chapter 6

Something Marvelous

He scampered up a fallen log and looked ahead. He could sense an expanse of light, just a tree’s-length away, where the forest seemed to end.

As he maneuvered around piles of broken fence boards and old plastic bottles and climbed over the massive roots of an ancient sycamore, he poked his head through a clump of maidenhair fern . . . and nearly stumbled off a cliff.

Twig gasped in surprise: the whole hillside dropped off in front of him, a dizzying vertical drop. He’d never been so high; he’d only seen the world from the forest floor.

He looked down, down, down. . . . An enormous expanse of water lay before him, a river of gray and green and blue and brown that rippled and gurgled and sang. He had heard of this before, a river, and had seen illustrations of rivers in his collection of books, but could never have imagined the beauty, or the enormity, of a river.

Large birds were calling to one another in a cascade of white, wings constantly tilting and balancing. They seemed to float on a suspended, invisible river themselves, and Twig stared at them in wonder.

And the breeze! It flowed all around Twig like a magical silk cloth. There was sweetness to it, and a rich earthiness, and honeysuckle, and roses, and a hundred other smells Twig couldn’t name. He stood there for some time, overwhelmed.

He stepped out of the tangle of pokeweed and wild roses to get a better view of the river vista. Suddenly the earth gave way beneath his feet. The overhanging embankment collapsed, eroded away for years by the flowing river.

“Help!” Twig yelled uselessly. He clawed at anything within reach as he became part of a landslide of soil and rock and vegetation that swept him down the slope toward the river.

With a splash Twig was pitched into the river.

A snarl of weed stalks, roots, and dirt entangled him, dragging him under. He opened his mouth to squeak, but it only let in a large mouthful of water and soil, and he choked and spat, clawing at the flotsam of vines, stalks, and muddy leaves. The river current was strong, pulling him downriver, quickly turning him over and over like a pinecone tossed down a hillside.

The current pushed him up, and his head emerged briefly at the surface. He gasped wildly for a breath. “Help!” he squeaked, his mouth again filling with water, his body pushed and pummeled and pulled again by the current.

With a sudden thump, Twig was washed into something large and heavy in the water. It was an old, sodden tree stump, floating heavily, mostly submerged, covered with slippery algae. Twig climbed on top of it, spitting up water and dirt.

The waterlogged tree stump floated steadily down the river. After a while, the river widened, and the trees could no longer touch their brothers and sisters on the opposite side. Twig pulled a floating weed stalk out of the water and tried to pole the makeshift craft, and was only slightly successful at maneuvering it toward the bank.

He looked ahead, downriver. A supple-looking sapling had been partially uprooted by the current and was bending, arched and stretched, over the river, dangling in Twig’s path.

In a moment the sodden log swept by the young tree, whose leaves were tantalizingly close. Twig quickly gathered his strength, tensed his muscles, and leaped.

His weight pulled at the sapling, and for a second Twig thought he might be dunked again in the water. But he scrambled up the branch and down the trunk, and made it to the muddy bank.

Twig felt the warm mud beneath his body and breathed in deeply.

He looked around. Just then an amber shaft of afternoon sunlight poked through the clouds and slanted its way across the river, illuminating the jewel-like blossoms and fern fronds on the riverbank. The whole world seemed bathed in gold. The sun slanted down some more, and Twig blinked.

Something caught his eye. Twig sat up, looking more closely. It glinted in the mud and sand where water had eroded the riverbank.

About twice his size, it looked to be a gold ball, slightly dimpled on one end. It was luminous, like it was lit from within. Twig couldn’t tell whether its glow was from the setting sun hitting it or from the sphere itself.

But as Twig marveled at it, he noticed it was slipping slowly, then starting to roll, down the steep embankment, down toward the dark water, carried by a landslide of soil. On impulse, he raced to it, pushing upward with his shoulder, trying to keep it from sliding. His paws slipped, and for a moment it looked as though he would end up in the river again.

Pushing with all his weight and muscle, Twig moved the golden orb inch by inch up the embankment, until it rolled safely into the grass. He sighed, brushing the bits of dirt and leaves from behind his ears and between his toes. He wiped the golden ball, rubbing it with his furry arms, shining it to a gloss, and then stood back, staring at it.

It was perfect. It seemed to glow, smooth and flawless. He knew that no one in the Hill, no one, had ever seen the likes of it.

Suddenly he heard a noise. He cocked his ears, listening. Then he heard it again.

It came from the golden ball.

It was a tiny, chipping sound. The ball wiggled a bit, rocking slightly back and forth.

Twig’s eyes widened as he saw a very small crack appear on the surface of the sphere. The crack grew larger.

Twig scurried behind a clump of weeds and peered back at the sphere. It shifted and jiggled some more, rocking more and tilting forward. Small sounds came from within it, peeps and clicks and whines, sounding like a combination of cries for help and growls of warning.

Twig was mesmerized. “Whatever it is,” he whispered to himself, “it’s hatching!”