The Hop Read online

  Text copyright © 2012 by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  Illustrations © 2012 by Niki Daly

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  ISBN: 978-1-4231-7072-3

  Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgments

  To my husband, Barry

  —SBM

  If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

  —Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

  Chapter 1

  THE LOAMY TUNNEL HAD FALLEN around Tad during the long night of winter and padded him like a brown blanket. But now the earth was stirring. And even three feet down, the young hopper felt it.

  Maybe it was the footsteps of people in the garden, or the deep, seepy drip of warm rain. Maybe it was the chorus of spring peepers.

  Tad stirred too. With the ancient toady wisdom, he knew days were getting warm and sunny up top. He knew plump crunchy beetles and luscious slimy slugs ambled above.

  Tad was half frozen to his center from the long season of sleep. Sluggishly, he scootched upward through the sand and clay and veins of rotting roots. Moisture soaked through his dry, papery skin.

  Near the surface, he tried a little hop. But it was lopsided and feeble—just a lurch, really, that flopped him half out of his hole.

  Tad opened his eyes. He lay on his side, a tasty meal for any red-tailed hawk that flew over.

  Using his rear diggers, he scrambled the rest of the way into the sun. The last little chunk of ice inside him melted away, and he hopped again. Stronger this time. Then another hop. And another.

  Thank the green grass for the feisty two-spotted stinkbug coming through the rye! Tad’s sticky tongue snapped out, and he blinked three times slowly, using the back of his eyes to push the bug all the way down his gullet, enjoying it. What a fine bug it was, what a good tickle it made. The first bug always tasted the best.

  Tad sat in the April sun for a while, trying to catch up with himself. It had just rained, and the grass was such a sharp green that it gave him a headache. He lurched under the leaves of a feverfew plant, catching the drops of water on his warts and bumps.

  He put his rear end into the sun, his head under the dripping leaves of the feverfew.

  Tad sat as still as the clod of earth he might have been mistaken for. His belly, mottled with dark spots, fooled a night crawler, dumb as dirt, that wriggled out into the open and—zot! The slick dangle of luscious worm disappeared as Tad blinked three times. Ahhhh, much better. Bundle-of-yummy was good in the tummy.

  The dew melted him into the mud, made his hands and rear diggers happy. Made him awake enough and strong enough to begin hopping home.

  But as he made his way through the grass, something seemed to be following him. When he turned to look, there was nothing there. Yet something wasn’t as it should be.

  His winter sleep had been different. That was it. Tad couldn’t shake off the bad feeling of the stories that had crept into his sleep. He had run from a stink-belching monster that shook the earth. He had heard strange music too. Not toadly music, which was like the chiming of the stars. No, this music was like the wind banging things. Like rain drumming the pond.

  Ping! Ping! Ping!

  And in another scary story he was dancing, but he was gigantic and his rear diggers looked all wrong. And he was supposed to do something really important, but he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried.

  Winter sleep was the time to go back inside Mother Earth’s belly to be reborn again. Mother Earth’s belly was quiet and peaceful, no place for twitching, fretful toads and drumming rain.

  What was wrong with him?

  He needed to talk to Seer. Seer saw stories in his sleep—of things that had happened or might happen someday. He called them dreams. Had the monster that roared out of the darkness been a dream?

  Plus, a spot between Tad’s eyes burned like fire. He needed to talk to Seer about that too. He began to hop faster, away from the patch of feverfew toward Cold Bottom Road.

  “Buuurk?” he called. “Anora?” He wanted to find his friends and hop together back to Toadville-by-Tumbledown, where Seer would be waiting.

  Where was everybody? At the end of winter sleep, the grass should be thick with other young hoppers like himself, groggily making their way up Cold Bottom Road. And he should have passed a few old toads croaking amiably as they lurched along. Buuurk or Anora or some other young hoppers should be helping Seer up the hill. Tad blinked. There wasn’t a single toad on Cold Bottom Road except himself.

  Chapter 2

  TAYLOR GOT OFF THE BUS at her grandmother’s house, as she did every day. The wind whipped open her jacket and scooped her hair up and made the tip of her nose chilly.

  An April shower had turned the asphalt road as shiny as black satin. Taylor picked up a fat night crawler who was just begging to get run over. She laid him in the grass and then hurried up the drive.

  “Eve?” she called at the front door. Eve was a funny thing to call a grandmother, but that was her name. Even Taylor’s mother called her that, instead of Mom or Mother.

  “I’m here,” Eve answered, standing on the deck outside the country kitchen. “I heard the bus.”

  Taylor stared at her grandmother. She had on muddy boots, and the knees of her jeans were already wet. What was going on? The spring day when they planted the first seeds was so special that they always went out together.

  “You didn’t forget what day this is, did you?” Taylor asked.

  “Do salamanders sing?”

  “Mud puppies do.” Taylor had learned that in science. Mud puppies were the only salamander that vocalized, according to her teacher.

  Her grandmother rolled her eyes.

  “Did you start without me?” Taylor pressed.

  “Not really. Change your clothes and let’s get going.”

  In her room-away-from-home, Taylor shed her backpack and pulled on a pair of garden jeans from last year. She sucked in and snapped the waist, but the tight jeans made her walk funny. She found a long-sleeved T-shirt with pink flowers on the front. Under the flowers was the message Impatiens is a virtue—which Taylor kinda got, and kinda didn’t. Her wrists stuck out. Then she zipped on a hooded sweatshirt that smelled like earth and leaves.

  “Ready!
” she announced, standing with her grandmother at the raised bed where they always started. Each year, they began at the lowest bed and worked their way up the hill.

  Taylor slid her arm around her grandmother’s waist. Her shoulder fit into Eve’s side like a key into a lock. Her cheek pressed to Eve’s windbreaker, right where her grandmother’s heart was. Taylor breathed in the windy smell of her grandmother’s jacket and wished she could stop time right now, at this perfect moment.

  “When you were a few months old and your mother had to go back to work, I carried you in a sling as I planted.”

  Her grandmother told her that every year.

  “The next spring you crawled around and poked sticks in holes. The next spring, when you were two, you almost put a toad in your mouth before I stopped you.”

  Her grandmother told her that every year too.

  Eve fanned seed packets with a flourish, as if she were doing a card trick. “What shall we plant first? Pick one!”

  It was a wonderful magic trick, that a tiny dark seed could change into something curly or something valentine-red and white. Comet radish. Arugula. Spinach. Piquant salad mix. Oakleaf lettuce. Bibb lettuce. Curly endive. French breakfast radish.

  Last year Taylor had chosen arugula because she liked the chewy sound of the word. She didn’t actually eat the green stuff. But arrr-uug-u-la sounded like something that might eat her.

  She’d picked curly endive one year, and who knew what she might pick next year? But this year she chose to start with French breakfast radishes, wondering if French people really ate them for breakfast. Taylor wouldn’t. Radishes were for lunch, with toasted cheese sandwiches.

  As she sprinkled the seeds, her grandmother’s shadow moved across the patch of garden soil. Taylor turned to see Eve drop down on the bench at the corner of the raised-bed gardens. Her grandmother always mixed the seeds into the dirt and patted the soil down. And Taylor always watered, and her grandmother always wrote the label, and Taylor always pushed it into the soil in the middle of the bed.

  “Why aren’t you helping?” Taylor called. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just like watching you. Go ahead. You can do my part.”

  “But—” Taylor wanted to do it the way they always did.

  “Really, sweetheart. I’ll watch.”

  So Taylor ran her bare fingers over the loose soil, tumbling the round radish seeds into it. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work.

  She picked up the heavy watering can and tilted it over the bed. Because it was too full, water splatted out and splashed up on her jeans, making her leap back. She didn’t look at her grandmother. She just scrawled FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISHES on the wooden stake and jammed it into the ground.

  When Eve came and knelt down, starting the row right next to Taylor’s, the sun seemed to shine a little brighter.

  Chapter 3

  BECAUSE THERE WERE NO OTHER TOADS around to lead the way, Tad almost missed the toad hole. It was small and hidden in the shadow of a rotten post. He dropped into it as fast as a gnat could blink.

  Where was everybody? Sunlight fell through both ends of the empty corridor. Tad hurried along. Usually, on the first day, the corridor was packed with jostling hoppers, ready for spring.

  Then he heard gossipy croaks drifting from the Hall of Old Toads. After the silence it was a relief. At least he was just late, and not all alone. But his warts prickled.

  Faint voices came from the Hall of Young Hoppers. He was so late, Seer might have already started the Telling.

  Tad passed the nursery, silent and empty, ready for the newbies who would come out of the pond in midsummer. Tad had once wanted to keep his tail and stay in the pond forever. He loved the warm shadows of the water. And he had stayed a tadpole for longer than anybody else that summer. But one morning, his tail had fallen off and his legs had carried him up Cold Bottom Road to Tumbledown.

  Late, late, late. Tad raced along the corridor, the path lit by skylights of translucent pebbles. Root fingers curling from the walls grabbed at him.

  He stopped outside the hall.

  He wanted to burst in. See everybody. Be welcomed home. Ask Seer what the stories in his sleep meant. But Seer would probably scold him in front of the other hoppers for being late. A toad in time saves nine, Seer always told him. Your friends have to be able to count on you, Tad. And maybe the hoppers would be able to tell, just by looking at Tad, that he had been restless inside Mother Earth’s belly. So Tad eased into the room.

  The old prophet rested on a pile of milkweed in the center of the crowd. His prophet hat hung on the bony ridge between his ancient eyes—eyes that no longer saw clouds or moonlight or moths or Tad. Yet Seer saw things that others didn’t. Dreamed things that welled up from deep pools. Predicted things that seemed unlikely.

  Seer’s milky eyes, like two spring moons, settled on Tad. “The last of our young hoppers has finally arrived.”

  Somebody whispered, “Seer’s blind as a stone. How does he know to the exact flicking tongue who’s here?”

  Tad bounced forward and thumped the ground three times in a sign of respect. “Greetings, Seer.”

  Seer looked even more ancient this year, the great ridge between his eyes bulging and ragged. As his hands touched Tad’s head in blessing, the old prophet jerked like he had touched a thorn. Could he feel the spot that burned behind Tad’s eyes?

  Tad needed to talk to Seer, but not with the other toads around.

  Sending up a little cloud of fluff, Seer collapsed back into the milkweed.

  Buuurk bumped Tad. “Thank the green grass, toad! I thought a groundhog had got you!”

  Tad looked at his best friend. “I just slept too long. How did you sleep?”

  “How did I sleep?” Buuurk blinked. “What kind of question is that? I shut my eyes and then I opened my eyes.”

  “Me too,” Tad lied. He didn’t want Buuurk to think he was a freak, like the seven-legged cricket they had found in the mulch pile last summer.

  Anora, beside Buuurk, nodded. “I told Buuurk not to worry. You do things at your own speed.” Her eyes danced in their frames of pretty white warts. Even Anora, who was a summer younger than Tad, knew how he’d gotten his name. Tad was short for tadpole, which was what he’d wanted to stay for as long as he could.

  Seer righted himself. “Everybody is here,” he said. “We will begin.”

  Still twitchy from his hurry, Tad took his usual place between Buuurk and Anora. All the young hoppers’ faces turned toward Seer like moonflowers to the moon. The light falling through the translucent pebbles was soft behind the old prophet as he began the Telling of who the toads were and how they came to be.

  “In the beginning, when there was nothing much in the darkness but a smile, Mother Earth and Father Pond found each other.”

  Tad could hardly make out Seer against the brightening light, but Seer’s voice was strong as he told the story the exact same way he always told it, word for word. Tad could practically tell it himself. The next part was how Mother Earth and Father Pond made the sun so they could see each other.

  “And they made the moon to play with the sun,” Seer intoned. “They made the stars”—Tad’s mouth moved along with Seer’s next words—“and named each one.” Tad loved that part. He wished he knew all the stars’ names.

  Seer told about the making of the trees and flowers and grass.

  And here came the very best part! Tad bumped Buuurk.

  “One day, they made a swirl of tadpoles to delight Father Pond.…”

  Yes, yes, Tad knew. Mother Earth wanted the tadpoles, but Father Pond wouldn’t give them to her, so they had a big fight with lots of thunder and lightning.

  “In time,” Seer explained, as he always did, “they decided to share. Mother Earth pinched off the tails of a few tadpoles and gave them legs so they could walk on her belly. She called the beautiful, breeping creatures her toads, her Jewels of Creation.”

  Tad glanced around at the faces
shining with pride. He squirmed next to Buuurk.

  “Mother Earth loved her toads so much that she gave them Toadville-by-Tumbledown, with nice rotting wood, a mulch pile, and a garden full of bugs and worms.”

  A voice cried from the back, “And she thought the toads were so wonderful that she pressed the shape of a toad on the face of the moon.”

  “Shhhh!” somebody said. “Let Seer tell it.”

  “She did do that,” Seer said. “And to show how much she loves her toads, she takes them back into her belly every year before Father Pond covers her with snow. But she returns them to the garden when the snow melts so Father Pond can enjoy them too.”

  The creation story always made Tad forget everything except how perfectly splendid he was. Mother Earth and Father Pond’s own jewel.

  “We are the toads!” a few of the rowdier young hoppers in the back chanted. “We are the toads!”

  “And almost all of us came back to life,” Anora told Tad. “We counted heads before you got here. Only one very, very old toad didn’t make it.” She reached out her hand to touch Tad. “Did a mole step on you while you slept? What’s that bump behind your eyes?”

  Tad ducked, glad that Seer had begun to speak again, and Anora turned to listen.

  “We are born of water,” Seer croaked. “Yet we live out our days on the land. And we return to the belly of Mother Earth to be born again.” Seer’s face swept over the young hoppers as if he could see them, but his prophet’s hat had slid over his blind eyes.

  “And it goes on and on,” one of the young girl hoppers behind Tad muttered. “We know.”

  “Until you roll snake eyes and a blue racer eats you,” one of the boy hoppers said.

  “Or a grackle,” somebody added.

  “Or a fox.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Anora cried. “We may go into the Great Cycle, one by one. But Toadville-by-Tumbledown will always be here.”

  “You tell it, hopper!” somebody shouted from the back.

  Why didn’t Seer put a stop to their arguing as he usually did? Tad looked at the old prophet. He had shrunk over the winter. A hummingbird could whir by and carry him off.