Waking the Warm Valley
The moss was cold and damp under Nils's knees, like a cloth wrung out and left overnight. He pressed one hand flat and felt how still everything was. Fern sat in the crook of his elbow, rolled into a ball, her spines tipped with mossy green. Mist lay low in the ferns. Nothing moved but the two of them. Nils breathed out and watched the white of his breath drift off and vanish. "Everything's asleep," he whispered. Fern's nose came out first, then one dark eye. The air was cold enough to make his ears ache. Somewhere ahead, water made a low, steady sound.
Nils went toward the sound, holding Fern close so she stayed out of the wet. The ground grew warmer under his feet, then warmer still. At the end of the path lay a pool with steam rising off it, and flat stones around the edge that had kept the whole night's heat. Nils sat down on one. Fern uncurled slowly, the way she always did, and stretched out long and flat on the warm rock. "Wake up slow," Nils said. "We're in no hurry." Fern's spines settled. Her small feet twitched. The steam curled up past them both and went pale in the mist.
Nils pressed his palms to the stone until they were properly hot. Then he carried the warmth to a fallen log nearby, spotted with rain and cold to touch. He laid his hands on the bark and waited. Fern padded along the log beside him, sniffing. Under a curl of bark, three green beetles sat stuck together in the chill. Nils cupped his hands around them without touching, the way you hold a candle out of the wind. One beetle moved a leg. Then another. Fern watched them go, her nose working, and then she looked up at Nils.
The ferns of the valley were all still shut, each new leaf coiled tight as a snail. Nils chose one and breathed on it. His breath went white, then thin, then gone. Nothing happened, so he breathed on it again, slower, closer. The coil loosened a little, like a hand letting go. Fern put her face right up against the next one and breathed too, small quick puffs. Nils laughed without making much noise. They worked along the row together, two warm breaths at a time, and behind them the ferns opened in a crooked line all the way to the pool.
Past the ferns, a great grey shape lay in the mist with its long neck folded over its feet. Nils had thought it was a boulder. It was breathing. Its side rose and fell, slow as the tide, and the air above it shimmered with its own heat. Nils stopped. He did not shout. He hummed instead, low, the sound he made when he could not sleep. Fern tapped her front feet on the wet stone, tick, tick, tick. One huge eye opened, found them, and stayed. "Wake up slow," Nils said. "We're in no hurry." The great head lifted like a branch in wind.
Then the rain came, warm as bathwater, straight down through the mist. It rang on the big leaves and filled the dinosaur's deep footprints one after another, each one a small round pool. Nils crouched under a leaf with Fern against his knee and watched the valley come loose. Something whistled far off. Something else answered. Small heads poked out of the fern beds, no bigger than Fern, blinking at the wet. The long-necked one stepped over the water and left new prints for the rain to fill. Nils put his hand out past the leaf and let it get warm and soaked.
When the rain stopped, the whole valley steamed. Nils carried Fern back to the flat stone by the pool, and they sat in the middle of the warmth with their backs to each other, which was the best way to sit. The light came through the mist the colour of honey. Insects went up in slow spirals. Nils counted the footprint pools and lost count, and did not mind. Fern leaned. He leaned back. Her spines were softer than anyone thought, once you knew how to lean. Neither of them said anything for a long time, and nothing at all needed saying.
The stone kept its heat and passed it up through Nils's legs and along his arms, until he felt as warm as the water. Fern yawned a tiny pink yawn. Nils lay down on his side with one arm curved, and Fern walked into the curve and turned around twice and stopped. "Wake up slow," Nils said. "We're in no hurry." Far off, the great grey one rumbled, low and kind. The ferns stood open. The mist went thin and gold. Nils closed his eyes, and there against his arm was Fern's small breathing, in and out, keeping time with his own.