The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Thirty-Five - New Home

"What are your plans for today?" I asked Bino at breakfast, a couple of days later. Bino was the most junior of the Marines and so he often needed a bit of guidance.

I was gradually getting used to the idea of doing the team leader thing for the whole gang. At breakfast, I went round the group and asked each one of them what they were planning to do that day... and, of course, I made a quick note. Then, at dinner time, I asked them all how they'd got on.

And it didn't really matter whether I completely understood what they were going on about... though, with all these chats, I was getting much better at that. What mattered was that they had to put it into words so at least they knew themselves!

"I'm going to look in on Flossie..." he told us. The guys had captured a sheep and shut her up in a small enclosure. They had explained that they had to get her used to people so she wouldn't get all stressy when they came to slaughter her. And they'd even decided to give her a name. I mean... it all felt pretty weird and a bit callous to me but they seemed to know what they were doing.

And I guess the rules of weird and callous are a bit different if you're a Royal Marine

"After that, Ben and me are going up to Rambo's place to get some more wood chopped..."

"I've been thinking about that," Daniel said. "If we waited for a really calm day, we might be able to build ourselves a raft with the firewood and float it down here? It'd be much easier than trying to haul the stuff down here on our backs."

The guys were doing steady work, preparing a small mountain of firewood for the coming winter... and nobody was much looking forward to the idea of lugging the stuff back here.

Of course that kicked off some general chatting but I tried to get things back on track. "Does that make any difference to today's plans?"

"If we come across any long, straight trunks, we might want to keep them whole to build the raft," Sarge suggested. "And the stuff might be easier to handle if we keep it in two foot lengths and chop it again when we get it back here."

That drew some nods.

"If you come across any wood up there which is already properly dry and seasoned, could you bring it back with you straight away, please?" I asked. "I mean... we've got a fair bit of coal but I'd prefer to keep that for burning through the night in winter, if possible."

Jake, Emily's dad, told us that he was planning another foraging expedition. Foraging was definitely helping to stretch out our precious food supplies and he was our resident expert.

There were early blackberries, crabapples and hazelnuts which were helping to make our breakfast porridge much more exciting. Some were eaten fresh and some preserved for later. There were three sorts of edible seaweed which didn't taste of much but helped to bulk out our stews. There were plenty of fish, of course, and there were muscles and crabs and, a couple of days before, he'd even managed to catch a small lobster!

"See whether you can find any more of those delicious wild mushrooms," his wife, Jane, told him.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.

"If somebody can take care of Emily."

"Are you doing your nursery thing this morning? I asked Margaret.

She nodded.

"Then I can look after her in the afternoon." I mean... I'd never had anything to do with kids before but I was basically getting used to having little Emily about and it was kind of fun!

"I'm afraid you can't," Daniel told me. "It's been a week since we were last in town and we need to go back there to keep up the impression that we're running short of food."