The Mountain Of Sweets

He landed on the bottom step, spun once, and slid into the umbrella stand.

The stand tipped over. Three umbrellas popped out and clattered across the floor.

Shizuka reached the bottom.

She hit the last step with a grand, springy bounce and rolled straight across the entryway.

The front door stood ahead.

“Shizuka!” Doraemon cried. “Turn!”

“I am turning!”

She was not turning.

She was heading directly toward the door, her napkin-cape flapping behind her and one cream crumb still stuck to her forehead.

Nobita scrambled upright. “Doraemon, use a gadget!”

“I’m looking!”

Doraemon plunged both paws into his gadget pocket. A small fan flew out, followed by a fishing rod, a pair of rubber boots, and a folded picnic blanket.

None of them looked useful.

Shizuka rolled closer.

The door filled her view.

She could see the brass handle shining in the afternoon light. She could see her own round reflection wobbling in it.

“What a tiny mirror,” she said.

“Move!” Nobita yelled.

Doraemon grabbed the fishing rod and flung the hook toward the door handle. It caught.

“Pull!” he cried.

Nobita seized the rod beside him.

Together they tugged.

The door opened.

The fishing line snapped.

Doraemon and Nobita fell backward, while Shizuka rolled through the doorway and onto the sidewalk.

Warm air rushed over her face. The street smelled of dust, green leaves, and someone’s cooking from a nearby house. Sunlight flashed across her eyes.

She stopped for half a second.

Then the sloping sidewalk carried her onward.

“Wonderful!” Shizuka cheered.

Behind her, Nobita scrambled outside. “It’s not wonderful! Come back!”

Doraemon hurried after him, dragging the fallen fishing rod. “Shizuka, stop rolling!”

Shizuka tried to stop.

She planted both hands against the pavement.

Her palms squeaked.

Her body continued forward.

She tried lifting one foot to steer. The foot waved uselessly in the air.

“I’m steering!” she announced.

“You’re going straight!” Nobita shouted.

“Straight is a kind of steering!”

The sidewalk dipped near the corner.

Shizuka picked up speed.

A row of flowerpots blurred past her. A bicycle bell rang somewhere nearby. A cat leaped out of her path and vanished beneath a fence. Shizuka rolled between two parked bicycles, brushing one with her shoulder.

The bicycle wobbled.

Its bell rang.

Shizuka rolled past it.

The bell rang again.

“Someone is applauding!” she said.

“That is a bicycle!” Doraemon puffed.

“It has excellent timing!”

Nobita ran as hard as he could, but his feet tangled beneath him. He stumbled, recovered, and continued with both arms flapping.

Doraemon reached into his pocket while running.

“Doraemon, don’t use anything dangerous!”

“I’m not trying to!”

He pulled out a small red gadget shaped like a hand.

“What is that?” Nobita asked.

“The Grabber Hand!”

Doraemon pressed the button. The gadget shot forward on a spring, opened its metal fingers, and grabbed the nearest object.

Unfortunately, the nearest object was Nobita’s shirt.

The hand yanked Nobita backward.

“Doraemon!”

“Sorry!”

The Grabber Hand reeled him toward Doraemon. Nobita flew past, spun around Doraemon’s head, and landed in a hedge with only his legs sticking out.

Shizuka reached the corner.

The street opened before her, bright and wide.

She saw a row of trees, a low wall, and beyond them the empty lot where Nobita, Doraemon, Gian, and Suneo had argued earlier.

The empty lot looked perfect.

It had plenty of space.

It had no walls.

It had no tables.

Most importantly, it had a long, smooth stretch of ground.

Shizuka’s eyes sparkled beneath the pink smoke.

“There!” she cried. “The grand bouncing field!”

“No!” Doraemon shouted.

Shizuka rolled across the corner.

A delivery box stood beside the sidewalk. She bumped it with her belly.

The box slid away.

She bounced off a stack of newspapers.

The newspapers burst into the air, fluttering around her like white birds.

One landed on her head.

She wore it over the napkin-cape.

“Now I have a crown!” she declared.

“You have yesterday’s newspaper!” Nobita yelled, finally climbing out of the hedge.

“A newspaper crown!”

Doraemon hurried after her, the Grabber Hand still attached to Nobita’s shirt.

“Take it off!” Nobita cried.

“I’m trying!”

Doraemon pressed the button again.

The hand released Nobita’s shirt and shot forward.

This time it grabbed a street sign.

Doraemon and Nobita were pulled toward it so quickly that they slid along the pavement on their stomachs.

Shizuka watched them pass.

“Doraemon is surfing!” she said.

“I am not surfing!” Doraemon shouted, his cheeks squashed against the ground.

The Grabber Hand let go.

Doraemon and Nobita slid into a pile of fallen leaves. Leaves stuck to Doraemon’s blue body and Nobita’s hair.

Shizuka rolled onward.

She had wanted to show them how funny bouncing could be. Now the entire neighborhood seemed to be bouncing with her. The sidewalk rose beneath her, dropped away, and rose again. Each bump lifted her slightly from the ground.

Boing.

Her feet flew up.

Boing.

The newspaper crown slipped sideways.

Boing.

The napkin-cape flapped over her face.

She could no longer see where she was going.

“That makes it more exciting!” she announced.

“It makes it impossible to steer!” Doraemon called.

“I wasn’t steering before!”

“That is the problem!”

Shizuka’s belly struck a small curb.

Boing!

She lifted into the air.

For one long, quiet second, she floated above the sidewalk with her arms spread wide. The newspaper crown rested crookedly on her head. The napkin-cape streamed behind her. Her pink dress shone in the sunlight.

Below, Nobita and Doraemon stared upward.

Shizuka looked down at them.

“I’m flying!” she cried.

“You’re falling!” Nobita replied.

She landed with a soft, enormous thump.

The impact sent the newspaper crown sailing into a tree.

The napkin-cape landed on Doraemon’s face.

Shizuka bounced once more and rolled toward the empty lot.

Doraemon pulled the napkin away. “We have to catch her before she reaches the pipes!”

“What pipes?” Nobita asked.

At the far side of the empty lot, several large concrete pipes lay in a row. They were gray, round, and wide enough for a child to crawl through.

Doraemon pointed at them. “Those pipes!”

Shizuka saw them.

Her eyes lit up.

“Round friends!” she said.

“No!” Nobita and Doraemon shouted together.

Shizuka rolled through the entrance to the empty lot.

The dirt was rougher than the sidewalk. Tiny stones clicked beneath her. Dry grass brushed her arms. Every bump made her belly wobble and her giggles jump out in little bursts.

The open space seemed to stretch around her.

She rolled past a baseball bat.

She rolled over a chalk line.

She rolled between two piles of dirt.

Behind her, Doraemon and Nobita charged into the lot.

“Shizuka, stop!” Nobita begged.

“I will stop when I reach the best bump!”

“You don’t know where the best bump is!”

“That is why I must investigate!”

Shizuka’s rolling slowed near the concrete pipes.

She could hear her friends catching up. Doraemon’s feet slapped the dirt. Nobita wheezed. Somewhere behind them, the loose newspaper crown rustled in the tree.

Shizuka pressed both hands against the ground.

At last, she stopped.

Her belly rested against the dirt with a soft puff.

Doraemon bent over, panting. “Stay there. Do not move.”

Shizuka looked at the concrete pipes.

One pipe had a small stone inside it.

Another had a dry leaf.

The third was empty and dark.

She leaned toward them.

Her belly shifted forward.

Doraemon’s eyes widened. “Shizuka, what are you doing?”

“Finding out which one is the best bouncing tunnel.”

“They are not bouncing tunnels!”

Shizuka pushed herself forward.

Her round body rolled toward the pipes.

Nobita grabbed one arm. Doraemon grabbed the other.

“Pull her back!” Nobita cried.

“We are pulling!”

The dirt crunched beneath Shizuka.

Her arms stretched between them.

For a moment, she stayed balanced at the edge of the pipes, her belly hovering inches above the ground.

Then a tiny stone slipped beneath her.

Shizuka rolled forward.

Her belly bumped the first concrete pipe.

Bonk.

She bounced backward.

“Excellent!” she cried.

She rolled forward again.

Bonk.

The pipe rocked.

Doraemon grabbed the side of it. “Stop testing the pipes!”

Shizuka tried a third time.

This time, the pipe rolled away.

Shizuka rolled after it.

The pipe bumped the second pipe.

The second pipe bumped the third.

The three concrete pipes began rolling across the dirt in a slow, noisy line.

Rrrrummmble.

Shizuka followed them like a giant pink ball chasing three gray marbles.

Nobita ran after her. “The pipes are moving!”

“I noticed!” Doraemon shouted.

The first pipe struck a mound of dirt and stopped.

The second pipe bumped into it.

The third pipe rolled sideways and headed directly toward Shizuka.

Shizuka tried to dodge.

She leaned left.

Her belly went right.

She leaned right.

Her belly went left.

The pipe reached her.

Bonk!

Shizuka bounced backward, spun once, and landed on her back.

Her arms and legs waved above her.

The concrete pipe rolled past her head and stopped beside the others.

For a moment, the empty lot was silent.

Then Shizuka burst into delighted laughter.

“I did it!”

Nobita skidded to a stop. “You fell over!”

“I bounced off a pipe!”

“You fell over after bouncing off a pipe!”

“That is the advanced version!”

Doraemon hurried to her side. “Are you hurt?”

Shizuka blinked up at him.

The sky stretched above the empty lot, huge and blue. A white cloud drifted slowly across it. From this angle, the cloud looked like a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Shizuka pointed at it.

“Doraemon,” she asked, “why is the sky so far away?”

Doraemon stared down at her. “Because the sky is always far away.”

“Then why does it look close?”

“Because you’re lying on your back.”

Shizuka considered this carefully.

The pink smoke shimmered around her eyes.

“So,” she said, “if I roll upward, can I reach it?”

Nobita’s face went pale. “Absolutely not!”

Gian and Suneo stood at the edge of the empty lot.

Neither had been there a moment earlier, or at least Shizuka had not noticed them. Gian held a baseball under one arm. Suneo’s mouth hung open as he stared at the scattered pipes, the dirt-covered Doraemon, the leaf-covered Nobita, and Shizuka sprawled beneath the sky.

Gian pointed at her.

“Is that Shizuka?”

Suneo adjusted his hair. “It looks like Shizuka.”

Shizuka waved from the ground.

“Hello!” she called. “I am a champion bouncing ball!”

Gian looked at Nobita. “What happened?”

Nobita opened his mouth.

Doraemon opened his mouth.

Neither found an answer that sounded less ridiculous than the truth.

Shizuka lifted her head as far as her round body allowed. “Do you know where the sky ends?”

Suneo took one careful step backward.

Gian looked up.

The white cloud drifted over the empty lot.

“No,” Gian said.

Shizuka nodded, satisfied. “Then we must investigate.”

Doraemon grabbed her shoulder. “No investigating!”

Shizuka tried to sit up.

Her belly pressed into the dirt.

She rocked once.

The concrete pipes creaked beside her.

Gian and Suneo both leaned forward.

Nobita grabbed Doraemon’s arm. “Hold her!”

Doraemon dug his feet into the ground. “I am holding!”

Shizuka rocked a second time.

Her pink dress stretched.

Her eyes shone.

The nearest pipe began to roll again.

End of chapter three. 2 more chapters in the full book.