Dax and the Notched Tracks

Dax found the first muddy print just as evening shadows stretched across the valley. It was wide as a soup bowl, with three round toes pointing toward the low ridge.

“Those look like the tracks I saw near the fern meadow,” he said. “If I follow them, I can get home before it’s time to rest.”

Dax was a young dinosaur with a tail that swished when he walked. He stepped beside the print, careful not to squash it. Then he found another, and another. The trail crossed a patch of damp ground, where the toes pointed straight ahead. On firmer earth, the marks grew shallow. Near a puddle, they turned sideways and made a funny zigzag.

Dax followed every change. He went past a tall stump, around a cluster of stones, and down into a muddy trackway. The prints there were deep and clear. Each one held a little pool of water.

At the edge of the trackway stood a flat gray rock. It had three-toed shapes pressed into it, almost like the muddy prints, but hard as the ridge itself.

“Those are fossils,” said Dax. His mother had shown him fossils before: old marks left in stone long, long ago. “The ground kept a picture of someone’s footprints.”

He traced the air above one stone print without touching it. Then he looked back at the fresh tracks in the mud. They made a line that curved toward the ridge.

A small beetle crawled across one print.

“Excuse me,” Dax whispered, and waited until it had crossed. Then he stepped around the mark and kept going.

The trail climbed gently. The prints leaned left, then pointed forward again. Dax’s legs were getting tired, but the fern meadow was just beyond the ridge. He could almost picture its broad green fronds and the soft nest of leaves where he liked to curl up.

At the top, the trackway split. One line of prints curved left around the ridge. Another curved right. Both had three toes. Both were deep in the mud.

Dax stopped between them. The meadow was somewhere ahead, but which way led back to it?

Dax studied the fork. The left prints were big. The right prints were big, too. Both trails bent around the ridge, and both seemed to head toward the valley beyond.

He walked a few steps along the left trail. Its prints stretched out, then turned sharply behind a clump of grass. Dax couldn’t see where they went after that.

He returned to the fork and tried the right trail. Those prints made a neat row, toe after toe, until a smooth stone hid the next one.

“Hmm,” said Dax. “You both look like the right way.”

A breeze ruffled the fern leaves far below. Dax wanted to hurry, but hurrying would not help him choose. He sat beside the muddy trackway and looked closely at the prints he had followed so far.

There was the mark beside the puddle. And there was the one near the stones. Dax leaned nearer.

On the outside toe of each print, a tiny notch made a little bite-shaped gap. It was the same on every mark from the first print onward.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said. “That notch is part of this trail!”

Dax turned to the fork. He checked the first print on the left. No notch. He checked the first print on the right. There it was—a small bite-shaped gap on the outside toe.

“That’s my trail,” he said, smiling. “The notched prints!”

He followed them around the ridge. They were close together at first, like steps taken carefully. Then they spread out across a muddy patch, pointing toward the other side. At the smooth stone, Dax searched patiently until he spotted the next notched mark beyond it.

“Found you!” he called.

The trail curved around a shoulder of the ridge, then slanted down. Dax watched each print’s toes. They pointed downhill now, toward the meadow. The marks grew farther apart, as if their maker had been trotting.

Dax trotted, too, but kept his eyes on the trail. At last the ridge fell behind him. A familiar flat rock came into view, then a tuft of tall grass. Beyond it, the fern meadow spread across the valley floor.

Dax had found the way on his own. He stepped off the trackway and headed for the ferns.

The meadow welcomed Dax with the rustle of fronds brushing one another. He passed the broad fern he liked best, the one with a curled tip that looked like a green fiddlehead. A few sleepy insects hummed among the leaves.

Dax glanced back at the ridge. From here, the two trails were hidden by the slope. But he could still picture them: one row curving left, one row curving right, their toes making the same three-pronged shape in the mud.

And he could picture the little notch.

It had been no bigger than a seed, yet it had helped him tell one trail from another. Dax was glad he had stopped to look instead of guessing. He had followed the prints, noticed a clue, and found his way home.

A small shuffling sound came from beside a fern. Dax peeked around it and saw a round beetle tucked beneath a leaf.

“Good evening,” he whispered. “I’m home now.”

The beetle stayed snug under its leaf. Dax chose a dry place among the ferns and turned around twice to make a nest in the soft ground. His tail curled along his side. He tucked his feet close, then stretched one leg and wiggled his toes.

The valley grew quiet. The muddy trackway rested beneath the ridge, and the old fossil footprints held their ancient shapes in stone. The fresh tracks waited in the earth, their little toe marks ready for morning sunlight and passing breezes.

Dax thought about the fork once more. At first, the trails had seemed exactly alike. Then he had noticed what was different. The thought made him feel steady and pleased.

“Good night, little notch,” he murmured, though the prints were far away.

A frond bent over him like a leafy roof. Dax listened to the quiet meadow and remembered the tiny mark that had shown him the turn. His eyes closed, and he settled into his fern bed, safe and snug until morning.