Catch Your Death. Lauren Child

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I’m sure there’ll be a logical explanation. Maybe they haven’t mailed the invitations yet.’

      ‘I hope you’re right Brant. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t get invited to this particular launch party.’

      Ruby rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

      After she had wolfed down her supper, she went back up to her room. She was keen to do more reading before she turned in for the night. She had been studying hard for the past weeks – reading everything she could, absorbing it, digesting it and living by it.

      What she didn’t know was that it was precisely this rigid adherence to the facts she had learned and the rules she had made that was going to lead to her downfall.

Chapter 2.

      

      ON DAY SEVEN SAM COLT BEGAN BY TALKING ABOUT BASIC SURVIVAL SKILLS.

      He hunkered down and motioned for them to gather round.

      ‘Anyone want to tell me the two most important things needed in order to survive out in the wild. . . other than water?’

      They had spent the first week mastering the skill of locating water, how to ensure the water was safe and how to make water when there was none.

      ‘Fire and shelter,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Correct again Redfort. Fire is your friend, except when it gets out of control. You have a responsibility never to let your fire get away from you. Forest fires you can’t always prevent, but you can ensure your campfire doesn’t cause one.’

      Ruby didn’t need reminding about this warning.

      It was:

      SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #1:

       Basic Skills

       2. FIRE

      SURVIVAL RULE 5:

       Only build a fire in a place where you can keep it contained.

      ‘Once you’ve found the right place to build your fire,’ Colt went on, ‘and once you’ve secured the surrounding area, tinder is what you’ll be needing next. Basically, you wanna find stuff that burns real easy and real quick. Tree bark, dried grass, paper – even cotton from your clothing if you’re desperate – all make good tinder. Or you could crush up pine cones or birds’ nests. Next on the list is kindling, then slow-burning fuel, meaning logs. Once you have all your materials lined up ready, all you gotta do is set fire to ’em. . . easier said than done.’

      He smiled and walked towards the door. ‘Since making fire is just about the most important skill you need, you better get practising.’

      The trainees all followed Sam Colt outside and spent the rest of that day trying to make a spark. As Colt had warned, it was ‘easier said than done’. All in all, it took about a week to master fire.

      Day fourteen, after school, and Ruby was sitting in the kitchen of Green-wood House, the Redforts’ stylish, modern Twinford home, making herself a little snack. The toaster pinged and up popped her two slices of toast: both were the bearers of unhappy news. Unlike most people’s toasters, Ruby Redfort’s doubled as a fax machine and was capable of delivering important messages from Spectrum when you had just sat down to eat a delicious snack.

      Ruby picked up the toast. The message was grilled into one side.

      The first piece said:

       ‘Foraging: one hour from now.’

      The other said:

       ‘Don’t spoil your appetite.’

      Ruby had been waiting for this day to arrive with a particular sort of dread. Having done some reading up on foraging, she couldn’t say it really appealed to her. She looked at the clock: she still had forty minutes before she needed to head off, still time to ask Mrs Digby’s expert advice on the subject.

      Mrs Digby had been with the Redfort family since before Ruby was born and with Ruby’s mother’s family forever or thereabouts.

      ‘I know all there is to know about mushrooms and toadstools, which ones will kill you and which won’t,’ Mrs Digby said.

      ‘You know a whole lot about the wild Mrs Digby, that’s for darn sure.’

      ‘The Digbys have always lived off the land and have always had it hard. We had it hard when we sailed over with the Mayflower and we’ve had it hard ever since, years and years of hardship and years of living off the free stuff that nature provided, no matter how disgusting, which it’s not unreasonable to say since it certainly can be at times.’

      ‘Just how poor were you Mrs Digby?’ Ruby asked this question not because she didn’t know the answer, but because the housekeeper enjoyed telling her.

      ‘Not a bean to rub against another bean. Which is why we had to forage. Mostly it was a cornucopia of goodness, but occasionally it was enough to turn a sailor’s stomach.’

      Mrs Digby was an excellent cook (though not a fashionable one) and she knew how to rustle up a supper fit for a president from ‘a dried-up onion and a pile of leaves’, if that’s all the ingredients there were.

      ‘Never turn your nose up at an edible mushroom. They might look like pixie furniture, but I’ve always told you Ruby: eat your mushrooms and you won’t go far wrong – full of protein is what they are. That’s why all these vegetarian types go cuckoo for ’em.’

      Ruby checked her book. ‘You’re not wrong. It says here, mushrooms are rich in most vitamins, especially B and C, and they contain nearly all the major minerals, particularly potassium and phosphorus.’

      Mrs Digby was a little surprised and, in her own words, tickled that Ruby was taking an interest in the theory of food and cookery, though she would have been more tickled if Ruby would take on the practical side too.

      ‘Since you’re so interested in cooking all of a sudden, how about you take over stirring this pot,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘while I read the funnies for five minutes?’

      Ruby checked her watch. Still thirty-nine minutes before she had to be at the helipad. She rolled her eyes and got stirring.

      Back at camp, some hours later, Ruby was busy trying to concoct a stew out of some unappealing roots and some ugly-looking fungi – Colt assured her none of it was poisonous; it was important to get this right since if you got it wrong you might wind up as extinct as the Blue Alaskan wolf.

      ‘I hope you all have understood the need to be getting au fait with roots and berries and СКАЧАТЬ