The Farthing Wood Collection 1 by Colin Dann Read Free Book Online Page A

on the other animals that some menace hovered over Farthing Wood; that in some way they must make changes to avert an awful fate.
    The other hedgehogs heard him out. ‘There are no changes we can make that would make a jot of difference to Farthing Wood one way or the other,’ commentedone. ‘We cause no disturbance. We take what we need and don’t interfere with the lives of other creatures.’
    Sage Hedgehog said, ‘None of us can escape the doom that threatens us, from the smallest to the largest. Unless.…’
    ‘Unless what?’ an elderly hedgehog asked. ‘Unless we sprout wings and fly away? Your riddles are of little help.’
    ‘Unless,’ Sage Hedgehog murmured, ‘we somehow pull together to – to –’ he screwed up his eyes as he struggled to find words to interpret what seemed to him a message from some mystical source – ‘to save ourselves,’ he finished in a burst with a long sigh of relief.
    ‘It’s the larger animals who can affect what changes take place here, and only they,’ another hedgehog said. ‘The foxes are the most powerful animals as they’ve already demonstrated. Take your tale to them. I doubt if they’ll listen, but if they don’t, your breath is wasted on any other creature.’
    ‘I shall speak to the foxes,’ Sage Hedgehog confirmed. ‘I shall speak to everyone.’
    As before, few of the Wood’s inhabitants were inclined to listen. Sage Hedgehog persisted. It was his role to warn others and not to be defeated by apathy or scorn.
    ‘You were wrong to make war with the otters,’ he told the foxes. ‘You will rue the day you drove them out.’
    ‘On the contrary,’ Lean Vixen corrected him. ‘It’s the best thing we ever did. Look how we’ve benefited.’ She and her mate had filled out considerably, andtheir coats had a healthy sheen. ‘We’ve taken on a new lease of life.’
    ‘A lease that will end abruptly in disease and panic,’ Sage Hedgehog predicted.
    ‘You dotty old ball of spikes,’ Lean Vixen scoffed, half angrily and half in amusement. ‘You come to us with this nonsense and expect us to take you seriously?’
    ‘A threat to the Wood is surely serious?’ Lean Fox cautioned.
    ‘What threat? There’s no evidence –’
    ‘There have been more humans in the Wood of late,’ Lean Fox interrupted.
    ‘Oh, we pay them too much attention,’ the vixen dismissed his remark. ‘We always have. But why? They never do anything. They walk, they look … what sort of threat is that?’
    ‘Human interest can always be a threat,’ Lean Fox muttered sullenly. ‘I’d prefer to be ignored.’
    Sage Hedgehog said, ‘If the human eye is on us, we’d do well to look out for each other.’
    Meanwhile the otters, torn between their fear of the unknown and their horror of returning to their homes, made makeshift dens under a hedgerow and ate vegetation, snails and slugs to avoid starvation.
    Sleek Otter determined to look for water. She knew that without it their lives were worth nothing.

At sunset one dry evening, four days after their flight, Sleek Otter set out. She slipped away while the others made their weary and fruitless search for nourishment. She had eaten almost nothing since abandoning her holt. She knew that the best way to find food was to find water. The memory of her cubs’ deaths after eating unsuitable prey remained with her.
    The air was balmy and still. She loped across a field. On the far side a road loomed – for the moment quiet. Sleek Otter sprinted across without pausing. Her heart beat fast. She sniffed the aroma of human food and human bodies hanging thickly in a cottage garden. Her nostrils twitched. Her whiskers brushed a wall as she ran along its length, then she slipped through a gate into the garden and trotted noiselessly to a garden pond. Her eyes widened. The scent of water lured her like a magnet. Noises from the house – a televised voice, the laughter of a viewer – made her hesitate. Then silence resumed.
    Sleek