Pip had one job at the Great Egg Relay. One job. Plant the giant spotted egg at the starting line, blow the horn, and BOOM — the race begins. Simple. Except when Pip arrived at the chalk circle that morning, there was no egg. Just a circle. And a very confused worm. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Pip walked the whole track twice. No egg. The crowd was already settling into their seats, rustling fern fronds and passing around fistfuls of crunchy beetles. If the race didn't start soon, they'd eat every single snack. Pip could not let that happen.
Stomp, stomp, stomp. Pip followed a trail of moss-dents and cracked dirt away from the track and into the forest. The air turned cool and green and smelled like wet bark. Something large had come this way. Something large, and possibly confused. The first thing Pip heard was a grunt. Then another grunt. Then a sort of sad, honking groan. Around a wide fig tree sat Bonk the Ankylosaurus — all four stubby legs in the air, belly-up like a very armored, very embarrassed turtle. The egg was wedged right under his enormous tail.
"I sat down for ONE rest," Bonk said miserably, his little legs windmilling. "And now the egg is under me and I cannot get up and this is NOT how I planned my morning." The spotted shell looked perfectly fine. Very hard, those eggs. Pip filed that away. Before Pip could answer, a sound came rattling through the trees. TAP-TAP-TAP-TAPPITY-TAP. Fizz the Compsognathus was perched on a root, two tiny sticks in two tiny hands, drumming on absolutely nothing — because the egg had rolled away mid-concert. Fizz didn't even notice. Fizz was in a groove.
"FIZZ," said Pip. Fizz looked up, sticks frozen. "Oh," said Fizz. "Was that yours?" Pip took a slow breath through both nostrils. Then came a shadow. A very, very large shadow. Loom the Brachiosaurus had stepped over the egg to be helpful, and was now frozen mid-stride, one enormous wrinkled foot hovering in the air, face crumpled with concentration. "I cannot," Loom whispered, "figure out which foot goes next." Loom's other three feet were planted around the egg like table legs. The egg sat in the middle, spotted and serene. Pip looked at Bonk. Looked at Fizz. Looked up — way, way up — at Loom's worried face. A plan began to form.
Stomp, stomp, stomp. Pip pointed at Bonk. "TIP." Bonk rocked once, twice, and with a tremendous WHUMP rolled upright. The egg popped free and bumped straight into Fizz. "PUSH," said Pip. Fizz pushed with both tiny hands, sticks tucked under one arm, tongue sticking out with effort. The egg rolled across a root, over a patch of soft mud, and stopped right between Loom's hovering foot and the ground below. "ONE step," said Pip. "Careful. Careful. CAREFUL." Loom placed the foot down with the delicacy of someone defusing a berry, and the egg nudged forward onto the open path. It was rolling. It was really rolling. Pip sprinted behind it, short legs pumping, and the egg trundled out of the forest and back down the dirt track — faster than Pip ever could have carried it — and bumped to a perfect stop inside the chalk circle with a satisfying little thud.
Pip picked up the horn. Took one big breath. PAAAAAARP. The crowd erupted. Striped shirts blurred past as the runners thundered down the track, and the whole forest floor shook with footsteps, big and bigger and biggest. Pip found a mossy rock at the edge of the track, sat down, and let both legs dangle. The beetle-crunching crowd roared. The runners grew smaller. The rumbling of their feet moved through the rock, through the ground, through Pip's tired little bones — slower, and slower, and slower — until it felt less like thunder and more like breathing.
