At the bottom of Petal Hill, the evening wind had begun. Clover heard it first — a low rushing sound, like the hill was breathing out. She lifted her lavender mane from her eyes and watched. High above, the meadow's loose petals lifted, swirled, and then tumbled downward all at once, a slow rolling wave of pink and white and pale gold, sliding down, down, down.
And at the very bottom, the wave delivered three passengers. A fox. A squirrel. A rabbit. All three landed in a soft heap at Clover's hooves, blinking, ruffled, turned completely around. The fox had a petal stuck to his nose. The squirrel's tail was pointing the wrong direction entirely. The rabbit simply sat and stared at the sky, as though not quite sure what had happened. "Hello," said Clover, very gently.
The fox sneezed the petal away. The squirrel patted her tail back into place. The rabbit said, "I was only going home." All three lived up the hill — the fox in his den beneath the big root, the squirrel in her hollow, the rabbit in her burrow near the top. So up they went, straight into the petal wave, heads down, paws churning. Slip. Back down. They tried again, leaning forward, legs working hard. Slide. Back to the bottom. The petals just kept coming, slow and steady, smooth as water. Slip, slide, slip. No matter how hard they pushed, the hill sent them back. Clover watched. She pressed one hoof to the ground just beside her — not the middle of the slope, but the very edge, where a thick patch of clover roots laced through the soil.
"Follow me," she said. "Not straight up. Sideways." The fox looked uncertain. The squirrel looked skeptical. The rabbit looked at the petals and then at Clover, and said, "All right." So they went, single file, winding along the hill's edge where the roots held the ground steady. The petals whispered past them, just a little. The air smelled of crushed grass and something faintly sweet. Clover went slowly, and the animals followed, one careful step at a time.
Halfway, the squirrel stopped. Her nose twitched. She turned her head toward a mossy nook tucked into the hillside, just at eye level from this angle — an angle she had never seen before. Her eyes went very wide. "My acorns," she breathed. "My acorns." There they were — the whole cache she'd been searching for since Tuesday, wedged snugly in the moss, perfectly safe. She tucked three under her chin immediately, just to be sure. The fox reached his root-den. The squirrel, cheeks now full, reached her hollow. The rabbit reached her burrow near the top and disappeared inside with a soft thump of the door.
And then Clover was alone. The petal wave had quieted. The hill was still. Loose petals lay settled across the slope in long drifts of pink and pale gold, and Clover walked to the very top and lay down among them. The petals were cool against her side. Above her, one star appeared — small and steady — in the darkening blue. She blinked once, slow. The hill was quiet. The star stayed.
