Welcome to Silver Street Farm (3 page)

“Excuse me,” said Karl. “Do you have any other kinds of milk?”

“What?” said the young man, scowling.

“Milk from — um — other animals.”

“What d’you mean,
other animals
?” the boy said, scowling even more. “Are you making fun of me?”

Just as Karl was wishing that the floor would swallow him up, Mr. Khan himself appeared.

“Ah!” he said kindly, sweeping his grumpy nephew to one side. “Karl! How is your aunt?”

“She’s well, thanks, Mr. Khan.”

“And you were looking for?”

Karl was aware that now everyone in the line was listening to him.

“Sheep’s milk, Mr. Khan,” Karl said in a very small voice, expecting the shopkeeper to burst into laughter or throw him out for being rude.

“Sheep’s milk. Yes,” said Mr. Khan, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “So good for the digestion. Also for complaints of the skin. Your aunt is quite well, I hope?”

For a split second, Karl thought of explaining about the poodle puppies that were really sheep, but it was much easier to just say, “She’s fine, Mr. Khan. Just a bit of eczema.”

“Well, we can’t have that. Please come this way.”

Mr. Khan rummaged around in the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen whitish stuff about the size of a soccer ball.

“Mr. Stephanopolis, may he rest in peace, ordered sheep’s milk every week. I hope your aunt finds it beneficial.”

Back at the apartment, Karl defrosted the milk in the microwave, put some in each of the bottles, and together he and Auntie Nat fed the lambs. Karl showed Auntie how to hold the bottle, just as he’d been taught on a school trip to a farm back in third grade.

The lambs braced their little legs and sucked hard at the teats, their tiny tails wiggling like demented pipe cleaners. When the bottles had been sucked dry, the lambs became sleepy. Auntie Nat picked up Bobo, and Karl took Bitzi onto his lap; the lamb nibbled at his sleeve and closed its eyes with pleasure as he scratched its nubbly little head.

“So cute!” said Auntie Nat, smiling. Karl nodded and smiled back. They
were
cute. They were
gorgeous,
but in a minute he was going to have to tell Auntie Nat that they
weren’t
puppies, and he didn’t know how he was going to do it.

“Karl,” said his auntie, gently stroking a lamb under the chin, “while you are out, I look on Internet. I check pictures of poodles. These are not poodles. These are sheeps.”

Karl sighed.

“Yes, Auntie. I know.”

“You think I am foolish?”

“No, Auntie. You’ve never seen a poodle up close.” said Karl. “And anyway,” he added, “there’s nothing foolish about having a dream.”

While Karl was delving into the freezer with Mr. Khan, Gemma was sweeping fur and fluff from the floor of the vet’s waiting room.

She worked there two evenings a week, mostly cleaning, but sometimes she got to help with the animals.

“Gemma!” Dr. Sweeney stepped into the waiting room. Gemma liked old Dr. Sweeney. Of all the vets, he let her work with the animals the most. He was holding a small basket with five pale blue eggs inside.

“Mrs. Tasker brought them in for me. She knows I like duck eggs,” said Dr. Sweeney. “But, bless her, she’s a bit loopy, and I’m pretty sure they’re rotten. Can you chuck them in the green trash can on your way out?”

“Yes,” Gemma said, “of course.”

“Thanks, Gemma. Next time I have to hold a hamster down, you’re the one I’ll call!” He grinned through his beard and went back to the exam room.

Gemma looked at the eggs. They didn’t look bad. In fact, they looked beautiful, resting in a little nest of snowy feathers. She couldn’t bear to chuck them in the trash can and hear them smash on the bottom. Very carefully, she wrapped the eggs in her sweatshirt and went home.

In the middle of the night, a tiny sound woke Gemma up.

Peep!

Then,
Peep! Peep!

The sounds were coming from under her sweatshirt on the floor. The eggs! She’d been so busy all evening being annoyed by her brother, Lee, that she’d forgotten all about them.

She got out of bed and, very gently, pulled back the sweatshirt and peered at the eggs. A little flake of shell had fallen from the middle of the biggest one, and a beak, a patch of pink skin, and some wet yellow fluff showed through the hole. The eggs weren’t rotten — they were just ready to hatch!

“Peep! Peep!” called the duckling from inside.

“Peep!” called another duckling from a different egg. Another flake of shell came off one of the other eggs with a tiny
crack,
and there was such a chorus of peeping that Gemma couldn’t tell which eggs were talking and which weren’t. Very gently, she lifted one to her ear and listened. Up against her ear she could hear little tapping sounds as the duckling’s beak worked at the inside of its shelly prison.

“Hello!” she whispered.

“Peep!” the duckling answered softly. Gemma was so surprised that she almost dropped the egg. She tried again, a little louder this time.

“Hello!” she said.

“Peep!” replied the duckling.

Gemma spoke to the other eggs one by one, until she’d had a little conversation with all five of them. Then she sat with the basket on her lap and watched as more and more flakes of shell fell off. One of the eggs split right around the middle! The duckling inside slowly pushed the two halves apart and then struggled up on its leathery webbed feet. It shook its beak and looked right at her with its bright, dark eyes.

“Hello, duckling!” said Gemma.

“Peep, peep,” said the duckling. It was wet and bedraggled looking, and Gemma realized that it would soon get very cold if it didn’t dry out. She got a cardboard box down from her closet, lined it with old newspapers, and put her desk lamp on the floor so that its warm bulb could shine inside the box and heat up the air.

By the time she got back to the ducklings, the first one had four little damp companions! She put them all inside the box to get warm, and they peep-peeped anxiously.

“Hush, ducklings!” Gemma soothed, and as she spoke to them, they settled down. The ducklings all sat on their feet and closed their eyes in the warmth of the lamp, like sunbathers. Soon they were drying out and becoming as yellow and fluffy as ducklings on an Easter card.

Gemma knew that newly hatched chicks didn’t need to eat or drink for a few hours, so she didn’t need to worry about feeding them until the morning. She pulled the box and lamp close to her bed so she could check on the ducklings and speak to them in the night. Then she fell back into bed.

“Night, night, Silver Street Ducks,” Gemma whispered sleepily as she closed her eyes.

“Peep, peep, peep, peep,” the ducklings whispered back.

The next morning, Meera ran all the way to the park, where she was meeting Karl, Gemma, and the very first Silver Street livestock. Karl was already there with the lambs. They were wearing leashes and looked
a lot
like puppies.

“I had to carry them some of the way,” said Karl, “but they don’t seem to mind the collars and leashes at all.”

Gemma arrived a few moments later with the ducklings tucked up in the hem of her T-shirt.

“They won’t let me out of their sight,” she said with a giggle. “I had to take them in the shower with me this morning!”

The children sat on the grass while the ducklings waddled around between their legs and the lambs took turns nibbling their hair and butting them playfully. It was hard to stop smiling and concentrate.

“The problem is,” Gemma said, “Mom says I can’t keep the ducklings. I’ve got to find them a home by the end of the week.”

“Yeah,” said Karl. “Now that Auntie Nat knows they’re sheep, she doesn’t really want them in the apartment. You can’t housebreak lambs. The whole place smells of sheep poop!”

“We need Silver Street right
now
!” Gemma said.

“But it could take months or even years to persuade the city council that a city farm is a good idea,” said Karl, taking his hair out of Bobo’s mouth.

“Hmmm,” said Meera thoughtfully. “What we need is publicity.”

“Yes!” said Karl. “If we get everybody in Lonchester on our side, then the city council would
have
to give us Silver Street.”

“Cosmic TV!” said Gemma. “They’re always asking for community stories.”

Meera jumped up. “And these are
brilliant
stories . . . the great poodle-lamb swindle and the rotten eggs that turned into ducklings! Come on, if we walk across the park now, we might be in time for their morning news.”

Sashi, the young reporter at Cosmic TV, was delighted. It was the best story they’d had in months, she said. Within five minutes, the children and the animals were lined up in the studio. It wasn’t much more than a broom closet with lights, but it didn’t matter. Meera and Karl held a lamb each, and the five ducklings popped their heads out of Gemma’s T-shirt.

“Looks good!” said Stewy the cameraman, peering through his dreadlocks with a grin. “Looks really
, really
good!”

“If we get this right,” said Meera, “the city council should give us Silver Street Farm tied up with a ribbon!”

“OK, everybody!” said Sashi. “On air in five, four . . .” she counted the last three seconds with her fingers.

A little red light lit up on Stewy’s camera.

Sashi smiled into the camera and began to speak: “Three Lonchester children have big plans to make the derelict station at Silver Street into Lonchester’s first city farm,” she told the camera. “The city council may have other plans for the old station, but two extraordinary twists of fate have given the children a head start with
their
plans and provided them with their first farm animals!”

Then Sashi asked Karl about the poodle-lambs and how Auntie Nat had been tricked, while he and Meera fed the lambs with a bottle. Sashi asked Gemma about the “rotten” eggs that the vet was going to throw out, which had hatched into ducklings, while Gemma held a duckling and stroked its fluffy yellow head.

Then Sashi turned to Meera. “Why do you want to make Silver Street Station into a city farm?” she asked.

For a moment, Meera’s head swam with all the dreams and plans that she and Gemma and Karl had made since they were small. Then, suddenly, she knew just what to say.