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

pond. No sign read: DON’T EAT THE PLANTS. No one stood there yelling, “Yer not supposed to float, ya hear me? Keep yer nasty little hands off my plants!” Isabelle reached into the water and pulled out a leaf. It tasted bitter, but nothing happened. She ate another leaf, then another. Maybe I’m too big, she thought.

Her body went numb. She knew she still had legs because she could see them, but it felt as if they had run off. It felt as if her entire body had drifted away.

Then her feet left the ground. Like the marmot, Isabelle grabbed at air, looking for something to hold on to. Oh, what have I done? She floated higher and higher but in a matter of moments she got used to her weightlessness and relaxed. So this is what it feels like to be a cloud, she thought, smiling. Gwen and Leonard would love this!

A breeze slid beneath her, lifting and carrying her back toward the cottage. Her white shirt billowed as she drifted. She moved her arms and legs but couldn’t quite figure out how to control direction—that probably took some practice. She rested her hands behind her head. Why would anyone bother to walk around the farm with floating as an option? If Great-Uncle Walnut allowed it, she’d eat those leaves every day.

The breeze carried her over the thatched-roof cottage. She drifted toward the tower that loomed behind the cottage, right up to its single dark window. Grabbing the window’s ledge, she held herself in place and peered through the glass. A man sat hunched in front of a fire, his back to the window. Orange streaks ran through his short white hair. Eve the cat nestled beside him.

Isabelle knew, from the way he sat all curled up and small, that the man felt terribly sad. Most of the workers at the Magnificently Supreme Umbrella Factory sat in the same way.

“Isabelle, what are you doing up there?” Walnut stood in the yard, clutching a basket. “My oh my, you shouldn’t be looking in that window. Come down, my dear.”

“I don’t know how to get down,” Isabelle called back.

“Push away from that window before he sees you.”

But it was too late. The man turned abruptly and all Isabelle noticed were his eyes, at first gentle and sleepy, but then they widened and blazed. His voice boomed through the glass panes. “How dare you. Get out of here!” He swept an arm toward her. “GO!”

Terrified, Isabelle let go of the ledge, but she didn’t drift away. The air beneath the tower’s overhanging roof was still and lifeless. She hovered as the angry man stormed his way to the window, his fists clenched.

Walnut cupped a hand over his mouth. “Can you hear me? You need to come down.”

“I’m trying,” Isabelle cried, kicking her legs. She wanted to get down more than anything. As the man glared out the window, she kicked with all her might, dislodging a clump of thatching in the process. Another kick and she managed to float free.

“Stay away from that window from now on,” Walnut called. “And when the Floating Fronds wear off, meet me in the greenhouse.” He pointed toward the immense glass building. “I’ve got to get these roots into some water right away.” He hurried off.

“No, don’t leave,” Isabelle cried, but Walnut didn’t seem to hear.

As she floated away from the tower, the angry man opened the window. “You’re not wanted,” he snarled. “Go away.”

After a long, venomous look, he slammed the window closed and drew its curtain.

You’re not wanted.

As the Floating Fronds wore off, those hurtful words rang in Isabelle’s head. “You’re not wanted” is a rotten thing to say to a person who has just arrived. It had to be a misunderstanding. After all, Sage had traveled across the ocean to find her and Great-Uncle Walnut had been waiting with the caravan to greet her. They wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble if she hadn’t been wanted. That man in the tower must have mistaken her for someone else.

But who was he? And why was he so angry?

Isabelle glanced up at the tower window, now shaded by a curtain. If she walked to the uppermost room in the tower and introduced herself, said something like, “Hi, I’m Isabelle. I’m a tender and I’m very happy to meet you,” then surely he’d smile and tell her that he had forgotten to put on his glasses and had mistaken her floating shape for a giant hornet or a storm cloud or something.

“Isabelle,” Walnut called from the greenhouse. He waved a shiny blade in the air. “Come along. I’ve got so much work to do.”

As Isabelle’s feet touched the ground, the numbness wore off. Reunited with her body, she hurried across the yard to the large glass building. “Can I float like that every day?” she asked her great-uncle, who was plucking a daisy from his bald spot.

“Best not to overdo the floating. Too much and your body gets befuddled. I learned that when I was your age. Woke up one morning after a particularly long float and found that my hands thought that they were feet. And my toes thought that they were fingers. Have you ever tried squeezing lemonade with your toes?”

Isabelle shook her head.

“Makes your toes stick together. Don’t recommend it.” He raised the blade in the air. “Good thing I found my old machete. Now that we are without farmhands, the weeds have taken over. We’ll have to hack our way through.”

Hack, whack, hack. Walnut swung the blade from side to side, slicing through the fortress of tangled vines and leaves. Isabelle kept a good distance as her great-uncle’s arm flew wildly about. Chopped bits of leaves sprayed onto her hair and face.

“Never… seen… it… this… bad.” Walnut attacked a shrub that was putting up a fight. “Yet another reason why I will never find myself a wife. Difficult enough to find one when the farm was