Twenty Two

The pack of wild Smackers roared through the trees, some twenty or more of them keeping up the chase, pursuing the egg at every turn as they flung themselves impossibly from branch to branch to branch. They were astounding athletes, every one, performing moves which no circus acrobat would ever attempt. Many of them had years of experience under their ivy belts, while all of them exercised and experimented constantly, and for moments just such as this. One a Gatherer picked a new ball, it was up to the Smackers to carry it forth. If there were rules in this part of the game, they were unwritten and unspoken at best, except for one and one only. Smackers knew best, and Smackers never told an outsider what really went on in these mad airborne scrums.
No one Smacker carried the ball very long. Instead, they passed it, threw it, chucked it heaved and tossed it up in the air, leaving it up to the others to snag it as best as they could. Astoundingly, even a small egg such as this one never got scratched, never got nicked, never got broken. Smackers pulled at each other, leaped at each other, clawed and dragged and tugged one another. Sometimes they fell. Sometimes they flew. Always they landed cleanly and safely. And all the while they made a huge noise, bellowing their way through the forest. One of their favorite routines was a call-and-response sing-song banter made of childhood poems passed down from the old days. Lucky witnesses below might hear a snatch or two of songs such as this one, where one Smacker went solo while a chorus responded in alternate lines:
Don't knock on the door
(I'm putting on my shoe)
Don't knock on the door
(There's nothing to do)
Don't knock on the door
(I'm putting on my sock)
Don't knock on the door
(Just please, don't knock!)
Or one of the many variations of this one:
You can call it San Francisco
(I will call it Sam's Clam Disco)
You can roll, in the grass
(I'll just sit here on my ass!)
And they'd laugh and they'd scream and they'd whoop and they'd holler, all the while covering great distances. The one and only hard and fast rule was this, the time limit. Smackers could only ferry the ball for exactly one segment. A segment, which was roughly an hour, was counted off by a designated Timer, a Smacker who followed the horde but didn't take part in the transfers. Periodically, the Timer called out the count so the others would know how much time remained. It was a great point of pride among Smackers to make a great distance during this interval, and another Smacker was assigned to mark ground. How this was done remained a great mystery, but the regular truth was that every new scrum set a new record. By now the ventures were legendary. They were said to cover hundreds of miles in the segment.
Of course, no one took any of this very seriously. The Smackers did what they did, and they loved it. No Smacker was known to have ever resigned from the game, and not every applicant could be accepted. Strict tests were installed to make sure the aspiring Smacker was up to the task. If not, well, they had to be Hunters or Gatherers and keep up their training for the next sign-up period, which was a suitably rare occurrence. The all-time great Smackers were heroes, but since they kept all their activities unto themselves, no one else knew even their names. It was practically a secret society.
In the end, the last Smacker holding the ball when the segment was up would just let it go. The Timer called out "TIME", and everyone stopped. No matter his or her placement or position, no matter the size or condition of the ball, no matter the time of day or night, the last Smacker holding would open their hand and let the thing drop. After that, it was up to the Strikers, all of whom were simultaneously mentally alerted to this event, with a flashing in their eyes and a ringing in their ears. This was the instant the Strikers lived for.
The Timer called "TIME" and the holder let go. He was perched at the top of a very tall tree, perhaps a hundred feet high in the air. The tiny crow egg started to fall. The tree, an old elm, was quite thick with leaves. It was certain the egg would get stuck somewhere up there, likely the egg would get broken, but down it kept going, falling and falling, evading each branch and each leaf, picking up speed as it hurtled towards the gravelly ground below. At that moment, a snake was peacefully snoring, curled up snugly around the neck of its master. Maybe it heard the egg whistling. Maybe it felt the breeze of its impending arrival. Whatever alerted her, Princess stuck out her tongue and held it there, steadily, and the little crow egg landed softly between the two forks.