Fortune's Magic Farm (2 page)

The sea monster took a great breath, then sneezed. The force of the sneeze knocked Isabelle sideways. Slime shot out the end of the dangly nose and landed in Isabelle’s short hair. Disgusting! “Cover your nose when you sneeze,” Grandma Maxine always said. But Isabelle wasn’t about to correct a sea monster’s manners.

“You can sneeze on me as much as you’d like. Just please don’t eat me.” She pulled on her hood as the creature took another breath and sneezed again. This time, something else flew out of its nose and landed with a
thunk
in Isabelle’s lap.

The creature tapped its flipper impatiently and grunted, as if waiting for something. The rain beat harder. Isabelle peered out from under her hood. She didn’t know what to do. What could it possibly be waiting for?

“Bless you?” she whispered.

It continued to stare.

“Bless you two times?”

The nose reached forward and pointed at Isabelle’s lap. She grimaced, expecting to find a giant booger, but found, instead, a slime-covered red apple.

A real, honest-to-goodness apple.

No apples grew in Runny Cove or in the wetlands that lay outside the village. Apples occasionally showed up at the factory’s grocery store, but only Mr. Supreme’s assistants could afford to buy them. Isabelle had never tasted one. She had never even held one. She picked it up. It would cost an entire day’s wages to buy one half the size. The sea monster grunted again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Here.” She held it out. Should she stick the apple back up its nose?

To her amazement, the sea monster shook its head.

“Don’t you want it back?”

It shook its head again. Then, with a roar that vibrated Isabelle’s teeth, it turned and made its way back to the water. It hadn’t eaten her. It hadn’t flattened her. It had only
sneezed on her. “THANK YOU!” she yelled, waving the apple.

It turned and nodded, its nose bouncing up and down. Then, it swam out of sight.

“Wow,” Isabelle whispered.

Other than being left on a doorstep, that was the most special thing that had ever happened to Isabelle. Even though slime coated her hair and face, and even though she had been scared half to death, she smiled. Gwen would never believe it. Wouldn’t Grandma Maxine be surprised? No one in Runny Cove had ever met a sea monster. No factory worker had ever been given an apple.

She checked to make certain that the water bottle was safe in one pocket and tucked the apple securely into another pocket. Then she climbed onto the driftwood pile and ran back toward the village, feeling extra, extra special.

W
ater sloshed against Isabelle’s boots
as she ran down Boggy Lane. The cobblestone lane dipped into the lowest part of the village, so it was always flooded. As her hood bounced at the back of her neck, rain washed all the sea monster snot from her face and hair.

Old, battered boardinghouses lined Boggy Lane. Lights glowed from kitchen windows. Greasy odors wafted through cracks in the house boards, aggravating Isabelle’s hunger pains. She wondered if the apple would be edible after traveling inside a nose. She plucked it from her pocket and held it beneath a gushing rainspout. Bigger and shinier than any apple in the factory store, she could have eaten it right there, but then she’d have no proof of her adventure. Besides, something that wonderful had to be shared.

Boggy Lane took a sharp turn, then ended at Mama Lu’s Boardinghouse. A vacancy sign swayed in the window, pushed by the wind and rain. No one had moved to Runny Cove for as long as Isabelle could remember, but Mama Lu still insisted on advertising. Isabelle ran up the stone steps and threw herself against the front door, which swelled in particularly nasty weather and needed a good shove to open.

“Yer late!” Mama Lu hollered from the kitchen.

“Sorry,” Isabelle called, closing the door. Of course, she didn’t regret her trip to the beach, not one bit.

The entryway felt chilly, as usual. The sour smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air. A frying pan sat on the floor, collecting water that dripped from a seam in the wall. Isabelle slipped off her boots and placed them neatly at the end of the boot shelf. She removed her rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the other slickers. She decided to leave the filled water bottle in her slicker’s pocket and get it after supper. The apple, however, was another matter. Mama Lu liked to snoop through pockets and while she’d have no interest in a bottle filled with seawater, if she found the apple she’d claim it for herself.

“This house belongs to me,” she often reminded her tenants. “So everything in it belongs to me, too.”

Isabelle tucked the apple into the waistband of her canvas pants. Her flannel shirt, a hand-me-down from another tenant, was four sizes too large, so it did a good job concealing the lump.

“Did ya check fer slugs?” Mama Lu bellowed. The boardinghouse’s proprietor despised slugs. In fact, she hated them so much that the mere act of seeing one drove her into a tizzy. Unfortunately, Runny Cove possessed more slugs than any other place on earth. The little gastropods bred in every damp nook and cranny the village had to offer. They gobbled up anything the villagers tried to grow, leaving trails of slime in their wake. If a slug wanted to move across town, it would attach itself to a boot or pant leg when a villager walked down the street, or drop from an eave to hitchhike on a hood or in someone’s hair. Mama Lu had decreed that
anyone who brought a slug into her house would lose blanket privileges for a month. “Did ya check?”

In all her excitement, Isabelle had forgotten to check. “Yes, I checked,” she lied, quickly sliding her hands through her hair.

“I hate those slimy things,” Mama Lu complained from the kitchen. “I hate their quivery antennas and their squishy bodies.”

Isabelle entered the kitchen, where six tenants sat around a warped table, coughing and wheezing, sharing the same cold. Even though only two of the tenants were related by blood, everyone looked alike. In fact, most of Runny Cove’s villagers shared a similar appearance. Their skin, having never been exposed to the sun, was translucent, and their eyes were light blue. And every hair on every head was gray, even ten-year-old Isabelle’s hair. Some said that the dreary sky had fallen into their hair, but Isabelle’s grandmother said that everyone’s hair was gray because gray is the color of sadness.

In the boardinghouse, only Mama Lu looked different. She dyed her hair with an expensive paste that turned it as black as a beach rock. She had spending money, a luxury none of her tenants had. In exchange for most of their factory pay, the tenants got an uncomfortable twin bed, a cold breakfast, and a lukewarm supper.

Isabelle reached for a tray. “Sit down,” Mama Lu ordered. “Ya can feed yer precious granny when yer done.”

Isabelle squeezed in between Bert and Boris, the elderly
toothless twins who lived in the basement. “Hello, Isabelle,” Bert whispered.

“Hello, Isabelle,” Boris whispered.

“Hello.” She liked to sit between the twins because they didn’t smell too bad, not like Mr. Limewig, who thought that with all the rain, he didn’t need to shower. The other tenants nodded, then, between coughs, slurped their soup. Mama Lu plunked Isabelle’s bowl and soupspoon onto the table.

“Yer a rude one, being so late,” Mama Lu said. “I’ve got better things to do than wait around fer you.”

“Sorry,” Isabelle said, knowing Mama Lu had nothing better to do.

“Sorry,” Mama Lu repeated in a whiny voice. “Sorry don’t mean nothing to my swollen feet.” She pointed to her feet, which were crammed into pink fuzzy slippers. Swollen or not, they sure looked enormous.

Isabelle dipped the wooden spoon into her bowl and sipped. The thin broth, a tasteless brew made from cabbage and carrots, was still a bit warm and it felt good going down. Isabelle would have voluntarily worked dish duty for just a dash of salt, but Mama Lu would let no one touch her salt. She considered salt to be a sacred weapon in her one-woman battle against the slugs of Runny Cove. She always carried a canister in her bathrobe pocket and would pull it out quick-draw style upon spotting a slug. It wasn’t a pretty sight when a slug got salted because the salt sucked all the moisture from the slug’s plump little body,
leaving a puddle of goo. Isabelle hated it when Mama Lu salted slugs.

But that evening, Isabelle wasn’t thinking about slugs.
I found an apple, I found an apple, I found an apple,
she sang in her head.

Mama Lu tossed a basket of rock-hard biscuits onto the table, then went to powder her nose. Isabelle pulled the basket close, took one of the biscuits, and quickly warmed it between her palms. No one understood why, but Isabelle’s hands had always been warmer than everyone else’s hands. She never needed mittens, a luxury that few could afford. In winter, when the rain turned to hail and the front doorknob froze, she simply gripped the knob until it thawed. When her grandmother’s arthritic knee acted up, she wrapped her hands around the knee until the muscle relaxed. But biscuit-warming could only be done in Mama Lu’s absence, so Isabelle hurriedly warmed another and another, passing them down the table.

Mama Lu returned, her nose all powdery, and climbed onto her
observation chair
—a tall chair with ladders on each side that sat at the head of the kitchen table. The mysterious words
LIFEGUARD ON DUTY
had been painted on the back a long time ago. The chair creaked as Mama Lu heaved her large thighs up each rung, pausing halfway to catch her breath. At the top, she adjusted her blue bathrobe, then sat down with a loud “hmphhh.”

From her perch, Mama Lu kept an eye on her tenants in case one of them tried to steal something. Bert had told Isabelle that sitting higher than everyone else made Mama Lu
feel important. Being the only person in Runny Cove found on a doorstep made Isabelle feel important.

“Which one of ya stupid dunderheads is going to bring me my cheese?” Mama Lu asked, her two chins jiggling. “Get a move on. I’m starvin’ to death.”

Isabelle hoped it wasn’t her turn, because if she had to climb that ladder, the apple might slip out from under her waistband. But to her relief, Mrs. Wormbottom climbed the ladder and handed up a platter that held slices of yellow and white cheese, some with holes, some with crusty rinds, and some with specks of blue mold. As Mrs. Wormbottom returned to her bland soup, Mama Lu began feasting.

“Moos gmph sumpin interumbling to smph?” Mama Lu asked with a mouth full of cheese. Even though they couldn’t understand the words, everyone at the table knew the question because every night Mama Lu asked, “Who’s got something interesting to say?” It was a dreaded question. Having something interesting to say was as rare in Runny Cove as an apple. For most of the tenants, each day yielded the exact same events so the days blended together, forming one gigantic blob of
un
interesting. Since Isabelle often managed to find bits of interesting, it usually fell upon her shoulders to answer the dreaded question.

But on this night she held her tongue. No way was she going to tell Mama Lu about the apple.

“Rain came down extra hard today,” Mr. Wormbottom said. “Sprang a leak in my window.”

Mama Lu scowled and pointed a floppy slice of white
cheese at him. “Ya wouldn’t be complaining about yer accommodations, would ya?”

Mrs. Wormbottom gulped. “No, he’s not complaining. Not complaining one bit.”

“I’m just making conversation,” Mr. Wormbottom said. “
Interesting
conversation.”

“Pathetic conversation, that’s what yer making. I don’t want to hear no more about the rain. In fact, anyone who talks about the rain ever again will lose spoon privileges,” she snarled. “One of ya morons better come up with something interesting.”

All eyes turned toward Isabelle.

She sank low on the bench, burying her nose in her soup bowl. No way.

“Don’t anyone got anything to say? Yer the boringest tenants in the whole world. Bunch of dimwits, the whole lot of ya.”

“Got a rock stuck in the heel of my boot on the way home,” Mr. Limewig said, widening his eyes hopefully.

“Rock?” Mama Lu cried. “What’s interesting about a rock?”

“Found a mushroom growing under my bed,” Mrs. Limewig said.

Like slugs, mushrooms cropped up all over Runny Cove—along the road, in ditches, under kitchen sinks. But only Isabelle grew them between her toes and no one knew why. And while most everyone in Runny Cove had to deal with itchy mold patches, Isabelle grew more mold patches
than anyone else. She had a tendency to grow lichen on her scalp, as well.

“Mushroom? There’s nothing interesting about a mushroom.” Mama Lu’s face turned red. “What about you?” She pointed at Isabelle. “Ya always got something to say. Ya think yer so special just because ya got found on a doorstep and the rest of us didn’t.” She shoved two cubes of orange cheese into her mouth. “My yus ya mate?”

Isabelle tried to disappear behind Bert’s damp sleeve.

Mama Lu swallowed. “I said, why was ya late? Was ya playing in the mud again? Making stupid muddy things? Was ya poking around like yer always doing, looking here, looking there? Huh? Where was ya?”