Jo, Bo and Den were having the best day ever. Small as it may have been (from the low hollow on its easternmost point, even a small child could see the glimmer of sunlight play off the sea lapping on the western shore), the island seemed like an endless funhouse to them, ringed with warm, sandy beaches, hemmed on its northern end with gently swaying grassy thickets which gave way to a range of densely skirted hollows cool with the shade of friendly trees, crowned on its southern face with a mighty rolling hill that suddenly gave way to a stunning cliff face, bejewelled with flashing strokes of brilliant quartz-speckeled limestone.
But they didn't really set out with any intention on fixing mental boundaries over the place. After all, since the warm dry weather seemed pleased to oblige, they felt had any amount of leisure to playfully pad about. All morning and late into the afternoon they strolled, ran, trotted, sauntered, loped, rolled, sumersaulted and lept from place to place like spring-loaded toys, surprising themselves equally with their own folly as well as the island's own kindly maternal playfulness. Jo loved the way that, when Bo rounded one particular shady hillock in front of her and beckoned, the wall of ferny leaves muffled and deflected his voice so as to make it seem that Bo were calling from behind her, a million miles away and in the opposite direction. Den was charmed by the airy brightness of another tree-rimmed clearing that seemed dozens of yards round, but was, in fact, less than a dozen feet in circle--and that reminded him so with a gentle earthy kiss on the forehead when she walked into the hill face she thought had been empty space!
The Island's sense of fun was infectious. Once, spying Jo as he ambled lazily round the hill beneath her, Den stealthily shimmied along an overhanging tree and loosed a shower of loamy mud over Jo's head. Jo shrieked like a boiled banshee at the unexpected shivvery coldness of it. But Jo soon gave over to fits of hysterical laughter when she pelted Bo in the face with a gooshy glop of the stuff as Bo poked his head into the clearing to see what was all the fuss. Den couldn't resist either, and swung herself down from tree top and into the middle of the melee. The three furiously flung dollops of doughy mud at each other in turn, until the soreness of their laughing sides and swinging arms urged a truce.
Catching their breaths, they knelt down beside a clear fresh running stream to slake their thirsts. Then they calmed themselves and set to comparing notes.
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