It was August now, and apart from my four days’ escape I had been on the Wild School island nearly four months. My insides were in knots thinking about going to Helsinki. Matti cracked a few jokes as we set off. Maybe he saw how nervous I was? ‘Hey, Niilo, want to dive overboard and swim alongsid...
Someone was in there with a torch. My heart galloped like a bolting horse. The hacking cough came again. My face was pressed up against the side of the shed. Let it not be Crow. Let it be an old tramp. Or Will. Or Robbie.I couldn’t blink, couldn’t run away. I felt frozen with fear. I couldn’t see...
Magnus Fin felt the keenness of his hearing and the sharpness of his nostrils. His long soft whiskers brushed sea grass aside. His tails fins flicked through the water, turning him easily this way and that. As last he knew the freedom and strength of the seal. He heeded the compass of his marine ...
With his torch-light pupils he could make out, through the dark water, massive swaying fronds of seaweed. The cavern seemed to be shaped like a great conch shell. Through the dimness he could see that some of the cavern was made of an orange stone. Miranda told him it was amber. She was swimming ...
What a relief. He wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to cheer. His hand was normal! He stretched and wiggled his fingers, then bounded out of bed. He couldn’t wait to go to school. He couldn’t wait to see his 22 pals. He’d be as normal as… He couldn’t think. Everyone in his class was different i...
Noble was speaking to me. “Ash goes oot the back on the compost heap. Guid for the grass. Some fires hav’nae been swept for months. Once they’re a’ swept, black them and polish them. Then hoik the coal up. Set a’ the fires. Dinnae drop coal dust. Dinnae get grubby fingerprints on the wa’s.”I star...
“I’m getting old,” that’s what she kept saying, but she’s not completely ancient, she’s fine really. Still, we spent ages in the supermarket. We must have looked at everything twenty times. How does that happen, that when you are in a hurry everybody else goes really slow? ...