The Snail Who Collected Distances

How it begins

Nell Moss collected distances. She kept them in the little pockets sewn around her shell.

The distance from her door to the gate contained a spiderweb, two interesting stones and the smell of somebody making toast. The distance to the pond was much larger. It included a whole conversation with a frog.

Rufus Fern did not understand this. He was the valley's fastest messenger and measured distance in how soon it could be finished.

'That pond is only six minutes away,' he said.

'Perhaps for you.'

'Would you like a race?'

Nell looked at the hill beyond the meadow. At sunset, the flowers up there opened all at once. She had always wanted to see them.

'Not a race,' she said. 'A journey.'

Rufus agreed, because he thought those were nearly the same thing. He sprang ahead. Nell followed, leaving a thin silver line behind her.

By the first bridge, Rufus had already returned.

'You missed the turning.'

'I found a beetle carrying a leaf.'

'Was it important?'

'To the beetle.'

He waited while she helped move a pebble from its path. Then he waited while she noticed the sound beneath the bridge. Then, quite unexpectedly, he heard it too: water making a tune around three roots.

Rufus had crossed that bridge every morning for six years. He had not known it could sing.

Nell tucked the tune into a shell pocket.

'How can you carry that?' he asked.

'You'll see.'

The sun was already leaning toward the hill. Rufus looked at its long bright slope, then at the snail beside him. He wanted Nell to see the flowers. He also wanted to know what else the valley had been doing while he hurried through it.

For the first time in his working life, he asked a question with no time inside it.

'What should we notice next?'