Chapter Twelve (part c)

Then all at once and without any warning, a very strange thing happened. As Jennifer looked across the river everything around her began to waver and change. The swamp where they stood became almost transparent, and another more familiar scene slid into focus. Jennifer blinked her eyes in amazement. The river was shrinking in size! It looked less and less like they were lost by a large rolling river and more and more like they were standing beside the small winding stream that flowed through the ravine.

A stick floated lazily out from under a wooden bridge back along the hiking trail. There were streetlights too and Jennifer suddenly realized she could see the jogging path they had been on earlier when they first started out.

"It looks like we're in both places at the same time!" she thought to herself.

It was hard for Jennifer to tell which was real. Both scenes looked equally possible. She looked at Rachael and Jamie to see if they had seen all this too, but they were still arguing about what they should do and how they could cross the river that flowed through the swamp.

"Why, they haven't noticed anything at all!" thought Jennifer in surprise.

She was just about to tell them what they were missing when just as suddenly as it had arrived, the strange way of seeing things two ways at once began to fade. The swamp and the river became more solid again while the familiar scenery of the park in the ravine became more transparent. Soon it disappeared entirely.

But the stick she had seen floating down the small stream in the ravine still remained. It seemed to grow in size as she watched it. All at once Jennifer realized it was actually a boat, a rowboat in fact, and a pretty good sized one at that. A fat, furry animal was pulling at the oars as it came downstream. His back was to them as he approached, but they could all see he had a large flat tail that was slapping on the seat as he rowed. He was certainly a beaver, and he brought the rowboat right over to the riverbank where they were waiting.

"Well?" said the beaver. "You want a ride or what?"

Jennifer looked at the pendulum. It had stopped spinning in circles and was nodding yes again.

"Yes, we would," she said to the beaver. "Thank you."

They all stepped into the boat and sat down. The beaver gave a great heave on the oars, grunted and then pushed off into the current again. Now that Jennifer was close to him she could see how fat he really was. She was sitting right on the seat facing him and his belly was so vast it was almost in her lap. The beaver whistled a song between his two large front teeth while he pulled the oars with his small pudgy paws. His teeth were brown from chewing on cedar. His fur was matted and dirty. All things considered he didn't look that nice at all.

"So where do you guys want to go?" he growled at them.

"We're going to the place where the new-moon stones are," Jennifer told him. "Do you know where that is?"

"Course I do, you think I hang around here for my health?" said the beaver and then suddenly he saw something move off to one side on the river bank. "Hey, look at that, there's a muskrat over there! You got objections to me double-loading?" he demanded. He leaned over and smiled craftily at Jennifer.

"You mean give him a ride?" she said. "Go right ahead."

"Right!" said the beaver and pulled hard on the oars so the boat veered towards the river bank.