The Slowest Race in Fern Valley

Everyone expected Rill to lose the race. He usually stopped to examine things, and there were many things between the resting hollow and the red boulder: a stream, fallen branches, ferns, stones, and whatever had happened to those stones since yesterday. His friends Ember and Sprig were already arguing about who would arrive first. Rill looked at a curled leaf near his front foot and wondered what had made such a perfect circle.

Aunt Ochre listened to the argument until both youngsters were out of breath. “I have a race for you,” she said. “Go to the red boulder and return before the long shadows. The winner brings back three things nobody else noticed.” Ember frowned. “Can we bring back stones?” Ochre shook her head. “Bring back descriptions. Leave the valley as you find it.” Sprig looked disappointed. Rill finally lifted his head. This sounded like a race he understood.

Ember started down the trail immediately. Sprig followed, determined to see the interesting things first. Rill waited to make sure Ochre meant all three of them should stay within calling distance. Then he set off at his usual steady walk. Near the stream he found a line of foam caught against a twig. The bubbles trembled but did not move downstream. He watched a little longer and saw the water curling backward in a tiny spinning current.

He wanted to show Sprig, but she was searching beneath a fern. “Don’t use mine,” she said. “I found a beetle with shiny wing cases.” Rill backed away. He had not thought of observations as things one could own. At the next bend Ember was pushing through some brush, certain the best discoveries lay away from the path. A branch snapped back across her nose. Ochre’s distant reminder floated between the trees: “The route is part of the race.”

They continued more carefully. Rill found his second observation on the sheltered side of a fallen trunk. The wood was dry above but damp underneath, and tiny pale threads ran through a softened patch. He did not scrape them away. He simply remembered their branching shape. Sprig discovered that a spider web near the trail became visible only when she stood with the sun behind it. She called Rill over before remembering they were competitors.

He looked, then stepped aside so Ember could see too. “Now we’ve all noticed it,” Sprig said sadly. Rill watched light flash across the threads. “But you noticed how to see it.” That made Sprig thoughtful. At the red boulder, Ember found only red stone. She had used so much energy hunting for something enormous that she had passed everything small. Rill sat beside her. For a while neither spoke. The valley made quiet, busy sounds around them.

A dry seed cone dropped from a branch and landed beside Ember. She inspected the branch, then the cone. One side had opened farther than the other. On the sunny side of the boulder another cone had opened even more. Ember’s eyes brightened. She began comparing them without carrying anything away. Rill found his third observation nearby: the boulder’s shaded face felt cooler than its sunlit top, and a narrow crack sheltered a patch of delicate moss.

On the way home nobody hurried. Sprig showed them where the web vanished into the background. Ember explained the cones, and Rill pointed out the tiny backward current. Each discovery changed the way they saw the others. By the time they reached the hollow, the valley seemed larger than it had that morning. Ochre asked for their reports. Ember began to say, “I found,” then paused. “We found,” she corrected, “that looking from another place can change what you see.”

Ochre listened to every description. She declared the race successful and the winner difficult to identify. This would once have annoyed Ember, but she was already planning to check the cones after the next rain. Sprig wanted to see the web at dawn. Rill returned to his curled leaf. Inside it, a small insect shifted in a shelter he had nearly disturbed. He smiled and stepped around it. Tomorrow’s race, he decided, could begin before anyone even left home.