It’s funny, thought John, how different the forest floor looked from down here. Of course, part of the issue is probably that he had never taken the trouble to look carefully at the forest floor before. He had always been focused on the trees, or the other things that were at eye-level. He had rarely taken the time to examine the ground carefully.
But now that he was on the ground, he was beginning to notice how rich it was with plants. This was a particularly green area of the forest, so the ground was covered with thick green grass. One top of the green grass, there were many fallen leaves. Some of them were older leaves that had turned brown. Many of them were freshly fallen green leaves--leaves that still looked healthy, but had been blown off of the trees by a gust of wind, or because of nibbling insects. And then there was the green moss everywhere. The moss covered the old branches and logs along the forest floor, and occasionally they would come across the remains of a whole fallen tree, which would be covered in moss and mushrooms.
They were starting to climb over one such fallen tree. It was long enough that it seemed quicker to climb over the trunk then it did to walk all around the fallen tree. John, as a human, used his hands to grab at the moss, and pulled himself up while trying to find secure footholds for his feet. Benjamin the mouse scrambled up quickly, and Jacob the frog was ascending up by a combination of climbing and hopping. As they were climbing, Benjamin suddenly stopped them. “Listen!” he said. “Can you hear it?”
“What is it?” asked John.
“It sounds like sniffing,” said Jacob the frog.
“It’s that fox again,” said Benjamin.
“What fox?” asked John.
“Tarquin,” said Benjamin. “He’s one of those foxes who occasionally eat small animals. He knows that it’s against the law of the forest, of course, but he will often gulp down a small mouse or two when he thinks no one is looking. All of us mice know to be careful of him.”
“Fortunately, he doesn’t like frogs so much,” said Jacob.
“You don’t know that for sure,” said Benjamin. “He might eat a frog. If he ever got the chance.”
The three of them became quiet so that they could listen to the air. John definitely heard it. There was some sort of sound, that was definitely a larger animal sniffing around. And they could hear the crinkling of leaves. But then, it became eerily quiet. John looked and saw that Benjamin the mouse was actually beginning to shake slightly.
And then, the fox’s head suddenly came up from the other side of the tree trunk. Benjamin let out a scream and scrambled off of the tree trunk. Jacob hopped down from the trunk. John stood where he was--too shocked by the sudden appearance of the fox to do anything.
The fox also appeared puzzled by John. It looked at him momentarily, as if he were not sure whether to ask him a question, or eat him. But then after a brief moment, he suddenly opened his mouth wide, and his jaws descended on John.
John was still standing frozen in a state of shock, not quite believing that this was really happening, until Benjamin the mouse (who had stopped running and turned around when he realized what was happening to John) scrambled back up the trunk and knocked into John, causing them both to fall down to the ground. When John hit the ground, this snapped him back to his senses. He stood up and started running with Benjamin the mouse.
The fox jumped over the tree trunk, and began chasing them, snapping his jaws as he went. Benjamin the mouse was able to scurry away quickly on his little mouse legs. But John, on his two human legs, was not able to run as fast.
Fortunately for John, the fox’s instincts attracted it first to the scurrying brown mouse. Foxes love to pounce on mice, and the fox knew from experience that mice always taste delicious. So the fox went after Benjamin. Benjamin disappeared into the fallen leaves. The fox crouched, then jumped and pounced onto the fallen leaves. It dug through the leaves quickly with its paws. There was a flash of brown, as Benjamin darted from the leaves into the nearby bushes. The fox then darted into the bushes, but the bushes were too thick, and Benjamin hid himself too well. The fox could not find him.
During this time, John was trying to run away as fast as his two legs would let him, even though the forest flow was so uneven, and so filled with all kinds of obstacles (roots, twigs, branches) that John found it difficult to run very fast.
“Climb up the tree, human,” yelled Jacob the frog, hopping close by. “Foxes can’t climb trees.”
“I can’t climb trees,” said John.
“You can climb this one,” said the frog. “It’s a gnome tree.”
John wasn’t sure what that meant, but he followed the hopping frog to one of the nearby tree trunks. John saw that the tree trunk was covered with flat mushrooms growing out of the trunk like little round plates--conks, John believed these types of tree mushrooms were called. Jacob started hopping up the mushrooms, and John realized the mushrooms were placed along the tree trunk so that they functioned almost like stairs. Sometimes you could step from one mushroom to the next. But just as often, the mushrooms were placed just far enough away from each other that you had to jump to get from one to the other. Jacob was already hopping up the tree ahead of John, and was moving quickly, almost halfway up the trunk already
John couldn’t hop quite as fast as Jacob, but he was able to jump up to the first mushroom, and by running and jumping, just barely make it to the second mushroom. He jumped to the third, and just missed it, but his hands were able to grab the edge of the mushroom, and then he pulled the rest of his body up behind him. Tarquin the fox had found them again, and was down below at the base of the trunk. John pulled his body onto the third mushroom just as Tarquin was nipping at his feet and trying to catch him, but John managed to pull himself up to the mushroom. He was now almost out of Tarquin’s reach. Tarquin jumped up from the ground but jaws couldn’t quite reach John.
John followed Jacob’s jumping, and got to the next mushroom. Now he was completely out of reach of the fox down below.
For the first time since the fox had attacked, John began to notice how hard his heart was beating. But as he sat on the mushroom and enjoyed his place of safety, he began to notice the rest of the tree. It was covered with mushrooms growing out of the side of the trunk. They stuck out from the tree like little round half discs. Actually, John remembered, he had read about these types of mushrooms once before in one of his books. They were called conks, or polypores formally. They grew out from tree trunks. John thought he remembered reading somewhere that they usually indicated rot or sickness in the tree, and yet this tree looked perfectly healthy.
Jacob seemed to guess what John was thinking. “These mushrooms aren’t completely natural,” he said. “This is a tree that’s agreed to be a gnome home, so the mushrooms have been put here. The tree agreed to let them grow. They form a kind of ladder for the gnomes to climb up the tree.
John looked up, and indeed the whole trunk, going all the way up, was covered with these mushrooms. It was possible for him to jump from mushroom to mushroom and go all the way up. In fact, in some places, the mushrooms looked quite close together. He might not even have to jump.
Tarquin the fox still was waiting for them down below, so there was nowhere to go but up. And besides, John was curious as to what could be at the top of the tree.
As they started climbing up the mushrooms, they met Benjamin the mouse, who explained to them that he had run up the other side of the tree. Benjamin, being a mouse, could actually run up and down the tree trunk fairly easily just using his little mouse claws. Jacob, who was more of a ground frog than a tree frog, relied on the mushrooms just as much as John did as they climbed up. Jacob could hop from one mushroom to another easier than John, but actually as they went further and further up the tree, the mushrooms got closer and closer together, and John had to do a lot less jumping.
John had never really considered it before, but a tree really is a whole eco-system unto itself. As they climbed up and up, they passed some bird nests. Some of the birds were friendly, so they stopped to talk. John even ventured to some of the birds if they could fly him back to the castle, but these were small birds, most of whom were too small to lift John. (Small as John was, he was still too big for the smaller birds.) And the other birds said that they couldn’t possibly leave their eggs.
A whole colony of ants also lived in the tree, and were climbing up and down. They were very busy, and not very talkative, other than occasionally issuing exclamations like, “Watch your step. Coming through. Don’t step on us please.”
Beetles crawled in and out of the bark of the tree, and a few of them stopped to say hello before they flew off.
And then, once they got up the trunk of the tree, they got into the leaves. And there were all sorts of creatures running around in the leafy branches. It was like a little village up in the air. There were more birds and birds’ nests. There were little brown squirrels and red squirrels and chipmunks. And there were even little fairies darting around.
Actually, they weren’t quite fairies. They were much smaller than the fairies that John had met before in fairy land. These, John recognized, were woodland sprites--small little creatures, no bigger than the leaf on one of the trees, but looking just like a miniature human, except with wings. They were darting all around the tree leaves as well. Some of them were running playfully, running down one branch and leaping to another. Some of them were flying about on their small wings.
There was so much activity up here in the tree top, that John
What was also noticeable to John was that the branches of the other trees intertwined with this one, making it hard sometimes to tell where one tree ended and another began, at least as far as the branches were concerned. And since the forest was nothing but a lot of trees densely packed together, it was easy to imagine, John thought, that these networks of branches went on forever. A sort of massive network of roads in the sky for squirrels, sprites, and the rest of the tree creatures.
Although Jacob had said this was a “gnome tree”, there were no gnomes directly at the top. “It would be too obvious,” Jacob explained, “for the gnomes to put their houses at the top of the same tree where they built their ladder. To find the gnome houses, we have to travel through the leaf and branch network. They usually keep their houses hidden among a cluster of leaves, so as to be difficult to find. But if we look long enough, we’ll find them.”
“I thought you said gnomes lived underground in tunnels hidden by mushroom clumps,” said John.
“They have both underground dwellings and tree-top dwellings,” said Benjamin. “Their main centers are underground, but they also have houses in the trees.”
Benjamin the mouse suddenly became very nervous, and John noticed a snake was sliding along the branch next to them. “Good day,” said the snake, politely but coldly.
“Good day,” said Benjamin, equally coldly.
Jacob the frog also looked uncomfortable.
After the snake had slithered past, Benjamin remarked, “He wouldn’t dare try to eat us with everyone watching. But if he ever caught us up in a tree all alone, then we’d be in trouble.”
“We frogs don’t like snakes either,” said Jacob. “Most of them follow the rules of the forest, and don’t eat other animals. But a few of them don’t. And if you ever meet one of them in the dark, you won’t know which ones are which until it’s too late.”
“It’s like a whole little animal town up here,” said John. “So many animals and sprites running around in the trees. I never imagined this.”
“Let’s see if we can find any of the gnome houses,” said Jacob. “They might be able to help you.”
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