Fortune's Magic Farm (25 page)

Nesbitt nodded.

“So be it. But mark my words, you tenders haven’t seen the last of me.”

Then he sped away, leaving behind a nasty-smelling black cloud and a whole bunch of happy people.

R
olo flew high above an orchard
where trees stood in tidy rows, their branches weighed down by red, orange, and purple fruit. Usually when he scouted the orchard, Rolo saw dozens of people climbing ladders and filling baskets. But on this day, except for the occasional scurrying marmot or darting blue jay, the orchard lay still. Rolo caught an undercurrent and lazily circled over the trees he had helped to plant. One by one, he and Great-Uncle Walnut had deposited squirming seeds into land that had once been suffocated by Cloud Clover.

Rolo pumped his wings and picked up speed, following the gravel road to the factory. Out front a huge painted sign read:
SUNNY COVE JUICE COMPANY
.
Usually the factory buzzed with activity but on this day it sat quiet. Rolo passed over a chimney that had once spewed stinky smoke. A nest of sticks perched on top. The nest’s owner, a great blue heron, paid her respects as Rolo flew by.

A breeze, carrying the scent of salt and waves, caressed Rolo’s wings. He dipped lower, his shadow gliding across the sand dunes and the driftwood forest. In the distance, sunlight danced upon clear water. Under Sage’s guidance, Neptune and his wives had pulled the rotting fishing boats from the cove. Isabelle and her friends had planted oyster and clam seeds. Slowly but steadily the fish had made their
return. From the corner of his black eye, Rolo caught their silver shapes as they darted between beds of kelp. A gull screeched at him, worried he might steal its clam. But something else had caught his attention.

All along the speckled beach people stood holding brightly colored umbrellas, some with tassels, some with rhinestones and stripes. The people were brightly colored as well, wearing their Sunday best on a Friday afternoon. Rolo scanned the crowd until he saw the boy with the tangled black hair. He lowered his wings and gently landed on the boy’s shoulder.

“Hello, Rolo. How’d the scouting go?” Sage asked.

Rolo nodded his head.

Sage walked to the front of the crowd, where the girl with green hair stood. She smiled at Sage. She and her friend Gwen wore matching dresses and held bouquets of flowers, as did Mrs. Wormbottom and Mrs. Limewig.

Then the girl with the green hair, whom Rolo had come to know and love, began to sing.

The Sunny Cove Song

I never thought that life could feel

warm and dry and bright.

I never knew that things could smell

sweet and clean and light.

But now I know and it’s clear to me,

that Sunny Cove is the place to be.

Sunshine shining down,

songbirds flying ’round,

seedlings in the ground,

happiness to be found,

here in Sunny Cove.

Walnut fumbled through his pockets, pulling out packets of seeds, handkerchiefs, and wads of paper. “I can’t find it,” he mumbled. “I’ve lost it. What am I going to do? I’ve lost it.”

Nesbitt cleared his throat and handed a golden ring to his brother. “You haven’t lost it. You asked me to hold it.”

Walnut clapped his hands. “Oh, what a relief. Thank you.” Then he slipped the ring onto Maxine’s finger. “With this ring, I thee wed,” he said.

A cheer erupted amongst the villagers. Walnut almost fell over from all the slaps on his back. Grandma Maxine gave Isabelle a hug and kiss. She waved as she and Walnut climbed into the caravan. “Have a nice honeymoon,” everyone yelled. Boris, Bert, and Leonard pushed the caravan into deeper water. Two of Neptune’s wives pulled it to the sea.

“We’ll leave soon,” Sage told the bird.

Rolo nodded again, then took flight. There was one last place he wanted to check.

He flew to the village, over streets that no longer stood underwater, over rooftops that no longer leaked. He flew past a sign that read:
BORIS AND BERT’S BED AND BREAKFAST,
and another that read
SUNNY COVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
. He followed the street called Boggy Lane until he came to its end.

While everyone else had been pleased with the changes in Sunny Cove, one particular group of residents had not—the slugs, which had lost most of their damp places to live. Sage thought it only fitting that one should be provided. So he and Rolo had secretly planted a single clump of Cloud Clover behind the house that stood at the end of Boggy Lane. Above that house, and above that house alone, a permanent cloud hung, dark and fat with endless rain. And so the village slugs had packed their bags and had moved into Mama Lu’s Boardinghouse.

Rolo landed on a windowsill and folded his wings. He pressed his eye to the foggy glass. The observation chair rocked from side to side as a large woman in a blue bathrobe shook an empty salt canister in the air. “SLUUUUG!” she hollered. “Gertie, get me some salt!”

Another woman stood on the kitchen table. The floor glistened with gooey, happy gastropods. “I keep telling you that there ain’t no salt in the market. They don’t allow it no more.”

“SLUUUG! SLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG!”

Rolo chuckled, for even a raven is blessed with a sense of humor.

He took to the sky once again, speedily making his way past the cove and out to sea. He spotted the seals as they
swam powerfully across the water. Nesbitt rode in front, on one of Neptune’s wives. Isabelle and Sage sat in Neptune’s saddle, sea wind blowing through their hair and across their smiling faces as they made their way back to a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. Rolo thought about joining them but decided to fly for a while longer.

The day was just so nice.

For another fun-filled adventure
from Suzanne Selfors, don’t miss
SMELLS LIKE DOG.

Meet Homer Pudding, an ordinary farm boy who’s got big dreams to follow in the footsteps of his famous treasurehunting uncle. But when Uncle Drake disappears, Homer inherits two things: a lazy, droopy dog with no sense of smell, and a mystery. Join Homer and his friends on an adventure as they discover that treasure might be closer than they ever imagined….

TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK!

AVAILABLE NOW

W
hat Homer Pudding didn’t know on that breezy Sunday morning, as he carried a pail of fresh goat milk across the yard, was that his life was about to change.

In a big way.

What he did know was this: That the country sky was its usual eggshell blue, that the air was its usual springtime fresh, and that his chores were their usual boring, boring, boring.

For how exciting can it be cleaning up after goats?
And that’s what Homer had done for most of his twelve years. Each year his chore list grew longer, taking more time away from the thing that he’d rather do. The one thing. The only thing. But it was not playing football, or riding a bike. Not swimming, or fishing, or building a fort.

If he didn’t have to rake goat poop, or change straw bedding, or chase goats out of the flower bed, Homer Winslow Pudding would have more time to dream about the day when he’d become a famous treasure hunter like his uncle.

“Daydreaming doesn’t have any place on a farm,” his father often told him. “There’s too much work to be done.”

But Homer dreamed anyway.

Mrs. Pudding waved from the kitchen window. She needed the milk for her morning coffee. Homer picked up his pace, his rubber boots kicking up fallen cherry blossoms. As he stumbled across a gnarled root, a white wave splashed over the side of the bucket. Warm goat milk ran down his sleeve and dribbled onto the grass where it was quickly lapped up by the farm’s border collies.

“Careful there,” Mr. Pudding called as he strode up the driveway, gravel crunching beneath his heavy work boots. He tucked the Sunday newspaper under his arm.
“Your mother will be right disappointed if she don’t get her milk.”

Homer almost fell over, his legs tangled in a mass of licking dogs. “Go on,” he said. The dogs obeyed. The big one, named Max, scratched at a flea that was doing morning calisthenics on his neck. Max was a working dog, like the others, trained to herd the Puddings’ goats. He even worked on Sundays while city dogs slept in or went on picnics. Every day is a workday on a farm.

And that’s where this story begins—on the Pudding Goat Farm. A prettier place you’d be hard pressed to find. If you perched at the top of one of the cherry trees you’d see a big barn that sagged in the middle as if a giant had sat on it, a little farmhouse built from river rocks, and an old red truck. Look farther and you’d see an endless tapestry of rolling hills, each painted a different hue of spring green. “Heaven on earth,” Mrs. Pudding often said. Homer didn’t agree. Surely in heaven there wouldn’t be so many things to fix and clean and haul.

The dogs stayed outside while Mr. Pudding and Homer slipped off their boots and went into the kitchen. Because the Pudding family always ate breakfast together at the kitchen table, it was the perfect place to share news and ask questions like,
Whatcha gonna do at school today?
or
Who’s gonna take a bath tonight?
or
Why is that dead squirrel lying on the table?

“Because I’m gonna stuff it.”

“Gwendolyn Maybel Pudding. How many times have I told you not to put dead things on the kitchen table?” Mr. Pudding asked as he hung his cap on a hook.

“I don’t know,” Gwendolyn grumbled, tossing her long brown hair.

Homer set the milk pail on the counter, then washed his hands at the sink. His little brother, who everybody called Squeak, but whose legal name was Pip, tugged at Homer’s pant leg. “Hi, Homer.”

Homer looked down at the wide-eyed, freckled face. “Hi, Squeak,” he said, patting his brother’s head. Squeak may have been too young to understand Homer’s dreams, but he was always happy to listen to stories about sunken pirate ships or lost civilizations.

“Get that squirrel off the table,” Mr. Pudding said, also washing his hands at the sink.

Gwendolyn picked up the squirrel by its tail. The stiff body swung back and forth like the arm of a silent metronome. “I don’t see why it’s such a problem.”

“It’s dead, that’s why it’s a problem. I eat on that table so I don’t want dead things lying on it.”

Confrontations between Gwendolyn and Mr. Pudding had become a daily event in the Pudding household, ever since last summer when Gwendolyn had turned fifteen and had gotten all moody. In the same breath she might
laugh, then burst into tears, then sink into a brooding silence. She befuddled Homer. But most girls befuddled Homer.

He took his usual seat at the end of the pine plank table, hoping that the argument wouldn’t last too long. He wanted to finish his chores so he could get back to reading his new map. It had arrived yesterday in a cardboard tube from the Map of the Month Club, a Christmas gift from Uncle Drake. Homer had stayed up late studying the map, but as every clever treasure hunter knows, a map can be read a thousand times and still hide secrets. He’d studied an Incan temple map eighty-two times before discovering the hidden passage below the temple’s well. “Excellent job,” his uncle Drake had said. “I would never have found that at your age. You’re a natural born treasure hunter.”

But the new map would have to wait because the morning argument was just gathering steam. Clutching the squirrel, Gwendolyn peered over the table’s edge. It wasn’t that she was short. It was just that she almost always sat slumped real low in her chair, like a melted person, and all anyone saw during meals was the top of her head. “You eat dead things all the time and you eat them on this table so I don’t see the difference.” She glared at her father.

“Now Gwendolyn, if you’re going to talk back to
your father, please wait until we’ve finished eating,” Mrs. Pudding said. She stood at the stove stirring the porridge. “Let’s try to have breakfast without so much commotion, like a normal family.”

“And without dead squirrels,” Mr. Pudding added, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Or dead frogs, or dead mice, or dead anything.”