Golden Mane, Book One of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick

by SJB Gilmour

  Sarah swallowed guiltily.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Roberta asked. ‘We can’t hang around the school every day. And what if the girl turns? People are going to notice. This could be dangerous.’

  There was a long pause. Sarah could almost see Benjamin smiling.

  ‘If she turns, then I’ll have to take care of it. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. As for your guardianship, you’ll just have to trust me,’ Benjamin replied finally. ‘I’ve got a few ideas.’

  Turned? Turned into what? And what was so dangerous?

  ‘Such as?’ Roberta demanded.

  ‘What would you say to a little reinforcement?’

  ‘Who?’ Robert asked. ‘Not…’

  ‘She’d be perfect,’ Roberta interrupted him. ‘I’ve known her for years. Good idea Benjamin. Besides,’ she added, her voice sounding confident, ‘she’s bound to know a lot more about what’s in store than any of us.’

  Then Robert chuckled wryly the way so many parents do. ‘I just hope her,’ and he paused as if trying to find the right word, ‘talents won’t be necessary.’

  ‘It’ll be alright,’ Benjamin assured him. ‘It might actually make things easier. One’s always harder than two.’

  Roberta then said, ‘If she’s so busy, why add her to the equation?’

  ‘If this is the beginning of what I think it is, she’ll be as much a part of it as any of us,’ Benjamin told her calmly.

  Now Sarah was very confused. None of this conversation was making any sense to her at all.

  There was another slight pause when nobody spoke for a moment.

  ‘Anyway, back to our charge, how are we going to tell her?’ Robert asked then.

  ‘You probably won’t need to, Robert,’ Benjamin reassured him. ‘She’s eleven. I think in a few months time, she’ll discover it all by herself. When that happens, it’ll be easy. She’s just about bursting at the seams with it already. It’s only a matter of time before she wakes up to quite a surprise.’

  Sarah didn’t want to hear any more! Some of what she had just heard made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Some sounded as if it was about those changes her body was going to start experiencing all too soon. Personally, she hoped that would never happen. It certainly sounded disgusting and she was sure it was going to be painful. Besides, she didn’t like boys one little bit, and the last thing she wanted was her body starting to tell her that the most disgusting creatures on Earth were actually interesting.

  Then she heard Roberta calling her down for dinner. With everything that had happened, Sarah had missed her afternoon snack. From the moment she and Mandy had started fighting, she hadn’t thought about food even once. Now Sarah’s stomach was talking to her quite loudly. She made her way down the stairs feeling much better about herself, but also very confused. She couldn’t dare ask her uncles and aunt what they had been talking about, so she pushed her troubles from her mind and put on a very brave face. What had become an awful day in grade five had turned out all right because her three most favourite people in the whole wide world were on her side and having dinner with her.

  Over dinner, Sarah pleaded with Benjamin to tell her all about his latest trip overseas. Her uncle ran a publishing business with the funny-sounding name of Heirogryph Publishers, Publishers of Educational Texts and Tomes. He always seemed to be off overseas somewhere for his job, visiting other publishers, writers and researchers. When he wasn’t there or travelling, he was at his home in Gembrook, a country suburb very nearly an hour’s drive away.

  When Sarah was a small girl, she thought his huge old house was haunted. Now, being eleven, she knew ghosts weren’t real. She also knew her uncle was living in a house way too big for just him, and it was getting on time for him to find a wife. A little sadly, Sarah knew that this was unlikely since he was almost married to his work and was very rarely at home. When he wasn’t at work or travelling around the world, he liked to hunt foxes and rabbits on his huge hilly property, but Sarah didn’t know many girls who liked the idea of that at all.

  When dinner was over, Sarah rushed into the living room, followed – of course at a better-behaved pace – by her two uncles and aunt, to open her present. She was in such a rush to open it that she had the bow undone and nearly all of the paper off before everyone else had entered the room. Inside the wrapping and the box was something very exciting indeed. It was a big red bicycle helmet! She put it on and ran to hug her uncle. He winced as the helmet collided with his ribs, but laughed and hugged his niece warmly.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Uncle!’ Sarah cried, hugging him again, and again. She knew what the helmet meant. It meant bicycle! ‘Is there a bike to go with it?’ she demanded excitedly.

  Benjamin smiled mysteriously and put his finger to the side of his nose.

  ‘Ah, I wonder where a bicycle would be around here,’ he said, looking around and out the living room window to the front yard. Sarah ran to the window and peered outside. Even though it was dark, she could see quite clearly that there was no bicycle in the front yard.

  ‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything down here…’ Benjamin mused.

  Sarah’s eyes lit up even more and she leapt up the stairs two at a time, not even pausing to wonder just how they could have put a bicycle in her room without her seeing it. She burst through the doorway and, sure enough, standing right there in the middle of her room, all shiny and new, was a lovely red bicycle! Sarah was all for riding it around the house right then and there but Robert laughed and took the helmet off her head. He helped her wheel the wonderful new machine into the garage. Then he locked the garage and gave Sarah her own key and all but dragged her back inside out of the cold.

  ‘There will be plenty of time tomorrow for you to ride your new bike,’ he assured her. When they got back inside, Roberta had made tea and they sat down in the lounge.

  ‘Sarah, I know how you must feel,’ Benjamin said, after Sarah had settled down from repeatedly hugging him for the bicycle. She knew he was being serious, so she sat down and listened carefully. Sarah was always careful to be polite and listen to her elders, which was something that certainly surprised her teachers. How, they wondered, could such a polite and attentive child in the classroom be such a terror in the yard?

  ‘You’re in a country that’s not your home, and you’re all alone, and sometimes everyone seems to be ganging up against you,’ he said.

  Sarah could only nod.

  ‘And when they do, you can’t help but stand up and fight.’

  Again, Sarah nodded, but her yellow eyes flashed defiantly. It was hard for her put into words. Luckily it seemed that she didn’t have to.

  ‘I know how it feels, Sarah,’ Benjamin assured her. ‘Your father is the same. No matter how many people he’s up against, he stands his ground.’ He chuckled. ‘Your mother’s even worse. She can make grown men twice her size turn and run.’

  ‘Those with brains, that is,’ Roberta recalled with a proud smile.

  Robert and Benjamin both laughed again.

  ‘Jozefa can dish it out when she needs to, can’t she?’ Robert laughed.

  This brought Sarah up short. Her memories of her mother, as vague as they were, were full of warmth and love. She had no memory of this tough woman her aunt and uncles seemed to remember.

  ‘Why did we have to leave? Why couldn’t we have stayed in Romania to look for my parents?’ Sarah asked seriously. ‘People don’t just disappear like that! Not when they were so experienced or as tough as you say they were!’

  Benjamin sighed and shook his head. ‘We can talk about all that tomorrow, cub. It’s quite late now, and we’re all tired. Besides, you know the story anyway, don’t you?’

  Sadly, Sarah nodded her head. ‘They searched,’ she muttered. ‘But they couldn’t find anything. Then we came here.’ Sarah was trying not to sound bitter, but it was very hard.

  ‘That’s right,’ Robert said. ‘There’s more, but you’re still a bit young for i
t all now. All we can say right now is that we think your parents were taken prisoner. Romania wasn’t very safe for you.’

  Sarah had visions of soldiers coming and taking her parents away in the dead of night. She shuddered.

  ‘I knew they couldn’t have gotten lost!’ she flared. ‘What happened to them? Will you tell me what happened? All of it?’ she demanded, sitting up straight. Her bicycle and Mr Dyson were all forgotten in a flash.

  ‘When you’re a bit older, cub.’ Benjamin vowed. ‘I promise.’

  They talked about other things until well past her bedtime. Finally, unable to hold her head up any more, Sarah went to bed. Gazing out the window at the moon half-hidden by the clouds, she wished she could remember more about her parents. She wondered where they were and what had happened to them. Then, unable to stop them, more tears came. This time Benjamin wasn’t there to make her feel better and she lay, sobbing into her pillow until she was fast asleep.

  The next day, after breakfast, Sarah was in her room getting ready to go to school when Robert came in and sat down on her bed.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said seriously. ‘Today we’re going to go and see Mr Dyson.’

  ‘Am I going to be expelled?’ she asked fearfully, her eyes wide with worry.

  ‘I think Mr Dyson would like to do that, but I don’t think we’ll let him,’ Robert replied. ‘Unless you’d rather leave, of course.’

  Sarah didn’t know what to say. She just shook her head from side to side. She most definitely didn’t want to stay at that awful place. However, she certainly didn’t want to be expelled!

  ‘But where would I go?’ Sarah cried, choking back a sob. Robert smiled and patted her on the shoulder.

  ‘I’m not sure. Your Uncle Benjamin is going to meet us there too. Everything will work out,’ he promised.

  One hour later, Sarah was sitting on the bench outside Mr Dyson’s office, flanked by Robert and Roberta. In his office, Mr Dyson was yelling down the telephone at someone – at whom, they didn’t know. Much of what he was saying wasn’t very clear, but they all heard him yell four words very clearly indeed.

  ‘…out of this school!’ He yelled the last so hard that the noisy class down the hall fell silent.

  There was silence from Mr Dyson’s office for a moment, then abruptly the door was flung open and Mr Dyson, red-faced and sweating, waved them in without so much as a ‘Good morning’.

  When he sat down, he wiped his face with a not-so-clean handkerchief, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was obviously trying very hard to calm down from what must have been quite a bad mood. He glanced at Robert’s bare feet with barely disguised contempt. Then he noticed Roberta’s feet were bare too and he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how uncivilised these people were. Then he pursed his lips.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Coppernick,’ he began in a very no-nonsense tone, ‘I’ve just been speaking with a Mr McConnell from Gembrook. He claims to be Sarah’s uncle. Is that correct?’

  Robert smiled. ‘Yep. Benjamin is Sarah’s uncle…’

  ‘On her mother’s side of the family,’ Roberta interrupted.

  ‘Once removed, I think,’ added Robert.

  ‘Twice removed,’ corrected Roberta.

  Sarah tried not to smile. Benjamin never lost his temper like Mr Dyson. She imagined him enjoying being calm and polite while Mr Dyson got madder and madder by the minute! Something went click inside her head. They were up to something. She could feel it!

  ‘Well,’ Mr Dyson said, huffily. ‘He…’ Before Mr Dyson could continue, Uncle Benjamin’s head appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Dyson!’ Benjamin said with great familiarity. ‘So good to see you, old boy.’ And without waiting to be invited in, Benjamin took a seat next to Sarah, giving her a sly wink. He sat down, crossed his legs and leaned back with his hands resting behind his head in a very relaxed manner. The effect on Mr Dyson was instantaneous. In a flash, he was on his feet, waving his hands in the air and yelling almost incoherently.

  ‘Get out of this office!’ he cried. ‘You said you were in Gembrook! I don’t know how you got here so fast or what your game is but you’re not on the list as this brat’s relative, so you’re not allowed in here!’

  Benjamin suddenly sat up straight with his knees close together. He fixed Mr Dyson with his steely grey eyes that seemed to flash like lightning, and pointed one finger directly at Mr Dyson’s face.

  ‘Now, that’s enough of that,’ he said in a dreadfully quiet voice that almost seemed to be a growl. ‘Sit down!’ The room suddenly went very cold and the air around Mr Dyson almost seemed to shudder. Sarah rubbed her eyes and everything was clear again, though the hairs on the back of her neck felt as though they were standing straight up. Also, her nose tingled suddenly and she sneezed.

  Mr Dyson paled and sat down. The wind had been suddenly released from his sails and he wasn’t nearly so puffed up now. Sarah was very surprised. As she wiped her nose (with a handkerchief that was much cleaner than Mr Dyson’s) her eyes went wide. She’d never seen her uncle so firm before. He managed to shush Mr Dyson without even raising his voice!

  ‘That’s better,’ said Benjamin. ‘Now, before we begin, I never said I was in Gembrook. I said I was from Gembrook. Quite a difference. And I wasn’t there at all. I was in my office in Prahran. It’s not far from here really.’

  Mr Dyson blinked, not quite sure what to make of this. Then his face clouded with disbelief but before he could protest that Benjamin had appeared in his office only fifteen seconds, not minutes, after hanging up, Benjamin clapped his hands on his thighs. The sound gave Mr Dyson quite a start and he forgot all about that little mystery.

  ‘Now!’ Benjamin barked loudly, making Mr Dyson flinch again. ‘You want us to take Sarah out of school, is that right?’

  Mr Dyson nodded like a little schoolboy who’d been caught doing something naughty.

  ‘Because you claim she bit another student?’

  Dyson nodded again.

  ‘But the bite resembles that of dog, I’m told, not the tooth marks of an eleven-year-old girl, isn’t that right?’

  Dyson gave another nod, this time followed by a whimper.

  ‘Is it possible for us to see this bite for ourselves?’ asked Roberta.

  ‘I’ve tried to get her in for this interview,’ he told her huffily. ‘It seems as soon as she was released from hospital, she and her whole family moved away. Their phone’s switched off. We even went past their house. Nobody’s home.’ Now he began to get angry again. ‘The Kelly girl’s family were strong financial supporters of this school…’

  ‘Never mind that, Dyson,’ Benjamin told him curtly. ‘If you’ve lost funding, it’s your own fault.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I have to tell you, Dyson,’ Benjamin went on disapprovingly. ‘The way you’re behaving makes us want to take Sarah out of your school too. You’ve made some very nasty and, quite frankly, rather unbelievable accusations against Sarah here, and you’ve been behaving most impolitely. What sort of example that sets for the teachers under your command, I have no idea.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Dyson asked, resembling a mouse trying to escape the gaze of a giant wolf.

  Benjamin smiled and took his time answering. ‘Before we get on to that, let’s just go over what kind of student we’re talking about, shall we?’ Without asking, he reached forward and picked up Sarah’s file from Mr Dyson’s desk and began flicking through the pages.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he mused. ‘Good at maths, reading and comprehension. Poor handwriting, well, nothing unusual about that I suppose. The whole family might as well be doctors… Good at sports…’ He looked up at Mr Dyson reprovingly. ‘All that running from bullies comes in handy, I suppose.’

  Mr Dyson merely swallowed noisily but said nothing. Sarah felt herself flare a little. She did not run away from bullies! She had to try very hard not to protest. Glumly she had to admit to herself that not keeping her mouth shut when goaded was exactly t
he kind of thing that caused so many fights at school.

  ‘Bit of a temper issue, I’ll admit,’ continued Benjamin. ‘Runs in the family as well, I’m afraid.’ He leafed through some more pages. ‘Hmm, problems with authority…’ He raised one eyebrow and looked at Dyson. ‘I think that says more about the authority than the subject,’ he said sternly. He put the file back on the table. ‘So what we have here, Dyson, is a better than average student, whom you’ve failed to keep from being bullied and now want to punish because she’s had the guts to stand her ground in your schoolyard.’

  Benjamin smiled and looked at both Robert and Roberta, who both nodded calmly. The two of them were nearly bursting from the effort of not laughing. Then Benjamin looked at his very wide-eyed niece Sarah who was both awed and very tempted to giggle. He winked again. Then he turned back to the much-deflated principal.

  ‘Dyson,’ he said in a very conversational tone, ‘Some might see your lack of concern for Sarah’s safety as a major lapse bordering on the criminal.’

  My Dyson swallowed again even more loudly. Benjamin brought his hands together with a loud clap that startled the poor principal terribly.

  ‘But!’ he went on brightly. ‘I’m not really here to give you a hard time. Let’s make it easy shall we? It so happens that I might have a solution to some of your problems.’

  ‘Y… Yes?’ stammered Mr Dyson. ‘G… Go on?’

  ‘Just recently, a niece of one of my employees was sent to her for private tutoring because the country school she had been going to got burned down. She’s taking her lessons in my office, from my staff.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mr Dyson was now genuinely curious, and seemed to forget some of his terror.

  ‘She’s about the same age as Sarah here, and would be studying the same subjects. Being a publisher of educational books, I have all the resources…’

  ‘H… How can I help you?’ Mr Dyson stammered again, once more transfixed by Benjamin’s steely gaze.

  Benjamin spread his hands out wide. ‘Now obviously I can’t have my staff teach the girls and administer exams. How about I take Sarah here under my wing and have my staff tutor her at my office and…’ and Benjamin smiled most reasonably, ‘…you drop by occasionally to give her a quick test or two to make sure she’s on track? Think of it as unofficial home-schooling.’