NEW WORDS TO LEARN
- Murky (adjective) Dark and gloomy
- Boast (verb) To talk with excessive pride or self-satisfaction
- Perish (verb) To suffer complete destruction
It had rained for most of the morning and Eva’s garden was very wet. When the rain stopped, the creatures of the garden left their burrows in the ground and their nests in the trees and came out to play. Squirrels chased each other across the wet grass and the birds opened their beaks and sang their beautiful tunes. The thirsty trees, plants and flowers soaked up the water as it sank deep underground. Warm sunlight broke through the clouds and the whole garden was awake and alive again.
Under the murky shade of the thick trees came the sound of snapping twigs and out into the sun walked a boy. His name was Nathi. He had found this secret place without meaning to, and it was so beautiful he completely forgot he had been visiting his best friend Tapelo, who lived nearby.
In the garden, Nathi had met Eva. Together they had run off to explore, and had found a river, where they made sailing boats out of leaves and decided to race them down the fast-flowing stream.
Nathi placed the two boats alongside one another in the water. ‘On your marks, get set, go!’ shouted Eva, and the boat race began.
As soon as Nathi let them go, the boats moved off swiftly, racing on the back of giant ripples. The boats were a very pretty pair as they sailed together over the water.
‘I’m captain of a sailing ship,’ Nathi boasted proudly. But it seemed that Nathi still had much to learn about being a boat’s captain.
‘Look, your boat is stuck!’ chuckled Eva.
It was true. While Eva’s graceful yellow-leaf boat sped ahead, Nathi’s orange-leaf one was moving as slowly as a tortoise.
He tried to figure out why. Was it too round, perhaps? Or too big? No, these were not good reasons, thought Nathi. After all, the stream was flowing just as fast for his boat as it was for Eva’s.
Find out in the September issue of Kids SuperClub!
