Escape from Silver Street Farm Read online

  Meera knew the city well and she led Gemma through every shortcut possible. Pedaling furiously with their heads bent against the wind, the two girls raced into the parking lot nearest the dam just as Officer Worthing and her partner arrived in their police car. No one wasted time saying hello.

  “I’ve brought some rope,” said Officer Worthing. “I thought it might be useful.”

  “The gate to the bank’s locked so you can’t drive to the dam,” said Gemma.

  “We’ll take the rope on the bikes,” Meera told Officer Worthing. “Then you can catch up.”

  Seconds later, the girls each had a rope slung around their shoulders and were cycling down the towpath. As they rounded the last bend, where the canal joined the river and the water tumbled over the dam and down toward the sea, they saw the bouncy castle.

  It was rather deflated but still afloat and turning around and around in the wind, looking like a cross between a soggy cake and a merry-go-round. In the middle, huddled in a heap between the checkered legs of an inflatable clown, were all ten turkeys, too tired now to make even the faintest gobbling sound. As the girls watched, the wind gusted and the castle picked up speed. In just a few moments, it would go over the dam and tip its feathery passengers into the white water!

  “We need to get a rope around it somehow,” said Meera desperately.

  “That tree!” said Gemma, pointing to a huge old willow. “If we climb it, we can loop the rope around the clown as the castle goes past.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?” growled Meera. “I’m no good at climbing.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” said Gemma. She dropped her bike and ran toward the tree. “Come on, Meera!” she shouted.

  The wind had dropped a little, so the castle wasn’t moving quite as fast, but they still had very little time. Gemma quickly swung herself up into the old willow and began to squirm like a wriggling caterpillar along the branch that stuck out over the water.

  “Hurry up, Meera!” she called.

  “I’m not an acrobat like you!” Meera grumbled.

  “Get on that low branch there,” Gemma said. “Then I’ll throw the rope to you through the clown’s legs.”

  Meera didn’t say anything. Gemma made it sound so easy, but even getting onto the “low” branch took all of Meera’s courage. And to catch the rope, she would have to let go of the tree.

  “Hurry, Meera!” Gemma’s voice was high and urgent. The bouncy castle waltzed closer, and the sound of the dam roared in Meera’s ears.

  “Now!” Gemma yelled, and threw the rope.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion. The rope slowly uncoiled against the white winter sky. It passed under the arch of the clown’s legs and headed down, down toward Meera’s outstretched hand. But at the last second, the wind picked up and cruelly jerked the rope aside. Meera could see that if she missed it, they were lost; the turkeys would be drowned, and the Silver Street Grand Christmas Opening would be a dismal failure. Nimbly as a trapeze artist, she crooked her legs over the branch and dropped upside down to hook the rope with the tip of her finger.

  Time returned to its normal pace.

  “Meera!” Gemma called excitedly. “That was amazing!”

  It didn’t feel amazing. It felt absolutely horrible to be hanging upside down by her legs, Meera decided.

  “Gemma!” she wailed. “Can you help me get down?”

  Officer Worthing and her rather worried-looking partner, Officer Owen, having finally opened the gate, came bumping along the bank in their police car as Gemma was helping Meera untangle herself from the tree branch. They helped the girls haul the bouncy castle to the bank and up onto dry land. The turkeys stayed sitting in a heap and allowed themselves to be picked up like so many soft, feathery cushions.

  “Seasick, by the looks of it,” said Officer Worthing.

  “Well, they’d better not throw up or do anything else in the back of our car!” said Officer Owen as they bundled the tired turkeys into the police car, ready for their journey home.

  But as they lifted the last of the turkeys, everyone froze. They gasped in astonishment, hardly able to believe their eyes. At the bottom of the turkey pile, warm as an egg under a chicken and fast asleep, was a baby.

  Nobody minded about the chaos caused by the sheep in the supermarket. The manager even insisted on having his photo taken with Kenny and his two “girls,” and the supermarket staff promised to sponsor Kenny’s food for a year! The whole city seemed to think that it was a big Christmas love story. Rockin’ Roland Rogers covered it on his afternoon show.

  “Kenny the romantic ram crossed the city to find his true loves!” Lonchester’s most famous DJ told his listeners.

  In fact, Kenny’s handsome face was all set to be front-page news until the story of the Great Turkey Baby Rescue broke.

  “Baby Saved by Runaway Turkeys,” said the Lonchester Herald.

  “Silver Street Turkeys Save the Day,” said the City Gazette.

  “Trapeze Girl and Turkeys Save Baby from Drowning,” said the Daily Post.

  “Turkeys Keep Baby from Getting Stuffed!” said the Lonchester Sun.

  Once again, Silver Street Farm was big news. Flora’s office was full of reporters and cameramen, all wanting to talk to the children and take pictures of the turkeys, which were now safely back in their pen. Flora was delighted and handed out leaflets to every radio, TV, and newspaper reporter she could find, inviting them all to the grand opening on Christmas Eve.

  “This is fantastic!” she said to the children. “Who would have thought the day would end like this?”

  “Well, yes,” said Gemma doubtfully. “But I still don’t understand what really happened.”

  “Well,” said Stewy, the cameraman from Cosmic TV who was an old friend of Silver Street, “Sashi knows the story, don’t you, Sash?”

  Sashi, the Cosmic TV reporter and another old friend, beamed at the children.

  “I do!” she said. “And what a story! A bouncy castle in a backyard ten miles away from the city was caught in a freak gale. It blew three miles into another yard and knocked over a stroller. The baby fell out of the stroller and onto the castle. And the castle blew into the canal. The baby’s mom had just dashed indoors to get her purse, and when she came out again, the stroller was tipped up and the baby was missing. She didn’t see the castle because the wind had already blown it down the canal. No one put the missing baby and the missing castle together, so no one knew where the baby had gone.”

  “But what about the turkeys?” asked Meera.

  “That’s the easy part, isn’t it?” said Sashi. “The bouncy castle got blown past your place just when the turkeys were flying over the fence.”

  “But I thought only wild turkeys could fly,” said Karl.

  “Maybe these turkeys are wilder than you thought,” said Sashi. “Or maybe,” she suggested, glancing at Buster, who was busy with some sandwich crumbs under Flora’s desk, “something scared them.”

  The children still looked as if someone had told them that one and one no longer added up to two but made three and a half instead.

  Sashi laughed. “You should see your faces,” she said. “Haven’t you three realized yet? This is just the kind of stuff that happens at Silver Street! It’s going to keep Cosmic TV in stories for the rest of my career!”

  Flora was also more than happy to accept the series of bizarre coincidences that had filled the day. “The really important part,” she said, “is that without our turkeys cozied up to his tiny body, that baby would have frozen to death. Our birds saved that baby’s life! I’ve invited him and his parents to our grand opening. It’s all good for Silver Street!”

  At last, the news people left and the Silver Street crew had some time to themselves. Flora put the kettle on for tea, and they all sat around eating toast and cookies, and talking.

  “Well,” said Karl, through a mouthful of toast and butter, “if the turkeys can fly over the fence, then we need to make the fe
nce higher.”

  “Or we need to make sure that nothing scares them,” said Flora, giving Buster a disapproving look.

  “You’re forgetting what me and Meera found,” said Gemma. “The hole in the fence and the hidden tunnel. We think someone’s planning to steal our turkeys!”

  “Maybe they’ve been planning to do it at night,” Meera added, “when the turkeys are asleep and easy to catch.”

  “And there are just two nights left before Chistmas dinner,” said Gemma.

  “So we should keep watch all night tonight and tomorrow!” said Meera excitedly.

  “Good plan!” agreed Karl.

  “No,” said Flora, groaning.

  “Please,” said the children.

  “Och,” Flora said with a smile. “Go and call your parents, or they’ll think I’ve kidnapped you all.”

  The wind that had caused so much trouble that day had died away, leaving a clear sky. There were no streetlights at the old station, so Silver Street sat in a pool of moonlight.

  From the window of the old waiting room, there was a clear view down into the turkey’s pen, which was striped with silver light and black shadows. In the pen next door, Kenny posed in the light of the moon; he was much happier outside. Bitzi and Bobo were snuggled into the straw a few feet from the watchers, wondering why the humans were in their stall. A few of the bantams, who preferred sleeping with the sheep to sleeping with the other chickens, were perched on the old luggage racks, their feathers ruffled out against the cold.

  “What time is it?” whispered Meera.

  “Half past midnight,” said Karl with a yawn.

  In the nest of bales under the window, Flora snuffled in her sleep.

  “She’s knocked out,” said Gemma. “You could tell us about her Christmas present now, Meera.”

  “OK,” whispered Meera. “Well, my uncle Sanjay —”

  But, once again, Meera was interrupted.

  “Shhhh!” hissed Karl. “Look!”

  Somebody was crouching at the end of the grass tunnel and opening the hidden wire gate into the turkey’s pen. The children withdrew into the deep shadow beside the window and waited.

  Two very small figures wriggled through the fence and climbed up the ramp to the stall next door, where the turkeys were shut in at night. The children could no longer see the intruders from the window, but they could hear the sound of a bolt being carefully drawn back. A moment later, flashlight shone through the cracks in the boards that separated the sheep’s quarters from the turkeys’. Quiet as ghosts, the children crept across to the wall so they could spy on the turkey rustlers.

  The flashlight showed two boys. One was very small and one a little bigger, and both had the same button noses and straight-set mouths. The children recognized them at once. The boys had belonged to a group from the youth club run by Sergeant Short. He’d brought them for a visit to Silver Street a month ago. Meera remembered how the button-nosed brothers had asked a lot of questions about turkeys.

  The bigger boy was inspecting the turkeys as they perched in a line with their heads under their wings, fast asleep. Very gently, he stroked their backs and the feathers on their chests, then finally returned to the third one in the row.

  “I think that one’s the biggest,” said the older boy. “Get the bag ready, Squirt.”

  The smaller boy unfolded a large sack and held it open.

  “Won’t the turkey wake up, Bish Bosh?” he asked his older brother.

  “Not after I’ve stretched its neck!” said Bish Bosh.

  “What?” Squirt’s little voice piped higher in shock. “You’re going to kill it?”

  “Well, it can’t be alive when we eat it, Squirt.”

  Squirt’s head dropped to his chest, and he began to cry. Bish Bosh sighed, bent down, and put his arm around his little brother.

  “What did you think we did all this for?” he asked gently.

  Squirt just shook his head.

  “I thought we were taking one to be my pet!” he wailed.

  “Shh,” said Bish Bosh. “Somebody’ll hear us!”

  But it was too late — somebody had. Flora woke up suddenly and shouted, “Wassthat?” loudly enough to be heard halfway across the city.

  “Run!” Bish Bosh told Squirt.

  Meera, Karl, and Gemma dashed out of the sheep stall to give chase. The turkey rustlers had a crucial two second head start, but in their panic they went down the wrong ramp. Instead of running into the turkey pen, with its door to freedom, the boys ran into the sheep pen, where Kenny was pacing about in the frost.

  As far as Kenny was concerned, these were two more flighty young creatures that needed a lesson. Like a Spanish bull, he put his head down and charged.

  Bish Bosh heard the hooves on the frosty ground and saw Kenny. He scooped up Squirt and boosted him to safety on the duck-house roof, then, just in time, scrambled up after him. The turkey rustlers were trapped.

  Squirt and Bish Bosh were far too little to be allowed to find their own way home in the middle of the night, Flora said. But, since the boys wouldn’t tell her anything about where they lived or who their parents might be, she called the police.

  Sergeant Short, who had just come back on duty, seemed to know exactly who Squirt and Bish Bosh were and came himself in a squad car to take them home.

  The moon was still shining when Flora got up the next morning. Frost sparkled everywhere in the last of the moonlight and the first glow of dawn. It was going to be a perfect day.

  She let the sheep and the ducks and the turkeys out and gave them their breakfast. The goats didn’t need milking in the morning at this time of year, so she let them wander out, too. Then she took Flinty and Buster to wake the sleepy children, who had spent what was left of the night on the three old sofas in the office. With a combination of nose licking and jumping on heads, the dogs had soon woken them up.

  “Come on,” Flora said. “You never get the chance to see the dawn on your farm, because you don’t live here. Come and look.”

  She led Meera, Gemma, and Karl across the yard and up to the old signal box, where the chickens were clucking to be let out. She ran up the steps to open the door, and the bantams fluttered down in a feathery fall while the big hens jumped down the steps.

  “Now,” said Flora, “come up here.”

  The children climbed the steps to the signal box, and they all looked out from the top, over the whole of Silver Street Farm.

  Flora’s timing was perfect. Behind them, the sun tipped over the lip of the city and flooded the whole of the old station with golden light. All the animals and birds in their neat pens were laid out below them like a toy farm. In the rich morning light, the colors glowed. The creamy white of the sheeps’ fleece turned gold, while the turkeys shone like copper, their red wattles as bright as holly berries. Flinty’s black-and-white fur looked painted as she practiced her chicken herding. Buster’s black coat gleamed like polished wood. Even the browns and grays and reds of the goats and chickens looked like silk embroidery.

  “Wow!” Karl breathed.

  “Yeah!” Gemma said. “Wow!”

  Meera hugged Flora. “You did this!” she said.

  “I did not!” exclaimed Flora, leaning down a little to look intently into all their faces. “You three imagined your city farm, and you kept imagining it, and that’s what did it.”

  They were all quiet for a moment as they looked at the scene.

  Then Flora said quietly and almost to herself, “This is just the start. Next year, a cow, maybe. And pigs. Oh, pigs would be nice!”

  As Flora stared dreamily into the distance, Gemma noticed that Meera was smiling rather knowingly to herself.

  “What?” Gemma mouthed at her silently.

  “Tell you later,” Meera mouthed back.

  That was the last quiet moment of the day. The official grand opening was at three p.m., and there was still lots to do. Flora got busy finishing off the special Christmas goats’ milk cheeses she’d b
een making. This left the children free to get on with the Christmas decorations: streamers made from the ivy that grew on most of the buildings, feathers painted gold, and little wooden chicken shapes that Karl had been secretly making all semester in wood shop.

  Finally Meera had the chance to tell Karl and Gemma about Flora’s two special Christmas presents.

  “Uncle Sanjay’s bringing them tonight,” said Meera.

  “Right,” said Karl. “We’d better get to work. They’ll need somewhere to live.”

  So, while Flora was safely out of the way in the dairy, the three friends spent the rest of the morning clearing trash and weeds from the old brick toolshed and its little yard.

  “If Flora asks what we’re doing, we can just say that we wanted it to look tidy for opening day,” said Gemma.

  “Yeah,” said Karl. “She won’t notice the feed and water buckets tucked behind the wall!”

  At lunchtime, other helpers began to arrive with all sorts of contributions for the grand opening. Auntie Nat had used Silver Street eggs to make lots of beautiful golden challah bread, and Meera’s mom had made Indian sweets — jalebi, gajar halwa, and singori. The food looked like plates of jewels.

  “Next year when I make these,” Meera’s mom said, “maybe I’ll be able to do it with milk from a Silver Street cow, right?”

  Stewy, the cameraman from Cosmic TV, popped in with a huge pile of little green fritters. “I’ll be back later to do a report, but I wanted to help out, too,” he said. “These are Jamaican callaloo fritters. My mom taught me how to cook them.”

  At last, Flora emerged from the dairy with a tray of tiny round cheeses, each one decorated with a nettle leaf and tied with a band of red ribbon, and arranged them with the rest of the goodies. The tables in the office — made from two old doors balanced on trestles — were now covered in dishes of yummy party food.

  “It looks gorgeous!” said Flora.

  At half past two, Sergeant Short turned up. The children almost didn’t recognize him out of uniform. He’d brought a large Christmas cake and two surprise guests: Bish Bosh and Squirt. The brothers were both freshly scrubbed and looked nervous.