The Finding of Freddie Perkins Read online

  ‘Freddie,’ said Granny P, ‘I have told you that this is the only rational explanation that I can think of. I agree that we shouldn’t believe everything we read in books – but that also goes for serious books that act as if they know everything there is to know about the world, you know.’

  Freddie pondered this for a moment. It was all like a riddle. But then, so were the mysteriously appearing items. His brain hurt a little, but with a sigh he decided he had nothing to lose from reading the entry.

  * * *

  Silly as the whole notion was, having read nearly seven pages on ‘the Fynd’, all Freddie and Granny P could do was stare at each other in wary, silent agreement.

  Freddie read the summary out loud again:

  The Fynd is small, shy and generally apt to hide in cluttered places where it will not be noticed. It likes the indoors, where it is warm and dry, and where it can surround itself with objects to sort and hide in or behind.

  It likes to interact with humans, but from a distance – this interaction typically taking the form of finding and presenting objects which have been lost, or which are unknown to the humans present, but have some form of value, whether monetary or sentimental.

  The Fynd’s exact physical appearance is unknown since it so persistently hides itself, even when it has made its presence known to the humans it is serving. However, it is thought to have a long tail, as several partial sightings have glimpsed this sandy-coloured appendage protruding from the Fynd’s hiding places.

  It is thought to survive by eating small amounts of waste paper, which tend to be in plentiful supply in the places it selects as habitats.

  It was discovered and named in 1601 by William Fynd.

  ‘Granny P?’ asked Freddie. ‘Do you really think we could have a Fynd living in the attic? I mean, I can hardly believe such a thing exists. But do you honestly think they are real? Not just a silly thing someone made up?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Freddie. It seems implausible. But it’s the best explanation we have. How do you suppose we could find out?’

  Freddie shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But for now, let’s not tell Dad. I’m not saying I believe it, but he definitely won’t. So we should wait for some proper proof before we mention it to him.’

  ‘Good idea, Freddie,’ said Granny P. ‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions without evidence to back them up. After all, that’s got us all into trouble recently, hasn’t it?’

  Granny P and Freddie sat in silence for some ten minutes, before Freddie had the idea. ‘I think we should put out some paper for it,’ he said, and he grinned at Granny P.

  Granny P smiled too. ‘Yes, that’s a good idea. We’ll put some paper out on the table in the attic and see if it disappears.’

  So that was what they did.

  At the end of that day’s work in the attic, they left some paper out on the table. Freddie worked especially hard to choose different types of paper, and to tear them up into tiny pieces that he imagined might be more manageable for a small creature.

  * * *

  But first thing the next morning, when they checked before breakfast, the paper was still there. Freddie found himself oddly disappointed, and glancing across at Granny P he could tell she was feeling the same.

  Then suddenly it hit him. ‘Granny P, Granny P!’ he shouted in excitement, jumping up and down. ‘Of course there’s no Fynd in the attic any more – it’s in the house!’

  There was a few seconds delay as Granny P caught up with that thought and put everything together…

  Things in the main part of the house had started showing up the day before yesterday – the day after Freddie had left the attic door open.

  ‘Yes Freddie, of course! You’re right,’ she giggled excitedly. ‘When you left the attic door open, the Fynd must have got so excited at the chance to investigate the rest of the house – maybe it had even found all the most valuable things up there, and knew there would be things we had lost that really mattered to us in the house. It must have come out of the attic, locked the door behind it, returned the key and then got to work. So the question is, where in the house should we try leaving the paper?’

  ‘Where else?’ grinned Freddie. ‘The dining room!’

  Freddie and Granny P were so excited that they completely forgot their own breakfast, laying out a feast of paper scraps in place of their porridge, and then creeping out and closing the door behind them.

  ‘How long should we leave it?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘Well, I think it wants to be friends,’ said Granny P. ‘So it might be confident to come and eat what it wants quite quickly… let’s give it an hour.’

  Neither Freddie nor Granny P was much good at being patient with a mystery. First one, then the other crept up to the dining room to listen against the door with a glass from the drinks cabinet in the drawing room. But they couldn’t hear anything. And they certainly couldn’t get on with anything else meanwhile. It was just impossible.

  Freddie was getting so desperate after just twenty-five minutes that he was all for going outside, walking round the house, and peering in the dining room window, but Granny said they mustn’t. They must have resolve, and a spirit of endurance.

  And so, after what seemed like weeks, an hour had finally gone by and together they approached the door to the dining room. Having spent the last hour frantically wishing time forward, they were strangely hesitant at the threshold.

  Granny P took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

  There was just one piece of paper left on the table. A piece of newspaper carefully bitten around to leave just two words in print – ‘thank’ and ‘you’.

  And next to it, as if to underline its sentiment, was another key.

  Granny P and Freddie looked at each other, wide-eyed and amazed.

  Here it was. On the table in front of them. Proof. They had a Fynd in their house!

  It was too wonderful to be real, but somehow it must be.

  For a few moments they just kept looking at each other, and then Granny P started to gently shake her head and say ‘No, it can’t be.’

  But of course it was.

  And as the truth settled into their minds it pushed out any remaining doubts that such a thing was not possible, and first Freddie, and then Granny P, began to giggle and clap, and laugh and dance. Well, Freddie danced; Granny P sort of bobbed and smiled, but her whole body seemed lit up with delight and excitement nevertheless.

  When they had got past the initial burst of excitement, they both flopped down onto the dining room chairs and marvelled again at the note, and passed the key backwards and forwards between them, imagining what it might be for. Because of course, neither of them knew. They decided to keep it safe because it looked very old, and they wondered whether perhaps it was for another chest or trunk in the attic which the Fynd wanted to make sure they could get into.

  11

  Scientific observations

  Most of the rest of that warm July day was taken up with the wonder of what or who had been discovered at Willow Beck.

  Freddie and Granny P read the Fynd’s entry in Grandpa P’s book so many times that Freddie began to remember whole sentences from it in his head. And just before lunch he decided it would be a good idea to make a sort of booklet of the most important points so that Granny P and he could remember them, and keep them easily to hand in one of the sideboard drawers.

  Freddie was very scientific in his approach.

  Now he was convinced the Fynd was real, he wanted to study it and learn as much about its habits and nature as possible. He was also secretly hoping that if he found out a lot about the Fynd, he would be able to care for it very well… and it might become friends with him, and perhaps even let him catch a glimpse of it.

  Then he, Freddie Perkins – the latest in a long line of explorers – would be the first person to ever see the Fynd properly.

  * * *

  His first efforts were focused on studying its food.

>   At lunch, he considered that the Fynd, who had eaten its breakfast a little while after theirs, might be hungry again by mid-afternoon, and so that would be a good time to conduct a study on which types of paper it would choose to eat.

  Granny P and he speculated about possible paper delicacies over their own lunch of egg sandwiches and tomato soup.

  ‘I imagine it would like soft paper, like tissues. Less effort to chew and better quality… rather like cake,’ said Granny P with a wink.

  ‘But wouldn’t that be a bit stringy for it?’ questioned Freddie. ‘Perhaps it would prefer crunching through cardboard as if it were munching crisps?’

  ‘Well, Freddie, as you say, the only way to find out is to conduct a proper, controlled experiment.’

  And so they did.

  When the lunch things had been cleared, they laid out as many different types of paper as possible. There was standard wrapping paper, foil wrapping paper, glitter paper, white cardboard, corrugated cardboard, cereal packet, newspaper, magazine paper, tissue paper, hand-made paper, posh watercolour paper, toilet roll, kitchen towel, and even some crepe paper which Freddie had found upstairs.

  Granny P managed to find a piece of Indian silk paper which she was kindly going to add. But Freddie saw her face was a little sad and realised just in time that it might be special to her. He didn’t want to let on to Granny P that he’d realised she might mind, so instead, he said he was a bit worried that silk, as it was a different fibre, would be poisonous for the Fynd, or simply too difficult to digest, and so probably not worth the risk of including.

  And then Freddie made up a mini-questionnaire to sit under all the different papers.

  1. Does this taste nice?

  2. Is this texture OK for you?

  3. Do you want more of this?

  Freddie then labelled all the samples, and counted them. There were fourteen different types of paper and he was a bit concerned that there was too much for the Fynd to get through in one meal.

  He wanted it to be able to focus on chewing the contents of the experiment rather than anything else, so he decided to save some of its appetite by asking Granny P to make a whole stack of scraps of paper with ticks and crosses on, so the Fynd wouldn’t have to chew its answers.

  Freddie and Granny P worked hard for at least an hour, preparing the experiment. Finally, they were content that it was the perfect test.

  Again they left the dining room, only this time they made the wait less agonising by going for a walk through the garden, and down the hill towards the loch.

  * * *

  Freddie was so excited to be back near the house, and to be so close to the results of his first official Fynd study. But Granny P was finding it slow going up the hill, and eventually he could wait no longer. She smiled at him, and as if sensing his carefully held-in impatience, said ‘Freddie, you go ahead and find out the results. Then you can present your findings just like all scientists do!’

  ‘Thanks, Granny P!’ he yelled over his shoulder, for he had started running ahead the moment she had begun to say he could.

  Freddie ran up the hill, through the garden, up the path, into the entrance hall, and then paused at the dining room door.

  He realised his mistake, too late of course… he should have come in quietly, tip-toeing into the house, because then he might have surprised the Fynd in the middle of its feast.

  ‘Oh well, next time,’ he thought to himself, as he pushed the slightly-ajar-door fully open and walked purposefully into the room to survey his results.

  ‘No way!’ he exclaimed.

  There was nothing left! The Fynd had eaten everything. Ticks, crosses, questionnaire and fourteen different paper samples!

  The only exceptions were three tiny scraps of newspaper print laid out in order to read

  Freddie sunk down onto one of the dining room chairs, still breathless from his run.

  How could you study something if it wouldn’t obey the rules?

  * * *

  When Granny P joined Freddie in the dining room she took in the scene and its implications at once. And as usual, she had thought of something wonderful that Freddie hadn’t even considered.

  ‘What a delightful discovery,’ she said. ‘The Fynd likes things best that have print on them, so it can communicate. I think it wants to be friends with us, Freddie!’

  Freddie felt all his disappointment at the thought-to-have-failed experiment fall away as a rush of excitement took its place.

  ‘What do you think it will tell us, Granny P?’

  Granny P smiled at him, and then gave him a playful poke. ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘What, now? Surely it can’t possibly eat anything else after all that paper?’

  ‘It does seem to be asking for more, Freddie… let’s give it a try.’

  So they did.

  They split up to better cover the house and found as much newspaper as they could from packing crates in the attic, the waste-paper bin in Dad’s study, and the recycling stack by the back door.

  Between them they constructed a massive pile of it on the dining room table. Freddie was a bit worried that it wasn’t safe to leave so much all at once, in case the Fynd ate all of that too and made itself ill. But Granny P said she had a feeling it just wanted to do things on its own terms, and they should trust it to be responsible.

  For the third and final time that day they backed out of the dining room, leaving the door just slightly open, and retreating quietly to leave the space free for the Fynd and its paper.

  The wait this time was sat out in the sitting room, and Freddie found it unbearably long.

  He wasn’t exactly surprised that Granny P fell asleep only ten minutes in, because they had had such an exciting and exhausting day. But all the same it was hard because now he didn’t even have anyone to talk to him to help pass the time.

  He couldn’t settle to anything.

  He tried reading his favourite comic, watching TV, and playing computer games, but somehow none of their made-up worlds captivated his interest half as much as what he now knew was going on just across the hall.

  This was the kind of agonising waiting time that only drawing could fill, and he even got as far as getting out his sketchpad and pencils. But it was no good, the ideas just wouldn’t come like they used to.

  There was nothing for it. He would simply have to sit it out.

  * * *

  At two minutes before five, when the hour was not quite entirely up, but Freddie’s patience absolutely was, he woke Granny P. Despite her nap, she was as impatient as him to see what the Fynd had said, and so they both rushed into the dining room.

  There on the table were more words – quite a lot more than the two short phrases they had seen so far.

  ‘Wow!’ said Freddie, ‘Wow!’

  Granny P was just about to say that she could think of no other word for it when the front door shut and Dad called out that he was home.

  Nothing more needed to be said. Granny P and Freddie quickly tidied up the pieces of paper into Freddie’s earlier created ‘Fynd studies’ folder, and hid it in the sideboard drawer with the booklet he had made about taking care of the Fynd.

  * * *

  Dinner that night was a bit tricky to navigate.

  Dad and Freddie were still a bit uneasy with each other. And Freddie and Granny P were struggling a bit too, because everything that was said seemed to remind them of the Fynd. But of course they couldn’t say anything about it, so there were lots of sudden halts in the conversation.

  All in all, Freddie was relieved to go up to bed that night so he could just relax and go over the magical day in his head.

  But as he lay there, revelling in the excitement of it, he couldn’t help but still feel sad about his dad.

  He didn’t know how he or Granny P could ever explain to him that they had a Fynd in the house, and without an explanation, how could he ever break through the silence that was back between them since the terri
ble row?

  Exhausted from trying so hard to conjure up a solution, he fell asleep. But his dreams were full of treasure hunts and chewed up paper words floating around, and strange, mythical creatures from Grandpa P’s book.

  12

  Find and seek

  The next morning, Freddie woke up to the sound of his door being gently shut. He turned over towards his bedside table thinking that Granny P must have brought him a drink in bed, and left it next to the genie teapot. But there was nothing there besides the pot itself.

  Freddie half sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he did so, and looking around the room puzzled, and still half asleep.

  It was then that he saw it.

  Over in the right-hand back corner of his room, near his desk, his waste-paper bin had been knocked over and some of its contents spilled out on the floor. ‘How did that happen?’ he wondered.

  Now he was properly awake.

  He sat up straight, and pulled back the curtain nearest to him, letting the bright July morning into his room. What was that behind the bin? It looked like some kind of book… and what was his glue stick doing off the shelf and on the floor?

  Barely three seconds had passed before Freddie was up, over in the corner, and down on his knees to investigate. Who had put it there?

  He gasped with excitement as he looked at its cover. The book was large, heavy and beautifully bound. Freddie didn’t know for certain if it was leather, but it felt like it might be. Was it a record of more of his family’s historic adventures?

  But as he hurriedly opened the book, he frowned in frustration. It was empty – and not at all old, as its cover had suggested. It was just a blank scrapbook.

  He flicked through a few of the clean, fresh smelling pages and saw square after square of inviting space waiting to be filled with beautiful pictures, or magical stories, or personal memoirs, and quickly he began to feel excited again. What would he use it for? It would have to be filled with something wonderful because it was that kind of book.