George the woolly caterpillar chewed the forty-eighth name into his bark and realized he could not read the forty-seventh. Rain had swollen the wood. The letters ran together like worms in wet dirt. He sat on a fern in the wild green valley and counted what he could still make out. Twenty-two clear names. The rest were smudges. Somewhere below him grew hundreds of plants he had promised to taste, one leaf each, because his older brother had dared him and then kept counting after George refused to stop. If George could not read his list, he would chew the same leaf twice and never know. He would never finish. He crawled down the fern and along a root until he reached a fallen log with a small round door. A woman knelt outside it, setting a flat stone by the entrance. Lannie Butterworth. George had seen her before, moving pill bugs off the path and writing things on laminated cards. She noticed him at once. "You're soaked," she said. "And your bark is finished." George waved his front legs at the door. Lannie studied the smeared list, then the log. "Inside," she said. "Dry shelf. I'll cut you fresh pieces." She opened the door with one finger. Warm lantern light spilled out over rows of tiny wooden slots, each one labeled in her small square handwriting. Lannie carried him to a shelf near the back and laid the ruined bark flat. She sliced thin strips from a dry branch and lined them up. "One plant per strip," she said. "You chew the name. I file it. Nothing gets lost." George started with the names he could still read. Nettle. Clover. Thistle. Mint. Lannie slotted each strip into its own slot as he finished. When he reached a smudge he could not recover, he left the strip blank and set it aside. By the time the lantern burned low, twenty-two plants sat filed and safe, and a small pile of blank strips waited beside them. George looked at the blanks. He did not know which plants they had been. He would have to taste them again to find out, and taste every plant he had not yet reached, and this time bring each name straight to the log before the rain could touch it. Lannie closed the door behind him as he crawled back toward the valley floor.

George crawled down from the log at first light. Twenty-two names sat safe on Lannie's shelf. Twenty-six blank strips waited beside them, each one a plant he had already chewed but could no longer name. The valley spread below him in wet folds of green, hundreds of leaves shining after the rain. He had to retaste the missing ones without wasting a bite on plants he'd already crossed off. If he chewed the same leaf twice, he'd never know. Another rain was coming. He could smell it in the wind off the hills. He was pushing through a patch of clover when a grasshopper landed beside him, folding long green legs. "You're the counting one," the grasshopper said. "I've watched you. Fern by the root. Mint by the stones. Thistle near the anthill." George stopped chewing. The grasshopper had followed him for weeks out of boredom and remembered every stop. George waved his front legs at the smudged strips he carried. The grasshopper leaned close. "Read them to me," George said, tapping the ones still legible. The grasshopper read: nettle, clover, thistle, mint, and twenty more. Then George pointed at the blanks. "Those," he said. The grasshopper thought, antennae twitching. "Sorrel. Yarrow. The little yellow one by the flat rock. The bitter vine. The fuzzy round one near the beetle log." He named them one by one, twenty-six in all, until every blank strip had a plant attached to it in the grasshopper's memory. George couldn't write yet. But he could crawl straight to each plant and chew the name at the log before the next rain. They worked through the morning. The grasshopper hopped ahead and pointed with one leg. George climbed, bit a fresh leaf as proof, and carried the strip back to Lannie's door in his jaws. Lannie filed each one as George chewed. By afternoon, forty-eight slots stood filled. The grasshopper perched on the log's roof, cleaning his face with a foreleg. "Hundreds more down there," he said, nodding at the valley. "You'll want a witness for those too." George looked at the green folds stretching to the far ridge. He had lost nothing. He had gained a set of eyes that remembered what his bark could not. The rain could come now. The old list was safe, and the new plants were waiting.

The shelf was full. Rain had passed, and the valley steamed. George crawled to the ridge and looked down at green he had never touched. The grasshopper’s help had filled his old list, but it also showed a gap. He had tasted what he knew. He had not tasted what he could not reach. He set a new goal. Find the hidden plants in high, tight places. He tried first by himself. He climbed a bramble wall, inch by inch, and found only thorns and air. A gust swung the cane and flung him onto soft moss. He tried a hollow log next, squeezing between laced roots. He reached a pocket of light and saw small round leaves he had never seen. A spider web blocked the way. He backed out. The valley had more doors than legs. A finch dropped to a reed near him and pecked the stem. Its head tilted. George lifted a cut reed tube he had dragged from the creek edge. He shoved it forward like a banner. “I need rides,” he said. “And I need this to taste nettle without stings.” The bird hopped closer, eyes bright. It tested the tube with its beak. Then it crouched. George climbed onto warm feathers and hugged the reed. The finch leapt. Wind pressed him flat. They skimmed over the folds of green. From above, he spotted tucked leaves in forked branches, shade plants under thorn roofs, and a square of dark needles that looked mean even from the air. They worked a circuit. The finch landed by a brushy ledge. George chewed a new leaf and marked its smell and bite. They rose again. At the nettles, the finch hovered close. George slid the tube over one tender point. He bit through the hollow, safe from hairs, and tasted clean bitter fire. He laughed into the wind. By dusk, his bark mind had new entries: one from the ledge, one from the fork, one from the nettles. The attempt had worked, but it changed his route. Hidden plants now lived on cliffs and in clouds of sting. He would need the finch, the tube, and a plan for weather. The valley had grown larger in a single day, and so had his list’s hunger.