The Golden Flight Read Online Free PDF

have an open mind,’ Lundy replied. ‘Humans try to keep their thoughts in a shell as though each was hiding some terrible secret. Only when they are alone on the beach do they relax and then their taut-lines convey their thoughts down into the sea like a trickle of water down a pipe.’
    ‘What else do they think about?’ Marguerite asked.
    Malin’s thoughts washed in, ‘One was excited about things he was studying called ‘computers’. You may know that humans in this part of the world do something called ‘work’ which most don’t like, for five days out of every seven and then they have two days for doing other things they do like, such as fishing. Then they do five days more of work.’
    ‘What is a computer?’ Marguerite asked.
    ‘It was hard to read that. I could only get a picture of a box, but it used numbers inside to find out all manner of things. That human was convinced that within a few years the computers would be doing much of the work the humans have to do now, and then they would spend only four days doing work and have three days for fishing.’
    Overhead Marguerite heard the W-wow, W-wow sound of a swan’s wing-beats and looked up as the great bird flew over. Finisterre’s thoughts reached her. ‘I wish I could fly,’ he was thinking.
    Malin said, ‘There will be humans about soon. We must go now.’
    ‘Are you going back out to sea?’ Marguerite asked.
    ‘I’ve a friend I would like you to meet. Like me, he is interested in numbers.’
    ‘We plan to show Finisterre around Poole Harbour today – we could come back at dusk.’
    ‘I would like that,’ Marguerite said, and the dolphins wriggled backwards into deeper water and swam away up the harbour on the rising tide.
     
    It was to be a long day for Marguerite. First she sought out Chip and tried to explain all that she had heard from the dolphins. She had told him before how she could communicate with them without actually speaking. Now she reminded him.
    ‘I seem to be the only squirrel who can do it,’ she said.
    ‘Not so,’ said Chip. ‘You remember when we were in that boat last year? I knew all that the dolphins were saying to you, but I couldn’t hear what you were saying to them. Your mouth was shut all the time.’
    ‘You never told me this before,’ said Marguerite.
    ‘I was always a bit scared of you then. You know – Tagger and all that.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now I know that you are just an ordinary squirrel like the rest of us … ordinary, but special,’ he added.
    Marguerite smiled back. ‘I often wish I could be ordinary – it’s just that extra-ordinary things seem to keep happening to me.’
    Chip hung the latest version of the Bark-rush on a twig and sat back to listen to Marguerite’s tale.
    She told him, not only about the human’s computer-box but also about Chestnut and Heather’s plantation of Woodstocks and the tree being made into a huge squirrel shape. ‘Sun knows what’s going on in other parts of Ourland. We never get together as we used to, there are just too many of us. And since there’s no danger now, it doesn’t seem so important.’
    Chip looked grave. ‘I’ve done some more calculations,’ he told here. ‘In a few years time there will be more squirrels on this island than it can possibly support. I’ve tried to see what would happen if we increased the Sun’s tithe and, even if we left half of the buried nuts to grow, there wouldn’t be enough room on the island for all those trees. We’re going to have to slow down our breeding rate, or get the extra squirrels to the Mainland.’
    ‘As far as we know, the Mainland is all Grey territory now. I don’t know how they would react to us coming back,’ Marguerite said. ‘I often wonder how my brother Rowan and his party are doing. Only a squirrel as bold as he is would have dared to stay on and try to teach them our ideals. I worry about him a lot.’
    ‘He’s got Meadowsweet, Spindle and Wood Anemone and all