Boingy's Day

There was one lantern left in the nettles, further out than the others, on the bit of bank that goes over.

"I'll get it," I said.

And I did, eventually. What happened first was very fast and involved a great deal of bank.

I arrived at the bottom in a sitting position with nettles up both arms and the wind entirely gone out of me.

Yetty looked down from the top, horrified. "Are you —"

"Yep," I said, from the ground. "Give me a minute."

And then I lay there.

This is the part nobody puts in the stories about me. Everybody knows the bouncing. Everybody has seen the bouncing; it is practically what I am for. Nobody mentions that first there is a stretch of lying in nettles at the bottom of a bank feeling entirely flat, while up above you the day carries on being lovely without you in it.

I could hear it, that is the thing. The whole lane going on. Somebody laughing at the bridge. Ladders.

I lay in it for a good while.

Pouty came and looked over the edge and said "oh no" in a deeply sympathetic way and then sat down at the top to keep me company from a safe height, which I thought was exactly the right amount of help.

"Are you getting up?" Pouty asked, eventually.

"In a bit," I said. "It's not a race. It's just a bank."

Then I said it out loud to the nettles — I can try again — and bounced three times on the spot, because three is what it takes.

The lantern was right there. It had been right there the whole time.

And then I came back up the slow way. On all fours, along the strip that was solid, which took about four minutes and no skin off anything.

That is Bravo's way. Bravo went down that same bank in the morning, sideways, one small step at a time, onto the part that looked solid — and said out loud first that it was frightening, which I did not see and have heard about since from about six fluffs.

I have been thinking about that solid strip ever since. It was there at half past two, when I went down the fast way. It was there the whole time. I did not look for it, because looking for it is not a thing I do — I go, and then I fall, and then I get up, and I have built an entire personality out of the third bit.

I told Bravo about it at Winky's, at about nine, with nettle stings all up both arms.

The arriving in a sitting position. The lying there a good while with the day carrying on above. Pouty at the top not once telling me to get up.

"I was in far too much of a hurry to notice it the first time," I said.

And Bravo said the thing about saying it out loud first, and about who is watching when a job gets handed out, and I did not entirely follow all of it, but the bit I took away was this: Bravo goes first on purpose and slowly, and I go first by accident and fast, and those look identical from the outside and are not remotely the same.

Beamy read the envelope out and I got Boingy — the last one out of the nettles, which is generous, and which left out the forty minutes of lying in them.

Pouty came and found me later and said the plan-B thing about the matches and the twig, and I said it was a better Plan A than our Plan A, and Pouty said "usually is", only slightly smugly.