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

She dried herself with the fluffy towel. Not a dishrag like the ones at Mama Lu’s, but a towel that reached from her nose to her toes. She dressed in a pair of tan cotton pants that fit well, a white cotton shirt, and a pair of soft boots. She found a comb and ran it through her new, thick hair. Gwen wouldn’t even recognize her.

Poor Gwen. She’d be working in the Handle Room, attaching handles to the new colorful umbrellas. And Leonard would be working in the Testing Room, dumping buckets of water onto each umbrella to make certain it worked. Didn’t they each deserve a warm shower, a fluffy towel, and a brand-new bar of soap?

I don’t want to feel sad, Isabelle thought. I can’t help them right now but I will help them. Right now I just want to feel happy. So she pushed the sad thoughts from her mind and looked out her bedroom window.

A grassy yard dotted with daisies stretched between her room and the red barn. Someone had parked the caravan next to the barn. Chickens made their way across the yard, clucking and pecking, and a pair of milk goats rested in the sun.

Fortune’s Farm is the happiest place on earth, Isabelle thought. Her head filled with music and, right then and there, she made up a song. The chickens picked up the song’s rhythm as they scratched the dirt.

The Fortune’s Farm 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 Fortune’s Farm is the place to be.

Sunshine shining down,

songbirds flying round,

seedlings in the ground,

magic to be found,

here on Fortune’s Farm.

I always hoped one day I’d find

a place to call my own.

I always prayed for a sign

to tell me where to go.

But now I’m here and it’s clear to me

that Fortune’s Farm is the place to be.

“Come on, Rocky,” Isabelle said, opening the door. “Let’s go explore.”

The marmot crawled out from under the pillow and followed Isabelle down the crooked hall. They passed a door with a large “W” painted on it. Then they came to a door with a large “N” painted on it. Isabelle didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the voices behind the second door thundered.

“I don’t believe you,” said a man.

“You must believe me.” That voice sounded like Walnut’s. “We have a future now. We have hope.”

“Why do you persist with this futile fantasy? We have no future. There’s nothing more to be said.” Sadness hung in the unknown voice. “The end has come. Now leave me in peace.”

“But Nesbitt…”

“Enough!” he hollered. “I just want to be left alone. Go away.”

Isabelle thought she might be reprimanded for listening and the last thing she wanted, on her first day in her new home, was to get into trouble. She hurried down the hall but as she did the unknown voice said, “The end has come.”

“But Nesbitt…”

“THE END HAS COME!”

To whom did that angry voice belong? Great-Uncle Walnut had called him Nesbitt. Surely he couldn’t be Isabelle’s grandfather, for she had imagined him to be kind, gentle, and good-natured. And finding a lost granddaughter would make for happiness and rejoicing, not yelling about things coming to an end. What had he meant by that, anyway?

While wondering about these latest mysteries, Isabelle stood in the Fortunes’ kitchen, which was everything a kitchen should be—warm, colorful, and filled with tempting scents. A wood-fed stove sat in the corner. Pots and pans hung from the beamed ceiling. Sun streamed in through open windows. Nothing in the room reminded her of Mama Lu’s kitchen, which was damp and sticky, riddled with piles of salt, and filled with constant demands about wanting to hear something interesting. Since leaving Runny Cove, Isabelle had encountered enough interesting to make Mama Lu’s head explode!

The Fortunes’ kitchen also happened to be a complete mess, which didn’t bother Isabelle one bit. Plates sat stacked in the sink and a family of mice ran along a little trail they had made across the dirt-covered floor. Red-breasted and black-crested birds flew in through the windows, helping themselves to overturned bags of corn meal and hazelnuts. Bees flew in and out of a doorless icebox that sat unplugged and empty, except for a mud-packed hive that dripped with golden syrup.

While the marmot dug a hole in a potted plant, Isabelle peered into some drawers. The first was filled with fat green worms. The second contained polka-dotted melons. One squirted at her; the stinky fluid just missed her shirt. She went to open another drawer but its contents growled fiercely. Best not to look in there.

A door slammed. Walnut emerged from the hallway, his face scarlet, swinging his arms and breathing hard as if he had just climbed to the fourth floor.

“Hello,” Isabelle said, ducking as a songbird flew by. “I’m all clean and ready to explore.”

But Walnut didn’t bother to look up. “Stubborn old fool,” he mumbled, stomping right past Isabelle and out the front door.

“Great-Uncle Walnut?” she called. “Come on, Rocky. Let’s see where he’s going.” Isabelle pulled the marmot from her new hole.

Outside the thatched roof cottage, Isabelle looked for her great-uncle. She called his name but only a goat answered, bleating as it ambled toward the field. Rocky wiggled free and started digging another hole.

Where had Walnut gone? She looked around one side of the cottage. The barn sat quiet, its double doors closed. “Great-Uncle Walnut?” She ran to the other side, a wilder side with a forest and looming mountains, hoping for a trace of checkered coat and white hair. Still no sign of him. She sighed. She’d have to explore on her own, but she had plenty of experience doing just that. Maybe she’d find some interesting things to put on those dusty shelves.

A tall post stood near the forest’s edge, covered in arrow-shaped signs. THIS WAY TO