Alex and the Alpacas Save the World Read online

  Ugh. So gross.

  Alex wiped her hand on her jeans, glaring at the black alpaca. The animal finished its mouthful in about two seconds and when no more apple was immediately forthcoming, proceeded to help itself by sticking its face straight into the plate of fruit.

  ‘Hey!’ Alex tried to back away, but the alpaca followed her. The other alpacas nudged in, trying to get at the fruit too, jostling her roughly from side to side. She lifted the plate above her head. A woolly foot came down hard on her sneaker and she squealed. ‘Ahh! Watch it!’

  ‘If she handed over the apple, she wouldn’t get hurt!’ an indignant voice grumbled.

  Alex spun around, looking for Grandpa Jacob. He was standing about ten feet away, peering at a tree in the grove. ‘What did you say?’

  He glanced over. ‘Me? Nothing.’

  ‘I thought you said —oof!’ She stumbled forward. The chocolate alpaca was trying to get at the apple by putting its head over her arm. Alex pivoted on the spot, twisting away from the animal.

  ‘Ouch!’ It was a different voice. Female. Annoyed. ‘The girl flicked me in the eye with her mane!’

  Alex dropped the plate. ‘What’s going on?’ Her voice was high-pitched, uncertain.

  ‘What?’ Grandpa Jacob limped back toward her.

  The alpacas shoved Alex out of the way as they dived down, inhaling the rest of the apple in about three seconds flat.

  ‘There were … I heard …’ She glared at him. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

  Grandpa Jacob saw the plate lying on the ground. It had broken in half. ‘That was Rosa’s favourite!’

  Alex wasn’t listening to him. She spun around, looking for who had spoken. But there was no one else around. ‘I heard voices,’ she said, quietly.

  Another voice, whispering. ‘Did she just say she heard voices?’

  Alex felt a nudge at her elbow and whirled around to face the chocolate alpaca. The animal opened its mouth. The voice that emanated from the creature was female, and full of surprise.

  ‘You can understand us?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Alex half-ran, half-stumbled back through the olive grove, her thoughts tumbling around like a skydiver without a parachute.

  The alpacas had talked to her.

  The alpacas had talked to her.

  The alpacas had talked to her.

  And all the while her mind was screaming, ‘That’s not possible! Alpacas can’t talk!’

  She almost slammed straight into Mum, who was standing just inside the gate, staring over the olive trees.

  ‘We need to leave,’ Alex panted. ‘There’s something wrong with the farm.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She looked past Alex. ‘Where’s Grandpa Jacob?’

  On cue, a red-faced Grandpa Jacob burst through a spray of branches, holding up the two sides of the broken plate. ‘Look at this! Look what she did!’ He hobbled closer and waved the china in Mum’s face, his voice shaking with rage. ‘She broke it!’

  ‘I remember that plate,’ Mum said, touching the pieces gently. ‘Mamma used to have morning tea from it every day. A sliced apple and two fig biscuits.’

  Grandpa Jacob’s eye twitched and he snatched the plate out of her reach. ‘The girl just threw it on the ground, like it was worthless.’

  ‘I didn’t throw it,’ Alex protested. ‘I heard … there were … the alpacas …’ She trailed off, looking to Grandpa Jacob for any indication that he knew his alpacas could talk. But he was trying to fit the broken plate back together, and paid absolutely no attention to her.

  ‘The alpacas what?’ Mum asked.

  Alex hesitated. She couldn’t just blurt out that the alpacas had talked to her. Mum wouldn’t believe something like that in a million years. In fact, Alex wasn’t even sure she really believed it. It had happened so quickly … Could it have been her imagination? ‘I didn’t throw it,’ she repeated, her voice small.

  ‘We can fix it,’ Mum said. ‘Alex, why don’t you help Grandpa Jacob glue the plate back together?’

  ‘I don’t need her help!’ Grandpa Jacob snapped. He glared at Alex once more, then limped down the path to the back door.

  Mum closed her eyes briefly. ‘I swear, in a previous life he must have been a goat.’

  Alex looked at Mum. ‘A goat?’

  ‘He’s the most stubborn person I know,’ she said, wincing as the back door slammed. ‘And one of the most difficult things for stubborn people to do is admit when they need help.’ Mum inhaled a long breath and let it out slowly. ‘But it shows great strength of character, kiddo. Don’t ever forget that.’

  Alex sometimes wondered if Mum’s previous life had been as a fortune cookie. ‘Is he mad because Neil didn’t tell him we were coming?’

  ‘Neil did tell him,’ Mum said. ‘But Dad refused to accept it. He just kept going on and on about how Neil and Wilfred were the only ones that could help.’ She sighed. ‘Why I can’t, I’ll never know but —’ she shrugged, ‘that’s my dad for you.’

  ‘I don’t think we should stay,’ Alex said. ‘He doesn’t want us here. And he doesn’t seem like he needs help.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘I’m not sure he knows what he needs anymore.’

  ‘But —-’

  ‘Come on, Alex,’ Mum said, in a voice that brooked no further argument. ‘I know we haven’t got off to the best start, but it’ll get better.’ Her voice softened, and she planted a kiss on Alex’s forehead. ‘I promise. Now …’ She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the orchard. ‘Seeing as we’re here, we might as well make ourselves useful. How about we start with pruning these olive trees?’

  Mum marched to the back shed and flung open the doors. She rummaged through and handed Alex a pair of green-handled gardening shears. ‘I used to help Mamma prune when I was your age,’ Mum said. ‘She called it giving the trees a haircut.’ Mum wielded her own shears dramatically. ‘What kind of haircut shall we give this tree today? A mohawk? Short back and sides? A nineteen-twenties bob?’

  Alex snorted a laugh. ‘Seriously?’

  Mum nodded, her face earnest. ‘That’s the rule Mamma set. You have to decide the style before you start.’

  ‘Okay then …’ Alex pondered the question. ‘A mullet. Party at the back, business at the front.’

  Mum grinned. ‘An excellent choice, daughter of mine.’

  Talking and laughing with Mum as they snipped branches in the warm sunshine actually made the world start to feel vaguely normal again, and for a while Alex forgot about all the weirdness of the morning.

  But that feeling didn’t last long.

  As she was working on the trees near the perimeter of the paddock, she heard a throat being cleared. She turned. The chocolate-coloured alpaca was leaning over the fence, the others huddled just behind. Alex quickly averted her eyes, focusing very hard on the branch in front of her. Go away, go away, go away, she willed silently.

  ‘Hurry up and ask her,’ a male voice said.

  A different, deeper male voice answered. ‘Be patient. We mustn’t rush this.’

  Alex glanced at Mum, to see if she could hear the voices too. But Mum was oblivious to the conversation that was happening between the animals. The conversation you imagine is happening, Alex corrected herself. Because this can’t be real.

  ‘Excuse me.’ It was the same female voice that Alex had run away from earlier. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt your gardening but … are you able to understand us?’

  Alex’s pulse quickened. This sounded way too real to be just happening in her imagination. Maybe she was going slowly crazy? Or perhaps there was some kind of growth on her brain that made her think she could hear animals talk? But what if it didn’t stop with the alpacas and she started to hear other things? She’d already heard the wind speak to her when she arrived. That had sounded different to these current voices. What was going to be next? A fence post? A door? Her sneakers?

  The chocolate alpaca tried again, leaning further over the fence. ‘We
just want to talk to you about …’ She cast a furtive glance around and lowered her voice slightly. ‘About you know what.’

  Alex did not know what, and did not want to know what.

  ‘Oh look,’ Mum said, glancing up. ‘The alpacas have come to say hello.’

  ‘We should get away from them,’ Alex said. ‘Grandpa Jacob said they, um, bite. Really badly.’

  ‘We don’t bite.’ The chocolate alpaca sounded wounded. She turned to the others. ‘We’d never hurt anyone, would we?’

  The other alpacas all answered at the same time.

  ‘As if!’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘Not unless they deserved it.’

  Mum laughed. ‘They sound so funny, don’t they? Like they’re trying to hum a song.’

  ‘Hum a song!’ The male black alpaca said indignantly. ‘We absolutely do not sound like that.’

  The caramel alpaca shrugged. ‘Apparently that’s exactly what we sound like to humans.’

  ‘Mum, I really, really think we should leave them alone.’ Alex’s voice now had an edge of panic to it.

  Mum moved slowly toward the fence. She held out her hand and then started to stroke the neck of the black animal. ‘They’re okay,’ Mum said, laughing as the animal closed his eyes and nuzzled into Mum’s hand.

  ‘A little to the left,’ he muttered, ‘a little more … oh yeah, that’s the spot.’

  ‘They’re so tame,’ Mum said. ‘Didn’t Dad say they just turned up here nine or ten years ago? I wonder where from.’

  The black alpaca snorted. ‘Lady, we’ve been here a bit longer than ten years. Times that by …’ he trailed off and looked at the caramel-coloured one.

  ‘Ninety-nine,’ she said without missing a beat.

  Maths wasn’t Alex’s strongest subject but even she knew that this came to nearly a thousand. Was this alpaca seriously trying to say that they had been here for a thousand years? The talking was bad enough, but that was … preposterous!

  ‘I’m going inside.’ She didn’t wait for Mum to answer before she took off at a run towards the farmhouse. She hadn’t even made it outside the grove before the back door swung open and Grandpa Jacob came barrelling down the path as fast as his fractured foot would allow. Alex stopped in her tracks. What was worse? Her foul-tempered grandfather, or talking alpacas?

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted at Mum. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing in there?’

  ‘Just tidying up the trees,’ Mum said.

  Grandpa Jacob was shaking. ‘No one touches those trees except Rosa!’

  ‘They need a bit of a prune, Dad,’ Mum said. ‘They’ll fruit better this way.’

  ‘Get away from them!’ he shouted.

  ‘I’m just trying to help,’ Mum said.

  ‘Why won’t you listen to me!’ Grandpa Jacob bellowed, snatching the shears from her hands. ‘I don’t need your help!’

  A muscle ticked in Mum’s jaw. The alpacas slipped away. Birds flitted noisily from tree to tree as the softest of breezes caressed the tips of the olive grove.

  Alex waited for the explosion, for Mum to start yelling, but it didn’t come. When Mum eventually spoke, her voice was even and calm, and just a bit higher than normal. ‘There’s barely any food in the house. I’m going to go and buy some groceries for dinner.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Alex said quickly.

  Mum didn’t look Alex in the eye. ‘That’s okay, sweetheart. I think I’ll go on my own.’

  Alex opened her mouth to protest, but the rumble of an engine made them all turn. A red truck had pulled through the gate and was driving up towards the house.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The truck came to a stop next to the olive grove. When the driver’s door swung open, Alex did a double-take. The boy who scrambled out was smaller than most of the kids in her class, all limbs and freckles, swimming inside clothes a few sizes too big. The only thing that fit properly was a scuffed brown drover’s hat, which he had pulled down low on his head. Alex would have bet her favourite hoodie that he was nowhere near old enough to have his driver’s licence.

  He caught sight of Alex and her mum and promptly removed his hat. An avalanche of sandy brown hair flopped across eyes of roughly the same colour. Without the hat, he looked even younger. Alex stared at him, wary, adding this truck-driving kid to the growing list of things-too-weird-to-try-and-explain that she’d seen today.

  ‘You were supposed to be here an hour ago,’ Grandpa Jacob said. His words were curt, but all the sting in his voice from before was gone. He sounded almost … friendly?

  ‘Sorry, Mr Ortiz,’ the boy said. ‘Deliveries are a bit delayed this morning.’ He looked back to Alex and Mum, confusion etched over his face. ‘Didn’t you say Wilfred was coming?’

  ‘He will be,’ Grandpa Jacob said stubbornly. ‘Just as soon as I can get a hold of his father.’

  Mum didn’t bother to hide her eye roll. ‘They’re in Europe for a holiday. I’m Elina, Mr Ortiz’s daughter. And this is Alex, his granddaughter. We’re here instead.’

  ‘I’m Leeuwin Bremmer,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Leeuie.’

  ‘Bremmer?’ Mum frowned. ‘You’re on the farm a few miles over? Apples?’

  ‘Yes Ma’am. Largest apple orchard in the southern hemisphere.’

  ‘And you, er, drove here?’ Her eyes darted to the red truck. ‘By yourself?’

  He gave her a strange look, as though she had asked him if water was wet, or the sun was hot. ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘You’re not … a bit young?’

  He tried to stand a little taller. ‘I’ll be twelve in April.’

  ‘I thought you had to be seventeen to get your licence,’ Mum said, in that tone of voice that sounded like a question but wasn’t.

  ‘You do,’ Leeuie said, ‘but no one cares as long as you don’t go on the highway.’

  Mum arched an eyebrow in total disagreement, but didn’t say anything. Grandpa Jacob wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation and had instead unlatched the back of the truck and was trying to heave one of the boxes towards him. He wobbled precariously on his fractured foot. Leeuie and Mum rushed over to him at the same time.

  ‘Stop your fussing,’ he said, brushing Mum away.

  Leeuie took the box gently from his hands. ‘Let me help with that, Mr Ortiz.’

  Grandpa Jacob considered this and nodded. ‘Okay, thank you, Leeuie.’

  And then he turned and stomped back inside without so much as a glance at Alex and Mum.

  Alex stared. Did her grandfather just say thank you? He couldn’t be bothered to say a single nice thing to his own daughter or granddaughter, or even remember Alex’s name for that matter, but some random kid turns up and he becomes all smiles and sunshine. She reformulated her observation from earlier. It wasn’t people in general Grandpa Jacob was horrible to. It was just her and Mum.

  Mum peered into the back of the truck where more wooden crates were stacked. ‘Are all of those for Dad?’

  Leeuie nodded. ‘For his alpacas. Apples are their favourite.’

  At the mention of the alpacas, Alex’s ears pricked up. She scrutinised Leeuie to see if there were any telltale signs he knew these were not ordinary alpacas. But he gave nothing away.

  ‘I should get to the shops,’ Mum said. ‘Maybe you could help Leeuie unload those apples and he can fill you in on what there is to do around here?’

  Leeuie’s face lit up at this idea. But Alex already knew what there was to do around here. Avoid talking alpacas, freaky winds and cranky grandfathers. She looked imploringly at Mum. ‘Can’t I come with you?’

  Mum hesitated. ‘I won’t be gone long,’ she said, and Alex could tell from her tone that she really wanted some alone time. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  Alex nodded miserably and tried to convince herself that Mum was right.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Leeuie unclipped a trolley from the back of the truck. ‘Are you staying for the whol
e summer?’ he asked, hopefully, passing down one of the boxes for Alex to load on the trolley.

  The box was heavier than Alex expected and she grimaced. Up until this morning she had been thrilled by the prospect of a whole summer on the farm. It was something different, exciting. But she did not sign up for the kind of different or exciting that this place offered! Now, the thought of her familiar apartment — devoid of all animals, talking or not — was intoxicating. ‘Not sure,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t think so.’ That last part was wishful thinking. She still had to convince Mum.

  ‘Oh.’ Leeuie tried to hide his disappointment. ‘There’s heaps of stuff to do, but not many people visit out here. Your cousin comes every year but … he’s never interested in doing much.’

  Alex accepted another box from Leeuie and stacked it on the trolley. ‘Don’t you have friends from school that live around here?’

  ‘I do distance ed,’ he said. ‘It’s all online.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘They’re really busy with the farm. We have the biggest apple orchard in the southern hemisphere.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex said, ‘you already mentioned that.’

  Leeuie didn’t clock her sarcasm and sighed, wistfully. ‘I can’t wait until next year when I go to boarding school. Then I’ll have tonnes of friends around all the time.’

  Alex didn’t have the heart to tell Leeuie that this wasn’t exactly how friendships worked. He heaved another box over the side of the truck to her. This was the heaviest one yet, and it slipped from her grasp and thumped heavily onto the other boxes.

  ‘Ow!’ Alex cried. A painful throb burned through her thumb where a splinter from the box had lodged itself under her thumbnail. Involuntary tears of pain filled her eyes and she shook her hand hard. How was it she’d managed to go her whole life without getting any splinters, but a single morning on a farm and she’d got two in as many hours?

  Leeuie peered at it. ‘That’s nasty. But don’t worry, I can get it out.’ He unclipped a hunting knife from his belt and removed its leather sheath. The blade glinted grey and sharp.