The sun had not yet reached its noontime perch and Philbert walked in the leaning shadow of the MidHillock down a dusty footpath worn through the lush grasses of a thin winding vale.

There were many such vales in the Hillocks, natural footpaths that wended and slunk through the shifting shadows of the innumerable hills that sprang from the ground. For if the Hillocks was said to resemble a sea of lumpy pea soup, the proper emphasis must be put on the words “sea” and “lumpy.” From one end of the Hillocks to the other, the rolling hills were as unceasing as waves, some low and shallow and others high and steep and threatening to break, crested with tufts of wild grasses that grew hardy and long and fluttered in the evening winds like streamers. Scattered throughout, like outsized sentinels, great trees with unbreakable trunks like iron flowered from lonely hilltops, spreading invincible roots that would at times erupt from the ground and arch through the neighboring hollows like groping limbs heavy with shaggy rooten webs.

Vast and fertile, the unruly topography of the Hillocks had long stymied any agricultural efforts but was a right and proper home for the plumpins. For while the land made clear its keen disinterest in any sort of ordered cultivation, it teemed with life all the same—and particularly the kind of life that plumpins like to eat. Currants and gooseberries grew rampant and wild in the hollows and bearberry bushes poured forth rich and deep underneath the long shadows of the sentinel trees. Many a vale was filled with sweet-smelling thickets of strawberry patches and blackberry briars, the fruit swollen and full under the hot yellow sun. And there existed a rather strange abundance of squirrels, thriving in the treetops where the plumpins could not reach them, and doing quite the opposite when found on the ground within arm’s reach.

The Great Northern Bramble, an impenetrable mire of knotted vines and creepers, ever-growing and covered in cruel thorns like hooked daggers, formed an unpassable northern border to the Hillocks that rose high into the sky and that few plumpins dared to intrude upon, for the plants themselves were poisonous and perilous and the deepest shadows home to countless nests of giant spiders. The Bramble felt no such compunction, however, and its seeking tendrils wound their way into much of the Hillocks, spiraling through the vales and looping over the hills like great thorny dragon tails that, if followed, would certainly lead to something more fearsome than spiders.

Many generations past, the plumpins nesting in the north had taken it upon themselves to curtail the encroaching bramble, beating back the vines with fire and stave and blade in a fierce confrontation that lasted many days and nights and left more than a few plumpins mortally wounded in its wake. When the battle was won, they built a high wooden wall along the northern border to keep the unwanted vegetation at bay, with sconces that held blazing torches to warn back any wayward ivy. But that was long ago and today all that remained of the wall were sparse dilapidated segments and a long line of abandoned posts that loomed in the dark like lonely sentries. In the hatching season, however, hardy plumpins still stood guard at night, watching and being watched in turn by shadows with eight eyes perched high in the Bramble.

Philbert, however, was headed south, away from the Bramble and towards the farm of his best friend in all the Hillocks, Gusly Cuttel. Philbert had known Gusly since the two of them were sprats, running naked through the tall grasses and getting up to the sort of mischief that only two young plumpins could. Back when the fur that striped down their backs was still fine and soft and a bright, innocent white. But those days were long past and now Philbert’s old friend spent his days fully clothed (a rare thing for a plumpin) and tending to the largest and finest pig farm around. This had made Gusly an important plumpin in the Hillocks, as plumpins prized few things as highly as a good and handsome pig, and Gusly had turned into what was called a “houser,” meaning, quite simply, that he had decided to build himself a house. “It’s the only way I can get any privacy from me pigs,” he would cry. But visitors all soon knew that Gusly’s pigs enjoyed free rein both in and out of the house—and often more privileges than his guests.

At midday, Philbert felt the heat of the high sun on his skin and his eyelids drooped and his flappy feet began to drag in the reddish dirt. Unbidden, his eyes looked up, drawn to the hilltops on either side, where the grass grew thick and supple and a deep bluish green. He knew it would be cool on his dusty feet and he wanted nothing more than to sink into its many-fingered embrace and take a nice long nap. And so he did.

Clambering up the steep ridge, his broad feet and nimble hands making quick work of the uneven climb, he reached the peak of the rise in a matter of moments and looked out over the land to see plumpins all across the Hillocks giving in to similar inclinations. It was a calling that all plumpins felt as the fire in the sky burned its hottest, a yearning to venture out of doors and find a high place to sprawl on one’s back and snooze. So Philbert sought out a spot soft and cool, trod in a circle three times to tamp the grass into a spongy mat, and then lay there with his belly warming in the sun and was soon fast asleep.