Dear Readers,
I am satisfactorily drowsy after writing this final chapter, and so to, you will find, are Timothy and Lisa, and, in fact, the Grenobles themselves. But I do not doubt, and I think you cannot, that after all are sufficiently rested (how long that will be I cannot say), they will wake up and have another adventure together.
Timothy, meanwhile, skipped, leapt, dropped, lowered himself, and, at times, fell down the stairs. He arrived at the next door unaware that Lisa was had stopped following him. Looking inside he saw a little kitchen. In he stepped, and turned all the way around, staring up at open, wooden shelves. A beautiful, wild window frame was carved into the wall, but there was no glass, only glowing amber lighting the room, showing up wisps of smoke and steam from the stove. Pots and pans hung from the wall; a deep, Earthy smell, like fresh bread but ten times better, wafted from the oven; and in the cabinets were all manner of roots, petals, grinders engraved with labels, and brown packages tied with rough yellow twine.
As the smell reached Timothy's empty stomach he sat down in the middle of the paneled floor and cried.
The Grenoble seized two moss gloves, dipped them into a basin of water, flung open the over, letting out more of the smell and a brilliant glow, and pulled out two trays, the mitts hissing and spluttering. With a flourish it carried them over Timothy's head, dripping water onto his bangs, to the only open counter and set them down on wicker coasters.
The spluttering and splashing and, most importantly, the trays of food, had stopped Timothy's eyes. He stood behind the Grenoble's leg, looking from the counter's edge, which he could not quite see over, to the Grenoble above him, which was busy doing to the food whatever mothers and fathers and Grenobles do to food while they make you wait too long before you can eat it. Finally, it raised a deep brown, almost-black colored muffin to its mouth, smacked a bite out of it, and closed its eyes.
Timothy let out a quiet whine.
"It is ready," whispered the Grenoble through dark crumbs, and handed one to Timothy. Timothy, now that he had his food, took his time examining it, and picked off a few crumbs to fall to the ground. Then he bit in. It's texture was that of rich wheat bread, and it tasted of freshness, grains, sugar-glaze, and birthdays. Then the Grenoble took from the other tray what looked something like the play clay snake Timothy had made the day before. Timothy examined this even more carefully (for he had taken a bite of the snake, and it had not pleased him); it was brown, flakey, crisp, and firm on the outside, and curled all around. He bit it; it crunched all the way through and filled his mouth with a strong taste, like after he had eaten six ginger-snaps at once when no one was looking, and started crying because of it. This time he did not cry at first, because he was getting to be a big boy and like spicy things. He took bite after bite, and then ran around the room in circles, tears pouring down his face, but laughing hard even as he wailed with the strength of the root. The Grenoble did something else on the counter, and then carried two packages with steam coming from them over to one of the cabinets. Putting these away, it rang a little triangle and stepped back out onto the stairs. The light coming down the trunk was reddish, like that at sunset, and Timothy yawned. Lisa came out of the room up the stairs, also yawning, and stretching, with the other Grenoble. The brother and sister took each other’s hands; Timothy thought Lisa smelled like syrup; Lisa thought Timothy smelled like gingersnaps.
"Food," said Timothy, pointing into the kitchen.
"Hmm," yawned Lisa, "books," she flung her hand behind her to indicate which way.
"Now, we..." she began to say to the Grenobles, but then she noticed that they had already begun to descend again.
"Come on!" she giggled, remembering a part in the book she had just read where the children found a cave on the estate and explored it.
They passed many more quaint little rooms with knothole doors. Timothy found it all quite ordinary, and nothing to compare with how tired he was, or how good the food had tasted, and Lisa marveled at how perfect and pretty it all was. There were several sitting rooms, with various types of lamps and chairs and tables, and writing rooms with desks and almost-empty shelves, old yellowed papers, quill pens, and ink wells, and closed doors, and dusty pantries, and rooms that were only a tangle of vines or branches, and two rooms that must have been the Grenoble's bedrooms, for inside of them were round beds of leaves and moss and dirt. Instead of cups and baths were little springs bubbling up from the floor, and foresty mobiles hung from the ceilings and circled slowly, casting shadows of leaves and creepers on the walls.
when they came to these two doors, the Grenobles yawned, stretching their limbs so that they squeaked and creaked, and opening their mouths wider and wider, so that wind sighed straight down the stairs, sleepy, pulling downwards, making Timothy's eyes sag.
Then they closed their mouths so quickly that Timothy jumped to see them disappearing into their faces.
The two Grenobles stood by their bedroom doors, crossing their arms behind their backs.
"You have made us be home," they said, "goodnight." Then they each hugged Timothy and Lisa in treeish embraces, which felt like throwing yourself against a young mossy tree that gives way under your weight so that it does not hurt. Then they hugged each other, wind whispering about, went each into his room, and closed perfectly shaped doors on the knotholes. The light from the sunset was fading from above. Timothy shivered.
"Come back?" he asked the door in front of him.
It cracked open, and the Grenoble poked its head out, a nightcap on its head, the burr that tipped it hanging in front of its face.
"Go to the bottom; that is the way home for you," it said softly, and closed the door again.
Lisa looked down. She could see only one more light below them, and no more rooms. She looked up. It was getting dark; she could see the vaguest tint of red far up at the top of the submerged trunk.
"Oh, Timothy, our shoes are up there; we had better go get them," she said, and then stood still and sighed wistfully. Timothy's footsteps retreated from her hearing down the tunnel. By the time she understood the sounds, he was out of sight below her.
"Timothy!" she hissed, trying not to disturb their hosts. "Ah!" she bounded down the stairs after him. There was a wooden candlestick with an amber candle glowing in it on the wall; she took it carefully as she went past ("I'll return it later," she said to herself).
Timothy came to the bottom of the stairs and ran into a closed door. He pushed and shoved on the handle; he even growled at it and banged his head on it, but it would not budge. Turning back he found himself at the bottom of the tree trunk on a dirt floor covered with leaves. Lisa leaned down from the stairs not far above, lit up by her candle.
"Wisa, door won't go!" remonstrated Timothy, thrusting an accusative finger at the knothole. Lisa was a big sister, and Timothy knew that when she wanted to she could be very helpful with doors (only she didn't want to be helpful often).
But she could not budge this door.
"Open!" said Timothy, annoyed that she was not cooperating with him. He was hungry again, and tired, and cross. When he was hungry and tired and cross Lisa should not be so silly as to not open doors.
"It's locked," she said, beginning to realize they were alone in the dark. The shadows cast from her steady amber candle shivered inexplicably, and Lisa took Timothy's hand (in case he was scared) before turning to survey the rest of their surroundings. Across from them was an opening beneath the stairs. She stepped to it with her candle and peered through, Timothy shrinking back a little so that she had to stretch out both arms to get the candle to the opening.
A shallow gust blew through the doorway, but the amber glowed brighter in its presence. She could see trees of a forest, and, now that she looked so hard, some lights. She pulled Timothy through the doorway, and, turning back, saw that they had just stepped out of an ugly gash in the side of an oak. The sun was setting behind the tree. Dogs barked from the lights.
"Home. Come on!" cried Timothy, and yanked Lisa towards the lights, so that she dropped her candle. It hissed in a puddle, and when she picked up what she thought was it, she found only an oddly shaped branch in her hand. "Come home!" said Timothy, and carefully led his sister through the forest towards the sound of the barking. Soon they were trudging through the backyard. Timothy saw the rest of the family sitting down around the meal, and the siblings dropped each other's hands to run up the back porch steps and inside.
"Play wit' 'nobles!" yelled Timothy as his mother served him.
"What's that, Timothy?" asked his father.
"He said we played with the Grenobles," said Lisa somberly, looking down at her plate. "They...they...we played a game with them...a dancing game with the wind."
"Oh," said her father.
"Funny dancing, fell in wa-water, funny feets!" Timothy clapped his spoon in his hands.
"Oh!” laughed his mother, spooning him out a bowl of soup.
"I'm sorry I got my dress dirty...oh!" said Lisa, for she had just at that moment realized that her shoes were back on her feet. She stuck her head under the table to see Timothy kicking his feet -- shoes and all -- against his high chair.
"Lisa, what are you doing?" asked her father. She sat up quickly, grazing her head on the table and making a leaf fall from her hair.
"Making sure Timothy didn't loose his shoes."
"Did he?"
"No."
"Want to play wit' 'nobles," pouted Timothy as he saw his mother approaching with the soup. He wished he could have another of the muffins, or one of the spicy snakes.
"It's dark now, Timothy; they probably had to go home, too," said his mother, sitting down beside his high chair. "You will have to play with them again later. Now, eat up."
She blew on a spoonful of soup.
It spun and danced under her breath.
Timothy giggled.
Showing posts with label Timothy and the Grenobles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Timothy and the Grenobles. Show all posts
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Timothy and the Grenobles, Part III
Dear Readers,
It is finished. However, due to the wise advice of my dear younger sister, I have split it into two more episodes, only one of which you will find below. I hope that this will allow you to read and digest it bitesize, and not be so bored (at least not all at one sitting), as you might have been had I published it all at once.
The Grenobles caught each other's hands and twirled together; the glade was filled with a singing wind that once again tossed Lisa's hair up over her head, and showered her with leaves.
"Timothy!" she called loudly, half to test the strength of the wind's song. It drowned her out completely, even though it did not overwhelm her ears. The Grenobles broke their grasp and danced past her, careening, gusts of wind laughing for them. One cart wheeled from the land into the trunk, and down the stairs out of sight. The other leapt on top of the trunk, straddling it, with legs splayed so wide that Lisa gasped, lest it slip and fall down the center of the stairs.
"Come home," it whispered from all around her in the wind.
"That is not my home," she said back, and though her voice was drowned out, it seemed to hear her, for it replied.
"It is your way home."
Lisa did not consider too long, for the sun was blotted out by clouds, and a wall of rain drummed in from the forest toward her, soaking Timothy's moss-covered tree and making the brook leap up from its place as it approached. She stepped into the tree-trunk, ducking beneath the Grenoble's legs, and down until only her head was above the trunk. The water danced and rippled just beneath her eyes; the wind swept her hair about still, but her dress was not touched by rain or wind.
The Grenoble snapped its legs together, grabbed the side of the trunk with one arm, and swung down to stand on a step above her. Lisa turned and climbed down the steps to bring her head out of the wind and rain. Holding onto the twisting, bark-covered rail that ran along the inner wall of the trunk, she leaned over the center, and saw many soft lights, the other Grenoble descending gracefully, and Timothy just in front of it, now leaping with both legs drawn up at the knees, from one step to the next.
"We are coming home," sighed the Grenoble behind her in its normal voice.
"Excuse me," said Lisa, not wishing to offend it by changing the subject when it was discussing something so important to it, "Timothy!"
He turned, leaning back against the wall of the trunk, still making humming sounds to accompany his descent.
"Don't get too far ahead, and listen to the Grenoble. You're in its house. Should we take off our shoes? They are wet," she said, turning back to the Grenoble beside her.
"Yes," it said, and, turning back to sit down and take her shoes off, Lisa saw Timothy and the Grenoble ahead of her going into a hole in the wall of the trunk, from which the first of the glowing lights seem to be emerging. Coming to the hole, which was actually a giant knothole-door, Lisa bent over and entered the room within. It would not have been large in her own house, but the glowing light, that came from a vein of sap running down the wall, put shadows in the corners, and in such a small house, with such small people, the room seemed very large indeed. Leaning against one wall was a stove, which the first Grenoble opened and tossed in glowing crystals of sap, licking its fingers with a thin tongue that was deep red striped with brown tree-rings, like the wood on Lisa's old dresser drawers. The stove glowed bright in a moment, and warmth poured in, for the tree was cool and moist inside. The other Grenoble, meanwhile, had approached a stand on another wall, and pulled down four pairs of slippers, covered with a light tan bark that curled and peeled up, and filled with soft, spongy moss. Then they all sat down on a bench along the center wall, took off their shoes.
"Funny feets!" chortled Timothy approvingly, and he leapt down, shoes half off, to examine the Grenobles' feet.
"Feet," muttered Lisa, leaning back and struggling to pull her shoes off.
The Grenobles' calves were smooth and a little green, under moss stockings. As they took these off they wiggled stubby, knotty toes, each toe having a young bud atop it for a nail, and each of their four feet having a different number of toes. Timothy sat down on the floor, pulled off his shoes, and tossed them back over his shoulder. Then he did the same with his socks. He leaned back, holding himself up on his arms, and wiggled his own toes in the air to compare them with the Grenobles.
After this, they all slipped on their slippers, picked up their shoes and socks (Timothy only after Lisa told him to twice) and put them on the now-empty shelf before continuing down the stairs.
Timothy tried walking down sideways, looking up to grin and laugh at the Grenoble above him, but after he saw too many glares from Lisa competing with the Grenoble's quiet, mouthless smile, he turned and hurried on. Timothy and the first Grenoble passed the next door without even looking in, but Lisa caught a glimpse of bookshelves as she passed, and stopped with a sigh.
"Timothy, wait!" she called, and stuck her head through the door for a better look. Through sap-filled cracks in the wall streamed in the light and warmth of a summer day, but outside of the beams was the cool of late fall. A rocking chair and a couch of velvet pillows, one deep brown, the other deep green, sat in the room, and within the walls were curving bookshelves and hundreds of books. The Grenoble came in behind her, picked up pipe, book, and reading glasses from a stand, lit the pipe, sat down in the rocking chair, and opened the book with a modest creak. A sweet aroma like maple syrup filled the room with the pipe's thin smoke, and Lisa forgot Timothy and began circling the room, head sideways, looking not for a good book, for they were all good, but for the best book for that day.
Finally, she settled on a book about an afternoon spent by a group of dear friends on a grand estate, and fell slowly into the couch's palm, watching the dust rise to be caught in the shafts of light. The Grenoble sucked on its pipe, and turned to eye her over its reading glasses. She could not help but laugh at those beautiful and strange eyes staring at her over the oak frames.
"What are you reading?" she asked to cover her laughter.
"The latest volume upon the pine style of dance. It is quite modern; I am not sure if I and my brother will ever learn it, but it is fascinating. See," it said, turning the book to show a diagram that looked like a piece of Timothy's pencil scribblings, only marked with numbers in a good hand, "the tributary gusts are used to surround the wells, and gradually lift them. There's some thought as to popping them and showering down the forest carpet; quite tricky, you don't know," it chuckled.
"Oh," said Lisa, and hid behind her own book, which was much more suited to her tastes.
It is finished. However, due to the wise advice of my dear younger sister, I have split it into two more episodes, only one of which you will find below. I hope that this will allow you to read and digest it bitesize, and not be so bored (at least not all at one sitting), as you might have been had I published it all at once.
The Grenobles caught each other's hands and twirled together; the glade was filled with a singing wind that once again tossed Lisa's hair up over her head, and showered her with leaves.
"Timothy!" she called loudly, half to test the strength of the wind's song. It drowned her out completely, even though it did not overwhelm her ears. The Grenobles broke their grasp and danced past her, careening, gusts of wind laughing for them. One cart wheeled from the land into the trunk, and down the stairs out of sight. The other leapt on top of the trunk, straddling it, with legs splayed so wide that Lisa gasped, lest it slip and fall down the center of the stairs.
"Come home," it whispered from all around her in the wind.
"That is not my home," she said back, and though her voice was drowned out, it seemed to hear her, for it replied.
"It is your way home."
Lisa did not consider too long, for the sun was blotted out by clouds, and a wall of rain drummed in from the forest toward her, soaking Timothy's moss-covered tree and making the brook leap up from its place as it approached. She stepped into the tree-trunk, ducking beneath the Grenoble's legs, and down until only her head was above the trunk. The water danced and rippled just beneath her eyes; the wind swept her hair about still, but her dress was not touched by rain or wind.
The Grenoble snapped its legs together, grabbed the side of the trunk with one arm, and swung down to stand on a step above her. Lisa turned and climbed down the steps to bring her head out of the wind and rain. Holding onto the twisting, bark-covered rail that ran along the inner wall of the trunk, she leaned over the center, and saw many soft lights, the other Grenoble descending gracefully, and Timothy just in front of it, now leaping with both legs drawn up at the knees, from one step to the next.
"We are coming home," sighed the Grenoble behind her in its normal voice.
"Excuse me," said Lisa, not wishing to offend it by changing the subject when it was discussing something so important to it, "Timothy!"
He turned, leaning back against the wall of the trunk, still making humming sounds to accompany his descent.
"Don't get too far ahead, and listen to the Grenoble. You're in its house. Should we take off our shoes? They are wet," she said, turning back to the Grenoble beside her.
"Yes," it said, and, turning back to sit down and take her shoes off, Lisa saw Timothy and the Grenoble ahead of her going into a hole in the wall of the trunk, from which the first of the glowing lights seem to be emerging. Coming to the hole, which was actually a giant knothole-door, Lisa bent over and entered the room within. It would not have been large in her own house, but the glowing light, that came from a vein of sap running down the wall, put shadows in the corners, and in such a small house, with such small people, the room seemed very large indeed. Leaning against one wall was a stove, which the first Grenoble opened and tossed in glowing crystals of sap, licking its fingers with a thin tongue that was deep red striped with brown tree-rings, like the wood on Lisa's old dresser drawers. The stove glowed bright in a moment, and warmth poured in, for the tree was cool and moist inside. The other Grenoble, meanwhile, had approached a stand on another wall, and pulled down four pairs of slippers, covered with a light tan bark that curled and peeled up, and filled with soft, spongy moss. Then they all sat down on a bench along the center wall, took off their shoes.
"Funny feets!" chortled Timothy approvingly, and he leapt down, shoes half off, to examine the Grenobles' feet.
"Feet," muttered Lisa, leaning back and struggling to pull her shoes off.
The Grenobles' calves were smooth and a little green, under moss stockings. As they took these off they wiggled stubby, knotty toes, each toe having a young bud atop it for a nail, and each of their four feet having a different number of toes. Timothy sat down on the floor, pulled off his shoes, and tossed them back over his shoulder. Then he did the same with his socks. He leaned back, holding himself up on his arms, and wiggled his own toes in the air to compare them with the Grenobles.
After this, they all slipped on their slippers, picked up their shoes and socks (Timothy only after Lisa told him to twice) and put them on the now-empty shelf before continuing down the stairs.
Timothy tried walking down sideways, looking up to grin and laugh at the Grenoble above him, but after he saw too many glares from Lisa competing with the Grenoble's quiet, mouthless smile, he turned and hurried on. Timothy and the first Grenoble passed the next door without even looking in, but Lisa caught a glimpse of bookshelves as she passed, and stopped with a sigh.
"Timothy, wait!" she called, and stuck her head through the door for a better look. Through sap-filled cracks in the wall streamed in the light and warmth of a summer day, but outside of the beams was the cool of late fall. A rocking chair and a couch of velvet pillows, one deep brown, the other deep green, sat in the room, and within the walls were curving bookshelves and hundreds of books. The Grenoble came in behind her, picked up pipe, book, and reading glasses from a stand, lit the pipe, sat down in the rocking chair, and opened the book with a modest creak. A sweet aroma like maple syrup filled the room with the pipe's thin smoke, and Lisa forgot Timothy and began circling the room, head sideways, looking not for a good book, for they were all good, but for the best book for that day.
Finally, she settled on a book about an afternoon spent by a group of dear friends on a grand estate, and fell slowly into the couch's palm, watching the dust rise to be caught in the shafts of light. The Grenoble sucked on its pipe, and turned to eye her over its reading glasses. She could not help but laugh at those beautiful and strange eyes staring at her over the oak frames.
"What are you reading?" she asked to cover her laughter.
"The latest volume upon the pine style of dance. It is quite modern; I am not sure if I and my brother will ever learn it, but it is fascinating. See," it said, turning the book to show a diagram that looked like a piece of Timothy's pencil scribblings, only marked with numbers in a good hand, "the tributary gusts are used to surround the wells, and gradually lift them. There's some thought as to popping them and showering down the forest carpet; quite tricky, you don't know," it chuckled.
"Oh," said Lisa, and hid behind her own book, which was much more suited to her tastes.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Timothy and the Grenobles, Part II
Dear Readers,
It is continued, but not yet finished. I do not apologize for putting it down, for tonight has become tomorrow, and I must sleep.
"Well, which way is it?" asked Lisa, for she was an educated young lady, and knew well-enough that the first part of getting somewhere is going in the right direction.
"Which ever way you go, so long as, at the end of it, you are home," they replied.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, the same way she always wanted to when she had to pretend there were numbers that were less than none.
"If I go that way, I will go home," she said, pointing over her shoulder into the woods, "but it will not be your home."
"How can it be yours and not ours?" they asked.
"Take off!" commanded Timothy, pointing at the boot of the Grenoble that stood beside him.
"We cannot," they replied. "We cannot take off our boots until we are home, and," they said, their voices dropping to the taut gust of a winter's wind through the trees, "we cannot go home until you do."
"Let's go home, Timothy," said Lisa, sadly, for she felt very sorry for the Grenobles, though she could not understand why they should have such difficulty.
"Take off!" He shouted, and, standing, he whacked at the boot. The Grenoble watched him silently.
"They say they can when we get home. It's almost dinnertime anyway. Let's go home."
"Take off at home?"
"Yes!"
"Come home!" he called to the Grenobles, and, as if he were sailing into a gale, he plunged into the woods.
A burst of wind followed him, as Lisa clambered up the bank. As she too plunged through the woods the wind twisted and rippled her dress, and she loved the cool breeze in the warm, damp air. Timothy stopped to watch a line of ants climb a highway set deep in a crack in the bark of a venerable pine and looked back to make sure his companions were following. Lisa checked as well, and saw, to her surprise, that the Grenobles were skipping, sprinting, twirling through the woods. One moment, they were walking soberly straight ahead. A burst of wind caught them; and with their arms held arched behind them like those of a ballerina, they too burst forward. The wind changed direction, dipping to the left, and the Grenobles swayed and dipped as well. The wind swirled, spinning Lisa's hair around her forehead, and the Grenobles twirled with it, limbs acting out the parts of eddies and currents. Timothy let out a cry of joy for he knew not what.
For when he looked at the Grenobles, he saw the wind.
Both Grenobles stopped, and Timothy began again his homeward romp. So still they stood, their limbs rustling for a moment longer than they moved, and so still was the wind, that Lisa turned to look over her shoulder at them.
"Have you remembered the way home?"
"We have found him," they replied in whispers. Then, all at once, they leapt forward, flying through the air, and, though she could barely see for the torrent of wind that stung her eyes, hurled leaves every direction at once, and threw her into a run towards home, she thought that their legs still stretched below them all the way to the ground, and they were running, but perhaps it was only the forest floor caught up in the wake of the wind beneath them.
She knew then that they were not mimicking the wind with their dance. The woods all about were still, until they moved. There was no rush in the distance. The wind mimicked them, or perhaps, stranger still, Lisa thought they could be making it themselves.
On she ran, and the sober thoughts in her mind and on her face melted when she heard Timothy squealing with delight as the wind caught him. She laughed as well, and her laugh was small and weak compared to the laughter of the Grenobles, for it was all the roar of the great gusts, the rustle of a thousand leaves, the singing of many great chords, none of which could be completely separated from another, and so could not so much be said to blend into as to be the same song.
So the Grenobles sang and so they danced their way through the woods.
Until, not nearly long enough and some time later, the two children ran laughing and breathless into a small glade, the last few bursts of a wind-storm sighing about them. They did not remember such a place -- where the trees grew thicker around, but thinner in number, and the new grass saluted the sky despite the leaves that laughed and lounged about their upright blades, and where the wind dipped down to mingle and chatter with a brook. The Grenobles arrived not long after the wind, and skipped their hands across its surface like stones before plunging their faces into it. They followed the brook, socializing with the water, until a drop in its path sent them somersaulting head over heels down into a pool. They fell with grace and beauty, spinning and twisting like a wind that has lost whatever course it was following, until they fell, limp-limbed, their bark streaked with rivulets of water, and were still at last.
Timothy had laughed a great deal more than Lisa when the Grenobles fell over the brook, for she was concerned they would be bruised by the fall, while Timothy had no doubt that anything so funny and exciting could hurt anyone.
"I've never been here before," said Lisa, concern shading her eyes. She cast her gaze back and forth, with each little gasp of air, and her lip quivered, for she did not like being lost at all.
Timothy stuck a finger in the water cautiously, roared at the cold, and ran up to a big, mossy old tree and caught it in an embrace, his arms not circling round a tenth of it.
"Aaaah!" he shouted, pushing with his feet, and Lisa, bound to pout if she was to be lost, scolded rather than laughed.
"You can't move that!" she said. For it looked very much as if Timothy were trying to pick the great tree up by the roots.
"Mmmmm!" He bit it fiercely.
There was a great splashing sound, and a burst of wind flew by. The Grenobles had leapt from their rest with a great flourish, and stood, now perfectly dry, before them, as a mist of water that they had flung off fell on Lisa and Timothy. Timothy turned at the sound and the gentlest of drumming on his back by the water, and leaned his face on the side of the tree to stare at them, whishing air in and out of his reddened cheeks, his eyes soft and tired.
"We are here," said one Grenoble.
Will you be home?" asked the other.
All was still.
"Home! Take off!" shouted Timothy, his eyes coming awake again, and Lisa jumped, startled. She did not know how, but she knew that whatever was happening was very important the Grenobles, more important than what had happened before.
"Is this your home?" she asked, looking around.
"We are here." They both said.
"Where is here?"
"Will you be home?"
"I most certainly would if you hadn't made us lost!" she cried.
"Then be home...look," and they walked, stiff and straight, no more than a rustle accompanying them, to the edge of the brook. There, was a pool. Though the water on either side leapt and danced, the center was still. Even more curious, Lisa saw, was that the water ran both ways away, and neither into the pool, as if it were the source of the whole rushing brook. Yet it lay as still as if it were ice, and through it the children could see, as if through clean yet gently swaying glass, a great well. It was the open trunk of a great tree, which reached almost to the surface, so that any ripple would expose the uppermost fingers of wood to the air. But nothing disturbed the water, and the well might as well have been a picture, but for the spring in its bottom. Playing with the water, rolling the current, rippling the inner walls of the trunk spun out a jet of water, Yet, as you, dear reader, I hope understand by now, the surface of the water was not disturbed. This truth struck the children just as often and odd as it has struck you.
"Staiws!" Timothy saw them, curving down around the inside of the trunk, carved wooden stairs, half-logs, so that only their tops were flat. Down and down they went until the blue of the water became too deep to distinguish the brown of the wood.
"What's down there?" cried Timothy, looking up perplexedly at the Grenobles.
"The spring."
"No, but, beneath it?" asked Lisa, looking up at them just as Timothy looked back down, sober-faced, to examine this "spring".
"We cannot go there, so it is no use saying," they replied.
Lisa stood up straight, crossed her arms, and pouted. "What is the matter?" she asked in her most fearsome voice -- a quiet, piercing one that began every word too quiet to hear and thrilled through it so that it resounded with crushing urgency at the end. Timothy almost fell into the pool at the sound of it, for it bode badly for him when she was angry. He took a few steps away, casting about for a hiding place, or hiding person. (A hiding person is just as good, if not better, than a hiding place, for, even if you are found with them, big sisters cannot take you away from a hiding person, so you can forget your big sister and play with their buttons while they hold you).
"Nothing," said the Grenobles.
"But there is something the matter! It is past our dinner! We need to go home. Come on, Timothy!"
Timothy wailed and ran behind his great tree.
"We need to go home," said the Grenobles.
"Then go! You're wind...like wind...go!"
"We need to go down the water," said one.
"We need you to stop the spring," said the other.
Once more Lisa knew they were in deadly earnest.
"Stop it?" Lisa pitied them. She could not leave them. Besides, Timothy, she could tell, did not want to be caught and brought home; he would be very difficult. So, "How?" she asked.
"Put finger in it!" laughed Timothy, and he bolted for the water. There was little he enjoyed so much as sticking his finger into the water-spout, feeling the water run faster to escape it, and chasing it about with his hand, trying to catch it and stop it. He never could, and that is not such a bad thing, for a game that is bliss to play should never be won, or it becomes tiresome.
"Timothy!"
Timothy shied away and sat down on the bank, a frown on his face. He did not like big sisters.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, trying to look important, and, walking a few feet downstream (she could not have walked any other way!) she took up a large, round-edged stone. Huffing with the weight, she brought it back and stood on the edge of the pool with it. She looked at the Grenobles on either side of her, and then at Timothy, sitting a little ways off. They all stared back at her, and, rather embarrassed, and glad there were no adults around to think she was silly, she mphed the stone into the water. It sank through the top of the pool, sending but a single ripple out to the edges, and fell ever so slowly, until, but a moment after it disappeared into the spring, the water stopped playing beneath the pool, and the pool, with a ripple like a spider's-web caught in the wind, sank and darted out through cracks in the trunk walls, different currents bumping into each other, like a school of fish, embarrassed to be intruding. The brook did not stop, however, but began around the top edges of the trunk, water pouring from the side of each splinter of wood outward, but not inward. Soon the well was empty, and Lisa could see that it went very far down indeed. Timothy stepped to the edge of the pool, and then onto the first step inside the trunk. He looked back at Lisa, half giggled, half gasped (for she frowned at him), and charged down the steps, moving more back and forth than he did forward and down.
It is continued, but not yet finished. I do not apologize for putting it down, for tonight has become tomorrow, and I must sleep.
"Well, which way is it?" asked Lisa, for she was an educated young lady, and knew well-enough that the first part of getting somewhere is going in the right direction.
"Which ever way you go, so long as, at the end of it, you are home," they replied.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, the same way she always wanted to when she had to pretend there were numbers that were less than none.
"If I go that way, I will go home," she said, pointing over her shoulder into the woods, "but it will not be your home."
"How can it be yours and not ours?" they asked.
"Take off!" commanded Timothy, pointing at the boot of the Grenoble that stood beside him.
"We cannot," they replied. "We cannot take off our boots until we are home, and," they said, their voices dropping to the taut gust of a winter's wind through the trees, "we cannot go home until you do."
"Let's go home, Timothy," said Lisa, sadly, for she felt very sorry for the Grenobles, though she could not understand why they should have such difficulty.
"Take off!" He shouted, and, standing, he whacked at the boot. The Grenoble watched him silently.
"They say they can when we get home. It's almost dinnertime anyway. Let's go home."
"Take off at home?"
"Yes!"
"Come home!" he called to the Grenobles, and, as if he were sailing into a gale, he plunged into the woods.
A burst of wind followed him, as Lisa clambered up the bank. As she too plunged through the woods the wind twisted and rippled her dress, and she loved the cool breeze in the warm, damp air. Timothy stopped to watch a line of ants climb a highway set deep in a crack in the bark of a venerable pine and looked back to make sure his companions were following. Lisa checked as well, and saw, to her surprise, that the Grenobles were skipping, sprinting, twirling through the woods. One moment, they were walking soberly straight ahead. A burst of wind caught them; and with their arms held arched behind them like those of a ballerina, they too burst forward. The wind changed direction, dipping to the left, and the Grenobles swayed and dipped as well. The wind swirled, spinning Lisa's hair around her forehead, and the Grenobles twirled with it, limbs acting out the parts of eddies and currents. Timothy let out a cry of joy for he knew not what.
For when he looked at the Grenobles, he saw the wind.
Both Grenobles stopped, and Timothy began again his homeward romp. So still they stood, their limbs rustling for a moment longer than they moved, and so still was the wind, that Lisa turned to look over her shoulder at them.
"Have you remembered the way home?"
"We have found him," they replied in whispers. Then, all at once, they leapt forward, flying through the air, and, though she could barely see for the torrent of wind that stung her eyes, hurled leaves every direction at once, and threw her into a run towards home, she thought that their legs still stretched below them all the way to the ground, and they were running, but perhaps it was only the forest floor caught up in the wake of the wind beneath them.
She knew then that they were not mimicking the wind with their dance. The woods all about were still, until they moved. There was no rush in the distance. The wind mimicked them, or perhaps, stranger still, Lisa thought they could be making it themselves.
On she ran, and the sober thoughts in her mind and on her face melted when she heard Timothy squealing with delight as the wind caught him. She laughed as well, and her laugh was small and weak compared to the laughter of the Grenobles, for it was all the roar of the great gusts, the rustle of a thousand leaves, the singing of many great chords, none of which could be completely separated from another, and so could not so much be said to blend into as to be the same song.
So the Grenobles sang and so they danced their way through the woods.
Until, not nearly long enough and some time later, the two children ran laughing and breathless into a small glade, the last few bursts of a wind-storm sighing about them. They did not remember such a place -- where the trees grew thicker around, but thinner in number, and the new grass saluted the sky despite the leaves that laughed and lounged about their upright blades, and where the wind dipped down to mingle and chatter with a brook. The Grenobles arrived not long after the wind, and skipped their hands across its surface like stones before plunging their faces into it. They followed the brook, socializing with the water, until a drop in its path sent them somersaulting head over heels down into a pool. They fell with grace and beauty, spinning and twisting like a wind that has lost whatever course it was following, until they fell, limp-limbed, their bark streaked with rivulets of water, and were still at last.
Timothy had laughed a great deal more than Lisa when the Grenobles fell over the brook, for she was concerned they would be bruised by the fall, while Timothy had no doubt that anything so funny and exciting could hurt anyone.
"I've never been here before," said Lisa, concern shading her eyes. She cast her gaze back and forth, with each little gasp of air, and her lip quivered, for she did not like being lost at all.
Timothy stuck a finger in the water cautiously, roared at the cold, and ran up to a big, mossy old tree and caught it in an embrace, his arms not circling round a tenth of it.
"Aaaah!" he shouted, pushing with his feet, and Lisa, bound to pout if she was to be lost, scolded rather than laughed.
"You can't move that!" she said. For it looked very much as if Timothy were trying to pick the great tree up by the roots.
"Mmmmm!" He bit it fiercely.
There was a great splashing sound, and a burst of wind flew by. The Grenobles had leapt from their rest with a great flourish, and stood, now perfectly dry, before them, as a mist of water that they had flung off fell on Lisa and Timothy. Timothy turned at the sound and the gentlest of drumming on his back by the water, and leaned his face on the side of the tree to stare at them, whishing air in and out of his reddened cheeks, his eyes soft and tired.
"We are here," said one Grenoble.
Will you be home?" asked the other.
All was still.
"Home! Take off!" shouted Timothy, his eyes coming awake again, and Lisa jumped, startled. She did not know how, but she knew that whatever was happening was very important the Grenobles, more important than what had happened before.
"Is this your home?" she asked, looking around.
"We are here." They both said.
"Where is here?"
"Will you be home?"
"I most certainly would if you hadn't made us lost!" she cried.
"Then be home...look," and they walked, stiff and straight, no more than a rustle accompanying them, to the edge of the brook. There, was a pool. Though the water on either side leapt and danced, the center was still. Even more curious, Lisa saw, was that the water ran both ways away, and neither into the pool, as if it were the source of the whole rushing brook. Yet it lay as still as if it were ice, and through it the children could see, as if through clean yet gently swaying glass, a great well. It was the open trunk of a great tree, which reached almost to the surface, so that any ripple would expose the uppermost fingers of wood to the air. But nothing disturbed the water, and the well might as well have been a picture, but for the spring in its bottom. Playing with the water, rolling the current, rippling the inner walls of the trunk spun out a jet of water, Yet, as you, dear reader, I hope understand by now, the surface of the water was not disturbed. This truth struck the children just as often and odd as it has struck you.
"Staiws!" Timothy saw them, curving down around the inside of the trunk, carved wooden stairs, half-logs, so that only their tops were flat. Down and down they went until the blue of the water became too deep to distinguish the brown of the wood.
"What's down there?" cried Timothy, looking up perplexedly at the Grenobles.
"The spring."
"No, but, beneath it?" asked Lisa, looking up at them just as Timothy looked back down, sober-faced, to examine this "spring".
"We cannot go there, so it is no use saying," they replied.
Lisa stood up straight, crossed her arms, and pouted. "What is the matter?" she asked in her most fearsome voice -- a quiet, piercing one that began every word too quiet to hear and thrilled through it so that it resounded with crushing urgency at the end. Timothy almost fell into the pool at the sound of it, for it bode badly for him when she was angry. He took a few steps away, casting about for a hiding place, or hiding person. (A hiding person is just as good, if not better, than a hiding place, for, even if you are found with them, big sisters cannot take you away from a hiding person, so you can forget your big sister and play with their buttons while they hold you).
"Nothing," said the Grenobles.
"But there is something the matter! It is past our dinner! We need to go home. Come on, Timothy!"
Timothy wailed and ran behind his great tree.
"We need to go home," said the Grenobles.
"Then go! You're wind...like wind...go!"
"We need to go down the water," said one.
"We need you to stop the spring," said the other.
Once more Lisa knew they were in deadly earnest.
"Stop it?" Lisa pitied them. She could not leave them. Besides, Timothy, she could tell, did not want to be caught and brought home; he would be very difficult. So, "How?" she asked.
"Put finger in it!" laughed Timothy, and he bolted for the water. There was little he enjoyed so much as sticking his finger into the water-spout, feeling the water run faster to escape it, and chasing it about with his hand, trying to catch it and stop it. He never could, and that is not such a bad thing, for a game that is bliss to play should never be won, or it becomes tiresome.
"Timothy!"
Timothy shied away and sat down on the bank, a frown on his face. He did not like big sisters.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, trying to look important, and, walking a few feet downstream (she could not have walked any other way!) she took up a large, round-edged stone. Huffing with the weight, she brought it back and stood on the edge of the pool with it. She looked at the Grenobles on either side of her, and then at Timothy, sitting a little ways off. They all stared back at her, and, rather embarrassed, and glad there were no adults around to think she was silly, she mphed the stone into the water. It sank through the top of the pool, sending but a single ripple out to the edges, and fell ever so slowly, until, but a moment after it disappeared into the spring, the water stopped playing beneath the pool, and the pool, with a ripple like a spider's-web caught in the wind, sank and darted out through cracks in the trunk walls, different currents bumping into each other, like a school of fish, embarrassed to be intruding. The brook did not stop, however, but began around the top edges of the trunk, water pouring from the side of each splinter of wood outward, but not inward. Soon the well was empty, and Lisa could see that it went very far down indeed. Timothy stepped to the edge of the pool, and then onto the first step inside the trunk. He looked back at Lisa, half giggled, half gasped (for she frowned at him), and charged down the steps, moving more back and forth than he did forward and down.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Timothy and the Grenobles, Part I
Preface: (Aren't literary words fun?). Here is a story. It is a bedtime story. I made it up lying on the carpet, my hands beneath my head, staring at the ceiling. I told it to a little boy, and it put him fast to sleep. I am writing it now because I am too sleepy to do any schoolwork, and want to go to bed soon. I will not finish it tonight, but some other night I hope to. I wish everyone a good night.
It was a misty day in late April. The sun had winged its way to the heights, pierced the clouds for a few moments during naptime, and was now falling, out of sight, towards its rest behind the Johnson's garage. For Timothy, three years old, had divined its hiding place, and secretly planned to seek it out some night and wrestle it across the Johnson's driveway out into the street, where it would light the yard so that he would be able to play forever and not go to bed when he was supposed to.
But the sun was not his object this particular day. No, he was enjoying his after-naptime romp through the back woods, his sister Lisa trying her best to keep up with him, but failing, of course. For young boys, Timothy knew, were much more clever and agile than grown-up girls like Lisa. Why, she was all of nine years old already! He felt sorry for her, for soon she would not be able to show her age on her fingers, and what is the fun in being older if you cannot show it to people?
The sun was to the left, its warmth cutting through the mist in rays of water droplets, water-stained, moss-covered bark, and reflecting pools in leaves. The leaves squished and squelched beneath his feet and he squirmed his toes and nose and paused to examine his footing in the deep muck. Satisfied, he turned about, his wide body giving him ample balance, and saw Lisa moving with behemoth strides through the forest behind him. He giggled uproariously and dashed away into the woods, a broad smile on his mouth, leaning his weight forward like a ship's sail caught in the wind, and his grinning face was his own figurehead, his arms the rigging.
But ships do not have feet, and oceans rarely have roots, so the ship that was Timothy was, as a matter of course, surprised to tumble down into the leaves. Undaunted, he put himself back on his feet, examining himself soberly. He was somewhat dirtier than before. A leaf was stuck to the base of his hand by a clump of mud. A black-stained pine twig clung by a drop of dirt to his chin, and his shirt had several new stripes on it.
"Timothy! You'll get all dirty!" cried Lisa, her tone important and full of peril, for she thought to be dirty one of the worst things that anyone could be.
He laughed harder and ran on into the woods. There was nothing in these woods for quite a while -- he had heard his father say once that there was nothing until the next neighborhood, and Timothy expected that was quite a long way.
Now, running in the woods while someone is following you is a tricky game. Run too fast, and you might loose your sister, and never find her again, and that would be a shame. Run too slowly, and she may well catch you, scold you, clean you up, tickle you, or something of that nature. Of course, at some point you must let yourself be caught...but not until you're quite done with your romp. So Timothy had to check over his shoulder often to make sure Lisa was neither lost nor about to swoop him up with her great big strong arms. After going some ways on, he saw that she was falling behind. He turned around, flinging the leaf from his hand by his motion, and laughed loudly so that she would catch up. He saw her moving slowly from tree to tree, but she was going more in a circle than coming towards him, so he shouted "Wis-AAA!" and began bounding back towards her, slightly annoyed that she would abandon the game.
Lisa, meanwhile, tired of pretending to chase her baby brother, slowed to a walk and wistfully glanced at the treetops above her, humming tunes that only she could discern, and glancing into the distance occasionally to make sure she could still see Timothy. Soon he was almost out of sight, and she was day-dreaming about whatever it is big sisters daydream about (many of you, dear readers, may be big sisters yourselves, and I am sure you choose choice daydreams, but I cannot tell what they might be, as I can only speak for big and little brothers, and not for sisters at all). His call made her jump and forget her dream, and, feeling a little guilty for letting him get so far ahead as she now saw he was, she began to run towards him.
As Timothy came near to Lisa, she ducked behind a tree, and, amused to find that she had known better after all, and invented a new game where he chased her, crept up to it giggling, careful to step quietly so she would not hear his approach.
As Lisa caught up with Timothy, he hopped down out of sight into a creek-bed, and, stirred to greater haste at the thought of what he would look like if given a chance to enjoy himself in the muddy stream, Lisa hopped down to the bank. "Timothy!" she cried scoldingly as she spotted him, and then she stopped very abruptly and took several steps back, so that she bumped into the bank and sat down on it, dirtying her dress. "Oh!" She said sadly, examining it, and then turned back to the little creature that she had thought before to be Timothy. "Now, see what you have made me done?" she scolded.
Timothy let out a squeal, halfway between delighted and terrified, for he had grabbed not Lisa, but a branch, and the branch had gently drawn itself back from his chubby hands. The brother and sister saw each other -- the real each other, finally -- from where they stood, not more than a few moments' Timothy-run apart.
Lisa pursed her lips, folded her eyebrows, placed her hands behind her back (over the mud on her dress), and examined the creature that she had mistaken for Timothy. Timothy, meanwhile, sat down and stared at the one that he had mistaken for Lisa.
The two creatures were very similar, yet, especially in their faces, the brother and sister could tell them apart easily, though they would not be able to say why, similar to how two puppies may look just alike to a visitor, but are easy for their master to name. They were brownish-green creatures, and their skin looked like bark, but they did not crackle or crumble as they moved. The bark, indeed, seemed able to bend easily as far as it needed to. Leaves and moss clung to them, and they wore boots lined with thick wet dirt with an upper of leaves and a lower of their own bare feet. They were each about as tall as Lisa, each had two arms and two legs like Timothy, and they had faces. Their faces were strange, and made Timothy look very serious. They had no noses to speak of, and if they had mouths, Lisa could not see them. Timothy looked at the eyes of the one nearest him, and yawned. Its eyes, Lisa mused, were like acorns. Not green acorns, or dirty acorns, or scratched acorns, but the acorns that have fallen unbruised, and been washed clean in a pool of rainwater till they shine a perfect rich reddish burgundy that makes you think of smelling good living wood and knocking on knotholes in trees, and root-beer flavored candy. The eyes did not look deep, but they seemed to shine the color of wet, clean wood deep in the forest where the light cannot come and yet you feel perfectly cozy and at home, until, of course, some naughty leaf drips a drop of water down the back of your neck and makes you gasp. The creatures looked at them with their eyes, eyes that reminded Timothy of the blind dog that lived next door, and also of the eyes of his teddy bear.
"What are you?" asked Lisa politely.
"We are the Grenobles," they answered, and as they spoke Lisa saw their mouths, but once they were silent she could not find them again.
"Ha!" said Timothy. He was amused that little treeish people talked. He was of the age where he had not yet firmly decided anything about the world, and so did not know that he should be very startled to find such creatures.
Lisa, on the other hand, knew quite well that there should be no such thing, but was old enough to know that it is silly to deny what you see with your own two eyes. So, she smiled and said, "We're Hunters," for that was their father's and mother's name. "We live through the woods that way. Where do you live?"
"Will you help us find it?" they asked.
"Do you not know where your own home is?" she asked in pity and astonishment, thinking that they were lost.
"We would know better if you showed it to us," they replied.
"Ha!" said Timothy again.
It was a misty day in late April. The sun had winged its way to the heights, pierced the clouds for a few moments during naptime, and was now falling, out of sight, towards its rest behind the Johnson's garage. For Timothy, three years old, had divined its hiding place, and secretly planned to seek it out some night and wrestle it across the Johnson's driveway out into the street, where it would light the yard so that he would be able to play forever and not go to bed when he was supposed to.
But the sun was not his object this particular day. No, he was enjoying his after-naptime romp through the back woods, his sister Lisa trying her best to keep up with him, but failing, of course. For young boys, Timothy knew, were much more clever and agile than grown-up girls like Lisa. Why, she was all of nine years old already! He felt sorry for her, for soon she would not be able to show her age on her fingers, and what is the fun in being older if you cannot show it to people?
The sun was to the left, its warmth cutting through the mist in rays of water droplets, water-stained, moss-covered bark, and reflecting pools in leaves. The leaves squished and squelched beneath his feet and he squirmed his toes and nose and paused to examine his footing in the deep muck. Satisfied, he turned about, his wide body giving him ample balance, and saw Lisa moving with behemoth strides through the forest behind him. He giggled uproariously and dashed away into the woods, a broad smile on his mouth, leaning his weight forward like a ship's sail caught in the wind, and his grinning face was his own figurehead, his arms the rigging.
But ships do not have feet, and oceans rarely have roots, so the ship that was Timothy was, as a matter of course, surprised to tumble down into the leaves. Undaunted, he put himself back on his feet, examining himself soberly. He was somewhat dirtier than before. A leaf was stuck to the base of his hand by a clump of mud. A black-stained pine twig clung by a drop of dirt to his chin, and his shirt had several new stripes on it.
"Timothy! You'll get all dirty!" cried Lisa, her tone important and full of peril, for she thought to be dirty one of the worst things that anyone could be.
He laughed harder and ran on into the woods. There was nothing in these woods for quite a while -- he had heard his father say once that there was nothing until the next neighborhood, and Timothy expected that was quite a long way.
Now, running in the woods while someone is following you is a tricky game. Run too fast, and you might loose your sister, and never find her again, and that would be a shame. Run too slowly, and she may well catch you, scold you, clean you up, tickle you, or something of that nature. Of course, at some point you must let yourself be caught...but not until you're quite done with your romp. So Timothy had to check over his shoulder often to make sure Lisa was neither lost nor about to swoop him up with her great big strong arms. After going some ways on, he saw that she was falling behind. He turned around, flinging the leaf from his hand by his motion, and laughed loudly so that she would catch up. He saw her moving slowly from tree to tree, but she was going more in a circle than coming towards him, so he shouted "Wis-AAA!" and began bounding back towards her, slightly annoyed that she would abandon the game.
Lisa, meanwhile, tired of pretending to chase her baby brother, slowed to a walk and wistfully glanced at the treetops above her, humming tunes that only she could discern, and glancing into the distance occasionally to make sure she could still see Timothy. Soon he was almost out of sight, and she was day-dreaming about whatever it is big sisters daydream about (many of you, dear readers, may be big sisters yourselves, and I am sure you choose choice daydreams, but I cannot tell what they might be, as I can only speak for big and little brothers, and not for sisters at all). His call made her jump and forget her dream, and, feeling a little guilty for letting him get so far ahead as she now saw he was, she began to run towards him.
As Timothy came near to Lisa, she ducked behind a tree, and, amused to find that she had known better after all, and invented a new game where he chased her, crept up to it giggling, careful to step quietly so she would not hear his approach.
As Lisa caught up with Timothy, he hopped down out of sight into a creek-bed, and, stirred to greater haste at the thought of what he would look like if given a chance to enjoy himself in the muddy stream, Lisa hopped down to the bank. "Timothy!" she cried scoldingly as she spotted him, and then she stopped very abruptly and took several steps back, so that she bumped into the bank and sat down on it, dirtying her dress. "Oh!" She said sadly, examining it, and then turned back to the little creature that she had thought before to be Timothy. "Now, see what you have made me done?" she scolded.
Timothy let out a squeal, halfway between delighted and terrified, for he had grabbed not Lisa, but a branch, and the branch had gently drawn itself back from his chubby hands. The brother and sister saw each other -- the real each other, finally -- from where they stood, not more than a few moments' Timothy-run apart.
Lisa pursed her lips, folded her eyebrows, placed her hands behind her back (over the mud on her dress), and examined the creature that she had mistaken for Timothy. Timothy, meanwhile, sat down and stared at the one that he had mistaken for Lisa.
The two creatures were very similar, yet, especially in their faces, the brother and sister could tell them apart easily, though they would not be able to say why, similar to how two puppies may look just alike to a visitor, but are easy for their master to name. They were brownish-green creatures, and their skin looked like bark, but they did not crackle or crumble as they moved. The bark, indeed, seemed able to bend easily as far as it needed to. Leaves and moss clung to them, and they wore boots lined with thick wet dirt with an upper of leaves and a lower of their own bare feet. They were each about as tall as Lisa, each had two arms and two legs like Timothy, and they had faces. Their faces were strange, and made Timothy look very serious. They had no noses to speak of, and if they had mouths, Lisa could not see them. Timothy looked at the eyes of the one nearest him, and yawned. Its eyes, Lisa mused, were like acorns. Not green acorns, or dirty acorns, or scratched acorns, but the acorns that have fallen unbruised, and been washed clean in a pool of rainwater till they shine a perfect rich reddish burgundy that makes you think of smelling good living wood and knocking on knotholes in trees, and root-beer flavored candy. The eyes did not look deep, but they seemed to shine the color of wet, clean wood deep in the forest where the light cannot come and yet you feel perfectly cozy and at home, until, of course, some naughty leaf drips a drop of water down the back of your neck and makes you gasp. The creatures looked at them with their eyes, eyes that reminded Timothy of the blind dog that lived next door, and also of the eyes of his teddy bear.
"What are you?" asked Lisa politely.
"We are the Grenobles," they answered, and as they spoke Lisa saw their mouths, but once they were silent she could not find them again.
"Ha!" said Timothy. He was amused that little treeish people talked. He was of the age where he had not yet firmly decided anything about the world, and so did not know that he should be very startled to find such creatures.
Lisa, on the other hand, knew quite well that there should be no such thing, but was old enough to know that it is silly to deny what you see with your own two eyes. So, she smiled and said, "We're Hunters," for that was their father's and mother's name. "We live through the woods that way. Where do you live?"
"Will you help us find it?" they asked.
"Do you not know where your own home is?" she asked in pity and astonishment, thinking that they were lost.
"We would know better if you showed it to us," they replied.
"Ha!" said Timothy again.
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