Crown of the Cowibbean (10 page)

Meanwhile Chuck paced back and forth in the grass. “I'm soooooo boooooored!” he
mooed. “Aren't you bored?”

“Nope,” Dakota replied from under his hat.

“Doesn't it feel like something should happen?” Chuck asked.

“Nope,” Dakota repeated.

“Don't you want to do anything exciting?” Chuck whined.

“Nope,” Dakota sighed. “I'm just fine right here.”

Dakota heard the sound of Chuck clomping over to him. Suddenly his eyes were
treated to a flood of warm sunlight as Chuck pulled the hat off his face.

“Can we at least take a walk?” Chuck asked.

Dakota blinked in the sudden brightness. “Sure,” he said, adjusting his cow mask
as he climbed to his feet.

They ambled toward the beach and then strolled along the shore, with Dakota eating
his last banana and Chuck complaining about his boredom all the way.

“I wish something amazing would happen,” he mumbled, picking up a rock from the
beach. “We've probably made this boring walk a billion times.” He pitched the rock far ahead of
them. It whizzed through the air and landed in the soft sand with a loud
clank
!

Chuck and Dakota exchanged confused looks.

“What was that clanking noise?” Chuck wondered aloud.

They trotted up to the place where the rock had landed, looking for the source of
the sound. There, half-buried in the sand, they found a shiny purple shell.

The shell was twisted into a cone-shaped spiral like a tiny tornado. But the
shell's shape wasn't what made it so bizarre. Its entire surface was covered with a pattern of loops
and swirls, as if thousands of permanent fingerprints had been left all over it. A string of symbols
was etched along its twisted spiral curve. They almost looked like letters but not in any language
that Chuck or Dakota could read.

Chuck was immediately fascinated. He had always been interested in shells, and he
had become a bit of an expert. Not only did he learn about them in school, but he also took extra
time on his own to research the ones displayed in the Hortica Center, the island's museum. But of
all the shells he had studied, he had never seen one like this.

“Wow!” Chuck said as his tail twitched all over the place. “Now this is amazing!”
He turned the shell over in his hooves. “Look at these weird loopy patterns! And these markings! It
almost looks like some kind of ancient writing. I've never seen anything like this before.”

“Well, I guess there's a first time for everything,” Dakota said with a shrug.

“No, you don't get it,” Chuck said, shaking his head. “This is impossible. Nothing
like this occurs in nature. This shell shouldn't be here.”

They looked down at the strange shell. Glowing in the slanted light of the late
afternoon sun, it almost looked alive. A gleam ran across its pearly purple surface, as if it were
telling them it was happy to be found.

“Are you going to keep it?” Dakota asked.

“Of course,” Chuck said. “You know I like to collect cool stuff.”

Dakota looked at the excited expression on Chuck's face. He suddenly had a feeling
things were about to become a lot less peaceful.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text and pictures copyright © 2014 by Mike Litwin

978-1-4976-6269-8

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