Tuffy Turtle's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

The doe stood on shaking legs and thanked him, then disappeared into the trees. Tuffy lay on the cave floor for a long time, feeling the rope still wrapped around his shell. His body hurt. His hands burned where the rope had pulled through them. But he couldn't rest. The frog had said the wind was moving toward the forest. Not away from it. Toward the places where families lived. Where the young ones nested in the trees and the elders gathered in their dens. He pulled himself up and stepped back into the open air. The forest stretched out before him, dark and vast. Tuffy looked at the weathered trees scattered across his path, their trunks snapped and limbs broken. The wind had done this. And it was still moving. He thought about running ahead of it again, trying to warn everyone one by one. But he had learned something in the cave. He couldn't be everywhere at once. His shell was heavy and his legs were slow and the forest was too big. He needed others to help him. But first, they needed to know where to find him. Tuffy walked until he reached the place where three paths met. A tall beacon stood there, its light glowing soft against the dark trees. He had passed it many times before, but never stopped. Now he stood beneath it and looked at the paths stretching out in different directions. If he stayed here, others would see the light. They would come. And he could tell them what was coming. He sat down and waited, his shell pressed against the cold stone base of the beacon. His breath came slow and steady. For the first time, he was not chasing someone's cry. He was asking others to come to him. Footsteps came first from the left path, then from the right. Shapes moved through the trees. A fox stepped into the light, then a family of raccoons, then a robin fluttering down from the branches above. They saw Tuffy sitting beneath the beacon and stopped. He looked at them, his voice quiet but clear. The wind is coming, he said. It's heading toward the burrows and the nests. I can't stop it alone. The fox nodded. The raccoons turned to each other. The robin lifted into the air and called out to others deeper in the forest. Tuffy stood and led them toward the stone shelter at the edge of the populated grove, where the thick walls could hold against the wind. They followed him. And for the first time, Tuffy was not walking the forest alone.