The Hop Read online

  Finally Seer held up his hand for quiet. “Unless we are bold and brave,” he said, “the Great Cycle will end soon.”

  The sudden silence was so vast that Tad could hear a mole passing by on the other side of wall.

  “Rumbler,” Seer said. “I told the old toads earlier, but they are like me—too old to do anything about it. Rumbler is coming.”

  Questions echoed through the hoppers. “Who?”

  “Rumbler is as big as many mulch piles.” Seer’s old voice was frail and shaky. “He has a cry like twenty lightning bolts fighting with one another. He smells like a mountain of stinkbugs.”

  Tad’s warts prickled. Could this Rumbler be the monster in his sleep?

  “I have felt his belly on the earth. I have heard his bellows. He will come on feet with teeth. He will scrape the grass off the earth, leaving earthworms and grubs to bake in the sun. He will hit the trees, making them shake out squirrels and baby birds. Foxes and groundhogs will try to flee, but he will overtake them and squash them to jelly. And Tumbledown will crumble on our backs.”

  Tad put his hands over his eyes, shuddering. Rumbler. So that was the monster’s name. Rumbler had been in his sleep. Tad’s warts went flat, and the ooze of terror slid out of his skin. Anora was making a noise like a mouse caught in a hawk’s talons.

  Seer’s voice grew more quiet. “When there is nothing left, when Mother Earth’s body is bleeding and barren, Rumbler will go after Father Pond.”

  A hopper in the back croaked wheezily.

  “Rumbler will make a sideways hole in the earth, like a woodpecker’s hole in a tree, and Father Pond—heartbroken—will slip back into the darkness. And where the hole left by his body was, Rumbler will scoop up Mother’s Earth’s body and fill the hole. And when everything is dead, humans will lay their covering over Toadville-by-Tumbledown.”

  “What’s a covering?” Tad gasped.

  “To be covered, to be buried under the sludgy, hardening gray stuff, is to be cut off from the Great Cycle of life. To be covered is to die forever. It is the end.”

  Seer shifted his old body until, except for his prophet’s hat, Tad could hardly see him against the light.

  “We have to do something!” Anora cried.

  “I have felt the strength of Rumbler in my belly as he shakes the earth,” Seer said. “But I have also dreamed things. Mother Earth and Father Pond are trying to show us a way to save Toadville-by-Tumbledown.”

  “A way to save ourselves?” somebody cried.

  Tad waited. Why didn’t Seer tell them?

  “A hopper must kiss a human,” Seer said.

  A hopper must kiss a human.

  No, Tad thought. Impossible.

  Silence, until someone cried, “Why?”

  Humans were uglier than hognose snakes.

  “Why can’t we kiss a goose or rabbit?” Buuurk cried.

  And before a toad could kiss a human, he’d have to catch it.

  “A turtle,” Anora said. “I might be able to kiss a turtle.”

  Seer gazed at them blindly, the strength of the prophecy written on his face. “To save Tumbledown from Rumbler, a hopper must kiss a human on the mouth.”

  “But how will that save us?” Tad asked with dread growing in his heart. There had been a human in his sleep. He remembered now.

  “I wish I knew,” Seer said.

  “What will happen when a toad”—Anora broke off, unable to say the words—“does that?”

  “We must trust Mother Earth and Father Pond,” Seer said.

  “Why don’t they save us?” somebody asked.

  “They have shown us the way,” Seer replied. “Now we must save ourselves.”

  Buuurk’s warts had all but disappeared, and he looked slick and sickly. “I could try, I guess.”

  Seer shifted a hand beneath his flabby belly. “Being big and strong is not enough.”

  They waited for more, but Seer’s prophet’s hat had begun to tremble with his snores. So all the hoppers thumped the ground three times in respect and made their way silently along the corridor toward the light of the sun.

  “You look like you need some sunshine, toad,” Buuurk finally said.

  Tad could hardly croak. “So do you.”

  Anora and another girl hopper named Shyly followed them. “Tonight should be the celebration of our return to Tumbledown,” Anora said. “I wonder if we’ll still have the feast of First Night.”

  “I hope it isn’t the feast of Last Night,” Shyly said.

  Outside, despite the sun, Tad felt cold to his core. He turned back. “I’ll see you later, toads. I have to talk to Seer.”

  Chapter 4

  THE KNEES AND BUTT OF TAYLOR’S JEANS were soaked. Dirt was mashed under her fingernails, and a smear of mud dried on her cheek. From where she sat on the deck, she could see the planted beds down the hill, five in all, where she and her grandmother had worked.

  Eve’s spring phlox in the neighboring field matched the color of the sky. It was the same color as Taylor’s eyes, her grandmother said. Way down in the valley, the new mall made an ugly empty place where a big woods used to be. Taylor got up and moved to a different chair so she didn’t have to look at it.

  Her grandmother came out with Taylor’s favorite cookies and set the bag on the table. Taylor could taste the creamy grit of the maple filling almost before it touched her tongue.

  “Our hands are dirty.” Eve sounded as if she didn’t care all that much.

  “A little dirt makes it taste better,” Taylor said. Her grandmother was the only grown-up who understood that.

  “Look.” Eve pointed behind Taylor. “The pond is shivering.”

  Taylor turned. Her grandmother was exactly right. The wind had caught the surface of the water and made it shiver. “It has goose bumps,” Taylor said, looking at the little prickles of light that dotted its surface.

  “It has geese,” Eve declared, as three geese floated into view.

  There was the weedy beach with a swaybacked dock where Taylor and her friend Kia swam in hot weather, and a dam for rolling down. Today the dam showed pale spring grass, but soon it would be snowy with Eve’s daisies.

  “Mr. Dennis’s son stopped by today,” Eve said. “I think he wanted one last look at the place. We walked down to the pond from here, even though he doesn’t own the land anymore.”

  “But we can still use it just like we always have, right?”

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  When she was little, she’d pretended to be a princess in charge of her kingdom. The squirrels, rabbits, and deer were hers to watch and name and worry about. Plus she had a big private swimming place with lots of interesting stuff in it. When she floated on her back in the middle of the pond, even the cloud shapes seemed like they had been put there to entertain her. She was getting too old to play princess, but Taylor didn’t want to give up her kingdom.

  “Why didn’t we buy it when Mr. Dennis died?” she asked. “It’s always been like ours anyway. Nobody but us has ever used it.”

  “Couldn’t afford it. And what would I do with twenty more acres, Taylor? Two seems like more than enough these days.”

  Taylor didn’t want to think about what her grandmother meant by these days. “Maybe the new owners will be like Mr. Dennis, and not pay a bit of attention to the pond and stuff, and it can still be ours.”

  “Maybe,” Eve said. “But it will be their land to use as they please.”

  “If they’re not nice, I think you should take all your flowers back,” Taylor said. It sounded stupid, but the thought made her feel better.

  Eve smiled. “Well, it’s not like I planted the seeds, sweetheart. The birds and time did that.”

  “Still,” Taylor said, “they’re your flowers. If you hadn’t had them in your garden first, they wouldn’t have moved into the field and made it so beautiful that somebody bought it.” She sounded like a kindergartener; she knew she did. “So it’s kind of like we own the field too,” she fin
ished lamely.

  “Maybe kind of. But my property stops just on this side of the old tumbledown shed, Taylor. The new owners can do whatever they want with the field and woods. And even the pond.”

  “What would they do with the pond?”

  “Not everybody wants a pond.”

  She saw the look in her grandmother’s eyes.

  Taylor gasped.

  “They couldn’t! What would happen to those geese right there?” She pointed to the mama goose now trailing goslings in her V-shaped wake.

  Taylor went to the south end of the deck and knelt on the bench, trying to imagine her kingdom without the pond. She couldn’t.

  A sudden breeze slapped her hood against her neck, and she heard the scream of a hawk.

  “We should get out the garden hose and fill the birdbaths,” Eve said. “And put up the hammock too. There’s so much to do.”

  “We better hurry, then. Dad will be here soon.” And he never wanted to wait for anything.

  Just then, the single toot of a car horn said he had arrived. Taylor heard his footsteps on the path, and his voice, edgy, talking to somebody on his phone. He waved hello to both of them, yipped a few words into the phone, and clapped it shut. “Ready?” he said to Taylor. “We’ve gotta hurry.” Hurry was his favorite word, Taylor thought.

  “I have to change clothes.”

  “Nah. Just grab your backpack and let’s go. Your mother’s waiting at Tortillas. Wanna come, Eve?”

  “Thanks anyway. I’m dirty and tired.”

  Despite what her dad said, when she was inside, Taylor yanked off her garden clothes. The jeans had left red marks on her waist. She put on her school jeans and shirt, then washed her hands and face. Her dad was nice enough, but if Taylor sprouted a second head he’d just pay for two quick haircuts without wondering a thing about it. He would never notice that her eyes were the color of the spring phlox around the pond.

  “See you tomorrow,” Taylor said, finding her grandmother in the kitchen and giving her a hug.

  “Not tomorrow. I have the first chemotherapy treatment in the afternoon. They say I’ll be tired.”

  “I’ll come over and make you a snack, then.”

  But her grandmother shook her head. “Thanks, honey. I’ll manage. We’ll see how the first treatment goes. Maybe the next time…”

  “But—” Taylor couldn’t believe her ears. She always came here after school and stayed until her parents picked her up. And sometimes they worked late and didn’t pick her up. Which was just fine, because she had lots of stuff at Eve’s house.

  “We’ll work it out, kiddo,” her dad said. He gave her grandmother a quick hug. “Good luck tomorrow.”

  Taylor stalked to the car.

  As her dad turned out of the drive, Taylor stared over the valley. The sun was almost down. A tiny clipping of new moon dangled in the pale pink sky. Their car curved around the pond dam and down the hill. As her dad turned onto the main road, Taylor saw a sign in the field that hadn’t been there yesterday. PARCELS FOR SALE—ZONED COMMERCIAL. Underneath that was the logo of a company called Central Iowa Realtors.

  Taylor knew what the sign meant. It meant another strip mall with another pizza place and another convenience store—when there was already a pizza place and a convenience store just down the street. It meant the loss of her kingdom.

  Chapter 5

  A TINY CURVE OF NEW MOON hung in the sky. Tad found Buuurk waiting under the leaves of the bleeding heart. As the last of the sun slipped below the edge of the earth, leaving only a dusky glow and the lights from the humanville on the hill, Tad watched all the toads gathering in the dewy grass. On First Night, they celebrated their own newness, although some of the old toads resting under the fern heads were very old.

  Seer had finally awakened, and two hoppers were helping him settle just outside the entrance to Tumbledown. His eyes—like marbles that might fall out and roll away in the grass—seemed to rest on Tad and Buuurk. Earlier, when Tad had left his friends to go back and talk to Seer, he had found the old prophet in a deep, jerky sleep and had been afraid to disturb him.

  Anora and Shyly were sprinkling dogwood petals in the customary circle just as if Rumbler wasn’t out there waiting in the darkness.

  “Do you think Anora is pretty?” Buuurk asked.

  Anora had large bumps behind her eyes that weren’t quite the same size, so Tad thought she was more cute than hop-toad gorgeous. But what really made her special, in his opinion, was the large cluster of warts on her back, each one ringed in dazzling white.

  “I think Anora’s really pretty,” Tad said.

  “I’m going to invite her to sit by me on the bank tonight when we sing.”

  “Whoa!” Tad said. Usually it took a few sunsets before the girl and boy hoppers sat together on the bank.

  “No time to waste,” Buuurk said.

  “I know. I just—” He just wished a pretty hopper would sit by him too.

  “This year you stick by me,” Buuurk said, reading his mind. “If any crawdads come around, I’ll take care of them.”

  Tad tried to puff out his singing sac and look like he didn’t know what Buuurk was talking about. But last year a crawdad had chased Tad off the bank. And he’d had to watch the singing from the tall grass. Seer had come by and talked about how a coward died a thousand deaths, but a brave toad died but one. Tad hoped he could stare down the crawdads this year. He was already worn out from winter’s sleep and didn’t want another lecture.

  Seer’s blind eyes turned to the sounds. He knew what was going on even though he couldn’t see, and he was glad the toads were enjoying life while they could.

  Seer remembered being young and brave once. And memory was a comfort, though it was a burden too. Sometimes Seer felt like just one big memory. An old, barely-able-to-hop memory box of all that had ever been.

  He remembered singing on the pond bank as a young hopper until he woke up the sun. He remembered feasting on bundle-of-yummy until his belly nearly burst. He remembered winning at ladybug shells. In many ways he had been a lucky toad.

  But he knew things from before there was anything. He knew about Mother Earth and Father Pond finding each other in the darkness. And he knew that Toadville-by-Tumbledown might soon not even be a memory because there would be nobody to remember it. The toads would be dead.

  In his dream visions, Seer saw many things. Some things were connected and clear. He dreamed of the past and how the toads came to be. He dreamed of the future and how things would be. In his second winter’s sleep, he had dreamed the great flood of Tumbledown, for example, but nobody had listened to him that time because he was young and not trusted as a Seer. Many newbies had died when the halls collapsed.

  But sometimes the dreams were like moonlight broken by swaying tree branches. He dreamed shapes and faces that shifted in the darkness. Those he had to wrestle to make them give up their meaning. Some of the shapes and faces just seemed puzzling. Others seemed terrifying.

  He was pretty sure the last toad to straggle into the Hall of Young Hoppers this morning, the one they called Tad, had dreamed during his winter sleep. When Seer had put his hands on Tad’s head to give him the blessing, he’d felt a jewel of dreaming, hot and fiery, just starting to grow under the skin.

  Poor young hopper. Dreaming was hard on a body. After Seer began telling the other toads his dreams, the sight had gradually left his eyes. Yet the more blind he became, the more he saw, in a way. And that’s when the toads in Toadville-by-Tumbledown had begun calling him Seer.

  The young hopper with the jewel beginning to grow in his head didn’t seem to amount to much. Small. Soft voice. Terrified of crawdads. Often late. Had Mother Earth and Father Pond really chosen him, of all toads?

  A while later, when everybody had gathered inside the circle of dogwood blossoms, the old toads carried out the delicious-smelling night-smacky-goo. The stuffed slug (because that’s what night-smacky-goo was—slug insides creamed with honeysuckle and stu
ffed back in the slug skin) glistened and wobbled when it was set down in front of Tad.

  He took a big serving and forgot everything except the joy of being home. The new moon, because it was only a wisp, made the image of the Toad-in-the-Moon look more like a tadpole.

  A glistening blue beetle, so pale and bright it might have been a jewel, was put at Seer’s place. It had a pink petal in its mouth, and its antennae were bound with a twist of new clematis vine. The blue beetles, shy, lived in a piece of rotten wood that leaned over Tumbledown. There were only a few, so only Seer was allowed to eat them, and only at the great feasts.

  When everybody was served and seated, and the stars were winking, the Head of Old Toads, a leader chosen each spring for his strong voice and many years of life, puffed out his wrinkled throat and asked for a moment of remembering.

  “Remember the things that we have eaten.…” he began.

  Tad thought of the first stinkbug and the luscious night crawler he had eaten on his way back to Tumbledown and how much perkier they had made him feel.

  “Remember the things that have eaten us.…” the Head went on.

  Tad remembered the red-tailed hawks and crows, the hognose snakes and racers who often ate the inhabitants of Toadville-by-Tumbledown, taking them up into the Great Cycle of life.

  “And remember those who have been eaten.” The Head named the newbies, hoppers, and old toads who had been eaten since the last First Night Feast.

  Tad remembered one of the young hoppers he’d hopped with last year—Bump was his name—who had been eaten by a snake near the mulch pile. Perhaps that snake had died and his body returned to the earth. Perhaps a big hosta had taken nourishment from that earth. Perhaps the very tray of night-smacky-goo inches from Tad’s hand was made of a slug who had chewed that hosta. Tad liked knowing that every living thing was part of the great circle.

  He was just beginning to feel supremely toadly and content when the Head’s voice went all thready and he said something that Tad didn’t hear. Then the Head croaked his throat and said it again more loudly. “And remember those who may be covered.”