Salt sea spray brushed against my cheek as I paced placidly along my beach. Well, not my beach, technically, but that’s what I fondly call it. My adoptive mother, Elnore, says every time it’s a nice day out, “It’s a day for your beach, Shayla, go and capture it.” So that’s where I am now, on a beach where your thoughts break loose from a cage called your mind, and take off into the sky. While my thoughts are off scanning the horizons, my green eyes stay close to the beach, seeking out shells. I always look for additions to my shell collection, which are easy to find, for I practically live on the beach. My eyes spot a dark gray shell poking out of the soft sand. I trot over and squat down by it, taking a piece of my short, curly brown hair and tucking it behind my ear. I carefully pick up the shell and turn it over. Sure enough, the rainbow colors of an abalone shell shimmer back at me. I smile and place the shell in the pocket of my battered old shorts, then skip off along the shoreline. After a few minutes of poking along the beach, I find the driftwood bench that I crafted myself. I plop down on it and think about my life, what I always do on this unique bench. I was adopted, or rather I was found. See, Elnore found me on the beach, which is, of course, very odd. Elnore told the police about me, and the police did their job and investigated to see if anyone had a missing child. No one claimed me, so Elnore took me under her wing. I have lived with her ever since, twelve years. I love Elnore’s cozy old beach house, and I love Elnore, but I would like to know about my past. After a few minutes of poking along the beach, I find the driftwood bench that I crafted myself A ship bell rings faintly. I look out on the ocean. Old Mr. Flint waves at me from his equally old fishing schooner. I wave back. Mr. Flint points to the cove that he usually docks in. I nod and he turns back to his wheel. Lifting myself off the bench, I make my way down to Fisher’s Cove. I usually help Mr. Flint unload his catch in exchange for stories of what he saw in the ocean that day, and a buck or two. “Aye, little Shayla!” Mr. Flint greets me with a toothy smile. “Hey!” I grin back. “Any fish stories today?” “Jest unusual happenings. I swear I saw a whale jest off the mainland. Gray-colored one it was.” My eyes open wide with surprise. “But it’s not time for whales to migrate by here yet!” I exclaim. “Yeah, I know. That’s what’s so strange about that whale. Help me with this net, wouldja?” I bend down and help him with a net full of fish. I still am very curious. “Was there anything strange about the whale, besides the obvious?” I enquire eagerly. Old Mr. Flint wrinkles up his nose, thinking hard. “Eyah . . . it were tossin’ around a trinket thing, mayhap a shell. I don’ think that that’s what’s causin’ um to act this way though.” He pulls out another net, and I help him with it. “Nothing else?” I ask hopefully. “Nothin’ ‘cept the sunrise,” was the disappointing answer. I stay through the usual sunrise bit, I finish, he thanks me, and hands me the regular paycheck (a dollar-fifty). Finally I trudge home, with darkness setting over the ocean. “I suppose you will be enlightening the beach with your presence today, right?” I smile at Elnore’s obvious question, and reply enthusiastically over the tink, tink of spoons against breakfast oatmeal bowls. “Of course! Going to the beach is one of the many privileges of this off-school vacation! How could you ever doubt I would spend a day without my beach?” “Oh, just a wild guess.” Elnore picks up my satchel, and tosses it at me. “Go find some seashells!” “Aye, aye captain!” I rush happily out the door. It is foggy when I get to my beach, and the waves crash steadily against the jagged rocks. I shrug my shoulders and continue on my way. A few sand dollars are all I can see in the sand, broken ones at that. I suddenly decide to walk on the western part of my beach, a part that I don’t acknowledge much. The wind starts to whip around violently, and strands of hair keep blowing in my face. Frustrated, I search my satchel for a rubber band, and come out with a piece of string. I turn in the direction of the ocean and tie my hair up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something move out on the ocean. I know it isn’t the waves; the thing I see is an object. Something plops down in the sand right next to me and I jump. I come to my senses and look down. A large shell sits comfortably in the sand, as if it had been there a million years. I stoop and take a closer look. The shell is a conch shell, and definitely excels in looks. It is glossy, and the surface is a mixture of cream and white colors. It is delicately rounded and has a curlicue on the top of it. Excited, I pick up the pretty shell and put it in my satchel. I walk home quickly, eager to show Elnore my lucky find. How little I knew then. * * * “Elnore, Elnore! Look, look! Look what I found!” I burst through the door, wet from the now falling rain. Elnore glances up from her sketch pad, and puts on her wire-rimmed glasses. “What do you have there?” I hold up the conch shell. Elnore’s eyes are like tennis balls. “Wow. That is
Animals
My Friend
Tap, tap, tap. The light drizzle sprinkled upon my window. I stood up and ran downstairs. “Yes! Only one more hour till eight. My favorite show ‘Rocket Power’ will be on.” I skipped into the living room and grabbed my Gameboy off the top shelf. While doing this I thought about how nice it was on rainy days like this. My parents couldn’t make me go outside. I poured my cornflakes into the bowl. I looked with my dark blue eyes down into the bowl. Wow! Those pieces of cereal are like the stones that sink in the next level of Nintendo. I thought of all this while playing my game on Gameboy. The milk would be the lava I would sink in. I stopped the game and ate my cereal slowly, imagining each spoonful another monster jumping out of the lava and killing me. I did this for quite a while until my cereal got soggy. I took my plate to the sink and looked at the clock. Still half an hour to go. Ten minutes later my parents got up. They ate breakfast. With only two minutes to go, I ran into the TV room and flipped on the TV. “Rocket Power” had just started. I lay down on the soft leather couch and lay there with my eyes half closed. “Frederick,” called my father Leonard. “We don’t have any more wood for the fire.” I saw Leonard’s face peek around the door. “That means you’ve gotta help.” “But Dad . . .” I saw the squirrel in the mother hawk’s beak. She was about to feed it to her young “No buts about it. It’ll only take half an hour.” ” . . . in half an hour, my show will be over.” “Do you want to freeze to death?” I snapped off the TV and walked out of the room with my head down. I flung a jacket around me and stomped outside. “Ahhh, but it’s raining,” I said with a grin, and turned around. “No. The rain has stopped. Now it’s just foggy.” I slowly walked down the stairs, trying to think of an excuse. The chill stung me like needles. The little autumn light that there was cast an image through the skeletons of trees. I finally made it to the corner of the field where all the wood was kept. I saw my father breaking through the fog with the rusty wheelbarrow from the barn. When he got to where I was standing, I started throwing wood into the wheelbarrow. When it was so full that not one more log could fit in it, he took it back to the house to empty. He took his time, as if trying to make me suffer. Once he had disappeared into the fog, something else caught my eye. It was from above me. When I looked up, I saw a small animal with a big gray bushy tail. A squirrel. It darted from branch to branch. I followed it down to the creek. Every once in a while it would stop to groom itself. When it got to the creek, it noticed me. Such a fascinating creature, climbing head first down the trunk of an old oak, every few minutes glancing up at me. When it reached the ground, it hesitantly came toward me. After it was about three feet away from me, I reached out to pat it. It scampered away frantically. I waited patiently for the squirrel to sneak back out of the blackberry bush. It did with a cautious look, its eyes staring at me the whole time. Slowly, it sat down next to me. I reached out a quivering hand, its eyes closed. Now I could feel the warmth of the animal’s fur. Suddenly, a flash of feathers was flung into my face, and a small squeaking sound filled the forest. When the feathers left, the squirrel was gone. I looked up to see a red-tailed hawk with the squirrel clenched between its talons. I followed the vicious bird to its huge nest of leaves and sticks. The scraggly bundle was literally five feet long and two feet thick. The bird landed as I started to climb the big pine. I kept an eye on the nest until I reached it. I had a grip on the tree as I peeked over the edge. Three little cotton balls were bouncing up and down, looking as if their heads were attached to loose springs. I saw the squirrel in the mother hawk’s beak. She was about to feed it to her young. She saw me! Her yellow eyes glared at me with an awkward stare. I ducked and clung to the tree like it was my mother. The hawk dropped the half-dead squirrel into the nest and peered over the edge. She couldn’t see me, so she started digging into her nest; I peered over the other side of the scruffled nest to see the birds from behind and all three youngsters staring at her. No one was looking at the squirrel but me. I snatched the squirrel and felt a pecking at my back. I lost my balance and fell, fell and fell till I hit the ground, felt the squirrel leave my hands and everything went black. Slowly my eyes opened, but sharply squinted as the sun reached into my pupils. I rolled into the shade of the dark pine. The damp ground comforted me. “What time is it? Where am I? Why am I here? Wasn’t I just chopping wood with my father?” I slowly got up from the leaf-carpeted soil, trying to think why I was in the middle of the forest. I looked up and saw a grungy nest. In the back of my mind I could remember a bird, a hawk, with something in its sharp talons. It was a smaller animal, shaking and squeaking. I just couldn’t remember what. I dazedly walked home, trying
Roscoe
CHAPTER ONE Roscoe the River Otter peered at the glittering stream with bleary eyes. The warm sun had dulled his senses and left him asleep on the bank since noon, but the cooling mists of twilight brought a searing pain to his stomach. Hunger. It was the driving force in all the forest creatures, and Roscoe was no exception. He yawned, exposing a row of gleaming, ivory-white teeth sharp enough to slice an elephant’s hide. He stretched, feeling the cords of his muscles draw taut and send tingling waves cascading over all of his body. A soft patter of feet on the dry leaves startled the half-awake Roscoe; he whirled to face the danger but readied himself to leap into the water at a moment’s notice. But it was merely Red, the fox, coming down to drink of the sweet river water before his nightly hunt. He ignored the frightened otter and bent his auburn head to lap up some of the cool liquid. Roscoe relaxed. The fox posed no danger to his welfare and always kept to his own affairs. And, besides, it was time to think of more important things. Like food. Roscoe dove gracefully into the water, making a series of ripples that warped the peaceful reflection of the woodlands into a six-year-old’s crumpled painting. He darted through the stream like an elongated torpedo, his beady black eyes searching the murky depths for the shining scales of the fish his mouth desired. And then began the chase. Roscoe twisted, circled and sliced through the water, mimicking his prey’s every move. Between rocks, under logs, through twisted masses of rotting roots he pursued the tasty morsel, who was fast tiring. And with one last, great effort, his jaws closed on the silvery scales to silence the fish’s life forever. Roscoe broke the surface with his prize. Dragging it onto the shore, he curled up and started to hack away at the juicy pink meat with his scissor-like teeth. Roscoe broke the surface with his prize As the smell of blood filled the air, scavengers began to flock around the fresh kill with lust in their eyes. A mink peered at the fish hungrily from behind a rock, and a pine marten sighed enviously from a green thicket, where he waited impatiently for the otter to finish. But it was quite some time before Roscoe deemed himself satisfied; in fact, he was fully gorged and bloated before he finally turned away from his catch. Curling up on a flat rock, he closed his eyes contentedly and fell into a happy, dreamless sleep. CHAPTER TWO The morning dawned smoky. A haze of burning, bluish smoke settled over the forest, smothering the cheerful robin’s song and sending many of the animals into cautious hiding. Roscoe sniffed the air warily. There could be no doubt of the scent; man was near. The smoke was from his campfire—a very large one, to be sure—and the deathly silence that hung over the woods was proof that he was very close. Roscoe slid into the water quietly. It was time to go. Man desired his fine pelt, and where man was he would not stay. He swam swiftly, away from the smoke, away from the smell of man, like an arrow soaring through the blue-black depths to safety. He surfaced for a breath and scanned the shoreline with trepidation. The smell was stronger. Roscoe’s whiskers quivered and twitched with fright, and his nose rebelled at the putrid, unpleasant scent. He dove back under. The river widened up ahead, and the stronger current already began to tug at his sleek body. Onward, onward. The river was frothy now, and all of his swimming skills were applied to steer a straight course in the roiling waves. He lifted his head for a gulp of air. “Bang, whiz!!! Bang!!” Bullets ripped through the water on his right and left! He yelped and sank beneath the surface, his heart pounding madly. Man was on the shore! He swam toward the opposite bank. Perhaps there was some brush to shelter him. “Bang!! Whiz!!!” The bullets hissed as they hit the water, inches away from Roscoe’s head. He was a clear target in the crystal-blue liquid. Air! Air! Roscoe’s lungs screamed. He surfaced. “Bang!! Whiz!! Bang-bang!!!!” A searing, red-hot pain lashed through the river otter’s body. He managed to sink back under the water, but his right side had been viciously scraped by a bullet. He kicked feebly, trying to get up enough propulsion to sail with his usual grace. But it was impossible. He floundered about helplessly, crying and sending bubbles of precious air back up to the surface. It wouldn’t be long before the man sent his dog in to fetch him. One Tooth was pitying the otter very much as he sank slowly into the water But there was other movement in the water. An old, solitary beaver, named One Tooth because of obvious reasons, had seen the entire plight from his small, brush-and-mud lodge and decided to play a part in Roscoe’s fate. Now, the beaver and the otter are most certainly not friends—one builds and the other takes extreme delight in tearing down—but old One Tooth hated man above all other hates. Man burned the forest. Man shot the animals. Man cut down his trees that he needed for his lodge! So, you see, One Tooth was pitying the otter very much as he sank slowly into the water. Roscoe kicked with the last of his strength and ended up beside the beaver. “Bang!!! Whiz!!!” A red dot began to swell on One Tooth’s scruffy hide. He roared with anger and slapped his great tail against the water’s surface. Roscoe squeaked as the huge beaver drew him in, sheltering him with his body, taking the bullets, the pain, the death that was meant for the injured otter. They swam to the lodge, where One Tooth nudged Roscoe inside with a look that said, “Take
