Pippa Counts the Wrong Rainbow — At the bend where the river combed itself around flat stones, Pippa set a tin thimble on a stump and promised to drop in one pebble for every stripe in the morning rainbow. Read the full story →
At the bend where the river combed itself around flat stones, Pippa set a tin thimble on a stump and promised to drop in one pebble for every stripe in the morning rainbow. The air smelled of wet willow bark and sun-warmed mud. Above her, arches of dots, waves, leaves, and zigzags stacked so neatly that Pippa felt sure the job would be quick. Plink went red. Plink went orange. By the fourth plink, a trout burst from the water with a slap like a wet hand applauding.
Pippa squinted. The trout’s back flashed with scallops, vines, ladders, spirals, and one extremely smug stripe that looked almost borrowed. “Excuse me,” she said, “are you part of my rainbow?” The trout opened and shut its mouth as if saying, Obviously, then sailed through the spray. Pippa laughed so hard she dropped two pebbles at once, which made the count completely useless and much more interesting.
So she changed the challenge: not how many stripes the rainbow owned, but how many places color had decided to live. The arches kept the sky. The river kept its silver curls. The trout kept its ridiculous stolen stripe. And Pippa, sitting exactly where river, rainbow, and joke met, dropped the last pebble into the thimble at the bend where the river combed itself around flat stones.
