Rain had fallen on the swamp for nine days, and Barney the Frog counted every neighbor who had stopped smiling. Cricket wouldn't sing. The old newt kept staring at the water like it owed him an apology. Barney sat on a wet stump and made a list on a soaked leaf: everyone in the swampy end of the forest needed somewhere warm to gather before the gloom set in for good. That was the promise Barney had made to themself when the rain began. No frog, no bug, no fish was going to slip into sadness on Barney's watch. The problem was simple and awful. There was no dry spot. The lily pads sagged. The muddy leap where Barney usually held sing-alongs had become a puddle inside a puddle. Barney tried stacking reeds into a roof. The reeds fell. Barney tried a hollow log. Water poured through the knot in the top. Every attempt ended with wetter neighbors and darker faces. Barney hopped toward the tree line to think, and nearly collided with a white rabbit in a green field coat and muddy boots. Frank Rabbit. Barney had only met him once, at the edge of the marked paths, where he'd been mapping washouts with a stubby pencil. He had the same pencil now, tucked behind one long ear. "You're going to catch a cold standing there," Frank said. He didn't smile. He looked at Barney's soaked leaf list and read it upside down. "Gathering, warm, dry. That's a shed problem." "There isn't a shed," Barney said. "There is. Up the slope. Rustic. Empty since last spring." Frank tugged a strap on his satchel. "Roof holds. Door sticks. I can get it open." Barney hesitated. The shed was outside the swamp. Some of the older frogs wouldn't want to hop that far in the rain. But wet and far beat wet and hopeless. "Show me," Barney said. Frank led the way along a marked path, ears flat against the drizzle. The shed sat under two leaning pines, small and gray and blessedly dry inside. Frank shoved the door with his shoulder until it gave. The floor was dusty. The roof did not drip. Barney hopped in a slow circle, testing every board. Dry. All of it dry. "I'll bring them up before dark," Barney said. "Sing-along at sundown." Frank nodded once and started sweeping leaves out with the side of his boot. "You'll need firewood. And more room than this by week's end, if the rain keeps up. Word travels." Barney stopped at the door and looked back down the slope, where the swamp glittered gray under the rain. The shed would hold tonight. Maybe two nights. But Frank was right. If neighbors from the dry end of the forest heard there was a warm room, they'd come too. And Barney had only one small building, one stuck door, and no plan for a crowd.

By sundown the shed was full. Frogs crowded the dusty floor. A newt shivered against the wall. Two minnows in a jar sat by the door. Barney the Frog counted heads and felt his stomach drop. Everyone was dry, but no one was warm. No one had eaten. The rain drummed the roof, and the drumming was the only sound. Barney tried the sing-along anyway. He hopped onto an overturned crate and started an old marsh tune about summer bugs. Three voices joined. The rest stared at the floor. The newt closed his eyes like he was already giving up. Barney's throat went dry mid-verse. A song was not going to be enough. Not tonight. The door scraped open. A bear ducked under the frame and stepped inside, shaking rain off a red flannel shirt. Billy Bear. Barney had seen him once, hauling deadfall past the swamp flat with a strap over his shoulder. Everyone in the shed went quiet the way small animals do when something large arrives. Billy looked at the crowd, then at Barney on the crate. "Heard there was a warm room," Billy said. "Doesn't feel warm." "There's no fire," Barney said. "And no food." Billy grunted. He set down a canvas sack by his boot. "Firewood outside. I passed a stand of dry pine under the leaning rocks. I can split it." He nudged the sack with his toe. "And I came through the berry bushes on the ridge. Full up. Red ones and dark ones. Enough for this many, if someone helps me pick." Barney hopped off the crate. "I'll go." "You'll slow me down," Billy said, not unkindly. "Send the rabbit if he's here. I need someone with hands." Frank Rabbit was already at the door, pulling his hood up. He gave Barney a short nod and slipped out after the bear. Barney turned back to the room. "Firewood coming. Food coming. Keep singing." He started the summer bug song again, louder. This time more voices joined, because now there was a reason. Billy returned first with an armload of split pine and a coil of birch bark. He built a fire in the ring of stones by the door in the time it took Barney to finish two verses. The flame caught. Heat pushed into the room. The newt opened his eyes. Frank came in behind, satchel bulging, and dumped berries onto a flat board. Small paws and beaks moved in at once. Barney watched the shed change. Wet fur steamed. Someone laughed. The gloom broke. Then Billy leaned close, low enough that only Barney heard. "Ridge is stripped after tonight. And I counted twice as many coming up the path behind me. Word's out." Barney looked at the door. The rain had not stopped. And the shed, warm now, was already too small.

Billy's warning still hung in the air when the door scraped open again. A muskrat pushed in, then a pair of soaked squirrels, then a hedgehog carrying a bundle. Barney counted eleven new bodies in under a minute. The shed groaned. Frogs pressed their backs to the wall. The newt got stepped on and squeaked. Warm air turned close and wet. Outside, more shapes moved up the slope through the rain, slow, heads down. Barney climbed back onto the crate. From there he could see the doorway and the path beyond it. A rabbit stood in the mud with her kits, staring at the packed room. She did not come in. She just stood. That was the look Barney had promised to prevent. The look of giving up in the rain. "We can't fit them," Frank Rabbit said at his elbow. "Not one more." "They'll sit down out there," Barney said. "They'll sit down and stop moving." He hopped off the crate and pushed through legs and tails to the door. He needed a second dry place, now, and he had nothing to build one with. Then something shifted in the shadow beside the fire ring. A long green coil unwound from behind the woodpile. Yellow eyes. A flicking tongue. Sammy Snake. Barney had not seen them come in. Snakes moved when no one was watching. "You've been under that wood the whole time," Barney said. "Warm spot," Sammy said. "I know another one." Barney waited. "Hollow under the leaning rocks. Where the bear cut his pine. Dry floor. Roof of stone. Big enough for twice this crowd." Sammy's tongue flicked. "I den there in cold weather. It's empty now." "Why didn't you say so an hour ago?" "No one asked a snake." Barney turned to Billy Bear by the fire. "Take a torch. Take Frank. Lead half of them up to the rocks. Sammy shows the way." Billy was already reaching for a split pine brand. Frank pulled his hood up again. Barney went out into the rain and hopped to the rabbit in the mud. "Follow the bear," he said. "There's a second room. Stone roof. Dry floor. Come on." The rabbit blinked at him. Then she picked up the smallest kit and stepped onto the path. Half the shed emptied behind Billy's torch. Sammy poured ahead through the wet grass, a green ribbon in the firelight. The line of animals followed, kits and squirrels and the hedgehog, up the slope toward the leaning rocks. The muskrat brought up the rear. Barney watched them go until the torch was a spark in the trees. Rain ran off his back. The shed behind him breathed easier. No one was sitting down in the mud. Then Frank came running back down the path alone, waving both arms. "Barney," he called. "There's someone already in the rocks. And he won't let us in."

Frank Rabbit stopped in the mud beside Barney, panting. Rain ran off his hood. "He's got the door blocked with a log. Won't even show his face. Billy's up there arguing through the crack." Behind Frank, the line of animals had halted on the slope. The rabbit with the kits sat down on a wet stone. That was the sitting Barney had promised to prevent. "Take me up," Barney said. He turned to the shed and called for a lantern. A squirrel passed one out. Then Barney hopped after Frank through the marsh grass, past the low pools of the swamp flat, up onto the drier ground where the leaning rocks rose out of the trees. Billy Bear stood at the mouth of the hollow with his torch, one huge paw braced on the pine log wedged across the entrance. Sammy Snake was coiled on a flat stone above the door, tongue flicking at the gap. A small fire burned inside the shelter. Barney could see clay jars stacked in the shadows, and a bundle of dried reeds. Someone had lived here a while. "He says he'll bite," Billy rumbled. "Won't say who he is." Barney hopped onto the log. "I'm Barney. I'm the frog who runs the shed down the slope. We have kits out here in the rain." A voice hissed from inside. Old. Cracked. "I know your shed. I know your crowd. They'll eat my winter stores in a night." "Show yourself," Barney said. A hedgehog shuffled into the firelight. Grey quills. One clouded eye. He held a walking stick like a club. "Nine days of rain. I counted. You've been loud about it. Everybody's been loud about it. I stocked this hollow for myself." "Sammy said it was empty," Barney said. "Empty in cold weather," Sammy answered from the rock. "I was wrong for now." Barney looked past the hedgehog at the jars. Then at the rabbit sitting on the stone below. He hopped down off the log. "Your stores are yours," he said. "Nobody touches them. Billy stands at the door all night. Frank writes down every jar before anyone steps in. When the rain stops, we leave and we replace what the room cost you. Firewood. Dry reeds. Berries from the ridge." The hedgehog's stick lowered a finger's width. "Who signs for that?" "I do," Billy said. "Bear's word." The hedgehog stared at the fire behind him. Then he stepped back and dragged the log sideways with his stick. "Kits first. Wet ones by the fire. Don't touch the jars." Billy lifted the log clear. Frank waved the line up the slope. The rabbit stood, gathered her kits, and walked in. Barney watched them file past the jars into the dry. He had two shelters now. And he had promised a stranger a debt he did not yet know how to pay.

By morning the rain had thinned to a drizzle. Barney stood at the shed door and looked down the slope. Two shelters full of animals. One debt. The hedgehog had asked for firewood, reeds, and berries, and Barney had said yes without knowing where any of it would come from. The storm had beaten the swamp flat. The reed beds were pulped. The berry canes near the water were stripped and broken. Billy Bear came up the slope with his flannel soaked through. "I walked the ridge. Berry bushes are snapped. Anything the wind didn't take, the water did." He wiped his snout. "I can cut firewood. Reeds we can pull from the high side of the flat, some of them. But berries, Barney, I got nothing." "He'll say the deal's off," Barney said. "He'll put them back in the rain." "Then we find berries." Barney thought. The low ground was ruined. Anything that survived would be on high dirt, under cover, where wind couldn't reach. He remembered a mound past the leaning rocks, an old fox den nobody used. Roots grew thick over it. Brambles too. "Follow me." They climbed past the hollow. The old den sat under a lip of earth, its mouth dark, its sides wrapped in tangled roots. Wild canes had grown up through the roots for years. Barney pushed into the thicket. The roof of roots had held. Underneath, the canes still carried fruit — dark, wet, but whole. Clusters of them. Billy laughed once, short. "Look at that." They picked until Billy's shirt was heavy with them. Barney's throat sac worked. It would be enough. Not generous. Enough. They carried the load down to the leaning rocks. The hedgehog was outside, poking the fire pit with his stick. He watched them come. Billy set the bundle down and opened it. Barney laid a stack of split wood beside it, and a tied sheaf of reeds Frank had cut on the way. "Firewood. Reeds. Berries," Barney said. "As promised." The hedgehog crouched. He picked up a berry, turned it, sniffed it, ate it. He looked at the wood. He counted the reeds with one claw. "You said after the rain stopped," he said. "It hasn't stopped." "It's stopping," Barney said. "I didn't want to owe you another day." The hedgehog grunted. He pulled the bundle inside the hollow with his stick. "Deal's kept. Your kits stay dry till they can walk home." Barney hopped back down the slope beside Billy. His legs shook. The debt was closed. The shelters were safe. Halfway down, a squirrel came running up the path, breath ragged. "Barney. The rabbit's kits. One of them's got a fever. She's asking for you." Barney didn't answer. He jumped past the squirrel toward the shed.