Once upon a time, Fern was nine and a half years old and really wanted to go outside further than the castle backyard. She was really desperate, so one day she decided to run away. First, she looked for ways to escape. But then, Fern suddenly remembered that she had a toy ball in her room, so she forgot all about escaping and started rummaging around for the ball.
That ball was super bouncy. It was a yellow ball with green leaves on it and it was very rubbery and super duper duper duper bouncy – so bouncy. Fern loved her ball and usually played with it all day long.
Fern found her ball and started playing with it. She loved how bouncy it was. She would sometimes bang it against the floor as hard as she could, and it would go up, up, up, up, up and it would bounce back from the ceiling – and it was a super duper high ceiling.
She bounced it harder and harder until it started getting out of control, and then it started bouncing across the room, banging off walls, and making lamps crash to the ground.
“Uh oh,” said Fern.
She tried to get the ball but it just bounced right off her and toward the wall, where her grandpa and grandma’s portrait was.
“Oh no!” cried Fern. She leapt toward it, but the ball bounced off it, and for a moment Fern was sure that the ball would make the picture crash to the ground. But instead of doing that, the ball bounced back out and came to a stop. The portrait didn’t break – instead, it slid away to reveal a secret passagewayThe secret passageway is the same hole that Bella saw in her story.
Fern was so surprised. She had never known there was a secret passageway in her room! She peeked in. The tunnel was pitch black and she couldn’t see the bottom, but there was something wooden that seemed to fall down, down, down forever. Fern quickly scrambled around and found her flashlight and shined it at the wooden thing. It was a ladder! The longest ladder you have ever seen.
Fern decided to go down the ladder; after all, she was a very curious cat and she had no idea where this went, which meant she was even more curious and really, really wanted to see what was down there so badly, that she climbed down.
She was climbing for a really, really, really long time. Finally, she saw light. She started climbing even faster and soon reached the light – but it was only an illuminated torch. She wondered where it came from. She kept climbing, and soon found the bottom. She expected the bottom to be dirt, but it was stone.
There were more torches along the side of the walls, but only a few of them were lit. Fern wondered if she should go back. “But then I’ll never be able to escape!” Fern said out loud. “So I guess I’ll just have to see what’s at the end!”
Fern started running super duper fast following the tunnel. She soon saw light ahead, but it wasn’t a torchlight – it was sunlight! Fern started running even faster.
Then she realized that the tunnel got smaller and smaller, all the way to the opening. She tried to squeeze past, but it was too small. She tried and tried, and soon her head fit through just enough for her to peek out. She saw a tiny clearing with a little stream that was bubbling next to the secret passageway. This was super amazing for Fern, since she had never been out of the castle. Fern was so excited!
Fern tried to get out, but the hole was too small. So Fern started digging and digging and soon made the hole big enough for her to fit through. She came out and looked around. There were some tiny mouse prints by the side of the hole, and it seemed like a mouse had been looking into it also.
Fern leapt across the stream and looked at the clearing.
“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe I should build myself a little house.”
Fern got a bunch of sticks and came back. She put them all in a pile and started putting three of the biggest sticks in a teepee shape. Then Fern (who was always carrying around scrunchies) took a scrunchie from her paw and put it on top of the sticks, so that it would hold them together. Then Fern got the smaller sticks and filled in the gaps the bigger sticks had made so whomever was in the teepee was safe from wind and rain (the rain can slide off the sides).
Just as Fern was putting up the last stick, it slipped and made a cut on Fern.
“Ouch!” Fern yelped, “That hurts a lot! It’s probably going to leave a scar!”
Fern got some leaf bandages and put them on the cut. Then, she carefully put up the last stick and went inside.
Fern thought the teepee was very plain; it had nothing in it except the ground, the sticks, and some grass.
“I have an idea!” Fern said to herself. She scampered back out of the teepee and went back to the secret passageway. She ran through the passage, came back into her room, grabbed a snack, and a basket with a few spare blankets and pillows, and leapt back inside the passage. She got back and put the basket inside the teepee and snacked for a bit. Then she crawled in after and spilled all the blankets and pillows into a pile. Next she started arranging them neatly and put two of her biggest, softest blankets on the floor so that it would be a very comfy floor. Then, she decided it was getting dark. So Fern hurried back home and went into her room just as Mama Leopard arrived to check on her. Fern pretended she was sleeping and Mama Leopard just hugged her and went back out of her room.
The next morning, Fern woke up suuuuper early and ran down her passage and back to the teepee and went inside. She brought her ball with her to play in the grass. There had been a big storm that night yet everything was like it was the day before.
Fern noticed that the teepee was darker than outside. She decided to bring in a torch from the secret passage. But first, before getting out of her teepee, Fern made a little gap between the blankets and made sure it was all dust in the gap, not grass. “If there was grass here then it might catch on fire,” she thought.
Next, she went back to her passageway but this time only went a little bit into the passage before she came to the second torch. She didn’t want to take the first one in case she lost sight of the hole when it was dark. She took the second torch, went back out of the tunnel and into the teepee, and placed the torch in the middle of the circle of dust, away from the blankets. It lit up the teepee immediately, giving off a warm glow.
She settled herself into the blankets and fell asleep. Fern woke up and saw that the sun was high in the sky.
“I must have slept for hours,” she thought. “Mom must be worried about me. I have to go back home and eat breakfast.”
When she left, she noticed that the blankets which were green, and the pillows which were yellow, really matched the dark brown color of the wood as well as the warm orangish glow of the torchlight.
The End.