Children

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Chapter 1
Annika and Gabe


It was Annika's idea to go into the cave. Immediately after she suggested it, she regretted it.  She had only said it to scare her little brother, Gabriel.  She was sure that he would be too afraid to set foot into that big, damp, dark hole and she yearned for the satisfaction of being able to call him a woosy pants and a baby. Gabe was made of tougher stuff than his sister had imagined and to her horror he was the one, who wasn't afraid, but excited by the prospects of the enticing adventure; cut darkly out of the rocks.  
Gabe had been truly annoying Annika all morning.  He had been dancing around the backyard with a toad he found in their pond the night before, hollering all sorts of hideous things up to Annika.  Things like, “Your wedding will be on Thursday!” or “Finally! A Prince Charming for you, Annika!” and worst of all, “This guy is much better looking than Charlie.”  
By Charlie, he was referring to Charlie Lawson, who lived about two miles away and was their nearest neighbor.  It happened, that Charlie had walked Annika home from their bus stop on Friday, certainly not because Annika in anyway thought of “Chirpy Charlie” as a prince charming! He had walked her home simply because they were supposed to do a school project together about the Solar System.  Charlie was largely referred to as “Chirpy” due to of his unusually high pitched voice and his habit  of going on at length about the many subjects that intensely interested him. These subjects included, and were not limited to: frogs, volcanoes, types of fungus and famous battles. Incidentally, the solar system was also a subject about which Charlie's enthusiasms had been given leave to run wild.
 Annika was not looking forward to working on the presentation.  The wild enthusiasm about anything not pertaining to pressing flowers in wax paper, which was all the rage at Annika's school, was nothing but bothersome to her.  
Gabriel felt, and you may too, that his older sister had become particularly irritable recently.  He could find no concrete reason for his sister's mood.  She never seemed to want to play with him, or talk.  So he concluded that the only way forward with his sullen sister was to taunt her until she yelled at him, which, although not optimal, was better than her boring silence and ignoring of him.  
Annika had been hiding in her room with the window open all morning.  Gabe caught a glimpse of her looking out from time to time but he couldn't tell what she was doing in there.  It annoyed him.  Around 11:00 a.m. he got bored and restless and started to hit the side of the house with a stick, an activity less satisfying than he had expected.  Therefore, he was particularly pleased when his Aunt Persephone opened the back door and pushed Annika out onto the sunlit porch calling, “Gabe, I am sending you and your sister out for a walk.”  
Aunt Persephone had once been something of an adventurer, and had traveled all over the world.  She was a robust and singularly happy woman of about 60 years.  She had once read that sunshine was one of the most important ingredients for a satisfied life.  Since she herself had lived a very pleasurable life, mostly out of doors,  she did her best to see that the children also spent as many waking hours as possible outside, in life-giving sunlight.  The children had lived with Aunt Persephone since their parents had been taken from them while having an adventure of their own.  An adventure which had ended sadly, but had been worth it.  The children didn't mind living with their aunt and did not ever wish that their parents had not gone on an adventure.  But that is another story.  

Chapter 2
A Journey Begins

Gabe was thrilled that his sister was now outside with him and forced to spend time with him.  He was about to run over to her with an enthusiastic greeting but stopped to kick some rocks on the ground when he saw the scowl on his sister's otherwise pretty face.
“Well, come on!” Annika said to him and charged through their gate and toward their field without waiting for Gabe.  
He stood there for a second watching her go, thinking that it was going to be a miserable walk and wondering how to improve matters.  In a flash, he turned to the porch where his toad was now confined in an old aquarium which he had put there for just such purposes.  He grabbed the poor creature and then hurried off after his sister.  
It was a very decent sort of day; just the beginning of summer so nothing was too dried out and dusty.  Gabe hated the dust.  He was slightly allergic and it made his nose run and this in turn forced him to walk around with a finger in each nostril.  There was a breeze in the air and a few clouds in the sky.  It was warm enough for Gabe to remove his shirt and he did so as soon as he caught up to his sister.  He stuck one end of the shirt into the back of his shorts so that it flapped behind him as he trotted merrily through the high grass of the field, the warm sun light beating down on his brown little back.  Despite the fact that his legs were short he could keep up with his sister's long striding ones and Gabe felt good inside and composed a little tune which he started out humming to himself but soon was singing aloud with un-selfconscious abandon, “Wa-wa-walking with a toooooad! Oh I wish I had been told, tha-tha-that tomorrow is his bir-ir-irthday. Ohhhhhh, it is just a day away! Wh-wh-whaddaya say?”
When he got to this last line he would run up to his sister and hold the toad up to her mouth like a microphone, beaming with pleasure.
“I say, 'STOP IT!'” Annika ended up screaming, after about 3 rounds of the catchy tune.  
Annika was gathering flowers to press and she focused on finding the best flowers unswervingly.  Gabe was delighted, when she broke her concentration to yell at him.  He laughed and danced away from her and continued to grin and hum. Annika did her best to ignore him.  It grew progressively harder and she could feel irritation rising up within her, flowing from her stomach to her finger tips and toes, nearly forcing her to explode with rage. She knew that she wouldn't be able to catch him or force him to stop singing and yet as he carried on, “Tomorrow is his wed-wed-weding day with you-hooo-ooooo!” Annika found the pressure unbearable and flew at him through the tall grass, screaming, her face all flushed and blotchy.
“STOP.! THAT! SINGING!”
This made Gabe positively over-joyed.  His sister turned into a whirling, twirling, angry tornado.  He continued to skip and scamper along laughing, always managing to stay just out of her dangerous reach.  In this manner, one laughing, still carrying his toad, one fuming with frustration, all of the flowers she had gathered now dropped from her hands as they reached the end of the field. Now they were standing on the edge of the forest where the trees were still fairly wide apart and the sun still shone through. Gabe dodged gracefully behind the first big, familiar fir tree and Annika's hand missed him by a centimeter.  Annika's foot, however, caught directly on a big fallen tree limb and down she fell with a thud into the dirt and fir needles and even though she wasn't really hurt, she was startled and sobbed loudly.
Gabe's heart was touched.  Seeing his sister on the ground crying softened him.  He wondered what he could do and glancing around he found a flower and picked it tenderly by the stem.  He knelt down beside his sister and poked her in the shoulder.  
“Don't touch me!”  she hollered at him.
He recoiled for a moment but then plucked up his courage and said, “Here, Annika, I brought you a flower!”  She stopped crying for a second and lifted her puffy face to look at the peace offering which was not golden orange with brilliant streaks of red. It was a basic, everyday yellow dandelion.  
“It isn't very pretty,” she sniffled ungraciously. “Go away!”
“Fine,” said Gabe and he crumpled it up in his hands. “Come on Toad! Let's go!”
The animal was now in his trouser pocket. Gabe charged off into the woods, not looking back.  
Annika, not liking to be left alone, watched him go for a few seconds but then jumped up, brushed herself off and ran after him. “Gabe! Wait! Stop! Hey! Aunt Persephone won't like it if you go off alone without me. Your flower was alright.”
Gabe didn't stop but slowed down.   When Annika caught up with him she said, “I skinned my knee, you know.”
“Lemme see it.”  
“There.” She showed him the scratch on her leg, “I think we should go back now.  I'm tired of walking and I want to press some flowers before school tomorrow.”
“Why? So you can show them to Chirpy-Charlie?” asked Gabe, who was not ready for the walk to end.
Annika called upon her deepest powers of will to ignore this comment,
“Noooo! Ruby, Leyla and I are all going to trade tomorrow. So... come on!” she insisted as he kept on walking.
“No,” he said, calmly trudging on. “I want to get up to the stream so I can find another frog for this one to marry.  Maybe I can even have some pollywogs in my aquarium!”
This last bit he called over his shoulder optimistically. Annika rolled her eyes. “Frogs lay eggs,” she said in her older sister voice. “You won't get a girl frog to lay eggs in that stinky old aquarium.  You need to just find the eggs in the stream if you want pollywogs. You cannot find frog eggs in a stream of running water!” she concluded authoritatively. Her voice had turned into that annoying “know-it-all” voice that Gabe hated.  
“Well, maybe if we walk down the stream we can find some still water!” he suggested.  
“If we walk down stream we come to the road!” she answered, throwing up her hands.
“Wellll, what if we walk up the stream?” he persisted.
They did not make a habit of walking up the stream.  It led deeper into the woods where the trees grew closer together and very little sunlight could fight its way through.  No one had ever forbidden them to walk up stream, but they both had a funny feeling about going in that direction.  Neither of them wanted to admit it, though.
“Come on, Annika!” Gabe urged as he turned up stream.
“Oh, alright!”  she answered, reasoning that if she gave in on this, he might give in about something really important later on.
It was cool in the woods and it smelled good. Gabe put his shirt back on.  Both children found enough to amuse and occupy their minds that they moved steadily forward, without any more fighting, up the stream, into the dense forest without really noticing that it was getting darker.  In fact, they chatted and laughed pleasantly alone in the woods, where no one could see them; almost as if they had stumbled into a simple, happy world that belonged to just the two of them.  
Just when both children were beginning to feel hungry and ready to turn back, the stream took a turn past some big rocks, and they found what they had been looking for, a still, small pool of water.  The stream ran into one side of it and out the other, but the pool was just wide enough, and the stream small enough, that the water was perfectly still for frog's eggs near the edges.  They also found something else that they were not looking for, Chirpy Charlie, perched on a rock gazing intently at something in the water.  

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