Chasing The Rainbow E-Book

Andrea Lepri

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Four children. An old pot full of golden coins!

Four children in pursuit of the rainbow, they want to take the gold coins contained in the old pot. They will live an unforgettable adventure!

PUBLISHER: TEKTIME

Leseprobe

Andrea Lepri

CHASING THE RAINBOW

Story & translation by Andrea Lepri

©First Edition February 2021

Publisher: Tektime – www.traduzionelibri.it

This novel is a work of fiction. Any reference to real facts or people is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved

INDEX

PROLOGUE

THE TEMPORAL AND THE RAINBOW

CHASING THE RAINBOW

THE MAGIC FOREST AND THE MANYMONEYS KINGDOM

THE FOUR TALISMANS

THE SCARY MUSHROOMS

THE TOOTHLESS TIGERS

THE GIANT SPIDER

THE JAILBREAK

THE GOLDEN POT

TIME TO BACK HOME

AT HE FARM

EPILOGUE

CHASING THE RAINBOW

PROLOGUE

Once upon a time there was a child named ... in reality his name is not really that important, because everyone knew him as ‘Spring Onion’. He had earned that nickname since the first day of school, more precisely at the time of the snack on the very first day of school! At the sound of the bell, his classmates had pulled out of their backpacks crackers, apples and bananas, snacks with all kinds of surprises and fruit juices. Instead he had placed on the counter a nice stuffed sandwich, crunchy and fragrant. He had unwrapped and had bit it, smiling, while everyone else looked at him in disgust. The acrid and intense smell of the freshly picked Onion had quickly invaded the classroom, the teacher and her companions ran while crying to open the window to catch their breath.

Spring Onion was rather skinny. Her hair was long, straight and thick, full of rebellious tufts. They were of such an odd reddish color that at times, depending on the light, they looked almost green. Her eyes were light brown, her face awash with freckles.

He had a close friend whom everyone called ‘Little Wheel’ ever since he was hit by a buggy a long time ago. But people didn't call him that because he ended up under the wheels of the cart, his nickname was due to the fact that since then he used a wheelchair to get around. In fact, even though a long time had passed since the accident, he said he had not yet recovered well. He said that his legs did not support him because they were stubborn and did not want to do their duty.

Little Wheel had a chubby face and a large cascade of black curls that almost completely covered his very dark eyes. He had also a plump body, in fact in addition to making little movement because he did not walk he was also a great glutton. Unlike children of his age, he ate everything, even salads and vegetables, and had not yet found a single recipe that he did not like.

Little Wheel and Spring Onion were good friends; they were always together and helped each other with their homework. Often they also had to defend and strengthen each other, when the other children made fun of them for their appearance or played some unsympathetic joke.

As in any school class, of course, there was also a slightly rascal child. He was tall enough, neither thin nor fat, his fine hair was very blond and his blue eyes so clear they looked like a patch of sky.

His classmates had nicknamed him ‘Little Spiteful’ because he was quite a scoundrel!

THE TEMPORAL AND THE RAINBOW

Spring Onion also had a five-year-old sister named Josephine. She had two beautiful blonde pigtails and a pointed nose, and above all her eyes and smile were those of a very sly. He always carried Emma, his inseparable favorite rag doll.

Spring Onion and Josephine lived on a beautiful farm on the top of Battered Knoll, a gentle hill on the edge of a beautiful wood that housed a pond teeming with minnows, ducks and frogs. However, we must say that the farm was no longer as beautiful as it once was. It had once been really beautiful, but lately Spring Onion's parents had neglected it a bit because they had less and less time and less money to do the maintenance. In fact, in the last few seasons the sky had turned out to be rather stingy with rain, and so, as if out of spite, the soil had refused to produce luxuriant plants and abundant crops as it once was.

But even if the fence was no longer as new and straight as it used to be, even if some windows were broken and occasionally it rained from the roof, Spring Onion and Josephine would never leave the Battered Knoll farm!

They wouldn't go away for anything in the world, they were delighted to live there and they knew they were very lucky. In fact, their school and playmates all lived in the nearby town called ‘Big Factory’, born a few years earlier together with the large car factory. They lived in small apartments located inside large buildings with small windows, like many bees in a hive, and most of them had never seen a hen or a hedgehog up close. And they probably hadn't even seen a nest in a tree, or a porcini mushroom. Indeed, they had certainly seen mushrooms: in the refrigerated counter of the huge supermarket that someone had thought seen fit to build together with the factory, the petrol stations and their beehive houses.

However, even though it was no longer new, their farm still had everything a real farm needs to have: there was a nice wood oven for baking bread and a small oil mill for making oil, there were the stables and a large barn, there was the stone well and finally there was the granary, from which the country mice peeped out from time to time. And then there were the tractor, the tool shed and many trees that gave them the sweetest fruits of all kinds and colors. But above all there were the animals, many animals.

There were two geese and a horse, two pigs and a spotted cow that gave them fresh milk every morning. And again goats and rabbits, a dog and a cat, birds of many breeds and hens who gave them eggs at will. And all around there were the cultivated fields, which changed color every season: from the burnished green of the spring cabbages to the bright yellow of the summer sunflowers, ending with the September orange of the Halloween pumpkins.

But although for the children this was a real paradise, lately their parents didn't seem very happy to be living in Battered Knoll! A few years earlier they had decided to leave the city to live in contact with nature; they had found that place and immediately fell in love with it. But that kind of life required many sacrifices, so they began to be tired of going to sleep in the evening and then get up before the crowing of the cock. Especially since getting good harvests was becoming more and more strenuous each year, so their enthusiasm diminished more and more as time passed.

In the evening, in front of the lit fireplace, Spring Onion had heard them talk more than once about the possibility of selling the farm and moving back to the city. But in the end they couldn't do it because they were too fond of the place and their animals. However, in short, life on the farm was no longer as peaceful and carefree as it once was.

Spring Onion and Josephine had understood the situation, so they did their best to help their parents. They had learned to milk the cow and groom the horse, to feed the pigs and chickens and to collect the eggs. They had even learned to make bread. For this reason, at times, Spring Onion was a little behind with the homework that the teacher assigned him.

Sometimes she scolded him for not having prepared properly but he did not get angry, on the contrary, he was happy because he knew he had taken some of the effort out of his parents. ‘It will be better next time’ he said to himself shrugging as he walked home pushing Little Wheels wheelchair.

But despite the help of Spring Onion and Josephine, lately their parents were more and more tired and nervous, in fact they sometimes quarreled in the evening. Not that they had become bad or that they no longer loved each other, or that they no longer loved him and his little sister. But that life, so tiring and stingy with satisfactions, had made them a little harder. Above all, they were disappointed, because their efforts were not rewarded by the results they expected and deserved.

Sometimes a small tractor failure was enough to put them in serious trouble, then all the heavy work fell to poor horse ‘Horace’, who was also a bit old. When he saw Spring Onion's father enter the stable dragging the yoke, he sighed in resignation, shaking his head slightly. ‘Again? When will you decide to buy a new tractor?’ he seemed to think looking at him.

Spring Onion would have liked to help his parents more, but he knew that his first job was school because he was still young. His father and mother had explained to him a thousand times that, if he had committed himself to school, when he grew up he could have chosen an important and satisfying job. Then, since he liked it so much, he could have bought his own farm if he wanted to. But he shouldn't have got up at dawn to look after the animals; there would have been people who did it for him. And he just could not understand this fact: ‘why spend so much money to buy a farm if you then pay someone to have fun with your animals in your place?’ he thought!

Sometimes he wished he was already grown up, he would have liked to earn a lot of money already to be able to help his parents. So they would work less and smile more. But even if in some moments he really wanted him so intensely, even if he tried to find an idea from time to time, he just wouldn't know how to get money.

His friend Little Wheels too would have liked to know how to find a lot of money. His parents both worked in the car factory, they were making great sacrifices to save the sum that would allow him to go to America for therapies, so that he could recover completely and walk normally again.

But the doctors who had examined him had all repeated the same thing: they were convinced that his legs worked perfectly, that the only thing not healed was his fear. Put simply, according to the doctors, Little Wheels legs refused to move because he feared that by walking again he might be hit again by a buggy.

The wheelchair, that now Little Wheels handled skillfully, had become his tank. For him it was his indestructible fortress, he felt sure of himself only when he was on board. However, his parents loved him so much that in order to see him go back to walking and running like other children they could really do anything. If someone had told them that to make him heal it was necessary to take him to the moon, they would have to take him there without hesitation!

As for Spittle ... well, he was a perfectly normal child. He did not live in the beehive but in a pretty house just outside the town. In fact, his father was a manager of the car factory and his mother was employed as a secretary in the same factory. So they had a nice house and a good job, and they didn't lack anything. At school, some said that she even had a large room of her own full of games, even the most modern ones. But no one had ever seen them, because he had never invited anyone to his house to do his homework and then play together.

And to be honest, if he invited some children to his house, he wasn't sure that they would accept the invitation. And so he spent most of his time alone, even Christmas and his birthday.

It was probably for this reason that he had a somewhat rogue character: although he had everything a child could wish for, he was bored to death. He had no brothers or sisters and had grown up with a slew of babysitters, who promptly quit their jobs after a while with an excuse, because he was too temperamental and spiteful.

Due to his way of doing, therefore, Little Spiteful had not yet managed to make friends. So, when he looked at Spring Onion and Little Wheels, he felt a little envious because those two seemed to him really inseparable. In those moments he realized that for him friendship with a capital ‘a’ was a real mystery, still to be discovered and tested. He would have liked to have a true friend too, maybe even more than one ... but he had no idea where to start making friends!

In short, for our friends, life in the town of Big Factory flowed fairly quietly, between ups and downs, until one morning something happened that would have prompted Spring Onion and the others to experience an unforgettable adventure.

That spring morning, while the teacher was doing a boring math lesson on the multiplication tables, the sky beyond the windows suddenly turned black. A carpet of dark threatening clouds, swollen and low, covered the entire horizon in a few minutes. A strong wind shook the trees for a while, frightening the birds, who went to take refuge under the sloping roofs. Then, suddenly, a strange silence fell and everything seemed to stop. The teacher, turned towards the blackboard, had not noticed anything. The children continued to look out the window with bated breath, worried, until out of blue they heard a tremendous roar. It had been so strong that those children had never heard of it in their entire life. That thunder had been the only warning of the terrible storm that broke out immediately after, which raged over the town for a few minutes: repeated thunder and lightning, and a rain so dense that prevented to see at an inch of the nose.

The teacher sighed resignedly, interrupted the explanation and went back to sit at the desk, in fact the rain was beating on the windows so hard that it even covered her shrill voice. The children were delighted to look outside; the whole country seemed to have disappeared. In a few minutes the deserted streets were covered with water, the school garden had become one large puddle and the Swing was moving by itself, pushed by the wind. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ended. The wind blew away the few remaining clouds, while the first timid rays of the sun timidly returned to the world, making everything shine. The children continued to look outside for a few moments, fascinated, until the teacher called their attention with a cough.

She explained to the children that thunderstorms like that were rare, but that even though it frightened them, they were important and useful, especially now that it was spring. In fact, that was exactly the time when Mother Nature needed more water. Many animals were awakening from hibernation and were thirsty, the plants needed water to bloom, and those wonderful flowers were fed to the bees, which then made honey. Those same flowers in the summer would later become good and juicy fruits, and so on, in an endless chain. But Spring Onion already knew these things, so he got distracted and went back to looking out through the windows.

And unexpectedly, as if by magic, a rainbow materialized in the distance, it was so large and colorful as he had never seen.

"Ooooh!" he exclaimed aloud in astonishment. All the children turned to admire that riot of colors, fascinated, and began to comment on each other. The teacher understood that the math lesson was now over because she would not be able in any way to bring the children back to planet Earth, but instead of getting angry she decided to take advantage of the opportunity to teach them something new. So she took the selvedge and cleaned the blackboard, then took the colored chalk and drew a rainbow, the ends of which ended in two large pools of water. She took a step back and admired her drawing with satisfaction, then immediately took a breath and launched into a scientific explanation so complicated that it gave everyone a headache. The teacher talked about reflected light, the decomposition of colors and vaporized water drops, and they didn't understand anything.

Fortunately, after a few minutes the janitor Mario came to save them.

“Good morning, teacher, and sorry if I interrupt you. The secretary asked me to come and tell her there is a phone call for you," he said.

“Thanks Mario, I'll go now. Do you watch the children for me?" the teacher answered.

"I'll take care of it; don't worry ... even if there would be no need to check them because they are really smart!" Mario answered giving them a wink.

The teacher ran out and Mario looked at the children one by one with his usual mysterious look, smiling. Some of them looked down, they were a little afraid of him because they found him really strange. At first glance he looked very old, but his lively eyes that constantly ran here and there seemed like those of a young man. They only knew about him that he was always very kind and that he had worked there ever since the school was opened, many years ago, when the town was still only a very small country village. He lived alone in a small house in the woods just outside the town and he came to work riding a donkey named ‘Dunce’. This increased the aura of mystery that surrounded him.

"What do you think?" Mario asked pointing to the explanation of the rainbow on the blackboard.

"We didn't understand a dry fig," Spring Onion answered on behalf of all.

"It doesn't matter, that explanation is all wrong," Mario replied, looking at them seriously.

"What do you mean?" a little girl then asked, taking courage.

"Can I trust you?" Mario asked scrutinizing them again one by one, seriously. The children all nodded, curious and frightened at the same time, and then he told them about the pots overflowing with gold coins placed at the beginning and at the end of the rainbow.