Billy and the Birdfrogs by B.B. Wurge Page B

of the tunnel. They were the teeth of a saber-toothed tiger, exactly as my grandmother had described it. I could see a little bit of his bony jaw and part of an eye socket, but most of the skeleton was trapped in solid rock. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to chip that skeleton out of the solid rock.
    As I went down, I saw more and more skeletons, some with labels and some without. They were amazing. Most of the time I couldn’t tell what kind of creature it was, because the bones were jumbled up. But sometimes a whole animal would be laid out in order, and I’d see that it was a turtle, or a two-headed frog, or a big bird with pointy teeth. I could see why my mother had been so excited by this find. It was fantastic.
    My grandmother must have guessed right about the rubble that had blocked up the shaft. Either it had broken apart and filtered down by itself, or the birdfrogs had cleared it away. The shaft didn’t seem to have any bottom now. I was already past two hundred feet, and still, when I loosened a pebble, I’d hear it echoing down into nothing. It never seemed to hit bottom.
    Down around three hundred feet I saw the biggest cave yet in the side of the tunnel. It was at least five feet tall and twice as wide. It went back very far. When I shined my helmet light into it, I could see the back wall sparkling from some kind of mineral. I didn’t know if it was a natural cave, or if my mother’s crew had dug it out for some reason. But then I realized that the floor of the cave had a skeleton embedded in it. It was a gigantic skeleton, a wooly mammoth skeleton. And on the wall of the cave, someone had written:
    “T29. Remove Tail First.”
    There it was, the whole wooly mammoth! I could see the curved top of the skull sticking up from the floor of the cave, and the long lumpy spine running down the middle of the cave. My mother’s crew must have dug out the cave to get at the main part of the skeleton. I wasn’t surprised anymore that it had taken six months to get out three tailbones. I could also see that the wooly mammoth hadn’t killed my mother. He was still intact. None of him had collapsed into the tunnel. It must have been some other part of the tunnel that had crumbled in. Maybe some of the hollows I had seen up above were the places where rocks had fallen loose and tumbled down.
    I was so tired that I decided to take a break and sit inside the wooly mammoth cave. I pulled in my rope and rod A and rod B, and crawled into the back of the cave. Even though the floor was hard and full of points of rock, I was so exhausted that I felt wonderfully comfortable sitting down and resting, with my legs stretched out and my back against the cave wall. I felt safer, too, because if the birdfrogs came, they could only get at me from one direction, from the mouth of the cave.
    I opened my backpack, rummaged around, and took out the bread, jelly, peanut butter, and knife. At the sight of the food, I was suddenly incredibly hungry. My stomach felt like it was hollow. I couldn’t wait. I had to scoop out a fingerful of peanut butter and put it in my mouth. It was delicious, and tasted stronger and saltier than usual because I was so hungry. While I was sucking on that first mouthful, I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When I was done eating the sandwich, I ate the hardboiled egg, and then I drank about half of my water. I felt wonderful. I decided to stay where I was and rest before climbing back up the shaft. I was free to climb back up now, because I had found out everything I needed to know. I had even found T29. I didn’t know if anyone else would believe me, but at least I would know the truth inside my own self. It would be a lot easier now to live with the Whingles.
    I didn’t want to waste my batteries, so I turned off the light in my helmet and leaned back against the cave wall in the dark to rest for a few minutes. Of course, I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to, but I was very tired. It