THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WELL

Chapter 3 – page 8

There were two full moons here, just like there were two suns. One moon was white and the other iridescent pale, lavender-green. Since the colors were different in this world, that’s the only way you could describe it, other than it also looked transparent with color, sorta like the fairies.

There was not a speck of trash to be seen. The only sound was the bubbling waterfall along with a hooty owl once in awhile. The full moons gave off enough light that Granma and Julio could see each other. "Well, what now?" says Julio. "I dono," says Granma. A lot of help 129 years does a person.

They just sat there until they heard a clomp clompity clomp on the path above the Waterfall Birthday Park. Here it was, the middle of the night ,and guess who shows up? "Hey, what’s that? Little clompity clomps behind the big clompity clomp," said Julio. "Oh, you’re such a smarty pants, Julio," said Granma, swatting at him.

And what to their complete surprise and amazement, if Mober and Pepper, two of Granma's horses, didn't appear out of nowhere. Mober is a big horse and Pepper is a baby horse that follows Mober around. Wherever Mober goes, Pepper is sure to follow. Granma held her breath and whispered, she didn't know why: "They must have gotten sucked down the well too, nosey horses!" Then she finally let her breath out. Funny how such a big animal can stretch out all skinny and get down such a little pipe, thought Granma. Julio thought the same thing, but didn’t say anything.

Well at least Mober seemed like she was gonna behave just fine. She wasn’t pawing or tossing her head around, like sometimes. Granma got an idea. "Ok Julio, at daybreak, we make a run for it! "I mean this place is so nice it is sucking us right in, like we’ll stay here forever. We gotta get going and see what’s on the other side of them there mountains, and see about getting home. You could just barely see the pink tips of the mountains over the forest trees; the same mountains PKK had talked about over cake and ice cream.

"And now we have a way to get there!" shout-whispered Granma. So they got busy in the middle of the night and made bridles for Mober & Pepper out of willow switches, braiding them with five strands. "Only one thing, Julio …. ah …." stuttered Granma …. "Pepper has never been ridden before. But you don’t weigh so much. She won’t mind." And Granma swallowed a big lump in her throat. "Wherever Mober goes, Pepper follows anyway. I can just tie Pepper on behind and off we’ll go!" exclaimed Granma.