Cricket Magazine Group is proud to partner with Worldreader to make this collection of stories, specially selected from Cricket® magazine, available via e-reader to young people throughout the developing world—where having a book to read has often been just a dream.

THE REALM OF IMAGINATION: FAVORITE STORIES FROM CRICKET® MAGAZINE

by Cricket Media

© 2011 Carus Publishing Company

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The selections in this collection were first published in Cricket® magazine.

ISBN: 978-08126-2779-4

Cover and interior design by Kristen Scribner

Bug characters by Carolyn Digby Conahan

CRICKET and its logo are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Cricket Media

Carus Publishing Company

70 East Lake Street, Suite 300

Chicago, IL 60601

www.cricketmag.com

Acknowledgments at the end of this book constitute an extension of this copyright page.

CONTENTS

Copyright

Welcome to

Cricket: The Realm of Imagination

Cricket Country

by Carolyn Digby Conahan

Cowgirl Morning

by Bryn Fleming

Time of Proving

by Tamora Pierce

Boarding School

by Timothy Tocher

Old Cricket Says

“Mongolian Mobile Library”

The Herdboys of Lesotho

by Sue Drake

Tara

by Sujata Shekar

White Mice

by Ruskin Bond

Old Cricket Says

“Porcupines and Salt”

Boo

by Tom Brennan

Ahimsa

by Josie Tagliente

The Pride

by Paul Sullivan

Mantrap

by Tish Farrell

Winning

by Joseph Yenkavitch

The Eighteenth Camel

by Thelma Schmidhauser

The Camel and Hassan Djiwa

by Stephen Davies

Old Cricket Says

“Inside a Beaver Lodge”

Cricket Country

by Carolyn Digby Conahan

My Corner

by Jennifer Szostak

Gordon Parks: Bigger than LIFE

by Ann Parr

Instead of the War Drum

by Uma Krishnaswami

The Telescope

by Lisa Harries Schumann

The Tale of Paddy Ahern

retold by Patricia McHugh

The Explorer

by Christy Lenzi

Swing It! The Story of Peg Leg Bates

by Darienne Oaks

Little Brother of War

by Judy Dodge Cummings

Beyond the Call of Duty

by Brenda Moore

A Driftwood’s Tale

by Shirley Ann Hoskins

The Traveler

by Connie Martin

Old Cricket Says

“Methusaleh Tree”

Acknowledgments

WELCOME TO

SINCE ITS FIRST ISSUE   in 1973, Cricket magazine has cherished the goal of bringing the beauty, integrity, and humor of the world’s best stories to young people everywhere. In The Realm of Imagination you will find realistic stories about kids in America and around the world, as well as inspiring tales of true adventure, fantasy, and science fiction. With comments from Cricket’s irrepressible bug characters, these stories will excite your imagination and curiosity—and often, make you laugh.

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CRICKET COUNTRY

COWGIRL MORNING

by Bryn Fleming

Illustrated by Ned Gannon

“CASSIE!” FRAN SHOUTED.   “The cows aren’t going to milk themselves. Get a move on!” My older sister tossed the words over her shoulder as she stamped up our dirt driveway, her skirt blue as a cornflower, her boot heels leaving little prints like a deer’s hooves in the brown dust.

I stood watching the yellow school bus pull away from our place. The road ran so flat to the east, I could see the dust cloud for a mile if I watched long enough. The afternoon sun soaked bright green through the oak leaves, and I’d have liked to sit awhile. School had been confounding, which was nothing new. But Fran was right. Ranch life was pretty much composed of endless chores.

I shook my head clear and settled my hat low on my forehead, one-handed, like the movie cowboys do when they have their other hand on the reins. I started toward the house. Maybe I was lazy like Fran always said. It was another thing to think about.

To the west, Mr. Daly’s semi-tame buffaloes heaved and snorted in the bunch grass. Fran never gave them a look, but I kept an eye out for Cyrus, the bull. Sure enough, he jerked his big head at me from his spot under the oak. His horns caught the low sun, and I flinched, despite myself. It came back to me every time I saw him or smelled his musky wildness: Pa and I kneeling in the half dark of Daly’s muddy calving yard, pulling a stubborn calf from its bawling mother; Cyrus banging his shaggy head, over and over, against the gray plank fence shuddering between us.

Fran and I didn’t talk much more that day, just glared at each other across the supper table. Pa looked from one of his daughters to the other and shook his head, probably wishing he’d had boys. Then again, sometimes his eyes went soft when he looked at us, like he saw a bit of Mom there. I was glad for that. Mom had gotten ill and passed away the year that I turned nine. I’d only lately started filling in the space she’d left in me.

Neither Fran or I had done more than pick at our burgers when Pa said, “You’re both excused — to finish your chores.” I cleared my dishes and slammed the screen door.

Fran had already pitched the hay down, as nice and neat as you can pitch hay, into each manger. The cows munched while I rested my head on the their warm flanks, listening to the milk sing into the metal bucket. I only slopped a little when I emptied each bucketful into the big tin milk can. Fran would skim the cream later. As she says, it’s not a job for the careless, as cream is money and doesn’t belong on the barn floor.

I cleaned up at the kitchen sink and fell into bed, hanging my hat on the bedpost. I dropped off quick, leaving school, cows, chores, and dust for a deep warm dream, something about a wild, white horse.

BANG! BANG! BANG!   I jerked awake to Pa pounding on our door.

“Daly’s buffaloes broke the fence. We have to get them out of the alfalfa!” he shouted.

Fran was on her feet in an instant. Pulling her jeans on under her nightgown, she stepped into the hall. “Can’t we do it, just us, Pa? Cassie will only be in the way.”

“Both of you,” Pa said as he hurried for the back door. “We need all hands.”

Me, I’ve never liked being yanked out of a hard sleep and a good dream. I heard buffaloes through my sleep-haze and scrunched lower under the covers, remembering Cyrus’s chuffing breath on my neck and the creaking whine of fence planks. I grumped and groaned when Fran pulled the quilt off me and slapped my feet.

“Let’s go, Cassie. Pa needs us quick.” Fran jerked on her boots and slapped my feet again as she raced out of the room.

I pulled yesterday’s jeans from the pile of clothes by my bed, shrugged into a T-shirt, and grabbed my hat off the bedpost. Pa had a pan of cold biscuits and a dish of butter on the table. I gobbled one as I ran for the barn.

Fran was drawing up Pet’s cinch in the stable yard. Stars were fading in the east as the sky lightened over the Blue Mountains. The autumn air smelled of sage and juniper scrub. My lungs sucked it in like cold water.

Rowdy, my paint pony, stamped in his stall and nickered after Pet. The early morning darkness and close scent of musky buffaloes set him on edge, but I talked him into standing quiet and slipped the bit in his mouth. He pranced and high-stepped as I led him out of his stall to saddle him. I turned the stirrup to me, and swung up on his back with a satisfying squeak of leather, the soft feel of the reins in my hand.

“Your cinch is loose,” Fran called to me as she trotted after Pa. I moved my leg back and pulled the leather strap tighter without getting off.

Up ahead Pa was edging his mare around the wide gate to the open pasture. Fran and Pet followed. I leaned out and hooked the gate closed behind us, something Rowdy and I had been working on. I patted his neck. “Atta boy, let’s go get those buffs.” There was a shakiness in my voice, but I squeezed Rowdy into a lope to catch up.

“Looks like half the herd is in here,” Pa shouted. “Big piece of the north fence is down.” We stood a minute on the rise between the hayfield and the house. Thirty or forty buffaloes spread out in the tall grass.

“There’s Cyrus. Watch him.” Pa pointed to a huge, dark shape shifting like a hill in an earthquake. “I’ll pick him up and head him back through,” Pa said. “Some of the cows should follow. Fran, take the right.” He ran his gaze over the herd again. “Cassie, hang back. Move any stragglers up toward Fran. And stay away from Cyrus.” He didn’t need to tell me twice.

Pa reined toward the herd. The heavy, dark smell of buffaloes rose from the green patches of alfalfa as I followed Fran into the hayfield. Pet and Rowdy snorted, their bits jingling as they tossed their heads.

Fran loped off, whooping and chasing the cow buffs toward the hole in the far fence. Rowdy and I crisscrossed the field after strays. “Hut! Hut! Hut!” I called as I swung the end of my rope at a cow’s flank. Fran shot me a look. “Get after those buffs, Cassie. You’re not inviting them to a party!” I hollered louder and swung my rope harder. On the other side of the field, Pa had Cyrus headed back toward the broken fence.

Seems like I looked away toward a hawk screech for only a second when I heard Pa’s mare whinny sharply. I snapped my head around quick. She was rearing up in high alarm and stepping backward. Pa wasn’t in the saddle.

Cyrus pawed the dirt in front of the mare, swinging his big woolly head from side to side, his horns low to the ground The mare spun off and stood stiff-legged. Pa sat in the dirt with one leg stretched out in front of him. Cyrus flared his nostrils, sucking in Pa’s scent.

In my mind I heard a plank fence splinter and smelled Cyrus’s angry stink. I shivered, but there really was no choice. I kicked Rowdy and laid the reins across his neck. Rowdy jumped to it as Cyrus scraped the dirt powerfully with his sharp hooves and charged.

For such cumbersome-looking beasts, buffs can move real fast. I leaned forward in the saddle, racing Rowdy across the field toward Pa, hoping we’d be in time to head off the enraged bull. As Cyrus closed in, I shouted and waved my hat frantically. Cyrus jerked his head toward us and turned as Pa rolled out of his way.

Rowdy stopped on a dime, like he faced a mad buffalo bull every day. We dodged in close, and I leaned out and slapped Cyrus’s rump with my hat while Rowdy danced out of reach of his horns. Cyrus left Pa in a whirl of dust and pounded after us.

My hat flew off as Rowdy sprinted over the field. We cut a sharp right at the broken fence, and Cyrus plunged through the gap. A dozen cows streamed after him with Fran at their rear. She let out a whoop and flashed me a grin. We’d done it!

As I rode back, Pa was trying to get his feet under him. His jaw was clenched tight, and his eyes were narrowed. “Good work, Cass,” he said. His voice shook, and he held his leg with both hands. I swung down next to him.

Fran hung at the fence gap, flapping her rope against her thigh and yelling at the last of the cows as they trailed after Cyrus. Two of Daly’s men galloped up the fence line toward Fran, and I heard her shout to them as she waved toward the herd and then toward us. The taller of the two dropped off his big, spotted mare at the broken fence, and the other rode toward us with Fran. By the time they’d crossed the field, I’d pulled Pa up. He stood crooked on one leg, leaning hard on my shoulder. I stood about a foot shorter than Pa, but I felt strong and tall with him leaning on me like that.

“Can you walk back?” I asked him. Pa’s mouth was clamped tight, and his face was whitish.

“It’s twisted badly, but I don’t think it’s broken,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll make it.”

Daly’s man got off his horse and took Pa’s other arm. We started a slow shamble across the field. Fran followed, leading the horses, as we straggled over the rise and back to the house. We settled Pa on the couch, and Fran put the coffeepot on. I called the doctor from the kitchen phone. Full light streamed through the window. I felt like a day and a half had passed since my feet had hit the cold floor boards before dawn.

DR. MOSS CAME AROUND   and said Pa’s knee was sprained badly but nothing was broken. Fran brought them both coffee. She got a cup for herself and even one for me. “Cassie pretty much saved the day,” Fran said, and she told Dr. Moss the story. Pa smiled at me, and I smiled at the floor.

After the doctor left, I walked back through the alfalfa and found my hat where I’d dropped it. The grass lay trampled and pawed up. I remembered the sharp glint in Cyrus’s eye when he’d aimed his horns at my father. I felt a rush of pride in my chest, but pushed it down. Anybody would have done what Rowdy and I did, if they’d needed to. Still, I felt taller as I dusted my hat on my jeans and walked back over the rise.

TIME OF PROVING

by Tamora Pierce

Illustrated by jada rowland

ARIMU OF THE WIND PEOPLE   was halfway through her Year of Proving when she found the creature at the bottom of a Dustlands canyon. She was on her way back to her camp with combs of honey when she heard a roaring moan. Since she was a careful girl, she tethered her camels in a safe place, then went to see what made such an unearthly noise.

There, in a stream, she discovered what looked like a bull wearing blue silk drapes and brass trinkets. He lay there as if he’d been thrown from the cliffs as a sacrifice to the gods. But that made no sense. Arimu knew this country. No one lived here to make any sacrifices.

She approached the bull, her spear raised. He looked half-dead — she would put him out of his misery. A crippled animal would never survive here.

The bull turned his head. Arimu froze. He glared straight at her. When could a bull look a human straight in the eye?

He croaked something, as if he spoke to her.

Nonsense, Arimu told herself. Bulls can’t talk!

The bull made other noises. These, too, sounded like speech.

“Stop it,” she ordered, before she realized she talked to him as she would a human.

She had heard stories of bull people. His feet were humanlike and bleeding from cuts. So were his hands. His chest was powerful, to hold up his large head. And now she understood the problem with his eyes. They pointed forward like a human’s.

The blue silk rags had once been embroidered trousers and a jacket. The many rings on his horns were gold, not brass. Some were jeweled. He was no sacrifice. No one threw gold and gems into a canyon.

He was still talking. Finally he spoke in a market language she knew. “Help … me. Please.”

Arimu scratched her head. How could she explain? She doubted he knew the customs of the Dustlands nomads. Someone of her tribe would have mentioned knowing bull-men or cow-women.

“You … understand,” he said, and coughed. “I beg you, by the laws that govern all civilized people, to help me.” He spat into the dust. “You are civilized, are you not?”

Arimu leaned on her spear. “I am civilized by the laws of the Wind People, the children of the Dustlands,” she replied. “Who are your people? How did you get here?”

“I ran,” said the bull-man. He looked at his scraped hands. “When I did not run I walked, and when I could not walk I crawled. I was on holiday when I was captured like an animal. An animal! Hunters from the Merchant City cast a sleeping spell on me and put me in a cage. They released me in a canyon maze, far from here, to hunt me, camping in silk tents at night while I starved! I stole a horse, but it finally threw me, and I just kept running away. Look at me!” He lifted his rags. His hands left bloody streaks on them. There were tears in his eyes.

“I am a Tenth Rank Scholar,” he said woefully. “I was studying to become a Ninth Rank Scholar. I wanted a little holiday, and now look. I don’t even know where I am.” He drew away. “Where are your people? Are they going to hunt me?”

Arimu smiled crookedly. “The Wind People are in the north. I am the only human you will see for miles.”

He still looked nervous. “You will rob me. Only I know how to take my rings from my horns. If you cut my horns from my head, a dreadful curse will descend on you.” He began to chant in some foreign language, only to start coughing. At last he caught his breath. “Please help me.”

Arimu sighed. “The Wind People do not give knowledge away. Once we did. Then, when we were poor, we were driven from rich homes east of the Andrenor into tents in the Dustlands. We no longer give anything to outsiders. When I go home in six months, I will be asked to tell the full tale of my time here. I cannot lie and I cannot break my people’s law.”

The bull-man reached up to a horn, wrapped his hand around a jeweled ring, and gave it a complex twist. It popped open. He slid it off and tossed it to her. “What will this buy?”

She inspected it. When she saw it was real gold and jewels, she put her spear aside and came to look at him more closely.

“It buys you medicine and care for your wounds,” she said. The bottoms of his feet were cut to ribbons, his knees and hands nearly so. He took another gold ring from his horns and gave it to her. “This buys you a ride to my camp. The wounds first. I can’t bandage them all, but I can clean them.” She set her pack down at a distance, so he couldn’t grab it, and took out what she would need. “Do you have a name?”

He lay back with a groan, then spoke a mouthful of syllables. “You would say Sunflower,” he added.

Arimu smiled as she cleaned his cuts. “Well, Sunflower, tell me if it hurts too much,” she warned, swabbing a six-inch gouge in one of his great thighs. He grunted a reply; sweat rolled from his hide. His feet twitched as she plucked thorns from between his toes; she ordered him to hold still. Seeing a stone embedded in his heel, she pulled it out. He wheezed and relaxed. When she looked up, his eyes had rolled back in his head. He had fainted.

“Just as well,” she muttered in her own tongue.

By the time she was done, he was awake enough to get onto her stronger camel. She tied him down when the pain of that effort made him faint again. Slowly she led both camels up a tiny trail to the canyon’s rim. Twice Sunflower’s camel nearly fell off the path, dragged down by his shifting weight. Arimu got so frightened that she promised the rings he’d paid her to the goddess Dansiga, if she let them reach the top in safety.

They camped that night on the canyon’s rim. In the morning Sunflower showed improvement. Though he was too weak to walk, he had plenty of questions, demanding to know the names and uses of every plant he noticed. Once they camped that night, Arimu gave him a tiny knife and a stick, and asked him to whittle some tinder while she got firewood. When she returned, he had cut himself three times.

“Scholars don’t whittle,” he said when she scolded.

“How will you live to go home?” she demanded as she cleaned his wounds. “It’s nearly autumn. You’ll need to build fires at night. They don’t just start themselves.”

“I’ll learn quickly enough,” Sunflower said.

Arimu wasn’t so sure. She remembered his infant-soft hands and feet. What did he know of the kind of work needed to survive in a desert autumn?

As she got the fire going, he resumed his questions. This time, they were about her.

“They turn you out on your own at thirteen?” he asked, horrified, when she explained about the Year of Proving.

“If I want to lead my people,” she said, watching the flatbread as it baked on a stone. She boasted, “It’s the path of greatest honor, if I succeed. I came to part of the Dustlands where the Wind People have never gone, to map land we have never walked. If I survive the year and bring my maps home, my people will have new places with water, grazing, and hunting. We will have new places to live free of our enemies.”

Sunflower snorted. “How far away can your people be, not to have maps of this area?”

Arimu smiled up at him. She did feel smug about her choice. “Spring City. Here.” Using the map she carried with her, she pointed to the location of Spring City, and to the ruined tower where she lived now.

“You’re mad,” he said. “You’ll get eaten, or lost.”

“Not as long as I have a good map, and the stars.” She pointed to the sky. “The North Star never moves. I know the constellations, and where they are at every season. All children of the Wind People learn these things, as soon as they are able to learn. What are you taught?”

“How to read, and to write elegantly,” Sunflower replied dreamily. “How to play the lotus flute and the harp. The principles of music and poetry and law.”

“Where did you learn such useless things and not fire starting?” Arimu wanted to know.

Sunflower touched the map southwest of the Dustlands, on the seacoast. “We call it Wheeler.”

“The Veiled City,” she whispered. “But it’s a legend.”

“It’s veiled against those who mean us harm,” he corrected her. “So we cannot be invaded and enslaved.”

“But you wanted a holiday,” Arimu said.

Sunflower heaved an immense sigh.

“I wanted an adventure. And so I left the veils. I got my adventure, and a person who wants me to pay for everything, and asks what use is poetry and music.”

Arimu knew her duty to Sunflower. She meant to do it, even if she made him pay according to the customs of her people. “If you’re to get home alive, you must know some things,” she explained as she helped him down the steps into her lair under the old tower called Karn Wyeat.

“But I feel your kind of learning will not make me as happy as my kind of learning,” Sunflower replied mournfully.

“You’ll be happy when you’re home.” Arimu helped him to sit, then built a small fire of tinder and twigs and lit it. “There’s the firewood,” she said, pointing. “All you need do is add wood to keep the fire going. I’ll tend the camels.”

She returned to a smoke-filled room. Once she aired it out, he explained that he had begun to look through a book he’d found in the ruined karn. When he saw the fire was dying, he had thrown tinder onto it. Then, when it had blazed too high, he had scattered water on it, dampening the tinder and making it smoke.

More than once in the weeks that followed, Arimu wondered if that had been a sign from Dansiga that Sunflower could not survive on his own. He let meals burn. He let fires die. He knew wonderful stories for every constellation, but had no idea of their summer or winter positions, which could guide his travels. She found him watching a sandstorm advance, as if it were an interesting display. She barely got him back to the karn with both their skins in one piece.

She first taught him the uses of honey and spider webs as medicines, then which plants were edible. She even showed him how to build a fire using dried dung and brush.

“Why?” he asked her, recoiling from the smell. “There is wood here.”

“Because you don’t want to follow the Andrenor to the coast,” she told him.

He shuddered. “Follow the river to the Labyrinth and Merchant City? I may be a dreamer and an idiot” — names she had called him after the sandstorm — “but I don’t want to be captured again!”

“Then you will have to cross the desert. Trees are scarce west of here. It’s mostly brush, so you’ll have something to use, but you must know how to use it.”

“Oh,” he said mournfully. He drew closer to the fire. “Honored Teacher, teach me to cook food over burned animal droppings.”

She grinned, put out the small fire, and began again.

While Sunflower mended their clothes — children of his people were also taught to sew — Arimu made a straw hat that would fit around his horns, and a pack. He copied her map with brush strokes that made it into a work of art. When he was strong enough to venture farther from the karn, she tried to show him how to find water and food.

He was not very good at it.

One by one, Sunflower paid Arimu every ring from his horns. The day after he had given her the last ring, he put on his hat and the pack. He tucked the copy of the map in his rope belt. “You have taught me all you can by the laws of your people,” he said. “I thank you. When I am home, I will compose a song in your name and sing it before the elders. What is this?” he asked as she thrust a small pouch at him.

“I did not give full value for the sapphires in that pair of rings two days ago,” she told him. “This makes us even.”

He dumped the pouch’s contents onto his brown hand: her spare flint and steel. He failed at making a fire with sticks as often as he succeeded.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Your goddess Dansiga blessed me when she put me in your path. I will make an offering of songs to her as well.”

She had told him that the Wind People hated good-byes. He walked up the steps and out of the karn. Arimu followed and watched as he checked the sun’s position and headed west. He used the trail they had already scouted. It would take him into a valley where a stream flowed south.

She told herself, He can follow that safely for at least four days. If he doesn’t fall in and lose his food. If he doesn’t forget to check the rocks for snakes before he sits. Unless he sees a bird he doesn’t recognize and follows it out of that valley and gets lost, or steps in a bog. Or he loses the pack, or …

I have taught him all I can under the Wind People’s laws, she thought angrily. He has nothing more to pay me. He is an outsider, a bull-man. I owe him nothing.

He is no more fitted to find his way to the Veiled City than a baby.

What is a Year of Proving about, if it proves I am a heartless person?

“Wait!” she cried. “Sunflower, wait!” She ran to catch him. She grabbed his sleeve, panting. “I want maps. Good ones, like the one you made for yourself, of our whole route south. I want trade goods to take back to my people. And you have to mind what I say.” She glared up at him, daring him to say anything that would make her ashamed of her softness.

Instead he just smiled. “This will be so much better,” he said. “And I can teach you what poetry is for. That is a fair trade.”

They shook hands on their bargain.

BOARDING SCHOOL

by Timothy Tocher

Illustrated by Adam Larkum

ONE MORE OUT   and we would win the game, thanks to my home run. One more hit and we would lose, because of the error I had just made at first base. After only two weeks at my new school, I would be a hero or a goat. I knew which story I wanted to tell my dad when he picked me up on Saturday morning. I used my toe to draw a lucky horseshoe in the dirt as our pitcher delivered.

Whack! My head snapped around as a line drive shot toward left field. But Jamie at shortstop timed his leap perfectly. He speared it in the webbing of his glove, then crashed to the ground.

I raced across the diamond as my teammates whooped for joy. I helped Jamie up, so glad I was spending the night at his house. We’d talk about his great catch — and my home run. We were walking off the field, Jamie’s arm over my shoulder, when the trouble started.

“You know, I’m glad your folks are getting divorced,” Jamie said. “Otherwise, we’d never have met.”

I wrestled him to the ground, determined to rub his face in the dirt. Shocked, Jamie worked one hand free and popped me in the eye. Then Coach Johnson was picking us up by our shirt collars. Jamie blamed me for starting the fight. I didn’t say anything. Mentioning the divorce would just make me mad again. Finally Coach said, “I’ll fill out a report for the principal. Maybe you’ll talk to her. Billy, go to the nurse. Jamie, back to class.”

Once we were alone, Jamie said, “Don’t even think about coming to my house,” and ran off.

Even though my eye was throbbing, I took my time walking up the stairs to the nurse’s office. When she called my mother, I’d be grounded for the only weekend this month that I was supposed to spend with my dad.

But a barfing first grader had Ms. Domiani too busy to do anything except hand me an ice pack. “That’ll take the swelling down, Billy. I want to see you again first thing in the morning, O.K.?”

At first I felt lucky. Then I realized, once my mother saw my eye, the whole story would come out anyway. A tuneless whistling drew my attention. Mr. Ames, the custodian, rounded the corner. He unlocked a closet with one of the eight hundred keys that hung from the ring on his belt, and stepped inside. He came out pushing a mop bucket on wheels, using the mop handle to steer.

“Hi, Billy. Feeling sick, are you?” he asked in his cheerful way.

“Not me, Mr. Ames. Some first grader.”

“Good,” he answered, as he rolled into Ms. Domiani’s office. “It wouldn’t be fair to have a shiner and a sour stomach in the same day.”

I picked up my backpack and scuffed slowly down the hall. Passing Mr. Ames’s closet, I peeked inside. It was lit by a bare bulb, and crowded with mops, brooms, trash barrels, and an oversized sink. The rungs of a metal ladder ran up the back wall. Curious, I leaned in and looked up. There was a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Glancing over my shoulder down the empty hallway, I ducked inside. My heart raced as I eased the door closed, then started up the ladder. Even wearing my backpack, it was an easy climb.

My feet were four rungs from the top before my hands were close enough to reach the trapdoor. I gripped the ladder with my left hand and pushed against the wooden barrier with my right. It lifted slightly.

The mop bucket squeaked its way down the hall, and I eased the trapdoor back into place. The door swung open. Mr. Ames rolled the bucket into the closet, hoisted it up to the sink, and poured. Then he rinsed the inside. When that was done, he stuck his mop in the sink and ran hot water on it. The ammonia fumes nearly knocked me from my perch.

Leaving the mop in the sink, Mr. Ames reached up and pulled the string under the light bulb. Still whistling as if his job was a delight, he shuffled into the hallway, banging the door closed behind him.

I was in total darkness. I felt that if I moved a muscle, I’d fall. The buzzer sounded for final dismissal. Shouts and laughter filled the hall. Maybe I could wait until everyone went home, then sneak out without being seen.

Then I remembered the trapdoor. In the pitch blackness I needed all my courage to let go of the ladder with one hand and push against it. It lifted. This time I brought my feet up to the next rung. As I straightened, the door raised higher. I stuck my head through the opening.

An attic ran the length of the second floor of the school building. Blankets of puffy, pink insulation lay everywhere, packed between the wooden beams. Across some of the beams, planks had been laid to provide a narrow walkway. A dim light filtered through vents in the roof.

I slid the trapdoor away from the opening and heaved myself up. A thrill shot through me. No one knew where I was, and no one was expecting me. My mother thought I’d be at Jamie’s. Jamie believed I was going home. I had clean clothes in my backpack. Why couldn’t I stay in school? I could uncover all the secrets in this mysterious attic, then slip into class tomorrow morning.

I tiptoed along the plank pathway, forgetting everything except my opportunity to explore. Toward the center of the building I spotted a gap in the insulation blanket. Carefully, I knelt and peered through a narrow crack between the ceiling panels, down two floors, to the stage of the auditorium. It was like being the Phantom of the Opera. The stage was bare, but if there had been a show going on, I could have seen everything.

I continued along the shadowy pathway. A few light bulbs with string switches dangled from the roof. That meant I’d be able to explore the attic all night. But I also planned to spend some time below. I’d watch television in my science classroom, play games in the computer lab, even visit the cafeteria for an ice cream.

The planking ended at a flight of stairs that led up to another trapdoor. When I climbed the stairs and clambered through it, I was in a small room filled with machinery. The domed ceiling told me I was inside the clock tower above the main entrance of the school. I remember tilting my head back to look at it when I came to school on my first day.

I dropped my pack and ran to a small, round window. The school buses rolled toward the highway. I felt like shouting with joy. No other kid had ever been up here. I stared at the beautiful sky, the puffy clouds, the distant mountains. Birds flew past, and I envied them for having this view every day.

I decided this snug space would be my bedroom. I opened my backpack and dug out the remains of lunch. I downed half a ham sandwich and a slightly bruised banana as I walked laps around the tower. When Mr. Ames’s pickup truck chugged out of the parking lot, I knew I was alone. I couldn’t wait to wander the school. Also, I needed a bathroom.

As the sunlight in the attic faded, I made my way back to Mr. Ames’s closet. I dropped into the darkness through the trapdoor and crept carefully down the metal ladder. Safely on the ground, I pulled the string, lighting the dark closet at last. I grabbed the door knob. It wouldn’t turn. I panicked and banged the door with my fists. I might even have yelled “Help!” a time or two. The closet filled with a deep stillness that seemed to bring its walls toward me.

I climbed the ladder again, but not until I had done something in the sink that I don’t want to talk about. Let’s just say there would be one more bad smell coming out of that drain from now on.

The attic was darkening as night fell, and I switched on every light. The hanging bulbs lit small spaces, leaving huge areas of blackness in between. I wondered if frustrated teachers or crazed bullies returned to haunt a school when they died.

I hurried to the clock tower, lowering its trapdoor behind me. I figured if I sat on top of it, there was no way anyone or anything could get in. The little room that had seemed so welcoming by day felt tiny and cramped in the dark. The whirs and clicks of the clockworks gave me the uneasy feeling of sitting next to a time bomb.

A breeze added weird, creaking noises to the mechanical sounds. The night grew colder. I opened my backpack, stripped to my underwear, and quickly pulled on the clean shirt and pants my mother had packed, then put my dirty clothes on top, hoping to keep warm. My swollen eye throbbed in time with the ticking clock as I hugged my knees, shivering.

A SUNBEAM   tickled my eyelids until I blinked awake. What a relief! Once Mr. Ames unlocked the closet, I’d sneak out and mix with the other kids as they arrived. I shed my dirty clothes and rammed them into the backpack. Then I went around the attic, shutting off the lights. In the custodian’s closet, I splashed water on my face. My throat was dry, but I was afraid to drink from the corroded faucets.

Keys jangled. I climbed into an empty trash barrel, and pulled a lid over the top.

The door swung open. I peered through a space where the lid bent away from the can and watched Mr. Ames draw hot water for his mop bucket, drumming a tune on the edge of the sink as it filled.

His mop clanked against the barrel that hid me as he lowered it into the hot water, then pushed the whole unit into the hallway. I jumped up and grabbed for the door knob, hoping to keep the latch from catching. He yanked it from my fingers, and the door snicked closed.

I climbed out of the barrel and tried it. Locked. I was about to start yelling and give myself up, when I had an idea. If I searched, I might find another way down from the attic.

An hour later, I was as low as a guy could get. If there was an escape, I hadn’t found it. I lay on the plank walkway, resigned to surrender. I wondered what my teachers and classmates would say about the weird new kid who got locked all night in the janitor’s closet.

Voices, grownup voices, made me sit up. I crawled over the planking toward the sound. I stopped where the voices seemed loudest and lifted a sheet of insulation. Instantly, the words were clear.

“How is that new boy in your class doing?” It sounded like Ms. Domiani.

“Billy? He’s quiet, but he’s starting to make friends.” There was no mistaking the voice of Ms. Aguilera, my teacher.

“How did he get that black eye?” the nurse asked.

“What black eye?”

“He came to me at the end of the day. I didn’t have time to ask what happened. He’s supposed to drop in on me early this morning.”

“My sixth graders had gym last period. He probably got hit with a ball.”

“I understand he moved here with his mother,” Ms. Domiani said. “Does he see his father at all?”

“Actually, he’s picking Billy up today. There was a message …”

Ms. Aguilera’s voice faded as she walked away. I stretched out above the insulation, my toes on the planking, my right hand sliding along a beam. A sliver of wood buried itself in my palm. I jerked at the pain without thinking, lost my balance, and flopped onto the bed of insulation.

There was a sharp crack. Then, I was falling. The ladies shrieked as I slammed onto a hard surface. The room filled with dust. I wish it had stayed that way. When the air cleared, I was lying on the table where the teachers ate lunch. Ms. Domiani’s and Ms. Aguilera’s faces were covered with dust. Streams of coffee trickled down their chins onto their blouses. Not hurt, I moaned anyway. Sympathy was my last hope.

THE PRINCIPAL   sentenced me to after-school cleanup duty for a month. I got to know Mr. Ames real well. A baseball fanatic, he taught me about the old-time players. I think he liked it that someone had shown interest in his closet.

Mom was great. When the doctor at the emergency room said I was fine, she hugged me so hard it hurt worse than when I landed on the table.

I didn’t go to Dad’s, but he stayed in a motel and we spent the weekend sprucing up the yard at the new house. He told me some of the dumb things he did when he was a kid, which made me feel better.

Ms. Aguilera didn’t hold a grudge. She treats me the same as the other kids, except that she never sends me on errands. I guess she feels better when she knows where l am.

Jamie has invited me to sleep over, and I’m working on Mom. I hope that someday he’ll stop asking me what it’s like to spend a night in the clock tower. I tell him it was cold, lonely, and boring, but he doesn’t believe me.

OLD CRICKET SAYS

IN 1991   the well-known Mongolian writer Jambyn Dashdondog established the Mongolian Children’s Library Project to take books to children in the rural areas of Mongolia. He wrote me recently about his experience as a mobile librarian.

“In a country as vast as Mongolia, a nation containing more horses than people, it is not always easy to go to your local library for books. Miles and miles of open prairie stretch out between gers (the round tents Mongolian people use for housing), and a person could literally walk for days without seeing another face. This is why I journey across the icy steppes on horseback with my load of books, looking for children in need of a story.

Photographs by Jambyn Dashdondog of the Mongolian Children’s Library Project

“I’ve had many adventures carrying my library across the country. I’ve battled wolves in the freezing cold and fought the racing winds gusting through the hills. Along the way, I’ve met many children whose eyes come to life when they discover my cargo. There was one such time, when I noticed two white gers perched between hills in the distance. There, I thought, might be children wholly in love with books, children dreaming of a library like mine to appear, very suddenly, on their doorstep.

“I got down off my horse and settled with them in the warm comfort of the ger. We sat in one big circle with a fire blazing in the center. After seeing so much snowy white, my eyes were relieved to gaze through the orange flames.

“When the story was over — I had read the tale of the Snowflake Queen who lives in a frosted castle — the children were enraptured. I had to leave. But as I did I recited a poem I wrote sixteen years ago, when I first took my mobile library out to the children of Mongolia:

Candy will melt in your mouth.

But books will stay forever in your mind.”

THE HERDBOYS OF LESOTHO

by Sue Drake

The teacher scanned her class of fifty-five first grade students, noting the very tall, thin boy in the back row. Neo wore a ragged, colorful blanket over his faded sweater and patched, cotton shorts. The tiny desk of a first grader was much too small for his long legs, and Neo sat hunched over, nervously kicking his bare feet on the hard-packed dirt floor. His dark eyes stared straight ahead, filled with anticipation.

“Where is your school uniform?” the teacher asked.

Neo, whose name means “gift” in the African language of Sesotho, stood respectfully to answer. Nearly fourteen years old and just under six feet tall, he towered over his younger classmates.

“I am without money,” he said softly in his native tongue.

The teacher understood. Neo was a herdboy. She had accepted these older boys into her classroom before.

IN TINY,   mountainous Lesotho, an independent country located wholly within the borders of South Africa, livestock is the family wealth. Sheep furnish wool to sell. Goats provide mohair for weaving cloth. Cattle pull plows and give milk, while horses and donkeys are the means of transportation. In rural areas, poor families live on small plots of land given to them by their village chief. Beyond these plots lie open grasslands for grazing animals. This land is not fenced. Herdboys are the fences!

At age seven, when most children are learning to read and write, about 20 percent of the boys in Lesotho are instead herding animals for their families or neighbors. High in the mountain pastures, the boys endure hunger, fend off cattle thieves, and brave all kinds of weather. Their pay is a few goats, or maybe a cow, at the end of each year. Any money a herdboy receives must be shared with his family.

It is a hard and lonely life. Herders might begin their week with 7:00 A.M. Sunday Mass at a local church. The boys receive a blessing from the priest to keep them and their animals safe. After the service, each boy gathers his herd. Whistling and throwing pebbles to get the dawdling animals moving, he slowly follows them up the mountain. Knee-high rubber boots keep his feet dry and protected as he fords streams and climbs rocky trails. Clanking bells on the lead animals help him stay in touch with his wandering herd.

Young herders are sent out into the rocky, barren countryside with only a stout stick and a dog for company. The tough, lanky dogs are not just companions but also help guard against thieves. Stealing livestock is common. Older boys sometimes gang up on a younger herder. That’s when a stick and a snarling dog become useful. Many a herdboy carries scars from protecting his flock.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, grew up in a village just south of Lesotho, where he herded cattle as a boy. “I was no more than five when I became a herdboy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields,” he recalls. “I learned to stick fight — essential knowledge to any rural African boy — and became adept at its various techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking in another, and breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork.”

In the high mountains, herdboys have little to occupy their time or minds. Food is always scarce. The boys survive on papa, a type of porridge made from ground maize and water, and on whatever they can find to eat in nature. “I learned how to knock birds out of the sky with a slingshot,” says Mandela, “to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of a cow … and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire.”

Using their imaginations, herders make toys and musical instruments from the natural materials surrounding them. They might use a feather and a long stick to make a flute-like instrument called a lesiba. Its music calms grazing animals. A toy called a galamoto can be made by twisting wire into the shape of a car, with filed-down pop cans for wheels. Mixing soil with water makes a sticky clay that a boy can mold into a toy horse or cow.

Playing homemade instruments: a lesiba and a mamahorong

A game of morabaraba

With a companion, a herdboy might play a game of morabaraba. Using a stone, he scratches a grid on a large, flat rock. Each player lays down twelve pebbles, representing cows. The object of the game is to reduce the number of your opponent’s cows to two or until he cannot make a new move. Morabaraba has been played in Africa longer than memory.

A boy can spend seven years or more watching the herds. At night, only a shabby wool blanket and cap keep a herder warm under a cold, starry sky. He can sleep, knowing that his animals are safely penned in an area called a kraal. As he grows older, he may live away from home in the mountains by himself for weeks at a time.

Because of the number of herdboys, Lesotho is one of the few countries in the world where more girls than boys attend school. Some herdboys are eventually able to go to school once their herding days are over. The Lesotho government recently joined with the United States Agency for International Development to provide free basic education for these boys. Herdboys can now attend schools called Learning Posts in the remote mountains, where they are able to catch up in reading and math.

Former herdboys who learn to read and write are able to find jobs in Maseru, the capital. Some even go on to Lesotho’s National Teachers Training College and become teachers themselves in the primary schools.

The teacher returned Neo’s steady gaze. “Neo, school fees are no longer required. If you don’t have money for a uniform, we will find you a used one. Welcome to St. John’s Primary! Maybe you will be a quick learner. Then you can help me with these young ones.”

As he squeezed back into his desk, a grin spread across Neo’s face. The hard, lonely life of a herdboy was behind him. With an education, Neo would soon follow his dreams.

TARA

by Sujata Shekar

Illustrated by Adam Gustavson

THE NARROW LANE   wound past me and turned the corner. Old one- and two-storied houses crouched on either side, their faded shutters opened wide. Crimson vines of bougainvillea clung to the walls, shivering in the early morning breeze. I heard snatches of song from a radio and the hiss of a pressure cooker ready to come off the stove.

The house in front of me was the best one in this pleasant Kolkata neighborhood, with whitewashed walls and leaf green shutters. I climbed shallow steps to the porch and circled the sacred tulsi plant in its center, touching my fingers to my lips and eyes in a silent prayer. The plant looked more alive than it had in weeks; someone had remembered to water it. I grabbed the brass ring that was nailed to the front door and swung it down twice. Khat khat!

Didi opened the door and stared at me. “Tara! Not you. Not today!”

I ducked under her arm and sprinted into the house.

“Where is your mother?” asked Didi, following me in. “She knows it’s Pujo tomorrow and there’s a mound of work, doesn’t she?”

Answering that would be like lighting the fuse on a bomb. My mother was doing the dishes at Shubra’s house at double the going rate. Shubra and Didi were friends, at least until today. Everybody knew that filching one’s servant was the worst form of treason.

“My hands are magic, Didi. I will make your floors sparkle,” I said, shaking my wrists so she’d notice the new glass bangles I wore. Six on each arm, green for luck.

Didi frowned so hard the bindi on her forehead came unglued. She slapped it back on and said, “Ma is visiting.”

Now, I may be only twelve years old and I stopped going to school at ten, but I am clever. I notice things and I hear stuff I shouldn’t, because when you are sweeping around people’s feet, they tend to think that you are dust, too. I had never met Ma, but that told me something. How many Indian homes do you know where the mother-in-law never visits?

And it wasn’t as if there was no room. We stood in the central hall, paved with black-and-white tiles. Four rooms led off the hall, two on each side. There was a kitchen at the far end and a yard out back. Only Didi and her husband lived there, with their nine-year-old son, Biren.

I skipped toward the kitchen but Didi got there first. It was her day for blocking doorways. “You can’t go in there, Tara. Or the prayer room. Ma does not allow it.” Didi’s voice sounded angry and scared at the same time, but I could have been wrong because it had dropped to a whisper.

“But the dishes?”

“You can do them in the yard. I’ll bring them out.”

“Why does she not allow it?”

I was disappointed, I admit. I had wanted to meet Ma. See if she had a big belly and nose hair, like her son. Find out what she thought of Biren, who liked to track mud in the wake of my mop.

“Because you’re untouchable,” shouted Biren, who had run into the hall chasing his top. “I cannot even look at you because that would be touching you with my eyes.” He covered his face, but it wasn’t enough to hide his smirk. “That means you’re dirty,” he finished, in case I hadn’t understood.

But I hadn’t. I cleaned the floors and washed the dishes and wrung out the laundry. I made everything around me clean; how could I be dirty?

My face felt warm. The bangles clinked on my shaking hands. I had heard ugly words before, but never spoken to my face. I wasn’t stupid. I knew I wasn’t upper caste, a Brahmin, born to lead the chants and light the lamps at the temple every evening. So what!

My feet wheeled around and ran out of the house.

“Tara! Wait, please,” wailed Didi, but I was gone, to a dark and lonely place in my head.

THAT AFTERNOON   I arrived an hour early at my grandfather’s house. He is a genius — not because he knows a lot, but because he explains things in such a simple way that even Biren would understand. He also makes pots. He sits at his wheel after breakfast and spins until lunchtime, shaping the clay with fingers that remind me of Didi’s silver butter knives — flat and strong, but not sharp at all. I call him Dadu.

I like to help him every afternoon once my work is done. I load the kiln with the damp pots — placing the large round ones at the bottom, the flat bowls and plates on the narrow middle rack, and the delicate pieces, with spouts and handles and skinny necks, at the top. Dadu never asks my brothers to join us. “You are too strong,” he says, slapping them on their scrawny backs. “You would dent my pots just by breathing on them.” My brothers strut away, satisfied. What he means, of course, is that I am the only one with the steady hand and keen eye required for the job.

The steady hand was missing today. I nudged a half-dry bowl into its neighbor and ruined its rim. Worse, I squeezed one of the pots so hard it developed a dimple on its cheek.

Dadu said nothing. He walked over to the wheel and handed me a stick. Then he picked up a lump of clay and began to massage it.

“Should I get the wheel going? Are you going to make another pot, Dadu?” I asked.

“You are, Tara,” said Dadu. “Let’s see you spin.”

Was I really going to make my first pot? I sat down on the low stool in front of the wheel, placed the stick between two spokes, and twirled it as if I were stirring a cauldron. The wheel blurred as it gained speed. My mind was spinning, too.

I put down the stick and removed my bangles, two at a time, and placed them on the side. Then I took the clay from Dadu and threw it on the center of the wheel, as I had seen him do so many times. I cupped the gray mound in both hands and pushed it to the center. The wheel spun faster. My elbows flapped like chicken wings as I wrestled with the clay.

Dadu placed his hands over mine. “You must control it, Tara. Feed it, but don’t let it escape,” he said.

And so I did. I pushed back against the clay, splashing it with water and willing it to behave. Soon I worked my thumb from the top down the middle to create a mouth, coaxing the sides up in a gentle curve. At last, as the wheel slowed to a stop, I pulled a string under the base of my pot and set it aside to rest.

“Do you feel better now?” said Dadu as I rinsed my hands.

Not much. I had thrown my rage on the wheel with the clay, but there was still plenty left. I told Dadu everything. About Ma, and Biren, and Didi’s spine that was as weak as wet mud. And then I asked, “Are we dirty, Dadu? We are poor, I know, but are we dirty?”

Dadu sighed. “Ma’s fears are as rusty as her bones, Tara. You cannot change her now. But it doesn’t matter. We are all made from the same clay. Some of us are fat and hollow, some of us have cracks in our sides, and some of us are beautiful but only for show. The longer we are burnt in the kiln, the stronger we become. The best pots are those that are used every day and keep the water cool in the summertime.”

That was nice to hear, and poetic and all, but I still stung. I seethed the next day, and the day after that, and when my pot was finally burnt and ready, it looked flushed and dark with anger. That afternoon, I took it to the riverbank, lifted it high, and dashed it to pieces on the rocks.

THE NEXT MORNING   I dawdled toward Didi’s house as rain pummeled my umbrella. My mother had gone on about how a job was a job, that money did not grow on trees, and did I think I was born a princess, and other such gems I had heard so often they passed by my ears like the whine of a mosquito.

Didi opened the door and sucked me in like a whirlpool. Her hair was undone, her eyes wild. “Thank goodness you’re here, Tara. I think Ma’s had a stroke. I can’t reach Dr. Ghoshal on the phone. I have to fetch him from his clinic. Watch her, please, O.K.?” Didi moved as she spoke, sandals on, sari tucked up against the rain, umbrella unrolled.

I could only nod as she ran out. A stroke had hit me, too, a lightning bolt of guilt. I had poured my feelings into the pot and broken it by the river. Perhaps I was a witch, with smoke coiling from my fingertips and poison in my spit. Had I wished the stroke upon Ma?

The house was quiet. I heard a moan from the room to my left and tiptoed to the door. The woman on the bed was neither fat nor hollow, I thought, remembering Dadu’s words. She did not have cracks on her side, nor was she beautiful. She was very old, her body so slight it barely showed under the sheet. She moaned again, her tongue peeping between her lips like a lizard’s.

Then she opened her eyes and saw me. She croaked: something about the prayer room.

“It’s O.K., I’m not going in there,” I said. “Didi will be back any minute.”

“Room … water … please.”

I had to double-check. “You want me to go into the prayer room and get you the holy water. Is that it?”

She could not nod, but her eyes moved. I understood.

After I had fed her a few sips, she grabbed my hand and would not let go. We stayed that way even when Didi returned with Dr. Ghoshal.

When it came time for Ma to go to the hospital, her wizened fingers clung to mine, as if they were joined in prayer. Did she know who I was, or rather, what I was? Or when death crossed her threshold and danced on her pillow, had the biggest fear of all washed away the rest? Did it matter? I decided not.

AFTER THEY HAD LEFT,   I went to the riverbank and salvaged the broken shards of my pot. I crumbled them and soaked them in water until they turned to sludge. Then I mixed in some more clay and made another pot. I thought of music and sunshine and feasts and colors as I shaped it. When it had cooled, I filled it with flowers and took it to the hospital.

Ma’s door was open, waiting for me.

AUTHOR’S NOTE   The caste system organized Hindu society into four social classes based on occupation—Brahmins (priesthood), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (commoners, including farmers and traders), and Shudras (serfs, those who served the first three classes). A fifth caste arose over time, comprising those Shudras who performed the most unwanted menial jobs—butchers, leather workers, garbage collectors, those who cremated the dead, and those who cleaned places such as toilets, drains, and streets. They became perceived as unclean because of their work, which in turn caused the other castes to deem them untouchables (Pariahs), both literally and socially. Although the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s holy texts, states that the nature of a man is what determines his caste, over time the system became hardened and hereditary. Fortunately, the caste system is fading in importance in modern India, especially in urban areas among younger and more educated people.

WHITE MICE

by Ruskin Bond

Illustrated by Michael Chesworth

GRANNY SHOULD NEVER   have entrusted my Uncle Ken with the job of taking me to the station and putting me on the train for Delhi. He got me to the station all right, but then proceeded to put me on the wrong train!

I was nine or ten at the time and I’d been spending part of my winter holidays with my grandparents in Dehra. Now it was time to go back to my parents in Delhi before joining school again.

“Just make sure that Ruskin gets into the right compartment, Kenneth,” Gran said to her only son, then thirty, unmarried, and unemployed. “And make sure he has a berth to himself and a thermos of drinking water.”

Uncle Ken carried out his instructions to the letter. He even bought me a bar of chocolate, consuming most of it himself while telling me how to pass my exams without too much study. (I’ll tell you the secret someday.) The train pulled out of the station, and we waved fond good-byes to each other.

An hour and two small stations later, I discovered to my horror that I was not on the train to Delhi but on the night express to Lucknow, over 300 miles in the opposite direction. Someone in the compartment suggested that I get down at the next station; another said it would not be wise for a small boy to get off the train at a strange place in the middle of the night. “Wait till we get to Lucknow,” advised a third passenger, “then send a telegram to your parents.”

Early next morning the train steamed into Lucknow. One of the passengers kindly took me to the stationmaster’s office. “MR. P. K. GHOSH, STATIONMASTER” said the sign over his door. When my predicament had been explained to him, Mr. Ghosh looked down at me through his bifocals and said, “Yes, yes, we must send a telegram to your parents.”

“I don’t have their address as yet,” I said. “They were to meet me in Delhi. You’d better send a telegram to my grandfather in Dehra.”

“Done, done,” said Mr. Ghosh, who was in the habit of repeating certain words. “And meanwhile, I’ll take you home and introduce you to my family.”

Mr. Ghosh’s house was just behind the station. He had his cook bring me a cup of sweet, milky tea and two large rasgullas, syrupy Indian sweetmeats.

“You like rasgullas, I hope, I hope?”

“Oh yes, sir, “ I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Now let me show you my family.”

He took me by the hand and led me to a boarded-up veranda at the back of the house. Here I was amazed to find a miniature railway, complete with station, railway bungalows, and signal boxes. Next to it was a miniature fairground with swings, a roundabout, and a Ferris wheel. Cavorting on the roundabout and Ferris wheel were fifteen to twenty white mice! Another dozen or so mice were running in and out of tunnels and climbing onto a toy train. Mr. Ghosh pressed a button, and the little train, crowded with white mice, left the station and went rattling off to the far corner of the veranda.

“My hobby for many years,” said Mr. Ghosh. “What do you think of it, think of it?”

“I like the train, sir.”

“But not the mice?”

“There are an awful lot of them, sir. They must consume a great many rasgullas!”

“No, no, I don’t give them rasgullas,” snapped Mr. Ghosh, a little annoyed. “Just railway biscuits, broken up. These old station biscuits are just the thing for them. Some of our biscuits haven’t been touched for years. Too hard for our teeth. Rasgullas are for you and me! Now I’ll leave you here while I return to the office and send a telegram to your grandfather. These newfangled telephones never work properly!”

GRANDFATHER TELEGRAMMED BACK   that he would arrive that evening. In the meantime I helped feed the white mice with railway biscuits, then watched Mr. Ghosh operate the toy train. Some of the mice rode the train, some played on the swings and the roundabout, some climbed in and out of Mr. Ghosh’s pockets and ran up and down his uniform. By the time Grandfather arrived, I had consumed about a dozen rasgullas and fallen asleep in a huge armchair in Mr. Ghosh’s living room. I woke up to find the stationmaster busily showing Grandfather his little railway colony of white mice. Grandfather, being a retired railwayman, was more interested in the toy train, but he said polite things about the mice, commending their pink eyes and pretty little feet. Mr. Ghosh beamed with pleasure and sent out for more rasgullas.

Late that night, when Grandfather and I had settled into the compartment of a normal train, Mr. Ghosh came to the window to say good-bye. As the train began moving, he thrust a cardboard box into my hands and said, “A present for you and your grandfather!”

More rasgullas, I thought. But when the train was underway and I had lifted the lid of the box, I found two white mice asleep on a bed of cotton wool.

BACK IN DEHRA,   I kept the white mice in their box; I had plans for them. Uncle Ken had spent most of the day skulking in the guava orchard, too embarrassed to face me. Granny had given him a good lecture on how to be a responsible adult. But I was thirsty for revenge! After dinner I slipped into my uncle’s room and released the mice under his bedsheet.

An hour later we all had to leap from our beds when Uncle Ken dashed out of his room, screaming that something soft and furry was running about inside his pajamas.

“Well, off with the pajamas!” said Grandfather, giving me a wink. (He had a good idea of what had happened.)

After Uncle Ken had done a tap dance, one white mouse finally emerged from the bottom of his pajamas; but the other had run up his jacket sleeve. It suddenly popped out beneath my uncle’s chin. Uncle Ken grew hysterical. Convinced that his room was full of mice, pink, white, and brown, he locked himself inside the storeroom and slept on an old sofa.

Next day Grandfather took me to the station and put me on the train to Delhi. It was the right train this time.

“I’ll look after the white mice,” he said.

Grandfather grew quite fond of the mice and even wrote to Mr. Ghosh, asking if he could spare another pair. But Mr. Ghosh, we learned later, had been transferred to another part of the country and had taken his family with him.

NOTE   Born in India in 1934, acclaimed author Ruskin Bond has written many stories and poems for Cricket.

OLD CRICKET SAYS

IT’S SOMETIMES CALLED   the “rock we eat.” You might even have sprinkled some on your eggs this morning. What is it? Sodium chloride — ordinary table salt! You need to have the right amount of salt in your diet to stay healthy. Wild animals do, too, and, as Jack D. Remington (Grandpa Jack to his friends) told me in a recent letter, they will do some surprising things to get the salt they crave.

“I remember years ago backpacking into the Wallowa Mountains of Northeastern Oregon with Grandma Betty. On our first night, we made the mistake of leaving our packs against the trunk of a tree while we slept. In the morning, Grandma discovered that a porcupine, in his need for salt, had chewed both her shoulder straps in two! Backpacking up a steep trail is hard work, and when you work hard, you sweat. The sweat dries and leaves a residue of salt. So, when you hike into porcupine country, hang your pack high in a tree!

“When I was studying wild animals in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, I had the use of an old log cabin. It had a rickety table and chair, a bed spring with no mattress, a wood stove, but no indoor plumbing.

“One night while I was trying to sleep I heard a strange noise. Scritch-scritch-scritch. It was dark, so I couldn’t see what was making the sound. My flashlight revealed nothing, not even a mouse. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Loud! I got out of bed and crept to where there used to be a door (I believe some previous ‘renter’ had broken it up for firewood). Scritch-scritch. It sounded like it was coming from the outhouse. Flashlight in hand, I sneaked up to the outhouse and looked in. There, sitting inside the hole, was a porcupine, chewing on the edge of the seat! All I could see was his head as he scritched with his teeth on the salty wood. I doubled up on the ground laughing! What a way to get salt in your diet!”

BOO

by Tom Brennan

Illustrated by Alan Fore

BOO LIKED TO SWIM.   He liked running through the ship’s grass-floored, ivy-clad passageways and playing the sports handball and pelota with other children. He enjoyed tending the crops and the way the rich, sweet smell from the liquid in the hydroponics vats clung to his clothes. But most of all he liked to swim in the secret places only he knew.

Boo had earned his nickname with his sudden unexpected appearances: at two years old he had found an entrance to the ventilation system and disappeared overnight. His family searched but found nothing until they heard scratching from a ventilation grating. Instead of the expected rat they found Boo, grinning upside down from the duct, naked and filthy.

Despite his family’s watchful gaze from then on, Boo found his way time and again into the heart of the spaceship, using the hidden arteries and veins that pumped gases and fluids through the great craft. Service ducts and vent shafts became his playgrounds; the unseen skeleton of the ship became his own private world.

And, somehow, he always found his way back home.

“Where do you go?” whispered Jan, the mayor’s daughter, who sat beside Boo in the packed schoolroom lit by flickering electric tubes.

“Everywhere,” he told her. “Every deck and level.”

Jan waited until Mrs. Williams turned her back to write on the board at the front of the room, then asked, “Aren’t you scared?”

“Me? No, never.” Boo grinned at Jan, then remembered the rat in the forward deck.

It had happened two years before: Boo had gone as far forward as he could, farther than ever before, using a service duct that became narrower and narrower. Flat on his stomach, sweating and thirsty, he had pushed on, eager to find what lay in the nose of the ship.

Suddenly a rat had dropped from an unseen opening overhead and scuttled away from Boo, who pulled back and hit his head against the metal. The rat, desperate to escape, disappeared around a curve. Boo heard a sound like a water bottle being ripped open, and the rat’s remains spattered against the duct wall ahead.

With his nose pinched tight against the smell, Boo inched forward and peered around the corner. The rat had run into a curtain of shimmering radiation that distorted Boo’s view of the duct beyond.

Boo worked a loose button free from his shirt and threw it into the duct. The button sparkled before disintegrating in the microwave field.

After that, Boo was more careful.

“Dad, what’s in the front of the ship?” Boo had asked once at dinner as he sat at the scratched plastic kitchen table with his parents and brother. The family shared the same stocky build and long, dark hair and wore similar patched cotton tunics. “What’s through the big bulkhead doors?”

Boo’s father scowled. “Nothing for you to see. They sealed the front up for a good reason. Eat your dinner.”

“But there must be something …” Boo often pressed his ear to the massive metal doors and felt the hum of distant machinery. According to the old storytellers, all the doors leading to the bow had been sealed centuries before.

“You stay away from there,” Boo’s father ordered. “Understand?”

Boo toyed with his tofu and vegetables.

“He won’t listen.” Boo’s brother grinned mischievously, revealing a missing front tooth.

“We’re just worried for you.” His mother reached out and smoothed Boo’s wayward hair. “Nobody knows what happened up there.”

Later, as he lay on his bunk listening to his brother’s snores, Boo thought about the giant spaceship he called home, an ancient, rotating, tapered metal spindle four kilometers long by one wide, with the hydrogen engines’ massive exhausts at the rear and the mysterious sealed sections at the front.

In between lay Boo’s green world, a jungle of rich vegetation, home to three hundred people, with acres of verdant hydroponics vats, family cabins, schoolrooms, and recreation halls. Grass and ivy lined the corridors, green tendrils groping toward the overhead UV light tubes.

No one knew the name of the ship; no one left the enclosed world alive. So Boo helped his father grow the community’s food, stuck to his schoolwork and play, and tried to forget about the hidden chambers beyond the doors. And while he worked the hydro vats, he tried to ignore the immense, jagged scar in the ship’s outer skin, sealed with concrete and scraps of metal, and the names of ancient crew members etched into the metal beside it.

Boo, like the other children, had a good life: he ate well, he played and studied, and at night he played chess by candlelight with his father and brother, though his brother cheated. Sometimes Boo visited the school library and read the old books, touching the yellowed plastic pages carefully, tracing words written on another planet.

Of the many children in his school, Boo liked Jan the best. She laughed at his jokes and didn’t make fun of him as some of the others did. He liked the way she braided her dark hair into two long tresses and the way her mouth dimpled when she smiled.

He decided to show her his secret swimming place, but she hesitated at the vent shaft opening. “I don’t think I can do it.”

Boo crouched in the shaft and held out his hand. “It’s easy — only thirty meters of this. Or is the mayor’s daughter too afraid?”

Jan scowled and jumped inside. Boo led the way through the echoing metal tunnel, following his familiar path. They heard the steady, soft draft of air through the system, inhale, exhale, the respiration of automatic systems centuries old, the breathing of a great metal being.

The tunnel’s surfaces glowed blue with the residual radiation of charged particles. When Boo opened a hatch, the tang of chlorine filled the shaft. Boo rested his feet on the steel ladder’s top rung. “What do you think?”

Speechless, Jan looked past him into more water than she had ever imagined. The ship’s main fresh water tank, forty meters by thirty, held millions of liters of water. Boo had never touched the bottom, but he knew it must be deep. Most of the ultraviolet treatment lamps suspended above the water still worked, giving the chamber an eerie blue glow.

“Ready?” Boo slipped off his outer clothes and dropped smoothly into the cold liquid.

“Where are you?” Jan scanned the water. “Boo?”

Boo laughed as he resurfaced in the middle of the tank. “Come on in.”

“O.K., but look the other way,” said Jan. When Boo turned away, Jan slid her overalls off before slipping into the water. “Oh, it’s cold!”

“You’ll get used to it,” Boo told her, and she did.

They visited the reservoir three or four times a month after that, and the metal walls echoed with their laughter. They left the humid, sticky heat of the busy decks and disappeared into their own cool, clean world.

Then, one day as they chased each other through the water, they heard a bell ring out three times.

“What was that?” asked Jan, treading water.

“I’ve never —” Boo was interrupted by a message in a language that sounded like a distorted, garbled version of his own.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Boo, sensing danger.

Far below the two swimmers, rusting sluice gates began to grind open.

“Did you feel that?” asked Jan as the water trembled.

Boo, his stomach knotted with fear, pushed Jan toward the ladder as the warning message repeated. The water pulled at his legs and tried to drag him under.

“Quick, get out!” he told Jan.

She hauled herself up the slick metal ladder and into the vent shaft, then reached down for Boo. “Come on!”

As the unseen sluice gates opened farther, the water formed a vicious whirlpool in the tank’s center, a maelstrom that clawed at Boo’s body as he reached for the ladder.

With a wail of sirens, automatic systems sucked water from the main chamber and through the open sluices. Boo fought the current and reached out for Jan’s hand, feeling every muscle and sinew straining. Churning water seethed around the ladder, clawing at Boo and dragging him down.

“You can do it!” Jan stretched down.

Boo’s fingers brushed Jan’s for a moment before the riptide pulled him under, down and down, into the open maw of the sluice. The swirling current slammed his body into the curving walls of the pipeline, his lungs burned with the last gasps of oxygen, and Boo knew he was going to die. His limbs flailed in the silent, black, churning vortex.

Then, suddenly, Boo broke through the surface of another chamber. He clung to the nearby ladder, gasping for breath. As he watched, the bubbling surface of the water subsided, and the sluice gates below him slammed shut. Boo was alone, trapped in the forward water tank.

He looked around at a smaller version of his swimming hole, at the same metal walls and overhead lights. But all these lights were working, forcing Boo to shield his eyes from the glare. Slowly, one rung at a time, he climbed the steel ladder and hammered at the grating with his fist until it gave way with a crash. Boo crawled into the duct and lay back, exhausted.

He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but he woke suddenly, cold and confused. Then he remembered the sluice gates, and Jan. He looked down into the tank; the water’s surface was calm. He could see no opening or exit other than the vent.

Boo fought the sensations of fear and panic and began to crawl along the vent shaft until he came to an intersection: he recognized none of these tunnels. He sniffed at the current of warm air and followed a new shaft, which ended in a steel grille. Boo looked through the mesh, down into a corridor just like those he had grown up in, except this corridor was clean and well-lit, sterile even. No grass, no vegetation.

Boo set his feet against the grille and kicked it open. He dropped to the corridor floor, crouched and wary, listening. He walked slowly on a strange floor of small flexible hooks that tickled his bare feet. From the curving corridor ahead, he heard voices speaking the same language as the warning message.

As he pressed himself flat to the corridor wall, a hidden door behind him slid open. Boo fell inside, landing on his back. The cabin seemed identical to Boo’s home, with its built-in kitchen, folding plastic tables, recessed cupboards, and foam chairs. But where Boo’s home was shabby and worn, the fittings here appeared sleek and almost new. A wide viewscreen dominated one wall.

When Boo saw the small refrigerator, he realized how hungry he was. He sorted through plastic boxes until he found glistening chunks of strange food. He gulped the tangy, sour cubes and drank from the faucet.

One of the bedrooms looked just like his, with twin bunks and closets; inside one he found children’s clothes, but they were too small. In the other bedroom, he found a small adult-size jumpsuit made from soft, warm, white fabric. The front edges of the suit fastened without buttons.

Boo was trying on a pair of boots when he heard the door open and a child’s voice call out.

The small boy saw the stranger in the bedroom and began to scream. Boo pushed past the child and into the corridor, running blindly, the scream pursuing him. He twisted past surprised crew members dressed in identical jumpsuits.

Above his head, a siren sounded. Boo looked for an escape route and found a ventilation grille at shoulder height. He ripped the mesh cover off, jumped up, and crawled along the duct until someone gripped his legs and pulled him back.

Boo tried to cling to the smooth surface of the duct but was dragged from safety. His body hit the floor, and Boo looked up into a stranger’s eyes and the end of a small weapon.

BOO STARED   at the man holding the weapon, trying to understand the strange language that sounded close to Boo’s own, yet so different. A crowd of thin, pale men and women appeared as the question was impatiently repeated. Then, as the man tightened his grip on the gun, a pale, light-haired woman stepped forward and pushed the weapon away from Boo.

“Where are you from?” She spoke slowly, and her speech, though heavily accented, was understandable.

Boo pointed to the rear of the ship.

The woman nodded. “What is your name?”

“Boo.”

“That is a strange name.”

“Maybe so, but it’s mine,” said Boo.

The woman smiled and helped him up. “I am Susan.”

“How come you understand me?”

“We are not so different,” said Susan. “We all spoke the same language once; some of us still remember the old tongue and sing the old songs. Now, tell me what happened.”

As Boo explained, Susan guided him through corridors of sleek metal and plastic, past spider-legged cleaning and repair robots. Everything looked new and shiny, unlike Boo’s home decks. Boo stared at the crowd following him, at their pale skin and scrawny bodies.

The crowd paused outside a massive metal door that opened to reveal an air lock. Only Susan and the man with the weapon stepped inside with Boo.

When the inner doors parted, Boo gazed in awe at the ship’s control center: in a cavernous, curving room larger than the freshwater tank, teams of people sat before banks of flashing screens and control stations. The operators, slender and pale with bulbous joints and white hair, turned from their stations and stared at Boo as if seeing some wild, mythical animal.

On a raised dais at the room’s center, in a padded acceleration couch, lay the captain. Boo had never seen anyone so old: the man seemed as helpless and frail as a blind, newborn grub. Countless years had stretched his skin and molded his face into a translucent skull with fleshless lips. Liquids pulsed feebly through the plastic tubes that connected the captain to the couch.

Directly above him floated the hologram of a blue-and-green sphere. Another hologram, an image of the slender ship itself, approached the projected planet from a point over Boo’s head.

Susan bowed to the captain and spoke. Boo couldn’t hear the whispered reply, but he saw the captain wave him over.

“You are from the aft?” The old man spoke formally, in Boo’s language.

Boo nodded.

“You live well? You eat?”

Again Boo nodded, more scared by this living corpse than by anything in his life.

“How many are alive?”

Boo said, “Three hundred or so.”

“So many? I never imagined …” The old man closed his eyes. “I remain here out of duty, my boy. This ship keeps me alive, repairs me and sustains me, because I am the captain. But duty demands difficult choices, sometimes. I am so sorry.”

As the captain fell silent, Susan guided Boo to the air lock.

“I CAN NEVER   go back?” Boo demanded. “Never?”

Susan shook her head. “I am sorry.”

Boo thought of his family, and of Jan.

“It could have been much worse,” said Susan.

“How?”

“The Protocol tells us to kill all trespassers.”

Boo realized then how much Susan had done for him: she had risked her position on the ship and saved his life.

They gave him a small room, little more than a bunk and a shower, next to Susan’s cabin. At first Mark and Elaine, her two children, were scared of Boo, but eventually they grew curious.

“What is the aft like?” Mark asked Boo at dinner.

“Yes, tell us,” said Elaine. Like their mother, both children had blond hair and intense blue eyes.

Boo explained slowly, still getting used to the dialect of the forward crew. “It’s very different from here: there are no robots, and most of the machines don’t work. But plants and crops grow everywhere, and we have good food.”

Boo stared at his plate of greasy, yellow, manufactured protein and wished he had a bowl of his mother’s tofu and vegetables.

“What happened to your dad?” Boo asked, thinking of his own family.

The children looked away as Susan explained, “Occasionally people here get sick, and some can’t fight it off. The virus or germ is too strong.”

Each day, Mark and Elaine showed Boo around the ship and taught him how to use the many machines. They took Boo to their school, where he sat in a gleaming, bright classroom and tried to follow the viewscreen lessons. The other children stared at the new arrival in class and flocked around him at recess, curious about the ship’s aft.

“There are monsters back there,” one boy assured Boo.

Another added, “And ghosts!”

Boo smiled. “There are no monsters or ghosts. Just people like us and like your parents.”

Boo taught the children how to play his favorite sports, pelota and handball, even though they grew tired quickly. The children soon accepted Boo, but most adults still avoided him.

Every week, Susan took Boo and her children to concerts in the main auditorium, where groups of crew members played ancient, strange instruments of polished wood. The soft melodies echoed down the ship’s corridors and drifted through Boo’s body.

“What was that?” he asked after the first concert.

“Classical music,” said Susan, smiling. “It is the sound of our past.”

Some nights, the crew would sing the ancient songs, tales of seas and forests, cities and ships. Susan took Boo wherever she went, partly to protect him from the suspicious glares of the crew members, but also because the two got along well. He was grateful that she was trying to help him, but at the end of each day he lay on his bunk, thinking of his parents, listening to the ventilation pumps, and planning his escape.

Susan taught Boo how to use the ship’s systems. Sitting at the cabin viewscreen with the remote keypad on his knees, Boo explored a vessel he had grown up in but never understood.

He journeyed from the engine’s raging nuclear inferno, gripped tight in magnetic coils, to the forward control room. He saw his home from above, as if he were crouched on the metal skin of the hull looking inward. He learned the ship’s name: Boreas, the god of the north wind in a language old before the ship had been built.

And he discovered that the ship was traveling through space to a specific destination: 47 Ursae Majoris, the planet he had seen in the captain’s viewscreen. And they were almost there.

Boo asked, “What happens when we arrive?”

“We follow the Protocol.” Susan looked away. “Survey probes will verify the planet’s suitability. Then the forward crew will descend to the surface and begin construction. Once the settlement is self-sufficient, the ship … the ship will be sent off on auto-destruct sequence.”

“What about my family, my friends?” Boo jumped to his feet. “Who decided this?”

“The captain, centuries ago. When the trouble started, and crewmen fought crewmen, the aft was sealed and the Protocol created.”

Boo paced the small cabin. “I’ve got to warn them.”

“Boo, you’ve got to think of yourself. And of me: I put myself at risk by telling you this. If the captain didn’t need engineers like me, we’d both be in trouble.” She paused. “You will only make things worse if you leave here. Your family and friends still won’t survive, and you will be risking the lives of my family and me, as well.”

Boo stared at her. He wanted to argue with Susan but knew it was no use. Instead he said, “I understand.”

But when Susan left the cabin, Boo took her remote command pod and made for the vent shafts.

Choosing a corridor adjacent to the sealed bulkhead, Boo opened a duct and crawled along until he saw the shimmering curtain of microwave radiation that separated the ship’s fore and aft. Boo typed a combination into the pod.

The pod beeped, but the radiation remained.

Boo tried other combinations with no result. Then, finally, something worked, and the control pod’s small screen displayed the phrase Shut down, and the shield disappeared.

He crawled as fast as he could through the duct. As his boots cleared the burn marks seared in the metal, the radiation curtain snapped back into place behind him with the crackle of imploding air molecules.

Boo took a deep breath and crawled on through the network of shafts. It seemed like hours before he heard voices and dropped down into the middle of a meeting.

Jan pushed through the stunned crowd and threw her arms around Boo’s neck. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

Boo saw his parents rushing toward him, tears streaming down his mother’s face. He turned and said, “Jan, I need to speak with your father.”

“WHO ELSE KNOWS   about this?” The mayor, Jan’s father, sat behind his desk, listening to Boo’s story.

“Only the people in this room,” Boo said, nodding to his parents standing behind him. “You must believe me — we’re running out of time.”

“I don’t know.” The mayor selected a fraying book from the shelf. “The old chronicles mention a long journey, a mission, but you say we’re traveling to a new planet … that’s difficult to believe. Who decided this destination?”

“Our ancestors,” said Boo patiently. “The ship was designed to support generations of families; we’re the descendants of the original crew.”

“I think you have a vivid imagination, son.”

“What if the boy is right?” asked Boo’s father.

Before the mayor could reply, the electric lights faded, plunging the office into darkness. Only the dim glow of Cerenkov radiation gilded the metal surfaces.

Boo said, “They must have realized I escaped and decided to finish us off. Listen: there’s no air moving.”

The sound of distant, essential machinery and pumps was a part of the crew’s life, taken for granted. The sudden silence was overwhelming.

“We have to get through the bulkhead and talk to them.”

“But how?” The mayor’s voice sounded small and faint.

Boo found the command pod. “Using this.”

With his parents and Jan close behind, Boo pushed through a growing, confused crowd. Lights appeared, small fireflies of candles and oil lamps that gravitated toward Boo. Soon a noisy mob strode behind him as he approached the bulkhead doors.

By candlelight, Boo found the door controls. After his father ripped the faceplate open, Boo held Susan’s command pod next to the controls and tried a combination: nothing. Boo tried many combinations, but the controls were dead. He wondered if the doors had lost all power but pushed that thought aside.

The mob began to whisper, then mumble, then jeer and shout. Jan held the smoky candle close to Boo’s sweating face as he worked. Then, just as he was about to give up, the control panel glowed blue.

Boo tried the pod’s buttons and heard the reluctant whine of rusting gears. The massive doors, three meters high by four wide, began to grind open inch by inch. Light spilled from the widening gap, blinding the crowd as they streamed into the forward decks.

“Stop!” Boo called out. “Don’t hurt anybody!”

Warning sirens cut through the clamor as the tide of bodies surged on and on through the spotless corridors. Boo grasped Jan’s hand and led her toward the control room.

They saw the forward crew fleeing; the officers’ weak, skeletal bodies stood no chance against the stocky aft crew. Families huddled together, protecting their children as best they could.

Then, ahead of them, came the sound of weapons firing.

“Wait!” Boo pushed through the mob converging on the control room, where officers blocked the entrance. As the scared defenders raised their weapons, Boo shielded Jan’s body.

“Enough!” The captain’s amplified voice filled the corridor. “Hold fire, sergeant. Let the boy in.”

The men hesitated before standing aside to let Boo and Jan in; Boo felt Jan’s hand tighten as the air-lock doors opened to reveal the captain.

Jan stifled a gasp, but the captain didn’t look in her direction. He gazed at Boo with sad, weary eyes, and Boo stared back, waiting for the captain to speak.

“We never intended this,” the captain finally whispered. “We were all supposed to work together on a new planet.”

“What happened?” Boo asked.

The captain’s body seemed no bigger than a child’s. “After the trouble on our old planet, they sent us into the void on a journey that would last centuries so our children’s children could build new lives on distant worlds. It was a good plan.”

Boo stared at the captain and tried to calculate how old he must be.

“Fifty years into our journey, space debris ripped the hydroponics deck open, and we lost most of our food. I put everyone on half rations, then quarter — everyone except the officers. They convinced me they were essential to the mission.”

Boo and Jan waited.

“The food had almost run out when the scientists created synthetic proteins: they could manufacture basic foods, but only in small amounts. Enough for the higher ranks, but not the crew. What could I do?”

“You cut us off,” Boo said. “You sealed us behind the bulkheads.”

“I had to choose between some of my crew surviving or none at all. It was the most difficult decision I have ever made.”

“You left us to starve?” Jan asked. “No food? No supplies?”

“There wasn’t enough food,” the captain said. “We barely survived. I am amazed that you did.”

Boo looked at the captain’s crew, at bodies gaunt from years of synthetic foods. He remembered the hydroponics vats and the jagged scars in the outer walls, next to the etched names of heroic aft crew members. “They must have repaired the damage and gotten the tanks working again. We had plenty of food: we would have shared it.”

“We thought we were alone and, truthfully, we tried to forget what had happened.”

“Why did you stop our power and oxygen just now, when you knew there were so many of us alive?”

The captain glanced at the sergeant. “Some of my men took things into their own hands when you were missing this morning.”

Jan asked, “What happens now?”

The captain considered. “I will speak to the crew in the auditorium.”

The sergeant began, “But, sir —”

“It must be the crew’s decision.”

An announcement went out over the ship’s speakers.

With Boo, Jan, the mayor, and the sergeant leading them, a crowd began to assemble in the auditorium. Boo saw Susan waiting for him.

“You scared me. I was worried about you!” She embraced Boo.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to warn my friends and family.”

The fore and aft crews stayed separate and stared at each other, unsure and suspicious. The mayor addressed the aft crew, explaining what Boo had learned, until the captain appeared in the viewscreen. A hush came over the crowd.

“A new world awaits us,” the captain said, using Boo’s language. “The scout probes tell us that the planet is more than we hoped for.”

“You left us to die!” someone from the aft crew yelled.

“I was wrong,” the captain said. “But we have a second chance. We can choose to build new lives together, or we can fight and destroy everything we have. The decision is ours.”

“Why should we trust you!” The shouts of the aft crew filled the auditorium.

Boo stepped in front of the viewscreen. “Quiet!” yelled the mayor.

Boo waited for the crews to settle down, then said, “We should at least listen to what the captain has to say. We all worked together, once. Maybe it can be that way again. Show them the planet, Captain.”

The captain’s face faded, and the image of the new world filled the screen. The crew looked up at the revolving sphere and the white clouds that masked deep, blue oceans.

“This is for all of us,” Boo told them, “if we want it.”

The crew, suddenly silent, stared with longing at the green, vibrant world.

“We need to talk,” the mayor said.

The aft crew gathered around the mayor while the fore crew surrounded the sergeant. Boo heard low, urgent voices and disagreements, the harsh snap of arguments. After what seemed like hours, the mayor relayed the aft crew’s decision: “Captain, we’ll try to work with you.”

The sergeant nodded as well. “We are in agreement.”

While the two crews approached each other cautiously, swapping names and histories, Jan and Boo stared at the image of their new world. Jan said, “It’s very, very beautiful. What shall we call it?”

Boo smiled. “Home.”

AHIMSA

by Josie Tagliente

Illustrated by Michael Chesworth

ONCE WHEN I   was four, Mom attacked a keyhole with a paper towel, wiping a spider clear out of existence.

“Stop!” I yelled. “She’s somebody’s mother!”

Mom told everyone. I don’t think it stopped anybody from killing spiders. She, however, began to cup paper towels around the intruders and whisk them outdoors to freedom.

Mom’s friend said that I was practicing ahimsa, the belief that people shouldn’t harm other living things. She told me that Hindus and Buddhists believe that the lives of even the tiniest creatures are precious and must be honored, and we should never do them harm.

One summer day, Mom and I were at the local greenhouse. A tall, bushy vine with bright green leaves caught my attention. A grapevine! I begged Mom to buy one.

“Gosh, Lily,” she exclaimed, “where would we plant it? In our apartment everything we grow has to be in pots.”

“Oh, Mom, we can find something big enough.” I pulled out my allowance money, which I’d planned to spend on Rollerblades.

“You want it that badly?” Mom asked in disbelief.

“Yeah! Wouldn’t it be fun to have grapes from our own vine?”

Mom sighed, giving in. “All right,” she said. “But you’ll have to take good care of it yourself.”

When we got home, we cut away the container with heavy garden snips and planted the vine outside in the turtle bin. It would receive nourishment from the soil, and the roots would have room to grow. I gently tied the lanky branches to the trellis against the stone wall with brightly colored yarn.

By the end of the summer, the longest branches had spread over the wall. The vine was beautiful, the first thing people noticed as they walked toward our apartment.

In the fall, Mom and I clipped the branches back at the advice of the greenhouse man. “Not too far back the first year,” he’d said. “Give the vine a chance to grow.” I missed the trailing leaves on the stone wall. It now looked as bare as a sheared lamb.

In March of the following spring, I noticed tiny shoots of bright green bursting through the dry wood of the vine. Every day more glossy baby buds popped their fringed heads out. They grew faster than we could have imagined.

As the weeks melted into summer, the vine provided shade for the turtles in the bin. By July the leaves had started to peek over the wall to our neighbor’s patio as well. I could measure the buds one day, and the next they would be almost twice the size, with new ones appearing overnight. Tiny clusters of grapes no bigger than a ladybug’s coat began to form near the leaves. The greenhouse man told us if they ripened into real grapes the first year, they would be very small.

One day, as I was watering, the most magical thing happened. A beautiful midnight blue bug landed on my white T-shirt just below the shoulder.

“Hello, pretty one,” I whispered. She didn’t move. Delicate translucent wings fluttered into a Y shape, hanging just behind her body and remaining slightly open. Her antennae had tiny feathery hairs on the edges, as did the tips of her wings — a tiny, elegant princess.

I kept talking to her as I walked slowly around. She clung to my shirt, making no motion to fly away. When she left, I was overwhelmed.

That evening, I told Mom what had happened.

“I’ve never seen what you describe, Lily. Sounds like a spiritual experience,” she said.

“It was amazing, Mom.”

One morning, weeks later, I stepped onto the patio to feed my early rising turtles. In the purple light of dawn, the grape leaves appeared brown and lacy. Something was wrong with my vine!

I felt the throb of tears swelling under my eyelids. I ran in to wake Mom, who stumbled out clutching her robe.

“Oh my,” she said. “What is that?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t notice it yesterday.”

I held up a branch and suddenly felt a burning pinch. Part of my arm itched badly, and welts swelled on my skin.

I called the man at the nursery to describe what had happened. He called the culprit Harrisina brillians, the Western grapeleaf skeletonizer moth, who feeds on the leaves in her caterpillar stage. He recommended a chemical with a long name.

“No, sir,” I said. “No chemicals.”

Later that day I looked up skeletonizers on the Internet, hoping for information that would keep the bugs away. Scrolling down, I saw a photograph of the caterpillars, black and yellow stripes chewing away. I kept scrolling.

Suddenly, there appeared, in full midnight blue, my elegant princess. A skeletonizer moth! How could this be?

The photograph showed her dark, thin wings spread back — the same glorious creature, laying eggs on a grapevine.

I was stunned. My moth had laid the eggs. Her babies were destroying my vine!

I read some more. The hairs on the caterpillar are the parts that burn. They break off when disturbed, stinging whoever touches them. This is how the bugs protect themselves. Harrisina brillians are found in the Southwest, where we lived.

A major problem for vineyards, the article said. An organic substance called Bacillus thuringiensis, a product used widely by California grape growers, was recommended for exterminating the moths.

Back to the nursery for Bacillus. The man smiled. He said we had made the right choice.

I had intended to use the liquid abundantly, until I read the label. It was organic, all right. However, it needed to be mixed. After using it, the bottle could not be stored, nor could you use the rest of the stuff for another spraying. Recommendations were to start all over again, after throwing away the previous liquid. The warning label had elaborate instructions for disposing of the original container.

Mom agreed to help me. We sat covered from head to toe, each with a spray bottle in our gloved hands. Mom stared into space, and I was hysterical.

“Mom, we can’t do this. The poor bugs and turtles!”

She nodded and sighed, thinking the same thing.

The next afternoon, wearing long sleeves and gloves to avoid touching anything, I clipped the vine as much as I could. It was being destroyed, anyway. And I cried. What a mess! The cuttings left a pile of lacy leaves and wilting branches on the patio floor. I stuffed it all into garbage bags and hauled them to the Dumpster. Maybe the caterpillars would just continue eating on their voyage to the dump. Hopefully they wouldn’t be crushed.

Within the week, bright green leaf babies began to pop up again on the desolate twigs, just as they had in the spring. But the leaves continued to be devoured, and I just kept clipping.

One day, as I was misting the vine, something flittered into my vision. There she was! My midnight moth. She circled the vine slowly, deliberately, landing in a whisper. Repeating this ritual several times, she finally chose the right spot for her eggs, oblivious to me watching her. Her velvet body steady, shimmering wings fluttering, she leaned in toward the shiny leaf directly above me.

I moved silently into the house to get a jar from the cupboard. I pounded several tiny nail holes into the lid and quietly went back to the patio. I carefully cupped the jar over my moth, pinching off the grape leaf she had attached herself to, and slid the lid into place. I added a few more leaves to make her comfortable.

My heart fluttered. How could such a thing of beauty cause so much destruction?

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught another moth slipping into the tangle of vines, just as the first one had. Again I slid the jar over her, careful not to release the other one. I caught three that day and sprinkled plenty of water and leaves into the container for them. Sitting very still, I held the jar, thinking.

“I know where I’ll take you,” I whispered.

That night Mom and I gazed at the lovely ladies in confinement. They accepted their captivity. They didn’t even try to escape. It occurred to me that they might be at the end of their life cycles. It made me sad. I had made a decision that I was not totally sure of. Perhaps I was interrupting the natural order.

I announced my plan.

Mom nodded and said, “Ahimsa.”

The next morning I rode the bus to the desert. I placed the jar near some bushes and released the lid.

The moths wouldn’t fly immediately. The moisture in the jar seemed to restrict the movement of their wings. I waited with them until they were all free.

“Be safe,” I whispered. It was my prayer for them.

Back home, the caterpillars continued their work. I cut off the leaves and placed them in bags. They went to the desert as well.

Was I doing the right thing? I wondered. Could the desert handle them? Would I have to continue this for the rest of my life?

The grapes grew sweet. They were the size of miniature marbles. I sat under the umbrella shade of the vine, my beautiful vine. I thought of the first time I’d seen my midnight blue princess moth. Of the way she’d landed on my shoulder and stayed. And I hoped with all my heart that she liked living in the desert.

THE PRIDE

by Paul Sullivan

Illustrated by Elizabeth Biesiot

THERE HAD BEEN   six lions. Now there were five. The old male had been killed that morning by a hunter’s bullet. That left three cubs and two adult females. They had no leader now — no old lion with a great flowing mane to protect them from prowling hyenas or defend their territory from other, roving lions. The pride, the family of lions, was not helpless, but it was much weaker.

That morning the hunters had also killed a Cape buffalo. The buffalo had lived by the river in the shade under the trees. He had been too old to run with the herd, and his legs were bad. The hunters had taken his head with its large horns and left the carcass in the grass for the vultures to feed on. But the pride had watched as the hunters carried all of the big lion back to their camp, hung on a long pole between the shoulders of two strong men. These were not meat hunters. They hunted for the horns, heads, and skins of other creatures. They killed for trophies.

The three cubs could see the smoke from the safari camp and the large white tents and people moving about. They watched from the rocks as the smoke twisted up to blot out the evening sun. The old female had warned her cubs to stay away from the camp, and they had heeded her warning. But they mourned the loss of the big male.

He had seemed to know days before, when the men first came and put up their tents under the trees. It was already in his eyes. These men hadn’t come for just any lion: they had come for him, because he was one of the great lions of Africa.

The men had come early on the first day, scouting the area, watching from far away. And the lion had gone out to meet them, warning them to stay away, putting himself between the hunters and the pride as he had always done. The hunters had backed away that first time and gone back to their camp. But the male knew that they had marked him and would return. He’d warned the cubs to stay close to the females when that time came, and it came quickly — the very next morning. The hunters returned, and just as before, the big lion had placed himself between them and the pride. He’d shown no fear as he’d moved through the high grass, placing one paw evenly before another, his powerful shoulders flexing under his thick fur. But the hunters also appeared to have no fear now. They were ready. When he’d challenged, they’d stood their ground. And when he’d neared, a rifle cracked. Then he went down, as if he had hit something terribly solid, his big body rolling into the grass. He lay still. The hunters waited several moments before they approached him. Then one of the trackers nudged him cautiously with a long spear to make certain he was dead.

The older female knew the pride would need to leave that area before darkness brought the hyenas. The buffalo carcass under the trees would surely draw them. Vultures were already feeding. The hyenas would follow. First one, then two, then five or six prowling in the night. It was just at the end of the rainy season that a group of hyenas had killed off a member of the pride, a young male that might have one day replaced the old one. Now, without the old male, the females could not, with any certainty, protect the cubs. The big male’s reputation would have kept the hyenas away. Now there was nothing. And soon the hyenas would know.

As evening fell, the campfires grew brighter. The cubs watched the human figures for the last time before the smaller adult female turned the three cubs away. The older female, much more sure of herself, took the lead. The leaving was sad. The cubs had to be nudged and coaxed. They didn’t understand the leaving. They hadn’t understood the death of the big male. Not that death was new to them — they saw it every day under the vast African sky. It even fed them, keeping them alive. But that was different and accepted by the pride.

They neared the river just as darkness covered it. Several times the lioness stopped, allowing her younger sister and the cubs to catch up to her. Out in the night they heard other lions. But they were to be avoided; other males from other prides might harm the cubs. There were zebras, barking to one another in their strange way. And there was the laughter of the hyenas, distant, but not far enough away, and always frightening.

The lioness moved cautiously. Her sister followed haltingly. The little legs of the cubs worked twice as fast to keep pace. The last of the three cubs, over time, slowly fell behind. Soon the last cub lost sight of the others completely, struggling to find his way in a maze of twisted grass and thornbush, all in total darkness. He cried pitifully, searching for his siblings, searching for the females — no more than a whine, but certain to attract the hyenas.

The pride moved on. They came to a grassy clearing by the river, where the hippos had come out to feed. The hippos, seeing the lions in the darkness, moved their young farther away, closer to the water. The pride passed wide of the hippos, anxious to avoid trouble. The older female, her younger sister, and the two cubs followed, their eyes shining in the darkness, the smoothness of their bodies slipping under the moonlight.

Far behind followed the third cub, his cries becoming more desperate.

The two hyenas, lying in the darkness, had also watched the pride pass along the river. They made note of the females leading the two cubs. But it wasn’t to their advantage to attack, not when the odds were even: two on two. So the pride passed safely. But then came the cry of the third cub, more of a plea now as he stumbled out of the bush and into the clearing. The hyenas rose up on their legs, panting heavily, laughing in the darkness with their big, bone-crushing teeth showing white.

The pride came first. The older female knew that. It had always been the way. It was understood — the natural instinct the old male had answered that morning. The pride must survive. And when she had finally turned to discover the third cub missing, the older female heard the laughter of the hyenas, not knowing if it was two or if it was twenty. There was still her young sister and the two cubs to lead away. She didn’t turn back, though her heart longed to, though her sister whined and pleaded. She roared angrily.

It should have ended quickly for the terrorized cub cringing before them, but the two hyenas looming above seemed to be in disagreement as to whose kill it should be, for the one who made the kill rightly owned the tender, young carcass. There was so little of it that it had to be agreed upon. There was quarreling, even some snapping of teeth. One beast eyeing the other, warning and circling.

The hippos watched from the water’s edge. Out in the darkness, zebras barked, and other lions roared. Then finally it was decided, and the uglier of the two hyenas turned on the cub, his jaws wide and the juices dripping.

The pride came first. It was a natural instinct. But there was one greater — a mother’s reply to her cub’s cry in the night. None in any creature was stronger, as the hyenas were quick to learn when the lioness sprang into the clearing. She tore into the first beast with a fury that sent him to the ground. Turning on the second hyena, she saw only his tail as he stumbled over his mate. Both vanished into the darkness.

The cub huddled close to his mother, whimpering and rubbing against her for comfort. But his mother’s attention was still on the hyenas. Even though they were gone, it was her nature to be cautious.

When she started across the clearing, the cub followed, hurrying along behind her. But long before they reached the bank of the river, she turned and collected him in her powerful jaws, carrying him by the scruff of his neck through the high grass, under the African moon.

She had no problem locating her sister in a place where the pride would sleep away the night, sheltered by an ancient thorn tree. And there the lioness dropped her cub to the joy of his siblings — to teeth, claws, wet tongues, and bundles of rolling fur.

MANTRAP

by Tish Farrell

Illustrated by Lois Neethling

WILLY SANK   to his knees and peered through the potato bush. Impala! He’d almost spooked them back in the winter thorns. A bad mistake. Now they were frozen — caught between fright and flight. If he breathed, they’d be gone. Willy held his breath, willing his father to shoot the big male on the rise. In the dawn light, he glowed like bronze, lyre antlers held high, bright eyes scanning the bush. He meant only one thing, that buck. Meat. Succulent juice-running flesh that Willy could weep for. They’d been living on wild mangoes for weeks, eaten their last scrawny hen a month back.

In the corner of his eye, Willy could just see his father, Jacob, crouching low, bow in one hand, the other sifting red Luangwa dirt on the breeze. He thought, Quick, Dadda, shoot! Before the wind turns and they smell us. The lyre heads went down as one. The bachelor herd was grazing again, moving out under the sausage trees. Now, Dadda. Now. Kill the big buck now!

Willy dared to blink. When he looked again his father was on the move, closing in on the herd as quietly as a ghost. Then before he knew it — without seeing the arrow fly — the buck was down, and the herd was barking the alarm, which flushed white storks from the swamp and stopped his heart.

“Now!” Jacob breathed. The tension snapped, and Willy’s legs turned to water. He stumbled as he tried to drag the buck to cover.

“It’s all right, boy,” Jacob said, and, with the flick of his knife, he slit the buck’s throat, letting the warm blood flow into an old porcupine den. Then he whipped through the soft underbelly, scooping out the guts, setting aside the offal. Next, he peeled back the bronze hide, started slicing the flesh for Willy to wrap in grass parcels. Already the buck’s eyes were growing dull, the flies dancing round in dizzy swarms. Willy brushed them off. Maybe he felt sorry for the dead buck. But then again, maybe he didn’t want to share one shred of it.

Next, they dragged the carcass to the foot of a mahogany tree. Willy knew his job now. His father had explained it in the darkness of the hut while Mammy slept. She wouldn’t have wanted them to do this. She wouldn’t have let Willy come. But now he didn’t care. They had meat! He shimmied up the tree to the first high branch while his father tied rope around the dead beast’s hocks. Between them, they hauled the buck up the trunk, and Willy wedged it safely in the fork of the tree and grinned down at his father. Cunning, eh? To disguise their kill as a leopard’s larder. But then wasn’t his father an old-time hunter who knew all the tricks?

“The rope!” Jacob warned. Willy shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans, then scrambled down the tree. Next, they stuffed the meat parcels inside their shirts, and Willy wanted to be off home to cook it, but his father wagged a finger. No, he said. First they must cover their tracks and remember the spot. Only a fool lost his meat because he couldn’t find his stash in the dark. They had to be careful, too. At sunup the park rangers would be on patrol. Willy felt sick again, as he had before they spotted the impala. Caught with poached meat! They would go to jail for sure, maybe even die there. Suddenly the parcels of meat felt stuck to his flesh, the meat he’d wanted — still wanted — to stuff into his mouth, raw and red and warm.

He crept after his father through the brushwood, the sweat stinging his eyes. Home wasn’t far — just a half-hour’s walk to the boundary — but those two miles of the park’s many thousands were the riskiest. That the homestretch was open grassland with little cover was bad enough. Worse, though, it lay near the track to the rangers’ camp.

Yet when they reached the grassy plain, Jacob stopped, bold as brass, and got out his knife again. Willy almost sobbed. Not more delay! Please, Dadda. Then he remembered. This was Jacob’s cover in case the rangers did drive by. They were going to cut grass for roof thatch. It was the season, after all, and no one minded the farmers coming to the game reserve for that. Willy pulled the garden knife from his belt, and, as they moved forward, slashed the grass savagely until he had two fat bundles.

He almost yelled for joy when his father said, “That’ll do, boy. Give me the rope now!” Willy felt in his pocket. No rope. Must have dropped it while he was cutting. He cast around. His father frowned, saying, “Forget it!” They bound the bundles with grass stems and, hiding the bow and arrows inside, laid them across their shoulders. Willy walked behind, eyes darting left and right. And then, after all the longing, there it was, the line of thorn trees by the dried-up stream, their homestead thatch just beyond. His father threw him a look, the bare twitch of his brow. Willy smiled back.

Twenty minutes later and safe inside their hut with the cooking hearth stoked up, Willy thought he could go on eating forever. Never mind the smoke with every chew, so long as the juices went on bursting in his mouth. Mammy stopped him, though, saying he’d be sick after eating only mangoes, and anyway they must dry the rest for another day. She said nothing about the poaching, though, only cast her husband a worried glance. What could she say when they had come home with meat? She was hungry, too. What could anyone say when their fields were baked to brick dust and the granary was empty? Not even the old ones could remember a drought so bad. And how could starving people ignore all that food in the park: the herds of gazelle, impala, and puku that grazed Luangwa’s plains? These had been their own plains once, before the government pushed them out and banned hunting.

So now they had helped themselves. Where was the harm? Willy lazed by the hearth. He had no work to do. How could he scare birds from a garden that had blown away? Instead he dozed in a haze of contentment. It was only later, as the day began to cool, that fear wormed again in Willy’s chest. That night they must go back and claim their kill. And night brought other dangers, leopard for one…

YET WHEN IT WAS TIME   to step from the lamp-lit warmth of the homestead and into Luangwa’s chilly darkness, Willy found only meat juices flooding his mouth, not the sour wash of fear. The thought of more meat spurred him on, and besides, who was better to lead them than his own father? He’d been a tracker for the game warden once, hunting down man-eating lions that were attacking the villages. Dadda was a real hunter — no need to feel afraid. And so with cricket song ringing in his ears, Willy padded after Jacob, who silently crossed the sandy streambed and slipped into the reserve.

Once they had cleared the acacias, the going was swift. All that morning’s thatch cutting had left a clear path into the sagebrush where nothing could see or smell them. They were almost running as they reached the game trail that skirted the lagoon and led to their tree. By now a slice of moonlight was falling on the stagnant pool and lighting their way. Willy smiled at the dark and closed his mind to the white snakes of mist that were coiling off the pool and into his bones. This was going to be easy.

It was only when they were thirty feet from the mahogany tree that Jacob called a halt. He pulled Willy behind a winter thorn and laid a warning finger over his mouth. At once the morning’s fear came flooding back to Willy. He knew why they were waiting this time — to check that there wasn’t a leopard on their buck. The cold sweat broke out on his face as he scanned the tree and every bush and prayed not to hear that big-cat cough that froze the blood.

Then suddenly it was all right. His father was sending him up the tree. Willy swung up the trunk, relief flooding his chest. As he reached the fork, there was the whiff of ripe flesh. But it didn’t matter, not now. Here was more meat to eat and more to dry. He pushed at the hindquarters till the beast slid to the ground. But as he hung in the tree, the darkness flashed white, and he was blinded.

“Got you!” said the voice in the light. Willy heard the metallic click of a safety catch released.

“Dadda!”

“Shut it! Come down. Slowly now.”

Willy slithered to the ground at his father’s feet, holding out his hands to fend off the light. He couldn’t escape the voice, though. It froze his blood as well as any leopard.

“So, Jacob, Luangwa’s best tracker has a new career, eh?”

Jacob stood his ground. “Is a man to let his family starve so that rich foreigners can come and stare at wild animals? What is one buck to them? It’s elephant and lion they come to see.”

Even through his fear Willy flushed with pride. He’d never heard his father say so much, not all at once. And he was right, so perhaps the ranger would let them go.

But the voice only snorted, and then Willy knew that it was Davis Sata, the head ranger. No one in the district liked him. He had the leer of a crocodile and manners to match. There were rumors, too. Ivory-poaching rumors.

The searchlight flicked off, and heavy boots ground nearer. Into the dipped beam of headlights swaggered Davis. He was holding their rope. “Careless,” he said. “Spotted it lying on the thornbush. Then I saw the buck.”

Willy groaned. All his fault! They were going to prison for a dropped rope.

“Been waiting these last two hours,” Davis went on.

“Better arrest me then!” Jacob said.

But Davis continued to stand there, the rifle resting across his forearm. “Or I could let you go.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “In fact, you could be just the man I need, Jacob. Just the man! So you come the next time I call.”

Willy felt the rip of Jacob’s anger. “I’ll come. But not the boy.”

“Of course the boy!” Davis insisted. “Make a man of him. And why worry, Jacob? You’ve made him a poacher with this day’s work!” The ranger’s mouth gaped mockingly, and Willy started to cry. Next, Davis laid down the gun and, taking a hunting knife from his belt, hacked a leg from the buck and tossed it in the cab. “O.K. You can go. But be ready. Both of you!” Then he swung into the Land Rover and roared off.

With a heart as heavy as lead, Willy helped his father sling the remains of their buck on a branch. Between them, they lugged it home, and not one word did his father say, not a single word to relieve Willy’s wretchedness and fear.

NOR DID THEY HAVE LONG   to wait before Davis Sata came calling. A few nights later, they heard the Land Rover pull up outside their gate. Soon the latch was rattling, and there was an arrogant thump on the door. By the light of the hurriedly lit candle, Willy saw his father wave the fear from Mammy’s face, tell her they’d be gone awhile and not to worry. Shame shot through Willy’s heart like the steel of a trap. Then there was no space to think. They were hustled into the back of the truck where two other men sat.

The stars were fading as Davis drove them away. No one spoke. Willy shivered and sweated by turns. For a time, they drove through dense mopane woods that closed around like a tunnel. Then they bumped across flatlands where the stumps of dead thorn trees reared up like ghosts. Willy buried his face in his arms then, while beside him sat his father, still and comfortless as stone.

When at last the Land Rover stopped, Willy found himself staring up at the biggest baobab tree he had ever seen. It seemed to hold up the iron sky. Davis hauled Willy out, saying, “Up there, you!” as he shoved him toward the tree. Willy stared up the iron trunk. Even the nearest branch was twenty feet up.

“Use the ladder, fool!” Davis pushed his hands into deep scars in the tree’s bark where laths had been hammered inside to make invisible rungs. “See? Been a poacher’s tree for fifty years.” He slung a pair of binoculars around Willy’s neck. “A big bull. Hundred-pound tusks. Been watching him for days. Find him!”

WILLY CRAWLED UP   the trunk, to the dizzying top where the branches spread to make a lookout post. Never had he been so far off the ground, with the whole world laid before him. To the east a red vein spread along the forest top; to the west low, gray scrub stretched to Luangwa’s banks, then to the silver snake of the river itself, and the shadowy trees beyond. He put the binoculars to his eyes.

“What’s keeping you?” hissed Davis from below.

Willy’s hands were shaking. How could he do what the man wanted? He’d never used binoculars before. There was only a blur. Tears of fear and frustration pricked his eyes as he turned the dial one way and then the other. Soon the sun would start to rise.

“C’mon, why don’t you?”

Suddenly the dark veil fell, and Willy almost cried out. Into his sights stepped a hyena, lugging his belly home from the kill. Then behind the hyena was forest. He could even recognize some of the trees. With growing confidence, he began to scan the landscape, drawing the trees to him, pushing them away. That’s how he found it, a lone elephant, a mile off maybe, browsing a murula tree. He stammered the details to the ranger below, saw the man strike out on foot, pushing Jacob ahead of him. Jacob’s role was soon clear — to watch the wind and maneuver the shooter close to his quarry. Willy followed their moves from bush to bush, his father watching the dirt blow through his fingers, pressing quietly closer, Davis following the tracker’s lead.

Willy’s heart beat hard as he tried to hold his father inside the lens: Please don’t let him die. He knew the grim tales of what an elephant could do — there were reasons enough not to poach ivory. Then he saw his father drop into a pig hole and Davis move forward to take aim. There was a muffled shot, and now it was the big bull that filled the binoculars. Willy gasped. He could see the bloody wound on its head, and yet it was still standing! Then, all at once, the great gray beast crumpled to the ground, the red dust rising round it.

“It’s dead,” Willy said flatly to the men below. He heard the engine start up, saw the Land Rover speed out across the plain, one man hanging off the side as it veered around stumps and brush, scattering hornbills, flushing a warthog. Willy saw the men jump from the cab, axes out. Watched as they set on the bull, hacking at the tusk roots as if they were felling timber. When he saw the angry red holes in the elephant’s cheeks, he dropped the binoculars and climbed down the tree. He felt cold and sick, and around his head the question reeled: weren’t he and his father as bad as Davis and his men? Their buck was no less dead than the elephant. Yet there had to be a difference, if only he could think of the words.

When the truck returned, Jacob was arguing with Davis.

“What about the meat?” Willy’s father was shouting. “It will feed many hungry people.”

Davis scoffed, “Listen to Saint Jacob here. Wants to risk our necks to feed the poor!”

The other men were laughing, but as Willy scrambled into the truck, he saw the flicker of guilt in their eyes before they turned away. Jacob sat and glared at his feet, but Willy couldn’t take his eyes off the two long rolls of gunnysack on the truck floor. A red stain was swelling through the cloth. It was turning into a face — Davis’s face, with the crocodile gape.

No one spoke again until the ranger jammed on the brakes and told Willy and his father to beat it. The day was getting on, he said, and he still had to stash the ivory. “Now remember, Jacob,” he leered, “you come when I call.”

Jacob turned on his heel and strode into the bush. Willy had to run to keep up, the wind drying his tears to a salty crust. And though it was a long way home, his father did not speak once or even look back at him.

After this, things only grew worse. With each day, Willy watched his father sink into himself a little more, like a man slowly sucked into Luangwa quicksand. Only once did Willy say, “Can’t we go to the chief, Dadda? Can’t we tell him?” At last, Jacob sighed and said that when it came to ivory poaching, the stakes were high and who knew who was running it or whose protection Davis had bought. At least he and Willy weren’t in jail or worse. But Willy could see it was a devil’s bargain and that his father knew it. Nor did the news that a truck of mealie meal and cooking oil had arrived at the mission lift Jacob’s spirits. Willy railed inside, running the scene with the rope over and over in his head, each time carefully stowing it in his pocket, making a better ending. If he thought it enough times, perhaps it would be so.

It was only when he was standing in line at the mission, waiting for Father McGuire to hand out his family’s food rations, that Willy knew. This was the man to tell, the strange white man with sun-scoured cheeks and wild, red hair. Hadn’t Willy always known him? He had been to Father McGuire’s school until he was twelve years old and needed on the farm instead. And the priest had given Willy good reason to remember him. He had once made him learn the entire David and Goliath story by heart and recite it to him word perfect after class because he had found Willy fighting a boy much smaller than himself. Later, when Jacob had come to hear of the incident, he had looked at Willy hard and said, “I hope you learned your lesson, boy.” Father McGuire would help them. He was a hard man but fair.

Later when the other villagers had gone and Willy had steeled himself to go back and knock on the office door, Father McGuire did listen to Willy’s tale. The priest’s cheeks flushed redder than his wild, red hair. “Son of a serpent!” he exclaimed, thumping the table, while Willy shrank into the floor, amazed at the old man’s fury. But then the priest had looked more kindly. “Now I’ll not say poaching buck is a good thing. But killing for ivory! Forcing hungry souls to commit a crime — that’s breaking God’s laws as well as man’s!” Then he had slipped into an angry silence as if fighting battles inside his head.

At last Father McGuire had said, “Now, William. This is dangerous ground — for all of us. But I’ll speak to the bishop. If he can’t catch a government minister’s ear and tell him what’s going on up here, then no one can.” As they walked to the mission door, Father McGuire turned and clasped Willy’s hand in his veiny paws. “Well done, my lad. It took courage to tell me this. Now have faith! Davis Sata’s poaching days are numbered.”

At first, Willy’s heart had soared, the heavy weight of his guilt melting clean away, but as he trailed along the dusty road with his bag of mealie meal and bottle of oil, he began to have doubts. What if the priest spoke to the wrong people and Davis Sata heard? The thought made his stomach churn. Had he made things worse by telling Father McGuire?

TWO LONG WEEKS LATER   when the Land Rover came again, Willy was trembling with fear, wondering if the ranger had discovered his betrayal. In the back of the truck, his father put a hand on Willy’s arm as if to say, it’s all right, boy. But Willy couldn’t tell him why he was so afraid, not with the two men there.

As before, they were driven to the giant baobab, and Willy was sent up the poacher’s ladder. Then for an age he wiped the cold sweat from his brow and scanned the wooded fringes of the grassland as it emerged from darkness. Below him, Davis was kicking the steel cap of his boot against the iron trunk, thwack, thwack, thwack. It seemed like a death sentence, but there was no elephant in sight. Willy prayed for deliverance, staring out across the empty world.

Then suddenly there it was: a big old bull cruising the tall grass at the forest edge, coming out of nowhere. Willy focused on the wrinkled, red-dusted hide, the battle-torn ears, the great sweep of ivory with one tip broken. Something about the bull’s sure steps reminded him of his father, and suddenly his fear of Davis Sata was shot with anger. Perhaps he wouldn’t get it after all. He prayed with all his might that Davis wouldn’t. Besides, it looked as if the bull was heading toward the thorn trees near the river. Davis would have to shoot from over there if he wanted enough cover to get in close, which meant Jacob would have to swing wide, almost to Luangwa’s banks.

He heard the ranger curse at having so much ground to cross. He was too well-fed for this kind of exertion. Even so, he set off swiftly enough, hustling Jacob. Willy watched them creeping low through the scrub, with Jacob checking the wind at every stand. Off to their right, the old bull held a steady course, plying calm waters with no thought of the storm ahead.

Flicking the binoculars back toward the river, Willy could see the cruel set of the ranger’s jaw, the tension in Jacob’s hunched shoulders. And all Willy could do was stand in the tree and shiver.

Then at last Davis was in position, taking aim. Jacob was a little way behind, crouched against a tree. It was only when the shot resounded and the elephant fell that Willy saw the second bull. It was coming the other way: out of the thorn trees. The first bull was still twitching, and Davis fired another round at it. As the gun went off, the second elephant broke cover behind Jacob.

“Dadda!” Willy nearly screamed — for the bull had seen Jacob, and, with its ears out and trunk curled, it charged — but the warning stuck in Willy’s throat. He could only stare in horror. Then at the last moment, Jacob saw the charging elephant and flung himself behind the tree. Just then, Davis stood up to inspect his kill. In the blink of an eye, the bull had him, screaming its rage, tossing Davis like a twist of rag, piercing his cruel heart.

There was no cry from the man. And when it was done, the avenging bull stood beside his fallen comrade and gently explored the dead, gray face with the tip of his trunk, urging him to rise.

Willy thought his head would explode. Dadda. Why wasn’t he moving? But suddenly there he was, snaking back through the brush, and by the time Willy had scrambled out of the tree, his father was slumped against the empty Land Rover, gasping for breath, his own face gray as ashes. “Others … where?”

“Run away. When the elephant roared.”

“Then let’s go.”

A FEW DAYS LATER,   it was the talk of Luangwa that Davis Sata’s gun, the Land Rover, and not much of Davis had been found by fellow rangers. The official story claimed that he had been killed by poachers, but no one believed it. No one was sorry. Secretly Willy wondered if Father McGuire had somehow caused the ranger’s death. He remembered the ring of certainty as the priest said Davis Sata’s poaching days were numbered. He shuddered.

It wasn’t long after this that the paramount chief of the district called a meeting down at the mission. Willy went with Jacob and a crowd of village men. They listened, unmoved by the chief’s formal preamble, but when he unexpectedly announced that at long last the government had seen sense over the wildlife problem, there was a ripple of interest. From now on, the chief said, the villages of Luangwa will reap some benefits from their old tribal territory. “When the antelope herds are culled, the game meat will be shared among you. And when foreign tourists pay to visit the park, some of those fees will go to your schools and clinics.” The murmurs of approval grew louder. The chief held up his hands. “But in return, there must be no more poaching. Of any kind. If you so much as smell an ivory hunter, I want to know. You take care of the animals, and they’ll take care of you.”

Willy nodded. This made good sense. Everyone seemed to think so. Even Father McGuire, who was sitting in the far corner of the meeting room, was smiling. Perhaps he had arranged this, too. But when Willy turned to his father to see what he thought of the new rules, all he said was, “We’d have saved ourselves much sorrow if the government had said these things sooner.”

On the way home, as they walked side by side past their neighbors’ wasted gardens, Jacob suddenly turned to Willy and cried, “I hope you’ve learned your lessons, boy.” Willy looked back, uncomprehending, as Jacob’s brow began to twitch. “Why, surely you know!” And when Willy did not answer he said, “Always have a tree between you and a charging elephant. And never, ever lose your rope.”

Now Willy laughed, too. He and his father even danced a step on the red, dusty road. Above, a cloudless sky glowed blue as a china bowl, lighting up their ravaged fields. But soon, God willing, the rains would come, and they could start to plant next year’s mealies.

WINNING

by Joseph Yenkavitch

Illustrated by Andrew Standeven

TOM PERRY CONCENTRATED HARD.   The rocket competition would begin shortly, and he wanted to be sure he hadn’t left any detail unchecked. No possible glitch was too small to be ignored. Nothing could jeopardize his winning.

He had never lost a contest, but that didn’t calm him. Being on top counted, and he pushed himself to remain there.

The other kids, however, rarely came over to him. Whenever they did, it usually made him feel like they’d been forced to do it. No way, though, was he going over to them. He’d win again, and they couldn’t ignore that.

He opened his toolbox. Pushing aside engines, igniters, glue, tape, and microclips, he pulled out the pieces of his launch pad and began assembling it.

A shadow fell over him, and he looked up. His father stood there. Ever since the divorce, his father had attended more contests, but not enough to completely take away the hurt Tom felt. Still, he was glad Dad was here.

“How’s it going?” his father asked.

“Fine,” Tom replied, grunting as he tried to put one leg of the launch pad in the wrong way and finally turned it around.

His father pursed his lips. Tom knew the look. It meant he had something important on his mind.

“Relax” his father said. “Enjoy yourself. You’ve done the best you can, haven’t you?”

Tom nodded. He wanted to say he always did his best. He won every time, didn’t he? Mostly, though, he wanted to ask why it made so little difference. Why didn’t being first make everyone like him better?

He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, he was almost sure his father understood. But did he really understand losing and what it meant? No one had much to do with him now. What would happen if he lost?

Time was passing, and he hadn’t started readying his rocket. “Uh, Dad …” he said.

“Oh sure,” his father replied. “Good luck.” He winked and went to the bleachers.

Tom checked his rocket again. Everything from the smooth fuselage to perfect aerodynamics told him he had another winner — especially when he glanced at the other rockets.

He noticed problems quickly. A green rocket had dents and rough areas around the decals: drag. He knew its altitude would be limited. Another had fins too close to its center of gravity: without a doubt the rocket would tumble. A red rocket with overly wide fins showed cracks where the stages met. Uncalled for, he felt. Sloppiness.

One rocket, however, caught his eye. Its finish glinted in the sun. The painted areas were finely done, and the seal between the stages was practically invisible.

It had the look. His critical eye detected that this rocket could beat his.

A thin boy lifted it carefully. Tom turned away and started placing the igniter wire into his engine. It slipped from his hand and became lost in the grass. Unable to find it, he found another one and fitted it carefully into place.

“Hi,” said a voice out of the blue.

Tom looked up. The thin boy peered down, a nervous smile on his face. His hands jingled coins in his pocket.

“Nice rocket you’ve got there,” the boy said.

“Thanks,” Tom replied without much emotion, then regretted it. “Looks like you spent a lot of time on yours. Where do you fire it? I haven’t seen you at any of the competitions.”

“In the field behind my house. By the way, my name’s Ed.”

“Tom. You don’t care for these contests?”

“I never really thought about them. I keep pretty much to myself.”

One of the other boys walked past and tapped Ed on the arm. “You’re new here,” he said. “Maybe you can beat him.” The boy glanced down at Tom, but there wasn’t any warmth in his face.

“Guess you’re king of the hill,” Ed said.

Tom waited for a snide remark, but it didn’t come.

“Well,” Ed said, “good luck. Maybe sometime we could … well, see you after the contest.” He walked away and knelt beside his rocket.

Seeing the rocket again gave Tom a sinking feeling in his stomach. He ran a hand through his damp brown hair and wiped it across his blue T-shirt. Trying to ignore his nervousness, he sat back on the grass, propping himself up on his elbows. A refreshing breeze started. The airless, sticky morning was changing. Pulling out his notes, Tom matched up these conditions with those of previous flights to see what angle his launch pad would need. He didn’t have to alter a thing.

The announcer asked for everyone’s attention and proceeded to explain the competition. Tom barely listened, his gaze constantly drifting to Ed’s rocket.

Suddenly his heart did a leap, and he sat upright — within a fraction of a second, Tom knew that Ed had no chance of winning

Tom had noticed that as Ed lifted his rocket to place it on the launch pad, one fin had caught against something in the ground, pulling it away from the fuselage. Not enough to break it off, just enough to loosen it. Immediately the fin resumed its proper place, only now it was fatally weakened.

But Ed hadn’t noticed. He glanced back at Tom and gave a thumbs-up sign. Tom felt a twinge of regret but decided he wasn’t going to jeopardize a sure win by saying anything. Anyway, it was up to Ed to keep checking his rocket.

The announcer called the first contestant. A blond-haired girl excitedly clipped on the firing wires. With a facial expression that made it seem she was setting off a pound of dynamite, she pressed the ignition button. The rocket spit out exhaust and sped upward, then quickly tumbled, hitting the ground. It sputtered, firing its second stage into the grass. Teeth clenched, the girl walked back to the other contestants.

The second rocket flew a considerable distance, but Tom noticed an obvious wobble and knew that would certainly reduce its altitude.

And so it went, one rocket after another, most gaining respectable heights, while a few careened wildly. Men at tracking stations that looked like giant protractors far off to each side of the launch pad scribbled down numbers.

Tom watched, but the problems the others had didn’t make him feel good. For the first time the looks on their faces bothered him.

Someone made a joke, and that got everyone laughing, even the blond girl. Tom felt twice as alone now. He would have his victory, yet they seemed to be having more fun. The knowledge he had about what was wrong with their rockets soured within him. It felt like something he had stolen. He pulled at a few blades of grass.

“Ed Malovich will be our next contestant,” the announcer said, interrupting Tom’s daydream. Immediately Ed lifted his rocket and started to the launch area.

Without thinking, words flowed from Tom’s mouth so that it almost surprised him to hear them.

“Ed, hold up!” he yelled. Ed stopped. Heads in the bleachers turned, watching him.

“What is it?” Ed asked.

Tom walked up to him and pointed at his rocket. “It’s your fin. It’s loose.”

Alarmed, Ed looked down and tested the fin. Like a broken wing, it bent. He held it up to the announcer, who gave him five minutes to fix it.

“You should have kept quiet,” Ed said. “You’d have won for sure.”

A few minutes later Ed’s rocket blasted skyward, shooting up flawlessly. No wobbles, cutting the air as though it knew nothing could stop it. Higher and higher it climbed, a puff of smoke indicating the second stage had fired, and soon after another puff signaled that the parachute had deployed. Even without tracking equipment, Tom could tell it had beaten all the others easily

Everyone cheered. Tom watched so intently that he didn’t hear his name being called. When it was repeated, it startled him.

He moved to the pad. The excited jabbering of the other kids continued, but he tuned it out. Nonetheless, his fingers trembled as he connected the wires to the igniter. He wondered if he should have said anything. Who would have known?

Stepping back to the firing board, he took a deep breath and pushed the button. For the briefest moment there was nothing, only a dreadful silence. He let out a tiny gasp.

Then, as though finished with its little joke, the rocket roared to life. Spitting smoke, it leaped from the pad — true in its direction — slicing the air effortlessly. It climbed wonderfully. Tom anxiously awaited the second puff. When it came, the rocket sped higher, seeming as though it could puncture the blue sky and speed into space. The parachute deployed, and it drifted down leisurely.

Tom ran out into the field as the rocket swung to the ground. As he picked it up along with the first stage, he heard the numbers being announced.

They were read in the order of the flights. Tom ignored them, only interested in his and Ed’s.

“Ed Malovich,” the announcer boomed. Tom perked up and watched Ed. “Eleven hundred fifty feet.” The crowd came to life. No one else had reached a thousand feet.

Tom wrapped the string from the parachute around his hand. For the first time, he realized he was standing in the field alone. Alone in victory or a sitting duck in defeat, he thought.

He started walking as his name was called. He stopped. The crackle of paper came over the loudspeaker, and there was a pause. Tom stared at the mountains in the distance.

“Eleven hundred feet.”

The number struck Tom a blow. He began walking one way then turned, not sure of where he was going. Voices spread from the bleachers, a great noise from which he wanted to escape.

Squeezing his rocket, he strode from the field. At his toolbox he methodically put everything in its place, amazed at how his attention to detail hadn’t left him at this horrible moment. Still his hands gripped each object as though he hated it.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He kept his head down, not wishing to face his father. But that’s not who it was.

“Thanks,” Ed said, when Tom finally looked up. “Sorry you didn’t win.” Tom could almost feel that he meant it. He stood up.

He noticed a few other kids who’d gathered around him. A tall boy walked past and smirked. “Finally got your butt kicked, huh, Perry,” he said. Tom stepped backward, glancing at the others.

“Don’t mind him,” the blond girl said. “It was nice what you did. Both of you are great rocketeers.”

Another boy piped up. “Do you think you could help us with ours?”

“I’d like one to fly up, not down,” the blond girl said. Everyone laughed.

“Well, sure,” Tom replied. He felt awkward. “Anytime.”

“We’re going over to my house,” Ed spoke up. “See you there?”

Tom could only nod. He wanted to say something, but just couldn’t. All he did was stare after everyone as they left. At that moment he felt relaxed, and the competition seemed very far away.

THE EIGHTEENTH CAMEL

A Retelling of an Old Bedouin Folk Tale

by Thelma Schmidhauser

Illustrated by Rupert van Wyk

BEFORE THE INVENTION   of mechanical vehicles, camels furnished transportation for many peoples of the Arabian deserts and were valued for their milk, meat, and skins. So important were they to the desert economy that a Bedouin would measure his wealth by the number of camels he owned.

A tale is told of a certain wealthy Bedouin who, upon his death, left seventeen camels to be divided among three heirs. The first heir was to get half of the camels, the second a third, and the third heir … one-ninth of the lot.

By such a division, the first heir would get eight and a half camels, while the second heir received five and two-thirds, and the third heir would inherit only one and eight-ninths of a camel. The situation seemed impossible to resolve. None of the heirs would sell his share to the others, and certainly none of them wanted to kill any of the camels, for the beasts were much more valuable alive than dead. Tempers flared. Angry words were spoken.

Now, in the area lived a wealthy Arabian woman. Distressed by the quarreling, she offered the heirs one of her own camels in hopes of resolving the dispute.

They now had eighteen camels to mete. The first heir received his half, nine camels. The second heir received six camels—his one-third share. And the last heir received two camels, one-ninth of the eighteen.

To their surprise, they found that there was one camel remaining. For, when added together, nine plus six plus two equals only seventeen. So they returned her camel to the woman with their thanks.

Without her camel, the inheritance would not have been peacefully resolved. Though it would seem that she had done nothing — for she had neither lost nor gained an animal — she was what is sometimes needed to bring about an action … a catalyst. Her action was worth more than any wealth she could have given to the heirs.

THE CAMEL AND HASSAN DJIWA

by Stephen Davies

Illustrated by Rupert van Wyk

In the west of Africa there is a hot, dry country called Burkina Faso. You can find it on a map if you look hard enough. The Fulani people of Burkina Faso say that God has one hundred names and that humans know ninety-nine of them. They say that only the camel knows the hundredth name of God, and that is why it smirks.

HASSAN DJIWA OF GOROM-GOROM   was a bad man. He was not all bad — he loved his mother and he hardly ever forgot to feed Haroun, his pet aardvark. But he was mostly bad. He would lie, cheat, steal, and make pirate cassettes of copyrighted music. Hassan was a businessman of sorts. He would buy cheap trainers and T-shirts at Gorom-Gorom market and get his mother to embroider Nike on them. Then he would walk to the big town of Dori and sell them at high prices.

One day, Hassan was walking back from Dori and he was feeling sad. He had not sold any T-shirts or trainers that day, and no one had even glanced at his stack of Ali Farka Toure’s Greatest Hits. And now he had to walk all the way back to Gorom-Gorom on an empty stomach.

Before he had gone far, he came across a dromedary eating thorns off a tall acacia tree. (Camels really do eat thorns — that is one amazing thing about them.) He gazed at it, thinking about how much quicker the journey home would be if he could ride this camel.

Hassan did not think for long. He ran up and leaped toward the camel. It stepped aside, and Hassan landed in the thorn tree.

“Zorki!” he shouted. That is a Songhai word, but Fulani people use it, too. It is very rude, so please don’t say it if you are in Africa. But if you are in England or America, you can say it as much as you like, and no one will tell you off.

Hassan leaped again, and this time he landed on the camel’s back.

“Hup!” he cried, but the camel refused to budge. Hassan boxed its ears with all his might, and they arrived in Gorom-Gorom before sunset.

HASSAN DID NOT LIKE   his new camel very much. It was ugly and it spat at him whenever he came close. Also, his mother was unhappy about having a stolen camel in her yard. She did not object to defrauding large multinational companies, but stealing a valuable animal from another poor Fulani man, that was different. She served up nothing but baobab leaves every day to show how peeved she was.

Hassan did not like baobab leaves one little bit, and he decided to sell the dromedary at the next market. It should fetch enough money to buy a whole cartload of blank cassettes, he thought.

But something happened that changed Hassan’s mind. On market day he got up early, put on his paisley turban, and fed Haroun. When he went to untie the camel, it launched a big glob of spit that landed in his left eye. But Hassan did not box the camel’s ears; he did not even say zorki. He had noticed something with his right eye that made him gape in wonder.

In the dust beneath the camel, three Arabic letters were clearly written:

H-S-N. Hassan. His name.

As a young man Hassan had trained to be a marabout, so he could read and understand Arabic quite fluently. But who had come into his yard in the night and written his name underneath the camel? This was a mystery that demanded careful attention. He would not sell the camel today. He would wait and see what happened.

The wind was high that market day, and the men of Gorom-Gorom leaned forward as they walked, holding their turbans tightly over nose and mouth. Hassan went to market to haggle for white T-shirts, but he could not concentrate. He kept thinking about the writing in the dust under his camel. He returned home to look at it again, but the wind had already obliterated all trace of the letters.

THE NEXT MORNING,   Hassan woke early, fed Haroun, and put on his neon yellow turban. Then he went outside to look at the camel. There in the dust was written as clear as day:

Hassan’s mouth dropped open in surprise, just as the camel spat. That is gross, so let us not dwell on it.

That night, Hassan did not go to sleep. Someone was playing a prank on him, and he intended to find out who. There was a huge clay water pot in the corner of the yard. Hassan emptied out the water and bored a small peephole through the clay. Then he climbed inside and lowered the lid. It was cold in the pot, but Hassan did not mind. He would keep watch there all night if he needed to.

The camel knelt down to sleep, folding its eight knees neatly beneath itself. (Camels have two knees on each leg — yet another amazing thing about them.) It did not lay its head on the ground, but held it up high. That’s how camels sleep.

By the light of the moon, Hassan watched and watched and watched, until his eyes ached. No one came. The only sounds were from inside the hut, where his mother was snoring.

At four-thirty in the morning, the prayer call rang out from the mosque. The camel woke and stood up. It sniffed the air. Then it raised one hoof slightly off the ground and put its head on one side as if deep in thought. Hassan watched, agog.

The camel lowered its hoof and began to trace shapes in the dust. Hassan jumped, banging his head so hard on the lid of the clay pot that he blacked out. When he woke up, it was afternoon. Hassan climbed out of the water pot and ran over to where his camel was tied up. The letters were still visible in the red dust:

This was inconceivably good luck. Hassan had a camel that could write! He would be rich. He would be famous. He would never have to record another Ali Farka Toure cassette in his life. Better still, he would never again have to eat baobab leaves.

There was no time to lose — the camel’s training regime must start immediately. Hassan would cajole that animal and box its ears until it could write entire genealogies and ballads. Natural talent must be harnessed, Hassan said to himself.

Hassan started with something simple. He stood beside the camel, took a stick, and traced on the ground, from right to left, the following words:

Hassan is great and generous and good.

“Copy that as neatly as you can,” he said to the camel, and with the stick he rapped its eight knees one by one. The camel turned and spat carefully into Hassan’s left ear. This was going to be hard work.

GOROM-GOROM   is a small town where everyone knows everyone, and when two market days passed without an appearance from Hassan, people began to wonder what he was up to. One man in particular was getting anxious. Yero Askula, the town troubadour, had not sold any blank cassettes for a long time, and the continued absence of his best customer perplexed him. Tabaski, the feast of Abraham, was approaching, and Yero Askula needed money to buy a new robe and a nice fat sheep. He decided to pay Hassan Djiwa a visit.

“Salaam alekum,” called Yero Askula, standing at Hassan’s closed gate and clicking his knuckles anxiously. (The closed gate was unusual in itself. In Africa, people always leave their gates open during the day.)

“Alekum asalaam,” came Hassan’s voice from behind the gate. “Is that you, Yero Askula? Peace, I hope?”

“Peace only,” called Yero Askula. “I have brought you some fine C90s with the long thin labels you like so much.”

“Very kind of you, Yero Askula, but I do not need C90s today, or indeed — Zorki!”

Yero Askula stood on tiptoes and tried to look over the wall into Hassan’s yard, but he was too short. He clicked his knuckles harder and harder. “What are you doing in there, Hassan Djiwa?”

“I will show you,” came Hassan’s voice, “on the day of Tabaski. On the day of Tabaski I will show the whole town!”

Yero Askula returned to the marketplace dejectedly. Robe or sheep. Thanks to Hassan Djiwa’s curious, antisocial antics, he would have to choose one or the other.

TABASKI DAWNED   at last and countless small children rushed hither and thither in great excitement. Some of them went from door to door, wishing people a blessed feast and asking for sweets. Some of them went straight to the marketplace to get in place for the day’s festivities. Various activities were planned, but there was one thing in particular that the children did not want to miss. The whole town was talking about the special something which Hassan Djiwa would be unveiling that day.

Inside his yard, Hassan Djiwa rubbed his hands together gleefully. For the fourteenth consecutive time that morning, his camel had accurately reproduced the sentence they had been working at:

Hassan is great and generous and good.

Three weeks of painstaking work had paid off. His prodigy was ready to face its audience. Today Gorom-Gorom, tomorrow the world.

THE TABASKI FESTIVITIES   followed their normal course. There was the usual three-stringed guitar contest, won by Yero Askula. There was the usual calabash race for women, won by Mad Mariama of Yengerento, followed by the usual debate amongst the judges as to whether it was acceptable to bewitch the calabash. There was the usual shooting contest, won by blind Gorko Bobo (with an impressive score of sixteen vultures). He won the pouring-tea-from-a-horse competition, too, and no one knew how he managed it.

But throughout it all, there was an extra-special buzz in the air. What would Hassan Djiwa show them that was so wondrous? They were soon to find out.

“Salaam alekum,” cried Hassan, leaping out from behind a mango tree. He was wearing his purple polka-dot special-occasion turban.

“Alekum asalaam!” roared the crowd in a state of ferverish excitement.

“I have something to show you,” cried Hassan, “that will make your eyes bulge like bullfrogs.”

“Show us now!” roared the crowd.

“Camel!” cried Hassan. “Come on down!”

The crowd parted, and a camel loped down the aisle to join Hassan at the front. It was wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a baobab-leaf cigar stuck out between its teeth.

“Camel,” said Hassan quietly, “in your own time …”

The camel chose an area of sand on a slight upward slope, in full view of the people. He smoothed it gently with a hoof, and then began to write. There was a collective gasp followed by an awed hush.

Hassan picked up a calabash and moved up into the crowd, murmuring “Donations, please” and “Even gifted camels must eat.” By the time he looked over at what the camel was writing, it was already too late.

The camel had diverged from the agreed script. It was writing fast and fluently, a frown of intense concentration on its face.

Hassan was overtaken by rage. He ran through the crowd to where blind Gorko Bobo was standing. He seized Gorko Bobo’s rifle. He took aim.

“Stop him!” someone cried, but to no avail. Children screamed. Women fainted. Men zorkied. And the camel keeled over in midsentence.

After that, everyone was quiet. Yero Askula, Mad Mariama, and all the people of Gorom-Gorom (except those who had fainted) stared at the shapes in the sand. Most of those present did not understand Arabic. They just felt sorry for the camel that had made such beautiful lettering. The few who did understand Arabic felt a deeper sorrow, for the camel had written:

Hassan is a thief and dresses badly.

Please take me back to the house of Diallo Munnyal in Dori.

By the way, the hundredth name of God is …

OLD CRICKET SAYS

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD   beavers talking to each other? My friend Jack D. Remington — Grandpa Jack — has, and apparently they’re quite chatty!

“Grandma Betty and I often listened to beavers while canoeing in streams and lakes in this country and in Canada. Beaver houses look a little like igloos. The beavers dam a small stream to create a pool, then pile up sticks, plant stems, and mud to form a ‘house’ with an underwater entrance. Along a larger stream or river, they’ll dig a tunnel with a large room into the bank, piling up sticks and mud on top to keep other animals out.

“The living room (which is also the bedroom and dining room) is always above the water level, and there they spend their days sleeping and eating. When daylight fades, they leave their homes to search for more food. Before they leave, they stretch their arms and legs and have a ‘family conversation.’ If you know where there is an occupied beaver house, just paddle your canoe up to it and listen. Beavers sound sort of like kittens mewing or puppies whining. What are they talking about? Maybe where to find some juicy aspen or cottonwood branches to chew on! Don’t bother to listen during the middle of the day because that’s when they are sleeping.

“When I was a lot younger I wiggled into an old, very large, very muddy abandoned beaver house in Colorado with four other men. There were no beavers living there because their dam had broken and the water level had dropped, forcing them to move out. All five of us were able to get inside and sit in the beaver bedroom. The floor was littered with sticks, from which the beavers had chewed the outer bark. They are not very good housekeepers!”

CRICKET COUNTRY

MY CORNER

by Jennifer Szostak

Illustrated by Maurie Manning

THE CORNER   of 71st Street and Prospect is my corner. Nobody else seems to want it, anyway. Most folks look at it and say there’s nothin’ there, just an empty lot. But they’re not lookin’ hard enough. My corner is like a wide-open treasure box, but folks pass by all day long and never take the time to peek inside.

My name is Tia. I live on the third floor of the apartment building next-door. Some days, when my sisters are chasing each other, and my brothers are yelling, and I feel like the walls of our apartment are about to burst, I run down to my corner. My sneakers pound the pavement, then they take me on a flying leap into a sea of green. I wade through the tall grass, my jeans swish-swishing with every step. Butterflies and crickets scare up at my feet. How they got to this part of the city, I’ll never know. I’m careful not to step on the flowers that grow here. They’re beautiful, even though they’re probably just weeds. If I’m real quiet, the birds go on about their business all around me. I sit down and close my eyes and listen to their songs. The grass smells clean and fresh. The sun warms my skin, and I wonder why I’m the only one who’s thankful for this place.

Some folks don’t respect this corner. I’ve seen them throw trash from their car windows as they speed down 71st. There is junk here, too—old chairs, a broken bicycle wheel, someone’s rusty mailbox. I worry that soon there will be more garbage than birds.

One evening, Mama says, “Tia, the city wants to pave over that corner of yours, turn it into a parking lot. It’s in the paper today.”

I stop in my tracks. “Not my corner, Mama! They can’t do that!”

“They can and they will,” says Mama, “unless somebody comes up with a better idea.”

“It just needs some cleanin’ up, that’s all. How come they can’t see that?” I run to my room and slam the door. Out my window I can see my corner. Where will the birds and butterflies go, when it’s all blacktop and concrete? Mama knocks softly at the door and steps in.

“Tia, you see somethin’ in that corner that most folks don’t. You got to make them see what you see. Make some noise about it. No one ever got anyplace by sittin’ back and stayin’ quiet.”

That night, I lie awake for a long time. I’m thinking about what Mama said to me. In my heart, I know she’s right. I’ve got to do something.

Early the next morning I drag a chair down to the corner. On a big scrap of cardboard I’ve painted “No Parking Lot! Save Our Nature!” in large letters. I sit down and wait. Most people pass by and don’t pay any attention to me. Some boys walk by, and I hear one of them say, “Looks like a junkyard to me.” They laugh, but I don’t care. A few people ask me what I’m doing, and I tell them. Seems almost no one knew about the plan to turn this corner into a parking lot.

Across the street, Mrs. DiRisio steps out of her beauty shop. She’s angry, I can tell. She marches across 71st without even looking, sending cars screeching to a stop. Her eyes are fixed on me. “What is this?” Mrs. DiRisio asks, waving her hand at my sign. My heart is racing. “My customers need a place to park,” she says. “You go home, little girl.” She glares at me. “Go home,” she says again and heads back across the street.

I swallow hard. I feel my sign drop to the ground. I don’t stand a chance against angry Mrs. DiRisio.

Then I see Mama and my brothers and sisters coming down the street. They’re carrying chairs and they’ve painted signs. They’re here to help me! I give each one of them the biggest hug I can. “Thank you,” I say. Six people gonna get a lot more attention than just one. That’s the great thing about our family: We’re an instant crowd. I can see Mrs. DiRisio in the window of her beauty salon watching us.

“Don’t pay her no mind,” says Mama. “Don’t she know that most of her customers ain’t got cars, anyway? What do they need a parking lot for?” Mama’s shoulders heave with laughter.

The afternoon sun is hot, but that doesn’t stop my sisters from trying to catch crickets in the tall grass. As I fan myself, I look down the street and notice a woman taking pictures of my corner. She smiles and walks over to me.

“I’m Sara Bennett from the Tribune. Can I talk to you?”

I look to Mama, but she nods her head in my direction. I’m the one who needs to make some noise. I start talking, and Ms. Bennett scribbles on a small notepad.

“A walking path would be nice,” I say, “and maybe a vegetable garden. And a bench, so people could sit down and listen to the birds singing.” I’m surprised at myself, at how many ideas I’ve got for this corner.

When we’re done, Ms. Bennett snaps a few more pictures and thanks me for my time. I can’t believe it! A real newspaper story about my corner! Mama hugs me and says, “I’m real proud of you, Tia. You’re makin’ things happen. I have a feeling tomorrow’s gonna be a big day.”

Mama was right. My brothers burst into my room the next morning, waving a copy of the morning paper. “Fighting for Nature on the Corner of 71st and Prospect” was the title of the article, and along with it was a picture of me! We were all jumping up and down and shouting when Mama said, “Hey, don’t be throwin’ a party just yet. You’ve got a corner to save.”

After breakfast we drag our chairs and signs back to the corner. I’m just settling in for a long day when all of a sudden I see my friend Tanya and her family coming down the street. They’ve got chairs and they’re joining us!

“That was quite an article in the paper, Tia,” says Tanya’s father. “You’ve got some good ideas for this corner.”

Then Mr. and Mrs. Choi from the second floor show up. “Tia, I think you’re right. We need a little nature around here,” Mrs. Choi says.

This isn’t just my corner anymore. This is our corner.

A week later we’ve got people all up and down 71st Street and Prospect wavin’ signs and makin’ noise. A few of us work on cleaning up the garbage. It’s hard work, but it feels good. Folks are finally takin’ a closer look at this corner, and they’re excited about what they see. Not Mrs. DiRisio though. She’s standin’ out in front of her shop with her own sign. I feel a little sorry for her, partly because she’s all alone over there, but mostly because she cares more about a parking lot than the birds and flowers.

I’m asked to speak to a group of people from the city. Mama says they’re the ones who will vote on what to do with our corner. I wear my blue dress and my Sunday school shoes. My hands start shaking when I spot Mrs. DiRisio in the audience, but I keep my eyes on Mama and I speak in my loudest voice, just like she told me to. “If this is the last little bit of nature in our neighborhood,” I say, “doesn’t it make sense to try and save it?” At the end of my speech, everyone applauds and Sara Bennett gives me a big smile. I think secretly she’s on our side.

Other people give speeches, too. Some of them have good reasons for wanting a parking lot. Mr. Agostino argues that people would buy more groceries from his store if they could park right across the street. Mrs. Worth explains that she hopes to attract customers to her dress shop by being able to offer them parking. I feel a lump in my throat and I look down at the floor.

“Hold your head up, Tia,” whispers Mama. “No matter what happens, you should feel proud of yourself for standin’ up for somethin’ you believe in.”

I’m almost asleep that night when the phone rings. I hear Mama’s voice, low and muffled. I climb out of bed and peek into the living room. When Mama hangs up the phone, she lets out a whoop that probably wakes the entire building! “You did it, Tia! The city voted against the parking lot! You got your nature preserve!” Mama hugs me so hard that she lifts me off the ground. And then my brothers and sisters are there, and it’s a night I’ll never forget as long as I live.

My family congratulates me by giving me a nature book. Inside the book I find the names of all the flowers, birds, and insects that live on our corner. Mama told me there’s no sense in living next-door to a nature preserve if you don’t know what’s in it. I think I must be the happiest girl in the world.

A year later, the sign on the corner makes it official. Now we’ve got a walking path that curves and winds its way through the 71st Street Nature Preserve. We’ve got a stone bench and plans for a vegetable garden. School groups come here to collect leaves and study the insects and birds. Folks come here to walk, run, or just sit. My corner isn’t just mine anymore, but I’m more than happy to share it. As for me, I spend as much time down here as I can, but I’m pretty busy these days. There’s a vacant lot down on 73rd Street that could use some cleanin’ up…

GORDON PARKS:

BIGGER THAN LIFE

by Ann Parr

GORDON PARKS TOOK   a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Bolstering his courage, he entered the Life magazine building in New York City and marched straight past the secretary into the office of the chief picture editor. Wilson Hicks, his glasses propped on the end of his nose and a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, looked up and frowned. “How’d you get in here?”

“Just walked in.”

“Then you can turn around and walk out.”

“Fine,” Parks answered, “but can’t you take a quick look at my work first? You might like it.”

Still grumbling about the unexpected interruption, but noting the excellence of Parks’s photographs, Hicks finally said, “Got something in mind that you’d like to do?”

Parks, who hadn’t expected to get this far, thought fast. “Gang wars in Harlem,” he blurted out.

Hicks thought it would be easier for Parks to sell snowballs in Alaska than to photograph gangs in one of the roughest and poorest areas of the city. But after a long pause, he agreed to give Parks a try.

It was 1948, and Gordon Parks had become the first black photographer for Life, the world’s most popular magazine.

THE YOUNGEST   of fifteen children, Gordon Parks was born on November 30, 1912, in the small town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Like many towns and cities in America at the time, Fort Scott was racially segregated. Black children and white children attended different schools, and Gordon faced racial prejudice every day. Gordon’s family was poor, but his mother inspired him with confidence. From the time he was little, she told him, “If a white boy can do it, so can you.” Gordon believed her. His mother guided him to use his head instead of his fists. When Gordon came home bloodied from a fight with white boys who had jumped him, she wanted to know if he had refrained from hitting until he had been attacked first. Gordon asked why whites hated them so much. “All whites don’t hate you, son,” his mother answered. “And those that do are in such bad trouble with themselves they need pitying.”

“My mother spoke one language — love,” Gordon later remembered. She showed him how to build dreams and to work hard for what he wanted. She died when he was just fifteen years old. Looking at his most beloved friend and advisor for the last time as she lay peacefully in her coffin in the family parlor, Gordon dried his tears, wrapped himself in a quilt she had pieced, and lay down to sleep on the floor beside her. Over and over he thanked her for her words of wisdom. They would encourage and strengthen him throughout his life.

After his mother’s death, Gordon was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with an older sister. He entered high school and joined a basketball team. But on a frigid December night just before Christmas, he argued with his sister’s husband, who threw him out into the below-zero weather. At sixteen Gordon was on his own, scrambling to stay alive. He worked at a diner, where he had one full meal a day, and rode the trolleys at night to keep warm. During the Great Depression, times were miserably hard, especially for a young African American. Gordon traveled to Chicago and New York, hoping to find work. By the age of twenty-four, having married a high-school classmate, Gordon was happy to get a full-time job with the railroad.

Gordon waited tables on a train that ran from Minneapolis to Seattle. In his spare time, he read the magazines that his well-to-do passengers left behind. One day he came across photographs that showed the effects of the Depression on the rural poor. The sadness and confusion on the faces of drought and dust-storm victims, traveling in broken-down jalopies and looking for work of any kind, reminded him of his own impoverished childhood. He noticed that the photographers worked for the Farm Security Administration, a program set up by President Roosevelt to help farmers. Gordon never forgot the power of these photographs to show the reality of poverty. But he also loved looking at the photographs of beautiful clothes and models featured in stylish fashion magazines such as Vogue. He even wrote his name under one of his favorite pictures, thinking that “Gordon Parks” looked quite natural there.

Parks photographed both ordinary people and famous personalities, such as these two happy children (top), and poet Langston Hughes (bottom).

In December 1937, with just seventeen dollars in his pocket, Gordon bought his first camera for twelve dollars and fifty cents. He studied photography during breaks on his train runs and took pictures while on layovers in Minneapolis and Chicago. “I read every book on art and photography I could afford,” he said. “I talked to painters, writers, and photographers whenever I discovered them on my car.” One day he noticed big red letters spelling LIFE on a passenger’s camera bag and struck up a conversation with Life photographer Bernard Hoffman. “Come and work for us someday,” Hoffman said. Laughing, Parks promised he would do just that.

To get a start working as a photographer, Gordon visited department stores asking for a chance to photograph their merchandise. Everyone refused the inexperienced black photographer except Mrs. Murphy, the owner of one of the most fashionable women’s clothing stores in St. Paul. “I’m willing to give you a chance,” she said. “Can you be here tomorrow evening?”

With borrowed professional equipment and a few last-minute instructions from a local camera store owner, Gordon returned and shot the photographs. “How beautiful!” Mrs. Murphy exclaimed the next day. Unknown to her, Gordon had double exposed all but one picture of her models and gowns. Enlarging the only good picture, he had placed it on an easel at the front door. “Where are all the rest?” she asked. When Parks told her, she said, “What’s double exposure anyway? If you can do pictures like that, I want you to do more.”

The wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis noticed and admired Gordon’s photographs for Mrs. Murphy. With her support, he was able to move to Chicago and get work as a fashion photographer. But Gordon never forgot the power of the camera to expose misery and injustice. “I knew that more than anything else I wanted to strike at the evil of poverty,” he said. When he held an exhibition of his fashion photography, he also included documentary photographs of the urban poor on Chicago’s South Side. Rich and poor, black and white, were both in his photographs and in the audience.

Parks was ecstatic in 1941 when he won a fellowship that sent him to Washington, D.C., to work for the Farm Security Administration — the agency whose photographers had so impressed him just a few years before. But he was dumbfounded by the racism he experienced upon arriving in the nation’s capital. Taking a walk on his first afternoon, he was not allowed to eat at a drugstore counter because it served only whites. He was ignored by salesclerks in a department store and denied entry to a movie theater. Parks returned to the FSA building, angry and frustrated. His boss encouraged him to use his camera to expose how freedom and opportunity were denied to black people. Gordon took his best-known picture, titled “American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,” when he photographed one of the ladies on the cleaning staff holding her mop and broom in front of the American flag. This woman, whose mother had died when she was a girl, whose father had been lynched, whose husband had been shot, and whose daughter had died two weeks after giving birth, was raising her grandchildren, one stricken with paralysis, on her tiny salary.

Following World War II, Parks moved to New York. Although many publishers refused to hire a black photographer, he found work photographing fashion as a freelancer for magazines such as Vogue. In 1948, having built up his professional portfolio, Parks made good on his promise to himself and marched into the offices of Life.

Parks took these pictures of cleaning lady Ella Watson (top) and her grandchildren (bottom) while working for the FSA in Washington, D.C.

“YOU’VE GOT   a death wish,” Red Jackson, Harlem’s most feared gang leader, said when Parks explained his plan to photograph Red’s gang, the Midtowners, for Life magazine. But for the next four months Parks hung out with Red and the Midtowners, risking his life to get the pictures he wanted. He photographed the Midtowners battling other gangs and viewing the body of a slain gang member. One picture caught Red crouched in a corner, clutching a .45 automatic pistol. When Parks’s photographs hit the newsstands on November 1, 1948, Life’s readers reacted with shock and amazement to his stark portrait of senseless urban violence.

“Poverty, crime, fashion, Broadway shows, sports, and politics were among the fifty-two stories I was assigned during my first eighteen months at Life,” Parks later wrote. “But those special problems spawned by poverty and crime touched me more, and I dug into them with more enthusiasm.”

During his years as a Life photographer, Parks reveled in his assignments to Paris, kept company with celebrities, and met world leaders. But “I never lost my fierce grudge against poverty,” he said. And Parks used his camera to make an impact. His photographs of slums outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on Flavio, a boy dying of tuberculosis, generated thousands of letters. Life readers spontaneously sent in more than $30,000 to help Flavio’s family and provide medical treatment that saved his life.

Parks’s camera gave Life’s white, middle-class readers another perspective on the world. During the racial turmoil of the early 1960s, only Parks was able to photograph and write about the Black Muslims, whose leader, Elijah Muhammad, refused to talk to white reporters, believing that the white man “can no longer be trusted.”

Muhammad said to Parks, “Universal peace and brotherly love [are] two things the white man will never be able to accept.” But Parks did not agree with the idea that blacks and whites could not live together. He admired the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who preached that God’s great capacity for love included both black and white. The assassination of Dr. King in 1968, however, tested his faith in racial harmony.

The nation was in turmoil when Life sent Parks to photograph Dr. King’s funeral. Parks expressed his anger and despair to Life readers when he wrote of the fallen leader: “He spent the last dozen years of his life preaching love to men of all colors. And for all this, a man, white like you, blasted a bullet through his neck. And in doing so the madman has just about eliminated the last symbol of peace between us.”

Parks said afterwards, “My words stared back at me when I saw them in cold print the following Monday, and I realized that my anguish had swept me dangerously close to hatred.”

LATER IN 1968,   after twenty years with the magazine, Parks left Life to make a movie of his first book, The Learning Tree, about his childhood in Fort Scott. He became the first African American to produce, direct, and write screenplays for major Hollywood productions. Always curious, he never quit reaching out in new directions. He took up painting, wrote six volumes of poetry, and composed music, including a symphony and a ballet. At age ninety-three, he published his twenty-first and twenty-second books. He died a few months later, on March 7, 2006.

People asked Parks again and again, “How did you learn to do so many things so well?” Parks credited those who, regardless of their color, became his teachers and helped him overcome the racism that threatened to keep him down. He did not finish high school, but in his life Parks was honored with thousands of awards and tributes, along with more than fifty honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities around the world.

“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty,” Parks said. “I could have just as easily picked up a knife or a gun, like many of my childhood friends did … most of whom were murdered or put in prison … but I chose not to go that way. I felt that I could somehow subdue these evils by doing something beautiful that people recognize me by, and thus make a whole different life for myself, which has proved to be so.”

“The camera was not meant to just show misery,” he said on another occasion. “You can show beauty with it; you can do a lot of things. You can shows things you like about the universe, things you hate about the universe. It’s capable of doing both.”

Born into a life dominated by poverty and racism, Parks turned stumbling blocks into inspiration and used his camera to build understanding among people by exposing the differences that separated them. Gordon Parks spent his life growing bigger than Life.

INSTEAD OF THE WAR DRUM

The Story of Ashoka

by Uma Krishnaswami

Illustrated by Olwyn Whelan

IN ANCIENT INDIA   in the second century B.C., war drums beat loudly and often in the land of King Ashoka. He fought many battles and conquered many neighboring kingdoms. As a result, his domain stretched from west to east, across the entire Indian subcontinent, and deep into the south. His power was fearsome, and his name was known throughout the ancient world. His enemies trembled before the might of his armies.

The eastern kingdom of Kalinga dared to resist Ashoka’s power, so in about 261 B.C., King Ashoka decided to attack this defiant rival. It is said that the dust raised by foot soldiers, horses, and war elephants darkened the bright sky.

The battle was long, and many thousands died. The armies fought fiercely, with sword and spear and arrows flying swiftly. Ashoka was victorious, and the kingdom of Kalinga was utterly defeated.

The story goes that Ashoka walked the battlefield that night, glorying in his victory. As the sun set, a man came up to him, carrying the body of his soldier son. “O King,” said the man, “you are so powerful. You have taken many lives. Will you give this one back to me?”

Ashoka was startled. He said to the man, “How can you ask me to do this? You know it is impossible.”

The man persisted. “Surely not for such a great king as you. This was my only son. I am asking you for one life, only one, among the thousands you have taken, Mighty Ruler.”

Ashoka looked about him at the scene of battle. The man’s words struck him like a thunderclap. He realized he had indeed taken many lives. His soldiers, following his orders, had taken many more. Yet he could not give back a single one of them. His heart filled with remorse, and he turned back to the man but found himself speaking to the darkening sky. The man had vanished.

Some say the king dreamed this very vivid dream. Others say the incident really took place, and the grieving father was the Buddha himself, who had come to teach an arrogant king a lesson. No one knows if this story is mythical or based on an actual event. History tells us that after the battle of Kalinga, Ashoka did become a faithful Buddhist, following the path of peace and nonviolence. Sickened by war, he vowed that from that time onward he would use his armies only in defense of his kingdom. He swore he would never take aggressive action against a neighboring land. In truth, he never did.

“Instead of the sound of the war drum,” Ashoka declared, “the sound of Buddha’s teachings, or Dhamma, will be heard.” Ashoka turned his attention to the welfare of his people. He built hospitals for the sick and rest houses for travelers in his land. He urged all the people to join with him in following the path of peace. Feeling that all killing was wrong, he even stopped eating meat. It was during his reign that Buddhism spread through South and Southeast Asia. Ashoka’s own son and daughter went to the island we now call Sri Lanka, bearing with them the Buddha’s teachings.

Ashoka put up pillars and rocks all across the land with inscriptions about the Buddha’s rules for living a righteous life. He appointed officials whose job it was to travel the land and ensure that people lived in harmony. While he himself favored the teachings of Buddhism, he made it clear through his inscriptions that he honored and respected all religions and called upon his subjects to do the same. In many ways, he was far ahead of his time — perhaps even of ours!

Today, the government of India uses two images from Ashoka’s reign as national symbols: the chakra, a wheel with twenty-four spokes, is the central design element in the flag of modern India, and a statue of four lions, each facing one of the four directions, can be seen on India’s currency.

THE TELESCOPE

by Lisa Harries Schumann

Illustrated by Bryn Barnard

ONCE UPON A TIME   there lived a young king named Fensgar in a land near the top of the world. Winters in that land were long, and during the darkest, loneliest time of one particular winter, the king felt the whole realm was frozen with boredom. It seemed to him the streets were silent as everyone sat numbly indoors, and the woods were still while all the creatures slept.

On a stormy, frigid day, King Fensgar wandered through room after room of his castle, searching for anything that might intrigue him. He listlessly examined trinkets in cabinets and baubles in chests. He stopped by the kitchen, where the cooks were chopping up root vegetables, and stared into the pots that bubbled on the huge stove. “Vegetable soup again?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the cooks replied, bowing.

The king sighed and continued his meanderings until he came to the castle library. There he sank into a velvet chair by the fire. He absent-mindedly pulled a leather-bound tome off the nearest shelf and opened it.

It was an atlas. The paper was yellowed with age, but the maps were colored in vibrant inks. Mountain ranges were in blue, and their tips had been dotted with white. Islands like emeralds were strewn in turquoise water. Deserts were sand-gold, and the wide plains grass-green. Cities were depicted as tiny houses with red walls surrounding them. Each page was covered in names he tried to say aloud: “Ulanibad. Fortunbalia. Wrinkly Coe.” Each name tickled his tongue. “Tokado. Gurunth. Balfish. Quagly.”

Toward the end of the book was a map of Norland, his own kingdom. Even the images on the page looked icy to him. He glanced up at the library windows. Sharp needles of snow pinged against the glass.

King Fensgar did not linger over the map of Norland. He moved on to pages where roads like silver ribbons threaded through coppery savannas, villages nestled on forest-green hills, lakes of sapphire seemed to sparkle. He was enthralled by the maps.

As he reached the last page, he was about to shut the book and start all over again when he discovered a tiny knob in its thick spine. He pulled it, and a drawer opened. In it lay a slender telescope the length of a pen. The king put the telescope to his eye and looked around the library, but he saw only a blur.

Deep in the castle, the dinner gong sounded. “Vegetable soup again,” King Fensgar groaned. He placed the telescope carefully in its drawer and put the book back on the shelf.

THE NEXT MORNING,   King Fensgar settled into the library chair. Outside the windows, the blizzard that had begun the day before raged on. He opened the atlas and once more looked through the telescope, this time pointing it toward a map of islands off a shoreline. It was as if the telescope leaped to life: No longer did he see merely a blur, but rather the clear outlines of an island. As the focus sharpened, the color of the island changed from the emerald hue of the ink to a lush tropical green. To his astonishment, the king saw trees and a strip of sand at the shore.

King Fensgar turned the page and aimed the telescope toward a town on the coast named Baboniki. He saw small, white houses with red-tiled roofs on the slopes above the sea. Cobblestone streets ran between the houses. Gardens in courtyards were filled with flowers of lemon yellow, lavender, and scarlet.

The king gasped. Tiny figures moved about the page! There was a woman with a scarf on her head and a basket under her arm. A boy pulled a donkey. An old man sat in a chair and whittled. Five little children were holding hands and dancing in a ring. Baboniki was alive with color and motion. The telescope was a minuscule window into those faraway worlds.

The king wanted to know each and every place on each and every map. Through the telescope he saw great cities brimming with lights in the evenings. He saw frothing streams plunging down mountainsides. In Utande on page 32, farmers in broad-brimmed hats bent over fields, picking deep purple fruits. In the village of Rezin of the land of Fania on page 104, he saw women in long robes pulling up buckets from a well. In the Sea of Estamadrol on page 16, men in brightly painted fishing boats pulled nets heavy with catch out of the water. And high up on the mountain pass of Kardan on page 59, the king saw a dragon saunter out of its cave, stretch its shimmering wings, and warm its gray-green scales in the wintry sun. The king saw its breath come rhythmically out of its nostrils, condensing into small clouds of steam. When he placed the telescope back in its drawer at the end of the day, the king thought, What a splendid diversion from this frozen land of mine!

WINTER SETTLED   deeper over Fensgar’s kingdom. The ice that covered the lakes and ponds grew as thick as the castle walls. For many days snow fell and blanketed the forests, the villages, and the castle.

As winter wore on, the king spent his days eagerly studying the atlas. Each land was filled with countless interesting features. But the maps he returned to most frequently were the mountain pass on page 59 and the town of Baboniki on page 53. The dragon often sat placidly by its cave, and in Baboniki he saw the same people going about their daily lives: men talking in clusters, children playing, the old man sitting on his chair, whittling. The king felt he knew them, although he had only observed and could not hear them or speak to them.

One morning as he watched, a group of about one hundred men dressed in blue jackets rode out of Baboniki on black horses. With the telescope he followed them as they rode, bows slung over their shoulders and quivers of arrows on their backs. In subsequent days, the king checked the men’s progress as they moved off the map of Baboniki on page 53 and through the plains and forests on pages 54 to 58. He sucked in his breath as he watched them move up the mountain pass of Kardan, where the dragon lived. How little I know, he thought. Will the dragon, who has always seemed so peaceful, eat those men? Or are the men from Baboniki on their way to kill it? Either way, the outcome struck the king as calamitous. There was nothing he could do … nothing but watch.

On the high mountain pass, surrounded by peaks covered in snow, the men in blue jackets rode their dark horses. The dragon was nowhere to be seen. Then, approaching from the other side of the mountain, an army of men in red coats appeared. The sun glinted off their spears. And so, far away from King Fensgar, a battle between the two armies began. The king screamed at them to stop, but his words did not carry through the paper. Never had he felt so helpless. He slammed the book shut.

And my own kingdom? he thought with a start. Perhaps I know nothing about it, either. Perhaps it, too, is in peril? He opened the atlas to the map of Norland. Gray mountains circled the land, indigo streams ran down the slopes to end in slate-blue lakes and ponds. The one patch of bright color was the red of the small town where his castle stood. He put the telescope to his eye.

It was twilight in Norland. In the town at the foot of the castle, peddlers were pulling their wares on sleds through the streets. Figures, their scarfs fluttering behind them, were skating on the lake that lay between the town and the forest. Near the woods, a bonfire blazed with a crowd gathered around it, roasting apples on the ends of sticks. People are out in the winter, the king thought, and I knew nothing of it.

Then, in a forest clearing, the king saw a hut with drifts of snow up to its windows. Outside the door, seated on the snow, a boy sat with his head on his knees and his shoulders shaking.

The child is crying, the king thought, and he ran out of the library.

He ordered that his sleigh be readied. Then he rode out into the snow, the way lit by torches. The coachman drove King Fensgar past the peddlers, the skaters, and the crowd at the bonfire, all of them turning and cheering when they saw the royal sleigh. It raced down a forest path into the deepening dark until it reached the hut where the boy still sat outside the door. As the king got off the sleigh, the boy lifted his face, which was wet with tears and red with cold.

“Child, why do you cry?” King Fensgar asked.

“My mother and father and baby sister are sick, and there is no one but me to care for them.”

“But why are you outside, sitting in the snow?”

“I do not want them to see I’m scared.”

“Come,” the king said, taking the boy’s hand in his. “Let us go inside.”

The hut was lit by a fire, and two beds were pulled close to its warmth. On one lay a man, and on the other a woman and a baby. As the king bent toward them, he saw that their faces were pale and thin and their eyes seemed barely to see him. “I have nothing left but water to give them,” the boy said. At that, King Fensgar went out to the coachman and told him to go back to the castle for the court doctor, blankets, and pots of vegetable soup. Then the king returned inside, where he sat, long after the doctor arrived to examine the invalids and had gone, until the parents were well enough to see the boy and smile.

For weeks the atlas sat untouched on the library shelf while the king rode through his kingdom. He stocked his sleigh with potatoes to roast in the bonfires, carried his skates with him so he could join the laughing people on the frozen ponds, and brought pots of vegetable soup for the boy and his family. But one day, after dancing in a ring with a group of children in the square near his castle, King Fensgar could no longer bear not knowing what had become of the people of Baboniki.

He sat once again on the chair in his library. He turned the pages of the atlas slowly to page 59, where he looked through the telescope at the mountain pass of Kardan. No trace of the battle was left, but faint clouds of steam emerged from the cave.

He flipped back to page 53 to look at Baboniki. The old man still whittled, the children played, and men in blue jackets walked through the streets. “What happened?” King Fensgar longed to ask them.

He shut the book and walked to his desk. Using his most colorful inks and elegant calligraphy, King Fensgar wrote a letter. As soon as the spring melt was far enough along that the mountains encircling Norland were passable, the king gave his letter to a messenger … who rode a horse over the mountains, across the winding rivers, and through the wide green plains to deliver the letter to the people of Baboniki.

THE TALE OF PADDY AHERN

Retold by Patricia McHugh

Illustrated by Lee White

THERE ONCE WAS   a lad named Paddy Ahern who trod the green hills of Limerick, Ireland, offering to help farmers with their chores in return for food and lodging. Trudging uphill and down over the country roads, day after day, wore Paddy’s shoes so thin that sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t have apprenticed to be a shoemaker. But that would have been inside work, and Paddy preferred fresh air and sunshine.

Young Paddy was slight of build, but strong. He had a pleasant face, though his short, brown hair, which he cut himself, stuck out here and there under his cap. His tweed jacket may have been a mite small, but Paddy kept it clean, taking care to brush off the dust at the end of each day’s work. However, in spite of his earnest appearance, no one wanted to hire poor Paddy.

Indeed, the farmers much admired the fields Paddy plowed, the long rows of potatoes he planted, and the hay that he stacked. Yet there were some things the wandering lad could not do. He could not tell stories, nor sing songs, nor play the flute or fiddle to entertain the farmers. And the farmers needed that, too.

“Haven’t yeh got a story to tell, Paddy?” a farmer once asked after sharing supper with the boy. “Or maybe some news or a song?”

Paddy looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at the floor. Finally, he shuffled his feet until the farmer, hopeful for any amusement, thought Paddy might be about to dance. Instead, not saying a word, Paddy just slowly shook his head no.

Well, each farmer who had an experience with Paddy told another, so it wasn’t long before Paddy’s reputation as a boring person was known throughout County Limerick.

ONE DAY AFTER   finding neither work nor a place to stay, Paddy dragged himself down a dark, narrow road. Weary, hungry, and cold, he finally spied a candle flickering in the window of an isolated house. The lonely, gray cement dwelling appeared so grim and cheerless that Paddy hesitated to stop there, but his circumstances pushed him to knock at the door. He heard heavy footsteps, then the door opened slowly.

A tall man wearing a gray wool suit and a starched, white shirt eyed Paddy somberly up and down. “Come in, Paddy Ahern,” he invited. “I have a turf fire going that will warm you.” Though he spoke in a low, doleful tone, his voice was kind and strangely soothing. “Have yourself a bite to eat.”

Paddy thought it odd that the man knew his name, as he had never passed this way before. Yet the lad sat himself down at the table eagerly and gratefully gobbled down the lamb stew he was offered. Then the man gestured for Paddy to take a spot in front of the fire. “You may stay here for the night.” The man picked up the candle and turned to climb a narrow staircase. “And in case yeh be wondering, my name is Seymour Specter.”

As Paddy stretched out to sleep, he saw by the light of the small fire that, though the house was plain on the outside, the parlor was richly furnished, with fringed rugs on the floor, hand-carved wooden panels decorating the fireplace, a maroon sofa with plush velvet cushions, and small tables topped with doilies and vases of white flowers. Such elegance Paddy had never seen.

IT SEEMED TO PADDY   that he had just lain down to rest before the dying fire when a sudden cold draft awakened him. Three men bearing a coffin stood in the open door.

Paddy rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Seymour! Seymour, where yeh be?” he called out. But no one replied or came. The silence of the night was broken only by the dismal voice of one of the coffin bearers.

“Get yourself up and help us carry this coffin, Paddy Ahern.”

With his knees a-knockin’, Paddy pulled on his jacket and helped the gruesome trio move the coffin out the door. “W-w-where are we going?” stammered Paddy.

The three men spoke together. “Over the fields and across the bog,” they chanted. “Walk, Paddy, walk.”

Paddy did as he was told. “O.K., O.K., I’m walkin’.”

Paddy stumbled more than a few times as he carried the heavy coffin through the moonless night. He tore his jacket on blackthorn bushes that seemed to jump out of the darkness, and slipped into the mud of a low, marshy bog. Finally, they came upon the stone wall of a cemetery.

“Lift the coffin over the stones, Paddy Ahern,” the men commanded. “Lift, Paddy, lift!”

“O.K., O.K., I’ll lift,” Paddy said to himself. He hoisted the coffin to the top of the wall, then climbed over and gently pulled it down to the other side.

“Are yeh a wee bit frightened?” the men jeered as they nudged each other. “Start digging a grave, Paddy.” They handed him a shovel. “Dig, Paddy, dig.”

“O.K., O.K., I’ll dig,” Paddy whispered.

“Open the coffin, Paddy,” the men sang. “Open, Paddy, open.”

“O.K., O.K., I’m openin’,” Paddy mumbled as, hands a-shakin’, he pulled up the heavy lid and peered inside, terrified at what he’d find. The coffin was empty.

“Get yourself in the coffin, Paddy,” the men’s voices rose. “Get, Paddy, get!”

“O.K., O.K., I’m gettin’.” Then Paddy shouted in a voice so loud, the three men stepped backward. “I’m gettin’ myself away from here!” And Paddy made a run for it.

The men chased after him. One grabbed onto Paddy’s jacket. Paddy felt the tug on his collar as his jacket tightened around his neck. But he twisted this way and that until he broke free of the man’s hold.

Paddy ran all the way back to Seymour’s house. Before he could knock, the door opened. Paddy stumbled in and collapsed on the floor, worn out by the fright of it all.

WHEN PADDY OPENED   his eyes again, he saw only the fringed rug and other furnishings he had admired the evening before. Night was over.

“So, are yeh well-rested?” asked Seymour, who had descended the staircase.

“To be sure, I’m not!” Paddy gasped at the man. “Twas a night I shall never forget. You’ll not be seeing the likes of me here again.” Paddy stood up to go, confused that his clothes were as clean and well-mended as if he had never run for his life from the coffin bearers.

“Well, Paddy,” Seymour responded. “I had heard before you even got here how you never had a story to tell. I guess that’s no longer true. Tis a grand story you’ve got now.”

Paddy spoke not a word. He put on his tweed jacket and left the house straight away. When he turned to look back, his mouth gaped open in surprise, for nothing was there.

“What a night that was!” Paddy said to himself as he trotted down the lane. “I sure do have a story, but I want to be away from here when I tell it!”

SO, PADDY FOUND   his voice at last. Throughout County Limerick, farmers were entertained by Paddy from then on, and he never walked a hill where he was without an offer of supper and a night’s rest at any cottage. Too bad the farmers never believed a word Paddy said. “Tis no lie!” Paddy always exclaimed, with a bang of his fist on the table.

The farmers all answered Paddy the same way. “Sure, Paddy, sure … now, would yeh like more supper?”

THE EXPLORER

by Christy Lenzi

Illustrated by Gavin Rowe

THE MIGHTY SEA MONSTER’S TAIL   curled around the bow of the ship, poised to crush the sturdy vessel into splinters. Crisp lines of dark charcoal outlined every tooth and claw against a background of dingy white paper.

Hendrik scowled at his drawing and rubbed his chin with blackened fingers. The creature needed more space. Sketching on the backs of old shipping orders never gave him room to draw anything properly.

He hugged his knees and gazed out over Oude Delft, the principal canal of the city. The water was as blue as the famous delft ware pottery the ships exported, and it shimmered like the expensive silks they carried home. One day Hendrik would sail away from the bank of the canal. Leaving Holland on an explorer’s ship, he’d travel to the far reaches of the earth. He’d become a captain’s artist, sketching exotic creatures no other person had set eyes on. Of course, he would use fine, large parchment so the drawings might be preserved and marveled at for ages to come—

“Hendrik!”

The stern voice shattered his daydream. Lunch scraps of pancake and herring slid into the water as Hendrik bolted to his feet. Trying not to tumble over the canal bank, he flailed his arms and legs like windmills to keep his balance.

“Break’s over!” the man shouted from a nearby window.

“Yes, sir!” Hendrik stuffed the sketch into his pocket and sprinted toward the brick building that comprised the office and warehouse of Delft’s East India Company. He raced past the men unloading a ship’s cargo from the East — cinnamon and other aromatic spices, planks of teak, fine porcelain — and skidded to a stop inside the main office, panting for breath as he awaited his instructions.

The clerk tucked his writing quill behind his ear and glanced at his large sandglass. “Captain van Krimpen left a package to be delivered to …” He shuffled the mass of shipping orders and cargo lists cluttering his desk. “Ah, here we are.” He waved a crumpled note in the air. “To a Mynheer Leeuwenhoek —”

“Mynheer Leeuwenhoek, the draper?” Hendrik’s face fell at the thought of delivering something as ordinary as cloth or buttons. He’d hoped for a more interesting package, like Captain van Krimpen’s journal of seafaring adventures or a newly charted map of distant lands. Perhaps he might have stolen a peek —

“Well?” The clerk raised his eyebrows, waiting for Hendrik to take the bundle he held out.

At fourteen, Hendrik had worked hard to be the East India Company’s best messenger boy, hoping that one day the captain of a ship would notice his skills and hire him for a voyage. He straightened his shoulders. “Right away, sir!” This was no time to dawdle. He whisked the gunnysack from the man’s fingers, but it was clunky and heavier than he’d thought.

“Careful, boy!” the clerk yelped. “The specimen’s in a breakable jar!”

“Specimen?”

Liquid sloshed around inside.

“Preserved in brandy. The captain cut it from the creature himself! Now get along to Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s.”

Hugging the sack to his chest, Hendrik nodded to the clerk and dashed out the door. The splashing noises grew louder with every stride. What could a draper want with a specimen? He ran under the lime and linden trees that flanked the canals, hurrying toward the cloth merchant’s home. The bright colors of the village blurred together as Hendrik sped past market stalls, red brick houses with green and white shutters, and horses drawing trekschuits along the canal.

He puzzled over the mysterious parcel in his arms. Surely the captain wouldn’t mind one quick peek. Hendrik paused at a footbridge to catch his breath. He gently pulled the jar from the sack.

A lone eye, large as an onion, lolled around in the brandy until it stopped and stared at Hendrik, who almost threw the object from him in shock. Swallowing his cry of surprise, Hendrik whisked the bag back over the jar and streaked across the bridge. When he reached a green door with a sign hanging above it that read Antoni Leeuwenhoek, Draper, Hendrik lunged for the silver knocker and clanked it loudly.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek appeared in the doorway, wearing an apron with a magnifying glass, scissors, and measuring tape peeking from its pockets. He tucked his long hair behind his ears and blinked through the glare of the afternoon sun. “Yes?”

“A delivery from Captain van Krimpen, sir.”

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s face lit up. “Ah, the whale’s eye! I’ve been looking forward to dissecting —” The merchant’s gaze fell to Hendrik’s feet. “What do we have here?” He plucked the old shipping order from the ground, where it had fallen from Hendrik’s pocket. “Is this drawing your creation?” he asked, studying the sea creature with great interest. “You’re an artist.”

Hendrik’s face burned hot as a griddle. “No. I mean … not yet.”

“Can you draw real creatures as perfectly as the ones in your imagination?”

Hendrik lifted his chin. “Of course.”

Beaming, Mynheer Leeuwenhoek returned Hendrik’s drawing and said, “Excellent! You’re just the person I need.” He turned on his heel and beckoned Hendrik into his home.

“Sir —” Hendrik hesitated. The clerk would expect his return soon, but an overwhelming curiosity tugged at him. “I … I can only stay a moment.” He followed the merchant into the front room, which served as a yardage and notions shop.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek suddenly grimaced and made a sound like a wounded dog. He bent over double, scratching feverishly at his ankle. Hendrik backed away, fearing the man was mad.

Behind them, a door swung open, and a rosy-cheeked girl, several years older than Hendrik, hurried in carrying bolts of cloth. She took one look at the shopkeeper and sighed. “Oh, Father! How long will you suffer those monsters in your stockings for the sake of experiment?”

Hendrik gulped. “Monsters?” he whispered.

The young woman laughed. “Yes, Father bought two lice from a beggar child and dropped them into his legging to discover how fast they multiply. It’s been a miserable six days.”

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek stifled a groan. “Yes, it has been a trial, but the poor suffer such hardships for a lifetime.” He shook his head sadly. “Experiments can be eye-opening in more ways than one.” He straightened up and set the brandied whale’s eye on a table. “Maria, this young man is —” He motioned toward Hendrik.

“My name is Hendrik.”

“He’s an artist!”

“Ah!” Maria clasped her hands together. “I’m so glad Father found someone to sketch his beautiful beasts. Our drawings look like chicken scrawl!”

Beasts? Hendrik peered through the doorway, looking for a caged bird or pet dog.

Maria threw up her hands. “Oh, they’re everywhere!”

He glanced nervously around the quiet room.

“Father, show him the louse.”

Hendrik’s shoulders slumped. There was nothing interesting about lice. They were barely large enough to see and certainly too small to sketch.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek slipped his magnifying glass from its pocket and untied his stocking. He pinched a louse from his leg and held it under the glass.

Hendrik leaned in close and drew in his breath. The tiny creature now loomed before him in a coat of armor with six legs, pointy horns, and frightening pincers. Even as he drew back in surprise, his fingers itched to sketch the wonderful monster.

“Of course, this lens doesn’t do him justice; it’s for examining the weave of my cloth,” the draper’s voice was apologetic, “but with one of my stronger lenses, you can admire him properly — that is, if you can spare the time.”

Hendrik glanced at the sandglass on the table and winced as if he’d been splashed with icy water. Too many grains had slipped through since he’d set out from the East India Company. The clerk would be annoyed. There was nothing Hendrik would rather do than draw Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s wonderful beasts, but he couldn’t lose his job.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek seemed to read his mind. “Yes, you must get going.” He dropped the insect back into his stocking. “Forgive me, I’m too easily distracted by exploring the handsome louse’s hidden world.” He grinned and added, “He’s not the only inhabitant, you know.”

Hendrik jumped as the door knocker clanked and Maria hurried to receive the customer. Mynheer Leeuwenhoek pressed a stuiver into Hendrik’s palm. “Thank you for delivering Captain van Krimpen’s most excellent gift. And if you are interested in a secondary job as artist —”

“Oh yes!” Hendrik interrupted.

A twinkle appeared in Mynheer Leeu-wenhoek’s eyes. “Wonderful! I collected a new specimen yesterday that I am most curious to examine. Maria and I will expect you this evening.”

“Yes, sir.” Hendrik could barely keep his voice steady.

While the merchant greeted his customer, Hendrik floated out of the shop in a daze. He flew over the hog-backed bridges and along the familiar canals toward the East India Company. Sea gulls called to him, ship sails beckoned, but for once Hendrik did not notice. His mind was on Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s creatures and their hidden world.

WHEN THE SHADOWS   grew long, and the sun glinted golden on the ripples of Oude Delft, Hendrik returned from his final delivery of the day. The smell of stewed meat and hot bread wafted from kitchen windows as he walked eagerly through the village to the draper’s house.

This time, an elderly maid answered the door. “Mynheer Leeuwenhoek will join you in the study.”

She left Hendrik alone in a cluttered but cozy room crammed with papers, books, specimens in jars and vials, and several mysterious metal instruments. A new map of the world hung on the wall near a large celestial globe. Hendrik studied the map’s shorelines and islands. He ran his finger over the vast expanse of ocean and felt the old familiar longing to explore its mysteries.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek swept into the study, puffing on a long, thin pipe. He had donned a dressing gown over his waistcoat and wore pantoffels on his feet. When he saw Hendrik gazing at the map, he said, “Ah, to discover new worlds!”

Hendrik smiled.

“Do you know what all explorers have in common?” asked Mynheer Leeuwenhoek.

Scratching his chin, Hendrik pondered the question for a moment. “They travel far from their native land?”

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek rested his pipe on the table and raised a jar of murky liquid to the window. The setting sun gave the contents a greenish glow. “I believe that what they have in common is curiosity.” He returned the container to the jumble of jars on the table, next to the staring whale eye.

Hendrik noticed several small rectangular metal plates lying near the specimens. He wanted to pick one up and turn it over in his hands, but didn’t wish to appear impolite.

“Go ahead, take a closer look!” Mynheer Leeuwenhoek motioned to the instruments. “You’ll be using them to observe the specimens as you draw. They’re mounted lenses that I ground from fragments of glass.” A spark of pride lightened his eyes. “I believe they may be the finest and strongest magnifying lenses yet produced!”

In his palm, Hendrik cradled a slip of dark metal, no heavier than a key. He peered at the small hole in the middle, where a bead of glass had been secured, and examined the adjustable rods on one side of the plate. A maggot specimen had been mounted on a pin, directly in front of the lens.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek lifted one of the other instruments to his eye. His face contorted for several minutes as he adjusted the screws and squinted through the tiny round glass. “Ah, there he is!” He passed Hendrik the magnifier. “Now you may have a proper look at our friend the louse.”

Hendrik’s hands trembled, and his palms felt sweaty. He tried to hold the instrument still, but it kept shaking. Squeezing his eyes half closed, he attempted to see through the small lens. For a moment he caught a glimpse, but lost it. Then the light hit the insect just right, and suddenly the louse’s head came into focus.

Hendrik’s breath caught in his throat. “Amazing!” he almost shouted. “He’s enormous! The horns — they have five joints. And his sharp nose has a hole in its point — how marvelous!” Aided by the powerful lens, Hendrik saw that the louse’s armor was not smooth as he supposed, but rough and dented. “Remarkable!” His heart beat faster with each new discovery.

“Father, I believe you’ve met your match!” Maria said as she entered the room with a tray. “Shall we eat?”

Normally, the gingery smell of hutsepot brought Hendrik running to the dinner table, but at that moment he barely noticed the steaming bowls of stew. “Forgive me, but may I examine this specimen for a few minutes more?”

Maria exchanged amused glances with her father. “Perhaps the stew needs cooling, after all.”

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek, who had once again raised the jar of cloudy liquid toward the fading light, grinned and added, “If we’re not going to eat right away, I might steal a quick glimpse of my newest specimen.”

“Ever since you collected that lake water from Berkelse Mere, you’ve been itching to see what’s in the filthy stuff,” Maria said. “Go ahead — I’ll fetch your strongest new magnifier and one of the glass pipettes you made.”

With great effort, Hendrik pulled himself away from the louse and glanced at the jar of scummy water. “What makes it so green, sir?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t always this color. In winter, the water from Berkelse Mere is quite clear, but in the warmer months, it turns cloudy and green. Some people call it honeydew and believe the dews cause the change.”

“But you think they’re wrong?”

“I think one should never accept a belief as fact, but be curious enough to test it!”

Intrigued, Hendrik laid the louse aside and watched Mynheer Leeuwenhoek suck a drop of lake water the size of a millet seed up through the pipette, which was thin as a horse hair. The draper glued the pipette to the rod of the magnifying instrument.

Maria scurried to light a candle in the darkening room. The hutsepot sat cold and forgotten.

When the glue had dried enough to position the instrument upright, Mynheer Leeuwenhoek pressed it close to his eager eye, and Maria and Hendrik held their breath. For several moments, they watched his features twist and tighten as he fiddled with the rods, struggling to bring the image into focus. Suddenly, Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s fingers froze. His mouth dropped open.

“What is it, Father? What do you see?” Maria’s knuckles had turned white from clasping her hands so tightly.

The draper continued to stare in awed silence at the magnified drop of water. Finally he whispered, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d scarce believe it!”

Hendrik’s heart pumped faster. “Seen what, sir?” He shoved his hands into his pockets, resisting the urge to grab the instrument from Mynheer Leeuwenhoek.

“Animalcules!” the draper whispered in shock. “They’re swimming — oh, ’tis wonderful to see!”

Maria gasped. “You see creatures in that drop of water?”

Her father dragged his eye away from the magnifier and blinked at Maria and Hendrik. He swallowed with difficulty and cleared his throat. “I may very well be the first person in the world to see such creatures! That new lens is my strongest. I calculate that those animalcules are at least one thousand times smaller than the mite, which is the tiniest creature I’ve observed!” Before he finished talking, he had already raised the instrument back to his eye, gaping at what he saw through its lens.

The last sands in the hourglass fell to the bottom. Maria lit more candles.

Hendrik could not stand still. Biting his lip, he paced the room with his hands fidgeting in his pockets as Mynheer Leeuwenhoek studied the strange creatures. Hendrik had to see for himself. Finally, his words burst forth like steam from a kettle. “Sir, I must see these animalcules you speak of!”

The draper and his daughter turned startled faces toward him.

“If I may,” he added with a sheepish grin.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek raised one eyebrow. “See, Maria, he does not accept my opinion as fact, but must test it, out of curiosity. This is good!” He smiled and handed the magnifier to Hendrik. “Tell us what you see.”

A wind of excitement swept over Hendrik, as if he were an explorer at sea on the brink of discovering new lands. Instead of a telescope, he held the magnifier. The flicker of candlelight teased his eyes as he adjusted his position, searching for just the right angle.

“I see them!” he cried. His heart beat against his chest like waves pounding the side of a ship. “They’re beautiful!”

“What do they look like?” Maria asked.

“Some are transparent, and others are green and white. Oh, I see some sparkling ones with green scales and some that are dove-gray!” The words tumbled from Hendrik like a gushing waterfall. “I see round and oval ones. The animalcules have two little legs near their heads and two fins at their other ends, and there are coiled green streaks and greenish globs. Extraordinary!”

A lump rose to Hendrik’s throat. The animalcules’ simple beauty and the fact that he was one of the first people ever to see this beauty made his heart feel as if it might burst. The magnified image grew blurry as water rose to his eyes.

He turned to Mynheer Leeuwenhoek, who was preparing lake water specimens for Maria and himself. “Thank you, sir,” Hendrik whispered.

Mynheer Leeuwenhoek held out his hand. “It is a pleasure to work with another curious mind.”

Hendrik shook Mynheer Leeuwenhoek’s hand firmly.

“Now then, are you ready to draw these fantastic beasts for all the world to see?”

Hendrik could almost feel the large, smooth parchment in his fingers. Something fluttered in his chest like the breeze blowing on the banks of a newly discovered world. He grinned at the eccentric cloth merchant, who had turned out to be an explorer, after all. Hendrik’s heart made a giant leap. “Yes, sir!” He was ready.

AUTHOR’S NOTE   Antoni van Leeuwenhoek was born in the Dutch town of Delft in 1632, the same year that his friend, the famous Delft painter Jan Vermeer, was born.

Leeuwenhoek made his living selling fabrics, buttons, and ribbons, but in the evenings he ground lenses, constructed microscopes, and made observations and experiments to satisfy his curiosity about the world. His homemade microscopes, or “simple magnifying glasses,” as he called them, were far superior to any others created in his time.

Although Leeuwenhoek never held an academic position, he was accepted as a fellow into the Royal Society of London. For fifty years he made important contributions to science through the reports that he sent to the society.

Leeuwenhoek really did hire an artist in order to send drawings of his observations along with his reports. Although the person’s identity is not known, Leeuwenhoek sometimes referred to him in his letters. He remarked upon the interest shown by both the artist and his daughter in his observations.

Leeuwenhoek’s famous discovery of “animalcules” opened a new world of science and laid the foundation for modern protozoology and microbiology. In the Age of Discovery, when explorers canvassed the seas and astronomers scanned the heavens, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s simple microscopes revealed the hidden world right at people’s fingertips.

SWING IT!

The Story of Peg Leg Bates

by Darienne Oaks

Do you folks mind if I introduce myself to you?

I am the fastest dancing man in town.

Just give me half the chance

And I’ll prove that this is true

When I swing this peg leg all around.

— Peg Leg Bates

IF MOTHER BATES   ever found out that he was dancing in the streets, she would “wup” him good, but five-year-old Clayton couldn’t help himself. His feet needed to dance as surely as his heart needed to beat. While waiting for his next shoeshine customer, Clayton rhythmically snapped his white polishing rag in the air, joyfully stomping around to its catchy beat. People walking by sometimes dropped a few coins in his shoeshine kit to show their appreciation. Clayton sure didn’t tell his Momma about that either!

The money Clayton earned shining shoes was needed at home. His father had deserted the family when Clayton was three. Mother Bates struggled to make ends meet while raising Clayton by herself and caring for her own mother. A strong woman, she labored from “kin work” to “kant work” — which was often more than from sunup to sundown — as a sharecropper in the cotton and corn fields near Fountain Inn, South Carolina. On Sundays she worshiped at the Baptist church in town, making Clayton come along, too. Clayton deeply loved his mother and tried to respect her wishes, but her church taught that dancing was sinful, and dancing was something he just couldn’t keep himself from doing.

When Clayton was twelve years old, he knew it was time to offer his aging mother more help. He’d heard there was work at the cottonseed gin, a factory where machines removed cottonseeds from the fibers, then crushed them to extract their valuable oil. At first Clayton’s mother refused to give him permission to work near such dangerous machinery. But Clayton hated sharecropping and, like a small child pleading for a puppy, constantly begged his mother to change her mind. Worn down by weeks of pleading, Mother Bates finally told Clayton she would take the matter up in prayer with the Lord. Next morning, she informed her son that he had God’s blessing to take the job.

At the cottonseed gin, several buildings were connected by an auger conveyer, a long trough with a corkscrew-shaped blade along the bottom. The blade turned night and day, pushing cottonseeds in the trough from one building to another. Clayton was still getting used to the layout of the factory when, around three o’clock one morning, a light went out in the back of one of the buildings. Not quite knowing what to do, Clayton went to investigate. As he crept cautiously across the floor in the darkness, groping his way through the unfamiliar rooms, he suddenly felt his left foot step into air and slip down into the auger conveyer. The sharp blade, twisting like a screw, ripped through his flesh and began to devour his leg. Intense pain exploded through Clayton’s body. His piercing screams reached the only other person working that night. He found Clayton, stopped the machinery, then ran to get help.

Clayton was carried home to his horrified mother, and doctors came to examine his injury. His leg was so terribly mangled that they had no choice but to amputate. They cut off Clayton’s left leg below the knee as the boy lay across his kitchen table. In those days, “colored” people just weren’t sent to hospitals.

It took Clayton more than a year to recover from his surgery. He learned to walk with crutches, and then on a crude wooden leg that his uncle whittled for him. In time, Clayton taught himself to do everything the other kids at school could do, from baseball, to gymnastics, to horseback riding. Although the mill owner bought him a peg leg to replace the homemade leg, Clayton vowed he would never return to the mill.

Determined that the loss of his leg would not stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do, Clayton experimented with dancing while wearing only one tap shoe on his good leg. Tapping with his good foot, he would work the bottom of his peg leg to create unique sounds and rhythms. Having a peg leg added an interesting dimension to his dancing, he discovered. At fifteen he began entering amateur dance contests. The audiences loved his dancing, and with his glowing grin and sparkling deep brown eyes, he won first prize in every contest he entered.

Clayton made up his mind to become the best tap dancer around. He had never taken a lesson in his life, but he watched the two-legged tap dancers and copied their steps. For hours every day, Clayton made up rhythms in his head and worked them out with his foot and peg leg until they sounded right. Combining gymnastic leaps with his dancing, he created an electrifyingly flashy step he called the “jet plane.” After a running start, he would jump high into the air, do a split with his legs, then land on the tip of his peg, with his good leg stretched out behind him and his arms wide open as if he were soaring. He finished his routine by hopping backward on his peg leg all the way offstage.

To earn money, Clayton would hobo the local trains to dance on the streets in nearby towns. He danced alone, swinging away without any music, his peg leg providing a driving rhythm. But dancing in the streets was a very hard and lonely way to make a living. When he felt his routine was as polished and flashy as he could make it, Clayton decided to hobo the trains up the East Coast, dancing at each stop on his way to New York City, the dance capital of the country.

In the 1920s, theaters in New York were racially segregated. Clayton performed in black theaters on the vaudeville circuit, as well as in the segregated theaters that were only for white people. Although blacks were not allowed in these theaters, white performers would blacken their faces with burnt cork to entertain the white audiences by impersonating the singing and dancing of African Americans. Never allowing physical or racial barriers to get in his way, Peg Leg also performed “black-faced” in the early part of his career, so the white audiences wouldn’t know he was really a black man. As his popularity grew, Clayton stopped rubbing his face with the burnt cork and became Peg Leg Bates, the legendary black, one-legged, tap dancing man!

Clayton began to dance with other well-known black entertainers, including the famous Bill Bojangles, with whom he toured Europe, creating a clever three-legged tapping routine that thrilled audiences in Paris. A very dapper dresser, Clayton had fifteen peg legs made to match his suits. He was in such demand as a tap dancer that some days he’d have to change his suit three times, adding the matching peg leg for each outfit. Audiences found his act so stupefying that they would leap to their feet, whistling and shouting “MORE! MORE!” He entertained the king and queen of England, performed with the great Louis Armstrong, toured with the Harlem Globe Trotters basketball team, and danced at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. He was the first African-American to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, one of the most popular television shows of the 1950s and 1960s, on which he appeared an astonishing twenty-two times. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, Peg Leg spent a lot of time visiting and performing for wounded soldiers who had lost legs or arms. When he tapped for young children in the New York State schools, he told them, “Remember, you can do anything you want to, providing you want to bad enough.”

Clayton danced for fifty-two years, right into his sixties. He died in 1998, at the age of ninety-one, convinced that losing his leg was God’s way of giving him his character and a unique dancing style. Peg Leg danced with a beaming smile, sharing his unwavering determination with people of all ages, colors, and cultures. “Always go with your heart,” he advised. By following his own heart, Peg Leg spread more than just the joy of tapping. When people watched him, their hearts danced warmly with inspiration, filled with the exciting feeling that they could swing it, too!

Life mean do your best with all your

might with what you’ve got.

I’m not sorry nor unhappy that I lost this leg.

So please, don’t sympathize with me

For I enjoy my peg.

— Peg Leg Bates

LITTLE BROTHER OF WAR

by Judy Dodge Cummings

Illustrated by Suling Wang

Dyami raced toward the wooden posts shimmering in the moonlight, his feet skimming over the field as though he could fly like the eagle for which he was named. Sweat-sodden hair clung to his eyes, clouding his vision. His lungs burned, but still Dyami ran, the ball gripped in the net at the end of his stick. A thin, pale figure appeared beyond the posts as he drew nearer. Even in the dim light of the moon, Dyami knew it was Anan, his mother, weakened and shrunken by her illness. He must reach her before it was too late! As Anan beseechingly stretched out a hand to her son, he swung the stick behind his shoulder and hurled the ball through the goal.

DYAMI WOKE   with a start. The longhouse was silent as a tomb. Beside the long row of shared hearths that divided the dwelling, Snake clan families slumbered in furs. Dyami glanced to his right. His father’s furs were empty. Once again, Aystan had risen before the sun.

Dyami rubbed his flat stomach. For the first time in many mornings, he felt free of the anxiety that had been gnawing him. His dream last night had changed everything.

“I will save Anan,” he whispered fiercely.

As Dyami approached his mother’s sleeping mat, the odor of her sickness assaulted him. Her face was pale as a corpse, her breathing ragged. Dyami poured a mixture of bee balm and bloodroot into Anan’s mouth. She tossed restlessly, her body burning with fever. He rubbed her limp hand.

“I had a dream last night, Anan,” he whispered. “I will play Little Brother of War today, and fly like an eagle and defeat our opponents. You will get well then. It is the Creator’s promise.” He kissed his mother’s hot brow and strode from the longhouse to find Aystan.

Mist clung to the trees as the rising sun winked between the posts of the palisade that surrounded the village. Outside the adjacent longhouse a girl named Hurit bent over a fire, stirring a pot of corn soup while her father squatted nearby, waiting for his breakfast. Hurit looked up eagerly when Dyami emerged through the cedar bark door of his house, her black hair flowing down her back like a waterfall. Although dazzled by her beauty, this morning Dyami did not stop to flirt. Romance was far from his mind. He nodded in greeting and headed to where he knew his father had gone — the longhouse of Goyogoin, the healer.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”   Aystan sharply rejected Dyami’s plea to take the field with the men of the Bear tribe in the great contest later that morning. “You are only a boy twelve summers old. Little Brother of War is serious business, a man’s game. Control of the beaver pond and the welfare of our village rest with victory over the Rock People.”

Aystan paced in front of the healer’s fire, while the black eyes of ancient Goyogoin, who rarely stirred from his spot by the hearth, bored into Dyami.

“The beaver in our other ponds are disappearing,” Aystan continued. “If we cannot supply the French with furs, the white man will turn his trade to the other tribes in our confederacy — or worse, to the Mohawk.” Aystan’s upper lip curled as though he smelled something bad.

Dyami dropped his gaze, struggling to appear obedient while desperation clawed at his chest.

Aystan’s voice, still firm, grew more gentle. “Men have died playing Little Brother of War. The players use their sticks like clubs. They kick and throw men across the field. There are many injuries. The only act that is forbidden is to touch the ball with your hands.” He shook his head. “Our opponents would crush you in minutes.”

“But what about the dream?” Dyami’s voice rose. “I saw myself playing Little Brother of War. Anan stood between the goalposts. I was flying down the field and scoring again and again. Anan waits for me to play for her so she will be cured.”

A frown clouded Aystan’s face. Like every Wendat, he knew that Little Brother of War was a sacred game with the power to cure, and that dreams were oracles with meaning that must not be ignored. But the sport of the Wendat was also violent and vicious, a substitute for warfare in solving disputes among rival tribes. A muscle twitched under Aystan’s left eye, revealing his internal struggle. To cure his wife, could he endanger the life of his son?

For Dyami there was no confusion. In his dream he had played the game. He had scored point after point as his mother waited in the goal. He must play in the match today to fulfill the prophecy. If he didn’t, Anan would die.

Aystan squatted in front of the healer. “My son speaks true. Along with the other clan chiefs, I negotiated this contest against the Rock People to settle the dispute over the beaver pond without bloodshed.” He fingered the pouch that dangled from his neck. Anan had decorated it with elaborate designs of beads and porcupine quills. “But my wife has taken ill these past weeks. She weakens. If my son dreamed that he played in the game today, the Creator must require this for my wife’s recovery.” Aystan trailed off, the emotions of fear and hope fighting for control of his rugged features.

The aged healer coughed, his chest rattling like beads in a gourd. He studied Dyami so long the boy’s cheeks burned under the scrutiny. Finally, Goyogoin spoke in a voice as dry as thistles in autumn.

“Dyami has not reached his fifteenth year and so has not completed his vision quest. No guardian spirit has come to him and revealed his future.” The old man puckered his lips and spat into the fire. It hissed in resentment. “You have not dreamed of your son playing in today’s game, have you?” he asked Aystan.

When Aystan shook his head, Goyogoin shrugged as though all was now clear. “Then the boy is wrong about his dream. His desires, his future, must come through your mind until he has completed his quest. Your wife has been treated by the Awaterohi curing society. I have treated her myself. We have done what we can and now must wait for her recovery or death.”

Aystan gasped and covered his face with his hands. A shiver ran through Dyami’s body. He wanted the old man to stop talking, but Goyogoin was not yet done. “You are the chief of the Snake clan and the principal leader of this village. Your responsibility is to our entire Bear tribe, not solely to your wife. Today, our sixty worthiest men will play the game to gain control of the beaver pond. A boy of twelve will not aid in victory — dream or no dream.” The old man closed his eyes, dismissing them both.

Dyami trailed Aystan out of the longhouse. His father paused outside the door and laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I am playing today. Our family is represented. That will be enough to honor the Creator for your mother’s sake.”

“But it was my face I saw in the dream, not yours,” Dyami cried.

Worry carved lines on Aystan’s face. “Be silent.” His voice cut the air. “Goyogoin has spoken. You are not to play today. My presence on the field will both ensure victory for our village and satisfy the Creator for your mother.” As he turned away, he murmured. “It must. It is all I can do.”

Dyami’s chest rose rapidly as he struggled to calm his frustration and fear. Aystan would not allow the dream to be fulfilled! His responsibilities to the tribe and fear for his son’s safety were too strong. “But will the Creator be satisfied with Aystan, not me?” Dyami whispered.

LATER THAT MORNING   Dyami, surrounded by the crowd of excited people flowing from his village, trudged out the gate of the palisade to the meadow where the game would be played. Under the indigo sky he passed fields of sunflowers, prized by the Wendat for their seeds and oil, and green corn, already waist-high and dressed in bean vines that wound gracefully up the stalks. No women tended the fields on this special day.

The meadow was about a mile away, halfway between his village and that of the Rock tribe. Two sets of goalposts, five hundred yards apart, defined the playing field. Around the edge of the meadow, clusters of Bear and Rock villagers engaged in a flurry of pregame betting. Some women armed themselves with bundles of sticks to throw at opposing players when fights broke out. Others fetched water or prepared coffee to refresh the men during the game. Young mothers carried babies in cradleboards on their backs, while groups of boys and girls practiced playing ball with their child-size sticks, longing for the day when they could play for the honor of their tribe. Dyami, avoiding the hubbub, crouched in tall weeds near the Bear tribe’s goal, nervously gripping the stick that Aystan had carved for him years ago.

At the beat of a lone drummer, two teams of sixty men emerged from the woods on opposite sides and charged onto the field, whooping and circling the goalposts. Dyami swallowed hard. Clad only in breechcloths and covered with paint, these were fearsome warriors — purified and hardened from days spent in fasting and prayer. Although a few wore moccasins, most were barefoot. Many had woven totems of bird feathers into their hair — a raven feather for sharp vision, a sandpiper wing for swiftness, a peewee tail for agility. The Bear players, red paint marking their faces, lined up against the Rock men, streaked with white ash and charcoal. Shamans from both tribes chanted the ceremonial blessing. Then the deerskin ball was released, and the game began.

From the outset the men played with a fierce energy and ferocious violence, each side determined to win the game and control of the beaver pond. Only Dyami and Aystan prayed for a greater victory. A Bear tribe brave scooped up the ball in the net at the end of his three-foot stick. Dyami winced as three Rock warriors tackled the man. The brave’s skull cracked against the ground. He sat up dazed, blood trickling down his cheek as the game continued furiously around him.

Dyami did not join the throngs of spectators on the hillside. He remained hidden all day in the tall grass, hunger and thirst forgotten as he followed the scoring. New players entered the game as the injured hobbled off with bloodied noses or broken collarbones, or collapsing from exhaustion. As the sun began to sink beyond the horizon, the game was tied.

Suddenly, Aystan broke free and ran with the ball toward the Bears’ goal. His feet flew with the wind of fierce determination; but it was not enough. An opponent rammed his stick between Aystan’s feet, tripping him. Aystan fell hard, the ball shooting out of his net. He clutched his ankle, writhing in pain as the wild mob of men turned toward the Rocks’ goal.

“Get up!” Dyami burst from the weeds. “Get the ball.”

Aystan grimaced. “I cannot. My leg.”

As Aystan limped off the field, panic gripped Dyami. He looked down at the game stick in his hand. The Creator had sent him this task, not Aystan. In the dream he had been the one running up and down the field, swinging his stick and shooting the ball into the goal. Dyami was certain that he must secure the victory or his mother would die.

He charged onto the field and ran straight into the pack of players. They were a wall of bodies blocking the ball. The men shrieked war cries, their faces dripping with sweat and blood. Their bodies glistened with a slimy grease made from slippery elm bark that they smeared on so opponents could not easily grip their limbs. Dyami crouched behind a Bear brave. The ball was in the center of the circle of men, who chopped at it viciously with their sticks. Before Dyami could even try to scoop up the ball, a strong hand grabbed his shoulder. “Get off this field, boy!” The same Rock warrior who had tripped Aystan heaved Dyami onto the sidelines. His playing stick went flying, and he clambered onto his knees, groping in the weeds to find it.

The Rock brave had the ball in his net. He darted and weaved through the men, leaping over bodies that lay strewn on the field. The game was tied two all, and three points were necessary to win. Dyami stared in horror as the brave hurled the ball straight between the goal posts. Before it could cross the goal line, Aystan appeared, jumping to catch the ball in his net. The crowd roared, and Dyami’s heart swelled with pride in his father.

Ignoring his swollen ankle, Aystan lurched, first to the right then the left, using his shoulders like a battering ram to fend off opponents. The Bear tribe offense carved a clear path, and Aystan hurled the ball down the field. A Bear brave caught it and deftly tossed the ball to another man poised near the goal line. He scored! As the sun slipped below the horizon, the Bear players whooped in victory. Dyami collapsed with relief.

HIS EUPHORIA   did not last long, however. Following the Bear victory, Dyami and Aystan stood by Anan’s bedside. The victory had made no difference. Her heartbeat was faint, her breathing raspy. Tears ran down Dyami’s face, and Aystan put an arm around his son’s shoulders. His voice was thick with anguish. “Goyogoin said there was nothing more we could do. We must accept the wishes of the Creator.”

Flinging off the embrace, Dyami ran from the longhouse straight to the playing field. Retrieving his stick from the weeds, he began to swing wildly. He raged at everyone — his mother for her illness, Goyogoin for denying a game to heal her, and Aystan for accepting this decision so placidly. But mostly he raged at himself for disobeying the dream. Dyami struck the air again and again, finding strength in his sorrow and fury.

Finally pausing to catch his breath, Dyami spotted the buckskin ball in the grass, forgotten in the confusion after the game. He scooped it up in his net and ran down the field. He drew back his stick and flung the ball as far as he could and then chased after it. He hit the ball with all his might and it ricocheted off the goalpost. Anger and heartache forced his aim off-kilter; his gait was lumbering and bearlike, but still he played on. Gradually, as the minutes turned to hours, something changed. A sense of purpose fell over Dyami, and he found a rhythm in his running, a flow to his swing. He began to play Little Brother of War with the skill of a veteran warrior. Watched only by the silver moon and an inky sky glittering with stars, he soared like a solitary eagle, up and down the field, sending the ball flying first through one set of goalposts and then the other.

Finally, with bleeding soles and blistered palms, Dyami collapsed on the dewy grass. Rage had ebbed, leaving in its wake an overwhelming fatigue tinged with grief. As a finger of sun nudged the moon from the sky, Dyami walked slowly to the longhouse, dreading what he would find.

Silence greeted him. Aystan lay like a sleeping sentry at Anan’s feet. Dyami could not bring himself to look at his mother’s face. He stopped several feet from where she lay, focusing on the deer hide that carpeted the floor.

“My son, come to me.” Anan’s voice was barely a whisper, but it shouted in Dyami’s heart.

His eyes flew to her face. She was still pale, but a spot of color shone high on each cheekbone and her brown eyes were brighter than they had been in weeks. He ran to her and fell on his knees. Anan’s breathing was clear and steady. Her cool hand smoothed the hair from her son’s brow.

As suddenly as if he had stepped from the shadow into the light, Dyami understood. The dream of the night before had not shown him beating the Rock team on a crowded field. It had shown him running and jumping, throwing and swinging with all his might and faith and love for his mother. That is what he had done throughout the night as he raced for hours up and down the game field fighting his toughest opponents, anger and despair. That had been his sacrifice to the Creator, his gift for his mother’s sake.

“I had a dream,” Anan whispered. “You were the bravest, strongest player in Little Brother of War.”

Dyami reached out and embraced her. He knew it had been more than a dream.

AUTHOR’S NOTE   The Wendat were Iroquoian-speaking Indians who lived in what is now southern Ontario, Canada. Their name meant villagers or islanders. When the French encountered the Wendat in the early 1600s — the time at which my story is set — they referred to them as the Huron, a French word meaning ruffian or unkempt person and not a name by which the Wendat called themselves. After warring with the Iroquois in the mid 1600s, the Wendat tribes dispersed, some to the western Great Lakes, where today they are known as the Wyandot.

The Wendats lived in houses about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. Families in a clan would share a longhouse, constructed with sheets of bark, usually cedar, on a wood frame. There was a long row of about ten hearths down the middle of the house, each hearth shared by two families who lived on either side of it. For protection from attack, a fortified palisade surrounded the longhouses in a Wendat village.

With the coming of the Europeans, the trade in beaver furs became increasingly important to the Indian peoples, leading to disputes among rival tribes as pelts grew scarce with overhunting.

Hundreds of years before Europeans arrived, Indian peoples across North America played a game that blended the footwork of soccer, the swinging sticks of hockey, and the slamming bodies of football. Tribes had many different names for this rough sport, including Little Brother of War; but it is known to us as lacrosse, a name given it by French missionaries and probably derived from the French word for a crooked or hooked staff, a reference to the lacrosse stick.

Indian lacrosse, more violent than today’s game, was deeply rooted in religion. Shamans directed pregame rituals and blessed equipment. Some tribes, including the Wendat, believed playing the game was pleasing to the gods and had the power to cure the sick or influence the weather. Sometimes territorial disputes between nations were decided on the outcome of a game, which served as a substitute for actual warfare.

Like warriors before battle, players painted their bodies and fasted before a game. The number of players and the size of the field varied by tribe. In one Seneca-Mohawk game in 1797, two teams of 600 men played on a field a mile long. As many as 10,000 spectators might attend a game when two Indian nations competed. Pregame betting was common, as people wagered possessions or land. One Wendat man even bet his little finger (and lost).

While my story is based on the best available research into the history of Indian lacrosse, the exact details of how the game was played by the Wendat hundreds of years ago cannot be known with complete certainty.

BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY

by Brenda Moore

ROD HAYDEN STARED   down at the mass of black fur lying at his feet. What was he to do? Pal, the family dog, had grown so big. Too big. It was 1940, and in the remote Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland, Pal was a friend to everyone. The 130-pound Newfoundland dog loved to romp with the neighborhood children. He even pulled their sleds in winter. But today the playful giant had accidentally scraped the face of a six-year-old girl. As Pal’s owner, Hayden felt upset and responsible. Now he wrestled with a terrible question of what to do about his massive, energetic pet. He even wondered if Pal should be put down.

Thankfully, a better solution was found. Soldiers at RCAF Station Gander, the air base, knew Pal well. Their exuberant friend loved to chase after landing airplanes. Unsuspecting pilots often radioed in that there was a bear on the runway! When Hayden offered Pal to the soldiers, they eagerly accepted, and Pal became regimental mascot for the 1st Battalion of the Royal Rifles of Canada. The soldiers renamed him Gander and quickly promoted him to the rank of sergeant.

World War II had broken out in Europe the previous year, and tiny Gander, located at the eastern tip of Canada, had suddenly swelled into one of the busiest airports in the world, a vital staging and refueling point for thousands of Canadian and American planes bound for Europe. Although the Royal Rifles had been sent from Quebec to defend the base from possible German attack, no one expected the battalion ever to face dangerous combat.

In 1941, that changed. On the other side of the world, Japan had conquered most of China and was now posing a threat to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong on China’s southern coast. The Royal Rifles were ordered to join other British Commonwealth troops to defend the island should war break out with Japan.

At a farewell parade in Quebec City, thousands of people cheered the Royal Rifles as they marched proudly behind Sergeant Gander. But the battalion ran into trouble in Vancouver as it tried to board the transport ship for Hong Kong. When the crew of the Prince Robert saw Gander trotting along the wharf, they did not believe he was a dog. “You can’t take that bear on this boat!” the captain ordered. But the Royal Rifles refused to back down. They could not leave their mascot behind!

Mascot Sergeant Gander with the Royal Rifles, the men he protected

The Royal Rifles arrived in Hong Kong on November 16, 1941. The climate was very warm for a dog with thick, heavy fur. For relief, his handler, Rifleman Fred Kelly, would let Gander sit in the shower as long as he liked, blissfully soaking up the cool spray. Gander also developed a taste for beer, which he lapped up, right out of the sink. At night, he made it clear he did not like his doghouse, howling until he was brought in to sleep by Kelly’s bed. This was where Gander belonged, alongside his fellow soldiers.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and, eight hours later, invaded Hong Kong. The surprise attacks threw the Royal Rifles into a desperate fight against an overwhelming Japanese invasion force.

As a big, friendly pet, Gander might not have been expected to be of use in the frenzy of battle. But the lovable Newfoundland had a strong drive to protect. When confronted by the enemy, he transformed into a fearsome fighter. “He growled and ran at the enemy soldiers, biting at their heels,” recalls Rifleman Reginald Law. When a group of injured Canadian soldiers could not escape the approaching Japanese, Gander lunged out ferociously and drove off the enemy. Weeks after the battle, the Japanese closely questioned Canadian POWs about the ferocious “black beast.” They feared the Allies were training giant animals for warfare.

Gander’s final heroic act occurred on December 19, just after midnight, during the Battle of Lye Mun. It was pitch-dark, and Fred Kelly had put Gander in a concrete shelter called a pillbox, where he would be cool and safe. Suddenly, the Japanese attacked. In the chaos, Gander escaped from his pillbox and, showing no fear of guns or bombs, ran straight toward the enemy. “Gander must have seen the hand grenades landing,” says Jeremy Swanson of the Canadian War Museum. “He must have seen the men furiously throwing them back. He must have sensed their terror.” On a hillside, seven Canadians were lying wounded when a Japanese grenade landed in their midst. Gander rushed in, grabbed the grenade, and ran away with it in his mouth until it exploded. The lives of the seven men had been saved, but as Reginald Law remembers, “When the firing eased up, I saw Gander lying dead in the road.” The next morning, the Canadians were marched away to captivity. Fred Kelly could see Gander’s body in the distance. “I didn’t go near, I was so distraught.” His courageous friend had made the ultimate sacrifice.

Of the 1,975 Canadians who went to Hong Kong, nearly 500 were wounded, 290 were killed in the battle, and 264 died as Japanese POWs. During four years of harsh and brutal captivity, the Royal Rifles often shared the story of Gander, which helped inspire them to keep going during this terrible time. Long after the war, the Hong Kong veterans happened to mention Gander to commemorating officer Jeremy Swanson, who spent several years documenting the story. Through his efforts, the PDSA Dickin Medal, also known as the animals’ Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery against the enemy, which had not been awarded since 1949, was brought back for the special case of Gander. In October 2000, Fred Kelly, with a Newfoundland dog at his side, gratefully accepted the medal honoring Gander’s courage and loyalty.

For the Hong Kong veterans, their mascot represented them and all they had endured. When the Hong Kong Memorial Wall was unveiled in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, they insisted that Gander’s name be included, where he could forever be remembered, alongside the soldiers he had served.

NOTE   Introduced in 1943 by Maria Dickin, who founded the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, a British veterinary charity, the PDSA Dickin Medal honors public service animals who have shown exceptional courage and devotion to duty in saving human life during war. To date, 32 pigeons, 3 horses, 27 dogs, and one cat have received the award. Gander’s certificate reads in part: “For saving the lives of Canadian infantrymen during the Battle of Lye Mun on Hong Kong Island in December 1941 … Twice Gander’s attacks halted the enemy’s advance and protected groups of wounded soldiers. In a final act of bravery, the war dog was killed in action gathering a grenade. Without Gander’s intervention many more lives would have been lost in the assault.”

A DRIFTWOOD’S TALE

by Shirley Ann Hoskins

Illustrations by Gavin Rowe

I REMEMBER THE DAY   the men cut me down.

I was the tallest and straightest and healthiest spruce on the hill. On one side, I gazed with wonder at the ocean that smashed against the boulders far below.

I enjoyed the cries of gulls and terns as they wheeled and soared with the wind.

I welcomed morning fogs that drifted in from the sea. I swayed with the thrilling, violent gales that tore across angry water and up the hillsides.

In the other direction, I looked over green forests full of deer and bear and elk. A sharp-eyed eagle sat at my top and scanned the hillsides; smaller, singing birds raised families in my lower branches; chipmunks played; rabbits chewed on ferns and grasses at my feet. It was a lovely and peaceful scene, but my soul was tuned to the drama of the waves and the powerful wind from across the seas.

The men came from a ship on the ocean. They clambered up the hill with their tools and walked around me, measuring my worth.

The man in charge said, “We are lucky. This giant spruce is the best replacement we will ever find for the broken mast.”

“Aye, lucky for sure, Captain Harbison,” they said. Then they attacked me with their long saws.

How sharply I groaned as I began to topple; how hard I crashed. I lay helpless, severed from my roots. When the men hacked off my branches, it seemed to be all over. But then they lowered me down the hill to a tiny beach. They scraped off my bark and floated me out to a ship they called the Dolphin. It wasn’t long before I stood upright again, fastened as firmly to the Dolphin as if I had grown there. They nailed pieces of lumber onto me — yardarms, they called them — and fitted them with sails.

There were two other masts, before and behind me, but I, the tallest, could see over everything. The water sighed and swished around the hull, then boomed against the cliff. When the sails were full, we headed out to sea. I could feel every creak and groan of the ship beneath me as it rocked with the waves. I soon got used to the salty taste of the spray that bounced back on me from the prow. I came to know the feel and the voices of the men who scampered around in my rigging.

What unforgettable days! I gloried in my travels across the oceans of the world. We flew before the wind; we skimmed the dancing waters; we raced the tides and the clouds as I could not have done before. Exploring every horizon, we found new lands and astonishing people. Laughing children splashed and waved at us from warm, blue lagoons. We were welcomed by throbbing drums on wind-swept, mountainous islands. At times, chanting warriors with spears chased us from hidden coves. In far northern oceans, we dodged huge ice floes and barely escaped being frozen into the Arctic cap. We never knew what unexpected adventure awaited us.

The men of the ship came and went over the years, and instead of exploring, we turned to a terrible business. Changes were made in the hold, and we carried a cargo of people — kidnapped souls — from one country to others. What a dismal time! The captives’ anguish overwhelmed the ship like a flood of fouled water. There seemed no joy in running the waves; the very sun dimmed. The deck hands began to distrust the ocean and one another. They skittered nervously between their chores and their bunks.

“Listen to the masts, listen to the ship,” the men whispered. “They groan and lament as if we are doomed.” And it seemed so. The currents disappeared for a time, as if they wanted to punish us, to leave us forever in these silent, stifling doldrums. One frightened sailor, praying and crying in the dark, crammed a religious medal deep into a slit he had cut in my side.

But with a new owner, we became a merchant ship. Now we carried goods between the New World and Asia and Europe — sometimes cotton, sometimes pepper and cinnamon, sometimes gold. I stood proud once again. As the mainmast, I still had a view of the world fore and aft. The old “salts” often sang sea chanteys as they worked; some played the hornpipe in their spare time. People cheered when we hove into the harbors, bringing them their fortunes.

Tragedy hit us on a relaxed, sunny day. We spied a quicker ship flying the skull and crossbones on its black flag. “Look sharp, they have cannons!” cried our men.

Approaching rapidly, the ship fired upon us. One of the cannonballs hit me low and broke my hold on the ship. The men scrambled frantically to keep the sails up so we could escape. But it was no use. Savage pirates boarded us and attacked wildly, slashing and looting and throwing people off. They took the treasure that we were carrying — and then they set my ship on fire!

I fell into the water, and a lucky sailor managed to grab me. He found rope trailing from a yardarm and tied himself onto me. We could do nothing but let the currents take us where they would. In this way we floated for two days until we came to a small island. When we grounded on the beach, we lay still until the sailor got the strength to free himself. After exploring for a bit, he came back and gave me a pat.

“Well, ol’ mast, it looks like you and me are all that’s left of the good ship Dolphin. My own grandfather once captained that ship. I’m glad he ain’t around to see this unhappy day.”

Sailor Harbison and I were on that island for months. He found fresh water and enough food to keep himself alive, mostly fish and coconuts and breadfruit. He had no tools but a knife, yet he managed to find wood for a signal fire. He sometimes slept in a cave on the hill. Often he climbed high and scanned the empty horizon for ships. Some days he leaned against me while he wove sandals from pandanus leaves or made fishing spears from bamboo.

“I’m carving my name into you, old friend,” he said, “and the name of our ship, in case no one ever finds me. And I’m carving it really deep so it will last.”

Eventually some native fishermen came by and rescued him. I was left on the beach alone, but not for long.

The pirates came back in heavily loaded ships, but they didn’t rescue me. Instead, they cut most of me up: for firewood, for stools, or for other uses. From the ships, they unloaded cargo, which they hid in the cave. At times they lugged the cargo back out to other ships or buried it. Lookouts constantly watched for unfriendly ships.

But one day a military ship found the pirates, and there was a frenzied battle, with men and their weapons and their shouting all over the island.

When it was over, one of the soldiers said, “It has taken us a long time to catch these pirates. I hope that’s the end of piracy and smuggling in this area.”

Then they left me to the quiet again — what remained of me.

I was now about three feet long and had been flung behind some rocks. I was stuck fast. Once more I could only listen to the surf and watch the creatures around me — sand crabs and turtles, birds and insects. The sun and moon and stars drifted above me. Seawater danced in to tease and tickle me, then crept away again. And every time the tide changed, it buried me a little deeper in the sand.

It was a typhoon that rescued me. The raging wind and enormous crashing waves tore the sand and rocks away and lifted me out. I was free again, free to drift the world’s oceans, and that’s what I did for many a sailor’s lifetime.

I wasn’t at all lonely. I met whales migrating to richer feeding grounds. Dolphins swam beside me; flying fish jumped over me; seaweed grabbed hold and trailed along; sardines hid in my shadow. At times, seabirds rested on me. I often saw ships, but after a while, they were not the tall-masted sailing ships I once knew. These had smelly smokestacks and cut a noisy, straight path in the water, regardless of wind or tide. They took no notice of a piece of flotsam bobbing in the swells.

And then, when I had nearly forgotten people, I was caught in a fishing net. On the deck of the boat we were dumped: tuna, mackerel, sea turtles, strands of green kelp, and me. A bearded, suntanned man picked me up.

“Aha!” he said. “I’m glad I came along instead of going beach combing.” He looked me over and said to his friends, “This will work out great. It’s a real old one. This rusty place must have been a huge hook. And look here! Does this carved spot say Harbison? And this one — is that Dolphin?”

He took me to his workshop on shore and soon cut and polished me. Once more I thought it was the end. But when he was satisfied, he set me outdoors with chunks of old cypress and cedar. He patted me. “You probably came from this Oregon coast in the first place,” he said.

People wandered by and said, “Look at the great driftwood! This one looks just like a dolphin. Isn’t it perfect?”

The beachcomber said, “That one’s not for sale. I’m saving it for my friend Harbison. He’s from an old sailing family and he’s built a sailboat he calls the Dolphin. I carved this figurehead for the prow.”

And that’s where I am now. We go out often onto the blue ocean and run before the wind. I am in the front, where I can chase the waves and smell the spray and smile up at the terns and gulls. I am home again.

THE TRAVELER

by Connie Martin

Illustrated by Daniel Krall

JAMIE WANDERED AIMLESSLY,   kicking a broken chunk of sidewalk, following the chip of cement as it skittered and bounced through leaves and off curbs. In a trance, she walked down unknown blocks and around unfamiliar corners, her mind so far away that she didn’t sense the falling night until the chill air pinched her nose and a gust of wind lifted her out of her meandering thoughts.

She found herself in a spooky, rundown neighborhood. Above her a yellow streetlight stained the gathering dusk. She could barely make out the words on the bent sign. Vine Street. She had never heard of it.

Shadows buried the intersecting streets in darkness. Which way was back? Defeated, she plopped down on her backpack. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

The glowing numbers on her watch flashed, as if laughing at her. It was dinnertime at home. Five-thirty sharp, so her stepdad wouldn’t miss his favorite news show. Today was Friday, which meant greasy meat loaf with out-of-the-box mashed potatoes and green Jell-O with canned pears.

She actually wished she were there, or, rather, her stomach did. It felt like wadded-up paper. All she’d had for lunch was pop and a bag of potato chips.

Something swiped across her ankle. She jerked back and looked down to see a pure white Persian cat sitting at her feet. It sat so still it could have been a statue.

“Go home,” she said. It didn’t move. “Go home!” she repeated, leaning toward it. It blinked, slowly, and tilted its head. “Shoo!” She stood up to step around it, but the cat pounced in front of her. It sat down again and purred as loudly as her brother’s aquarium motor. She imagined feeding the cat his fish collection. That made her smile.

“Maybe you’re lost and hungry, too?” she asked. “I’ll make you a deal. You show me the way home, and I’ll give you something good to eat.” It blinked its huge eyes at her. “Sushi, fresh,” she added. It continued to stare up at her, as if listening to every word. “No? Well, do you have anything for me to eat? Catnip? Tuna?” As if on cue, the cat bounded across the street and looked back at her, waiting.

“O.K., O.K., I’m coming.”

Jamie picked up her backpack and followed as the cat slipped through a broken fence surrounding a ramshackle house. Even in the near darkness, Jamie could see the paint curling off the sides. Shutters hung loose or had fallen off altogether. The gutter lay like a monstrous snake in the knee-high weeds, and in the dim streetlight the windowpanes glittered with spider web cracks. Trees clawed the roof, while shrubs and vines clambered over the porch railing.

“This place would be great for Halloween,” Jamie said to the cat. “Even the cemetery isn’t this creepy.”

The cat darted into the house through a square hole in the front door. Jamie heard a meowing cry. Her invitation to follow? Was this worth a rusty can of food? Her paper-wad stomach gave a sharp twist. Yeah!

As she crunched through the weeds, she tried not to think of what might be slithering around her feet. It wasn’t until she reached the porch that she realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out and put a foot on the first step. The board creaked and sagged under her weight. A back door banged in the wind. The cat meowed. What’s taking you so long?

“You sound like my mother,” she whispered back.

An icy finger dropped down her spine as something slipped past the side window. Only the cat, she thought. She forced herself to imagine a can of food waiting inside — probably cat food! She wiped a sweaty palm on her jeans and grabbed the metal doorknob. Something creaked inside. Her hand froze.

Run, just run! she thought. But if she did, she’d hate herself for being a chicken. Slowly, she turned the knob. It whined and snapped. Her nerves jumped. She pushed the door open, feeling more hungry and cold now than scared. Her eyes squinted into the darkness. Gradually the room’s interior began to take shape. She saw a sofa and a coffee table on an area rug and what looked like a china cabinet against the wall. So where was the cat?

“Kitty, kitty, kitty?” she said softly, taking another step inside.

Claws raked across the porch, and she whirled around. Her shoulders sagged in relief as she realized it was just branches scraping against the house.

Rain tapped lightly on the windowpanes, and thunder rattled the glass. Lightning flashed, glinting off a thronelike chair opposite the sofa. Jamie crossed to it and ran her finger along the back. It felt cold, like metal. Was it real gold?

She walked carefully over to the china cabinet and peered in. In the flickering light she made out a porcelain china doll on the top shelf. Below it stood an Oriental fan decorated with flakes of gemstones. Beside it was a carved jade vase and a jeweled dagger.

“This is a museum!” she breathed.

“Na, this is me home.”

She spun around as a shadowy form stepped forward.

“Who are ye, might I be askin’?” said a raspy voice.

She stared, petrified. Then she realized the figure was wearing a shabby bathrobe and slippers. He was just an ordinary old man leaning on a cane.

“Your mother did name ye, now didn’t she?” He spoke with an Irish lilt.

“I’m — I’m Rosie O’Connor,” she improvised. Surely he didn’t expect her to give her real name, did he? She calculated the distance between him and the door and the speed necessary to shoot past before he could grab her.

“O’Connor, eh? With a name like that, ye canna’ be all bad.” His voice softened. “Did ye get lost in the storm, lass?”

“I followed a white cat,” Jamie said. “I didn’t think anyone could possibly live here. I’ll just go now.” She waited nervously for him to step aside.

“Caesar brought ye, eh?” He sounded amused. “Well, any friend of Caesar be a friend of mine. Ye can call me Eddy. Join me for some tea and cake?”

He seemed harmless, and she was hungry, so she followed him to the tiny kitchen. He switched on the light, and there, on the chipped Formica-topped table sat the white cat, cleaning its whiskers, waiting for them. It stared at Jamie with eyes as blue as sea foam.

Jamie sat on a chair with a cracked vinyl seat and dropped her backpack onto the speckled pink linoleum. The refrigerator was squatty and rounded, and when the old man pulled on a fat silver bar, the door popped open. Inside, a huge light bulb blinked on.

He took out a plate of teacakes and set it on the table. The cat mewed as if to say I told you so. Eddy pushed the fridge door shut and shuffled to the sink where he filled a kettle. He put it on the gas stove, over a blue flame.

“Rosie, eh? A lovely name. Bein’ as you’re an O’Connor, are ye Irish, then?”

“Me? No. I’m nothing.”

He grunted and shuffled the four steps to the table where he lowered himself into a chair, leaning his cane against the tabletop. He picked at the plastic wrap matted around the edge of the plate.

Impatiently, Jamie folded her arms over her cramping stomach. “What do you do?”

He smiled, peeling back the plastic cover. “I live.” He offered her a teacake.

She took it and stuffed it into her mouth. When she could speak again, she said, “I mean, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a traveler.” He picked up a cake and took a bite.

“A salesman? My real dad sold tools for a while.”

“I’ve nothin’ for sale.”

“So how do you make money to buy those beautiful things?”

“I never make money. I make friends. Those ‘things’ be gifts from many people and many places.”

“You travel all over the world?” She felt a spark of interest. “Have you met any famous people? You know, kings or sheiks?”

He merely smiled and stood with the help of his cane. Moving to the stove, he spooned tea leaves into a brown-glazed pot before pouring in steaming water from the kettle. He carried the pot to the table and poured the tea into two cups.

The fragrance of mint tickled Jamie’s nostrils as she took a sip. The tea burned down her throat, but it tasted so good. The old man’s piercing green eyes examined her from under white bushy eyebrows. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek.

“Tell me, lass, have ye ever heard of the Taj Mahal?”

“It’s white, isn’t it? In India? A palace, or something?”

“’Tis a tomb, in truth. A magnificent edifice. Had a tour by the shah himself. Jahan was a pleasant fellow, though a might solemn since the death of his wife, Mumtaz.” He offered her another cake. Nothing had ever felt as warm and comforting as this tea, or tasted as good as this cake, and it wasn’t even frosted.

“Come to think of it,” he continued, “the most excitin’ travel I ever experienced was when I sailed from Spain to the New World. That was adventure at its peak. I was drinkin’ a wee glass of ale in a pub with some of the finest sailors in Spain, when a great and terrible brawl broke out. Now, that was a good time.” He chuckled at the memory. “I ducked the flyin’ mugs and was makin’ me way with God’s speed to the doors, when I saw a mate in trouble. Two big sailors were holdin’ him down, and another was about to smash him with a chair. I’m a firm believer in fair play, and it was a very nice chair, so I sprang in to help.”

“That’s totally unreal,” Jamie mumbled through a mouthful of cake. She washed it down with tea and asked, “So what happened? Did you win?”

Motioning with his hands, he said, “I grabbed the chair and hit the one on the right and then the one on the left. That gave the fellow on the floor time to get up, and he punched the third man square in the face, and we flew out the doors.” He chuckled again. “We didn’t stop runnin’ till we were out of town.”

“Bet he was glad you were there.”

“That he was. When he learned I was in need of some doubloons, he offered me a job on his ship. Turns out he was the first mate on the Santa Maria, and I sailed with him on a most historic voyage. My, I loved the smell of the sea and the first sight of land. That was fine excitement.”

Jamie helped herself to another teacake. “Historic voyage? Was the captain famous, or something?”

He nodded. “Cristoforo Colombo.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Ye Americans call him Christopher Columbus.”

“Sorry?” She didn’t dare swallow the cake in her mouth for fear of choking on it.

He continued reminiscing. “How about George Washington Carver? Now, there was an inspirin’ fellow. I gave him an idea for the fifty-ninth use of the peanut. A paste you could use for glue or crackers.”

“You — are — not — serious.”

“Shouldn’t I be? I thought it was ingenious meself.”

“Look, you’re old, not ancient! How dumb do you think I am?”

“Ye do na’ believe me?” He didn’t even crack a smile. “’Tis as true as I’m sittin’ here.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, you also took part in the Boston Tea Party, rode inside the Trojan Horse, and, and — wait, I know—you laid the first brick on the Sphinx.”

“Na,” he replied, “I just watched the Boston Tea Party, I didn’t have the courage to ride in the Trojan horse, and I must confess, in all me days of travelin’, I never saw the Sphinx.”

She studied Eddy in the weak light of the bulb. Behind him raindrops oozed through a cracked windowpane and trickled onto the sill. Caesar blinked his azure eyes at her, as if waiting for a thank you. Still she watched the old man’s face. He gazed steadily back at her, unnervingly serious.

Did he think she was dumb enough to believe all this? But even if he was crazy, she still had to ask, “So what’s the future like?”

Now his eyes narrowed on hers. “Do na’ know. Never been. Ye wantin’ to go?”

“You selling tickets?”

He returned her gaze. “Possibly.”

“Oh? What’s it gonna cost?”

“Belief,” he said.

“I don’t have any of that.”

“Ah, lass, there be so much to believe in, so much goodness in the world and in people.”

“Yeah, right. Maybe in ancient history. Not today. Certainly not tomorrow.”

He reached for his cane and propped it between his knees. “Tell me about yourself, lass.”

“I gotta go.” She stood. The rain was more tolerable than this.

“The cakes were na’ free.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“But ye have an answer, now do na’ ye?”

“I’m just a number in a high school. I’m nobody.”

“Nobody’s nobody.”

Jamie rolled her eyes.

He rose slowly and took a step toward her. “Ye do have parents?”

“One of each. And one fake one.”

“Brother or a sister?”

“One bratty brother who collects fish and rocks, but I’m the one with rocks in my head.”

“Interestin’ form of brain matter. Makes ye quite a specimen.”

“Yeah, well, I guess. It’s what my stepdad always says.”

He leaned on his cane and gazed deep into her eyes. “What grabs ye and doesn’t let ye go? What is it ye want more than anythin’ else?”

She shrugged and looked down. “I don’t want anything.”

“Ye have your whole life ahead of ye, lass. If ye do na’ want somethin’, you’ll get nothin’.”

“And what is there to get? You can’t pretend you’ve traveled to the future, ’cause you don’t know anything about it.”

“I know every breath brings ye closer to it.”

“Closer to what?” Her jaw stiffened. “Every night there’s another riot or a terrorist attack or war on TV. Thousands of people are dying every day from new diseases, and grownups think we’re too young and stupid to care what’s going on. Grownups are the ones who don’t care. Just look at my parents. What does it matter to you, anyhow? You’re old and you’ve lived your life.” She grabbed her backpack. “Thanks for the cakes.”

He pulled two coins out of his pocket and dropped them on the table. They rolled and chinked together. “Take these and call your mother and father. They be scared, too. For ye.”

She snatched the coins. “Yeah, well, thanks. Really. I’ll pay you back.”

Caesar meowed, and Eddy rubbed the cat’s chin. “I’d be glad if ye trespassed here again. Caesar would, too. He followed me home from Persia. That was on me very first journey. Lonely, he was.” He looked up at her and winked. “Needs a good friend.”

Eddy gave her directions to Main Street, and she grabbed her backpack and walked down the hall to the front door.

It wasn’t until she stood at the gas station pay phone, soaked, trying to shove the first coin into the slot, that she even looked at it. Now she gaped. In the palm of her hand lay a heavy gold piece with Roman numerals and Latin inscribed around a man’s leaf-encircled head. She turned it over; on the back was a bird. The coin felt thick, and the images were lumpy, not sharp and defined. It looked ancient.

THE NEXT DAY   Jamie walked up to the same rundown house. It was Saturday afternoon, and all the ghosts of the previous, eerie night had disappeared. Awkwardly, she stood on the porch. So many boards were broken or missing, she was amazed she hadn’t fallen through the night before.

She was about to turn back, when Caesar hopped onto the porch and mewed a hello.

“Yes, I’m here. Don’t ask why.” She knocked at the door, then waited, fingering the bulky coins nestled inside her jeans pocket. “Hello? Anybody home?”

“Come in, lass.”

In the daylight the front room looked both filthier and finer. Faded grape-patterned drapes wilted over the windows. Ugly, thought Jamie. Who would buy grape drapes? The ceiling light was a frosted glass globe with dead moths entombed in it. Cracks scrawled across the plaster walls, and yellow water spots stained the ceiling.

Yet the plush rug under the massive furniture glowed a vibrant red, woven with designs of men with dog bodies. The objects in the glass display case gleamed in the sunlight and were even more beautiful than last night. The door to the coat closet stood open, revealing clothes from different eras. Maybe, she thought, Eddy was once an actor, and these were his costumes.

She saw the old man sitting on a sofa covered with heavy, flowery fabric, the arms and legs carved like lion paws. Beside the sofa stood a table with a glossy figurine on its marble top. A shepherdess, holding a crook in her right hand and a bouquet of flowers in her left.

“I, um, brought your coins back, Eddy,” Jamie said. “I think you made a mistake.” She held them out in her open palm. “I found a book at the library on old coins. The money you gave me, well, it’s worth a lot more than fifty cents.”

Eddy didn’t say anything. He just sat looking at a wooden box in his hands.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Jamie continued. “Not even about you.”

He opened the lid, and music began to play.

She stepped closer, taking a package of cellophane-wrapped snack cakes out of her jacket pocket. “I brought you these, to repay you for your teacakes.” Her lips formed a sarcastic smile. “Don’t think they had any of these in ancient Rome.”

“More than kind of ye. Keep the coins. Caesar would want ye to have ’em.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant the cat or the emperor. “Well, thanks for the stories. And the tea. It was really nice of you.” She slid the coins back into her pocket.

He nodded heavily. He seemed different, weaker, as he slouched on the elegant cushions. There was a moment of silence. Then, both curious and testing, she asked, “Everything here is old. Antiques. Last night you said you’d never been to the future. Why?”

“How could I, now? The future is na made yet. There be no place to go. Ye, and young ones like ye, have yet to create the future.”

“How? All I have is a world you grownups have left for me.”

“Na, lass. Time can be a good friend or a cruel enemy to each of us. Treat her with respect, and she’ll take ye to a grand future.” His green eyes gazed intently at her. “The future is the most promisin’ place of all. And it be waitin’ for ye.”

She slid her hands into her back jeans pockets. “If that’s so, how come you live in the past?”

He gave a wry smile. “My future was supposed to be there. I was too rash and fool-headed to see it.” His eyes fell on something inside the box. “And now it be too late.”

“Tell me how you travel,” she challenged him.

“With me trusty cane.”

She hated grownups who lied to her. Now this old man was making a fool of her, and she wanted to trap him or embarrass him into admitting it. “What if I’m ready to pay the price for the ticket?”

“Time, lass, is a river with thousands of currents to each place. The ones behind, they be history. The ones ahead are opportunities. It’s just a matter of openin’ the doors and steppin’ through.”

“How do you open a door?”

“I canna’ tell ye that.”

“How do you step through?”

“Very carefully.”

She didn’t know if he was serious or joking. “What does it feel like to step through time? Get any weird sensations?”

He parted his lips as if to speak, then closed them again. He studied her for a moment and finally confided, “I see the doorway openin’ and I either fall into it or fall back away from it and miss it. If I jump through, I do feel a ‘weird sensation’ all right as I float — colors and light and sounds fillin’ me bein’. And then I hit the ground in another time and place.”

“Ever hurt yourself on one of your landings?”

“I jammed me thumb, and it still is na’ quite right.” He showed her the oddly cocked joint. “And another time I scraped me whole face down the side of a gypsy wagon.”

He took a small picture from the music box and gazed at it. “And I’ve broken me leg.” It was as if he had traveled back in time before her eyes, the way he stared at the image. With trembling fingers, he handed it to her.

“What is this?” Astonished, she held the thin sheet of cold metal with its brown-tone images of a woman and a man. The woman wore a long, full dress with puffy sleeves. She had her hair swept up into a bun. Jamie looked at her wistfully; she was beautiful.

“It be a tintype. ’Tis how the first photographs were made 150 years ago.”

“Is she alive now?” Jamie raised her eyebrows, bracing herself for his answer.

He shook his head mournfully. “She died 104 years and twenty-nine days ago.”

“And you knew her?”

“That be me with her.”

Jamie looked at the tintype again, this time at the man. Though he wore baggy pants with suspenders and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he was young and good-looking. She peered closer at his face, then at the old man’s before her. The resemblance was spooky. Uneasily, she handed Eddy the tintype and watched as he traced the woman’s silver-and-brown image with his aged finger.

As if still caught inside the picture, he continued, “I landed in the back alley of a dress shop in New York City. ’Twas 1863. I fell through a pile of crates and upset a nest of mice. When I opened me eyes, I was lookin’ up into the face of this beautiful lass. She was gapin’ at me. She thought I was an angel the way I fell from the sky, but couldn’t understand how an angel could be lyin’ there in an alley with a broken leg.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I fell from the roof. I didn’t realize the roof was five stories high. She couldn’t believe I had survived such a fall.” With a half smile, he glanced at Jamie before returning to the ghostly image in his hand.

“She nursed me back to health in the storage room. Said mine was the slowest-healin’ leg in history. She was right. I lived each day for her visits. What a lass! I told her about me travels, and she laughed just as you did. Then one day she kissed me. Can ye believe it, now? She kissed me! After I had been lyin’ awake nights plannin’ it, and there she went and did it.” Tears swam in his eyes. “She told me she loved me.”

Jamie sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. “What happened?”

“The doorway came soon after. Just after buyin’ her this box. I panicked. I didn’t know if the doorway would ever come again.” He sat in silence, but the music box chimed on, slowing as he stared at the picture.

“Why don’t you go back?” asked Jamie.

“I’ve tried many a time to go back and break me other leg.” He made a vain attempt to smile. “I have never found that doorway again. Never caught the same current.”

“You quit trying?”

“There’s a price to travelin’. I pay with me life. Each time I return I’m about five years older than when I left.”

“So how old are you?”

“Thirty-two.” He looked at his hands as if not recognizing them. Jamie was dumbfounded. Thirty-two was old, but it wasn’t that old. “You can see how diligently I’ve tried to find her again,” he said.

She couldn’t say anything. She felt stupid for believing such a ridiculous tale, yet she felt so much pain from him, she couldn’t speak. The music box struggled to get out one last note, and then it stopped. Very slowly Eddy closed the lid.

“Do your parents know where ye are? That ye came here?” His voice sounded hollow and labored, like the last notes of the music box. She shrugged. “Why did ye na’ tell them, eh?”

“She wouldn’t understand,” Jamie said fiercely.

“Ah, and he would?”

Her eyes shot up at him. “No. My stepdad just doesn’t care,” she muttered, “about anyone but himself.”

“Then your mother, she does care, now doesn’t she?”

Jamie shrugged again, pretending not to care herself. “She only cares about the rocket scientist.”

“Your brother? Rockets now instead of rocks?”

“She’s bought him half the hobby store. The house is so full of his junk, they’d never see me if I was there.”

“Ah, and your room? It be empty?” She shrugged again.

Eddy looked back at the box and caressed the wooden lid longingly. “Things do na’ matter in the end,” he whispered. “It’s the memories we keep. They’re all we have. Lass, go home and enjoy your time with your family while ye still have ’em.”

She stood slowly and walked to the door, too shocked and confused to say a word. “Lass.” She stopped and glanced back at him. He looked gravely at her. “Will ye do me one last favor? Will ye come again tomorrow, one more time? For Caesar?”

“Why? You traveling again?” she asked.

“I am,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll be gone.” Caesar mewed up at her, and she nodded reluctantly and left.

ON SUNDAY   Jamie walked across the weedy, overgrown lawn to the tired porch. Even though the old man’s stories disturbed her, they were all she could think about. She was also drawn back, she realized, because he offered her more than stories and teacakes.

“Eddy? Hello? Caesar?” Silence greeted her. She walked through the living room and peeked into the kitchen. “Eddy? Here, kitty. It’s me. Hello?”

The floorboards creaked with each step as she made her way down the hall, peering into the dark rooms. They were empty. Then she looked into the last bedroom.

“Eddy?” Her breath caught in her throat as she saw him lying in bed, pale and gaunt, his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “Eddy!” She rushed into the room and grabbed his hand, then dropped it in revulsion. It was cold. Caesar lay with his head on Eddy’s chest, as if trying to keep him warm.

“Eddy? Eddy!” Tears burned Jamie’s eyes.

“Lass?” he rasped, his eyes barely slits. “I thought yours be the footsteps of death.”

“What happened to you?”

“I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about her. I had to try again. Missed. Again. So close. So — close.” A tear slid down his wrinkled temple. “I landed next to her grave. No one beside her. She never married. Now I be travelin’ one last time …” It was difficult for him to talk. “… goin’ farther than I have ever gone. Maybe I’ll be with her at last, in a very different place. And I’ll be young and handsome again.” He attempted a wink. The cat rubbed his whiskers over Eddy’s chin. The old man didn’t raise his hand to stroke Caesar, and Jamie knew it was because he didn’t have the strength.

She took Eddy’s hand, even though it scared her to touch it; it was like touching death. She leaned closer. “I believe you. I believe everything you’ve told me.”

“My last … doorway be drawin’ nearer, lass. I have to step through soon.”

She knew what he meant. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Na, lass. Nothin’ medicine can —” Suddenly he gasped. “The basement. I forgot. Saints help me — I forgot!”

“What?”

“No one must ever go — never see. No one must —” He struggled for breath. “Me hand. It’s in me hand.” She looked in his other hand, saw a key, and took it. It was a metal key ridged with odd specks of glass. “Throw it in the doorway. Promise me.” She nodded. “And Caesar — take care of the ol’ boy.” The cat arched his sleek back and yowled.

“No,” Jamie protested. “Caesar belongs here with you. You’re going to be all right. I’m calling an ambulance. They’ll know what to do.”

“I’ll be gone … before they … get … here.”

“Traveling?” She pretended, for Eddy and herself.

“Far. Away. I’ll be waitin’ on me porch. A very different porch. You’ll tell me stories ’bout your travels. In the future.”

She kept talking to him, trying to keep his eyes open, but they closed in a strange way. His hand went limp.

Caesar prodded the old man’s cheek with his nose, but Eddy lay motionless. The cat stood with his front paws on Eddy’s chest and cried.

“Eddy?” Jamie whispered. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He had just passed through another portal, the one that closes time.

HER FEET RAN;   they just ran. Without even thinking, she raced blindly, farther and faster and harder down the street. Suddenly her knees gave way, and she dropped to the pavement, her eyes and lungs burning. Then she heard a cry. It was Caesar. Looking back, she saw the cat on the porch. Somehow she made herself turn around and go back.

She sat with him on the porch, her arms and neck curled around his soft, warm body. “We have to go, ol’ boy. You and me. Nothing left here. I have to call —” Who? 911? Yes, that’s what she had to do. They would come and take care of him.

The cat wriggled from her arms and bolted inside.

“Caesar, no!” Terrified to go back in the house, she froze at the front door. Caesar’s mew sounded hollow and scared, beckoning her. She peered inside. Their eyes met, hers hazel and his sea foam, and then he leaped down the basement steps.

“I’m not following you!” she said.

But she did. She ran through the house before she could see the memories or they could see her. She thumped down the wooden steps to the dark basement, feeling her way along cracked cement walls until she stood on a cement slab. The air smelled musty. Something tapped her forehead. She swatted at it, but it was just a thin metal chain dangling from the ceiling. She yanked it, and a bare light bulb blinked on. In the wall opposite her was a wooden door. Caesar sat before it.

Her heart thudded as she walked over. She slid the key into the lock and turned it. Reaching for the old brass knob, she wrapped her sweaty fingers around it. It turned with a click.

She jerked open the door. As it swung wide she saw someone staring back at her — eyes matching her eyes! She jumped; then, the next instant, she recognized herself in the mirror that filled the entire doorway.

This was it? A mirror! This was his time machine? Caesar mewed, a dull, strange sound. He sniffed at his reflection. Jamie watched as the poor cat, lonely for his master, stood on his hind legs and leaned his plush white forepaws on the glass, as if wanting in. He began clawing at the mirror, and the surface rippled like colored water rolling out from the center to the odd metal frame.

Jamie felt a vibration growing in the concrete under her feet. Oh, so slowly, she raised her hand, palm up, and moved it toward the surface of — whatever it was.

As her hand moved closer, the mirror changed again. She stared transfixed at a misty wave of glowing colors, whipping, swirling, combining, peeling apart.

Caesar’s pupils grew larger and larger until his eyes looked black. His tail whipped back and forth, a predator’s tail just before the pounce.

Slowly, Jamie extended her hand and watched the patterns close like water around her fingers. A burst of white light shot out and filled the metal framework. The mirror became clear as water, and she could see through it, see that her entire hand was gone, just gone. She couldn’t even feel it!

Shrieking, she jerked her hand, arm, entire body back and fell on the cold cement floor. She stared at her wrist. Her hand had been restored to her arm. Frantically, she shook it and opened and closed her fingers to make sure it was really there and it still worked. It did. With a sigh of relief she scrambled to her feet.

“No. I don’t want this. I don’t want to end up like Eddy.” She looked at Caesar. “And you don’t want to end up a hairless old cat in only one day. We’re going home, Caesar. We’re — we’re going home and we’re telling no one about this place.”

Just then Caesar’s back arched, the fur standing up, and he yowled and leaped away as the white light burst inside the frame again. From the doorway through time, Jamie heard the clomping of horses’ hoofs and the babble of voices. Carefully, she peered into the entrance and saw a funnel of iridescent light swirling like the inside of a tornado. The other end widened to reveal a red brick wall with an open door in it. In front of it stood a man wearing baggy pants, suspenders, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He twisted around when he saw the light.

He had brown shaggy hair and piercing green eyes. She knew those eyes. He was young and handsome, and he was holding a small brown box. It was Eddy’s music box.

“Edward?” A woman stepped through the alley door. She wore a long brown dress, her hair swirled up in a bun. It was the woman in Eddy’s tintype.

Eddy saw the woman and turned to leap into the tunnel, but Jamie yelled through it, “No, Eddy, no! Don’t do it!” She heard her words echoing through the passage. Eddy jerked back, startled by the voice within the tunnel.

“Edward?” The woman looked at Eddy, then stepped back, stunned by the gyrating light. Again, he crouched to spring into it, but Jamie shouted even louder. “No! Don’t! Don’t do it, Eddy! You’ll live your life searching for her and never find her again!”

“Edward!” the woman gasped. He looked from her to the tunnel, afraid to leave, afraid not to leave. Just then Jamie remembered the key Eddy had given her.

“Throw it in the doorway,” he had begged her. She yanked it out of the keyhole and hurled it into the tunnel, where it floated, suspended. Then it twisted in half as if melting in on itself. With a burst of mist, the light and colors suddenly collapsed. The vibrations stopped. All that remained was an ordinary mirror.

Jamie held up a shaking palm and tried to push it through the glass. It stopped on the cold surface. She staggered backward and grabbed Caesar, stroking him jerkily while the cat clung to her.

As if seeing herself for the first time, she stared at her reflection. Time seemed suspended again as she realized that she didn’t need a time machine to see into the future. She never had. Her own choices determined her future.

Her feet pounded on the steps as she darted upstairs and slammed the door behind her. Trembling, she entered the living room. She looked around, almost expecting Eddy to be there, laughing at her. But he wasn’t.

And neither was the china cabinet. It was gone! The shepherdess on the table was missing, and only dust covered the marble top.

The couch and chair were faded. No, they weren’t faded. They were thick with dust. The floor was thick with it as well. And there were no footprints, no paw prints, anywhere. No sign anyone had been here for years.

Jamie held Caesar up to her face, coiling her arms around him, as if keeping him safe would also keep her safe. Very slowly she walked down the hall, leaving dusty footprints behind her. She peered into Eddy’s bedroom. The chenille bedspread was pulled taut, without a wrinkle and gray with dust. No one had lain on that bed for a long, long time.

She felt inside her pocket. The Roman coins were gone. Vanished. “This is impossible!” Numbly, she backed out of the room.

She hurried out the front door and sprinted through the weeds. Walking backwards down the street, she stared at the empty, rundown house, and then she turned at the streetlight and ran home, Caesar in her arms.

If it was true, if she had really changed Eddy’s life, then she could change her own. She was a time traveler, into the future, one day at a time, and now she was no longer afraid of the journey.

TEN YEARS LATER,   on a day in late fall, Jamie got out of her car. The old white Persian cat slept contentedly on the seat, basking in the sunlight. Jamie was taller, her hair shorter, and she was dressed like a woman, for that was what she had become.

She walked up the steep hill, her feet crunching over the carpet of gold, red, and orange leaves, leaving an imprint in them as she went. Up she walked, past weathered gray headstones speckled with green moss.

She put her hand on her hat to keep it from lifting off her head as a breeze stirred around her, swirling the leaves. Her eyes continued to scan the chiseled names in the stone slabs of this old cemetery in upstate New York.

Then she saw them. There they were, just as the court records had said. She ran through the leaves, kicking them up behind her, and knelt at the stones.

EDWARD O'FLANNERY

DIED SEPTEMBER 28, 1906

A LIFE BLESSED BY AN ANGEL

Beside his stood another headstone, one for Mary Price O’Flannery. They had both died the same month of the same year. Jamie looked around, and nearby, buried with their spouses, were their four children, Garth O’Flannery, William O’Flannery, Ann-Mary Rollins, and Rebecca Jones.

Jamie smiled and sat down beside Eddy’s headstone. As the leaves spiraled up around her head, up to the sky, she told him stories about her travels and of the choices she had made. And in her mind she could hear him saying, “Ah, lass, I told ye so. Treat time with respect, and she’ll take ye to a grand future!”

OLD CRICKET SAYS…

ISRAEL IS CALLED   the “land of milk and honey” in the Bible. According to my friend Allison Ofanansky, the “honey” came, not from bees, but from the fruit of the Judean date palm.

In Biblical times, forests of date palms flourished in the Jordan River valley between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea in Israel. The palm’s dark, nutritious fruit was often made into a sweet syrup, or “honey.” The dates were also used in medicines. Unripe, green dates were smashed into a paste to put on wounds. But war with the Romans led to the destruction of the date palm plantations. Eventually, the Judean date palm became extinct.

In the 1970s, archaeologists excavating the ruins of Masada, a mountaintop fortress that was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 73, discovered a few Judean date palm seeds in a storage jar. Preserved for centuries by the dry desert climate, the precious seeds were kept in a drawer at a university nearly forty years longer. Then, in 2005, scientists Sarah Sallon and Elaine Solowey, experts in ancient plants and medicines, decided to see if the extinct Biblical palms might grow again from the 2000-year-old seeds.

They soaked the seeds in a bath of special nutrients, then carefully planted them. Two months later, one of the ancient seeds sprouted! It has since grown into a tree almost six feet tall, the oldest seed ever to grow into a healthy plant. “Just that one still had a spark of life,” says Dr. Solowey. The joyful scientists named the tree Methuselah, after the oldest man in the Bible.

“Actually we are hoping the tree will turn out to be Mrs. Methuselah,” said Dr. Solowey. Only female trees can produce fruit, which the scientists hope to study for its medicinal qualities.

Imagine! From a single seed protecting the secret life within it for thousands of years, a Judean date palm grows again in Israel. It makes this Old Cricket wonder. What marvelous possibilities lie inside each one of us, waiting for the right moment to awaken?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Cowgirl Morning” from CRICKET magazine, October 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2010 by Ned Gannon

“Time of Proving” from CRICKET magazine, November 2006, text © 2006 by Tamora Pierce, art © 2006 by Jada Rowland

”Boarding School” from CRICKET magazine, September 2010, text © 2010 by Timothy Tocher, art © 2010 by Adam Larkum

“Old Cricket Says: Mongolian Mobile Library” from CRICKET magazine, February 2009, text and photos © 2009 by Carus Publishing Company

“The Herdboys of Lesotho” from CRICKET magazine, February 2009, text © 2009 by Carus Publishing Company; photos courtesy Susan Drake

“Tara” from CRICKET magazine, April 2011, text © 2011 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2011 by Adam Gustavson

“White Mice” from CRICKET magazine, April 2009, text © 2009 by Ruskin Bond, art © 2009 by Michael Chesworth

“Old Cricket Says: Porcupines and Salt” from CRICKET magazine, July/August 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company

“Boo” from CRICKET magazine, September 2004, text © 2004 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2004 by Alan Fore

“Ahimsa” from CRICKET magazine, June 2007, text © 2007 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2007 by Michael Chesworth

“The Pride” from CRICKET magazine, August 2006, text © 2006 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2006 by Elizabeth Biesiot

“Mantrap” from CRICKET magazine, February 2003, text © 2003 by P. M. Farrell, art © 2003 by Carus Publishing Company

“Winning” from CRICKET magazine, January 2006, text © 1996 by Joseph Yenkavitch, art © 2005 by Andrew Standeven

“The Eighteenth Camel” from CRICKET magazine November 2002, text © 2002 by Thelma Schmidhauser, art © 2002 by Carus Publishing Company

“The Camel and Hassan Djiwa” from CRICKET magazine, September 2007, text and art © 2007 by Carus Publishing Company

“Old Cricket Says: Inside a Beaver Lodge” from CRICKET magazine, March 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company

“My Corner” from CRICKET magazine, February 2008, text © 2008 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2008 by Maurie Manning

“Gordon Parks, Bigger than LIFE” from CRICKET magazine, February 2008, text © 2008 by Carus Publishing Company; photos courtesy Library of Congress

“Instead of the War Drum” from CRICKET magazine, July 2007, text © 2007 by Uma Krishnaswami, art © 2007 by Olwyn Whelan

“The Telescope” from CRICKET magazine, June 2007, text © 2007 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2007 by Bryn Barnard

“The Tale of Paddy Ahern” from CRICKET magazine, October 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2010 by Lee White

“The Explorer” from CRICKET magazine, May/June 2007, text © 2007 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2007 by Gavin Rowe; photo courtesy The Print Collector/Heritage Images

“Swing It” from CRICKET magazine, February 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company; photo courtesy American Tap Dance Foundation

“Little Brother of War” from CRICKET magazine, October and November/December 2010, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2010 by Suling Wang

“Beyond the Call of Duty” from CRICKET magazine, January 2011, text © 2010 by Carus Publishing Company; photo (1) courtesy Carol Mercer Walsh/The Gander Beacon; photo (2 & 3) courtesy Library and Archives of Canada; photo (4) courtesy PDSA

“A Driftwood’s Tale” from CRICKET magazine, June 2006, text © 2006 by Carus Publishing Company, art © 2006 by Gavin Rowe

“The Traveler” from CRICKET magazine, January 2010, text and art © 2009 by Carus Publishing Company

“Old Cricket Says: Methusaleh Tree” from CRICKET magazine, February 2011, text © 2011 by Carus Publishing Company