Mira was hurrying along Acornbell Bramble Path with a small bundle of blackberry leaves tucked under one arm. The leaves were meant for Rowan, who liked to line his nest with soft things and call it "careful comfort." Ahead, the path bent past two fat roots and into a pocket of shade where Pip had promised to meet them for a "wonderful surprise."
But the surprise had already started.
From the hedge came a series of tiny metallic plinks. Then a wobble. Then a bright little bell rolled out of the brambles and bumped against Mira’s paw. It was no bigger than a cherry, silver and round, with a loop on top and a dent in one side. When Mira touched it, the bell gave a soft, unhappy tinkle.
Rowan frowned through his round spectacles. "That is not one of ours," he said.
Pip popped up on a root behind them, tail fluffed high. "Good!" he cried. "It’s exactly the kind of thing a surprise should have. I was going to ring it from above and make you all look up at once."
Before Mira could ask how the bell had gotten into the brambles, it gave another weak tinkle, and somewhere deeper in the leaves a whole answering chorus of tiny bell sounds began to shake and jitter, as if the path itself had started whispering back.
Mira looked from the bell to the hedge to her friends. If the sounds were coming from inside the brambles, then someone—or something—had left them there. She could follow the bells into the shade, ask Rowan to inspect the little dent, or let Pip make his surprise first and see what answered.
What happens next?
Sign in to rate
