Free The Farthing Wood Collection 1 by Colin Dann

Perhaps you’ll feel better.’
    ‘I-I couldn’t. I couldn’t eat at all. Oh, I feel so, so poorly. I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.’
    ‘Don’t say that,’ Sly Stoat beseeched her. ‘That sounds like –’
    ‘I know,’ she cut in before he could spell it out. ‘I know what it sounds like. I really think … I’ve done for myself.’
    ‘It’s the legacy of the otters,’ Sly Stoat whispered to himself. ‘It’s revenge for what we did to them. I must see the old hedgehog. Perhaps he has some advice.’
    Sage Hedgehog could often be found near Farthing Pond. There were sedges there whose leaves attracted snails and slugs, his favourite food. Sly Stoat heard the hedgehog smacking his lips over a glutinous morsel before he actually spied him. Sage Hedgehog saw him first.
    ‘Troubled times,’ he said. ‘You’re in trouble, I’ve no doubt.’
    ‘How did you –?’ Sly Stoat began, then hastily added, ‘Of course, you can see my agitation. My mate, the wily stoat, is sick. Her wiles were not enough to save her from the otters’ revenge. What can I do?’
    ‘Otters’ revenge?’ the old hedgehog repeated. He knew nothing about the trail of voles. ‘No, the otters are gone. It is not revenge. It is fate. The fate of FarthingWood and everything in it is sealed. It will not be long before the humans know this.’
    Sly Stoat was puzzled and irritated. What sort of advice was this? ‘I don’t understand your rigmarole,’ he muttered. ‘All I want is for my mate to be well again.’
    ‘A vain hope, I fear,’ Sage Hedgehog replied, ‘when the Wood itself is doomed.’
    The sly stoat had achieved nothing and was baffled and angry. ‘Why, you silly, flea-ridden old thorncoat,’ he snarled and made a rush towards him.
    Sage Hedgehog instantly turned himself into a pincushion and Sly Stoat, more frustrated than ever, had to abandon him.
    In the makeshift shelter of their log the three otters shuddered as new, frightening sounds assaulted their ears. The thunder and clatter of passing trains rocked the ground beneath them. It was a noise so terrifying that it made them desperate to escape from that place immediately – even in the daylight. Slow Otter, who hadn’t, of course, the benefit of a proper hiding-place, had run at once when the first train approached. He had made the mistake of trying to cross the track and had blundered directly into a live rail. His body was still draped over it when the train passed. There was very little of him to be seen afterwards.
    In one of the lulls between trains, Sleek Otter led her companions out of the log. She drew a sharp intake of breath. ‘Look,’ she gasped. ‘We mustn’t go across there. Some poor creature has been caught and killed by the monster.’
    ‘Where shall we go? Oh, where can we go?’ cried Long-Whiskers who was at her wits’ end.
    Sleek Otter tried to keep calm. ‘Away from this dangerous place at least,’ she answered. She looked all round for some feature that promised a vestige of safety. There were buildings and other forbidding shapes at every point. She realized they had strayed too far into the alien world of humans.
    ‘We must be quick,’ Lame Otter urged. ‘We’re vulnerable in the daylight.’
    ‘What do you suggest then?’ Sleek Otter snapped, overcome by tension.
    ‘I don’t know. But we have to find shelter.’
    ‘I know that, I know that,’ she hissed. ‘All right, let’s try this way.’ In a nearby overgrown garden, rank plants offered a hiding-place. She set off at a run, leaving the other two to follow at their own pace. Lame Otter was soon trailing behind the females.
    ‘I shall be the next to be separated,’ he muttered to himself as he thought of Slow Otter. As he limped along, a crow which had seen the dead meat on the railway track, flew close beside him, carrying part of the severed head of the unfortunate animal. Lame Otter heard the beat of wings and looked up. Slow Otter’s disfigured face