The Warrior Sheep Down Under (6 page)

The warriors had followed Wills's advice and “gone with the flow.” The banks on either side of the river seemed to flash past in a blur of green, and soon they were a long way downstream from the bungee tower.

“Ohmygrassohmygrassohmypoorpoorhooves…” Jaycey had wailed as she was swept through a series of small, shallow rapids and her dainty hooves scraped the rocks beneath.

A bit farther on, the river began to narrow and the current raced still faster.

“Forget the flow,” Oxo had gurgled, trying to talk without getting his mouth full of water. “Swim!” He turned and paddled as hard as he could.

He had spotted a small bay that had been gouged into the nearest riverbank, and seen that the water in the bay was moving more slowly. He'd also seen that Wills and Jaycey were almost exhausted. He paddled harder and harder, then suddenly felt himself being swirled sideways, out of the current, and into the shallow water of the little bay. Sal was swirled in next, then Links. But Wills and Jaycey were too small and too weak to cross the current. It swept them on, past the little bay, toward the next line of rapids.

“Keep paddling!” Oxo shouted to them, then he threw himself back into the current and surged out to the struggling youngsters. He opened his mouth and picked Wills up by the neck, in the way a cat picks up a kitten. “Got goo,” he grunted through clenched teeth.

Jaycey used her own teeth to hang on to Oxo's tail and he turned and paddled for the bay. Strong though Oxo was, he couldn't have managed if Links hadn't plunged in to help. Between them, they shoved and dragged the exhausted young sheep until the current suddenly released them all and they were able to stagger onto the beach.

“This way, dears,” called Sal from the top of a short, concrete slope. “I think we could all do with a nice rest.”

The slope was a slipway in front of a wooden boathouse. A few rubber rafts had been pulled clear of the water and were tied to metal rings fixed into the slope. Outside the boathouse, there was a rack, neatly stacked with kayaks, and another stacked with paddles. The boathouse door was locked. It was getting late and the humans who worked there had gone home. Only a lone backpacker on the other side of the river saw the bedraggled group of sheep emerge from the water. He whooped with relief, turned, and raced back the way he'd come, back toward the bungee tower to pass on the good news.

The warriors made their way around the side of the boathouse to the grassy bank behind it, led by Oxo's nose.

“All that going with the flow makes you hungry,” he said, ripping up a mouthful of grass.

Sal sat down heavily. “Possibly, dear,” she said. “But my stomachs don't know which way up they are. I'll just sit and think.”

Jaycey and Wills sank to the ground close to Sal, their sides still heaving, their wet fleeces plastered flat against their small bodies.

“Wills, man,” said Links. “You is real skinny.”

Wills didn't answer. He was already fast asleep. Exhausted.

Jaycey's eyes had also closed.

The older sheep munched on, but for only a short while before they too settled down to dream of barns and home…and maidens in distress.

• • •

It was getting on toward bedtime in Australia too, but Tod and Ida were wide awake and thinking of their little flock of rare breed sheep. In fact, they were getting more and more worried about them.

“Is it too early to Skype Auntie Rose?” Tod asked, looking at the clock on Uncle Frank's kitchen wall.

“Well, if it's supper time here in Australia, then it's breakfast time in England,” said Ida. “And no, that's not too early.” She sipped her cocoa. “Tod, why am I drinking this? The weather's far too hot for cocoa.”

“Because it's good for you, Gran,” said Tod. “You need milk to make you grow big and strong. Here, have a dollop of ice cream to cool it down.”

He plopped a scoop of ice cream into his gran's mug of cocoa. “Can we borrow your laptop again, please, Uncle Frank?” he asked.

Frank slid it across the table. “I'm one step ahead of you. There's Rose now. Looking fresh as a dandelion.”

Rose wasn't feeling as fresh as a dandelion, or a daisy or any other sort of flower. She wasn't feeling fresh at all. She hadn't had a good night's sleep for ages. Not since Ida's sheep had disappeared without trace from her field by the sea.

She
had
stopped worrying that they'd fallen into the harbor and drowned. Their bodies would have been found by now. But that was small comfort. Where were they?

The hardest part was knowing what to say to Ida and Tod when they rang and it was even worse when she used the webcam, like she was doing now, so they could see her as well as speak.

“Hello, Tod. Hello, Frank. Hello, Ida,” she shouted at her laptop as soon as she saw them all on her screen. The microphone picked up her voice, and thousands of miles away in Australia, it boomed out of the laptop in her brother Frank's kitchen.

“Hello, Rose,” Ida shouted back. “How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine.” Rose's voice rattled the clock on Frank's kitchen wall.

“Amazing, isn't it?” said Frank. “This technology malarkey.”

“Brilliant,” agreed Tod. “Deafening too.”

“How are our sheep?” Ida was shouting. “Are you going to let us see them at last?”

“Yes,” lied Rose. “I'm taking the laptop out into the field right now.” She did so, carefully, and put it down with the web camera facing the fence. “There you are. Can you see them?”

Ida and Tod peered excitedly at their screen.

“Move the camera, please, Auntie Rose,” said Tod. “We can only see grass.”

“Good,” muttered Rose under her breath. She moved the laptop slightly. “Is that any better?”

Tod and Ida peered again. In the distance, against the fence, they could just about make out a few whitish-brown blobs.

“Can you get a bit closer to them, Rose?” asked Ida. “We can't see them clearly.”

“No,” shouted Rose. “They won't stand still if I get too near.” She waited for a few moments, then shouted again, “That's it. I'm going indoors now. I'm getting cold. It's not eighty degrees here, you know. I'll speak to you again soon. Byee.” And the laptop snapped shut.

“Oh, well,” sighed Ida, as the screen on Frank's laptop went blank. Then, after a moment, she said, “Tod…Did you think the sheep looked a bit…strange?”

Tod shook his head. “No, Gran.”

“No?”

“No. They didn't look like sheep at all.”

• • •

Back across the other side of the world, in the chilly autumn breeze at Murkton-on-Sea, Rose was hurrying across to the fence. She bent down and began to pull sheep from the wire. Five paper cutouts, that is, decorated with felt tip and bits of knitting wool.

Rose sighed deeply. She didn't want to ruin their vacation, but was she doing the right thing by keeping the truth from Tod and Ida?

“Lucky it didn't rain,” she said to the cutout sheep. “But I can't keep this up for much longer. I'm going to have to tell them the truth.”

While Ida sipped her cocoa and ice cream and wondered what was bothering Rose, Tod and Uncle Frank went out to check that all the rescued animals were safely bedded down for the night.

When they'd finished, Tod stood in the yard, staring up at the beautiful star-spangled night sky. He lowered his head slowly, then stood quite still. He was sure he could see a dim light shining from the window at the very top of the Maiden Tower. It darted about like the beam of a torch. Then suddenly vanished. Had he imagined it?

“Get a move on, mate,” said Uncle Frank. “It's a bit late for stargazing.”

Tod suddenly felt silly. He
must
have been seeing things. He followed Uncle Frank back to the kitchen. They were soon talking about the Skype call again.

“Rose was always a bit scatterbrained,” Frank said. “But even she can't have lost a whole flock of sheep. Go on, you daft Brits, get to bed, the pair of you.”

• • •

The warriors slept soundly all night on the grass beside the Rotapangi River and woke refreshed. As the sun came up, their damp fleeces began to dry properly and they all felt warmer and more comfortable.

“What I don't get, Sal,” said Oxo, “is why you hopped off the tower like you were a bird.”

“I thought I heard Tuftella calling,” said Sal. “But I'm afraid it was only humans.”

Jaycey wasn't listening. She was examining one of her hooves. “Just look at this chip,” she said crossly. “Look at it. What I need is some polish. Where's our fairy godtingy when I need her?”

No one knew. The last time they'd seen her, she was boinging skyward on the end of a piece of elastic. It was all rather puzzling.

“Well,” said Oxo, “there's always one thing you can do when a fairy godtingy's gone missing.”

“What?” asked the others.

“Eat breakfast.”

• • •

While the sheep hungrily munched juicy grass behind the boathouse, their fairy godtingy was nibbling a slice of burnt toast as she bounced and bumped along in Trevor, Shelly's battered truck.

“Sorry about the charcoal,” called Shelly from behind the wheel. “The toaster at the roadhouse has only got two settings. Burnt or very burnt.”

Alice didn't reply. She was not enjoying this so-called breakfast and she had not enjoyed a good night's sleep. The other people in the dorm hadn't clipped their toenails on her bunk as the receptionist said they might, but they had certainly talked a lot. And not to her. They had jabbered till the early hours and merely shrugged their shoulders and carried on when she ordered them to shut up. Then, long before dawn, it was zip…zip…rustle, rustle, cough, sneeze, as a couple of girls who were planning to catch an early bus had slipped from their bunks and started packing to leave.

“I'm dead scared about the next place,” whispered one of them, unzipping her rucksack for the umpteenth time to stuff in her pj's.

“Me too,” whispered her friend, accidentally dropping her boots on the floor. “They say Tickler's Turnpike is
the
worst one of all.”

“Will you be quiet!” yelled Alice, sitting up in her bunk and banging her head on the ceiling. “I am
trying
to sleep!”

“Sorry…sorry…” whispered both girls and they tiptoed from the dorm, attempting, without success, to avoid bumping their rucksacks against the bunks as they passed.

Three sleepless hours later, Alice was still thinking about what the girls had said. She stopped nibbling her burnt toast.

“This Tickler's Turnpike,” she said to Shelly. “Is it really that bad?”

“Yeah,” laughed Shelly. “Toughest bit of white water in the country. The river gets squeezed between two cliffs and, er…speeds up. But look on the bright side. The photo can't possibly be worse than the bungee one.”

It was a very short ride. Shelly had been driving parallel to the river and soon drew up beside a low brick building.

“Here we go,” she cried, jumping out. “Rotapangi Rafters.”

“But I'm not rafting,” objected Alice, still in her seat. “This must be the wrong company.”

“This is the
only
company,” said Shelly. “They call themselves Rotapangi Rafters but they cover all the white water sports. They've got places up and down the river, both sides…” She stopped and frowned at Alice. “What did you just say? You're not rafting…?”

“You heard me correctly,” said Alice.

“So…if you're not rafting, what exactly
are
you planning to do?” Shelly paused. “Tell me you're not kayaking?”

Alice gulped but remained steady. “Those
are
my instructions,” she answered stiffly. “Kayak down Tickler's Turnpike.”

Shelly whistled long and low. “Well…I guess we'd better find the guys and get you sorted,” she said. “And then start praying.” She turned to Deidre, who was struggling out of the backseat. “No point in you moving. They don't do doubles. The kayaks here are a strictly solo mode of smashing yourself to pieces.”

Alice glared at Shelly, then climbed down from the truck. “You're enjoying this, aren't you?” she said.

“Not as much as you're going to.”

Shelly pointed at the front door of the building. “You book in over there. They'll give you a wet suit, helmet, and life jacket. You'll have to sign a form saying…”

“Don't tell me,” said Alice, “That if anything goes wrong, it's not their fault.”

“You're getting the hang of this,” said Shelly. “Then they're going to ask you if you've done any white water stuff before.”

“Of course I haven't,” snapped Alice. “Do I look as if I spend my days romping in rivers?”

Shelly shook her head. “No. So you'd better fib. They don't allow first-timers to kayak down Tickler's Turnpike.” She pointed at the rocky hillside in front of them. “Anyway, the river's going to take you way down there beyond the bluffs. We'll meet you on the other side.”

Alice kept her face very straight when she told the man at the desk that she was experienced in all water sports. And it wasn't entirely untrue. She had once had to do a term's canoeing at school. On a still, shallow lake. She donned the wet suit, rubber socks, life vest, and helmet she was given and handed Shelly the clothes she'd taken off.

“Be careful,” she tutted. “You're creasing my cashmere sweater.”

Shelly thrust the clothes to Deidre through the truck window, then climbed back into the driving seat. “Good luck!” she called. Then under her breath, “You're gonna need it!”

Deidre leaned out. “Don't worry, Miss Barton. I'll be ready with the camera.”

Shelly sat and watched Alice walk away.

“Is it really dangerous?” asked Deidre.

Shelly nodded. “Yeah. It can be. But I guess she'll be all right. If she doesn't fall out.” She drove off. “This chunk of land you say she's going to inherit. What's so special about it?”

Deidre shrugged. “I don't know. She's never told me.”

Shelly drove around the rocky hillside to another stretch of river and switched off Trevor's engine.

“I suppose she'll be a while yet?” Deidre said. “I think I'll stretch my legs.”

She climbed from the truck, taking a couple of small locked bags with her. Shelly spent a while wiping dust and splattered flies from Trevor's windscreen. She glanced at her watch, then wandered off to find Deidre. Alice should be coming through soon and Deidre would be in trouble if she missed taking the photo. Shelly came across Deidre sitting behind a tree. One of the bags was open and papers and maps were spread out on the grass. Deidre was using a bobby pin to swiftly and expertly unlock the second bag.