Indian camp

Whispering Feather crept slowly through the tall grass. He crouched down, trying to peek through the vivid blades without being seen by anyone. He supported his palm in front of him and carefully inched forward. Suddenly, he hissed in pain when he touched a thistle and it pricked his hand. Cautiously, he wiped his sore fingers on his loincloth and began to closely examine the wound for any splinters. Just as he removed a tiny thorn, he felt someone touch his ankle for a moment. Startled, he turned around and stared into the blue eyes of a blonde girl.

‘Did you hurt your hand?’ asked Grinning Hair with a smile.

‘Shh!’ Whispering Feather hissed. ‘Because of you, they’ll hear us coming!’

Without a word, he gestured for his younger sister to follow him silently. Now the two of them crept through the towering, fat blades of grass. They moved almost noiselessly. They could clearly hear the birds chirping above their heads and the cool afternoon wind whistling as it fluttered the flowers around them. Whispering Feather heard some rustling from the thick vegetation on his right. He stopped and held up his hand to alert his cautiously approaching sister. They stood motionless, waiting for the faint rustle to repeat itself. After a few moments, a beautiful, colorful bird flew up a few meters from them with a loud squawk. Grinning Hair watched the bird with wide eyes.

‘Wow… look at that!’ she exclaimed in awe.

‘That was close,’ replied Whispering Feather, and then turned forward again to continue creeping through the grass. Almost immediately, he froze in fear because a long brown snout and a pair of large brown eyes stared at him through the tufts of grass. A few moments later, a mouth full of sharp teeth opened, and before Whispering Feather could even shout, a big red tongue licked his face.

‘Ugh!’ Whispering Feather grimaced and fell back onto the soft grass. The brown, furry dog needed no further invitation, wagging its tail and rolling the boy on the ground, all the while licking his face with its tongue.

‘Cone won! Cone won!’ shouted Grinning Hair.

‘But only because I was watching the pheasant. I’ll catch it next time,’ the boy resigned himself to defeat and scratched the base of the dog’s drooping ear. He got up and straightened the feathers tucked in his hair.

‘Come on, let’s go down to the stream,’ he said to Grinning Hair.

‘At least you can wash off all that drool,’ the girl giggled. They ran down the hill one after the other, with Cone-dog running around them, barking happily. They reached the foot of the hill, where the undergrowth and bushes had long overgrown the once-used path. Dense bushes lined both sides of the path, into which – both of them knew well – one could only crawl with great difficulty. Grinning Hair slowed down and pointed into the bushes.

‘Do you see those white things?’ she asked Whispering Feather, who also stopped at the sound of his sister’s voice. He walked back and looked in the indicated direction. Deep beyond the bushes, at the edge of the forest, round and snow-white objects stood out from the dark-colored forest floor.

‘It looks like skulls scattered under the trees,’ the boy guessed.

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Grinning Hair grimaced. She elbowed her brother in the side. ‘Are you going to see what it is, or just stand around here?’

‘Get higher!’ Grinning Hair instructed. ‘Don’t be so clumsy!’

‘How about you don’t boss me around?!’ Whispering Feather snapped back and tried to climb higher on the long pole that held the gate separating the wooden fence. He gripped tightly with his legs while holding the terrifying skull they had just found with one hand, and tried to adjust his partially slipped loincloth with the other.

‘Your butt is showing!’ the girl laughed, not caring about her brother’s glaring look.

‘Don’t wait for me to come down, or I’ll chase you all the way to Star Forest!’ the boy threatened, but his eyes also twinkled with amusement as he thought about the ridiculous situation. He reached up and firmly placed the colorful, painted skull on top of the pole. ‘There, it’s done!’ he happily exclaimed and jumped off the top of the pole.

‘Just in time. The pale-faced man is coming with his cart. Quick, let’s hide!’ she urged and rushed inside the gate towards the safety of the Indian tent. Whispering Feather followed with a semi-successful war cry.

/

Dad turned onto the bumpy road leading to the farm. He drove slowly, knowing that the little dog would have heard him approaching from miles away in the old Skoda. The dog would always run ahead and bark alongside the car for the last few hundred meters. When he reached the gate and noticed the painted skull on top of the pole, he was only mildly surprised. He knew his children and was aware that they could be quite mischievous, especially here in the peaceful countryside where nobody disturbed them in their natural surroundings.

He got out of the car and saw Mom walking towards him, smiling, from the summer kitchen’s terrace.

‘I’m guessing they’re playing Indians again,’ he said, then gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. ‘Tough week?’

‘You have no idea,’ Mom sighed tiredly. ‘They sprayed the pasture next to the house, so now the grass is waist-high. The kids love playing in it, but by evening they both get rashes from the chemicals.’

‘And the skull on the gate? Where did they get that?’

‘You won’t believe it, but giant puffball mushrooms are growing along the old road next to the stream,’ Mom said, tilting her head slightly, knowing about Dad’s passion for mushroom collecting.

Dad’s eyes sparkled, and it was clear that if he weren’t tired from the long journey, he’d already be rushing for his mushroom classification book and exploring the whole forest with the kids again. Dad’s fatigue won, and he began to unload the trunk of the car instead.

‘The main thing is that they had a good time,’ he said, looking towards the camping tent set up in the back of the property, where the two children had already forgotten about the Indian totem pole and started building a Lego city. Their joy wouldn’t be dampened by evening fatigue, as they knew that the cool adobe room and the warm down comforter awaited them, from which they would wake up to another world full of wonders the next day.