The Rainbows and the Secrets - Christine Cox (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📗

minutes they were back in the Jungle, standing on the Rainbows’ side of the bridge, with Snapper, Tufts, and a little cluster of Rainbows around them. Above them, Augustine and Evangeline perched on the parapet. Opposite them, on the other side of the bridge, stood Softpad and his small band of Secrets.
“Oh no, there's Shadow and his gang,” whispered Jamie to Ellie. He didn't trust those three. "I wonder what they want those creepers for." Shadow and Thrasher were carrying coils of creeper slung over their shoulders.
Ellie shrugged. "Maybe they're scared of falling in the river, and they've brought lifelines just in case."
Some of the monkeys hadn’t heard Ellie’s plan, and she explained it again.
“We’re going up the river,” she said. “We’re going to follow it to its source.”
“What’s ‘source’?” asked a monkey.
“The place the river starts from.”
“Why are we going there?”
“Because there, it won’t be wide. It’ll – just bubble up out of the ground or come out of a crack in the rocks or something.” Ellie wasn’t really sure exactly what happened at the source of a river. “The point is,” she continued, “we won’t have to cross it. We’ll be able to just walk round it.” Ellie waited for her words to sink in. Several of the monkeys were staring at her, open-mouthed with astonishment. (The Rainbows among them had turned bright pink). The monkeys had never even thought about where the river came from, or what it was like upstream.
“I think,” continued Ellie, “that that’s why the Rainbows’ Story says that monkeys don’t need to cross the river.” She looked up at Evangeline, who nodded encouragingly. Augustine looked doubtful and rather cross. “And even if Augustine is right, and the Golden Monkey said monkeys mustn’t cross the river, “she continued, “it doesn’t matter. Because up there, up at the source, you can get to the other side without crossing it.”
“Ellie thinks there’s another bit to the Stories, too,” put in Jamie. “Tell them about that Ellie.”
“I think,” said Ellie, “that the Secrets’ Story and the Rainbows’ Story are all really part of the same Story. Because the Golden Monkey wouldn’t give her Children different Stories: she’d treat them all the same. So if you’ve both got different bits of the same Story, maybe there’s another bit missing too that might explain things more. And I-I don’t know why, but I think we might find it if we go up the river.”
“Let’s go then!” said Snapper. “What are we waiting for?”
But of course, there were things to be decided first, like what side of the river they all travelled on. Neither set of monkeys was willing to cross the river, but Jamie and Ellie wanted to be together on the same side: apart from anything else, they only had one torch. In the end, it was agreed that the two children would walk up the Secrets’ side of the river, with Softpad and co, and their parrots. The Rainbows, with Augustine and Evangeline, would make their way up their side.
It was easy at first, because the moon lit their way as the children walked along the sand. But as they progressed upriver the beach gradually petered out and their path was often blocked by tangles of undergrowth that grew right up to the water’s edge. Sometimes the children had to leave the bank and make a diversion into the darkness of the jungle before finding their way back to the river. Other times they had to wade through the water itself. While they did this, the monkeys swung through the tree tops ahead of them. The children could faintly hear the Rainbows, across the river, chattering impatiently as they waited for the humans catch up. From their own side came the sound of Secrets singing cheerfully in harmony. They were much more patient.
"What do your songs mean? What's that tune we just heard?" Ellie asked Softpad, when they caught up.
"Oh that was just a Passing-the-Time song. We have lots of different music," said Softpad. "It's the way we send messages to each other without words. Some music means we're worried, some means everything is fine. They sang both kinds on the bridge, when I was saved from drowning. First they sang the Worried Song, because I was cold and wet. But when they saw I was all right, they changed to the Happy Song. But you can't hear some of our music at all," he added. "That's our special Warning Music. Only we Secrets can hear that. We don't use our ears for it."
"How can you hear it without using your ears?" demanded Ellie.
Softpad shrugged. "We just do," he said. "We just feel it inside us. Even deaf Secrets can hear the Warning Music. We send it when we need help."
"So that was what happened on the bridge!" cried Jamie, suddenly realising. "That's how that Secret knew you were alive. He told the others to 'listen to the music', but I couldn't hear any! It was the special Warning Music, that only Secrets hear!"
Softpad nodded. "We Secrets are cleverer than you think," he said.

They must have walked for at least two and a half hours: it was the longest walk that either of the children had ever been on. But at last the trees and undergrowth grew thinner, and the ground started to rise. They saw bare hills in front of them, under the moon and the clear, starry sky. The monkeys were waiting for them as, hot and tired, they sank down on a rock to rest: Secrets on their side and Rainbows on the other. They could see each other easily, because here the river was less than half as wide as by the bridge, from where they had set off. Ahead of them, they could hear it coming down the hillside in a series of waterfalls, that glittered in the moonlight.
“End of the Jungle!” announced Softpad.
“Have you been here before?” Jamie asked him.
“Of course.”
“Have you been up into the hills?”
Softpad shook his head. “No point,” he said. “No trees.”
“It’s a long, steep climb up there,” grumbled Shadow. “And we don’t know what’s waiting for us when we get there. I don’t hold with going places no-one’s ever been before.”
“That’s right,” chimed in One-eye. “We don’t know if it’s safe.”
“Big waste of time,” added Thrasher.
But Softpad was beginning to believe that Ellie was right about the river. It was definitely getting narrower; perhaps it really did end in nothing. In that case, he wouldn’t be able to stop the Rainbows coming to the Secrets' side of the Jungle as often as they wanted, and the Secrets would be able to wander about as they liked in Rainbow territory. Somehow, they would all have to come to some kind of agreement and be friends: otherwise the fighting would be endless.
“No, Ellie is right,” he told the complainers. “We have to get to the start of the river.”
“Let’s move on! Let’s move on!” Snapper was shouting impatiently from the opposite bank.
“Off we go then,” said Jamie, getting up.
Secrets and children on one side, Rainbows on the other, they all started to climb the hill.


14

The source of the river

The climb up the hill took as long as the walk through the Jungle. It was gradual at first, passing through a grassy area, where hippos grazed in the moonlight. Then it went up in giant steps, so they had to scramble up steep bits, where the river beside them rushed down in a torrent. Then the river would flatten out again, flowing along a kind of shelf, and the bank would become flatter too, until it reached the next steep bit. But the river was becoming narrower as they climbed. The children jumped across it several times, to prove this, but the monkeys stuck firmly to their own sides.
They came to the source of the river quite suddenly. They had just scrambled up a very steep, rocky bank and they found themselves at the side of a round pool that sat in a hollow near the hill top. From the front of the pool water trickled over the edge and gathered force, turning into a waterfall. This was the start of the river. But at the back of the pool, there was just a wall of rock. There, the pool was very still, with no movement of water at all.
“It’s here” announced Ellie. “The beginning of the river!”
Awestruck, the monkeys watched in silence as Ellie started to walk around the pool. Her path took her up onto the top of the rock wall at the back. She stood there for a moment calling:” No water here! My feet are dry!” Then she walked down the other side and joined the Rainbows on their “side” of the river.
The monkeys were overcome with shock. Ellie had got to the other side of the river without touching a drop of water on the way. The river they had always thought they couldn’t cross, didn’t need crossing any more! The barrier that divided Rainbows and Secrets from each other was gone!
“Three cheers for Ellie!” shouted Jamie and the monkeys cheered. The Rainbows cheered because now they could get coconuts without crossing the river. The Secrets felt they had done something new, different and clever, so most of them cheered too. They rushed up the rock wall to the hill top behind it and leapt about: Secrets, Rainbows and children together, whooping with joy and embracing each other. Only Shadow and his friends didn’t join in the fun. They stood to one side and looked on suspiciously, muttering to each other.
Jamie leapt about so much, he fell over. "Be careful," warned Ellie. "You're not supposed to bang your head. And look! We're on a cliff-edge!" They were standing some distance away from the pool and the river, facing towards the other side of the hilltop. When Ellie shone the torch ahead of them, Jamie saw that she was right. The land seemed to fall away into nothing.
When the monkeys were tired out with glee, everyone flopped down on the hill top to rest. Snapper said: “What's next?”
“Next you have to decide how you’re going to share all the fruit in the jungle and look after it,” said Ellie.
“How?” asked Softpad.
“Well, if you Secrets let the Rainbows eat some of the coconuts, the mango trees will grow more fruit again, and one day the Rainbows will be able to share the mangoes with you.”
“Who wants to eat mangoes?” objected Shadow. “Stupid Rainbow food! It turns monkeys funny colours!” One-eye and Thrasher sniggered.
But Ellie wasn’t put off. “What would you do,” she asked the Secrets, “if the coconut trees all got a disease? That happens to trees you know. And how do you know you won’t run out of coconuts sometime, just like the Rainbows are running out of mangoes? Anyway, eating different kinds of food is good for you. They told us that at school.”
“I’d like to try mangoes,” said Softpad.
“So would I!” chimed in another Secret, and another, and then another.
“We could share the coconuts,” said Softpad, “if the Story says it’s OK. But I’m not sure if it does.”
He looked up at the parrots circling overhead, and had a big surprise. There, among the Rainbows’ multicoloured Story Keepers, and the Secrets’ plain green ones, he spotted two of a kind he’d never seen before. They were shocking pink.
Just as Softpad spotted them, the two swooped down and landed in a flutter of shocking pink feathers on the ground amongst the crowd of astonished monkeys and children. (The Rainbows turned