The Binkle and the Catawampus Compass (Binkles and Magic)

The Binkle and the Catawampus Compass

Faith Lynella

The Binkle and the Catawampus Compass

Faith Lynella (1944)

Also published as Dr. Lynella Grant and Lynella Faith Grant

Book 1 of The Binkle and Magic series

Digital versions - Copyright © Off the Page Press, 2012

ISBN-13:   978-188739602     ISBN-10  1-888739-63-0

Soft-cover version, © 2008

ISBN-13:  978-1888739633    ISBN-10 1888739630 

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of  this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. Reviewers may quote brief passages to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the World Wide Web.

Publisher: Waltzing Words, an imprint of Off the Page Press

100 Conway Street

Greenfield, MA 01301

(719) 359-5575 

“Binkle” is a registered trademark and copyright belonging to The Binkle Foundation, Lynella Grant, and Off the Page Press

Website:   
http://www.catawampuscompass.com
 

Contents

Before You Start

Chapter 1
~ Over the Edge...                                               

Chapter 2
~ It Was a Cold and Windy Night              

Chapter 3
~ Life Beneath the Oak Trees                      

Chapter 4
~
Time Stands Still for a While

Chapter 5
~ Inside the Chamber of Ancient Wisdom                

Chapter 6
~ Jeep Discovers You
Can
Go Home Again              

Chapter 7
~ Ask Not for Whom the Bully Waits                       

Chapter 8
~ Laughter at the Zoo                                                        

Chapter 9
~ The Return to Grikkl’s World                                 

Chapter 10
~ Beware the Face of Evil                                 

Chapter 11
~ Sealing the Rift                                              

Chapter 12
~ The Disturbing Visit to Elkhorn                     

Chapter 13
~ High-Stakes Negotiations                                     

Chapter 14
~ The Truffle Disaster                                              

Chapter 15
~ Detective Work at Elkhorn                                   

Chapter 16
~ The Daring Rescue Attempt                                  

Chapter 17
~ The Truffle Secret Revealed                                 

Chapter 18
~ A Magical Tea Party

 
End

Dedication

TO EVERY LIBRARIAN

who ever encouraged a child to fall in love with reading

TO THE POWER OF THE BINKLE

May binkle power brighten the lives and deeds of everyone who knows about them

TO YOU, THE READER

I hereby bestow a bucket of binkles upon you and all you love

BEFORE YOU START—

A puzzle for you to solve

Jeep, the main character, likes to read whenever he gets a chance. Because he loves reading so much, he notices when what happens to him resembles adventures or characters from favorite stories.

“
Allusions
” is a big word meaning that one thing refers to something different. Like saying “a person’s nose is growing” could indicate lying or Pinocchio. Or saying “The sky is falling” refers to Chicken Little.

Throughout the book, Jeep makes allusions to well-known books or characters he’s read about. See if you can spot some of them. Think of finding allusions like an Easter egg hunt.

At the back of the book you’ll find a list of allusions. But it is not complete. I’m sure you’ve found others that I missed. Looking for allusions as you read makes it more interesting—like a treasure hunt. It helps you spot connections beyond the words.

Watch for allusions in life too. As a reader, you’ll see them everywhere!

Chapter 1—

OVER THE EDGE

WHAM!

CRASH!

SMASH! The sound was followed by the scraping of loose rocks, which picked up speed as they tumbled downward.

 “Uggg... Aaaggggggg...” was accompanied by more crashing and scraping noises... Punctuated more than once by the splintering of branches. Then more falling rocks and tree limbs clattering to the bottom.

THUD! OOMP!  “Urrrrrrgg...” was followed by indistinct crashing, breaking branches and scraping pebbles... The hubbub echoed from all directions.

SLAM! Then total silence—except for the pebbles that continued to rain down on the fallen body.

The whole unsavory incident happened quickly. In no more than half a minute it was over. (Though the flattened tumbler probably felt as though the fall was going on forever.) Not that you could ask him—he was dead to the world.

~~~

Rolling the scene backwards: one moment the soon-to-be-flattened person was balanced much too precariously on the unstable edge of a steep cliff. The next moment he lost his teetering balance. His efforts to snatch a branch and save himself only hastened the inevitable. Then the ill-fated fellow’s inert body rolled, bounced, and bumped against a blur of branches as it plummeted to the earth below.

It slammed into every rock or tree big enough to have broken the fall. None of them did. Somewhere on his tumble he got himself knocked out cold. 

~~~

Somewhat later, that unfortunate pile of flesh woke up in a thorny thicket in the dark of night. His first thought was “
Owwwww!”
That was his second and third thoughts, as well. In fact, that very thought wasn’t far from his mind for days.

The banged-up body hurt in places the guy never had reason to notice before. And his spinning head was in no condition to sort out much of anything. He was pitiful—pure and simple.

The battered body belonged to Jeep. And his head-over-heels fall was courtesy of his dog, MeToo. Him and the darned truffles.

Every day after school (where he was in the sixth grade), Jeep “worked” in the large park not far from where he lived. His job was to grow truffles—a fancy type of mushroom. To this day, no one in the world understands how to cultivate truffles  successfully. But his stepfather, Chris, expected to get rich from figuring out exactly how it could be done. Chris had been chasing that dream for years—long before he married Jeep’s mother.

To make Jeep’s job harder, he had to carry out his “farming” in secret—like in a spy movie. Nobody who came to the park gave Jeep a second look—just the way he wanted it. The boy looked ordinary in every way—from his short, curly brown hair, to his downcast eyes, to his ability to fade unnoticed into the background. Nothing about him stood out, making him as good as invisible.

Chris repeatedly warned him to be carefully about being found out. “Secrecy is essential! If anyone finds out we’re actually growing truffles... Well, let’s just say lots of greedy people would stop at nothing to find out what we know.”

Jeep could only look after his truffle patches when the coast was clear. Playing with MeToo provided a good cover. Other times he leaned against a tree, reading some adventure book he always carried along with him. People in the park assumed he was just fooling around—but in truth he was tending to his chores.

At the start of their farming activities, Jeep couldn’t figure out why Chris made so much fuss over truffles. They sure didn’t look like much. The blackish, knobby, mushroom-like fungus grows wild on the roots of oak trees. Specially trained pigs or dogs sniff them out under the ground, so their keepers can carefully dig up the valuable truffles before they can gobble them up.

Chris explained that the truffles’ musky smell drives people mad with romantic desire. Gourmet chefs can’t get enough of them for their la-de-da cooking. And since they aren’t raised like other crops, truffles are rare and ridiculously expensive (even hundreds of dollars a pound!).

Their “farm” was spread all around the park, wherever the full-grown oaks grew. Mostly in out-of-the-way spots. Nobody else had a clue what they were up to. Jeep relied on his compass and his hand-drawn maps to keep track of their underground patches. Many of them were in place for years—with not much to show for it. So far, anyway.

Chris and Jeep often labored late at night in the corner of the basement they grandly called “the laboratory.” Using an old microscope and simple lab tests, they compared countless combinations of soil, fertilizer, and spores (tiny truffle seeds no bigger than dust), as they tried to figure out which worked the best.

It was up to Jeep to keep precise records of all the growth data they collected. So he regularly checked the patches for signs of growth. As with most scientific discoveries, lots of tedious work must happen before discovering just the right “lucky” combination.

Whenever Jeep grumbled about doing so much boring work, Chris would say, “We’re getting nearer all the time. We’ve got to be close to success, we’ve just got to¼”

Still, Jeep wondered,
If we’re so close why aren’t we seeing more truffles?
But he was smart enough to keep such doubts to himself.

Between school, his truffle duties, homework, and so many chores around the house, Jeep hardly found a moment when he could read what he wanted. Yet the drearier his life, the more he counted on adventure stories to transport him to distant places and happier times—where heroes triumphed and magic was real.

~~~

It was already late afternoon when his dog approached him with what appeared to be a large truffle in his mouth.

“Hmmm... Where’d you find that, MeToo?” As Jeep reached for what he was clutching in his jaws, the dog pulled way.

“Hey! Give!” The dog scampered away, leaving Jeep no choice but to follow.

MeToo never looked back or slowed down until he reached a cluster of trees shrouded in shadows. The dog stopped suddenly at the edge of a steep drop-off. Jeep found himself in a gloomy and overgrown place that was totally unfamiliar. A clump of tangled oak roots dangled over the edge.

I don’t remember this place, and I was sure I knew every bit of the park by heart.
He pulled out his ever-handy compass, trying to figure out their location. No dice, he couldn’t get an accurate reading.

“OK, MeToo, let’s have it.” Jeep bent down and patted MeToo as he reached for the truffle. The dog backed away—to the very edge of the overhang.

Jeep smiled his annoyed-but-patient, while reaching again for the truffle yet again. His voice was quiet and slow to calm the excited dog. “C’mon. Good dog! Where’d you find that?”

Expecting to get a hug along with the praise, MeToo eagerly sprang against Jeep’s outstretched right hand. The jolt knocked the compass out of his left hand. Jeep could hear it clatter down the steep incline, gathering speed as it went.

As he looked over the edge, Jeep couldn’t tell where it landed in the hazy shadows.
Phooey! No way I’m leaving that here. Gotta climb down. There’s probably still enough light¼

Jeep spoke as sternly as he knew how to MeToo. “Sit! Wait here! You hear?” The dog wasn’t known for obedience—quite the opposite.

MeToo sat. But his tail end wagged around so hard, it couldn’t be described as sitting still. Jeep turned his back to the dog, hoping the sternness of his voice would restrain MeToo’s urge to follow.