Silas and the Seed-Path Game — Under the soft chuff-chuff of the tractor cooling by the shed, Silas tapped his trowel on his boot and invented a game. Read the full story →
Under the soft chuff-chuff of the tractor cooling by the shed, Silas tapped his trowel on his boot and invented a game. If he could mark a path from pumpkins to corn to cabbages, visiting kids could follow it and find supper in the soil. But the paint box was empty, and bare sticks all looked the same.
So Silas stepped past the comfortable garden rows, over the hummocky field, to the creek bed where flat stones slept in cool mud. Mosquitoes whined. Burrs grabbed his socks. He traded his last biscuit to a bold crow for one shiny blue feather, then carried the stones back, heavy as loaves.
By lantern smell and cricket song, Silas painted each stone by hand: a curl for pumpkin, dots for corn, ruffled lines for cabbage. In the morning, his path wound through the farm like a quiet riddle, and the first child who played it held up a carrot with dirt still clinging to its whiskers. “I found dinner!” she called. Silas smiled at his muddy fingers, proud of the trail he had made from creek stones and care; next time you spot the basket, can you guess which seed-path clue led there?
