The intertwined network of branches along the treetops seemed to go on forever. The squirrels ran and jumped from branch to branch with ease, but John walked a lot slower and more cautiously. Some of the branches they walked down were broad, and easy to walk on. But some of them were narrow, or were rounded and easy to slip on. John knew that his human legs were not fitted to running and jumping on tree branches the way that the squirrels were.
Benjamin the mouse, whose small body and low center of gravity was much more suited towards tree climbing, tried to convince John it was okay. “Don’t worry so much,” he said. “If you fall down, you just grab onto the branch. You won’t fall off. And even if you do, there are branches below that you can grab before you fall all the way to the ground.”
However, John noticed that Jacob the frog was also taking a cautious attitude towards walking on the tree branch.
As they continued walking down the branches, John also noticed that not all trees were equally populated. The tree they had first climbed up had looked like a small village once they got into its leafy branches, but as they continued through the branches, and crossed over to other trees, John began to realize that some of them were major roads, and some of them were apparently minor roads.
At one point, they were walking down a branch that brought them next to a hole in a tree trunk. Suddenly, a big hairy spider sprung out from the hole. Benjamin the mouse screamed and ran away. Jacob the frog turned around and started hurriedly hopping in the other direction.
John was so shocked that he lost his footing and fell down on his butt. The spider came rapidly towards him. “What are you doing?” John yelled out. “We don’t want to fight you.”
“Small creatures like you who are foolish enough to come near my home are fair game for my sustenance,” said the spider.
The spider pounced forwards, and John didn’t have time to stand up, but he rolled over to avoid the spider’s fangs. John rolled right off of the branch, but just like Benjamin the mouse had said, there were branches below, and as John fell he found himself bouncing off leaves and twigs below. He grabbed at some of the leafy twigs below to keep from falling to the ground. John’s feet dangling in the air, but his hands had managed to grab hold of some of the small twigs.
John was still pulling himself up when the spider jumped down from the higher branch and also landed on the lower branch. The spider started running towards him. Jacob the frog jumped down and landed on the spider’s head, and then quickly jumped off again before the spider could strike. This distracted the spider long enough for John to pull himself up onto the branch. The spider was now running towards him again. John turned and ran the other way. He was running full speed now--he no longer had time to worry about slipping and falling on the branch. His only thought was to get away from the spider.
The spider, however, on his eight legs, could run much faster than John, and was gaining on him. John knew it would be only a few more seconds before the spider would pounce on him.
There were no more lower branches for John to fall down to now. If he jumped off of this branch, it would be all the way down to the bottom of the forest floor.
John tripped across a stick that was lying on the tree branch. He fell flat on his face. John turned over just in time to see the spider’s fangs coming down on him. Without really thinking about what he was doing, John picked up the stick he had tripped over, and pushed it up against the spider. It stopped the spider from lowering his fangs into John. John then pushed the spider back with the same stick, and got to his feet. The spider hissed, and came at John again, but John hit at the spider with the stick. His hits made the spider angrier, but John was able to push the spider back using the stick. He kept hitting the spider, and also thrusting the stick into the spider to push it backwards. However the spider was too big for John to knock it off the branch completely with the stick.
At this point, Jacob the frog came back to help. He came bouncing up from behind, and jumped on the spider’s head, then he kept bouncing up and down. The spider was enraged, but it couldn’t reach Jacob with its fangs because Jacob was on top of its head. So the spider reared up and buckled back and forth to try to throw Jacob off.
Benjamin the mouse also ran up. At one point, when the spider reared up on its back legs, Benjamin ran into it at full speed to try to knocked the spider off of the branch. John also joined in with his stick at this point, and the spider was sent falling off the branch. It screamed in fury as it fell down.
John watched the spider as it fell to the ground. “I never wanted to kill it,” he said sadly.
“Kill it?” said Benjamin. “We didn’t kill it. That spider has a hard exoskeleton. It will hit the ground and just bounce up again. It will be fine.”
“Which reminds me,” said Jacob. “We need to start moving. We don’t want to still be on this branch when it gets back up here.”
“Yes, let’s move,” said Benjamin. “By the way, where did you find that stick?”
“It was just here on the branch,” John said.
They all looked at the stick together. “This is strange,” said Jacob. “Look at it. It’s obviously been carved from a bigger piece of wood.”
“This is a walking stick,” said Benjamin. “It must have been made by the gnomes. One of them was passing through this way and must have dropped it.”
“Possibly when he got surprised by the spider,” John guessed.
“It means we can’t be too far from the gnome homes,” said Jacob. “Let’s keep looking. And let’s keep moving so that we’re not here when the spider comes back up.”
No comments:
Post a Comment