Around the Bend: Grass

"Two weeks," said Mum (I'd got her with the "really high marks" bit), "but don't expect me to explain this to Dad!"

She left the room. The grass-voices called to me again, and this time I knew I wasn't dreaming. "Thank you," they said in a soft chorus.

So the back lawns started to grow. It's amazing what happens when you let a lawn go its own way. It starts off looking neat and flat. In a few days it looks a mess. Some tufts of grass grow faster than others. Daisies poke their flowers up. Dandelions grow in clumps. All sorts of different grasses grow, and make seed heads, and they're all different colors. It's amazing how many greens there are! Before you know it, the lawn looks like a bit of old paddock, ready for a horse to graze on.

Every afternoon, after school, I'd sit in the high grass where the lawn had been and write nonsensical notes about it. I drew graphs that looked really impressive, and added things like the time, and the height of the dandelions, and whether their flowers were open or not.

Dad came to check on me now and then, frowning all the time. He didn't like my "experiment." He wanted his lawn mowed. I ignored his grumpiness and counted the daisies and wrote numbers down the page, and made it look very impressive, and Dad went away, not totally convinced. I'm glad he didn't ring my science teacher.

After two weeks, I had another dream.

"Tonight we will make your grass-brother," said the voices. "It will be the most difficult thing we have ever done. Many of us are afraid of humans, because of all the cruelty they have shown to us over the years. Your grass-brother will not be cruel like the humans. He will be kind."

"Will he be able to ride a skateboard?"

"What is a skateboard?" the voices asked.

"Never mind," I said. "I'll teach him."

It was quite dark, and my parents were asleep. I slipped out of bed and went outside to the back lawn. The street lights lit up most of the back lawn because we were on a corner. I could hear a rustling sound. The whole lawn was wriggling and moving, like a blanket that's come alive. The grass was swaying, rippling, and twisting. At the center of the lawn something was beginning to form. It was just a dark patch for a while, but gradually it became a human shape, then it stood up and walked towards me.