A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. —Laozi
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"Chapter One: The Watering Hole," Nick read aloud.
Judy looked at him in surprise. "You're actually going to read it in order?"
"Of course. Why? Are you going to skip ahead to Chapter Thirteen?"
"Well, probably," she admitted.
He shook his head. "No spoilers please. Hmm, interesting."
"What?"
"Nah, I'm not gonna spoil it." He went back to scrolling through his Brindle.
She wasn't sure if she wanted to download it. She loved having music on her Ipawd, but she also loved the tactile sensations of books. She reached for her print copy and was going to skim the Table of Contents, but then she decided she'd at least read the first chapter before skipping ahead.
Chapter One: The Watering Hole
This is where the legends begin, at times indistinguishable from our history. True, there are older legends, from thousands of years ago, when fear, treachery, and blood lust ruled our world..."
Judy smiled a little. That sentence was close to what she and Sharla had written in the Carrots Day play. It had made for a very dramatic opening, with Jaguar pretending to attack Judy, although he was a gentle cub, not at all predatory, unlike Gideon in those days. Although they were only nine years old, she and Sharla had liked the idea of a dark beginning leading to the uplifting ending. They knew enough about story-telling for that.
...but these are legends of darkness, while the "watering hole" stories are ones of hope and unity. Even when the world was divided into two unequal parts, vicious predators and meek prey, every mammal had something in common: the need for water to sustain life. In the modern era, we take water for granted most of the time. It's always there, for drinking, bathing, swimming, gardening. Sometimes, in the form of rain, it may be more present than we want.
It's hard to relate to a time when water was precious, when animals would come from miles away for just a drop of it. Try to imagine what that time was like, when every mammal from the smallest rodent to the largest pachyderm, sought out the watering hole.
(And here let us pause for a moment to consider that we're looking at legends about unity and universality, and yet they by definition exclude the mammals who live in the sea.)
"We're here."
Judy looked up from the book. "That was quick."
"Well, it was only two stops away."
She nodded. They were on the Lavender Line, which ran from Peak Street through the southwest corner of Tundratown. Nick had pointed out that it was one of the two routes shaped more like a U than a loop, the other being the Magenta, or Animalia Line, in the southern half of Savanna Central. There was still a lot of the ZTA system that Judy was unfamiliar with, but Nick had carried a mental map of it for years.
She put her book away and followed Nick off the train and out of the station. Even though they had traveled for only a few minutes, the climate was completely different. She should be used to that by now, but she wasn't.
This was Taiga Street and it had both swamps and pine trees, which Nick had told her came from being in the part of Tundratown that bordered the Rainforest. The scenery was both dramatic and peaceful. It made sense to put a safehouse there, especially since there didn't seem to be many animals around.
Their directions beyond the train station were in a sealed envelope, which Judy now opened.
"How far is it?" Nick asked.
She showed him the enclosed map.
"So it looks like a bit of a hike but we can do it."
"Right. I'm just wondering. Should we have gone back home first? I mean, we're going to be there awhile, right? We're going to need several changes of clothes and toothbrushes and everything." They'd headed out that morning not knowing if they'd do more than just talk to Ms. Steppe that day. She realized now that they hadn't fully thought this through.
He shrugged. "We'll check it out, talk to your friend. And then you can stay with her while I go home and get our stuff. Maybe Bogo will let me take a vehicle, so I'm not schlepping the luggage cross town."
She smiled at the word "schlep." Every once in awhile, Nick would throw in a Big-City word that no one in Bunnyburrow used. She could usually figure out the meaning from the context.
"Meanwhile," he continued, "we're on foot so let's get going."
She nodded and they headed to the foothills. She thought of how, other than two exciting, adventurous cases, a lot of her time as a police officer involved sitting around. Her brief stint as a meter maid had been comparatively active, although that was mostly because of her ambition to hand out twice the expected number of traffic tickets, not to mention chasing Weaselton through Little Rodentia. This case would probably be mostly sitting around as well, unless someone did threaten Sharla in person. Perhaps she and Nick would take turns guarding the perimeter of the safehouse.
"Nick, what do you think the safehouse will be like?"
He didn't answer right away, partly because the path was getting steeper and probably partly because he was thinking it over. Then he said, "I'm not sure. Is this something set up by the ZPD or by the publisher? Or someone else? Usually safehouses are remote, which this sort of is, and nondescript, which this probably is."
She nodded. She could sort of picture it. They walked in silence through a thicket of conifers and then they came to a clearing.
"Hm," Nick said, "looks more like a safe house, with a space in the middle."