“Hey, what’s that?” he said, his voice full of wonder.
Sirocco was staring at the bank of a little creek that ran through the woods. It had white, sandy mud. It wasn’t mushy and gushy like brown mud, either. It was thick and solid, yet it still looked moist and inviting.
It was impossible to resist.
Sirocco flew down to the creek and promptly scooped up a clod of the stuff with the front of his hoof. He sniffed at it.
“It’s clay!” he announced joyfully. It made a squishing noise and left a big, white splotch between his nostrils. “It’s awesome!” Sirocco added. “I could play with this stuff for hours!”
Kona landed next to him.
“We could also use this clay to make things,” she said practically. “Dishes and bowls and flowerpots!”
“Or we could use it to…” Sirocco scooped up a hoof-full and flung it right at Kona!
Splat!
“… have a little pre-winter snowball fight!” Sirocco cried.
“Ugh!” Kona neighed in outrage.
“Sirocco!” Sumatra scolded the colt, as she landed on the ground next to her friends. “You shouldn’t waste this clay by just throwing it around.”
“Oh, yeah?” Sirocco said. A mischievous glint came into his eyes.
“Yeah, oh yeah!” Sumatra declared. Then a mischievous glint came into her eyes.
“Not when you could use it,” she added, “to do a little painting!”
Sumatra dug her nose into the clay and came up with a chunk of it. Then she trotted over to Sirocco and used the clay to blot big, white polka dots all over his side!
Sirocco laughed so hard he fell—right onto the sticky creek bank! The fall covered his other side with a single, giant polka dot.
Then he scooped up his own nose-full of clay and smeared a stripe of it down Sumatra’s neck.
“Hey, you guys,” Kona reprimanded them. “Shouldn’t we be thinking about Bri—”
“Get her!” Sumatra neighed to Sirocco.
They covered their noses with more white clay and charged at Kona. Before she knew it, Kona had a messy, white smiley face on her right flank and big, white circles around both her eyes.
This sent all three horses into more fits of laughter. Until—
“Hel-looooo? Anybody home?”
Sirocco jumped, then exclaimed, “That’s Brisa!”
Without another word (but not before scooping up an extra clod of clay to take with him), the colt dashed off in the direction of Brisa’s voice.
Kona and Sumatra glanced at each other, shrugged, and took off after him.
* * *
While her friends clobbered each other with white clay, Brisa honed in on her mission—in a gushy, brown mud puddle deep in the forest.
Just as she’d hoped, three sets of bulgy eyes were poking out of the top of the water.
“Why, hello there!” Brisa said sweetly to the pond’s three resident frogs.
The bulgy eyes didn’t move. The trio of frogs didn’t so much as ribbit a reply.
“You’re probably feeling too dirty to be polite,” Brisa said understandingly. “But don’t you worry—I’m about to give you the bath of your life!”
She grabbed a leafy tree branch with her teeth. Then she propped the branch on the side of the pond and pried the little frogs out of the mud.
Next, she gripped a “sponge” made of fragrant, green moss in her teeth and dipped it into the water. Swabbing away, she washed all the mud and gunk off the messy frogs.
But through all of this, the little green guys didn’t say a word. Not “How do you do?” Or, “How nice of you to give us a bath!” Or even, “My, what a pretty little horse you are!”
Shaking her head in bewilderment, Brisa paused in her sponging and waved a hoof in front of one of the frog’s staring eyes.
“Hel-looooo? Anybody home in there?” she asked the froggie.
Nothing!
“Oh, well,” she said to the out-of-it amphibians. “You can thank me later when you see how pretty you look without all that mud on you. You know, your skin is the most lovely shade of green! Even if it is a little slimy.”
Next, Brisa found a tiny twig. She gripped it in her teeth and daintily began to clean out the mud from beneath each frog’s round, suckery toes.
But she’d barely gotten started when, all of a sudden, the sound of a whinny made her jump. She spun around to see Sirocco, Kona, and Sumatra flying toward her at full speed! “Hi, there,” Brisa said, with a welcome smile.
“Hey!” Sirocco neighed. “What are you doing?”
As Brisa got a good look at Sirocco, and the fillies behind him, her smile faded.
“What have all of you been doing?” Brisa countered as she beheld her clay-caked friends. “You’re even messier than you were after your water fight!”
Sirocco stopped looking aghast for a moment and grinned.
“Check it out,” he said, tossing his clay clod onto the ground. “It’s clay! We can make stuff with it!”
“Yes,” Brisa agreed. “You can make a mess with it. It looks like you already did!”
Sirocco glanced at Kona and Sumatra. As soon as they took in each other’s clay-coated selves, they dissolved into another round of giggles.
But before Brisa could respond, she heard a feeble ribbit.
“The froggies!” she cried in delight. She planted herself in front of the three, very clean frogs and grinned at them. “Finally you decide to say hi!”
The frog that had ribbited was blinking blearily. Next to him, another of the frogs was perking up, as well.
Ribbit, ribbit? the second frog croaked in bewilderment. Then the third frog began moving. He attempted a hop, but he only stumbled, falling sideways in the mud.
“Oh, no!” Brisa cried. “And I’d just gotten you all clean. Here, let me help you.…”
She snapped up her moss sponge with her teeth and started toward the frog. But before she could get near him, a neigh stopped her in her tracks: “Nooooo!”
The neigh belonged to Sirocco.
“Brisa,” he bellowed. “You can’t pull the frogs out of their mud puddle!”
Brisa gaped at Sirocco.
“Why not?” Brisa asked in confusion.
“Sleeeepy,” one of the frogs croaked. “Sooooo sleeeepy.”
Brisa turned to the foggy frog and chirped, “Believe me, as soon as you get a look at yourself in the mirror, you’ll wake right up!”
“You don’t get it,” Sirocco broke in. “The frogs are supposed to be asleep. They’ve just started hibernating!”
“Hibernating?” Brisa asked with a quaver in her voice. “What’s that?”
Sirocco—who had long been friends with the frogs of the forest—explained.
“Frogs spend the cold months asleep,” he said. “They bury themselves in the mud, and their breathing and heartbeat slows down. It’s how they survive the winter!”
Brisa gasped, then gazed down at the very clean—very annoyed—frogs.
Ribbit! they said irritably in unison.
“I’d be in a really bad mood, too,” Sumatra muttered, “if someone woke me up three months early to give me a bath!”
“Oh,” Brisa said sadly. To the frogs, she said, “So I guess you want to go back to sleep, huh?”
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit! the frogs answered indignantly. They turned and began to hop woozily back toward the pond.
Brisa gazed after them.
She was sad for just a moment. Then something occurred to her that made her gasp! She turned to her friends with a grin.
“I’ve just realized,” she announced, “that the frogs didn’t need my help after all!”
“Really?” Sumatra said hopefully. “So you’re going to give up on this beauty thing?”
Plop, plop, plop!
One by one, the frogs splatted back into their mud puddle.
“And you don’t mind,” Kona asked Brisa carefully, “that the frogs are all dirty again?�
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“The froggies may be dirty,” Brisa pointed out, “but they’re also tucking in for three months of sleep. Three months of beauty sleep! When those froggies climb out of the mud, they’re going to be prettier than I could have ever made them with my sponge bath! It almost makes me wish I could hibernate.”
Kona, Sumatra, and Sirocco gaped at their friend, who was smiling affectionately at the three frogs as they burrowed deep into the mud.
“But of course, I can’t rest,” Brisa went on. “Not when there’s so much more to do!”
“Yeah, like lunch!” Sirocco declared. “I’m starving!”
“Oh, I can’t think about lunch, now!” Brisa said breezily. “I can’t get hungry when I’ve got a mission!”
“A mission?” Kona asked nervously.
“What kind of dress-up are you dreaming up now?” Sumatra teased. “Are you going to style the silk on all the ears of corn in Leanna’s garden? Or color-match every pebble in the dandelion meadow?”
Kona and Sirocco started to laugh—until Brisa nickered approvingly.
“Those are great ideas, Sumatra!” Brisa exclaimed seriously. “But for now, I have something else in mind.”
She fluttered into the air. And before Sumatra could gasp out, “Just joking!”—Brisa was flying furiously toward the dandelion meadow, leaving her stunned friends behind.
CHAPTER 4
Dandelion Fields Forever
“The beautifier is on the loose again!” Sumatra said in alarm.
“We’ve got to go after her!” Kona agreed.
“Uh, guys,” Sirocco said, following the fillies as they flew toward the meadow, “did you not hear me mention lunch? As in, the most important meal of the day?”
“I thought that was breakfast,” Sumatra called over her shoulder.
“Sure, at breakfast time it is,” Sirocco whinnied. “And at lunchtime it’s lunch, and at afternoon snack time, it’s afternoon snack, and at—”
Sirocco was cut off as the three Wind Dancers emerged from the forest.
“Do you see any animals wearing tutus?” Sumatra asked fearfully.
“Or any plants that are way too sparkly for their own good?” Kona countered.
“Or any carrot sandwiches lying around?” Sirocco chimed in, his belly groaning audibly. “If I don’t get some food soon, I won’t be able to see anything! I’ll pass out!”
“Listen to the drama horse over there,” Sumatra said to Kona with an eye-roll.
But Kona had to reluctantly agree.
“Well, Sirroco’s right,” she said. “It is lunchtime and Brisa’s nowhere to be seen. We might as well eat and look for her later.”
“Yes!” Sirocco said, heading for the Wind Dancers’ tree house. “Let’s go!”
* * *
“There!” Brisa said. “All finished.”
She put down the loop of shiny silk that she’d borrowed from a friendly spider who lived in a nearby tree. Then she fluttered up into the air so she could check out her work.
Brisa had taken a length of spider silk and used her teeth to wrap it around the spiky seeds on a fluffy dandelion. Then she’d tied the delicate silk into a pretty bow.
“That pretty puff isn’t going anywhere now,” Brisa said, admiring the dandelion’s perfectly round, white poof. “I’ve tied its seeds tight! Now they’ll stay put and pretty forever.”
Brisa fluttered a bit higher and gazed out over the dandelion meadow.
“So, that’s one dandelion secured…” she said to herself, “about nine hundred to go.”
She heaved a small, weary sigh. But then she shrugged and smiled.
“Well, it’s all in the name of beauty,” she told herself as she flew over to the next dandelion. She was just about to begin battening down its seeds when she spotted Kona, Sumatra, and Sirocco winging their way toward her.
“Oh!” Brisa cried delightedly. She rose higher in the air and fluttered her sparkly wings at her friends. “Helloooo! Over here!”
As her friends flew over, Brisa saw that Kona was dabbing gracefully at her lips with the ends of her long, violet mane and Sirocco was chewing on what must have been his last bite of lunch.
Brisa jumped as her stomach rumbled. She glanced up at the sun and was startled to see that it had dipped in the sky.
“It must be almost two o’ clock!” Brisa realized. “Where did the time fly?”
“The better question,” Sumatra asked as the Wind Dancer trio reached Brisa, “is where did you fly off to?”
Brisa forgot her empty stomach and grinned at her friends.
“Oh, wait ’til you hear!” she said. “You know Mrs. Spider? Who lives in the apple tree next door to ours? Well, she gave me some of her silk. I’m using it to tie down all these seeds so the dandelions will stay full and fluffy forever! There’s nothing uglier than a bald dandelion stem, don’t you think?”
She smiled at the other Wind Dancers. But they didn’t return her grin. “Brisa!” Sumatra cried. “Dandelions aren’t supposed to keep their seeds.”
She flew over to an extra-fluffy dandelion nearby and blew on it. Countless white parachutes flew into the air dangling little, brown seeds. They coasted on the breeze, then began to drift toward the ground.
“See?” Sumatra explained. “Each seed will burrow into the ground to create a new dandelion. But if the seeds don’t scatter…”
“… no more new dandelions!” Sirocco finished.
“And a lot less beauty in our dandelion meadow, when you think about it,” Kona said.
“Oh!” Brisa cried as Kona’s words sank in. “That’s a very good point. And it changes everything!”
“So you’re going to stop your beauty project?” Kona said carefully. She tried not to look too happy (or hopeful). She didn’t want to hurt Brisa’s feelings.
“I will stop,” Brisa said soberly.
Sumatra and Sirocco heaved quiet sighs of relief.
“I’ll stop tying down the dandelion seeds,” Brisa said, brightening up. “But as for my beauty mission? That I’ll never stop! I owe it to the world to make all pretty things even more pretty!”
Brisa frowned thoughtfully and she murmured, “Now, what should my next project be? Hmmmm…”
While Brisa drifted off on an air current, lost in thought, Kona, Sirocco, and Sumatra clustered together anxiously.
“We’ve got to stop her!” Sirocco cried.
“Shh!” Sumatra scolded him. “Not so loud.” Then she turned to Kona and whispered, “We’ve got to stop her!”
Kona nodded in agreement.
“But how?” she wondered.
Sirocco spotted Brisa’s coil of spider silk on the ground.
“A-ha!” he said, pointing at the silk with his hoof. “We tie her up with her own spider silk! If she can’t fly, she can’t beautify! Easy as pie!”
“Sirocco,” Sumatra said with a scowl. “This is no time for silly ideas or silly rhymes.”
But Kona’s face had suddenly lit up!
“Easy as pie!” she cried.
Sirocco stuck his tongue out at Sumatra.
“See,” he said. “Kona likes my rhyme.”
“No, it’s not the rhyme I like,” Kona said (making Sumatra snort triumphantly). “It’s the pie! That’s how we’ll lure Brisa away from the meadow.”
“Huh?” Sirocco wondered.
Kona didn’t answer. Instead, she flew over to Brisa.
“I have an idea,” Kona announced. “Let’s make a pie this afternoon. An apple pie! You know how much you love apple pie!”
Brisa glanced distractedly at the violet filly. Her belly growled again, but she tried to ignore it.
“It just doesn’t seem fair to sit around eating pie,” Brisa replied, “when there are plants and animals who need my beauty help!”
“But,” Kona responded, “our pie needs your beauty help, too! You can use one of your jewels to cut pretty shapes into the pastry crust. It would be the prettiest pie ever!”
“It’s pie!” Sirocco interjected. “Who cares how it looks when it tastes delicious?”
At which point Kona and Sumatra both gave him a kick in the flank.
“Ow!” he complained. “Why did you kick me.…”
Kona looked pointedly at Brisa, who was looking tempted by Kona’s pie plan.
“Oh!” Sirocco said. “What I meant to say was…” He hesitated and glanced at Kona. “Pretty pies do taste more delicious than plain ones, and you should come home with us to decorate our pie.”
“Well…” Brisa hesitated. She was very hungry. But she hated to abandon her beauty mission for just an afternoon snack.
As she pondered this problem, she gazed at her friends. And then she knew.
“I just figured out how I can have my pie,” the filly replied, “and my beauty mission, too!”
CHAPTER 5
Beauty Parlor
A little later, in the kitchen of the Wind Dancers’ tree house, Sumatra glared at Kona.
“Tell me again,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “How did we get into this fix?”
“Shhh,” Kona whispered back. She glanced over at Brisa, who was busy washing some apples in the water trough. “We’ve made Brisa happy!”
“But what about our happiness?” Sumatra whined.
Kona squirmed. Sumatra did have a point. After all, Brisa had covered Sumatra’s pale-green mane and tail with dramatic stripes of yellow pollen! And Sumatra did look fabulous—when she wasn’t sneezing, sniffling, and coughing!
And Brisa had woven Kona’s mane into so many cute little braids that Kona had lost count of them. But one thing about these braids, Kona thought with a grimace. Every last one of them tugs and pinches and itches like crazy!
Finally, Brisa had spangled Sirocco’s teeth with magic jewels!
“Some of the children in Leanna’s school wear sparkly things on their teeth,” Brisa had explained as she’d stuck gems on each of Sirocco’s choppers. “It’s to make their teeth straight, but they’re also pretty! Don’t you love them?”
Horses Her Way Page 2
