The Mystery of the Icy Paw Prints
Page 2
The twins crossed back over to the other yard and went up to one of the doghouses. A husky poked its head out and thumped its tail.
Ella pet it. Its coat was thick and soft. “We’re here to inspect your paw prints,” she told the dog.
The dog thumped its tail again. Ethan crouched down next to Ella and surveyed the ground. “There are paw prints all over the place!”
Ella opened her notebook to the page with the paw prints she had just sketched. She and Ethan compared them to the paw prints on the ground.
“The dog paw prints have four toes. Our paw prints have five,” said Ella.
She drew some quick pictures of the dog paw prints just in case. Then the twins went inside to warm up in front of the fireplace.
Malina was reading a book on the couch. She glanced up with a smile. “Hi! If you’re looking for your parents, they’re in the dining room with my mom.”
“Thanks! Hey, Malina? Do you know anything about paw prints?” Ethan asked.
“Paw prints? I guess so. Why?” she answered.
Ethan and Ella told Malina about their case.
“We’re trying to figure out who stole the fish from the cooler. We think it was an animal,” Ella finished. She showed Malina her drawings of the mystery paw prints.
Malina jumped to her feet. “I think I can help you with this!”
The Old Sketchbook
Malina went over to a bookshelf. She picked up a notebook with a leather cover.
“This is one of my grandma’s sketchbooks. She was an artist,” Malina explained. “She traveled all around Alaska and drew things from nature. Like plants, insects, animals . . . and animal tracks, too!”
Animal tracks! The twins grinned at each other.
Ethan noticed that the cover of the journal had a bird on it. And it looked a lot like the bird on the gold coin Grandpa Harry had given him. Ethan went to reach for the coin in his pocket, but Malina opened the sketchbook and began leafing through it.
The pages looked old and fragile. They were filled with drawings, and each drawing had a handwritten label.
“Here.” Malina stopped on a page with animal tracks on it.
Ella compared her own drawings to Malina’s grandmother’s drawings.
“Look!” Ella pointed to a set of animal tracks. “These are the same paw prints we saw!”
“That’s weird. It says that these tracks belong to an Ursus maritimus,” Malina said with a frown.
“Huh? What’s an Ur-sus mar-i-ti-mus?” asked Ethan.
“Grandma always labeled her drawings in Latin. ‘Ursus maritimus’ means ‘polar bear.’ ”
Polar bear?
“So . . . a polar bear stole George and Nolee’s fish?” Ella said.
Malina shook her head. “No way. There are no polar bears around here. We’re too far south.”
“How about a different kind of bear, then? Like a black bear or a brown bear?” Ethan suggested.
Malina turned to another page. “These are black bear tracks,” she said, pointing. “And these are brown bear tracks. They look different from the polar bear ones.” She added, “I remember my grandma saying that polar bears have way bigger paws than other kinds of bears. Their paws act like snowshoes and keep them from slipping on ice and snow.”
“Cool!” Ethan said. Ella nodded. They sure were learning a lot of interesting stuff on their trip around the world!
“So if the fish thief isn’t a polar bear, a black bear, or a brown bear, then what is it?” asked Ella.
“I think I know how to find out,” Ethan said mysteriously.
The Fish Trap
Ethan, Ella, and Malina hurried into the dining room.
The three parents sat at the table drinking coffee. “Hey, kids! I just got off the phone with the mechanic. He’ll be here the day after tomorrow to fix our car,” said Mr. Briar.
“Until then, we can have a mini-holiday here. I’m going to interview Anna for my article!” said Mrs. Briar.
“It’s very kind of your mother. She thinks it will help attract lots of visitors to the inn,” Anna said, smiling at Mrs. Briar.
Malina tugged on Anna’s sleeve. “Mama, may we have some fish?”
Anna looked amused. “Honey, if you guys want a snack, there’s bread and cheese.”
Ella spoke up. “But we’re setting a trap for the fish thief. We think it’s an animal!”
“How did you detectives come up with that theory?” asked Mr. Briar.
Ethan explained about finding the trail of paw prints. “Our plan is to put a cooler full of fish outside. Then we’ll wait for the thief to come back and try to steal again,” he added.
Mrs. Briar frowned. “Wait a second. I thought you guys were building a snowman just now—not chasing thieves.”
Ethan and Ella stared at each other.
“Um,” Ethan mumbled.
“Um,” Ella mumbled.
Mr. Briar whispered something to Mrs. Briar. Mrs. Briar whispered something to Anna.
“All right. If you guys want to try this plan, you have our permission,” Mrs. Briar said after a moment. “It’s not safe for you to be hanging out in the yard waiting for some wild animal to show up, though. Once you set the trap, I want you to stay here and watch through a window.”
“You can borrow my binoculars,” Mr. Briar offered.
“I’ll get the cooler and the fish,” Anna said.
Ethan, Ella, and Malina exchanged high fives.
It was time to catch the fish thief!
* * *
“Do you see anything yet?” Ella whispered to Ethan.
Ethan squinted through the binoculars. “Nope. Not yet. And you’ve asked, like, a hundred times already!”
The twins and Malina had been keeping watch at the kitchen window all afternoon, waiting for someone—or something—to show up. They had placed the cooler of fish near the edge of the woods.
Malina glanced up at the sky. “It’s almost nighttime. Maybe we should give up for today.”
Ethan leaned toward the window. “Wait! I think see something!”
“What is it?” Ella grabbed the binoculars from him. She adjusted the knob to focus them.
Ethan was right! An animal hovered near the edge of the woods. It began moving toward the cooler.
“What is it? What is it?” Malina cried out.
“It’s too dark to tell,” replied Ella.
Just then, a second animal came bounding toward the first one.
“We have two fish thieves!” Ella announced.
Closing In
Malina got a flashlight and flung open the back door. She clicked on the light and pointed it at the animals.
They startled and scurried into the woods.
“I’m sorry. They got away!” Malina apologized.
“Did anyone get a good look? Were they bears?” Ethan asked.
“I’m not sure,” Ella replied.
“Me neither,” said Malina.
“We can’t follow them. Let’s wait until tomorrow morning and try again,” Ethan suggested, and the girls agreed.
* * *
The next day, the three kids headed outside right after sunrise. They went over to where the cooler sat in the snow.
Ethan opened the cooler. It was empty!
“Those animals must have returned in the middle of the night,” Malina guessed.
“Look!” Ella said, pointing. The bear paw prints from the Gardners’ yard dotted the snow.
Then she noticed a second set of paw prints. They had four toes instead of five. Ella tried to recall where she had seen them before. And then she remembered.
“These look just like the sled dogs’ paw prints, but they’re even smaller,” she said to Ethan and Malina.
“Peach!” Malina burst out.
“Peach, like the fruit?” asked Ethan.
“No! Peach is our new sled dog puppy. We adopted her a couple of months ago. These might belong to her!”
“So . . .
Peach is one of the fish thieves?” Ella asked.
“Maybe. But who do the other paw prints belong to?” Malina wondered.
The three of them decided to put more fish in the cooler and repeat yesterday’s stakeout. They also moved the cooler closer to the back door. Then they took their positions in the kitchen.
It didn’t take very long. After a few minutes, an animal lumbered out of the woods. It approached the cooler.
The creature was furry. And white.
Ella gasped. “Is that a . . . baby polar bear?”
Home Again
Malina gulped and nodded. “W-what’s it doing here? It must be really far from its home!”
The polar bear cub pawed at the cooler. Just then, Peach burst out of her doghouse and bounded up to the cub. The two animals began tussling in the snow.
The cub got up and pawed at the cooler again. Peach came over to help. The two animals knocked the cooler on its side, and the fish spilled out onto the icy ground.
Peach hung back as the cub gobbled up the fish. Then they resumed their playing. Peach slipped and skidded on the ice. The cub squealed happily. The two animals touched noses.
“They’re talking with their noses!” Malina gushed. “Awww!”
“Awww!” Ella and Ethan joined in.
Now all they had to do was get the cub back to its real home!
The next day, the twins wrote an e-mail to Grandpa Harry:
Dear Grandpa Harry,
Guess what? We rescued a polar bear cub! We named him Marshmallow!
Marshmallow had been taking fish from the people in the village. The lady we’re staying with called the animal-rescue people. They said Marshmallow got separated from his family and wandered south. He was hungry, which is why he took the fish.
The animal-rescue people took Marshmallow back to his home. Marshmallow was sad to leave his new friend Peach. They touched noses good-bye. It’s too bad polar bears and dogs can’t e-mail each other like we can!
Still, Marshmallow must be happy to be with his family again. He seemed pretty homesick.
Love,
Ethan and Ella
PS By the way, we saw the northern lights last night! They were awesome!
Ethan Briar stared wide-eyed at the creepy statue. It stared back at him in the dim light of the underground corridor.
“Um, guys? What’s that?” Ethan asked nervously.
His twin sister, Ella, giggled when she saw it. “I’m not sure. And is it supposed to be a person or an animal?”
“Both!” their father, Andrew Briar, spoke up. “This is Pan, one of the Greek gods. He’s part human and part goat.”
“Isn’t he fascinating?” their mother, Josephine Briar, said excitedly. “Dr. Pappas said they’ve already dug up ten statues at this site. So far, they’re all figures from Greek mythology, like Pan.”
The Briars had just arrived at an archaeological dig in Athens, Greece. Dr. Pappas was in charge of the site, which was more than two thousand years old! As an archaeologist, she was an expert in artwork, weapons, and other items left behind by people from the past.
Mrs. Briar had gotten special permission for herself and Mr. Briar to help out with the excavation. She was a travel writer, and she planned to write an article about it. Mr. Briar was a history professor back home.
“Back home” was a town called Brookeston in the United States. The Briars had been traveling around the world for many months now for Mrs. Briar’s job. The Brookeston Times had hired her to write a column called “Journeys with Jo!” It was all about the different places their family was visiting, like France, India, Peru, Australia, Alaska—and now Greece!
“Can you guys find something to do for a while? Your dad and I need to check in with Dr. Pappas and get to work,” Mrs. Briar said to the twins.
“Why can’t we dig with you?” Ella asked.
“Yeah. We want to see what Grandpa Harry used to do!” Ethan added. Their Grandpa Harry was a famous archaeologist.
“Sorry, kids. This project is for adults only,” Mr. Briar told them. “Say, why don’t you go outside and find a nice, sunny place to hang out? You could do the reading for our Greek history lesson. You brought your books with you, right?”
The twins groaned. Homework was the last thing they felt like doing today. Besides, who needed books when real history was all around them?
Mr. and Mrs. Briar said good-bye and went off to join Dr. Pappas, who was brushing dirt from a clay figurine. Ethan and Ella began walking down the corridor. They passed a group of volunteers digging with small shovels. Everyone was wearing hard hats with headlamps, including the twins.
“How do we get up to the ground level?” Ella asked Ethan.
“We need to take the stairs. They’re that way,” Ethan said, pointing to the right.
They walked on in silence. More corridors sprouted off in various directions. Electric lamps hung from wires and cast yellow pools of light. No one seemed to be working in this part of the site.
“Maybe we went the wrong way,” Ella said anxiously.
“Ella! Look!”
Ethan stopped in front of a stone wall. On it was a painted image of a hawk. Next to the hawk was an image of a globe.
About the Authors
HARPER PARIS loves to travel. Her favorite cities in the world are Paris (like her name!) and New York City. She has collected many souvenirs on her travels, including a good-luck coin from Japan and a reindeer-horn pendant from Sweden. She also loves mysteries. When she was a kid, she read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books after bedtime with a flashlight. She now lives with her family (including two cats and a bunny, who are not good travelers) in Ithaca, New York.
MARCOS CALO has worked as a professional artist for more than fourteen years. He has worked in different fields: illustration, animation, and comic books. He lives with his wife and daughter in A Coruna, a small Spanish town by the seaside.
VISIT US AT
SimonandSchuster.com/kids
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Harper-Paris
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Marcos-Calo
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LITTLE SIMON
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division · 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 · www.SimonandSchuster.com · First Little Simon hardcover edition October 2015 · Copyright © 2015 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. LITTLE SIMON is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Designed by John Daly. Cover illustrations by Marcos Calo. The text of this book was set in ITC Stone Informal.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4814-2374-8 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2373-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2375-5 (eBook)
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