The Boggart Fights Back by Susan Cooper

Author:Susan Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

TWELVE

Allie and Jay were cycling back from a meeting in the village called in support of their petition, which now had a gratifyingly large number of signatures. Their father and Granda were still there, headed for another meeting with members of the local council. The fight against Mr. Trout seemed to involve endless meetings and discussions and talking, and the only part the twins really enjoyed was their own current job: cycling to a house, knocking on the door, smiling brightly and offering the petition to just one person. They had been doing it for three days now and had managed to enlist Trout opponents of all ages. The older ones, they found, invariably did a double take, stared at them and cried, “You’re Tommy’s twins! You look just like him!”

Now they were pedaling up the last hill before the downward slope to the loch. Allie said to Jay, between puffs, “You think it really has a hope, this petition?”

“I dunno,” Jay said.

“I’d rather be having a go at old Trout directly, like the boggarts. Even if it didn’t work.”

“So would I,” Jay said. He stood up on his pedals, pumping away to beat the last of the hill. “I wish we knew what’s happening at the Minch.”

And then neither of them said anything for a few moments, because they were over the hill, looking down at the place where the farm next door had been.

The farmhouse was a mound of rubble, and the gently sloping fields around it had become a flat stretch of dirt. Nearby, on the land where the two bulldozers had uprooted all the oak trees, the crane and the bulldozers were busily rumbling to and fro, pushing all the trees into a single huge pile facing Angus Cameron’s store.

The twins slowed down, staring.

“Jeeze,” Jay said. “Look at that!”

Allie suddenly found she had tears in her eyes. “It’s like they dropped a bomb!” she said.

They saw Freddy the Site Manager, wearing his Trout Corporation jacket, talking to a group of men standing beside the road, near the pile of trees. One of the men was peering into what looked like a camera, set on a tripod. Another was planting a little orange flag into the ground some distance away. A third was a policeman, wearing a yellow-green vest over his black uniform.

“What are they doing?” Allie said.

Jay said, “This next field belongs to Granda, doesn’t it?”

They walked their bikes closer, and Freddy looked up and saw them. He stopped talking, and the whole group paused, and stared at them. Freddy came toward them, frowning.

Allie said accusingly, “That’s Granda’s land, where you are.”

“We’re surveying,” Freddy said. “Checking the boundary, between us and your grandfather.”

He had a sheaf of papers in one hand, and a bunch of orange flags in the other. Allie and Jay looked at each other, remembering the orange ribbons they had removed from the trees marked to be cut down.

They also remembered that removing the ribbons had not saved the trees.

Jay said, “I thought people did surveys right at the very beginning.

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