Katlyn could run around in The Yard for hours on end and never see the same bush twice. It was full of hundreds of sculpted bushes and meticulously groomed flower beds. It had its own orchards, a large lake and three ponds. There were thirty fountains scattered across its grounds, and it would take the better part of a week to visit all of them in a leisurely fashion. And that’s assuming one knew where to find them.
Katlyn knew where most of them were. She’d gone looking for them last summer. But even though she’d packed picnic lunches and searched as long as she could, she’d only found twenty-seven by the time school restarted.
She was determined to find the last three fountains before next summer ended. Her friends, only a few of whom owned fountains, all knew where theirs were, and they thought her quite silly for having lost not one, but three.
The Yard’s gardeners were no help in Katlyn’s search, though there were regiments of them patrolling the paths, pruning petunias, and patching the cracks in the statues and pathways. They had strict instructions from Katlyn’s parents to watch out for her and find her if she got lost, which used to happened quite frequently and was understandable given The Yard’s massive size. Unfortunately, the gardeners were also instructed not to give Katlyn any clues as to the missing fountains’ whereabouts. Mrs. Zinger firmly held the belief that if Katlyn could find the last three by herself, she would know The Yard inside and out and would never get lost in it again.
Katlyn had thought wandering about until she got lost, then wandering lost until someone found her, and then being brought back to the house to start over again was a silly, though admittedly ordinary, way to learn her way around The Yard. She’d told this to her mother. But her mother had claimed that she herself had learned her way around by getting lost. And that all the Zingers before her had learned that way too.
“You shouldn’t complain about such an ordinary, inoffensive tradition, Katlyn,” Mrs. Zinger had said the last time Katlyn complained. “It works very well.”
Katlyn hadn’t been able to argue with that. It was true. She’d only gotten lost once since last summer. And even though searching for fountains made finding time to play with friends difficult, she had discovered that the never-ending, irksome, and tiring search was also surprisingly fun and curiously rewarding.
You see, as a result of last year’s trial by nature trail, Katlyn had acquired the beginnings of the uniquely Zinger way of looking at the outdoors that all Zingers have.
This is the second out of the ordinary, though not quite extraordinary, thing that the Zinger family possessed. And it sprang directly from the various ordeals Zingers went through while being lost in The Yard.