Cloudhoppers

By Marianne Forbes

A lazy summer day in the backyard of their grandparents' house turns topsy-turvy for four children and a dog when the skies darken, and the winds pick up. With a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, they find themselves floating away on the clouds, lost in a world of Cloudhoppers. Follow the children on a magical adventure as they

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dama
• Release date: Mar 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987918012

Marianne Forbes

Raised in Fairfax, Virginia, Marianne studied design in college and married a West Virginia boy. After a few years in the Washington D.C area, they moved to his hometown of Charleston, West Virginia "temporarily" ... more than 40 years ago. Finding herself over 500 miles from New York's design mecca, she switched careers and devoted 30 years to special education. She and her husband have two sons, who both live nearby with their families. Marianne enjoys traveling, cooking, holidays with family, and watching her grandchildren grow in a place she has come to love.

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CLOUDHOPPERS

By Marianne Forbes

Cloud Hoppers

Copyright © 2023 Marianne Forbes

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Marianne Forbes, Damas Publishing

ISBN EBOOK: 979-8-9879180-1-2

ISBN HARDBACK: 979-8-9879180-0-5

ISBN PAPERBACK: 979-8-9879180-2-9

Cover Design & Illustrations by Emily Mottesheard

Interior Design by Emily Mottesheard

www.mottfolio.com

Dedicated to

My darling grandchildren,

Will, Addie, Nora, and Caden

And, since I unintentionally became inspired by their grandpa, parents, mimis, papas, great-grandparents, great aunts, and even their parents’ cousins, I best dedicate this book to them, as well.

PROLOGUE

This is a story about my four precocious grandchildren and their fantastical journey to find home. I tell it to you as it was told to me, by the children themselves. They claim it really happened. And when they ask me if I believe them, well, let me put it this way - there is a rule in our house: If a grandchild asks for something, Grandma always says yes.

CHAPTER 1

Clouds Gather

The day did not start with clouds. In fact, it was a hot, sunny morning in early August. Our grandchildren were visiting me and my husband - Grandma and Grandpa to them. The older two, Willder and Ada, brother and sister, were age 10 and 9. McCade and Honora, also brother and sister, were age 3 and 5. Their fathers are my sons, and I am lucky enough to have them and their families living nearby in the city where they were raised.

The little cousins love nothing more than to spend hours at our house, playing inside and out, eating all kinds of snacks frowned upon at home, and generally being spoiled. We play games, read books, watch cartoons, and bake cookies and cupcakes with every imaginable color of sprinkles. All the things you expect when visiting your grandparents. McCade likes to tell his mom and dad that he can do whatever he wants at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, which is mostly true.

We live in an old, stately white house on a hill with a sprawling yard that slopes down in the back to a line of tall pine trees. Beyond the trees, you can just see the city down below and mountains beyond. In a corner of the yard, in the shade of an overgrown crabapple tree, Grandpa built a sandbox. The sturdy, good-sized box is overflowing with white sand dirtied by leaves, small pinecones, and the occasional bug that finds its way under the blue tarp used as a cover. About halfway between the sandbox and the house lies a small putting green, with a bucket of golf balls accumulated over the years and a few rusty putters. In the opposite corner of the yard, up near the house, the children and I created a hidden fairy garden under the far side of the bushes that wrap around a bay window. Over time, we added fairies, gnomes, little houses with flower roofs, ceramic mushrooms that wobble, and a variety of miniature woodland creatures. Our fairy garden is a work in progress. The yard keeps the children, and us, busy. But nothing holds their interest quite like that sandbox.

On this particular day, with hardly a cloud in the crystal blue sky, all four of them were in the sandbox by mid-morning. They spent hours digging and building while Grandpa and I sat watching from the veranda, our big white dog, Charlie, rambling back and forth between us and the activity in the yard. The veranda stretches across the back of our house with tall white columns holding up the roof. Two rockers are centered there in front of a window. Jutting out into the yard is a patio in the shape of a semicircle with a round table and chairs under a big red umbrella. The children stopped playing only long enough to run up to the table for a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches with strawberries and a mid-afternoon snack of brightly colored popsicles. The goal was to eat as quickly as possible and run back to play, sticky hands and all. You might say they all passed the test.

As the day wore on, the high feathery clouds that appeared sometime earlier gave way to big, fluffy ones, creating patches of shade on the lawn. Grandpa crisscrossed the yard on his riding mower, puffing his cigar. I stayed busy filling cups with ice water and settling small disputes between the children, who played together rather peacefully given the confines of the sandbox. A castle for a princess or for a dark lord? Weddings or wars? A moat or no moat? All eventually settled.

But by late afternoon, dark clouds were looming in the distance, and the leaves on the trees curled up, turning silver in the wind. Grandpa knew that could mean only one thing. A storm was coming. He hollered to the kids, Almost time to go inside. And it was time for me to get dinner started.

Willder, the oldest, is the levelheaded and responsible one. He has always been that way. Quiet, sensible, and often buried in thought. He has sandy blond hair, a big smile, and glasses that he sometimes takes off and twirls around in circles. His time is spent reading, playing video games, watching movies, building massive Lego structures, and learning to code computers. Willder has a quirky interest in the music that accompanies his favorite movies and games, and he likes to share that music with me. I am happy to watch the video clips, but some are rather lengthy, and if I avert my eyes for even a second, he has a cute habit of putting his fingers on my chin and moving my face back to the action, to be sure I do not miss a thing. Though Willder has this soft side, you might not know it if you watched him play a video game. He is skilled, as I suspect most 10-year-olds are, at conquering level after level. His keen interest in games is plain to see. This day, he wore a kelly green T-shirt with pictures of a pirate and a kraken, a scene from one of his games. He likes the bad guys. Willder has a notebook full of story ideas, complete with illustrations, and all of them have detailed bad guys.

All afternoon, Willder created his own fantasy world of friends and foes off to the side in the sandbox. But upon hearing Grandpa’s warning, he abruptly ended his battle. He stepped out of the sandbox into bright green shoes, and turned to little McCade, who was pushing toy cars up a sandy road to a castle standing in the middle of everything. Covered with sand from his curly blonde hair down to his brown sandals, McCade did not have a care in the world. Willder, eyeing thick clouds moving closer, sternly repeated Grandpa’s warning to McCade and the others. Come on. Grandpa said we have to go in.

McCade, perhaps because he was barely three, was not nearly as quick to move as his sister, Honora. She is usually happy-go-lucky, her personality bursting with optimism. Tall for a five-year-old, Honora is what I call wispy, with long legs, just right for her dance class. A fairydiddle, Grandpa calls her. She is fair with blonde hair like her brother, but hers is straight and so blonde it is almost white. Her thin smile opens up when she laughs, making her whole face sparkle. She has a way of putting you in a good mood, precisely when you are not. But she is also the careful one, so she became quite concerned about the changing weather, looking up to see the sky darken and feeling a gust of wind on her face. Honora lost all interest in playing. She rose to brush the sand off her blue flowered dress, slipped into her pink and blue canvas shoes, and scurried up the lawn toward the house. She twirled around to tell McCade to come on. Grandpa said. Another step or two and she twirled again. Are you coming? McCade, whose standard reply to just about everything starts with sure answered, Sure am. He gathered more toy cars than he could manage in his two little hands and got up to follow his sister, paying no attention to the sand falling from his red shorts and blue choo-choo train T-shirt.

Willder knew the hardest one to convince would be Ada. Not that it was his job as her older brother, because it is not. But because, you see, Ada is, well, Ada. A lot like her Grandpa, some say. She is always busy and ready to enjoy the next exciting thing which, for Ada, is almost always going to start any minute. Especially anything outdoors. With bright blue eyes, a constant smile, and a flair for the dramatic, Ada is a free spirit, and she does not let rules get in her way if she can help it. She is what you might call plucky. She is also about as tall as her older brother, and definitely not afraid to take him on if need be. Ada had thus far ignored Willder’s pleas to leave the sandbox. But, as was often the case, she promised to stop playing just as soon as she finished one last thing. This time the one last thing involved placing a hastily made metal star on top of the highest turret of the castle. Except then she decided she liked the star that she fashioned from a long, bent piece of metal found jutting out from under the sandbox. So, it went into the pocket of her purple shorts, hidden under a white T-shirt, her favorite because it