In Ether Forest, the trees had silver trunks and soft blue leaves. At night, tiny lights floated between the roots like sleepy fireflies. In the morning, the forest usually shone in many colors: red berry bushes, yellow mushrooms, purple ponds, and green moss.
But one morning, Aryactanner opened her round window and gasped.
Everything was gray.
The berries were gray. The mushrooms were gray. Even the little birds looked like they had been dusted with flour.
Aryactanner was a young girl with bright boots, a red scarf, and a small satchel full of useful things. She was a little shy when meeting strangers. But when someone needed help, her heart became very brave.
“Oh dear,” she whispered. “Ether Forest has lost its colors.”
She packed a pear, a ribbon, three crackers, and her favorite shiny button. Then she followed the pale path into the woods.
“Hello?” called Aryactanner. “Does anyone know where the colors went?”
A voice answered from behind a fern.
“I do. Or I may. Or I might know a little bit.”
Out stepped Sorceress, the forest’s gentle sorceress. She wore a cloak covered in pockets. One pocket held cinnamon sticks. Another held a tiny sleeping snail. Her purple hat had become gray, but its star-shaped tip still wobbled cheerfully.
“Sorceress!” said Aryactanner. “Please help me.”
Sorceress adjusted her round glasses. “I saw a trail of gray footprints leading to Pebble Hill. The footprints were enormous.”
“Ogre footprints?” Aryactanner asked.
Sorceress nodded. “Probably. Ogre lives there. He is loud, grumpy, and has feet the size of bathtubs.”
Aryactanner’s boots suddenly felt very small.
“Is he mean?” she asked.
“He can be,” said Sorceress. “But sometimes a grumpy face is hiding a worried heart.”
They walked together. Sorceress carried a crooked wand made from a moonlit branch. Aryactanner carried her satchel. On the way, they found a gray squirrel trying to bury a gray nut.
“I cannot see my nut!” cried the squirrel.
Aryactanner tied her red scarf around the nut. “Now you can find it.”
“Thank you!” chirped the squirrel.
A little farther on, they found two gray butterflies bumping gently into a gray flower.
“We cannot tell where the petals end!” they said.
Sorceress tapped her wand. “Twinkle, tangle, tiny gleam!”
Only one flower turned pink. The butterflies clapped their wings.
“My magic is weak,” Sorceress said softly. “The forest’s colors are not gone forever. They are being held somewhere.”
At Pebble Hill, they heard a huge sound.
“HIC!”
The hill shook.
“HIC!”
A gray cloud of dust puffed into the air.
Aryactanner and Sorceress peeked over a rock. There was Ogre. He sat beside his cave with a giant jar in his lap. The jar glowed faintly. Inside, swirled every color of Ether Forest.
Red curled around gold. Blue sparkled beside green. Purple spun like grape juice in a glass.
Ogre hugged the jar close.
“Mine,” he grumbled. “All mine.”
“HIC!”
Every hiccup made a tiny rainbow bounce against the jar.
Aryactanner wanted to run away. Ogre’s eyebrows were bushy. His nose was wide. His big toe was wearing a hat because he had lost his sock.
But then she noticed something sad.
Ogre’s cave was dark. No bright flowers grew there. No birds sang nearby. On a stone beside him lay a small, gray painting. It showed Ogre holding hands with other ogres under a rainbow.
Aryactanner took one slow step forward.
“Hello, Ogre,” she said.
Ogre stared. “Who said that?”
“I did. I am Aryactanner.”
“Go away,” Ogre grumbled. “I have colors now. Colors make my cave less lonely.”
Sorceress stayed behind the rock, but she gave Aryactanner a brave little nod.
Aryactanner sat on a pebble, not too close and not too far away.
“Your jar is beautiful,” she said.
Ogre blinked. Nobody had called his jar beautiful before.
“I found it under an old root,” he said. “When I opened it, the colors flew into it. I shut the lid fast. I thought they would make me happy.”
“Do they?” Aryactanner asked kindly.
Ogre looked into the jar. “A little. But they keep bumping around. And I keep hiccupping.”
“HIC!”
A yellow spark flew out of the lid and landed on Ogre’s toe-hat. The hat turned sunny yellow.
Ogre sniffed. “Also, I miss the birds. They used to sing outside my cave. Now they do not come.”
Aryactanner thought hard. She was shy, but she was also clever.
“What if the colors could visit you,” she said, “without being trapped?”
Ogre hugged the jar tighter. “They will leave.”
“Maybe,” said Aryactanner. “But friends can leave and come back. That is what friends do.”
Sorceress stepped out at last. “I can make a Color Garden outside your cave,” she said. “But the colors must be free first.”
Ogre frowned. “How do I know you will not forget me?”
Aryactanner opened her satchel. She took out her shiny button. It was silver with a tiny blue star in the middle.
“This is my favorite button,” she said. “You may keep it until the garden grows. It can be our promise button.”
Ogre held it carefully between two huge fingers. His grumpy face became smaller somehow.
“A promise button,” he said.
“HIC!”
The jar lid rattled.
Sorceress lifted her wand. “We need a song,” she said. “A sharing song. Very simple.”
Aryactanner sang first, in a soft voice.
“Colors, colors, fly and play,
Come back to the woods today.”
Sorceress joined in.
“Red for berries, blue for streams,
Gold for all our sunny dreams.”
Ogre looked embarrassed. “I do not sing.”
Then the jar hiccupped.
“HIC!”
Ogre accidentally sang one loud note. “HOOOO!”
The jar flashed.
Aryactanner laughed, not in a mean way. “That was a very good note.”
Ogre tried again.
“Hoooooo!”
This time, the jar lid popped open.
Whoosh!
Colors streamed into the sky. Red raced to the berry bushes. Green rolled over the moss. Purple danced across the pond. Blue fluttered onto the birds’ wings. Yellow painted every mushroom cap with bright dots.
Ether Forest glowed again.
The birds came singing back to Pebble Hill. One landed right on Ogre’s toe-hat.
Ogre smiled. It was a big smile. It made his bushy eyebrows jump.
Sorceress waved her wand in a careful circle. “Seeds of color, roots of cheer, make a friendly garden here!”
Beside Ogre’s cave, flowers sprang up. There were red flowers shaped like trumpets, blue flowers shaped like bells, and orange flowers that smelled like warm bread. A rainbow vine climbed over the cave door.
Ogre stared in wonder.
“For me?” he asked.
“For all of us,” said Aryactanner. “We can visit.”
Ogre gave Aryactanner back her shiny button. But it had changed. Around its little blue star now sparkled a ring of rainbow colors.
“It is a Brave Friend Button,” said Ogre. “For you.”
Aryactanner pinned it to her red scarf. It shimmered in the sun.
Then Ogre opened a stone chest from inside his cave. It was full of smooth, glowing pebbles, each with a tiny color trapped safely inside.
“These are not trapped colors,” Ogre explained quickly. “They are pebble lights. I made them when I was lonely.”
He gave Aryactanner one. It glowed pink, gold, and blue.
“A treasure for the girl who talked to me,” he said.
Aryactanner held the pebble close. “Thank you, Ogre.”
From that day on, Aryactanner became the Keeper of the Color Button. Whenever anyone in Ether Forest felt left out, she visited with her glowing pebble and a kind hello.
And every spring, Ogre held a Color Garden Picnic. Sorceress brought cinnamon cakes. Aryactanner brought pears and crackers. Ogre wore his yellow toe-hat, even after he found his sock.
“HIC!” he would say.
Then everyone would laugh, and a tiny rainbow would bounce happily over Pebble Hill.