Fortune's Magic Farm by Suzanne Selfors (i read book .TXT) 📗

the factories, and the people? A sense of unease broke through her drowsiness. What if I’m alone?

And why is it so quiet?

The answer, she realized, was the lack of rain. One might think this would be a nice change for Isabelle, that she might start kicking out her feet in a happy, rain-free dance, or compose a little song about being dry. But the opposite was true. Imagine waking up one morning to find that you had suddenly gone deaf. That is how it felt to Isabelle. The rain’s melody, sometimes delicate, sometimes thunderous, had serenaded her for as long as she could remember. Though it hadn’t rained during the journey on Neptune’s back, the ocean had provided a constant melody of water and wind. Standing on the bluff, the inlet calm, she could feel the endless silence. Isabelle started humming her little song about Nowhere to fill the emptiness.

That’s when a short whistle popped into the air, then faded away. Another whistle followed.

Isabelle stopped humming and spun around. Behind her lay a field of grass and rocks. Behind the field stood a forest of red-barked trees. She waited, holding her breath, watching for movement. A thing that whistles is probably a thing that moves, and she didn’t want it sneaking up on her. A boy in a hooded cape, an elephant seal, a ship as big as a factory—what could possibly be next?

Another short whistle shot up from the field, and another. Perhaps the creature was very small—a whistling insect of some sort. Bending close to the ground, to make certain she didn’t squish anything, she took a few steps.

Twee, twee.

Then a few more steps.

Twee, twee.

Then she came upon a hole the size of a soup bowl. It wasn’t very interesting, as far as holes go. It didn’t have any decorative rocks around it or a flag sticking out of it. A hole sat in front of Mr. Supreme’s factory with a flag and a plaque that read: GROUND-BREAKING HOLE. ON THIS SACRED GROUND DID MR. SUPREME SENIOR DIG THE FIRST PATCH OF DIRT THAT BECAME THE MAGNIFICENTLY SUPREME UMBRELLA FACTORY, FOR THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE STARVING, DULL-MINDED VILLAGERS OF RUNNY COVE.

Isabelle took a few more steps and found another hole. She stood on tiptoe and scanned the field. Holes lay everywhere, hundreds of them.

“Hey!” a voice called.

Sage emerged from the woods, his satchel flung over his shoulder. He crossed the field, zigzagging around the holes. Eve trotted alongside, a dead mouse swaying from her teeth. Rolo flew overhead. Isabelle forgot all about the whistling, overjoyed to see that she had not been abandoned. Yesterday she hadn’t wanted to travel with Sage, but he seemed to hold all the answers to her questions—plus, he had all her stuff inside his satchel.

“Where did you go?” she asked as he approached.

“Just checking things out.”

“Is this Nowhere? I mean, is this Fortune’s Farm?”

“No. This is one of the Tangled Islands. Neptune dropped us here last night. You were dead asleep.” He threw some sticks into the flames then looked to the horizon. “Cloudy. Calm sea. Sun should break through soon.”

“Sun?” A wave of excitement washed over Isabelle. Grandma Maxine had often told stories of sunny days spent lying on a picnic blanket or beneath the shade of a tree. But those were stories from long ago, before the rain. “I’ve never seen the sun.”

Sage tossed something into the pan, then stared at her dumbfounded. “Never? Well, that explains why you look like you’ve been living in a hole and why you’re so ugly.”

Ugly?

Isabelle turned away, feeling smaller than she had ever felt, her insides shrinking like a salted slug. Mama Lu had called her ugly many times. “Yer an ugly little thing, with that stuff growing in yer hair and those scrawny arms and legs. That’s why ya was dumped on the doorstep. Who’d want someone as ugly as you?”

Isabelle had tried not to take Mama Lu’s comments to heart. After all, Mama Lu had never said anything nice about anybody. But when Sage, the boy who had rescued her, called her ugly, it hurt like a punch in the gut. Isabelle wanted to hurt him right back.

“What do you know, anyway?” she mumbled. “You don’t look so good. Your hair is a mess. It looks like you never even brush it.”

“I don’t,” he said. “That’s the point. I want to look this way. You couldn’t possibly want to look that way, with your skin all puckered and see-through. It looks like the rain washed all the color right off of you.”

“Maybe I do want to look this way.” She folded her arms and glared at him. “Anyway, you’re just jealous because I’m a tender and you’re not.” She didn’t yet know the significance of this statement but from the stunned look on his face, she knew that she had hurt his feelings. “So there!”

Isabelle turned her back to him, angered by his rudeness and ashamed of her own. She wiped her stuffy nose on her sleeve.

“You’re not crying are you?” He sighed with exasperation. “Look, Isabelle, I didn’t mean to say it like that. Ugly’s not the right word. It’s just that you look so… unhealthy. And you don’t look anything like a tender. You’ll be surprised when you get to Fortune’s Farm.”

“You mean my mother and father don’t look like me?”

He scowled. “I told you I can’t answer any questions about your family. You’ll just have to wait.”

An unfamiliar scent drifted up Isabelle’s nostrils. Sage crouched next to the fire and poked at the sizzling contents of the pan with a stick. Isabelle’s stomach growled loudly. “Come on. You’ll like this,” he said.

She sat beside him and eagerly ate all that she was given—eight slices of bacon, a large chunk of smoked salmon, and a mug of peppermint tea—foods that she had never tasted before. The surface of the tea glistened with bacon grease but that didn’t bother her one bit. Eve the cat happily chewed on a mouse tail,