The very dome of the night sky shivered, and a few stars fell. Tad felt as if he had been stabbed with an icicle. That had never been part of the Ritual of Remembering before.
A tremor passed through the toads. The darkness suddenly seemed colder than night. It felt like true, eternal death.
Somebody murmured, “Deliver us from Rumbler,” and it echoed through the gathering until it finally died out in fretful silence.
After a while, the youngest hoppers who had been newbies just last year, began to sing, their voices high and sweet, breeep, breeep, breeep, and the stars were calm again.
Buuurk nudged Tad and said, “Eat, toad. No reason not to keep up our strength.”
Chapter 6
TAYLOR’S DAD WIPED HIS MOUTH, crumpled his napkin, and stood up.
“I’ll be late,” he told Taylor’s mother. “Midnight, probably. See you tomorrow, Peggy Sue,” he said, pushing Taylor’s nose like it was a button.
Taylor licked the salsa and cheese off her fingers and looked away, embarrassed. That’s what he’d wanted to name her. Peggy Sue, after an old song by someone called Buddy Holly. Her dad loved old rock-and-roll music and, on the weekends, drummed in a retro band. And her mother sang in it. But her mother had nixed Peggy Sue. She said people didn’t give children two names anymore, and Taylor was a nice non-gender-specific name.
As her dad disappeared through the door, Taylor had a shocking thought. Was it possible he didn’t even know her real name?
Her mom chewed quickly, taking little sips of water. Her eyes signaled to Taylor that this was no time for conversation. The goal was to eat and get going.
But Taylor charged ahead anyway. “You’re a lawyer, Mom. Can people just go around filling in ponds and mowing down flowers when they’re not their flowers?” She had to ask. Because what if some weird fact could change things?
Her mother made wait-until-I-finish-chewing motions with one hand and dabbed her mouth with the other.
Finally, she spoke. “Not without the owner’s permission. Who owns the pond and the flowers?”
“Eve owns the flowers, and I don’t know who owns the pond.”
Her mother gave Taylor an oh, that look. “It really is too bad, honey. But I’m afraid the new owners can do whatever they want.” She did some texting at the same time she signaled for the bill and found her charge card.
“But it’s not fair. It’s supposed to be ours forever.”
Her mother stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder. She was headed for the door into the mall, checking her voice mail, before Taylor even finished wiping her mouth. Taylor grabbed her book bag. “You’re not listening,” she cried, trotting to catch up.
Her mother turned with her best well-I-am-giving-you-my-full-attention-now look. “I’m listening, sweetie. I just can’t do anything about it. Change happens. Real estate is booming out by Eve’s place. She could probably sell her house for a small fortune if she wanted to.”
Taylor gasped and stood riveted until she was almost run over by a baby stroller. “Eve would never sell her place,” Taylor said, running to catch up with her mother. It was home. The center of the universe. The place where Taylor’s heart lived.
“Sweetie, I grew up there too. And I’d hate to see her sell it. But it’s a lot for her to handle. Especially now with everything else.…” She shrugged and looked at her vibrating phone.
Taylor wanted to yank the phone out of her mother’s hand and throw it into the fountain at the foot of the escalators. Where would she go if her grandmother didn’t live there? Who would she be?
“I wish things were different,” her mom said, putting the phone back in her pocket.
A little kid walked in front of them with a shiny helium balloon tied to his wrist.
“Balloons,” Taylor said, remembering. “I need to get a present for Kia’s birthday party Saturday.” Not that she was in the mood to shop, but a friend was a friend.
Kia liked stamping, and had about a million stamps, but there was a craft store upstairs that had maybe two or three million.
Taylor’s mom glanced at her watch. “Ten minutes.”
“But I can’t look at all the stamps and pick anything in ten minutes!”
Her mom tugged her out of the flow. “Taylor, I wish I could just hang out at the mall, but I can’t tonight. I’ve got to leave the office at noon tomorrow to take Eve to the treatment center.” Her mother’s voice was pinched. “And I’m writing a brief that has to be on a judge’s desk before then. So here’s the deal: we can run up to the stamp shop for ten minutes—” She broke off to glance at her watch. “Okay, fifteen. But no more. Or we can stop at the concierge desk and buy Kia a nice gift card. Then she can choose her stamps herself.”
A or B. How about none of the above?
“Maybe Eve could bring me here after school.”
Taylor’s mom sighed. “This is Wednesday. The party is Saturday. Eve has her first chemo tomorrow. She’s not going to feel like it.”
Taylor could tell her mother’s patience had expired. “Fine. A gift card.”
Five minutes later, on the way to the car, her mother stopped to dig through her purse for her keys. “So will you be okay staying by yourself tomorrow after school?” she asked. “I’ll try to be home by six or seven.”
Was that what her dad had meant by we’ll work it out? What would she do there all by herself?
Her mother handed her a key. “I had this made for you today. You’ll be responsible and not lose it, right?”
Taylor put it in her pocket, not meeting her mother’s eyes. Was absolutely everything going to change?
Chapter 7
DROPS OF DEW, like tiny see-through moons, clung to the grass as the morning sky turned pink. Most of the blossoms from First Night had blown away, but Tad could still make out the circle where the toads had celebrated. He found the old prophet sitting on a rock and thumped the ground three times in respect. “Greetings, Seer.”
“I have been expecting you.”
Seer inched over, making room on the rock. Even though Tad was among the smallest of the hoppers, the ancient prophet had shrunk so much that he was even smaller. The great bony ridge protruded between his eyes. A place between Tad’s own eyes flickered.
“Tell me what you dreamed in your winter sleep,” Seer demanded.
Tad almost fell off the stone. “How did you know?” he finally croaked.
“I felt the jewel between your eyes as I gave you my blessing in the Hall of Young Hoppers yesterday. And the jewel marks a dreamer—a someday seer.”
“But I don’t want to be a seer!”
Seer made a harrumphing noise.
Seers were old and blind. And Tad hadn’t even sung on the pond bank with a pretty hopper yet. “I’m more like an ordinary toad,” he explained.
When a sun ray lifted over the edge of creation, Seer said, “I had my first winter dream when I was your age.”
“But I wouldn’t be a good seer,” Tad said. “I’m small. My voice is weak.” And he was scared of many things—not just crawdads. He was scared of scurrying sounds in the leaves, and of falling stars.
Other toads had begun to stir out of Tumbledown, looking for worms in the cool of the morning. Tad saw Buuurk under the redbud tree, blossoms drifting down around him. Buuurk was big and brave. Why couldn’t he have the dreams?
“Mother Earth and Father Pond placed the jewel behind your eyes for a reason,” Seer said. “I think perhaps they have chosen you to save us.”
Tad swallowed. He didn’t know what to say.
The stone beneath them grew warm as the sun floated higher. A slow blackfly droned over Tad, and he automatically zotted it. It made such a fuss going down his gullet with all its buzzing and struggling that he almost spat it out.
“Blackflies are good for courage,” Seer said. “Did you know that?”
“I don’t really like blackflies.” Any other of the young hoppers—anybody—would be a better choice to sav
e Tumbledown.
If it was up to Tad to save them, surely Rumbler would come and tear the skin off Mother Earth and chase Father Pond away and kill all the toads. Tears stung Tad’s eyes, but he would not let himself cry. The stone was growing hot. Tad wanted to hop into the shade, but something as sticky as honey held him there.
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell the others about my dreams,” he heard himself croak. It wasn’t a brave thing to say, he knew, but it was better than crying.
“I will let you get used to the idea first. But tell me everything you dreamed, toad.”
And so Tad told Seer of the bellowing, stinking monster, though he hadn’t known it was called Rumbler. Seer nodded. And Tad told Seer about trying to get something important done, though he wasn’t sure what, and how he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. “See?” he demanded. “Even in my own dreams I let the toads down.”
“I am often weak in my dreams too,” Seer said. “Eat more blackflies.”
Tad shuddered.
“What else did you dream?” Seer asked.
Tad explained the music the best he could, stamping his diggers to the rocking rhythm and croaking out some words about going to the hop.
“Going to the hop?” mused Seer. “What’s a hop?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s nothing like that in my visions,” Seer said, sounding surprised.
Tad couldn’t bring himself to confess that he’d turned into something freaky and horrible in his dream too.
The two sat in silence.
“When will I have more dreams?” Tad finally asked.
“When you need them, toad.”
Chapter 8
“IS IT OKAY TO PICK ANYTHING?” Taylor called to her grandmother, who was resting on the deck. It had been a month since Eve started chemotherapy, and it seemed like she was always tired.
Eve was a garden photographer. Lots of books and magazines had her photographs in them. Photography by Eve Murphy, West Des Moines, Iowa, it would say below the picture, which always made Taylor smile. These days her grandmother didn’t take many pictures. But still, Taylor decided she should probably ask before she wrecked a flower bed that Eve planned to photograph.
Taylor wanted the tall pink tulips—the ones that made her think of sunrise—for the May basket she was making her parents. They were at work, of course, even though it was Saturday.
“Go ahead,” Eve answered. “If the storm comes, they’ll get pounded down anyway.”
The air felt like a storm. There was no breeze and the sky was no color.
Taylor snipped seven tall pink tulips because she liked the number seven. The two remaining tulips stood among the heliotrope all by themselves. They looked strange and ugly. She glanced up at her grandmother.
Her grandmother’s hair was like the last two tulips. A little was still there after her first chemotherapy treatment a month ago, but it looked strange and disturbing. Taylor had held back tears earlier when Eve had said she was going to shave her head. I should get it over with, she’d said. Bald will look better than dead hanks. But Taylor had just shaken her head.
Now, feeling her grandmother’s gaze, Taylor bent down and cut the last two tulips. She took a deep breath. “It’s okay to shave your head,” she said, standing up and meeting her grandmother’s eyes.
After a moment, Eve nodded.
Taylor drifted down the hill to where the last of the phlox and a few daisies were blooming around the tumbledown shed. They would look pretty with the tulips.
People in hard hats had been around with stakes and surveying equipment, and she knew she was on somebody else’s property.
The purple phlox grew wild among the caved-in walls of the shed. When Taylor bent down to cut a stem, a toad bounced, making her sort of scream. They were so startling! She watched the little toad for a moment, frozen near the tip of her shoe.
When she looked up, she saw the man in the hard hat who had been walking around the pond. He was coming toward her.
She looked back at the house. Eve had gone inside.
She knew she wasn’t supposed to be over here. Maybe she was going to get in trouble. But she didn’t move, even though her heart was pounding.
“These are my grandmother’s flowers,” she said, when the man stopped, his hands on his hips, looking at her from behind dark glasses. He had an underbite, like a bulldog.
“You help yourself, hon,” he said, taking off his hard hat and wiping sweat with his shirtsleeve. “All this will be gone soon anyway. Does your grandmother live there?” He pointed to Eve’s house.
Taylor nodded.
“Well, it’s okay to pick the flowers today. But I’m going to be bringing some heavy equipment in here tomorrow, and then it won’t be safe to be over here. I need to get the woods down by the road bulldozed first. And then take this shed or whatever it was out of here. Then the big guys will be coming in to get rid of the pond, and this old place will be cleaned up. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, depending on the weather.”
His cheerfulness about destroying her world made her shake inside. Cleaned up? Did he think she was stupid and didn’t understand what was really happening?
He didn’t know a thing about how it felt to jump off the dock on a hot day. How the boards creaked as she ran the length of the dock. How the frame felt warm when she curled her toes against it to push off for a dive. How the cold currents tickled as she settled deeper and felt a fish brush her leg.
“There’s a groundhog who lives in there.” Taylor pointed to the tumbledown shed. Last Saturday, she and Kia had seen little groundhogs waddling through the grass. For the man, Taylor made her voice sound sweet. Sometimes grown-ups were suckers for animal stories. “She has three babies. The other day she stopped in my grandmother’s yard and we got to watch her nurse them.”
“Aw,” he said.
He was such a phony. Taylor wanted to kick his shins. “So what’s going to happen to that family?” she demanded.
“Well, I guess that old groundhog will just have to move,” he said cheerfully.
Taylor glared at him over the armful of phlox, then turned and stormed back up the hill.
“Remember, it won’t be safe to be over here after today!” he called. “Don’t want any accidents with the machinery.”
He couldn’t banish her from her own kingdom! She would protest! Her grandmother used to protest things.
She pounded up the steps. “Eve!” she cried. “He’s taking out the pond!”
Her grandmother came out with two glasses of iced tea and put them on the table. “Did he say that?”
Taylor nodded.
Her grandmother breathed a sound like somebody had just yanked out a tooth. And she shut her eyes for a minute. Then she slipped her arm around Taylor. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Taylor pushed back. “But he can’t do that!” Nobody had ever done such a thing to her. How could she have her summer swimming parties? And her winter broom hockey games? That’s who she was. She would be somebody else if she didn’t have the pond. She would be ordinary.
Taylor’s heart thudded. She didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
“Do you see what I see?” her grandmother finally asked.
Taylor sniffled. “What?” Not that she much cared.
Eve pointed to the deck railing.
Taylor didn’t see anything.
And then she did. She barely made him out against the scraggly sweet-pea vine from last year. The praying mantis was totally still, his pale sticklike body about five inches long.
Taylor bent down, hands on her knees, to look. His head was a flat triangle, and little rows of spikes ran along his arms.
“Isn’t he ugly?” Eve said.
“Hideous.”
“But their name means prophet in some languages. The legend is that they point the way for travelers.”
As if on cue, the mantis moved. His triangular head turned so he was looking at Taylor. And his body
was pointing straight at the pond, as if to say, Better get going, girl.
Chapter 9
TAD TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT the jewel growing in his head, though sometimes he felt it. He began staying up all night. He leaped into the toadly slick and slop of the mud, and sang until he was hoarse, knowing each sunrise might be the last for Tumbledown. He had not actually felt Rumbler yet, but sometimes his warts prickled with promise that Rumbler would come.
The weather was nice, with lots of warm rain to soak into a toad’s skin and lots of sun to hatch juicy bugs. The old toads said it was the best spring ever. But everybody saw the humans with big yellow pumpkins on their heads coming and going around Tumbledown.
“I didn’t know you were such a party toad,” Buuurk remarked one afternoon as they pulled chamomile that hung over the pea patch and twisted it into sweet-smelling wreaths for Anora and Shyly.
Tad tucked a violet into the wreath. There were lots of things Buuurk didn’t know. Buuurk didn’t know about Tad’s winter dreams or his talks with Seer.
Just then, something quivered under Tad’s belly. At first he thought it was a night crawler, and he cocked his tongue for the big zot! But it was bigger than a night crawler. Much bigger! The earth shook.
Tad looked at Buuurk, who hugged the ground. Shyly’s chamomile wreath quivered and blurred, and all of Toadville trembled. Tad shut his eyes and gripped the grass. Was Tumbledown going to end now, before he even had a chance to try to save it? But after what seemed long enough for the sun to rise and set, the rumbling finally stopped.
“You can open your eyes now, toad,” Buuurk said.
Tad did.
Buuurk’s warts were flat, and there was a pool of terror around him.
“Rumbler,” Tad whispered. “That was Rumbler.” Tad had finally heard him. And he had survived! “Buuurk,” he said, “I have to tell you something. In my winter sleep, I didn’t just close my eyes and open them again. I saw things happening. It scared the warts off me.” He was still trembling so much he could hardly croak.
The Hop Page 3
