More Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins by Karin Kaufman

Author:Karin Kaufman [KARIN KAUFMAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Winter Tree Books
Published: 2023-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

THE TIME OF TREE SAP

“Geraldine! Get up now!”

Geraldine scowled and pulled her quilted blanket over her ears. Mama was at her door again. Knocking on it, calling her name, trying to stir her lazy bones from her bed. But it was another cold February morning. Though it was late February, to be sure, and March wasn’t far away, it was still chilly in the Hollow and Geraldine wasn’t interested in doing her chores. Besides, she was quite bored. That’s what she was. Bored. Since waking, she’d been trying to figure out what was troubling her brain. Now she knew.

“Can’t Button get the acorn shells just this once?” she shouted.

Her bedroom door flung wide.

“Geraldine Woolkins.”

“Mama?” Geraldine sat straight in bed and tried to look alert and obedient.

“Your papa already got the acorn shells. He grew tired of waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

“There’s something else I want you to do.”

Was that a smile playing at the corners of her mama’s mouth? It sure looked like a smile. Was she conspiring?

“What is it?” Geraldine asked.

“I want you to get the thimbles from the pantry. All four of them. You’ll have to make two or more trips.”

Geraldine stared. Could it be? Was it finally time?

Mama started to laugh. “Yes, tree sap is flowing again in the Maple Forest. Your papa saw three sap buckets on his way to Theodora Cresswell’s home to deliver a walnut.”

“The time of tree sap!” Geraldine cried as she tossed off her blanket and bounded from her bed. “I’ve been waiting my whole life!”

Indeed, since this was Geraldine’s very first February, she had been waiting her whole life. Her parents had told her stories about how trees came to life just before spring and dripped with a sweet sap that Mama cooked and turned into syrup for walnut pancakes. She had tasted the syrup, but she had never seen it flow magically from the trees.

“Is Big Hands in the forest?” Geraldine asked, slipping into her coat.

“No, and that’s why it’s best to go now,” Mama said. “Before he returns to check his buckets.”

Big Hands, the human who lived at the edge of the Maple Forest, captured the sap in buckets bigger than the Woolkins family kitchen. Geraldine had first seen him last October, when he had tenderly saved Penelope the sparrow after she had flown into his house. She liked Big Hands. He cared for birds, and he even cared for the vegetables in his garden, so how could he be bad? But Papa had warned her to stay away from him, and from all such creatures. “They’re big and we know very little about them,” he would always say.

Geraldine raced to the pantry, and because she was excited, she was able to carry two thimbles at a time and take them to the kitchen. They were beautiful, she thought, carved with the prettiest designs and shining like silver moonlight on a puddle of water. They were also much sturdier than acorn tops. Even sturdier than walnut shells, though that made them heavy.

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