The Brave Journey Preview

“Sure.” Benjamin shuffled out the front door. The sun hit him in the face. The pond glistened with ripples and the long, grassy wet hill on the other side sparkled emerald green. But the beautiful scene didn’t brighten him up any.

The big oak tree in front of his house was always full of birds, but as he walked by it he heard birds he’d never heard before. They seemed to be yelling at each other in really high voices. He continued walking down the pebbly driveway, noticing the different types of rocks that had been driven on for years. When he was younger he spent hours picking out flat rocks and trying to skip them across the pond.

His ears heard a new sound: a nearby flopping and hissing noise. The left corner of his eye caught a surprising image on the pond bank: a blacksnake twisting this way and that with a catfish in its mouth. He was shocked. Benjamin heard the fish groaning and thought it was quite strange. He’d never heard a fish groan but he figured that’s what they did. The image was still frightening. The snake looked up at Benjamin and quickly slithered off into the water, taking the fish with it.

Did I just really see that? Benjamin made sure no other snakes were along the pond bank.

A small, solitary maple tree, which grew on a hill separating the end of the pond from the road, always had a bullfrog croaking loudly beside it. Usually the croaking sounded normal (well, bullfrog normal). But today Benjamin thought he heard it croak “Beware! Beware!”

No, he can’t be saying that!

He approached the faded blue newspaper box, which the delivery man always carelessly missed when he drove by. A hedge apple lay close to the paper. Benjamin kicked it halfway across the road. Deciding to finish it off, he ran and gave it a great big boot. It soared through the air and landed on the other side of the r 14 r