Rexik and the Bully Pachycephalosaurus

That morning Quetza flew down to the river before the sun was up. She hadn’t even folded her enormous wings yet, but she was already talking:

“A newcomer! There’s a newcomer in the valley! He came from beyond the Grey Hills, his head is round and hard as a rock, and he has already shoved Pinecone and Nutkin! Both of them! In one go!”

“Which Pinecone and Nutkin?” asked Rexik. He was picking pebbles out of the shallows and didn’t look up right away.

“The little ankylosaur twins, who else?” Quetza clacked her beak. “And he almost shoved me too, when I landed next to him. Me! I’m not a dinosaur, I’m a flying reptile! Nobody ever shoves a flying reptile!”

Trika had been grumpily butting an old log on the bank with her little horns for a whole minute. Now she looked up. She and Rexik had been trying to roll that log across the stream for three days, to make a bridge, and for three days the log had stayed exactly where it was.

“Let’s go!” said Trika. “Let’s see who’s so hard-headed.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t?” asked Rexik.

But Trika was already running, her yellow frill bouncing behind her. Rexik sighed and trotted after her.

Next to the ferns, where the softest young leaves grew, the newcomer really was standing. He was a little taller than Trika and walked on two legs, like Rexik. And his head rose in a tall, pale dome, with little bony knobs all round the edge. Pinecone and Nutkin, two little ankylosaurs in their tiny armor, were sitting in a puddle, blinking.

“This is my clearing,” said the newcomer. His voice was low, as if he were talking from under a rock. “Who wants some?”

Nobody did. The little ones backed away into the bushes.

Rexik noticed something strange. The newcomer wasn’t eating the ferns he was supposedly fighting over. He wasn’t even looking at them. He stood there looking after the little ones, for a long time, as if he were waiting for them to come back.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Trika, and she lowered her head and pointed her horns. “I’ll show him ‘my clearing’.”

“Trika, wait. He’s bigger…”

“I do first and think later!” And off she charged. Thump-thump-thump!

The newcomer didn’t even move to meet her. He just stepped aside. Trika shot past, slipped on the wet clay and — splosh! — sat down in the very puddle the twins had just climbed out of. Muddy water splashed all the way up to her frill.

For a moment everyone froze. The newcomer jerked toward Trika, as if he wanted to give her a hand. Then he looked at Rexik, at the bushes where the little ones were hiding — and turned away.

“You fell by yourself,” he muttered, and walked off toward the old forest.

Trika climbed out of the puddle, shook herself and snorted angrily.

“Did you see that? Did you see?! Next time I’ll…”

“I saw,” Rexik said quietly. “He wanted to help you.”

“Who? Him? Mister Maybe-Not, the sun has baked your head.”

During the day Quetza flew over the valley twice more, and each time she dropped a fresh piece of news from the sky, like a pinecone. That the newcomer was called Bully. (Actually, it was the twins who called him that, while they were drying off on a rock.) That he had come with only his mom, and his mom was grazing far away in the hills. That he had shoved a rotten log and it had rolled all the way down to the stream.

“And I found out what he is!” Quetza called from the sky. “A pachycephalosaurus! It means ‘thick-headed lizard’. The bone on top of his head is so thick you can knock on it like a rock. And he shoves with his head! That’s all he can do!”

“It isn’t,” Rexik said under his breath. But Quetza had already flown on.

After lunch, Rexik and Trika walked along the edge of the old forest to find Trika’s favorite cycad leaves. All the way, Trika thought up what she would say to Bully next time, and every time it came out scarier. And Rexik looked at the trees. On three trunks, just at head height, the bark was knocked off in round patches. Fresh, pale ones. And a little further on lay a log that somebody had shoved out of place: on the ground you could still see the dent where it had lain before.

“Trika, look…”

“Later,” Trika waved him off. “I’ve just thought of what I’ll say to him about the puddle.”

Towards evening, when the shadows of the ferns grew long, Rexik heard a sound. Knock. Silence. Knock. Silence. Knock-knock.

The sound was coming from the old forest.

“Trika,” he called. “Can you hear that?”

“It’s a branch knocking,” Trika said, flicking her tail. Then she listened. “Although… that’s a bit loud for a branch.”

They crept between the trunks. Rexik stepped carefully, because he noticed every dry twig underfoot. And Trika stepped quietly, because Rexik shushed her every time.

In a small clearing in the middle of the forest stood Bully. All alone. In front of him towered a thick old trunk, and its bark was scraped off in round patches, as if someone had been kneading it with a forehead for a long, stubborn time. Bully stepped back three steps, lowered his head — knock! — and stepped back again.

“Come on,” he told the trunk. “Now it’s your turn. Go on, shove me.”

The trunk said nothing. Bully stood for a while, then went up to a fallen log and shoved it — thud! The log rocked and went still. He sat down beside it and laid his hard head on the bark.

“At home somebody would have shoved me by now,” he said very quietly.

Trika glanced at Rexik. For the first time all day she didn’t know what to say.

And Rexik knew what had to be done. And that was exactly why he didn’t want to do it at all. Bully was still bigger, and his head was like a rock, and the twins were probably still trembling in the bushes.

“Maybe we shouldn’t?” thought Rexik. And then he remembered how the newcomer had looked after the little ones. As if he were waiting.

He stepped out from behind the fern.

Bully jumped up so fast he nearly fell over, and pointed his head at him.

“What do you want? Did you come to laugh?”

“No,” said Rexik. His voice was shaking, but not much. “We heard someone knocking here. I thought maybe you needed something.”

“I don’t need anything,” Bully muttered. But he lowered his head.

Under the trunk lay a little piece of bark, knocked off by a blow. Rexik picked it up. On the bark was a round dent, smooth and even, as if someone had pressed a warm pebble into it.

“Did you do this? With your head?”

“Well, yes.” Bully looked embarrassed, for some reason. “Where we come from, I had brothers, cousins, a whole gang. We spent all day shoving: who could push who out of place. It’s a game. If you want someone to play with you, you walk up and shove them. Gently. Well… not always gently.”

Trika’s mouth fell open.

“So this morning… you weren’t taking the clearing? You were asking Pinecone and Nutkin to play?!”

“And they ran away,” said Bully. “Everyone runs away here. And you ran at me to fight. And I wasn’t fighting.”

“Where we come from,” Trika said slowly, “when someone shoves you, it means ‘go away’.”

Bully looked at her, at Rexik, at his scraped-up trunk. And asked in a completely different voice, a thin one:

“And how do you say ‘play with me’ here, then?”

Rexik and Trika looked at each other.

“Well…” Rexik scratched his nose. “You just say it. ‘Play with me.’”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Bully was quiet, as if tasting the words, like unfamiliar leaves.

“My name is Flint,” he said at last. “Not Bully.”

“I’m Trika. And this is Mister Maybe-Not.”

“Rexik,” Rexik corrected her.

“Mister Maybe-Not,” Trika repeated, pleased. “Listen, Flint. We’ve got a log we can’t move for three days now. Want to…?”

Flint had already opened his mouth to bark “yes” and, probably, shove someone for joy. But he closed it. And said it differently, carefully, like something learned by heart:

“Play… with me.”

The log lay by the stream, where Trika had been butting it with her horns since morning. Rexik and Trika pushed it with their tails and paws and shoulders, and it only sighed and stayed where it was.

Flint walked around the log, took aim, and stepped back three steps.

Knock! — the log moved.

Knock! — a little more.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Trika couldn’t help asking.

“No,” said Flint, surprised. “The bone up there is thick. Mom says it’s the thickest in our gang.” And after thinking a little, he added: “Only, you still have to do your own thinking afterwards.”

Trika squinted suspiciously, but said nothing.

“And now, all together!” Trika commanded.

Rexik pushed with his shoulder, Trika with her frill, Flint with his head. The log turned, slid over the wet grass — and thud! — lay across the stream, from bank to bank. The water under it began to gurgle differently, as if it were surprised.

“We did it!” Trika shouted, and jumped.

Flint jumped too — and for joy, he shoved Trika in the side with his head. Not hard. But Trika stumbled and almost splashed into the stream for the second time that day.

“Hey!”

Flint froze. He looked at Trika as if he’d caught himself red-handed.

“I…” he gulped. “I wanted to say: ‘How good that it worked.’ And also: ‘Let’s do something else.’”

Trika snorted a little. And then she laughed.

“Then say it with your mouth,” she advised. “Save your head for logs.”

Just then Pinecone and Nutkin peeked out from behind the bushes. They saw the bridge — and their eyes lit up. Then they saw Flint — and their eyes went out.

“Come here!” Flint called, and rushed toward them. “There’s a bridge! I…”

The twins squeaked and vanished into the bushes so fast that all that was left of them was two swaying twigs.

Flint stopped halfway. He stood there. Then he went back to the log and sat down on it.

“I didn’t shove,” he said. “I didn’t even shove.”

“They still remember the morning,” said Rexik, and sat down beside him. “And the morning was today. That’s very recent.”

“And will they remember tomorrow?”

Rexik thought. He didn’t want to tell a lie.

“Probably tomorrow too.”

Quetza flew over them, saw Flint sitting on the log between Rexik and Trika, and was so surprised that she flew an extra circle in the air. Then she flew off to deliver the new news. But Pinecone and Nutkin never stepped onto the bridge that evening.

Flint went off to the hills to his mom when the sky turned pink. As he said goodbye, he started toward Trika, as if to butt her in the frill — and stopped.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. The way they say it in the valley.

That evening Rexik turned the piece of bark over in his paws for a long time. The round dent was smooth and slightly warm. He put the bark on his little shelf, next to the striped pebble, and climbed into his nest.

Dad leaned over him, huge, blocking out the stars.

“When I was your size,” he began, “a thick-headed fellow shoved me, too. He shoved me so hard I flew over the river, over a hill and landed right on Granny Anki. And she didn’t even notice!”

“And then?” asked Rexik. “Did you become friends?”

Dad scratched the bushy ridge above his eye.

“We did. Only not that same day. And not the next.”

And he sang a lullaby so out of tune that even the crickets in the ferns went quiet for a moment.

Rexik closed his eyes. Tomorrow Pinecone and Nutkin would probably run away again. And the day after, maybe, too. And the piece of bark with the round dent lay on the shelf and was in no hurry at all.