Free Rain Forest Rose by Terri Farley

that made the spider have a “happy face.”
    â€œYou always told me, ‘without the trunk there are no branches,’” Jonah pointed out.
    The saying made Darby look up and smile.
    That Hawaiian proverb was pretty easy to understand, and a lot nicer way to train kids to respect their elders than some she’d heard.
    â€œOhia branches spring from the same root as the tree,” Tutu said.
    I saw those, Darby thought, wondering if the trees she’d been studying when half awake that morning were the ones Tutu was talking about.
    â€œBut the trunk has been around longer,” Jonah joked.
    What is this, dueling proverbs? Darby wondered, but now that Tutu and Jonah were both laughing, she remembered to look back down at the spider. It had almost reached her bare ankle.
    I admire your determination, Darby thought, but you’re not crawling on my skin.
    Darby lifted her foot and gave it a gentle shake.
    With the willpower of a pit bull, the spider held on.
    Darby shivered, but she couldn’t dance around to dislodge the spider, while she was eavesdropping.
    Get off! she commanded silently, then planted theheel of her shoe and jiggled the toe back and forth. She realized her mistake when the spider lost its grip and landed on her shin.
    Darby squinched her eyes closed and jerked the neck of her T-shirt up to cover her mouth against a silent scream.
    You’re just a little spider.
    You don’t bite.
    I’m not afraid of you.
    Some distance off, Kona snorted and saddle leather creaked. Jonah must be mounting his horse to ride back to the ranch.
    Good. Then she could get rid of this tiny trespasser.
    But Jonah didn’t move off before Tutu had the last word.
    â€œIt will be better for all of us if you don’t forget another of my favorite sayings, which you brushed aside while you were raising her mother.”
    Her mother. Darby really wanted to hear this.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Jonah sighed as if Tutu was picking on him.
    â€œWithout subjects, there is no king.”
    Okay, she’d mull that over later, but she couldn’t take time to make sense of it now, because Kona’s hooves were thudding away and the thump of Tutu’s walking stick followed.
    At last, Darby bent down and grabbed a leaf. She held it against her shin.
    â€œCrawl onto this,” she whispered, offering the happy-face spider an alternate route to wherever it was going. “That’s it. Yes!”
    Careful not to drop the creature, Darby placed the leaf on the rain-forest floor. She exhaled, shook her arms crazily, as if spiders had been creeping all over her, then ran back to Hoku as fast as she could.

Chapter 6
    P enny-shaped leaves puffed up from Darby’s shoes as she jogged back to camp.
    A little out of breath, she stood waiting, but no one came after her.
    So Tutu wasn’t coming to visit. Maybe she, like Jonah, had just been making sure her city slicker great-granddaughter had survived her first night in the rain forest. And, since Jonah had taken care of that, she’d returned home.
    Overstuffed with all she’d heard, Darby’s mind craved a simple task.
    â€œI’ll think about all that mother and son, father and daughter stuff later,” Darby told Hoku as she passed the corral. “Now we’re going to do something fun.”
    She dug into her backpack and pulled out the brown paper bag Megan had given her. Some kind of fun training tool, Megan had promised.
    Darby sat back on her heels. It was a plastic jar of bubbles.
    â€œOkay,” she said to herself, then backed out of her hut and stood before unscrewing the lid.
    She extracted the slippery pink wand and blew.
    Three of four iridescent bubbles popped almost as soon as they formed, but one drifted away, rising on tropical breezes.
    Hoku nickered, then bolted away from the bubble.
    â€œYou’re safe, girl.” Darby walked closer to the corral, drew a deep breath, and blew a long