Peter Rabbit's Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

By morning the mill wheel hung still. Peter climbed to the spring behind the bakehouse and saw the trouble he had made. His reed pipe drank the whole flow. Nothing was left to turn the baker's wheel. He had watered his carrots and stopped the bakehouse in one afternoon. He could not take all the water. But he had no way to give the wheel its share. He pulled the moss plug and stuffed it back. The pipe went dry and his rows would thirst by noon. He pulled it out again. Water rushed down to his patch, and the wheel sat dead. All or nothing. Peter sat on a wet stone and held his ears. Clementine Cottontail found him there. She was the rabbit who had once told him to hire the raiders instead of chasing them. She wore her apron and her cape, and she carried a basket of wet clay from the pond ringed with flowers. She looked at the pipe, then at the still wheel below. "You're trying to pour one cup into two mouths," she said. "Stop pouring. Split the stream." "Split it how?" Peter asked. "It only goes one way." Clementine knelt at the spring's mouth. She scooped clay and packed a low ridge across the flow, right where the water left the pool. "Build a fork," she said. "One reed feeds your rows. One reed feeds the wheel. The ridge decides how much each takes." Peter understood. He cut two fresh reeds from the pond. He set one low toward his patch and one low toward the mill. Then he built the clay ridge between them, higher on his side, lower on the baker's. He worked the mud with both paws until it held. He pulled the moss plug. Water spread against the ridge and slid into both reeds at once. Half ran down to his carrots. Half ran to the mill. Peter raced down the slope. Water darkened his dry rows, slower now, but steady. He turned and watched the wheel. It shuddered, dripped, then began to turn. The bakehouse creaked back to life. He climbed up to Clementine, out of breath. "It's enough for both," he said. "Just enough." Clementine wiped her paws on her apron. "Just enough is a thin thing," she said. "Watch it. Rain or drought will move that ridge." She was right. The clay fork held for now. But it was soft, and the spring was small. Peter had bought peace with the baker and saved his crop with one wall of mud. His carrots would grow. The wheel would grind. Yet the whole bargain sat on a ridge of clay no thicker than his paw, and every dry week would test it.