The Random Reader

by Volume One (retail) (epub)

  “Of course not,” said Ms Winsley. “But what say we pretend?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind pretending,” Quentin said, and looked at her expectantly.

  Ms Winsley set to work. She thought hard. Where would a parrot run to? It might try to find another parrot for some fun and games. Parrots are pretty big on fun and games.

  Ms Winsley thought very hard. Waves frothed up the beach and down again. The parrots in the palm trees fluttered from frond to frond. “Have you checked that lot back there?” Ms Winsley asked.

  The pirate sucked his ginger moustache. “I never thought,” he said.

  So Ms Winsley encouraged the pirate to come along the path under the palm trees. The vines curled darkly and the teeth of wild cats glimmered in the shadows.

  Quentin gripped Ms Winsley’s hand. She decided he was very timid for a pirate, as well as very small.

  The parrots clung to the tree trunks and squawked.

  “Well?” Ms Winsley asked.

  “None of those is mine,” the pirate said. “My parrot’s not as colourful as them. She’s a whole lot bigger, too.”

  Ms Winsley looked at the parrots on the tree trunks.

  She looked at the hummingbirds. She looked at a large blue swan that wandered by.

  She saw two skinny tree trunks just beside the path.

  As she looked, one of the skinny tree trunks took a step.

  Ms Winsley realised that it was not a tree trunk. It was a leg — the leg of a very large bird. And the other little tree trunk was the very large bird’s other leg.

  “Cool!” exclaimed Ms Winsley. “An emu in the wild.”

  Quentin peered around her. “Ms Winsley, you’re terrific!” he cried. “There she is! My parrot. You found Polly.”

  “But that’s an emu,” said Ms Winsley.

  The pirate stroked the emu’s feathers. “An emu? I suppose that’s why she doesn’t fly. I wondered why I got her cheap.”

  The emu lowered its long neck and nudged the pirate’s earring. Though Quentin seemed a little happier, a tear still shone on his moustache.

  “Any more problems we can pretend about?” Ms Winsley asked.

  “Not really,” Quentin said. His lower lip trembled again. “It must be because she’s an emu that she won’t sit on my shoulder, that’s all.”

  Ms Winsley looked at the very small pirate. She looked at the very large bird. She clenched her jaw tightly to help her wrestle with the problem.

  “Sometimes it’s fine to be different from everyone else,” Ms Winsley said at last. “Right?”

  “That’s why I became a pirate in the first place,” Quentin said.

  “So Polly can’t perch on your shoulder. But you could sit on hers,” Ms Winsley said.

  Quentin’s mouth dropped open beneath his ginger moustache. So Ms Winsley gave him a leg-up and there he was, a pirate sitting neatly on the emu’s back.

  “Terrific!” he said. “And it doesn’t really matter that she won’t say she wants a cracker. Two things out of three’s not bad. It’s not a problem. Truly.”

  “But if it’s all right to be different,” said Ms Winsley, “and you’re sitting on her shoulder, you can be the one to call out Polly wants a cracker.”

  The pirate’s eyes shone like diamonds. “And I can shout my Yo-ho-ho! whenever I get off. Ms Winsley, how can I thank you?”

  “Just be nice to your pet, and help me if I need it,” said Ms Winsley. “Though next time you find a treasure chest, perhaps you could remember me. Remember me a lot.”

  “Polly wants a cracker!” Quentin shouted. Polly raced over to the dinghy with the pirate on her back. They climbed in and the pirate rowed away.

  “It’s very satisfying to help people out of tricky situations,” said Ms Winsley to the parrots in the palm trees.

  “Polly wants a cracker!” squawked the parrots. “Awk! Polly wants a cracker.” And the kangaroos played kickball while Ms Winsley had her swim at last, in the warm and deep blue sea.

  ‘Ms Winsley and the Pirate Who Didn’t Have a Problem’ was first published by Random House New Zealand in Tricky Situations in 1999.

  The Giant Weta Detective Agency

  James Norcliffe

  There were dark jagged shapes all around me in the bush that night. Things made those strange chirrup-chirrup noises that chirrup-chirrup noise-making things make.

  Scary things.

  Not that I was especially scared. When you’re in the detective business, you learn to be brave. And I’m learning. To tell you the truth, I tend to scare people more than they scare me. That’s one advantage of being a giant weta. All the same, I admit I’m not the prettiest bean in the can. Nor am I the sharpest knife in the drawer. I should have realised that when I took on this huhu grub case.

  Not that Hilda had been put off by my appearance when she turned up in my office that afternoon. She was one cute little grub. A huhu grub. An upset huhu grub. A sort of boo-hoo huhu grub.

  “My sister’s missing,” she sobbed.

  “Your sister?”

  “Helga …”

  “Helga? Right. What does she look like?”

  Hilda dabbed at her eyes with a grubby handkerchief.

  “Oh, you know, Mr Weta. A segmented body, a little on the plump side, and sort of creamy white. Rather like me, actually.”

  “Got you. Very pretty.”

  Hilda blushed. “If you say so.”

  “Tell me about her. When did she go missing?”

  I didn’t want to upset Hilda, but I had heard that a number of huhu grubs had gone missing in the last few days. I suspected foul play — or rather fowl play. Probably a weka or a kaka.

  “It was three weeks ago. I’d crawled off into my tunnel and Helga crawled off into her tunnel. We shouted ‘Good night!’” Hilda sobbed again. “That was the last thing I shouted at her. In the morning she had gone …” More sobs. “All she’d left behind was one large, shiny suitcase.”

  Something did not compute. “Why on earth did she leave her suitcase if she’d gone?” I asked. “Why didn’t she take it with her?”

  “I don’t know,” wailed Hilda. “That’s why I’m asking you!”

  I’m a feeling sort of a guy — with feelers like mine I couldn’t be anything else — and I couldn’t bear the sight of her tear-stained face.

  “Look, kid,” I said. “I’ll check it out. No promises, mind.”

  So now I was staking out the old kahikatea log that Hilda and Helga and all their other sisters had been chewing through since they’d been tiny. That evening I’d seen her home, told her to stay put until morning, and looked for a spot where I could see anything that might take place. Any hungry kaka with a taste for huhu grubs would probably consider a giant weta an interesting dessert. So I half-buried myself under a pile of skeleton leaves and sphagnum moss.

  The night passed slowly. High above, the wind moaned. There were chirrup-chirrup noises, and chitter-chitter-chitter noises, and once or twice a distant, unnerving shriek.

  The minutes crept slowly by.

  I began to think of all the reasons Helga could have disappeared. Every reason was pretty depressing. Of course, she could have just gone for a walk and got lost. But huhu grubs rarely leave the safety of their crumby crumbly homes. What had happened to her was more likely to have been along the lines of my first fearful thought: fowl play. It could have been a weka. Or that kaka. The sudden flurry of a morepork. Snatch. Gobble. It didn’t seem hopeful at all. Huhu grubs didn’t have much of a chance in the big, bad world. Bad things tended to happen to you if you were fat and slow and tasted, by all accounts, rather like peanut butter.

  In the strange half-darkness before dawn, I became aware that I wasn’t the only one staking out the kahikatea log. To the left I saw a slight movement. A leaf. A large leaf. There was no wind at all now, but the leaf was trembling and moving. It was moving slowly towards the log.

  I froze. This was no weka or kaka.

  Carefully, I shrugged
off my cover of moss and began to circle behind the leaf. It was lighter now. I saw that the leaf had legs. Something was trying to disguise itself.

  Could this be the clue I’d been looking for? Could this be the killer?

  I allowed the leaf to move closer to the log. I followed at a safe distance. The disguised creature lifted itself onto the log and began trundling towards a large hole.

  The same hole Hilda had disappeared into before I began my stakeout. I crept closer. I heard a thin, reedy voice calling. Calling a name into the hole.

  “Hilda!” it cried. “Hilda, come out!”

  I was overtaken by anger. So this was how it happened! The killer called the name of his victim and the unknowing grub would come to the surface and then … This was what had happened to Helga, and, unless I acted quickly, this was what would happen to Hilda.

  I seized the leaf and whipped it off the creature.

  “Just one moment, buster,” I snarled. “I’d like to have a word with you!”

  Under the leaf was a long, thin beetle with a mottled brown back. It looked at me, startled and frightened.

  “I know what you’re up to,” I snarled again. “What have you done with Helga?”

  “Please!” the beetle quavered. “Don’t hurt me!”

  “That’s rich!” I rose on my back legs and lifted the quivering beetle with my forelegs. “After what you did to Helga!”

  “Put me down!” the beetle shrieked. “I didn’t do anything to Helga!”

  “Prove it!” I demanded.

  “Hilda! Hilda! Save me!” shrieked the beetle.

  There was movement at the entrance to Hilda’s hole. Two large feelers came out, followed by a long, narrow body. A mottled brown body. A beetle, just like the one I was gripping with my forelegs.

  “Helga!” cried the second beetle.

  “Hilda!” cried the first beetle.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded. I dropped the beetle, who scurried to the second beetle’s side. They waved their feelers at me soothingly.

  “Mr Weta! Mr Weta! We’re beetles!” they said.

  “I can see that. So what’s going on?”

  “Huhu beetles!” they said. Then one said, “I’m Hilda” and the other said,

  “I’m Helga”.

  “Oh,” I said. They were right. They were huhu beetles. Particularly ugly ones as well.

  There didn’t seem to be anything left to discuss, so I said, “Well, I’m off to my bed. There’ll be a bill in the mail. That was one long cold night.”

  As I said, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I should have known when I took on the huhu grub case that there would turn out to be two huhu grub cases: shiny ones, each one shed and discarded somewhere in the tunnels of an old kahikatea log.

  ‘The Giant Weta Detective Agency’ was first published by Random House New Zealand in Claws & Jaws: 30 New Zealand Animal Stories in October 2004.

  Uncle Trev and the Howling Dog Service

  Jack Lasenby

  I woke and heard a dog howling across the farms out the back of Waharoa and, somewhere further off, so far away I could hardly hear it, another dog howled back.

  “They’re barking at the moon,” my mother said next morning, but Uncle Trev had a different story when he dropped in for a cup of tea on his way home from the Wednesday stock sale at Matamata.

  “They’re not barking at the moon,” he said. “Don’t go telling your mother now, but they’re trained howling dogs. Mine. I trained them myself years ago.”

  I looked at Uncle Trev and he looked back at me. “Years ago,” he repeated, “I got sick of paying the post office for toll calls. It took ages to get through, then half the time you didn’t get the person you wanted, and when you did you couldn’t hear them for the noise on the line.

  “I don’t suppose you’re old enough to remember,” he said, “but people had much smaller ears before the telephone. They’ve only grown into these big flaps on the sides of our heads since we started squashing them with the telephone receiver.” I heard Mum give a sniff from the bench where she was making a cup of tea. “Have a look in the album at the old family photographs, if you don’t believe me,” said Uncle Trev. “You can’t even see ears on your grandmother.

  “Besides,” he said, “that old Mrs Eaves on the telephone exchange at the post office, she was always listening in. I could hear her breathing whenever I was talking to somebody. Sometimes, she’d even join in the conversation.

  “I was lying awake one night, thinking about it,” Uncle Trev went on, “and the dogs were barking across all the farms between my place and Waharoa, and I thought, ‘Those dogs are talking to each other!’”

  He stared at me. “That’s when I got my idea!” he said.

  I stared back at him. Mum put a cup of tea and a plate with a few slices of cake on the table. “Isn’t it time you were in bed?” she told me.

  Uncle Trev waited till she’d gone back to the bench. “A howling dog service,” he said, “that was my idea! I remembered how we used dogs to carry messages in the trenches in the Great War, and how my mate Squeaker Tuner always said we should teach the dogs to talk.

  “Well, it took me a few years, but I got hold of some expensive huntaway bitches and bred pups from them for their voices. They had to be able to bark high and clear so the messages would carry, and they had to be able to remember a long message, that was the other thing. I started selling my dogs cheap,” said Uncle Trev, “and they were good working dogs too, so in no time I had them planted on farms from one end of the country to the other.

  “From Waharoa on a clear night, a good howling dog can make himself heard in Matamata. From Matamata they howl the message up the Hinuera Valley, round through Cambridge to Hamilton, and up to Auckland. The reply comes back through Morrinsville and Walton to Waharoa before the first dog’s finished rattling his chain. Of course,” he said, “if the wind’s from the north, they howl the message round the other way.

  “You listen,” said Uncle Trev, “and you’ll hear them howling off messages in all directions, specially on a clear night. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin — our howling dogs cover New Zealand.”

  “What about Cook Strait?” I asked.

  “No trouble!” said Uncle Trev. “Sound travels good-oh across water. I’m even thinking of putting a dog on top of Mount Cook to howl messages to Australia.”

  “It’s long past your bedtime,” Mum said to me. “As for you,” she said to Uncle Trev, “if you’ve finished your tea, isn’t it time you were getting home to your farm? You’ve got cows to milk in the morning.”

  When he called in next week, I asked him how the dog was doing on top of Mount Cook.

  “You wouldn’t believe the trouble I’m having,” said Uncle Trev. “It’s so cold in the snow, the first dog I put up there got chilblains and wouldn’t bark, so I’m crossing my best huntaway with a beardie collie to get a longer-coated dog. It’s going to take a year or two to get a good pup though, and even then it’s still got to be trained.”

  “How much do you charge for your howling dog services?” I asked him the next time he called in.

  “It’s cheaper than toll calls,” said Uncle Trev. “You see, the dogs earn their tucker working in the daytime, and it costs me nothing to get them howling messages. There’s nothing a dog likes more than to have a good old howl at night, specially if there’s a moon.

  “Actually, I’ve had a bit of trouble with the post office. They were really scared when they found my howling dog service had taken most of their business. They sent their Post-Master General in his uniform with red stripes down the trousers and a shiny brass helmet. I asked him if he was a fireman, but he got off his horse and begged me with tears in his eyes to stop the howling dog service. He said the post office was going broke.”

  Mum was banging some pots around on the bench. I didn’t want her to hear Uncle Trev’s story or she’d send him home. “What happened?” I asked.

  “
I felt a bit sorry for him,” said Uncle Trev, “so I said I’d close down my howling dog service if the post office cut the cost of its toll calls in half. The Post-Master General couldn’t thank me enough. He wanted to give me a free telephone, but I told him I didn’t want big lugs instead of ears. I said I’d just go on using the howling dog service for myself and a few friends. I couldn’t stop the dogs talking to each other, of course. They still howl dog messages all over New Zealand.

  “The Post-Master General thanked me and put on his shiny brass helmet, jumped on his horse, and rode back to Wellington.”

  “Are you going to sit there talking nonsense all night?” said my mother. “Isn’t it time you were getting home to the farm?” she asked Uncle Trev. “As for you,” she said to me, “you’re supposed to be ill in bed, not sitting up listening to a lot of silly stories.”

  I said goodnight and heard Uncle Trev’s old lorry rattle away. It was warm under the blankets. I lifted the blind. Outside, it was frosty, and there was a moon. Somewhere down Ward Street, a dog howled. I listened, and out towards Uncle Trev’s farm under the hills at the back of Waharoa, another dog replied.

  ‘Uncle Trev and the Howling Dog Service’ was first published by Random House New Zealand in 30 New Zealand Stories for Children in October 2000.

  Why Anna Hung Upside Down

  Margaret Mahy

  One day Anna, wearing her blue jeans, went out and climbed onto the first branch of the second tree to the right of the supermarket.

  Then she hung by her knees.

  She saw the world upside down. The grass was the sky and the sky was the grass. The supermarket poured people upward into the green air.

  An old man with a ridiculous hat came by.

  “Look at this girl,” he said to a thin woman with fluffy slippers and curlers. “She’s upside down.”

  “My goodness so she is!” the thin woman cried. “Why do you think that’s happened?”