Ruby the Rhino Tiptoes

Ruby the rhino was the heaviest thing in the whole valley, and tonight she had to be the quietest.

The hippos were asleep across the path. All of them. In a row. Snoring.

And Ruby's bed was on the other side.

"Tiptoe," said the little bird who rode on her back. "You'll have to tiptoe."

"Rhinos don't tiptoe," said Ruby.

"Tonight they do."

Ruby looked at her feet. They were round and grey and each one was about the size of a dinner plate. She lifted one. She put it down on the very tip. It made a sound like a boulder being set down carefully, which is still a sound.

The nearest hippo snorted. Ruby froze.

"Tip," whispered the bird. "Toe."

Tip. Toe. The hippo settled. Ruby breathed again.

She lifted the next foot. Tip. Toe. And the next. Tip. Toe. She was doing it. She was actually tiptoeing. It felt very strange, like walking on her eyelashes.

The path went between two big hippos, so close that Ruby's sides nearly brushed them. She held her breath. She held her tummy in. She held everything in.

Tip. Toe. Tip. Toe.

A hippo's ear twitched right by her knee. Ruby stopped mid-tip, with one enormous foot in the air, wobbling.

"Don't move," breathed the bird.

Ruby did not move. Her leg began to shake. A rhino is not made to stand on three tiptoes with the fourth in the air; a rhino is made to stand on four flat feet and think about grass. But Ruby stood, and shook, and the hippo's ear twitched once more and was still.

Tip. Toe.

She was nearly across. One more hippo, the smallest, right at the end, curled up like a comma.

Tip.

Toe.

Tip...

And Ruby's back foot, the clumsy one, came down a tiny bit too flat and a tiny bit too loud. Thud.

The smallest hippo opened one eye.

It looked at Ruby. Ruby looked at it. Ruby was on tiptoe, with a bird on her back and her tummy held in, and the smallest hippo was so surprised to see a rhino in such a position that it did not know whether to be cross or to laugh.

It decided on neither. It yawned, a long pink yawn, and closed its eye again, and in a voice that was mostly asleep, it said, "Nice tiptoeing."

"Thank you," whispered Ruby.

She took the last two steps, tip, toe, and she was through, and there was her bed, a soft dip in the warm ground under the thorn tree, and she lowered herself into it one heavy leg at a time, and the ground did not mind the weight at all.

"You did it," said the bird, hopping down.

"Rhinos can tiptoe," said Ruby.

"I told you."

Ruby stretched out her four flat feet, all of them, as flat as they would go, which after all that tiptoeing felt like the best thing in the world.

And then the heaviest thing in the whole valley went to sleep as quietly as a feather, and did not wake one single hippo, not even in her dreams.