THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WELL

Chapter 1 – page 4

Their tongues were warm and tickly and soon Julio was rolling around in the bracken too, with the Cub. Frolicking as they were, Granma was a little more worried, as time went on …. and no one could tell how time went on here, whether they had been down the well an hour or more or longer, who knows? Julio didn’t care, but Granma was thinking: who would feed the horses?

After Granma and Julio were as clean as whistles and not the least bit sticky, the bears, sporting pot bellies and big smiles on their faces, sauntered off in the opposite direction of the trail on which they came. They quickly disappeared into a dark wood on the left, behind the bank where the well hole came out. There didn’t seem to be any trail to follow and they were gone in the blink of an eye. Just as if the trail rolled up and became invisible.

"Soooo," Granma began, "where do you think we’ve got to, Julio?" "Heck if I know," says Julio as he got up and brushed himself off. "But isn’t it neat?" he exclaims.

Well since they were already on an adventure of some sort, they both decided they might as well follow the springy, mossy path to their right and see where it led them. So off they went in the opposite direction of the 3 bears.

The sun was shining in this underground world ,, or had they come out on the other side of the earth? They didn’t know. Spring, bounce, spring, bounce, thump, boing, pounce, boing, spring, thump, poing, bounce, thump .... along the mossy trail they went.

The path soon started heading downhill a bit and became moister and moister and moister. Dew started dripping off the trees. And alongside the path, something like mushrooms started popping up here and there and there and here and there again til they were everywhere, on both sides of the path. They were small at first : pale pink, salmon, peachy, red, creamy, orangish, light purple; then they got bigger. After passing, Julio thought he heard them whispering. He would turn around suddenly to catch them at it, and then there was complete silence, except for the meadowlarks. Then, as he turned to walk on down the path, the whispering would start again, sounding somewhat like buzzing, humming and whirring all mixed up together.

Granma stopped short and said: "Julio, climb up in that there tree and get me a switch; a strong one." Julio thought: what have I done now? But he went up the nearest tree, that just happened to have handle bar limbs wherever one needed them and foot peddles too. So it was easy climbing. He found a bunch of switches and called down: "How long do you want it, Granma?" She couldn’t even see him in the tree but heard a small little voice calling out from silvery leaves

. . . so she yelled back up, "Oh, about 8 or 9 feet I’d say." Well, Julio wasn’t much of a judge of distance, but he always carried his handy dandy tape measure in his pocket, so he got it out and measured the switches til he found one that was long enough.