there to regain balance, before running along a thickening branch to the trunk of that tree.
‘Don’t get carried away. This isn’t a game,’ Crag had warned him.
Chip had no idea what a game might be, but knew from the tone of his father’s voice that the pleasure he had felt must be sinful and therefore hidden, and repented for later.
The three had moved from tree to tree, travelling up the wind-line, the scent of strange squirrels getting stronger, until even Chip’s unpractised nose could detect it.
They had then come to some pine trees surrounding a large pool, where they had paused, watching the blue of the water fading to green in the gathering dusk. Chip was thinking, sinfully, that he had never seen such a beautiful place in all his life.
They had heard the sound of excited squirrel chatter from the trees on the other side of the water.
‘Follow me quietly,’ Crag had whispered. ‘Try not to show yourselves.’
They had circled the pool and come to a large pine. Here they had stopped and listened, concealed behind a screen of pine needles. Many other squirrels were sitting in the next tree, whilst others moved about from group to group.
Chip, quivering from head to foot, felt waves of the cared-for feeling radiating outwards from the assembled squirrels. What seemed to him to be the strangest thing of all was that they were touching each other as they sat. He felt a great urge to leap across and nestle in amongst them, but one look at his father’s stern face killed that idea.
‘Quiet,’ Crag said, keeping his voice low, and the three sat silently, watching and listening.
‘Once upon a time,’ Dandelion started, in the traditional way of all story-tellers, after the squirrels had settled down to listen, ‘when the world was very young and there were only two squirrels in it – Acorn and his life-mate, the beautiful Primrose – the Sun looked down and saw that the ground was a mess. No animal or bird ever bothered to hide its droppings, and smelly piles were everywhere.
‘In those days it rained only at night – just enough rain to water the plants and trees and to keep the pools and rivers full, but not the heavy rain needed to wash all the muck away. So the days were always bright and sunny for the creatures to enjoy.
‘The Sun let the animals and birds know that they must bury their droppings, so that the food they had once eaten could be used again by the plants, but all the creatures were too busy doing other things, and the world was so big it didn’t matter. And if all the other buried theirs it wouldn’t matter about their own. All the reasons under the Sun why others should do it – but not them.
‘Soon it got so that no animal could walk on the ground without treading in horrid things, so the Sun let it be known that if the world was not cleaned up, something would happen.
‘Each animal and bird looked at the mess and said to itself, ‘I only did a tiny part of that - others did most of it.’ So each did nothing and, as every creature thought exactly the same, the world stayed in a mess.
‘The one morning, when Acorn and Primrose woke up, it was raining. They looked out of their drey and the rain was pouring down. This was so unusual that Acorn said the Asking Kernel –
Oh Great Loving Sun,
Please explain to us squirrels –
Why is it raining?
He couldn’t add ‘in the daytime,’ which is what he meant, because only five word-sounds are allowed in the last line. But the Sun understood, and made the water at the foot of his tree flash and sparkle so that Acorn could see his droppings tainting the pureness, and he was ashamed.
‘It was too wet now to go down and bury them, so he went back into his drey and hid there with Primrose.
‘Now, I forgot to tell you that Acorn and Primrose were then living in a sequoia tree on the top of a great rock called Portland, and that was the highest tree in the whole world.’
Crag