Daisy Malone and the Blue Glowing Stone

by James O'Loghlin

  They ran across the hotel foyer, which now had about eight firefighters in it, all trying to look important and being randomly thanked by hotel staff and guests for doing, as far as Daisy could tell, exactly nothing.

  As they ran out the doors, Daisy stuffed the canvas bag into her pocket. They raced down Cross Street and around the corner back into the main street, this time heading away from the lolly shop and dodging pedestrians, dogs and shopping bags.

  ‘Daisy,’ Ben panted, ‘that vase on your arm. It looks stupid.’

  She tried to shake it off as she ran, but couldn’t. ‘My arm’s stuck.’

  Despite the circumstances, Ben started to laugh as he ran.

  ‘Ben! Stop it!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he half-panted, half-giggled. ‘It just looks really silly.’

  Daisy looked over her shoulder. Sinclair and Dennis were only about twenty paces behind them.

  When someone is chasing someone else, it all boils down to who can run fastest, and keep running fastest for longest. Up until now the three humans involved in the chase had all been running as fast as they could. (Ben, on the other hand was only going at about half pace.) But the further humans run, the slower they get. Try it. Run as fast as you can and see what happens. After a while you’ll slow down. (If you don’t, that means you either started off really slow, or that one day, my friend, you’re going to the Olympics!)

  Whether or not Sinclair and Dennis would catch Daisy and Ben depended on who slowed down first. Daisy was a pretty fit and healthy twelve-year-old. She went on lots of walks, she went to the park, and during term time she did yoga and swimming lessons every week. She didn’t play netball or softball or anything-else-ball because she had always been terrible at throwing things, but she was a good runner. She could already outrun both her parents and last year had come second to Tracey Adams in the 100-metres sprint at the athletics carnival (which was a pain because Tracey Adams luuuuved herself and wouldn’t shut up about it) and third in the cross-country race (Tracey Adams came fourth, so nerrr!).

  However, Daisy was slowed somewhat by the vase stuck on her arm. But Sinclair looked old and Dennis was overweight, so she was sure they would slow down before she did.

  The only problem was that they didn’t.

  In fact they seemed to be gaining. They were both surprisingly fast and surprisingly good at ignoring the fact that they should be slowing down.

  ‘If … they catch … me,’ she panted to Ben, ‘you … take … the … stone … and … go.’

  ‘Yeah … that’s … going to happen,’ Ben panted back, proving that it’s possible to combine sarcasm and strenuous exercise. ‘I’m … a dog, you … idiot. Loyal to humans … not rocks … Forget it.’

  ‘But …’ began Daisy, but she didn’t have any breath left to argue with.

  They came to some traffic lights at a cross street that wasn’t Cross Street. ‘Don’t Walk’ was flashing. Daisy looked up and down and then, with Ben at her heels, disobeyed and sprinted through a gap between cars. On the other side of the road, she glanced back. Sinclair and Dennis were delayed a few moments by the traffic, but then another break came and they ran across.

  Daisy had an idea. ‘Follow me,’ she panted to Ben.

  At the next cross street, she turned right. At first she thought it might be a dead end, but then she saw a little lane between two houses that must, she hoped, lead back to the bush. They sped to the lane, through it and out the other side.

  In front of Daisy lay dense bush parted by a thin track that led up the same hill that they had earlier come down. Summoning all her remaining strength she sprinted up the track as fast as she could. She looked behind her. Sinclair and Dennis had fallen back a bit. She raced around a right-hand turn and for a few moments they were out of sight of their pursuers. Daisy abruptly turned left and charged off the track into the bush. She ran as fast as she could, pushing back branches and leaping over fallen logs, then stopped dead still behind a tree. Ben was, of course, by her side.

  Sinclair and Dennis’s footsteps got louder as they approached, and then softer again. Yes! thought Daisy. They must have kept going past the spot where she and Ben had left the track.

  She was just about to head back to the track and down the hill when Ben pricked up his ears. Soon Daisy heard it too: more footsteps coming down the hill. Two sets of them. The footsteps stopped at what sounded like a spot very close to where Daisy and Ben had left the track.

  ‘Why aren’t we still chasing them, boss?’ It was Dennis’s voice.

  ‘Shhh!’

  ‘But boss …’

  ‘Shhh! I’m trying to sense it.’

  Involuntarily Daisy closed her hand tight around the bag containing the stone and thrust it as deep as she could into her pocket.

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ said Dennis. ‘Er, so this freshly broken branch at the edge of the track isn’t important then?’

  ‘What? Let me see! Aha. This way, dear boy.’

  The sound of twigs snapping and branches being pushed aside told Daisy that the men were heading straight towards them.

  ‘Aha,’ said Sinclair again. ‘Over here. I’m sure of it.’

  Daisy bent down to Ben. ‘Take the stone,’ she whispered.

  ‘I told you before. I’m not going to leave you.’

  ‘If you let them see you have it, they’ll follow you. You can outrun them and I’ll be safe.’

  Ben stared up at her, thinking. He didn’t want to leave Daisy. Leaving your human was a very un-dog-like thing to do. It was almost like something that a – yuck! – cat might do. But her plan made sense.

  ‘Come on. Take it.’ She held the bag out towards him.

  Sinclair was getting closer. Ben nodded. Daisy opened her hand and Ben grabbed the bag in his teeth.

  ‘Go slowly at first,’ whispered Daisy, ‘so they think they’ve got a chance of catching you. Then when you get back to the road, take off. Don’t go home, ’cos I’m sure they’ll go there to try to find us. Meet me … um … I know. Meet me outside school in an hour. Okay?’

  Ben nodded again and then walked towards Sinclair. Daisy peeked around the tree. Ben approached to within a few steps and then stood in front of him, the bag dangling from his mouth and glowing faintly.

  ‘There it is, boss,’ yelled Dennis, pointing.

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Sinclair calmly, squatting on his haunches. He stared intently at Ben. ‘Here, dog,’ he said slowly and soothingly. ‘Come here. Good dog. Come here.’

  Ben took a few wobbly steps forward, as if hypnotised. Sinclair stared even harder at him. Daisy felt a bit woozy herself … She shook her head, and then managed to tear her eyes away. At her feet was a fallen branch as long as her arm and as thick as a rolled-up newspaper or, if you think newspapers are a bit old-fashioned, a rolled-up iPad. She picked it up.

  ‘Come here,’ ordered Sinclair, still staring at Ben. Ben tottered forward, nearly close enough for Sinclair to grab the bag.

  Daisy aimed the stick at Sinclair and threw it. It missed him and thumped uselessly into a tree. Rats! thought Daisy. But the noise of the stick hitting the tree distracted Sinclair. He looked around and that was enough, it seemed, to momentarily break the hold he had on Ben. Ben barked and ran off down the hill.

  ‘Get it!’ cried Sinclair, jumping to his feet.

  Dennis rushed past Sinclair and picked up the stick Daisy had thrown. ‘I’ve got it, boss! I’ve got it!’ He looked closely at the stick. ‘I’ve got you, you … stick. You’re going to get it now, stick!’

  ‘Not that! The dog!’

  Sinclair raced off through the trees after Ben, who ran back towards the track, looking over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they were following.

  ‘This is the most confusing birthday I’ve ever had,’ sighed Dennis as he ran after them. Daisy felt exactly the same wa
y.

  Soon Daisy lost sight of them but it sounded as if Ben was leading them back down the hill. She waited as the noise of the chase got softer and when it was so soft that you would only be able to hear it if you had ears the size of tractors, she cautiously made her way back to the track and set off up the hill.

  After a few minutes she realised she still had a Cross Hotel vase stuck to her arm, so she sat down and after 1.16756189 minutes of grunting, twisting and pulling, managed to remove it. Soon after, she reached the top of the hill, and a few minutes later she was back inside her home sweet home.

  Chapter 8

  AN UNCOMFORTABLE RIDE

  Daisy ran to her room, grabbed her rucksack and shoved a jacket and a hat into it, as well as the letter from her mum addressed to Professor Blont. Then she raided her bear-shaped-but-not-even-nearly-bear-sized money box. Eleven dollars and fifteen cents. Not enough. But there was also the twenty dollars she had got from Uncle Tony for her birthday. Daisy didn’t intend to be away for long, but weird things were happening and she figured she’d better be prepared.

  She put the money in a zip-up pocket of her rucksack then went into her parents’ office. There was always an emergency stash kept in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. If what’s going down now doesn’t qualify as an emergency, Daisy thought, then I’m a blue piano eating fried rice on the moon while doing ballet. She found sixty dollars, and took it all.

  She headed out of her room and then turned and ran back to her bedside table. From the bottom drawer she grabbed her pocket-knife. Just in case. (In case of what, she tried not to imagine.) She put the pocket-knife in her pocket (because it was a pocket-knife. If she had put it in her rucksack, then it would have been a rucksack-knife.).

  Back in the kitchen she grabbed six containers of dog food, a soft plastic dog bowl that folded up, some peanuts, some cheese, a few apples and two energy bars. Then she remembered that apples were fruit so she put them back and instead found a packet of chocolate-chip biscuits and a packet of corn crackers. She filled two water bottles, and then rang her mum’s mobile number. Again it went to voicemail. As she heard her mum’s voice cheerfully tell her to leave a message, Daisy felt her heart lurch. It was the sort of day when you really wanted to have a mother to hug or, at the very least, talk to on the phone.

  Finally she penned a note to her dad.

  Dear Dad, have gone to play at Eliza’s. Her mum says I can stay the night so I have taken my bag. And Ben. Hope that’s okay.

  She was about to write ‘Love Daisy’ when she had an idea.

  By the way, Eliza’s mum says their phone isn’t working and she has lost her mobile, so don’t bother ringing but really I’m fine, so definitely no need to worry at all about anything. See you soon,

  Love, Daisy

  She put the message on the kitchen bench with an apple on top of it so it wouldn’t blow away. There, fruit was useful for something.

  She knew her note wasn’t going to sort everything out on the home front, but it might at least buy her some time while she tried to work out what the ga-heckamany to do.

  At least she knew what the next thing to do was: meet Ben outside school.

  Daisy’s school was just five minutes’ walk from her house. Daisy loved her school, especially during the holidays when she didn’t have to go there. It was pretty enough, with lots of trees and grass surrounding old stone buildings. And it was big enough, not like some of those small schools near the middle of the city where kids spent their lunchtime bumping into each other and lining up to get a turn on the handball court.

  The problem for Daisy was that her school just wasn’t quite fun enough. Especially this year. All her best friends were in the other year 6 class, her chair was uncomfortable, her teacher was strict and grumpy and worst of all, they had to do maths. She hoped you didn’t have to do maths in high school. She was pretty sure you didn’t, because once you knew your twelve times tables and how to add fractions, heck, what else could there be?

  Daisy arrived at the school and circled around until she got to the front gate. Ben wasn’t there so she waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  As the length of the wait increased, so did her worry. What if they had caught Ben? What if Sinclair had managed to make eye contact with him and hypnotise him again (and how the balonga-donky did Sinclair do that anyway)? Or what if Ben had been looking over his shoulder and had got hit by a car? Or what if the dog catcher had got him? Or what if one of the lions from the zoo had escaped and it was a particular type of lion that loved eating dogs, and the lion happened to be escaping down the same street that Ben was running up and …

  ‘Why are you at the front gate? I’ve been waiting at the back one for ages.’

  ‘Huh?’ Daisy spluttered, whirling around. It was Ben! And at his feet, the canvas bag. ‘You’re okay! But what about the lion?’ she demanded. ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘Have you had a knock on the head?’

  Her brain slowly caught up with Ben’s words. ‘So you were round the back?’

  ‘At the gate we normally go to when I walk to school with you, yes.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. I was imagining all the bad things that could have happened to you. A bit like my dad does. Wow!’ She felt a wave of sympathy for her father. ‘Imagine thinking like that all the time! It must be horrible.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be fun,’ agreed Ben. ‘By the way, I do think it should be noted that if I hadn’t decided just to check around the front, just in case you had been stupid enough to come round here, we would have both stayed waiting forever, getting hungrier and hungrier and thirstier and thirstier and older and older and boreder and boreder until eventually we died, so well done, Ben, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well done, Ben.’

  ‘Thank you. Who’s a clever dog, hey?’

  ‘Yes, yes, whatever.’

  ‘By the way, you would have been the first to die because dogs are much better at surviving than humans. See, we can hunt, we can sleep in the wild, we know how to take complete care of ourselves without any help. So there. By the way, did you bring any dog food?’

  Daisy smiled. ‘I thought you said you could hunt.’

  ‘I could, but what’s the point if you’ve got dog food? And a drink would be nice too.’

  Daisy got him some water and dog food and then fixed herself some cheese and corn crackers. ‘How did you get away?’ she asked.

  ‘I just led them back down to Drain Street and then ran along it slowly enough for them to keep up with me until I thought you would have had plenty of time to get away, and then I acted like I was really tired and started to limp, and let them nearly catch up to me, and when they were really close I farted right at them and ran away.’

  ‘Brilliant. High paw!’

  Ben lifted up a front paw and Daisy hit it lightly with her palm.

  ‘But what happened to you in the bush when Sinclair was staring at you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly, I … I kind of just wanted to walk towards him and give him the bag.’ He hung his head. ‘Sorry. But then suddenly I was okay again.’

  ‘I threw a stick at him. It missed but I guess it broke his concentration.’ Daisy thought back to what had happened in the attic. ‘So he’s got some kind of hypnotism power thingy, and remember how he stretched his arm out in the attic? What sort of a person is he?’

  ‘And he smells weird too,’ said Ben. ‘It’s interesting, but let’s focus: what do we do now?’

  Daisy picked up the canvas bag containing the stone and put it in her pocket. ‘I think it’s time we visited Mum’s friend Professor Blont at the university. We’ll explain everything, give him the stone and then he can take care of it.’

  Ben nodded. ‘I think that’s a good idea.’

  Daisy started to unzip her rucksack. ‘So. You kno
w what that means.’

  Ben swallowed. ‘Oh no. Not that.’

  Daisy smiled at the bus driver as she paid her fare, trying not to show how much effort it took her to carry the rucksack. The bus was only half full but she went right to the back seat, eased the rucksack carefully off her shoulder and placed it on the seat beside her. The nearest passenger was a roundish man two seats in front who was reading an iPad, listening to an iPod, holding an iPhone and wearing an eye patch.

  Daisy checked that the rucksack’s zip was a bit open at the top. From inside she heard Ben’s voice, whispering desperately, ‘I need a wee.’

  ‘You’re going to have to hold on,’ whispered Daisy. ‘Try not to think of trees.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now I’m thinking of trees. I really want to go now.’

  ‘But I said not to think of trees.’

  ‘And I wasn’t. But then you mentioned them and now I am. Oh, how I love to wee on a tree!’

  ‘Shhh,’ Daisy hissed, just as the man in front turned around and stared at her. Daisy gave him her wide-eyed innocent look until he turned around again and buried his head back in his iThings.

  Daisy could feel Ben fidgeting inside her bag, no doubt trying to cross his legs.

  ‘Only a few more stops,’ she whispered.

  In reply she heard a muffled groan.

  Eventually they arrived at the university. As soon as the bus pulled away, Daisy opened her rucksack and Ben dashed to the nearest tree, where he quickly turned pain into relief. Then they walked through an old stone archway into the university.

  The city immediately melted away. Instead of cars, there were people riding bikes and walking; instead of telegraph poles, there were trees; instead of roads, long walkways flanked by grassy banks; and instead of people heading purposefully off to work, there were students sitting in the sun, chatting away and generally wasting time.