A countryside mystery for young readers

By Gareth M. Parkes

Benji heard her before he saw her.

The woodland trail at Quarr wound through ancient trees behind the Abbey, past walls of stone that had been standing since the twelfth century, and at this time of year it was alive with a particular kind of busyness. Not the alarmed busyness of spring, not the lazy busyness of summer, but the focused, purposeful busyness of a creature who knows exactly how much time is left and intends to use every minute of it.

The rustling above him was rhythmic and quick. Descend. Assess. Dig. Cover. Ascend. Repeat.

Benji sat on the path and looked up.

A red squirrel looked back down at him from a low branch. She was extraordinary — chestnut-red with ear tufts like small exclamation marks and eyes the colour of dark honey. In one paw she held an acorn. In the other, nothing. She'd already put it somewhere.

"You're very still for a dog," she said.

"I've been learning from good teachers," said Benji. His red collar caught the filtered light through the canopy.

The squirrel looked at the acorn. Looked at him. Made a decision and dropped to a branch at eye level.

"Sorrel. I'm in the middle of something."

"I can see that," Benji said. "I won't keep you."

"Nobody keeps me," Sorrel said pleasantly, already moving. "I keep myself. That's rather the point."

She worked as she talked, which was impressive to watch.

Every movement had a purpose — not frantic, not random, but methodical in the way of someone executing a plan they'd been refining for weeks. She descended to a specific spot at the base of a particular oak, dug precisely, deposited, covered, smoothed the surface with her paw in a single practised gesture, and was back in the branches before Benji had properly watched her go down.

"You have a system," Benji said.

"Everyone should have a system," Sorrel said. "That's the lesson of this time of year." She moved to the next cache site — three branches across, drop, assess, dig. "Come, walk with me. I can talk and work simultaneously. I've been doing it since September."

Benji followed along the trail as Sorrel moved through the canopy above, dropping to earth at intervals that seemed random to him but were clearly nothing of the sort. Each cache was placed in relation to something fixed: the old stone wall of the medieval ruins, a particular beech with a split trunk, the corner post of the wildlife hide.