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

but rather than biting her, it pressed its wet nose against hers. She giggled as its fur brushed her face. It nosed her again. Then the freed marmot greeted its friends. They touched noses, chirped, and scurried around one another. It was the happiest dance Isabelle had ever seen.

“Isabelle!” Sage called. “Time to go!”

She scrambled to her feet and ran back down the beach.

“Where were you?”

“I was over there,” she said, pointing to the distant tree.

Sage frowned and pointed at her feet. “And what are you doing with that?”

The rescued marmot had followed Isabelle down the beach and had wedged itself between her kelp booties.

“It was stuck. I helped it.”

“Oh.” Sage’s expression softened for a moment. Then he turned serious again. “We need to catch the tide.”

“Goodbye,” Isabelle said, waving down to the marmot. Then she ran over and greeted the glistening seal. “YOUR NOSE IS LOOKING EXTREMELY LOVELY… I MEAN, EXTREMELY BULBOUS THIS MORNING.”

Neptune nodded and tilted his head so Isabelle could scratch his chin. The marmot whistled and threw a rock at Neptune, who didn’t even notice—like a grain of rice bouncing off a truck.

“COME ON, LET’S GO!” Sage pushed Neptune’s rump.

Neptune rose up on his flippers and made his way into the shallows. Sage tucked Eve into the satchel and secured it to the saddle’s horn. Then he climbed on board. Rolo watched from the branch of a red-barked tree. The marmot scurried across the wet sand and sat on Isabelle’s foot.

“I’ve got to go,” she told the furry creature.

“Hurry up,” Sage urged. “We need to make the Northern Shore by nightfall.”

Isabelle tried to gently push the marmot off her foot but it flattened its body and chirped softly. “I think it wants to go with me.” She picked it up and held it at arm’s length, still unsure of those teeth. “Do you want to go with us?”

“No way,” Sage said. “We don’t have room for another passenger. There’s no place to put it.”

The marmot wiggled its bottom, then climbed up Isabelle’s arm and onto her shoulder, where it squirmed its way down the back of her kelp shirt. Its little claws tickled but didn’t prick her skin. The shirt stretched as the marmot turned itself around and popped its head back out through the neck hole. Its furry belly felt warm against her back. It sniffed her earlobe. Isabelle giggled. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

Sage grumbled to himself. “Fine. But it better not have fleas.”

Isabelle settled behind Sage. She helped tie the rope around her middle. The marmot made little wheezy sounds as it breathed in her ear. “Do marmots get seasick?” she asked.

“Probably, knowing my luck.” Sage gave Neptune a kick. The seal pushed itself into the deep water.

“What should I feed it if it gets hungry?” Isabelle asked, scratching the marmot’s head.

“I don’t know.” Sage checked the rope again. “By the way, it’s a she.”

“A she?”

“Yes. She’s a girl marmot.”

“Oh, how nice.”

Rolo flew overhead as Neptune wove between rocky reefs. Back on the island, a chorus of marmot chirps filled the air. Isabelle sensed it was a song of farewell, but if the marmot felt sad about leaving, she didn’t show it. She nestled her face against Isabelle’s neck and fell asleep.

Isabelle supposed that a barnacle-filled tide pool was a great place for her barnacle to live. But an overpopulated island was a horrible place for a marmot, just as a boardinghouse run by Mama Lu in a town where it never stopped raining was a horrible place for a person. She and her new friend were not so different, each looking for a better home. Perhaps, before falling asleep, the marmot had made the same promise that Isabelle had made—to return one day and help her friends.

Maybe, just maybe, they would both fulfill their promises.

Once they reached the outer edge of the Tangled Islands, the sea lay wide and calm. Isabelle tried to get comfortable, though getting comfortable in a saddle with a drooling marmot stuck to one’s back is not an easy feat.

The journey to the Northern Shore took most of the day. Sage continued to withhold information. Pestering and poking didn’t work on him. “You’ll have to wait,” he grumbled.

“I don’t want to wait,” Isabelle said. “I just want to know more about being a tender.”

“If you poke me one more time, I’ll turn this seal around and then you’ll never know.”

“Fine! I’ll wait.”

Isabelle had spent her whole life waiting—for the sun to shine, for Mama Lu to make something decent to eat, for the next box to wind its way to her station. “Waiting is a waste of time,” Grandma Maxine had told her. “Because in the end what you’ll probably get is one big fat disappointment and then what do you have to show for all that waiting? You should be doing, not waiting.”

But what was there to “do” on the back of a seal other than ask questions? And as hard as she tried, no new songs popped into her head. What if, at the end of this journey, being a tender turned out to be one big fat disappointment? What would she do? Where would she go?

It was late afternoon when a cacophony of barking woke her from a troubled and slightly nauseated nap. Neptune had stopped swimming and the water around them churned and frothed. A sharp stench shot up her nostrils. The marmot tightened her grip around Isabelle’s neck. “What’s going on?” Isabelle asked.

“It’s Neptune’s harem,” Sage explained.

In every direction seals poked their heads from the water, blinking large brown eyes and snorting through flared nostrils. Their noses weren’t pendulous like Neptune’s. Here and there smaller heads poked up—Neptune’s children. Their gray shapes darted beneath and above the water line, somersaulting and rolling as gracefully as waves. Neptune surveyed the welcome party with a proud smile. How nice, Isabelle thought, to have such a large family.

“TO THE SHORE!” Sage called, kicking Neptune urgently.

The Northern Shore stretched out