Rain had come to the Karoo at last, and the whole rock shelf smelled like a holiday.
This was the dry west of South Africa, a land of succulent plants and split sandstone, and in one long crack in the rock lived a whole family of armadillo girdled lizards. Grandmothers. Cousins. Babies born live and blinking, one or two at a time, the way this lizard's babies always arrive.
Most lizards live alone. Not these. These stacked together in their crack like spoons in a drawer.
The youngest of them woke to a sound like sizzling. Out on the flats, the termites were rising, called up by the rain. Termites are this family's favorite food, and a termite day is a feast day.
"Stay near stone," said the oldest lizard, who said it every time.
The young one meant to. She truly did. But the termites led her on, one delicious mouthful, then one more, then one more after that, until the crack in the rock was a thin dark line far behind her.
That was when the light changed.
A shadow slid over the sand. Wide wings. Circling.
A hunting bird had seen her, small and spiky and out in the open, with no stone in reach.
She had one trick, and it was the family's oldest treasure. Every lizard in the crack had learned it, the way you learn a song.
Tail. Mouth. Ring.
She whipped her tail around, gripped it in her jaws, and rolled herself into a circle. Her soft belly vanished inside the ring. What faced the sky now was armor, row upon row of thick square scales with spines like thorns.
She had become a crown of spikes with nothing to grab.
Nothing moved.
Then something did. The bird dropped, landed, and inspected her. It nudged the strange prickly ring, found points wherever it touched, and considered its afternoon carefully.
The wings opened. The shadow left.
Still she held on. She counted the way the old ones had taught her. Long enough. Then longer.
At last she unrolled, blinked at the bright empty sky, and ran, flat and quick, stone to stone to stone, until the great crack swallowed her home.
Inside, the family pressed warm around her, and she told them everything twice.
"The trick worked," she said.
"The trick always works," said the oldest lizard, "when you hold on."
That night the rain returned, drumming softly on the sandstone roof, and the youngest lizard fell asleep in a crack full of everyone she loved.
Her armor had saved her. But the armor was only half of it.
Every good trick is a gift from someone who loved you first. Hold on tight, and you carry your whole family with you, even out on the open sand.