Hello, it's me, Lily, a frog who lives in a pond and loves to tell stories.

This one's a Halloween story. And I'm not sure if it's a true story

or a make-believe one. Maybe you can tell me whether you think it's true or not. I'll tell you

where I heard it from. I took a trip down south this fall, and on my way back home, I stopped to admire the leaves changing color in a beautiful Maple Valley in Quebec.

And that's where I met a little forest gnome.

He is a busy gnome.

I was helping out forest creatures in distress.

He wears a backpack full of forest foods and medicines and a pointy green gnome hat and carries a birch-not bow. And everywhere

he goes, he's followed by a tribe of dragonflies. He told me this story, and he told me a bear told him,

and that a goose told the bear, and a boy told the goose. Who told the boy? We don't know.

Once upon a time, on the east coast, or maybe it was the West Coast, there was a happy little

village, busy preparing for winter. They were tapping maple trees for syrup and grinding

wheat for pancakes, picking mushrooms and blueberries to dry and store, and chopping firewood for their stoves.

When the village children ran shouting from the beach about an enormous ship heading straight to their shores.

The ship was taller than the trees, and it had at least a hundred sails, and it looked like it might be

on fire. The villagers put down their pails of maple syrup and their axes, and they ran to the

shore with their children. The boat was moving fast, and they screamed thinking it would crash onto the shore, but all of the sun, the enormous ship stopped.

The sails all furled and lowered, and the ship drifted calmly into the harbor and was still.

The villagers couldn't believe their eyes. They had never

seen such a fine, magnificent ship. It wasn't on fire. It was just so burnished that it looked

almost as if it were made of gold, gleaming in the sunshine. The villagers waited for the

captain and crew to disembark from the ship, but they waited a long, long time, and nobody

...