A countryside mystery for young readers

By Gareth M. Parkes

Benji found her in the long grass.

He almost missed her — she was very still for something that had been, moments earlier, moving at considerable speed in at least three directions. A narrow russet form, flat to the earth, ears forward, eyes fixed on a point across the meadow with the absolute concentration of a creature in the middle of a calculation.

"Don't," she said, without looking at him.

Benji stopped. His red collar caught the Essex morning light.

"Don't what?" he said.

"Don't move. Don't bark. Don't do whatever helpful thing you're about to do." She still hadn't looked at him. "I have a plan."

Benji settled quietly into the grass beside her and looked across the meadow.

Two jackdaws stood at the field edge, twenty metres away, their pale eyes moving steadily over the long grass. They were not in any hurry. They had the particular stillness of birds who know that whatever they're looking for is going to have to come out eventually.

"I'm Benji Booboos," Benji said.

"Flint," said the stoat. "And before you say anything — I have a plan."

"What's the plan?"

"The war dance," Flint said, with the air of someone producing a trump card. "I come up out of the grass, I do the bounce-and-spin routine — they won't be able to help themselves, they'll both look — and I break for the Coppice."

Benji considered this. The ancient woodland of Kelvedon Hatch sat at the far edge of the meadow, its trees old enough to remember when this part of Essex was still a proper forest, before anyone called it anything.

"How far to the Coppice?"

"Forty metres."

"And jackdaws fly at—"

"I'm faster," Flint said immediately.