Three Adventure Tales

by Ruth Chew

  Max fitted a stone into his slingshot.

  Terry held tight to the basket and felt her heart thumping in her chest.

  The rustling became louder. Suddenly a doe with a spotted fawn burst out of the bushes. They leaped across the little glade, bobbing their white tails, and disappeared into the forest.

  Singing-Moon rested the wooden end of the spear on the ground for a few minutes before going on.

  She must have been just as scared as I was, Terry said to herself.

  The baby was fast asleep and missed all the excitement.

  The path through the forest went in the same direction as the stream. After a while the trees became farther apart.

  Max and Terry saw clearings where corn was growing. The cornstalks were planted three or four feet apart. Beans of many colors were growing up the cornstalks and using them for beanpoles. In between the rows of corn were squash, pumpkins, and watermelons.

  Soon there were planting fields all along the stream.

  Singing-Moon led them to a tall stockade fence. The gate was open.

  “This is my village,” Singing-Moon said. “Come inside.”

  In the center of the village was an open space. A mound in it was higher than the rest of the ground.

  There were about ten houses within the fence. Each house had been made from a circle of young trees tied together in a dome shape. The houses were covered with strips of birch bark, animal skins, or mats woven of cattail reeds. Some were covered with all three. They had no windows, but each house had four doors and a hole in the roof to let the smoke out.

  Singing-Moon led Terry and Max to the largest house. “I want you to meet Wise-Defender, our chief.”

  The mats used to cover the four doorways were folded back. A gentle breeze blew through the house.

  Singing-Moon stepped inside. Terry and Max followed her into the shadowy room.

  A small smoky fire was burning in a circle of smoke-stained stones.

  Strings of corn held together by braided husks were tied to a pole that went across the ceiling. Bunches of dried herbs, clumps of roots, and strips of dried pumpkin also hung from the pole. They were all drying in the smoke from the fire.

  Terry and Max heard the sound of gentle snoring. They looked around and saw a thin old man fast asleep on one of the low benches that went around walls.

  Singing-Moon went over to him. She bent down and pressed her cheek against his hand.

  The old man opened his eyes. When he saw Singing-Moon, he sat up and hugged her. The children saw that his white hair reached to his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I had to wake you, Grandfather,” Singing-Moon said.

  “I’m glad you did. I was having a bad dream. I dreamed that the forest was gone from here, and so was the stream. Our people were gone, too.” He laughed. “I’m glad it was only a dream.”

  “So am I, Grandfather,” Singing-Moon said. “I woke you because I want you to meet my friends and hear their strange story. This is Max, and this is Terry.” She turned to the children. “And this is our chief, Wise-Defender.”

  The old man stood up and smiled. He held out both hands to each of them, and they gave him theirs in return.

  He had such a kind face that Terry and Max liked him at once.

  “I must go and feed my little darling,” Singing-Moon said to the children. “I’ll come back for you afterward.” She left the house with the baby on her back and her spear still in her hand.

  Wise-Defender sat down on the bench again. The ground in front of him was covered with soft pine branches. Terry and Max decided to sit there so they could look at him while they talked.

  “Start at the very beginning,” Wise-Defender said. “The more I learn about you, the better chance I’ll have of under-standing what happened.”

  Together they told him as much as they remembered. “We only wanted to know what was behind our fence,” Max finished.

  “I think you’re beginning to find out,” Wise-Defender told him.

  When Singing-Moon returned, Wise-Defender lay down again on the bench and closed his eyes.

  Terry and Max followed Singing-Moon out of the house to a much smaller one.

  “Does your grandfather live all by himself?” Terry asked.

  “Oh, no,” Singing-Moon told her. “Two of my aunts and their families live with him. Wise-Defender is very old and needs people to care for him. My husband and I built a house of our own. You must stay with us.”

  A young man was standing in front of the little house, holding the baby in the air and dancing with him.

  “This is my husband, Blackbird-on-the-Wing,” Singing-Moon said. “And these are our guests, Terry and Max,” she told him.

  “Welcome,” the young man said. “Look at this!” He leaned over and let the baby’s tiny feet touch the ground. At once the baby straightened his legs and tried to stand. His father laughed and lifted his son into the air again. “Not yet, little man,” he said, “but you’ll get there!”

  Blackbird-on-the-Wing had heard about the slingshot and wanted to see it. Max took it out of his pocket and showed him how the slingshot worked.

  A fire burned in front of each house. People were cooking and eating there.

  Singing-Moon was busy at her fire. Terry went to help her.

  She saw a pile of clean smooth stones near the fire.

  Singing-Moon kept taking stones from the pile and putting them into the fire. Terry copied her. She learned to use two sticks to pull the hot stones out of the fire and drop them into a large wooden bowl of water.

  When the water in the wooden bowl began to boil, Singing-Moon used a stone knife to skin and cut up two rabbits Blackbird-on-the-Wing had caught in his snares, and a large fish he’d speared, along with all sorts of roots and leafy wild plants. She dropped everything into the bowl and added several handfuls of cornmeal. Terry kept the water bubbling by putting in more hot stones.

  “Do you always use wooden bowls?” Terry asked.

  Singing-Moon showed her clay pots that were black from many fires. These had pointed bottoms, which had to be propped up by hot stones when they were in the fire.

  The pinecones they had gathered were now on a slab of birch bark. They had started to open and drop their seeds onto the bark. Singing-Moon scooped up as many seeds as she could and dropped them into the bowl of boiling water. She stirred the mixture with a long wooden paddle.

  The baby was asleep in his leather pouch on the board swinging from the maple tree next to the little house.

  When the food in the wooden bowl was cooked, Blackbird-on-the-Wing sat on the ground beside it. “Are you hungry?”

  The children nodded.

  “Sit.” Singing-Moon handed each of them a large clamshell, gave one to her husband, and kept one for herself.

  They sat near the big bowl and used the clamshells to scoop out the food. Terry and Max had never tasted anything quite like it. They enjoyed some of the things in the mixture more than others. Nobody told them what to eat or made them finish anything they didn’t like.

  Terry and Max ate what they wanted and stopped when they’d had enough.

  All the people in the village seemed to be out-of-doors in front of their houses. Some of them were eating. Some were making mats, stretching leather, carving wood, or doing other kinds of work.

  Children were playing games. A girl not quite as tall as Max came over with a younger boy to meet Max and Terry. “We want you to be happy here,” the girl said. “Tomorrow we can show you a good place to go swimming.”

  It was getting dark. The people went into their houses.

  Terry looked up at a sky that was filled with more stars than she had ever seen in Brooklyn. “Look, Max!”

  Max stared up at them. “Terry,” he whispered, “the stars are in exactly the same place in the sky that they are at home. It’s just that, without all the lights, we can see them better.”

  “What does that mean?” Terry asked.

  “It means we�
��re still in the same place, but I’ve a feeling we’re in a different time.”

  “I’ve read about that in stories, but I never really believed it,” Terry said.

  “It’s all part of the magic,” Max reminded her. “Singing-Moon seemed to think all we had to do was change our names to go home again. But I like it here, and I’m not ready to be called Traveler-Through-Tunnels.”

  “Won’t Mom and Dad be looking for us?” Terry said.

  Max thought about this. “We can’t do anything about it, Terry. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

  Singing-Moon had taken her baby into the house. Now she came out to tell the children, “It’s not safe to be out at night. Come inside, and I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

  In the house a small fire glowed under drying herbs and corn.

  Singing-Moon showed them where soft animal skins had been spread over the benches that went around the walls.

  “Ow!” Max slapped his bare arm.

  Singing-Moon gave him a clay pot of some sort of ointment. “This will keep mosquitoes away.”

  Both Max and Terry rubbed the ointment on themselves. Then they curled up on the soft skins and fell asleep.

  Singing-Moon woke the children in the morning. “Get up,” she said. “Snow-Flower and Like-a-Possum have come to take you to their swimming place.”

  Terry sat up and looked around. For a minute she didn’t know where she was.

  “Like-a-what?” Max asked.

  “Like-a-Possum.” Singing-Moon laughed. “That’s the name he chose. You’re not the only one who thinks it’s funny. He and Snow-Flower are my cousin’s children.”

  Terry stood up and stretched.

  “The water in our stream is good to drink,” Singing-Moon told her. “There’s a flat rock next to the stream near the little willow trees.”

  Terry went outside. “I’ll be ready soon,” she said to the two children who were waiting at the door.

  Terry ran over to the stream. She kneeled on the flat rock, leaned over the water, and cupped her hands to get a drink. Then she splashed water on her face and combed her hair with her wet fingers.

  Max came over to meet his sister. “If you want breakfast, you’d better eat something now,” he told her. “I was talking to Blackbird-on-the-Wing. These people don’t have regular mealtimes. They just eat when they’re hungry.” Max showed Terry a little bag of woven hemp. “He gave me this and said there’s something in it we can chew when we’re hungry and can’t find any nuts or berries. He takes a bag of this stuff when he goes hunting. He says he can’t do without it.”

  Terry decided she’d better eat while she had a chance. She went back to the little house. Singing-Moon was sitting under the maple tree feeding her baby.

  Snow-Flower had a fire burning and was heating stones in it. Terry joined her. Together they re-warmed the food in the wooden bowl. By the time it was ready, the baby was asleep in his little pouch on the board, swinging from the maple tree.

  Blackbird-on-the-Wing and the two boys sat down by the bowl, along with Terry and Snow-Flower. Singing-Moon brought out six clamshells, and everybody scooped out what they wanted.

  A little dog with pointed ears came over and sat down to watch them eat.

  Terry and Max saw that Blackbird-on-the-Wing tossed the food he didn’t want to the dog. So did Like-a-Possum and Snow-Flower. Max started to copy them, and then Terry did the same.

  “Singing-Moon eats everything,” Terry whispered to her brother.

  “Just like Mom,” he said.

  When the meal was over, Singing-Moon showed Max and Terry how to wipe the clamshells clean with dried grass. Then she gave each of them a sack of strong hemp. “Carry this everywhere. You can put what you gather into it.”

  Terry saw that both Snow-Flower and Like-a-Possum carried sacks. Snow-Flower also had a thick stick. Like-a-Possum held a short spear. They led the way through the village. Snow-Flower introduced Terry and Max to the people they met. Everybody seemed to be her aunt or uncle or cousin. They all stopped what they were doing to greet the visitors.

  The four children left the village by an open gate in the stockade fence and began to walk side by side through the fields of corn and beans and squash that were planted along the stream.

  “Why did you pick Like-a-Possum for your name?” Max wanted to know.

  “One day I saw a possum sleeping in a tree,” the younger boy told him. “I left my spear under the tree and quietly climbed up to grab him.

  “I put the possum in my sack and carried him down to the ground. When I took him out of the sack to kill him with my spear, he was stiff and didn’t move. I thought he’d been smothered. I put down the spear and used both hands to open the sack again and put the possum back into it. But that possum was up the tree before I knew what was happening.

  “The possum had fooled me by pretending to be dead. I want to be clever like him. So I changed my name.”

  “What was it before?” Max asked.

  “Little-Cloud,” Like-a-Possum told him.

  Max thought about this. “You were right to change it.”

  They crossed the last planting field and began to follow the narrow path that led downstream.

  The path led through the woods. Snow-Flower went first. Max came after her. Like-a-Possum followed him, and Terry was last.

  They walked silently. When they came to a large oak tree, Like-a-Possum pointed to piles of acorns lying on the ground under it. “We’d better gather these to take home.”

  “Why do you want them?” Terry asked.

  “To make bread,” he told her.

  Max looked at the acorns. “If we get them on our way home, we won’t have to carry them all day.”

  “They might not be here later,” Snow-Flower said.

  Suddenly Max saw something orange and brown and shiny among the acorns. It was long and thin and it was moving toward him. When it raised its head he saw that it was a copperhead snake.

  He’d learned in Boy Scouts that copperheads are deadly!

  Pow! A stone went flying from the slingshot in Max’s hand. It struck the copperhead right in the teeth.

  Snow-Flower banged the snake on the head with her club.

  When the snake stopped moving, Like-a-Possum said, “He’s dead now, Max. Put him in your sack. You can make a belt or a headband from his skin.”

  “You can have it,” Max told him.

  Like-a-Possum dropped the dead snake into his sack.

  Terry walked over to her brother. “I don’t know how you did it, Max. I was too scared to move.”

  Max looked at the slingshot. “I’m still scared, Terry. I’d forgotten all about the slingshot and was thinking about acorns. I don’t remember putting the stone in the slingshot.”

  Terry bent down and started to pick up acorns and drop them into her sack. Max joined her, but he kept his slingshot handy.

  When they’d collected all the acorns they could find, the four children continued along the narrow path. But now everybody kept looking for snakes.

  The trees became farther apart. Soon the path was crossing a wide plain with only a single big tree in sight.

  Snow-Flower ran over to a clump of scrubby bushes. She popped something into her mouth. “Yum!”

  The others joined her in eating the ripe blueberries. These were much smaller than the ones Mrs. Robertson bought in the stores, but they tasted wonderful.

  They ate all the blueberries they could find. Then Terry found a patch of blackberries. They were bigger and juicier than the blueberries, but the children had to watch out for thorns.

  After everyone had eaten enough berries, they went back to the path leading across the plain.

  The sun was high in the sky now. It was warmer here than in the forest. Snow-Flower began to walk faster. She led the way to a large pond surrounded by reeds and cattails. “Here we are! This is the best place to swim.”

  Terry and Max heard the sound of splashing and laughing v
oices. When they came to the shore of the pond, they saw groups of children playing in the clear water.

  Snow-Flower and Like-a-Possum took off their moccasins. Terry and Max slipped out of their sneakers. They left them with the rest of their things on a bank overlooking the water.

  “Last one in is a rotten pumpkin!” Like-a-Possum dashed toward the pond.

  The others chased after him.

  The pond was deep enough for them to swim, but not so deep that it was dangerous. Most of the children were good swimmers, but some were teaching themselves how to swim.

  The smaller ones bobbed like corks in the water. The older ones swam like ducks, diving down and kicking their feet in the air.

  Like-a-Possum wanted to race with Max, but Max won. He had longer arms and legs to push back the water.

  Snow-Flower was good at swimming underwater.

  “Show me how you do that,” Terry said. “I always seem to be up on top. You swim like a fish.”

  Snow-Flower showed her how she swam. No matter how hard she tried to copy her, Terry still floated to the surface.

  Snow-Flower watched her. “Terry, you don’t need to swim! I see you sitting in the water, turning around on your back or your stomach, and not sinking no matter what you do. If I stop swimming, I sink. I wish I could float like you.”

  They raced each other across the pond. Snow-Flower kept swimming, but Terry would roll over to look at the sky and drift. Snow-Flower had reached the other side of the pond and was on the way back before Terry was near it.

  While they were swimming, a few clouds began to gather. The sky became darker. A drop of rain fell on Terry’s nose.

  “We’d better start for home!” Max yelled. He swam to shore.

  The others were quick to follow him. As soon as they were ready, all four picked up their sacks. Like-a-Possum grabbed his spear. Snow-Flower held on to her club, and Max made sure his slingshot was ready. Terry was glad she didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t want to have to kill anything.