Free Olive of Groves and the Great Slurp of Time by Katrina Nannestad

her feet into the horse’s sides and fell off backwards as Star bolted through the middle of a hedge.
    Anastasia and Beauty threw their heads back and laughed. Olive, good-natured as she was, did not mind. Although she did wonder whether they needed to laugh quite so hard . . . or for quite so long.
    Star now refused to cooperate. She wandered off to the orchard, where she plucked one apple after another, chomping to her heart’s content. Olive, determined and practical, crept across the garden, climbed up into thebranches of the apple tree, dropped softly down onto Star’s back and grabbed her mane.
    Star did not move.
    Olive relaxed, just a little, and Star sprang to life. Rearing up on her hind legs, she let out a fiendish whinny, then shot off, galloping between the trees, cantering around the garden gnomes, jumping over the flowerbeds, swiping along the hedges and splashing through the fish pond!
    â€˜Look at me!’ cried Olive, laughing with the rush and fury of it all. ‘I’m riding a horse! I’m staying on! It’s amazing! Thrilling! Nothing, absolutely nothing , that this naughty horse can do will make me fall off!’
    Nothing, except for running under the low-hanging branch of an elm tree.
    Long story short, the equine acrobatics lesson came to an abrupt ending and Olive spent a quiet afternoon in the infirmary with Wordsworth reading her poems about cheese, Num-Num chewing on her elbow and Reginald buttering the soles of her feet.
    Fumble came in after dinner to plump the pillows and stroke her head, but found it difficult to see in the dimly lit room and accidentally plumped her head and stroked the pillows.
    And just before lights out, Basil called in and offered to read her his favourite bedtime story.
    â€˜Oh yes please!’ said Olive.
    He had failed to inform her, however, that the book was in his house . . . in the Black Forest . . . back in 1857 . . .

13
    In which we rest our weary heads upon a cowpat
    â€˜Goodness gracious me, Basil! Where have you been all this time? It is half past ten by the chiming of the cuckoos and you still have not been out to the barn to clean up for Papa after the milking! He will never get that giant cuckoo clock for Herr Gunther finished at this rate!’
    Of course, Mama said all of this in German, but by some astonishing trick of time travel, Olive could understand every single word as though it was her own language.
    â€˜Sorry, Mama,’ said Basil, without a hint of remorse. ‘I have been travelling through time . . . and I forgot to take my little brass clock with the backwards-moving hands . . . and then I went on a journey to see the dinosaurs . . . and then I was having such a wonderful time at my new school that I did not want to come home.’
    Olive cowered behind Basil, a little scared. Mama was a tall, blocky woman with a downturned mouth and devastatingly deep frown lines. Her blonde hair was coiled in a tight orderly braid over each ear. Her blouse sleeves were rolled up to the elbows to reveal forearms made large and muscular from churning butter, kneading great quantities of pumpernickel dough and wrestling cows. But, most disturbing of all, she clutched a rolling pin in one hand and a sturdy wooden spoon in the other.

    â€˜And who might these children be?’ asked Frau Heffenhüffenheimer, pointing the wooden spoon at Olive then beyond.
    â€˜ Children? ’ thought Olive. She looked around and was surprised to see Carlos and Hamish crammed side by side into a rocking chair. Three frogs were trying to escape from Hamish’s pockets. Carlos was stuffing a stick of dynamite up the sleeve of his jumper. Pigg McKenzie was standing behind them, smirking.
    All three had been under Olive’s bed in the infirmary when Basil had inadvertently drawn them back in time. Carlos and Hamish had been booby-trapping Olive’s bedpan. The pig had been eavesdropping, hoping to learn a little more about time