“Not exactly fine,” Umpah said. “But everything will probably be all right.”
They went on a little ways, until Sid asked, “Umpah, is the water still there? Can you really see it?”
Before Umpah could reassure him, Teddy cried out, “A stream! We’ve found another stream!”
This stream was shallow enough for them to splash easily across it, although the stones on its bottom made pushing hard and riding bouncy. After the stream, they had to make their way among dense bushes. The misty air grew darker, and they halted under the wide branches of a tall pine tree.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” said Sid. “I think we might be lost. Do you feel lost, Umpah?”
“I don’t know,” Umpah said. “We know how to get back,” he said.
“Don’t you wonder what’s next?” Teddy asked. “Aren’t those hills?” He looked off to the right, inland. “Hills with big stones?”
Sid and Umpah looked where Teddy’s arm was pointing and saw high, humped, shadowy shapes with dark lumpy shapes scattered on them.
Teddy asked, “Don’t you wonder about them?”
“No,” said Sid.
Umpah said, “I don’t think we should go any farther.”
Teddy looked at Umpah and he looked at Sid. They looked right back at him.
“All right,” he said, and he wasn’t happy about this. “All right, if—”
“No Ifs,” said Sid. “I want to go back now, Teddy. Really. I really, really want to go home. Right now.”
“If what?” asked Umpah.
“If Sid goes up the nearest hill, until he can see what comes next,” Teddy said. “So I can know,” he explained.
Drops of heavy rain plopped onto the ground.
“Sid can go fast,” Teddy reminded them, “and we can wait right here, almost out of the rain. Because we haven’t found anything.”
He waited, but nobody said Yes or No or even Let me think about it. He waited some more and rain fell more quickly, as if it were glad to finally get loose from its clouds.
At last Teddy added, “And then we can turn around and go back home.”
So Sid slipped off, speeding away. In the dim light, they couldn’t see him slide up the hill, and his return was so swift and silent that even if the rain hadn’t been drumming down, they wouldn’t have heard him.
“I saw a light,” Sid reported. “I saw a light, or maybe two.”
“How far away?” asked Umpah. “Do they look dangerous?”
Sid hadn’t thought about either of those things. “Not very far,” he said, then asked, “What does dangerous look like?”
“Is that all there is ahead?” Teddy asked. “What else is there?”
Sid shook his head back and forth. “There isn’t anything more.”
“There has to be some-thing,” Teddy argued.
“It’s just flat, I think. It’s too dark and rainy to see very far,” Sid reported. Then he reminded Teddy, “You said if I went and looked, we could go back. You’ve found out what’s farther on and it’s getting darker, and not just here in the woods. It’s getting late, I know it.”
“We’d better turn around,” Umpah agreed.
Teddy did not agree. He strongly disagreed. He was having a suspicion. He was having the first faint beginnings of an idea. He said, “Let’s find those lights. It’s a long way back, remember. In the rain. In the dark.”
Umpah reminded him, “We don’t know whose lights they are. They aren’t lights we know.”
Teddy thought he would keep his suspicion for a surprise, so all he said was “I think the best thing for us to do is go see.” The more he thought about it, the stronger his suspicion grew, and the stronger it grew, the more excited he was about it. “Which way are the lights? This way?” He pointed ahead and to the right, inland.
If his suspicion was correct, Sid’s answer would be Yes.
“Yes,” said Sid.
“I don’t know about this…,” said Umpah.
“I need something to eat,” said Sid, and reminded Umpah, in case he’d forgotten, “Where there’s light, there’s food.”
“All right. I guess,” said Umpah. “We can take a look.”
They set off inland, traveling around the side of the rocky hill, not going very fast. The stones made it hard work for Umpah to push the wagon, so Teddy cheered him up by telling him “Not far now” every time the elephant stumbled, or grunted with effort. “It’s getting close now, Umpah,” Teddy said, as if he could see the lights ahead, even though he couldn’t.
“You don’t know,” Umpah grumbled.
“But I think so,” Teddy said.
And in fact, it wasn’t very far, although to Umpah it felt like a long, hard way and the rain fell down faster on their heads, until, “There!” cried Teddy. “Look, Umpah, look there! Lights!”
Two yellow squares shone out of the rainy gloom ahead of them, shining from two windows of a little house that—if there had been sunlight to see with—they would have seen was entirely pink, a little house with pink walls, a pink roof, and a bright pink front door.
The door opened wide, and in its light they saw Prinny, with Zia behind her, and Peng behind Zia.
“You’re back!” cried Prinny. “It’s raining! What did you find?”
Before Teddy could answer her and tell everyone his discovery, Peng said, “You certainly took your time.”
“Come right in here. Let me get you towels,” said Zia. “I made hot cocoa.” She hurried off to bring soft pink towels and big pink mugs of cocoa. So Teddy had to wait a little longer. He planned to tell everybody all at the same time and all together.
Finally, “You’ll never guess,” he began.
Prinny guessed anyway. “You got lost?”
“Not even a little bit,” Teddy told her. “It’s better than that.”
“What can be better than getting back safe?” asked Peng, and answered himself: “Nothing.”
“What can be better than something to eat?” asked Sid.
“What is it, Teddy?” asked Umpah. “What won’t we guess?”
Teddy announced, “I found out that….We live on an island! We walked all the way, keeping the Sea always on our left, and we came right back to where we started. So I know we have the Sea all around us.”
“Oh dear, oh dearie me,” said Zia. “Surrounded by water.”
“Did you hear that, Sid?” asked Prinny. “We have our very own island.”
“Is everything going to change now?” asked Sid. “I hope it doesn’t. What will I do if everything changes because we’re an island?”
“We must have always been an island,” Teddy said. “We just didn’t know it.”
“So everything stays just the same as always?” Umpah asked.
“Except,” Teddy told him, “that now we know more. We know something we didn’t know before.”
“I knew it,” Peng said. “I’ve known it for a long time.”
“You did? Really?” Teddy had hoped that he would get to surprise everyone. “You never told me.”
“I thought you already knew,” said Peng.
“I didn’t,” Teddy said. “How did you find out?”
“By accident,” Peng said. “I was taking a swim one day, and by accident I swam all the way around. The island’s not very big. In fact, it’s a small island. It’s not so very far from the mainland either.” He looked over his shoulder to where the mainland lay, somewhere in the rainy darkness across the water, the mainland being a place where trouble might come from.
“Teddy can’t swim,” Umpah reminded them.
Prinny interrupted. “Neither can I! Can I learn?”
Umpah continued. “So Teddy discovered that we live on an island by thinking, not by swimming, and not by seeing it either. That was very clever of you, Teddy,” he said.
“Yes it was,” Teddy agreed.
Sid looked up from his mug to point out, “I helped. I went up the hill and I saw the lights.”
“That’s true, you did help, and so did Umpah,” Teddy said. “And I’m the one who had the idea and the one who figured things out. We were real explorers and discoverers.”
“And now we’ve come home,” said Umpah.
Sid was too busy slurping up the last of his cocoa to say anything more.
It was a sunshiny morning, and Prinny said to Zia, “What a good day to go to the beach.”
“I’m cleaning house right now.” Zia was sweeping the pink floor with her pink broom. “We’ll go later.”
“What if I went by myself and didn’t have to wait?”
“You’ve never been to the beach by yourself and what if you fell into the water?”
“I won’t go too near the water. You know that,” said Prinny.
Zia did know that.
“I promise,” Prinny said.
Zia also knew that Prinny kept her promises, so she said, “Oh dearie dear. Oh well. I guess,” because she also knew that sometimes Prinny liked to take care of herself and not be taken care of. “I’ll be there as soon as I’m finished here. It won’t be long.”
Prinny trotted out the door and past Sid’s tree. She didn’t see Sid and he didn’t see her, to ask where she was going. She would have liked to tell him, I’m going to the beach alone. She trotted past Umpah and Teddy’s red house and stopped to listen, but she didn’t hear anything. She would have liked to tell them, I’m big enough to go to the beach alone.
Before she stepped down onto the sand, however, she stopped. She stopped because now it felt strange and different and maybe even wrong to be alone. Maybe she would rather wait for Zia. Although it was also exciting to be all alone at the beach, with the water moving restlessly before her and the noisy gulls swooping up into the sky.
But there was nobody to explain if something new and unexpected happened. Something Prinny didn’t know about yet and might not know what to do about.
But it was her first time, ever, on her own, at the beach. So she took a breath and stepped down onto the sand.
That early in the day the sand was still cool from the night before. Prinny twisted her four little feet into the cool sand, then dug them in a little deeper, and then she jumped up, jumping free.
Sand sprayed up around her legs. She danced on top of the sand, pounding it with her feet, turning in circles.
Prinny was all by herself on the beach, digging and dancing. She wished there were someone there to admire her for being big enough to go to the beach alone. She looked around, hoping to catch someone watching, from the shore, from the air, from the water.
It was the kind of bright day when there were little fires running along the tops of the waves. On no other day had they been real fires, but she had never been alone on the beach before. Prinny didn’t think water could catch fire, but she wasn’t positive about that, and what if it did?
She watched the bright sparks carefully, being patient. After all, she knew they were only the sunlight reflecting on the waves. She knew also that the sound she could hear wasn’t the whispering of invisible strangers, but just the waves meeting the sand, rushing in, rushing along.
From behind her, she heard Teddy say something to Umpah. She couldn’t hear what he said, but she could hear his voice and Umpah’s rumbly response. She decided everything was all right and she could go back to being glad.
This was the most exciting morning of her life! Nobody was taking care of her! She was taking care of herself!
Prinny thought she would dig a hole and let the waves fill it with water. Then she would dig a canal down to the foamy edges of the waves. If she dodged in fast to dig and dodged back fast to stay out of the water, if she finished digging and a wave rolled in, the water would run up the canal and fill the hole, making a little pool in the sand. Then she would find some small stones to line the pool and to shine under the water, and then maybe a little fish would swim up the canal to the pool.
She looked along the beach for the right place to dig, not too close to the water but not too far back, either. It was because she was looking so carefully that she noticed something strange about the life ring. That’s odd, she thought, staring. That looks like something in the life ring.
The life ring was a round wooden ring painted bright yellow that had always rested up against the rocks at the edge of the beach. It was a yellow circle with an empty space in the center. But that morning, the space wasn’t empty. There was definitely something in it. The something was lumpy and brown, mostly, but it had four somethings more sticking out of it. Were they arms and legs? Were they broken branches?
Prinny took little steps toward the thing, just a few small steps to start with, and then just a few more. She looked back and forth and all around her, at the blue water and the brightly colored houses, at Peng’s stony hill and Sid’s beech tree and even the distant row of four pointy-tipped pines. She watched a gull fly squawking off toward a puffy white cloud. While she looked everywhere else, her feet moved in little steps, bringing her closer to the thing in the life preserver. What was it?
Something dirty, with arms and legs, maybe four arms, or maybe four legs, or maybe two of each. She could see that now.
It had long ears too, and she thought she could see a small mouth right under its tiny nose. So it had two arms and two legs, two long ears, and a face. Also, there was something brown and dirty tied around its neck, like a wide brown collar, with ruffles.
Prinny studied the face. The eyes were shut. She leaned over close to one of the ears. “Hello?” she said. “Are you asleep?”
The eyes opened and looked at her. Then they closed again.
“Wake up!” Prinny cried.
The eyes opened. They were bright black eyes.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
“I’m quite comfortable here, thank you very much,” it said, and did not move.
“You’re awfully dirty,” Prinny told it. “How can you be comfortable when you’re so dirty?”
It didn’t answer.
“Who are you?” asked Prinny, but it didn’t answer that question either. She wondered if she should call to Teddy, or run and get Zia. But this was her very own discovery.
“Wake up!” she called.
The eyes opened.
“What’s your name?”
“Mr. B,” he said, and closed his eyes.
“Because you’re a bunny,” Prinny guessed. “Bunnies have long ears, I know that,” she explained. “I know what bunnies look like. Bunnies are furry, and pigs aren’t.”
“If you say so,” Mr. B answered, this time without opening his eyes. He knew he looked floppy and silly and cuddly, with the stupid ruffled collar around his neck, and a face that belonged on someone who never had a mean thought, and those long, useless ears drooping down beside his head. Inside, however, Mr. B knew he wasn’t like that at all. Inside, he was sleek and selfish and sharp silver, like a knife, with sharp pointy ears that never missed a thing and secret sharp teeth. Inside, he wasn’t at all what his outside looked like. He waited for the little pig to go away.
“Zia will know what to do,” Prinny told him.
Mr. B said nothing. Sometimes, nothing was exactly the right thing to say, and after you said that, you could get back to your nap in the sun.
Prinny waited a little longer; then she trotted off.
On her way to find Zia, Prinny met up with Sid and told him about the bunny in the life ring. While she continued on to the pink house, Sid slid off to tell the news to Peng. When Teddy and Umpah heard Prinny and Zia and Sid and Peng talking excitedly on their way back to the beach, they came out of their house to find out what was going on. Nobody wanted to miss the excitement, if there was excitement. Everybody wanted to help, if help was needed.
Thus it was that the next time Mr. B felt shadows blocking the warm sunlight, he opened his eyes to see that he was surrounded. They stared down at him—the little flowery blue pig from earlier, plus another bigger, fatter, pinker one with thick black stitch
es down her stomach and holding, of all things, an ice cream cone out in front of her; a legless bear in a red wagon and next to him a big, long-nosed gray elephant with a thickly curled soft coat for his skin; a brightly striped snake that slithered up much too close to the life ring; and a black-and-white penguin with a bored expression in his tiny orange eyes. Mr. B noticed that, unlike all the curious others, the penguin stared off across the water, as if he wasn’t a bit interested in Mr. B, as if Mr. B was just the first of many things that would be floating in on the tide that day and nothing special, nothing special at all.
Why wasn’t that penguin curious about him?
Mr. B sat up. Carefully, he dusted some of the dirt off his arms and chest. Then he looked at both pigs, one after the other, then at the bear, the elephant, the snake, and finally, the penguin.
The penguin didn’t notice.
Mr. B leaned back against the life ring, which had been warmed by the sun. He was about to close his eyes for a nice nap when the little pig spoke.
“I told you,” she said. “Do you think he’s sick? He keeps going to sleep. His name is Mr. B. He told me.”
The pink pig came up so close that her ice cream almost touched his shoulder. “Hello, Mr. B,” she said.
Mr. B stared at her. It was not a friendly stare.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Oh dearie me, Mr. B, are you sick?”
“Not in the least,” said Mr. B.
“That’s one good thing,” said the pink pig. “I’m Zia, how do you do?” Then she introduced everybody, but Mr. B didn’t bother listening. If he wanted to know someone’s name, he could find it out for himself. After the names, she said, “You’re awfully dirty and you must be uncomfortable, lying here on the grainy sand in that hard life ring. Wouldn’t you like to come to my house and get cleaned up? And then, I was wondering, are you hungry?”
Mr. B considered that. “I could eat,” he said. He stood up, stretched, and waited to be shown where this house was.
“Where did you come from?” asked the bear. “What’s it like where you came from? Was it a city? Was it a farm? Why did you come here? This is an island.”