Rin the Red Panda and the Whispering Bamboo Forest

High in the green hills, where the bamboo grew so tall it tickled the bottoms of clouds, there lived a small red panda named Rin.

Rin was, by her own official declaration, an Explorer.

She had a satchel (made from a leaf), a compass (made from a button), and a pebble she had named Mr. Pip, who came along on every adventure even though he never said anything interesting.

"Today, Mr. Pip," Rin announced, balancing on a swaying bamboo stalk, "we are going to investigate the Mystery of the Strange Sounds."

Mr. Pip, as usual, declined to comment.

The night before, Rin had heard something odd.

She'd been curled up in her tree hollow, tail wrapped around her nose the way she liked, when the wind picked up — and the whole forest started talking.

Shhhhhh… whisper whisper… wooooosh…

It wasn't scary, exactly. But it wasn't normal.

Rin had bounced down to her grandmother's hollow so fast she nearly forgot her tail.

"Grandmother!" she gasped. "The forest is HAUNTED."

Grandmother Suri, who was halfway through her seventh attempt at improving her berry-tea recipe, did not look up. "Mhm."

"Did you hear me? Haunted."

"I heard you, dear. Try this." She passed Rin a tiny cup.

Rin sniffed it. "It smells like feet."

"Hm. Needs more honey."

"Grandmother, the forest —"

"The forest speaks," said Grandmother Suri, "to those who listen carefully."

"What does that mean?"

Grandmother Suri took a sip of her own tea, made a face, and added more honey. "It means tomorrow, you should go find out."

Which is how, the next morning, Rin found herself swinging through the bamboo with Mr. Pip in her satchel and a head full of theories.

Theory One: Ghosts.

Theory Two: A very large, very polite cricket.

Theory Three: The trees were gossiping.

She was leaning toward Theory Three.

The morning forest was bright and busy. Sunlight fell through the bamboo in long stripes, like someone had painted the ground with golden ribbons. A beetle the color of a blueberry trundled across a leaf. Somewhere, a frog was singing — badly.

Rin stopped to ask a family of rabbits whether they'd noticed the whispers.

"Oh, all the time," said the smallest rabbit, who was upside down for no reason Rin could determine. "The bamboo sings whenever the wind comes."

"But why?" Rin asked.

The rabbit shrugged with all four feet, which is impressive when you're upside down. "Why do you sing?"

Rin thought about this. "I sing when I'm happy. Or when I forget I'm singing."

"There you go," said the rabbit, and rolled over to chew a different piece of grass.

Rin walked on, less satisfied than before.

By midday, she'd traveled deeper than she'd ever gone. The bamboo here grew thicker and taller — some stalks were wider than her whole body. The ground felt cool and a little damp. Her paws made soft fwip fwip sounds in the moss.

That's when she noticed the roots.

They were everywhere.

Twisting under the soil, weaving between rocks, bunching together at the edges of streams like they were holding hands. Rin had never paid attention to roots before. She'd thought of bamboo as a thing that went up. But here, beneath her feet, was a whole secret forest going down.

"Huh," she said to Mr. Pip.

The wind picked up.

Above her, the bamboo began to sway — and there it was again.

Shhhhh… whisper whisper… wooooosh…

Rin's ears swiveled. She tilted her head. She listened the way Grandmother Suri had taught her: not just with her ears, but with the rest of her too.

The sound wasn't coming from one place. It was coming from everywhere at once — every leaf brushing every other leaf, every stalk knocking gently against its neighbor, the wind sliding through hollow places in the canes.

The bamboo wasn't haunted.

The bamboo was singing.

Rin sat down on a root, delighted.

And then the sky, very rudely, turned black.

The wind, which had been polite all day, suddenly became impolite. It shoved the bamboo sideways. Leaves spun through the air. Rin's leaf-satchel flapped against her ribs.

A fat raindrop landed directly on her nose.

"Oh no," said Rin.

Then a lot more raindrops landed on a lot more of her.

"OH NO," said Rin, and scrambled under the thickest cluster of bamboo she could find.

The storm came down hard. Thunder rolled through the hills like a giant rearranging furniture. The bamboo above her bent — low, lower than she would have thought possible without snapping — and Rin held her breath, sure that any second the whole forest was going to come crashing down on her head.

It didn't.

The bamboo bent, and bent, and bent. And then, slowly, it bent back. The wind howled, and the bamboo answered by swaying with it, not against it. The roots beneath Rin's paws stayed firm. The stream beside her, which she would have expected to flood, just kept on streaming, calm as ever, held in its banks by all those tangled roots.

Rin watched, wide-eyed, with Mr. Pip clutched against her chest.

The bamboo was protecting the forest.

Bending so it wouldn't break. Holding the soil so the rain wouldn't wash it away. Keeping the stream where the stream was supposed to be.

And whispering, the whole time.

Not in fear. Just… working. Singing while it worked.

When the storm finally tired itself out and wandered off to bother some other valley, Rin crept out from her shelter. The whole forest sparkled. Every leaf had its own little raindrop. The air smelled like wet earth and green things and something sweet she couldn't name.

A bird shook itself off on a nearby branch and gave her a look as if to say, Well, that was something.

Rin nodded back.

She walked home slowly, listening.

The whispers didn't sound mysterious anymore. They sounded like a forest taking a breath. Like everything — the bamboo, the wind, the roots, the streams, the upside-down rabbits, the badly-singing frogs, even Mr. Pip — was part of one quiet, enormous something that had been there all along.

Grandmother Suri was waiting outside the hollow, sipping a fresh cup of tea.

"Well?" she said.

Rin climbed up beside her, soggy and tired and grinning.

"It's the bamboo," she said. "When the wind blows, the leaves and stalks all brush against each other, and that's what makes the whispers. And the roots hold everything together. And the bamboo bends in storms instead of breaking. And —" she took a breath — "and everything is sort of connected."

Grandmother Suri's eyes crinkled. "Hmm. Look at that."

"Did you already know all of this?"

"I had my suspicions."

"Grandmother!"

"What?" Grandmother Suri said innocently. "You wouldn't have believed me. You had to go and find out yourself." She offered her cup. "Try this one. I think I've finally got it."

Rin took a sip.

"…it still tastes like feet."

"Drat."

They sat together as the sun went down behind the hills, painting the bamboo orange and pink and gold. The wind moved gently through the leaves, and the forest whispered its evening song — soft and steady and sure.

Rin curled her tail around her paws and listened.

This time, she heard every word.