It was shady in the raspberry room. Leaves rustled all around her. The air had a good, plant kind of smell. The tall brown fence made one wall of the room. The raspberry leaves made the ceiling. Patches of blue sky showed through. The floor was made of old leaves and squished weeds.
The fence made a good chair back, too. Abby sat down. She could hear the swing squeaking back and forth. Would Laura like the purple flowers?
Somewhere, a robin was chirping.
A dog started barking. It was Sparky, in the yard next door. Abby knew the dog's name. Sometimes the neighbors talked to him.
"Here, Sparky" she called. Then she laughed. There was a knothole in the fence. A sniffing black nose poked through the hole! Abby petted Sparky's cold wet nose. She let him sniff the purple flowers. Sparky sneezed.
A door banged in the house next door. "Hey, Sparky," someone said.
"Koalee froze in wide-eyed horror. Dyra grabbed the telescope. A shadow had fallen across the village. It appeared to be going in the direction of Lenk's house. Not Lenk! Dyra forced himself to look. It was not a shadow, but a tall man, formed like a grassman, just as the elf had said, and he was riding on an animal--an enormous four-legged animal with feet as big as a house. The man's skin was sun-bronzed to a tone very like Dyra's own, and he wore trousers of a dull grey colour which almost matched his own cover clothes. As he watched, the man got off the animal and bent to pull some grass trees with such ease that Dyra couldn't believe what he was seeing."
