head. “Oh, Migo. It pains me to say this. It truly does. But you leave me no choice. Disobeying the stones is a grave offense. From this day forward you are banned from the village.”
The Yetis gasped in shock.
“What?” Migo asked.
“Until you are ready to stand before us all and tell us the truth,” the Stonekeeper said.
“I am telling the truth,” Migo said.
The Stonekeeper turned to the crowd. “That’s all, everyone,” he said. “Back to work. Let’s make it another perfect day.”
Dorgle stepped in front of the village leader. “Stonekeeper! Please! That’s my son.”
“Just give him a little time out there to think,” the leader replied. “He’ll come to his senses.”
Little Soozie stared up at Migo with tears in her eyes. He didn’t know what to say to her. He’d been teaching the kids that the stones were always right. What would the young Yetis think of him now?
“Soozie—” he began, but Thorp rode up on his mammoth and got between them.
“Hey! You’re banished!” he barked.
Migo watched all his friends walk away in disbelief.
Thorp rode away, and the other Yetis slowly made their way back to the village, leaving Migo all alone.