Clo, Bram, and Wix had been practising all morning. The waterfall song had seven notes and one long humming part at the end, and they had sung it so many times that the meadow mice knew all the words too.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. Clo led the way down the mossy path, her small pink snout twitching. Bram trotted behind her, hooves clicking on the flat stones. Wix came last, still humming the tricky middle bit under her breath.
But when they reached Mossy Ledge, something was wrong. Where the waterfall should have roared and tumbled and filled the air with cold white noise — there was only a thin trickle. A sad, whispery drip, like a tap someone had nearly turned off.
"That's not right," said Bram. He pressed his ear against the wet rock. The rock said nothing back. The waterfall said almost nothing too. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Clo pressed her snout to the damp earth at the stream's edge. There — the smell of cold water, deep and green, coming from somewhere upstream. Sniff, sniff, sniff. She lifted her head. "I know where the water went," she said. "Follow the smell."
The three of them pushed through tall meadow grass, the seed-heads brushing their horns and leaving little tickly traces. The ground grew wetter underfoot. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. And then Clo stopped.
A great round river stone had rolled down and wedged itself firmly into the stream, plugging it like a cork in a bottle. Behind the stone, water was piling up in a wide, still pool — silent and flat and waiting.
And beside the stone, sitting very tidily on a damp patch of moss, was a tiny silver snail.
"Hello," said Clo carefully. "What are you doing there?"
"Waiting," said the snail, whose name was Dew. "This stone is my friend. She is very quiet and very slow, but I think she is just about to say something interesting."
Clo looked at the stone. The stone said nothing. "I think," said Clo, very gently, "that this stone needs to roll away now. But the water — the water will carry you somewhere even better. Somewhere with a warm rock, right in the sun, right at the bottom of a rainbow."
Dew thought about this. Her little antennae went up. Then down. Then up again. "A warm rock," she said, as if testing the words. "At the bottom of a rainbow." She gave one slow, dignified nod.
Bram and Wix leaned their small shoulders into the great stone. Clo pushed with her nose. The stone groaned. It shifted. It tipped — and then, with a deep, satisfying THUNK, it rolled free, and the stream surged back with a rush and a roar, cold water fizzing over their hooves.
"Run!" yelled Wix, already running. They galloped downhill through the meadow, laughing and stumbling, the stream racing alongside them, and arrived at Mossy Ledge just as the waterfall came crashing back — loud and cold and silver and real.
They stood in the spray and sang. Three wobbly, earnest voices, all seven notes, and the long humming part at the end. The mist rose. The light caught it. And slowly, softly, a rainbow arched overhead — quiet and wide, the colours deep as stained glass.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. Clo breathed in cold mist and clover and wet stone. She made one small wish: that Dew found her perfect ledge. And a moment later, the mist set something down very gently on the sun-warmed rock at the rainbow's foot — a tiny silver shape, antennae raised, already making herself comfortable.
