“You are lucky that I am a man of reason,” Nesbitt said between clenched teeth. “For there’s many a man who would kill you for what you did to my family.”
“That’s all in the past,” Mr. Supreme said. “But the future is bright. With your magic and my wealth, we could rule the world.”
Rage flashed across Nesbitt’s face. “Your kind have ruled the world for far too long.” He straightened to his full height, casting a shadow across Mr. Supreme. “Isabelle spoke true. It’s time for you to go away.”
Mr. Supreme snickered. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Uncle Walnut cleared his throat and reached into one of his pockets, pulling out a seed packet. “You seem to be a fan of our seeds,” he said, waving the packet in the air. “Perhaps you would like to try these?” He ripped the packet with his teeth and poured a single seed into his hand. It sprouted, then started to grow.
Mr. Supreme raised his eyebrows eagerly. “Changed your mind about making a deal? What is it?”
“Piranha planticus,” Walnut said. “A carnivorous plant that prefers living flesh.” The plant sprouted a fish-like head with enormous fangs. Walnut held it at arm’s length. The fangs eagerly gnashed the air. “It seems rather hungry, wouldn’t you agree?”
Mr. Supreme backed up, his gaze darting wildly between the plant and Nesbitt’s looming frame. “What’s to keep me from coming back tomorrow? Or the next day, or the next?”
Isabelle knew what would keep him from coming back—the only thing that mattered to him. She squirmed free of her grandmother’s arms and marched right up to Mr. Supreme, holding her chin as high as she could. “If you ever come back to Runny Cove, I’ll travel all over the world and make every one of your factories disappear!”
“And I’ll go with her,” Sage said.
A rock soared through the air and hit Mr. Supreme’s car. Then another rock and another. The marmots appeared at the edge of the road. They raised themselves onto their back legs and took aim.
“Hey, stop doing that,” Mr. Supreme cried as rocks rained down. “Watch the paint job. It’s fresh out of the factory!”
A rock hit Mr. Supreme in the head and Isabelle knew, without even looking, which marmot had thrown it. “Good girl,” she whispered.
The Piranha Plant growled furiously and grabbed Mr. Supreme’s coat, tearing off one of the sleeves. Rolo swooped and pecked Mr. Supreme on the nose. The plant grabbed the other sleeve and more rocks flew, but Mr. Supreme escaped by jumping into the roadster’s driver’s seat. As the engine burst to life, he rolled down his window. “I have your word, Fortune, that if I don’t return to Runny Cove, you’ll leave my other factories alone?”
Nesbitt nodded.
“So be it. But mark my words, you tenders haven’t seen the last of me.”
Then he sped away, leaving behind a nasty-smelling black cloud and a whole bunch of happy people.
Rolo flew high above an orchard where trees stood in tidy rows, their branches weighed down by red, orange, and purple fruit. Usually when he scouted the orchard, Rolo saw dozens of people climbing ladders and filling baskets. But on this day, except for the occasional scurrying marmot or darting blue jay, the orchard lay still. Rolo caught an undercurrent and lazily circled over the trees he had helped to plant. One by one, he and Great-Uncle Walnut had deposited squirming seeds into land that had once been suffocated by Cloud Clover.
Rolo pumped his wings and picked up speed, following the gravel road to the factory. Out front a huge painted sign read: SUNNY COVE JUICE COMPANY. Usually the factory buzzed with activity but on this day it sat quiet. Rolo passed over a chimney that had once spewed stinky smoke. A nest of sticks perched on top. The nest’s owner, a great blue heron, paid her respects as Rolo flew by.
A breeze, carrying the scent of salt and waves, caressed Rolo’s wings. He dipped lower, his shadow gliding across the sand dunes and the driftwood forest. In the distance, sunlight danced upon clear water. Under Sage’s guidance, Neptune and his wives had pulled the rotting fishing boats from the cove. Isabelle and her friends had planted oyster and clam seeds. Slowly but steadily the fish had made their return. From the corner of his black eye, Rolo caught their silver shapes as they darted between beds of kelp. A gull screeched at him, worried he might steal its clam. But something else had caught his attention.
All along the speckled beach people stood holding brightly colored umbrellas, some with tassels, some with rhinestones and stripes. The people were brightly colored as well, wearing their Sunday best on a Friday afternoon. Rolo scanned the crowd until he saw the boy with the tangled black hair. He lowered his wings and gently landed on the boy’s shoulder.
“Hello, Rolo. How’d the scouting go?” Sage asked.
Rolo nodded his head.
Sage walked to the front of the crowd, where the girl with green hair stood. She smiled at Sage. She and her friend Gwen wore matching dresses and held bouquets of flowers, as did Mrs. Wormbottom and Mrs. Limewig.
Then the girl with the green hair, whom Rolo had come to know and love, began to sing.
The Sunny Cove 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 Sunny Cove is the place to be.
Sunshine shining down,
songbirds flying ’round,
seedlings in the ground,
happiness to be found,
here in Sunny Cove.
Walnut fumbled through his pockets, pulling out packets of seeds, handkerchiefs, and wads of paper. “I can’t find it,” he mumbled. “I’ve lost it. What am I going to do? I’ve lost it.”
Nesbitt cleared his throat and handed a golden ring to his brother. “You haven’t lost it. You asked me to hold it.”
Walnut clapped his hands. “Oh, what a relief. Thank you.” Then he slipped the ring onto Maxine’s finger. “With this ring, I thee wed,” he said.
A cheer erupted amongst the villagers. Walnut almost fell over from all the slaps on his back. Grandma Maxine gave Isabelle a hug and kiss. She waved as she and Walnut climbed into the caravan. “Have a nice honeymoon,” everyone yelled. Boris, Bert, and Leonard pushed the caravan into deeper water. Two of Neptune’s wives pulled it to the sea.
“We’ll leave soon,” Sage told the bird.
Rolo nodded again, then took flight. There was one last place he wanted to check.
He flew to the village, over streets that no longer stood underwater, over rooftops that no longer leaked. He flew past a sign that read: BORIS AND BERT’S BED AND BREAKFAST, and another that read SUNNY COVE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. He followed the street called Boggy Lane until he came to its end.
While everyone else had been pleased with the changes in Sunny Cove, one particular group of residents had not—the slugs, which had lost most of their damp places to live. Sage thought it only fitting that one should be provided. So he and Rolo had secretly planted a single clump of Cloud Clover behind the house that stood at the end of Boggy Lane. Above that house, and above that house alone, a permanent cloud hung, dark and fat with endless rain. And so the village slugs had packed their bags and had moved into Mama Lu’s Boardinghouse.
Rolo landed on a windowsill and folded his wings. He pressed his eye to the foggy glass. The observation chair rocked from side to side as a large woman in a blue bathrobe shook an empty salt canister in the air. “SLUUUUG!” she hollered. “Gertie, get me some salt!”
Another woman stood on the kitchen table. The floor glistened with gooey, happy gastropods. “I keep telling you that there ain’t no salt in the market. They don’t allow it no more.”
“SLUUUG! SLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG!”
Rolo chuckled, for even a raven is blessed with a sense of humor.
He took to the sky once again, speedily making his way past the cove and out to sea. He spotted the seals as th
ey swam powerfully across the water. Nesbitt rode in front, on one of Neptune’s wives. Isabelle and Sage sat in Neptune’s saddle, sea wind blowing through their hair and across their smiling faces as they made their way back to a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. Rolo thought about joining them but decided to fly for a while longer.
The day was just so nice.
For another fun-filled adventure
from Suzanne Selfors, don’t miss
SMELLS LIKE DOG.
Meet Homer Pudding, an ordinary farm boy who’s got big dreams to follow in the footsteps of his famous treasurehunting uncle. But when Uncle Drake disappears, Homer inherits two things: a lazy, droopy dog with no sense of smell, and a mystery. Join Homer and his friends on an adventure as they discover that treasure might be closer than they ever imagined….
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1
Breakfast with the Puddings
What Homer Pudding didn’t know on that breezy Sunday morning, as he carried a pail of fresh goat milk across the yard, was that his life was about to change.
In a big way.
What he did know was this: That the country sky was its usual eggshell blue, that the air was its usual springtime fresh, and that his chores were their usual boring, boring, boring.
For how exciting can it be cleaning up after goats? And that’s what Homer had done for most of his twelve years. Each year his chore list grew longer, taking more time away from the thing that he’d rather do. The one thing. The only thing. But it was not playing football, or riding a bike. Not swimming, or fishing, or building a fort.
If he didn’t have to rake goat poop, or change straw bedding, or chase goats out of the flower bed, Homer Winslow Pudding would have more time to dream about the day when he’d become a famous treasure hunter like his uncle.
“Daydreaming doesn’t have any place on a farm,” his father often told him. “There’s too much work to be done.”
But Homer dreamed anyway.
Mrs. Pudding waved from the kitchen window. She needed the milk for her morning coffee. Homer picked up his pace, his rubber boots kicking up fallen cherry blossoms. As he stumbled across a gnarled root, a white wave splashed over the side of the bucket. Warm goat milk ran down his sleeve and dribbled onto the grass where it was quickly lapped up by the farm’s border collies.
“Careful there,” Mr. Pudding called as he strode up the driveway, gravel crunching beneath his heavy work boots. He tucked the Sunday newspaper under his arm. “Your mother will be right disappointed if she don’t get her milk.”
Homer almost fell over, his legs tangled in a mass of licking dogs. “Go on,” he said. The dogs obeyed. The big one, named Max, scratched at a flea that was doing morning calisthenics on his neck. Max was a working dog, like the others, trained to herd the Puddings’ goats. He even worked on Sundays while city dogs slept in or went on picnics. Every day is a workday on a farm.
And that’s where this story begins—on the Pudding Goat Farm. A prettier place you’d be hard pressed to find. If you perched at the top of one of the cherry trees you’d see a big barn that sagged in the middle as if a giant had sat on it, a little farmhouse built from river rocks, and an old red truck. Look farther and you’d see an endless tapestry of rolling hills, each painted a different hue of spring green. “Heaven on earth,” Mrs. Pudding often said. Homer didn’t agree. Surely in heaven there wouldn’t be so many things to fix and clean and haul.
The dogs stayed outside while Mr. Pudding and Homer slipped off their boots and went into the kitchen. Because the Pudding family always ate breakfast together at the kitchen table, it was the perfect place to share news and ask questions like, Whatcha gonna do at school today? or Who’s gonna take a bath tonight? or Why is that dead squirrel lying on the table?
“Because I’m gonna stuff it.”
“Gwendolyn Maybel Pudding. How many times have I told you not to put dead things on the kitchen table?” Mr. Pudding asked as he hung his cap on a hook.
“I don’t know,” Gwendolyn grumbled, tossing her long brown hair.
Homer set the milk pail on the counter, then washed his hands at the sink. His little brother, who everybody called Squeak, but whose legal name was Pip, tugged at Homer’s pant leg. “Hi, Homer.”
Homer looked down at the wide-eyed, freckled face. “Hi, Squeak,” he said, patting his brother’s head. Squeak may have been too young to understand Homer’s dreams, but he was always happy to listen to stories about sunken pirate ships or lost civilizations.
“Get that squirrel off the table,” Mr. Pudding said, also washing his hands at the sink.
Gwendolyn picked up the squirrel by its tail. The stiff body swung back and forth like the arm of a silent metronome. “I don’t see why it’s such a problem.”
“It’s dead, that’s why it’s a problem. I eat on that table so I don’t want dead things lying on it.”
Confrontations between Gwendolyn and Mr. Pudding had become a daily event in the Pudding household, ever since last summer when Gwendolyn had turned fifteen and had gotten all moody. In the same breath she might laugh, then burst into tears, then sink into a brooding silence. She befuddled Homer. But most girls befuddled Homer.
He took his usual seat at the end of the pine plank table, hoping that the argument wouldn’t last too long. He wanted to finish his chores so he could get back to reading his new map. It had arrived yesterday in a cardboard tube from the Map of the Month Club, a Christmas gift from Uncle Drake. Homer had stayed up late studying the map, but as every clever treasure hunter knows, a map can be read a thousand times and still hide secrets. He’d studied an Incan temple map eighty-two times before discovering the hidden passage below the temple’s well. “Excellent job,” his uncle Drake had said. “I would never have found that at your age. You’re a natural born treasure hunter.”
But the new map would have to wait because the morning argument was just gathering steam. Clutching the squirrel, Gwendolyn peered over the table’s edge. It wasn’t that she was short. It was just that she almost always sat slumped real low in her chair, like a melted person, and all anyone saw during meals was the top of her head. “You eat dead things all the time and you eat them on this table so I don’t see the difference.” She glared at her father.
“Now Gwendolyn, if you’re going to talk back to your father, please wait until we’ve finished eating,” Mrs. Pudding said. She stood at the stove stirring the porridge. “Let’s try to have breakfast without so much commotion, like a normal family.”
“And without dead squirrels,” Mr. Pudding added, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Or dead frogs, or dead mice, or dead anything.”
“But I’ve got to practice. If I don’t learn how to make dead animals look like they ain’t dead, then how will I get a job as a Royal Taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History?”
“Gwendolyn said ain’t,” Squeak said, climbing next to Homer. “That’s bad.”
Mr. Pudding shook his head—a slow kind of shake that was heavy with worry. “Royal Taxidermist for the Museum of Natural History. What kind of job is that? Way off in The City, with all that noise and pollution. With all that crime and vagrancy. That’s no place for a Pudding.”
“Uncle Drake moved to The City,” Gwendolyn said, emphasizing her point with a dramatic sweep of the squirrel. “And he’s doing right fine.”
“How do you know?” Mr. Pudding asked with a scowl. “We don’t even know where he lives in The City. All he’s given us is a post office box for an address. And we haven’t heard a word from him since his last visit. Not a letter. Not a postcard. What makes you think he’s doing right fine?”
“No news is good news,” Mrs. Pudding said. She set bowls of porridge in front of Mr. Pudding and Squeak, then set a bowl for Gwendolyn. “Now stop arguing, you two, and eat your breakfast. And put away that squirrel.”
Gwendolyn stomped her foot, then tucked the squirrel under her chair
.
As Mr. Pudding stirred his porridge, steam rose from the bowl and danced beneath his chin. “I told him not to go. The City’s no place for a Pudding. That’s what I told him. But he said he had important matters to tend to. Said he had to find out about that pirate, Stinky somebody or other.”
“Rumpold Smeller,” Homer corrected, suddenly interested in the conversation. “Duke Rumpold Smeller of Estonia became a very famous pirate. His treasure has never been found. Uncle Drake wants to be the first person to find it.”
Mr. Pudding groaned. Gwendolyn rolled her eyes.
“Eat your porridge, Homer,” Mrs. Pudding said, setting an overflowing bowl in front of him. Then she planted a smooch on the top of his curly-haired head.
Mr. Pudding motioned to his wife. Though she bent close to him and though he whispered in her ear, everyone at the table could hear. “Why’d you give him so much? Don’t you think he’s getting kind of… chunky?”
She put her hands on her hips. “He’s a growing boy. He needs to eat.” Then she smiled sweetly at Homer.
Now, Mrs. Pudding loved all three of her children equally, like any good mother. But love can be expressed in different ways. For instance, Mrs. Pudding knew that her eldest child had a mind of her own, so she gave Gwendolyn lots of room to be an individual. Mrs. Pudding knew that her youngest child wanted to be helpful, so she gave Squeak lots of encouragement and praise. And Mrs. Pudding knew, and it broke her heart to know, that her middle child was friendless, so she gave Homer extra helpings of food and more kisses than anyone else in the house.
“Growing boy,” Mr. Pudding grumbled. “How’s he ever gonna fit in if he can’t run as fast as the other boys? If all he talks about is treasure hunting? It’s my brother’s fault, filling his head with all that nonsense.”
It’s not nonsense, Homer thought, shoveling porridge into his mouth. So what if he didn’t fit in with the other boys? All they cared about was fighting and getting into trouble. He pulled the bowl closer. And so what if he was chunky? A true treasure hunter would never pass up the chance to eat a warm breakfast. Near starvation while stranded on a deserted island had forced more than a few treasure hunters to eat their own toes.
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