The Island of Almosts
Book 1 of the Elsebeneath series
by Juno Threadborne
Chapter One: The Tangle
Sam stood in the driveway, holding his yo-yo like it was mocking him.
It wasn’t a bad yo-yo. It was blue and shiny and balanced just right—just like the videos said it should be. Sam had measured, cut, and tied the string exactly the way he was supposed to. He’d practiced. A lot. But the stupid thing wouldn’t listen.
He tried the trick again. “Around the World,” just like Jamie had done at school. Sam whipped the yo-yo hard, but it twisted in midair, slammed into the ground, and bounced straight back into his leg.
“Ow!” He winced and looked up.
Across the street, Jamie was finishing a combo trick Sam didn’t even know the name of. Something with a loop, a flip, and a spin at the end. Jamie, of course, nailed it. Sam didn’t clap. He just sat down on the curb, yo-yo in his lap, arms crossed in defeat.
“I’ll never be good at this,” he mumbled.
The wind shifted a little. Just barely. Like it wasn’t sure what to say.
He felt himself go quiet.
The curb softened first. Then the sound of Jamie thinned, the way voices do underwater.
And then —
Something cool brushed his ankles. Grass. Soft, springy, and just a little damp. The sky above him was lavender, and the clouds looked like upside-down question marks. In the distance, a frog was singing scales.
And the yo-yo was still in his hand.
The grass rustled behind him.
“Ah. A visitor. Let me guess—you were almost ready to give up?”
Sam turned.
And standing there was a turtle wearing glasses, a hat made of moss, and the warmest smile Sam had ever seen on a beak.
The turtle stepped closer, grass folding under his feet. He wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, he moved like the world would wait if he needed it to.
His shell was wide, with tiny mushrooms growing near the bottom edge. His glasses had one cracked lens. And his eyes… his eyes looked like he’d watched a million suns rise and memorized every single one.
He held out a stubby hand.
“Welcome to the Island of Almosts. I’m Practicio. Resident listener, patient walker, and—if you’d like the company—your guide.”
Sam blinked.
”Where… am I?”
Practicio smiled. “A place made of almost there.”
Sam looked down at his yo-yo, then back up. “Is this a dream?”
“Maybe.” The turtle shrugged. “But it’s also real. Most of the good places are.”
He turned and began a slow amble down a gently curving path made of scattered notebook pages and half-finished to-do lists.
“Come with me. I want to show you something. Three somethings, actually. Stories. And all of them? Almosts.”
Sam hesitated.
Then—he stood up. Yo-yo still tangled, heart still sore, but maybe… just maybe… a little curious.
And he followed.
Chapter Two: The Bird Who Never Sang
Practicio led Sam along the winding path. The sky above bloomed into soft peach blush.
Soon they reached a clearing filled with music—but not full songs. Just… beginnings. A few notes here. A riff there. A melody that almost made sense before drifting off into nothing.
Sitting in the middle of it all was a tiny bird with feathers like scattered piano keys—white and black, and trimmed with a shimmering blue. She wore a scarf made of sheet music. And around her were dozens—hundreds—of little scraps of paper with lyrics, verses, and lines.
She noticed them and quickly stuffed one of the pages under a wing.
“Oh! Visitors? Um. Sorry. I’m still… working on something.”
Practicio gave a small bow. “Sam, this is Thimble. The best almost-singer I’ve ever met.”
Thimble looked embarrassed. “That’s not really a title, is it?”
“It is here,” the turtle said gently. “Why don’t you show Sam one of your songs?”
The bird shuffled. “They’re not done.”
“They don’t have to be.”
After a pause, Thimble pulled out a slip of paper and hummed a few bars. It was light and lovely, and then… it stopped.
Sam listened, eyebrows raised. “That’s really good.”
Thimble smiled shyly. “It always starts nice. But then I mess it up. I think of a better idea halfway through. Or I hear someone else’s song and mine feels… smaller. So I stop. And I start over. Again. And again. And again.”
Practicio gave her a kind look. “How many songs have you almost written?”
Thimble looked down. “…a hundred and forty-seven.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “You haven’t finished one?”
The little bird sighed. “Because what if it’s not perfect?”
Sam didn’t answer.
He looked at his yo-yo. Then at his hands. Then at Thimble.
She noticed. “You’re stuck too, huh?”
He nodded.
Thimble hesitated, then pulled a scrap of paper from the ground—one with a single, delicate line of lyrics—and tucked it into Sam’s pocket.
“Here. It’s not finished. But it’s still mine. And maybe… that’s enough for now.”
Practicio gave a soft smile.
Sam folded and tucked the page in his pocket.
The wind carried a few quiet notes behind them as they walked away—half a melody, unfinished… but still beautiful.
Chapter Three: The Snail Who Raced a Cheetah
The next part of the island felt slower. The air was thick with the scent of rain and earth, and the grass here grew in soft spirals that curled inward like sleepy question marks.
Practicio led Sam to a shallow hill with a tiny track carved into the mud—like someone had been running laps very, very slowly.
Sam squinted. “Is that… a snail?”
A voice groaned from under a little leaf umbrella.
“Was. Used to be. Sort of.”
The snail was wearing a headband—damp, droopy, and too big—and had tiny racing stripes painted (badly) down his shell. Around him were posters that read things like “YOU’VE GOT THIS!” and “SHELL ON, HEAD HIGH!”
Practicio waved.
The snail sighed and waved an eye stalk in return. “Name’s Zoomie. I was going to be the fastest snail in the entire world. I trained for weeks. Left slime trails everywhere. Even built this track.”
Practicio nodded. “He was doing well. Making progress. Consistent. Dedicated.”
Zoomie gave a shy little shrug. “Then one day, I looked up—and saw a cheetah.”
Sam tilted his head. “An actual cheetah?”
Zoomie nodded. “It was amazing. Legs like wind. Moved like a thought. Ran from one side of the island to the other in the time it takes me to blink.”
He lowered his voice.
“So I stopped. What was the point? I’d never be that fast.”
Practicio looked at him gently.
“Comparison can make you forget how far you’ve come. Zoomie was never supposed to race cheetahs. He was supposed to race yesterday’s Zoomie.”
Sam reached down and peeled a poster up from the mud. It read: YOU’RE STILL MOVING, AND THAT COUNTS.
He shook his head. “I keep thinking I’m supposed to be as good as Jamie.”
Practicio placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Jamie’s Jamie. You’re you.”
Zoomie was quiet for a long moment, looking at the little track he’d carved into the mud. The headband had slipped down over one eye. He didn’t fix it.
“Y’know,” he said slowly, “I haven’t run a lap in a while.”
He looked at the track. Then at Sam. Then at the poster in Sam’s hand.
“Keep it. I might not need it as much.”
He inched forward — just a little — and left a fresh, slow trail of slime behind him, glistening in the lavender light.
Chapter Four: The Painter Who Erased the World
The path curved gently into a forest of giant mushrooms and sea-glass trees. Light filtered through the leaves in ripples, like they were underwater.
Ahead was a clearing filled with canvases. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All propped up or tossed aside—some half-painted, others smudged over in grey.
And in the center, hunched over one of them, sat an octopus wearing a beret. Each of her arms held a different brush—and each brush was dipped in a different color.
She didn’t notice Sam and Practicio right away. She was busy painting, erasing, painting again—faster and faster until the canvas turned into a muddled blur of brushstrokes.
Practicio cleared his throat softly.
The octopus startled and whipped around.
”Oh! Visitors! Just a moment, I’m—well, actually, I’m restarting. Again.”
“Sam,” said Practicio, “this is Inky. She’s one of the most talented painters I’ve ever met.”
Inky waved a brush. “I was. Maybe. Before I started thinking about being good.”
Sam stepped closer. “What do you mean?”
Inky gestured to the wreckage of canvases around her. “I used to love painting. I’d make jellyfish galaxies and upside-down sunsets. But one day, I looked at my work and thought, ‘Wait… what if someone else sees this and thinks it’s bad?’”
She frowned. “So I erased a little. Then a little more. Then I started fixing lines that didn’t need fixing. And then I erased the fixes.”
She picked up a brush with a sigh.
“Now I paint and repaint until the colors forget what they were trying to be.”
Practicio gently touched one of the canvases. It was beautiful—soft blues and oranges, like a dream about the ocean—but the center was completely smudged away.
Sam stared at it for a moment.
Inky sighed. “You know what I never ruined? The first line. Before I started worrying.” She held out her palette. “Here. Try. Just one.”
Sam hesitated, dipped the brush in a vibrant orange, and drew one wobbly stroke.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it felt real.
“Now sign it.”
Sam looked up. “What?”
“It’s one thing done. Let it be.”
Sam took a smaller brush from the easel, carefully signed his name, and blew on it lightly.
Inky picked up a few brushes, and tilted her head toward Sam.
“Keep it.”
Chapter Four and a Half: The Shortcut
After saying goodbye to Inky, the trail forked.
One path kept winding gently forward, deeper into the island. But the other was narrower. Crooked. Twisted. At the end of it, Sam could see a shimmer—like the place he came from.
He pointed.
“Is that… the way home?”
Practicio looked at it for a long time. His stubby hand touched the cracked lens of his glasses. “Sort of. It leads back. But it skips the rest.”
Sam’s fingers tightened around his yo-yo.
“I don’t know if I want to see more Almosts. It’s kind of… sad. Like, what if I end up like them? What if this is just my Almost?”
Practicio didn’t answer right away. He just watched Sam. Not pushing.
Sam looked down the shortcut again. It was tempting—quiet and safe. No more unfinished songs. No more muddy tracks.
But something tugged at him. A memory. A page in his pocket.
“Thimble gave me a song,” he whispered. “Zoomie gave me a poster.”
“And Inky gave me…”
He looked down at the painting, still in his hand. “Me.”
Sam sighed.
The wind shifted. This time he knew what to say.
“I think they kept trying. Again. Even if it didn’t work out.”
Practicio nodded slowly.
“The shortcut skips the struggle. But it skips the story, too.”
Sam looked down the crooked path one last time.
Then turned away from it.
“Let’s keep going.”
Practicio smiled, and they walked on.
Chapter Five: Fall Number 4,030
The path rose again, gently winding up a hill scattered with pebbles and wildflowers. The sky above had faded into soft golden-pink, like a sunset that didn’t want to end.
Practicio walked a little slower now.
Sam walked beside him, yo-yo still tangled, but his hands holding it differently—like it wasn’t broken, just paused.
At the top of the hill, they heard it.
WHOOOSH—CLUNK—POOF.
And then:
“Well, that could have been worse.”
Sam stepped over the ridge and burst out laughing.
At the bottom of the hill, tangled in her own tail and lying in a puff of glittery dust, was a kangaroo. She wore a too-big helmet and elbow pads that had definitely seen better days. Her skateboard had rolled into a bush.
She sat up, shook her head, and grinned.
“Fall number 4,030! Who’s counting? Wanna see 4,031?”
Practicio chuckled. “Sam, meet Kip. She’s been practicing the same trick for three years.”
Sam looked down and tightened his yo-yo string. “You’re still not done?”
Kip pulled a leaf out of her helmet. “Nope! But I’m way better than I was at fall number 83. And way less bruised than 2,012.”
Sam stepped forward. “Don’t you get tired of failing?”
Kip tilted her head. “I don’t fail. I fall. It’s not the same.”
She stood up and dusted herself off. “Every time I fall, I learn something. Sometimes it’s big—like where to put my feet. Sometimes it’s small—like ‘don’t practice after eating six apples.’ But every time, I get closer.”
“And someday, I’ll land it.”
She looked at Sam’s yo-yo.
“You fallin’, too?”
Sam nodded.
“Then you’re already on the way.”
Kip grinned and grabbed her skateboard. “Race you to the next fall!”
Sam laughed. “I think I’ll walk.”
The sky shimmered. The world softened. The wind shifted.
And then—
Chapter Six: The First Trick
The driveway was back. The sky was blue again. The yo-yo was still in his hand.
Across the street, Jamie was finishing another trick Sam didn’t even know the name of. He watched for a moment, then looked down at his yo-yo, knot still tangled.
He untied the knot carefully. Rewound the string. He felt his hand brush his pocket. Paused. Took a breath.
And tried again.
The yo-yo dipped, spun, wobbled—and bounced.
Not perfect.
Not even close.
But it was the first time it didn’t feel like a failure.
“Almost,” Sam said.
And somewhere, quiet and patient, the wind shifted again— as if wondering when he might return.