Tallio pressed his back flat against the rough bark of the old oak and dragged one long leg up, then the other. His feet slid. Sneakers scraped the dirt in two long squeaks. He thought: "Again!" and kicked a pebble off the trail. Ten feet above, the club's rope ladder hung rustling in the breeze.
He wrapped his left leg around a low branch. His long shin stretched so far the far end whipped and tangled with the one above. He untangled. Re-wrapped. The branch CREAKED sharply and a clump of acorn caplets plopped onto his head. He thought: "Not this one." Already he was swinging toward the next.
This time his foot slipped and he swung wide. His shoe skritch-skritch-scuffed the bark in a long white streak. He grabbed a lower branch and steadied. The creaking stopped. He thought: "The tree is winning again." Above him, the rope ladder ticked softly against the trunk.
A tiny squirrel shrieked from deep inside the lowest fork. Its claws scraped the inner bark in quick, dry scratches. Tallio lowered himself carefully, wrapping both long legs wide around the trunk until his boots pressed flat against the wood. He slid a hand into the dark gap and lifted the squirrel out. It blinked at him, frozen.
He set the squirrel on a lower branch, three leaves down from where he'd found it. The little creature scurried two feet, paused, looked back once over its shoulder, then vanished into the tangle of green above. Tallio watched it disappear. He thought: "One problem down. One more to go." The wind pushed his hair against his forehead.
"Tallio! You reached the squirrel BEFORE us!" one of the three friends below yelled, pointing up at him. The others were already scrambling up the trunk, their small arms wrapping and unwrapping. Tallio looked up. The very top was one wide leg-wrap away. He grinned. "Give me a second," he called down.
He hooked his longest shin around the topmost limb and pulled. His foot cleared the branch with a soft thud against the wood. He sat. The wind caught the rope ladder overhead and flipped it end over end. The whole tree hummed under the sun, every leaf turning slow and bright.
Tallio dangled his long legs over the edge, toes barely brushing the leaves far below. The squirrel perched three branches down, chittering a tiny two-note song. Tallio waved his fingers at his friends. One clapped, and acorns popped out of her hair in a little brown shower. He grinned and pulled himself up two more inches.
