The Magical Land of Birthdays

tilted her head and squinted as she stared at the sprinkles. They were still moving, yes—but not randomly. It was almost as if they were moving with purpose.
Zbp. Zbp. Zbp.
With every pulse, the sprinkles moved closer together. Closer. Closer.
Amirah didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she suddenly gasped.
The sprinkles had formed the letter F, as clear as day.
That wasn’t all. The ground was still trembling.
And the sprinkles were still moving.
“Look!” Amirah cried. “A letter! No—it’s a-a-a word!”
In a flash, Mei and Elvis knelt on the ground beside her. The three friends sat in expectant silence, watching as the sprinkles shifted, until at last Amirah could see what they were trying to say.
“Find!”

The instant Amirah said the word, the sprinkles broke apart, scattering to the edge of the clearing. Oh no! she thought. What had happened? Had she broken the spell?
“I don’t understand,” Elvis cried. “Find what?”
“Shhh!” Mei hushed him.
The sprinkles were already moving again.
They inched across the clearing, trembling and twitching, and began to form a new set of letters.
“C,” Amirah whispered.
“A,” Mei said.
“R,” Elvis said.
“A,” Amirah said. “Cara!”
Once again, the sprinkles split apart.
“Find Cara,” Amirah said. “Who’s Cara? Is that the girl’s name?”
“Look,” Mei cried. “The sprinkles are moving again!”
“T-h-e,” Elvis said. “Find Cara the—”
“The what?” Mei asked. “That makes no sense. What does that even mean?”
“I have a feeling,” Amirah said as the sprinkles danced into a new formation, “that we’re about to find out.”
U-N-I-C-O-R-N.
“Find Cara the Unicorn!” Amirah exclaimed.
A sudden gust of air blew through the clearing, lifting the sprinkles up into a cloud of sparkles. They swirled away until even the last sparks had faded from view.
“Find Cara the Unicorn,” Amirah said again. She had hoped that the sprinkles would explain everything, but they’d left her feeling only more confused.
“Does that mean that there are unicorns here?” Mei asked, her eyes wide.
“I guess so,” Amirah said slowly. “I mean, when you think about it, a unicorn wouldn’t be the most unusual thing we’ve seen today. Right?”
Elvis jumped to his feet. “Why are we just sitting around?” he asked. “The sprinkles said we’ve got to find Cara the Unicorn. So let’s go!”
“We need a plan,” Mei pointed out. “We can’t just run all over the place, like we’re on a wild goose chase.”
“Or a wild unicorn chase,” Amirah said. To be honest, she thought that both her friends were right. But it was impossible to make a plan when they knew so little about this strange and magical place. Should they venture into the shadowy forest? Or continue along the path that had led them to Mei?
“Let’s go back to the candy-button path,” Amirah finally suggested. “It has to lead somewhere. Maybe if we explore a little, we’ll find out more about where we are.”
“And maybe we’ll even find Cara the Unicorn,” Elvis said.
“Or the girl!” Mei added.
The friends hurried out of the strawberry field and back to the path. They began to run together, laughing and shrieking in the warm sunlight as the path twisted and turned. As they ran, Amirah noticed that the candy buttons changed. They became larger and rougher, more uneven. The friends had no choice but to slow down as they crossed the rough terrain.
“So much for the smooth path,” Elvis said. “I’m kind of missing those candy buttons.”
“Me too,” said Amirah. “This feels like hiking in the mountains. You have to watch every step.”
Mei’s gymnastics training made it easy for her to leap nimbly along the trail. “I think the candy buttons have turned into rock candy,” she said.
“It really is a rocky road,” Amirah joked. The craggy candies were colorful but almost clear; they glinted in the sunlight as if they were flecked with mica.
Ping!
“Hey! Check it out!” Elvis yelled. The girls turned to watch him hop onto a rock.
Ping!
As Elvis stepped on it, the rock candy lit up and played a musical note.
“Wow!” Amirah exclaimed. She and Mei jumped onto other pieces of rock candy, making the clear, crystal notes ring through the air like a bell. Soon the air was filled with a jumble of musical notes, ringing like wind chimes.
Suddenly, Elvis stopped. He held up his hand. “Did you hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” Amirah asked. Of course they’d all heard the jumble of musical notes chiming through the air.
“It sounded like a song,” Elvis said.
Mei and Amirah exchanged a glance. Amirah could tell that Mei hadn’t heard a song either.
But Elvis was a musician and he loved music more than anything. Maybe he’d heard something the other B-Buds had missed.
“Did . . .” Mei began. Her voice trailed off when she noticed the intense look of concentration on Elvis’s face.
“Dah-dah-dah-dah,” he hummed under his breath.
Amirah tilted her head and listened carefully. The tune was familiar. She felt certain that she’d heard it before.
“Dah-dah-dah-dah,” Elvis hummed again. Then, carefully he leaped from a blue rock candy, to a green one, to a pink, to a purple—
Incredibly, the candies chimed out the exact same notes that Elvis had hummed!
“Wow!” Mei exclaimed.
“How did you do that?” Amirah asked.
Elvis grinned and shrugged. “My music teacher says I have a good ear,” he replied.
“Can you do it again?” Mei said.
“I think so,” he replied. “Actually, I’m going to try to play a whole song.”
The girls watched as Elvis jumped from stone to stone. The notes filled the air in a recognizable pattern, a tune that Amirah could almost name. Even cooler, though, was that Elvis’s jumps along the rock-candy trail looked like a dance.
Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah
Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah
Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah
Suddenly, Amirah recognized the song—just in time to sing the last line.
“Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu!” she sang out.
“Amazing!” Mei cried as she burst into applause. Amirah started clapping too, and Elvis couldn’t hide his pleased smile.
“Show me how,” Amirah said.
“Sure,” Elvis replied. “Each color of rock candy represents a different note. So, just like a piano, or a xylophone, if you touch them in a particular order . . .”
“It will play a song,” Mei finished for him.
“Exactly. It’s really pretty simple,” Elvis said. “The right