Read Summerland for Free Online Page B

bends and hairpin turns, because of all the zigs and zags in the limbs and boughs and branches of this Tree I'm telling you about, it so happens that two leaves can end up lying right beside each other, separated by what amounts, for a gifted shadowtail like myself, to a single bound. And yet, if you were to follow your way back along the twigs and branches, back to the trunk, you would find that these two leaves actually grow from two separate great limbs of the Tree. Though near neighbors, they lie in two totally different Worlds. Can you picture that, piglet? Can you see how the four Worlds are all tangled up in each other like the forking, twisting branches of a tree?"
    "You're saying you can scamper from one world to another?"
    "No, I can leap. And take you with me in the bargain," said the werefox. "And the name of this World is the Summerlands."
    It was the Summerland Ethan knew; yet it was different, too. The plain metal bleachers and chain fences of Jock MacDougal Field at the far side of the meadow had been replaced with an elegant structure, at once sturdy and ornate, carved from a pale yellow, almost white substance that Ethan could not at first identify. It was a neat little box of a building, with long arched galleries through which he could see that it was open to the sky. It looked a little like the Taj Mahal, and a little like a big old Florida hotel, towers and grandstands and pavilions. There was an onion-shaped turret at each corner, and along the tops of the galleries rows of long snaky pennants snapped in the breeze.
    "It's a ballpark," Ethan said. "A tiny one." It was no bigger than a Burger King restaurant.
    "The Neighbors are not a large people," Cutbelly said. "As you will soon see."
    "The Neighbors," Ethan said. "Are they human?"
    "The Neighbors? No, sir. Not in the least. A separate creation, same as me."
    "They aren't aliens ?" Ethan was looking around for possible explanations for Cutbelly. It had occurred to him that his new friend might have evolved on some distant world of grass where it might behoove you to work your way up from something like a fox.
    "And what is an alien, tell me that?"
    "A creature from another world. You know, from outer space."
    "As I thought I had made clear, there are but four Worlds," Cutbelly said. "Though one of them, I should mention, is lost to us forever. Sealed off by a trick of Coyote. Yours, including everything that you and your kind call 'the universe,' is just one of the three remaining ones, though if I may say, it's my personal favorite of the lot. Just now you and I are crossing into another one, the Summerlands. And this is where the Neighbors most definitely dwell. Now as I was saying, they are not very grand. In fact they are quite literally Little People."
    " Little People ?" Ethan said. "Wait. Okay. The Neighbors. They are. Aren't they? They're fair—"
    "Fair Folk !" Cutbelly cut him off. "Yes, indeed, that is an old name for them. Ferishers is the name they give themselves, or rather the name that they'll consent to have you call them."
    "And they play baseball."
    "Endlessly." With a roll of his eyes, Cutbelly threw himself down in the grass and weeds, of which he began gathering great handfuls and stuffing them into the bowl of his pipe.
    "In that little building over there."
    "Thunderbird Park," Cutbelly said. "''The Jewel of the Chinook League.' When there was a league. It's a drafty old barracks, if you ask me."
    "What is i t…what is it, uh, made of?" Even as he said it the thought strayed once more into his mind: human bones .
    "Ivory," Cutbelly said.
    "Whale?"
    "Not whale."
    "Walrus?"
    "Nor walrus, besides."
    " Elephant ?"
    "And where would anyone get hold of that much elephant ivory around here? No, that ballpark, piglet, was carved from giant's ivory. From the bones of Skookum John, who made the mistake of trying to raid this neighborhood one day back about 1743." He sighed, and took a contemplative puff on his pipe. "Ah, me," he said.