Fortune's Magic Farm (12 page)

Isabelle took a long, last look at her barnacle. “I hope you’ll be happy here,” she whispered. She felt proud and victorious, having saved something from Mama Lu’s stomping feet. Too bad she hadn’t been able to save the others.
Two of us escaped. Take that, Mama Lu!

Something hit the back of Isabelle’s arm.

A marmot sat on a log, a stone’s throw away. It wiggled its black nose and blinked. “Hey,” Isabelle said, rubbing her arm. Another marmot popped out from behind the log and joined
its friend. They greeted one another by touching noses. Then they balanced on their hind legs and stared at Isabelle.

“Go on. Shoo.”

They didn’t shoo. One picked up a rock and threw it at her.

“Ouch!” She rubbed her shoulder. “Stop doing that.” Was she standing near one of their holes? No. But still, they stared. “What do you want?”

The two marmots jumped off the log and scampered up the beach to where a giant tree had fallen. They climbed up the fallen tree’s trunk and chirped, a softer, friendlier sound than the whistle. They stared at her, chirped, stared, chirped—clearly telling her something. Sage was busy with the saddle, so with a shrug, Isabelle approached the tree, shielding her face with her hands in case they took aim again.

Dozens of empty broken crates lay hidden behind the fallen tree. Each had a label that read:
HANDLE WITH CARE. CONTAINS LIVE LABORATORY ANIMALS. SPECIES: YELLOW-BELLIED MARMOT.

The marmots ran along the trunk, then lay on their bellies and hung their heads over a branch. A furry marmot bottom poked out from under the branch. The creature’s little legs kicked frantically but to no avail—it was stuck. The two marmots chirped softly to their trapped friend.

“Poor little thing,” Isabelle said as the legs continued to kick. “I’ll help you.” She crouched next to the wiggling bottom and pulled at the branch with all her might until it snapped off. Branch in hand, she tumbled backwards.

The marmot waddled out and scratched its head with its leg. Except for a small cut above its right eye, it looked unhurt.

Isabelle was about to sit up when the freed marmot climbed onto her chest and sat itself down as if it meant to stay awhile. It leaned forward and peered into her eyes. Isabelle held her breath. Was it going to bite her nose with its buck teeth? It leaned closer 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.

O
nce 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 before them—speckled beach, clay banks, and fir trees as far as the eye could see. Rolo took flight, disappearing over the treetops. The marmot crawled from the kelp shirt and stood on Isabelle’s shoulders, draping her body over Isabelle’s head for a better view. Neptune caught the face of a wave and slid onto the beach.

As soon as the seal came to a complete stop, Isabelle scrambled off his back and carefully meandered between the other seals that mingled at the water’s edge. The marmot scampered up the beach, squatting to pee beside a log.
Thank goodness she didn’t do that in my shirt,
Isabelle thought.

Sage removed the saddle and flung it onto the beach. He patted the seal’s head. “GOOD JOB, NEPTUNE!” The seal nodded, then nose-butted Sage’s legs. Sage shoved back. Neptune followed with a flipper swat, Sage followed with a slap, until the two were playfully punching each other like brothers. The battle ended when Neptune pinned Sage to the ground. “OKAY, OKAY! I GIVE UP!”

Sage scrambled to his feet. “Best say goodbye,” he told Isabelle.

“Neptune’s not coming with us?”

“Of course not. Have you ever heard of an elephant seal climbing a mountain?”

Isabelle didn’t know whether seals climbed mountains or not, but she didn’t say so. She’d never seen a mountain but she didn’t mention that either. Sage would just tell her, again, that she didn’t know anything.

Isabelle knelt in front of Neptune’s thick head and looked into his dark eyes. So much had happened since that night on the beach when she had thought he was a sea monster. “THANK YOU FOR THE RIDE! AND THANKS FOR THE APPLE!”

Neptune roared softly, his fishy breath warming Isabelle’s face. Then he pulled himself back into the depths. His family followed, churning the water like porridge bubbling in a pot.

“Will we see him again?” Isabelle asked. Despite how bad he smelled and how seasick she got when she rode on him, she had come to like the big guy.

“I can’t think why you’d ever see him again. You’ll be living on Fortune’s Farm from now on. No need for you to travel by sea.”

“But what about when I go back to Runny Cove? Will Neptune take me?”

Sage opened the satchel, freeing Eve the cat, who shook herself, then scampered off. “Go back? Why would you ever go back to that stink hole?”

“To get Gwen. She’s an orphan and my best friend. She could come and live on the farm with me.”

Sage straightened his long body and stared down at Isabelle. “I’d get that idea out of my head if I were you. Things don’t work that way.” Before she could say anything, he handed the satchel to her, then hefted the saddle over his shoulder. “Don’t start in with the questions. Let’s just go.”

How could he expect her not to ask questions? That was as ridiculous as expecting a slug not to ooze a trail of slime. Or expecting Mama Lu to bake a birthday cake for someone other than herself. Isabelle tightened her grip on the satchel as she followed Sage up the beach. “Then who is going to answer my questions? That’s what I’d like to know, because I’m still very confused.”

“And I’m
very tired.
I found you, didn’t I? I’m taking you to Fortune’s Farm, aren’t I? All I ask is that you stop asking questions that I’m not supposed to answer. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Fine!”

The late afternoon sky, though cloud-covered, shone brighter than Isabelle was used to. She had taken to squinting since leaving Runny Cove and her cheeks ached because of it.

They walked through a grove of pine trees, passing over a forest floor of dappled shadows and moss. Eve strutted proudly, her tail sticking straight up. While the cat walked a straight, determined path, the marmot zipped up and down, over and under, occasionally stopping to sit on her hind legs and look around.

Isabelle grumbled to herself. She wanted to tell Sage that he was rude, and rotten, and mean for not answering her questions. But each time a question rolled onto her tongue, she clamped her lips tight to keep it from escaping. She’d know
soon enough.

“Here we are,” Sage announced.

They stepped out of the forest and into a little meadow where a wooden caravan sat. It resembled a yellow house on wheels, with windows on the side and a door in back. A creek meandered through the meadow, sparkling as it trickled past.

“What are those?” Isabelle asked, stopping in her tracks.

Two creatures stood beside the creek, their heads bowed as they drank water.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen oxen before,” Sage said, dumping the saddle in the grass.

Okay. I won’t tell you.

Sage knocked on the caravan’s door. “I’m back.” He
opened the door and stuck his head in. Eve leapt into the caravan. Sage cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Walnut! Where are you?” The oxen raised their horned heads but did not offer an answer.

“Who’s Walnut?” Isabelle asked, dropping the heavy satchel.