Sway, Sway, Slow as the River

"Heh..." The word floated down from the high branch, slow as honey off a spoon. Opal stood at the foot of the mango tree and waited, because she knew that word took a while. Opal was a small long-neck dinosaur, littler than a fern and greener than a leaf, with a neck longer than all the rest of her put together. Up on the branch, Moss the sloth was saying hello.

Moss had started saying hello before the warm rain came. The rain had dripped from leaf to leaf, all the way down, and patted soft spots on Opal's head. A last warm drop landed on her nose and she blinked. Opal sniffed the evening: wet moss, and ripe mango, and rain. She liked the smell of the Emerald Jungle when it was getting dark.

Opal's neck did not grow straight up like a tree trunk. It curved one way, and then the other, the way the slow river curved past the ferns. Her neck was good for reaching the high sweet leaves. It was no good at all for standing in a line.

Grandma Fern said it was a lovely neck. Opal wasn't so sure.

Yusuf was a small three-horned dinosaur who liked things straight. He lined up mangoes on a flat stone, biggest to smallest. He put fern fronds in a neat row along the bank. Opal wanted to help, so she leaned over to look, and her neck swung, slow and friendly, and bumped the mangoes, and the mangoes rolled off the stone into the moss. "Sorry," said Opal. Inside, she felt wobbly.

"It's all right," said Yusuf, and lined them up again. Opal watched and kept her neck very still. Keeping still was hard work, and her neck ached from it, and after a while she let it go, and it swung, gentle and slow.

Opal rubbed her neck. "It never does what I tell it," she said. Yusuf patted her foot. "Mine does what I tell it," he said, "and it's mostly boring."

Down by the river, something small blinked. Then something else blinked. Then a whole string of small lights blinked on, one after another. The glow-worms were coming out.

Every evening the glow-worms climbed the Lantern Branch. It was a long arm of wood that leaned out over the path, and the glow-worms hung along it in twos and threes, like tiny lanterns on a string. Each one carried a small cool light in its tail, and they liked to be close together. When the dark came, their light showed the little night animals where the path went, down to the water and back to their mossy beds.

But tonight the Lantern Branch lay on the ground. The warm rain had made it heavy, and it had leaned down and down until it touched the moss. The glow-worms climbed onto it and slid off. They climbed onto a rock and slid off. They bunched together on the riverbank, blinking slowly, and their light made one small puddle of glow on the wet ground.

The little night animals waited in the ferns, peeking out. They could not find the path without the lights.

Grandma Fern came along the path, wide and slow as a cloud. She looked at the branch, and she looked at the glow-worms. "Well," she said, in her warm-blanket voice. "Let's see." She tied a vine from the mango tree across to the fern post. The vine was too short. She tied a longer one, and the glow-worms climbed on, and every single one slid down to the low sag in the middle and sat there in a heap, blinking.

"I can hold it," said Yusuf. He put his three little horns under the sagging vine and pushed it up. He stood very straight. His legs began to shake. His nose began to tickle. "Ah... ah... choo." The vine bounced, the glow-worms swung, and they giggled in small blinking laughs. Yusuf sat down in the moss. "I'm too short," he said.

Opal looked at the branch on the ground, and she looked at her own long neck. "Let me try," she said. She lifted her neck and held it out over the path, stiff as a stick, straight as a stick. "Climb on," she said, and the glow-worms climbed up, one, then two, then a whole soft crowd of them.

Opal held her neck still. She held it stiller. Then it wobbled, and then it wobbled more, and the glow-worms slid down her long green neck and plopped into the moss, one, two, three, and they laughed, because moss is soft. "Sorry," said Opal. She felt wobbly inside again.

"Opal," said Grandma Fern, "who told you a lantern has to hold still?"

Opal thought about that. She looked at the river, curving past the ferns, going wherever it liked. Then she stopped holding her neck still. She let it sway the way it wanted to sway, slow and low, and the glow-worms climbed up and hung along it in twos and threes. When Opal swayed, the lights swayed with her. Left, right, left, right, a long slow sweep of light over the path, out to the fern hollow and back again, like a necklace of light swinging gently in the dark.

"Sway, sway, slow as the river," hummed Opal. "Sway, sway, slow as the river," hummed Grandma Fern. The glow-worms blinked along with the hum, and their light swept left, and swept right, and reached farther than the old branch ever had.

Out from the ferns came the little night animals. The frog found the water and found the way home again. A beetle carried a seed along the bright path. Two mice sat and watched the swinging lights, because the lights were lovely.

Yusuf watched too. "It isn't in a row," he said. Opal waited. "I like it like that," said Yusuf. He looked at his mangoes on the flat stone, and he did not line them up again.

After a while the jungle grew drowsy. Drowsy means sleepy and slow and warm all at once. The rain stopped dripping. The ferns went still. The glow-worms' light went soft and dim, the way a light does when it is nearly time for sleeping. Opal's neck swayed slower. Sway, sway, slow as the river.

Grandma Fern walked to her mossy hollow and curled up with her tail over her nose. Yusuf lay down beside the flat stone and closed his eyes. "Loh," said Moss from the high branch, finishing the hello she had started before the rain. Then she said, "Good... night." That one took all night, and that was just right.

Opal lay down in the warm moss and curled her long neck around herself, soft as a fern. The glow-worms swung once more over the path, left, then right. Then they settled, and shone, small and steady. The river went past the ferns, slow as always, and Opal's neck swayed one last time, and was still.