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Chapter One
    Kidnapping children is not a good idea. All the same, sometimes it has to be done.
    Aunt Etta and Aunt Coral and Aunt Myrtle were not natural kidnappers. For one thing, they were getting old and kidnapping is hard work; for another, though they looked a little odd, they were
very caring people. They cared for their ancient father and for their shrivelled cousin Sybil who lived in a cave and tried to foretell the future – and most particularly they cared for the
animals on the island on which they lived, many of which were quite unusual.
    Some of the creatures that made their way to the Island had come far across the ocean to be looked after, and lately the aunts had felt that they could not go on much longer without help. And
‘help’ didn’t mean grown-ups who were set in their ways. Help meant children who were young and strong and willing to learn.
    So on a cool blustery day in April the three aunts gathered round the kitchen table and decided to go ahead. Some children had to be found and they had to be brought to the island, and
kidnapping seemed the only sensible way to do it.
    ‘That way we can choose the ones that are suitable,’ said Aunt Etta. She was the eldest; a tall, bony woman who did fifty press-ups before breakfast and had a small but not at all
unpleasant moustache on her upper lip.
    The others looked out of the window at the soft green turf, the sparkling sea, and sighed, thinking of what had to be done. The sleeping powders, the drugged hamburgers, the bags and sacks and
cello cases they would need to carry the children away in . . .
    ‘Will they scream and wriggle, do you suppose?’ asked Aunt Myrtle, who was the youngest. She suffered from headaches and hated noise.
    ‘No, of course not. They’ll be unconscious,’ said Aunt Etta. ‘Flat out. I don’t like it any more than you do,’ she went on, ‘but you saw the programme
on TV last week.’
    The others nodded. When they first came to the Island they hadn’t had any electricity, but after his hundredth birthday their father’s toes had started to turn blue because not
enough blood got to his feet and they had ordered a generator so that he could have an electric blanket. After that they thought they might as well have an electric kettle, and then a TV.
    But the TV had been a mistake because of the nature programmes. Nature programmes always end badly. First you see the hairy-nosed wombats frisking about with their babies and then five minutes
before the end you hear that there are only twelve breeding pairs left in the whole of Australia. Or there are pictures of the harlequin frogs of Costa Rica croaking away on their lily leaves and
the next minute you are told that they’re doomed because their swamps are being drained. Worst of all are the rainforests. The aunts could never see a programme about the rainforests without
crying, and last week there had been a particularly bad one with wicked people burning and slashing the trees, and pictures of the monkeys and the jaguars rushing away in terror.
    ‘What if we became extinct?’ Aunt Coral had wondered, blowing her nose. ‘Not just the wombats and the harlequin frogs and the jaguars, but us .’
    The others had seen the point at once. If a whole rainforest can become extinct why not three elderly ladies? And if they became extinct what would happen to their work and who would care for
the creatures that came to the Island in search of comfort and of care?
    There was another thing which bothered the aunts. Lately the animals that came to the Island simply wouldn’t go away again. Long after they were healed they stayed on – it was almost
as if they knew something – and that made more and more work for the aunts. There was no doubt about it, help had to be brought in, and quickly.
    So now they were deciding what to do.
    ‘How do we find the right children?’ asked Myrtle as she looked longingly out at