“The Cloudies seem nice,” Jo suggested, curious to change the subject from just being really fast.
“They’re flakes,” Lady Dana muttered, annoyed. “They don’t like to run because they don’t want to ruffle their robes.”
Gesturing at the mass of clouds, Lady Dana fretted, “Plus since things are always changing around here, no one can be bothered to keep track of anything. So there’s no records up here! No fastest times! No points! Just tea and ‘weather talk.’”
Lady Dana wrapped her beard back around her neck. “You’re going to have to get used to that. You are stuck here now, like me.”
April threw her hands up, exasperated. “How can it be there’s no way to climb down? When the mountain is THERE, we can just GO.”
Lady Dana shook her head. “You don’t think I’ve tried? There’s NO path. Unless you have some sort of magical flying machine, you’re stuck here.”
“Flying machine . . . You mean a plane?” Molly offered, wondering if Lady Dana was so old she didn’t know what a plane was.
Lady Dana either didn’t hear or was grumpily ignoring Molly.
Mal wondered how it was that someone who was so old she didn’t know what a plane was could pace around with that much energy.
Ripley scratched her chin.
Jo wondered how long it would take to rig up a plane. Probably a while.
April was looking at her friends and wondering what the heck her stupid idea had gotten them into this time. Maybe something they would NEVER get out of.
“Humph,” Lady Dana said, scratching her beard. “It’s time for tea, again. COME ON. You might as well see what the rest of your lives will be like.”
CHAPTER 37
The Lumberjanes followed Lady Dana through and over a series of cloudy hills of pink and gray and white and varying degrees of puffy and lumpy and bumpiness.
As April tried to keep up with Lady D, she noticed that in some places the cloud seemed to be coming apart, leaving swirls of curly wisps of cloud floating in the air, like cotton candy in a cotton candy machine.
Eventually, they passed through a cloudy archway and through to what felt like a crater in the cloudy ground, a crater filled with the pearl-faced Cloudies.
The Cloudies, now that it was possible to see a bunch of them, all had pearly faces and beards, they all wore robes, and many of them wore hats. One was wearing what looked like a bowler hat, and one had what looked like a top hat. One had a hat that looked like a pom-pom, and one had a hat that looked a little like a squirrel. All the hats were gray. All the hats seemed to be too small. But also pretty stylish.
“Hey! Dudes! Sunny!” Flap waved lazily from the crowd of Cloudies. “Look, it’s the Lumberjanes!”
“Hey, little dudes,” Swish said, raising a cup in a toast.
“Humph.” Clearly, Lady Dana wasn’t feeling sunny.
“Hey, sunny to you too!” Ripley waved back.
“I hope you dudes like tea,” Flap said, as another Cloudie appeared, carrying a tray of tiny teacups filled with bubbling cloudy water.
“We do,” Jo said, cautiously. “That’s very sunny of you to share with us.”
Flap nodded vigorously. “Tea is, like, the sunniest thing we have in Cumulous!”
Lady D swiped her cup off the tray and huffed over to a less populated curve of the crater to sip and, seemingly, sulk.
“So what do we do now?” Jo asked the Cloudies, taking a cup from the tray.
“Dudes! Talk about the weather, of course!” Swish sang out brightly.
“Dude,” Flap said, “we really love talking about the weather. I hope that’s sunny with you.”
Another Cloudie in a tiny ten-gallon hat appeared with a tiny teacup. “Yo. It’s chillier today than it was yesterday.”
“Totally, WHOOSH!” Swish said. “Also it’s sunnier.”
“Toooootally,” Whoosh sipped its tea. “And yesterday, for a moment, I heard rain.”
“Dude! I heard the rain too. And last week there was thunder!”
“Interesting,” Jo said, taking a sip of tea. “Did you know that the closer together you see lightning and hear thunder, the closer a storm is to where you are? I mean you probably already kn—”
“WHAT?” Whoosh almost dropped its tea. “Dude. Are you serious?”
Whoosh called back to the crater full of Cloudies. “Hey, Bang, Boom, Clap, Flop, Thump! Check it out!”
Soon a cluster of curious Cloudies were all bumping and clumping together around Jo.
“Whoa! Where did you learn about lightning?” they wondered.
Jo shrugged. “I just like reading about stuff. Do you have someone who lets you know what the weather will be? Like a weather . . . uh . . . a weathercloudie?”
The Cloudies’ mouths dropped open. “A WHAT?”
Boom braided its beard. “What would that Cloudie do?”
Jo shrugged. “You know, uh, they would read all the atmospheric stuff, like the wind velocity and stuff, and tell you what the weather will be.”
“That,” Thump looked like it was about to faint, “is the most sun-shower thunder lightning thing I have ever heard.”
“A Cloudie”—Swoosh mused, in awe—“who knows what the weather WILL be!”
The rest of the Cloudies gathered around. “Tell us more!”
April peered over at Lady D, who was still sipping and stewing. She leaned in to Jo and whispered, “You got this? I’m going to go check on Lady D.”
“I’m talking about science to a bunch of strange creatures living in clouds,” Jo whispered back out of the corner of her mouth. “I’m TOTALLY good. Wait until I tell them how lightning CAUSES thunder!”
CHAPTER 38
It did not really look like Lady D wanted company, but April made her way over with her tea anyway.
April sat a careful distance from Lady Dana, on the edge of the cloudy crater and the Cloudie tea party. Lady Dana didn’t look up. April took a sip from her cup. The Cloudies’ tea tasted a bit like snow water. It had that grainy quality of the snow April used to scoop off the tree branches with her mittens, what she used to call “tree marshmallows.”
Mitten snow was also tasty.
Lady Dana slurped from her cup and then turned and squinted at April. “I imagine it’s quite a shock, meeting THE Lady Dana Deveroe Anastasia Mistytoe.”
“Oh! Um,” April crossed her feet nervously, “sure . . .”
Lady Dana sipped her tea. “My plaques are still mounted and on display? My records still lauded at all meets and tournaments? Do they still announce the names of past victors before each competition?”
“Um,” April looked at her lap, “well, um, not . . .”
Lady Dana put her tea down with a CLANK. “Spit it out, scout.”
April shrugged. “I mean, there’s lots of different places where scouts put up their records and stuff. There’s this place in the mess hall where you can see Ripley’s record for the most pancakes eaten . . .”
Lady Dana looked at April. Cold as a handful of ice cubes.
“Heh heh. Quite a mouthful,” April smiled.
Lady Dana scowled. Thunder.
“It’s a pun, uh, sort of . . .” April said.
“You were completely unaware of my achievements?” Lady Dana fumed.
“Sorry,” April said. “I mean, I—”
“Well, isn’t that just DANDY!” Lady Dana grumbled, picking up her tea again. “The whole system down the tubes! NO POINTS. NO RECORDS! So it’s just a bunch of amateurs running around not caring who is fastest and who can jump the longest or the highest?”
April shook her head. “No! I mean, there are still badges and sometimes there are competitions. We just, I mean we all try to do great things and learn new things, we just . . . I mean, we just got our Living the Plant Life badge, and Barney’s going to get . . . a badge, I don’t know, I told them to get their sailing badge, but Ripley said they’re going to do the Fondant badge instead . . .”
Lady Da
na sipped her tea. “I gather you’ve earned your talking-too-much badge.”
April took a sip of her tea. There wasn’t a talking-too-much badge, actually. There was a Tip of the Tongue badge for talking fast, which April didn’t have . . . yet. April could say something about Lady Dana getting her cantankerous-and-crabby badge but that seemed . . . not a good idea.
“I’m sure you don’t know this,” Lady Dana turned her face to the sky, “because it seems there is very little you DO know, but before THE Lady Dana Deveroe Anastasia Mistytoe, there WAS no climbing record. I was the first!”
Lady Dana paused, took a sip of tea, and added, in a grumble, “If this had been an actual mountain, I would have also had the record for most peaks discovered. If this WAS an actual mountain.”
“Because it’s not on a map,” April whispered.
“Yes.” Lady Dana took a slurp of tea. “It was a great opportunity. An opportunity for greatness.”
“But it’s not a mountain.” April looked across the clouds at her friends all drinking tea with the Cloudies. Molly reached up and touched one of the Cloudies’ gray hats.
“No,” Lady Dana said.
April looked at her cup.
Lady D looked at April. “I’m assuming you had similar motivations.”
“I did it, I mean, we climbed . . . because,” April frowned, “because . . . I mean, I don’t hold a zillion records, but I’m trying to get all the badges, or a lot of them. I mean, I guess getting badges is kind of something I’m really good at and I love doing. And . . . I wanted to win this medal, the Extraordinary Explorers medal. Rosie, she’s our camp director, she has it.”
“You wanted to be the best,” Lady Dana said.
April frowned. “I didn’t want to be the best, I just, I wanted to be the best Lumberjane I could be and . . .”
April’s face fell. “And I had this plan, and normally they work, I mean most of the time they work.” April’s cheeks went red. “But this time it really didn’t work. We didn’t explore anything. This Mountain doesn’t even exist. And Mal’s hurt. And my friends are stuck here forever.”
“It appears so,” Lady Dana said.
“Hey!” A Cloudie wearing a stocking cap almost as long as its beard came by with a giant pot. “More tea? It’s super sunny.”
April shook her head.
“No, thank you.” Lady Dana tucked her mug in her beard.
“Okay then!” The Cloudie wandered off.
April covered her face with her hands.
Lady Dana sniffed, got up, and walked to wherever it is Lumberjanes with beards go after tea.
April felt pretty stormy. Like there was an actual storm brewing on top of her actual head.
A small bolt of lightning flashed in her brain.
April stood up, clenching her fists. “No,” she said. “We’re not stuck up here. I’m going to find a way down.”
And with that, April was up and running—past Jo, who was talking about barometric pressure to the Cloudies; past Ripley, who was trying on a spare Cloudie robe for size; past Mal and Molly, who were putting on little Cloudie hats.
Friendship to the max, you guys, even when it looks glum. Friendship to the max.
CHAPTER 39
April was already knee-deep in the pile of frayed bits of rope when the rest of the Lumberjanes found her.
“Okay. SO! NEW PLAN. We piece together what we have,” she said, holding up the frayed ends and talking fast. “We can add our sweaters, socks, whatever fabric we have free, and you guys can lower me down. As close to the ground as we can get. And I’ll jump. No problem. I’ll go and get someone with a flying machine and—”
Jo shook her head. “Bad plan. We don’t know how far it is! We don’t have near enough fabric or rope!”
“Good plan!” April insisted. “I could get close!” April wrung her hands, her eyes huge and pleading. “Come on, it’s worth a try.”
Molly stepped over and took the rope from April’s hand. “April. We’re not going to let you dangle yourself off a cloud.”
“Yeah.” Ripley frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. “No dangling. Dangling BAD.”
“April,” Mal said quietly, cradling her sore arm against her chest, “you don’t have to fix this.”
April stepped over and took Mal’s good hand in hers. “Mal, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry we did this thing and you got hurt! I didn’t think. I just thought about this thing I wanted to do! I didn’t think about—”
Mal squeezed April’s hand. “WE’RE going to make a new plan. We’re going to figure out something out, April. And not something that puts YOU in danger.”
Ripley looked down at her hand, and the only slightly wilted Clow Bell she was still holding.
“Hey,” she said to April, holding out the tiny flower, “here. It’s a Clow Bell from Dr. Twinkle. To make you feel better.”
April took the flower carefully. It bobbed in the breeze. “Thanks, Ripley.”
“Hey, did we ever find out why they’re called Clow Bells?” Molly wondered. “They don’t look anything like a bell.”
“Oh! It’s because they make a little sound,” Mal said, pointing to her ear. “Listen.”
April watched the bell sway in the gentle breeze. It did make a sound. It wasn’t a very big sound; in fact, it was one of the tiniest sounds she had ever heard. It was like the size of a sound you would imagine coming from a ladybug, if ladybugs could talk.
Maybe they can.
Anyway, it was definitely a very small but distinct sound.
A eureka moment is when a person suddenly figures out a solution to a problem, also called an aha moment. This is obviously very different from a ha ha moment.
An image popped into Mal’s head. It was of her grandma, the one who played the flute and had three little gray cats that used to play in the backyard and steal laundry from the neighbors’ lines. At the end of the day, her grandma used to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, looking out over the garden, and she’d hit a tin of cat food with a fork until the cats bounced in from the backyard.
Mal flashed back to Molly shaking the Clow Bell at the unicorn.
“Hey,” she said, her face lighting up with a cool idea.
At the same time, Jo was thinking about the unicorns. About walking behind them, that first day, about how the unicorns didn’t leave any hoof (foot, whatever) prints behind. Jo thought about the unicorns whizzing around the fields of Clow Bells.
“Hey,” Jo said.
Mal looked at April. “OMG, NEW PLAN,” she said.
Jo nodded. “Me too. We need to talk to the Cloudies.”
KEEP IT TOGETHER BADGE
“Don’t break the chain.”
Working as a team is essential to the success of any Lumberjane endeavor. Lumberjanes know that are a lot of things you can do by yourself, but there are a million more things you can do as a team. These things include volleyball, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, cricket, and almost any other sport that isn’t golf. These things also include basic things like building a fire, a tent, a canoe, or anything else that requires a little bit of ingenuity.
When you work as a team, you combine the insights and energies of several Lumberjanes. Also, periodically, it will be useful for one Lumberjane to stand on another’s shoulders to see over a tall wall or climb a very tall tree.
Of course, in each of these cases, the following precautions should be . . .
CHAPTER 40
When the Lumberjanes got back to the crater, the tea party was still in full swing. The Cloudies were still talking about the weather, possibly even more excitedly than usual.
“If this works, we could talk about even MORE weather,” Whoosh gushed.
“SO SUNNY!” Flap cheered.
Boom clapped its hands together excitedly.
Swish braided its beard, which is what Swish did when it was excited. “Hey, look, it’s Jo! Yo, Jo, do you want more tea?”
Jo shook her head. “We have a qu
ick question for you.”
“Totally,” Flap said. “Sup?”
“Have you ever seen a unicorn?” Jo asked. “A horse with a tail, and a horn on its head.” Jo looked at the Cloudies, who seemed to be looking blankly back at her. “Oh, do I need to explain ‘horse’?”
Swished shook its head. “Nah! We know unicorns! They’re those smelly guys! Those dudes are up here all the time, like, zigging and zagging through the clouds and stuff, like little zigzag dudes.”
“Wait,” April looked at Jo, wide-eyed, “unicorns can fly? How did you know unicorns could fly?”
Jo turned to April. “Remember when we were following the unicorn in the forest and watching them in the fields? They don’t leave any hoofprints,” Jo explained. “I just had this thought, like, maybe they can fly.”
“Also gas,” Molly offered.
“Unicorn farts are probably pretty powerful,” Ripley added.
“That’s supersmart, Jo!” April chucked Jo on the shoulder. “Two points for smart.”
“Thanks. I’ll take those two points and give you two back for the cool compliment.”
“Accepted.” April turned to the tea-sipping Cloudies. “Is there any specific place you’ve seen the unicorns?”
“Oh, uh,” Swish scratched its head below its fuzzy cap. “Yeah. Uh. Do you want us to show you?”
“Yes,” Mal said emphatically. “That would be totally sunny.”
Flap and Swish, and Boom and Whoosh, put their cups down and gestured with their long, lazy hands to all the Lumberjanes to follow.
Past a series of puffy cloud banks shaped like penguins, muffins, and mushrooms, they came to a small gap, a hole the size of a backyard pool in the clouds.
Molly looked down through the clouds. There was the rest of the world. But it was very very very far away. The unicorns weren’t even dots anymore, they were blurry pixels indistinguishable from everything else. The wind whistled along the edge of the white bank. “Wow.”