and said,
Follow
me.
86
Some time later, I stood with her
among a circle of worms in a field.
We were wearing stylish hats that
had been decorated with twigs and
dangly things. One of the worms
was arranging sticks in the middle
of the circle. “This will help us get
Gwenda back,” he explained in
a serious voice.
I looked at the sticks on
the ground.
“Without further ado, let the
ceremony BEGIN!” he announced.
All of the worms started
wriggling in a circle around the
twigs. I didn’t have time to think
about what I was doing, I just
joined in. We were all chanting,
“Come back, Gwenda. Come back,
Gwenda. Come back, Gwenda.”
88
As we went around and around in circles,
I wondered if I would be wearing a twig hat on
my head while chanting if I were back at home.
I thought to myself that I would have laughed at
these guys and said that they were all off their
rockers. But here in France I didn’t have much
choice but to try to blend in with the locals, even
if they happened to be total weirdos.
I don’t know how long we’d been chanting.
It might have been thirty seconds, or it could
have been three hours, but I came out of my
trancelike state when a worm wearing a
fashionably dainty hat tilted
her head back and said loudly,
“HERE SHE COMES!”
We all looked up.
A plump worm was falling
from the sky. We watched
as the worm grew bigger
and bigger as she got
closer and closer, until she finally
whumped on the ground before us.
“It’s Gwenda,” said one of the
older worms.
I couldn’t believe it! I’d never seen
anything like it.
No one else seemed surprised.
Everyone gathered around her.
“Now we will give thanks,” a big
worm said.
We began circling again. This
time we had to chant, “Thank you,
thank you, thank you.”
Gwenda opened her eyes and sat
up. She was shaking. We all
wriggled in closer.
“Are you all right, Gwenda?”
asked a worm with so many
twigs on her hat that you
could barely see her eyes.
90
“Yes,” said Gwenda.
“A scary chicken-bird
thing picked me up
in his beak. I thought
that he was going to
eat me. He flipped me up in
the air, and I landed on his back. I was terrified.
He was talking to me as
if we were old friends,
saying all sorts of
nonsense. He was going
on about how he didn’t
want the crow to put
me in the stew pot and
that he was sorry for being
selfish about going to Africa. He said he was
going to help me get back home to my worm life
of digging holes in the mud. I thought to myself,
If you were that worried about me, why did you
take me away in the first place?”
me
91
Listening to Gwenda speak,
I realized that Laurence thought
that she was me, and he was
being kind in offering to take me home. I wanted
to take back all of the horrible thoughts that I’d
had about him. I wished that I hadn’t called him a
stinker. I suddenly really liked Laurence again
and wished that he were here. He was
kind. I wanted to try to be like him. If
he were here, I thought, I wouldn’t let
him take me home. I’d really navigate us to
Lake Nakuru. That’s where he really wanted to be,
after all.
Gwenda was still talking. “And then he was
saying, ‘Marcus, Marcus,
have you fainted?’
And then I said,
‘I’m not Marcus,
I’m Gwenda.’”
92
“That’s when I
lost my balance and fell
out of the sky. I saw your pile of
‘Come back, Gwenda’ twigs
and somehow managed
to fall toward them.
That was probably
the best part of
this terrifying
experience, and
I’ll be honest
with you,
I wouldn’t mind doing that part again.
“As I was falling, he was still going on!
He apologized first for stealing me
and then dropping me. He said
that if I see Marcus, I should
tell him that Laurence
is looking for him.”
Everyone looked at me.
93
“YOU’VE GOT TO FIND LAURENCE!”
they said in one voice.
I sighed. “How can I find him? Look
up at the sky. It’s huge. The world is
big, and I’m just a small and lowly
worm. There’s no point in even
trying.” I sighed again, a much
bigger one this time.
“I’ve got one word to say to you,”
said my underground, upside-down
dangling worm friend. “Robert the Bruce.”
I didn’t want to correct her by saying that
that was three words. I knew what she meant.
I couldn’t give up.
“You’re not on your own in this big world.
You’ve got us, and we will help you.”
I was really glad to have met these French
worms.
They were kind and helpful.
I liked them, even though they were weirdos.
I was at the top of an unusual tower.
My French worm friends had come up with a
plan to help Laurence find me. I would not have
been doing something as strange as this if I’d been
back at home, but there was something about
these guys and their firm belief that anything was
possible that made me believe that this was going
to work.
One of the worms had placed a crown of twigs
on my head. I wondered if Laurence would like
my fancy new hat.
Chapter Seven
96
Just as I was thinking that
thought, I heard a loud swoosh, and
I was suddenly swept up into the
air in a bird’s beak. I used all my
strength to twist around to see who
it was. It was Laurence!
It was a perfect way to say good-bye to my
lovely and unusual friends.
The worms hopped and beamed big smiles
up at me.
Hanging
upside down,
my twiggy crown
fell from my head.
The twigs detached
themselves from the hat,
and one by one they tumbled
and landed on the ground.
Laurence glided and landed in a nearby field.
He was out of breath, and his feathers were
&nbs
p; ruffled.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he
wheezed. “Are you all right?”
“Yes! Thank you very, very much for coming
to get me.”
“I took the wrong worm by accident, and
then I was worried that the crow
might have thrown you into
the pot.”
Laurence took a
cheese sandwich from
his feathers. He was
leaning against
a log, trying to
catch his breath
while eating his
sandwich at
the same time.
99
“Would you like to share
this?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” I said.
We ate in silence.
The sandwich had pickled onions in it.
I love pickled onions.
“I really ought to take you back home,” said
Laurence, standing up. “I’m sorry for making you
map-read and be the navigator for me. I don’t
exactly know the way back, but I’ll make sure
that you get safely home. It’s the sensible and
right thing to do.”
“No,” I said, squinting as I looked
at Laurence. He was standing in
front of the sun. “I want to do
something for you. You’ve been so
good to me. I’ve thought about it, and I know how
much it means to you to travel to Lake Nakuru
and be with the flamingos. I’d like us to continue
traveling there, together.”
100
“No,” said Laurence.
“I really need to take
you home. It would
be very silly of us to
continue with our
journey when neither
of us knows the way.
I’ve caused you too
much trouble already.”
I couldn’t believe it. Laurence was thwarting
my attempts to be kind. How dare he try to
stop me from being nice! Did he not realize how
difficult this was for me? It was really rude of him
to say no when I was offering something as big as
this. I wasn’t going to let him stop me.
I INSIST
that we go
to Africa.
101
“Oh,” said Laurence. He looked at his stomach.
“I can’t believe that you’re saying this. I don’t
know what to say. Do you really think that we
will be able to find our way to Lake Nakuru?
Is that even possible?”
I hadn’t actually thought about whether it
was possible.
I started panicking. I was so desperate to
try to be kind that I’d forgotten that I didn’t
actually know the way. Getting to
Paris was just a fluke. There was
no way that we’d ever find Lake
Nakuru. Of course it wasn’t possible.
This whole trip had been one disaster
after another.
I was just about to suggest that we do do
the sensible and right thing and go back home,
when Laurence said, “I accept your kind offer
of traveling with me to Lake Nakuru. We didn’t
know the way to France, but together we made it.
102
Marcus, you are an amazingly
kind friend. I’m so glad that
I met you. It might just be
the best thing that’s
ever happened to
me.” He gave
me a warm
smile.
I tried
to smile back at Laurence, but it took a LOT of
effort. I felt as though my face were covered in
mud that had been baked by the sun.
Laurence didn’t seem to notice; he was hopping
around with excitement. “We’ll go to bed now,
and we’ll get up very early to fly to Africa,” he
said, while bouncing in the air.
“Hooray!” I said in a monotone voice with my
baked-mud smile. I was too exhausted to think
about what to do next. My worm brain had been
through too much in one day.
Laurence lay down on the long grass, ready to
sleep. He offered me his feathery armpit to nestle
my weary head in.
I took him up on his offer, and he covered us
both with the itchy blanket. Although the sun
was still high in the sky, as it was only early
afternoon, and although I had tons of fresh
problems for my brain to solve, I fell into a deep
and heavy uninterrupted sleep.
When I woke up early the next morning, it was
still dark. Laurence was talking to himself and
hopping about, getting his things together. I
remembered that I’d agreed to navigate our way
to Lake Nakuru. I wanted to go back to sleep and
pretend that this day wasn’t happening.
“Do you think that it is the morning yet?” I
asked. “Because apart from the moon, which is big
Chapter Eight
105
and bright, the sky is as black as burnt sausages,
and all of the other birds are still asleep. I can
hear them snoring.”
“It must be the morning,” he said. “We slept
for ages and ages. Are you trying to sleep in,
Marcus?”
“Heh-heh, no!” I said, lying.
Laurence yawned and lowered his head for me
to crawl up onto the back of his neck. Reluctantly,
I climbed on.
He flew up into the burnt-sausage sky. The
darkness made it easier for me to see; it was like
being underground.
The air was
cool on my
worm skin.
106
I scanned the darkened countryside, looking
for things that I recognized. I could see a big tree.
I definitely remembered flying over a tree on
the way here. “FLY TO THAT TREE ON YOUR
LEFT, LAURENCE,” I shouted out.
Maybe, I thought, I can pretend that I am
navigating to Africa, but instead I’ ll just lead us
back home and then act surprised when we get
there. That should be doable. It didn’t take us that
long to get to Paris. I’m sure that I’ ll remember the
way back if I see a few familiar landmarks.
107
Immediately after the tree, there was a field
with a horse sleeping in it. I was a hundred per-
cent sure that I’d seen a horse on the way here.
“Keep flying straight ahead, over the field.”
We flew for a bit, and then Laurence started
to drop quite unexpectedly. “Are we landing?”
I asked.
“No — er, no,” he
answered. He must have
been a bit sleepy, like me.
This was going to be
so easy. I could probably
navigate with my eyes
closed. I closed my eyes and yawned loudly.
“Are you still sleepy?” asked Laurence.
“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”
“A little bit.”
“I’m going to take a nap,” I said, forgetting that
I was supposed to stay awake.
“That’s a good idea. Night, night,” said Laurence.
I should have known that something was
up. One minute I was
flying with Laurence in
the burnt-sausage sky, and the next moment
we were both lying on some dusty red soil in
the heat of the sun. Laurence was sleeping
and making whistling noises from his beak.
A zebra was sniffing around his head.
“WAKE UP, LAURENCE!” I whispered loudly.
110
Laurence opened his eyes and rubbed them
with his wings. He saw the zebra, made a high-
pitched scream, picked me up in his beak, and
flew up into a tall tree.
The zebra looked up at us. She swished her
tail and then turned and nibbled on a piece of
dry grass.
“That horse looks just like a zebra!” Laurence
squeaked.
“Yes, and that giraffe looks just like a giraffe!”
I said, pointing at a giraffe who was tearing at
the leaves of the branch that we were sitting on.
“Where are we?” Laurence said with a gasp.
m
u
n
ch
m
u
n
ch
112
I looked around. There were four giraffes
loitering around our tree. It was unlikely that we
were back home. The only place where I’d seen
these kinds of animals was in Laurence’s Africa
book. Maybe we were in Africa. Maybe I had
directed Laurence to Africa in my sleep. That
must be what happened! We’d actually made it
to Africa!
A surge of excitement rushed through my
worm body. Not because we were in Africa,
but because I had discovered that I could sleep-
navigate. What else could I do? Perhaps I was also
a virtuoso sleep-trumpet-player, or the world’s
greatest sleep-bricklayer. . . .
113
Laurence interrupted
my daydreaming.
“Marcus, I think that
I flew us to Africa
in my sleep! I can
sleep-fly!”
“Really?” I asked,
marveling that we
had both discovered
sleeping talents at the same time.
“Yes, you told me to fly over a tree and then
over a field. After that you didn’t say anything