The Finding of Freddie Perkins (9 page)

* * *

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 terrible 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.

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.

Freddie was lost to his creative plans for a few minutes so he wasn't quite sure which came first – the remembrance that it was still a mystery how the book had got to his room, or the flicking to the front inside cover. But either way, question and answer became one as he read four simple words, constructed carefully and neatly from chewed up newsprint, and glued near the middle of the page as if they were a dedication.