← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Nicole And The Box In The Barn P.26 ✨
00:24:20
A bedtime story series for kids about a magical farm on Prince Edward Island
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Foreign. Hello friends and welcome to sleept Stories. Each week we share a few shoutouts and birthday wishes for listeners who help support the show. It's a small way we say thank you and it always makes us smile. Happy 6th birthday to our king Charlie of Sydney, Australia. A Lego Master Nintendo champ, Roblox Pro and smartest in Outsmarted. Stay cool, sweet, kind and fun. Loving as you are, Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you and love you so much. Happy birthday Noah Kai. You are so precious and so loved and and we're excited to see you growing every single day. Happy 7th birthday to my sweet Ella Bella. Wishing you the best year yet. Love Mama, Anya, Titi, Gaga, Papa, Spartan and Bruno. Happy 6th birthday to Roman who loves buttered toast almost as much as Bernice. Mummy, Daddy, Ramsay. Hide and seek. Love you so much. Happy 9th birthday to Camilla Marie. You are sweet, caring and endlessly creative. Your curiosity and sense of wonder make the world brighter every day. We are so proud of you. Big love from mom and dad and a special shout out to your awesome brother Javi. Happy 7th birthday to Audrey from Grand Prairie, Alberta. Love mom, dad and Emmett. Happy birthday Paige, Dad, Mom, Claire, Gigi and Periwinkle. Love you so much and are so very proud of you. Keep up the good work. Happy birthday to our darling Isabelle. We can't believe you are already 10. You are smart, funny and kind just like Bernice. You are curious and determined. We love watching you swim, do Lego and learn so much in school. We hope your next year is filled with lots of happiness and fun. Love mom, dad and Noah. Happy birthday to Jojo, Miles and Sam. From mom and dad. You are loved to the moon and back and around the universe. Here is to the kid who made our hearts burst with love a decade ago. We love your curiosity quest for knowledge and creativity. Keep creating your own path. We are so excited to see where you end up. We love you very much. Avery. Happy 10th birthday. Love, Ima, Hama and Juniper. And happy birthday to Leif. You are so funny, sweet and kind. Never change. We love you. Love you much from all of us. And Hazel, Happy birthday to you all and thank you for supporting the show. We're so grateful you are here with us. Whether you've been listening since the beginning or just found us last week, you're part of something really special. Millions of families around the world making bedtime a little sweeter together. This year we have some lovely new stories planned. More adventures, more wonder and maybe even a few surprises. We can't wait to share. Them with you. Now on to our story. We're back with another part of Nicole and the Box in the Barn. Nicole and her mom moved from Montreal to an old farmhouse on Prince Edward island, and Nicole was not happy about it. No wi fi, no friends, no city. Just red mud, an old barn, and a lot of questions. But then Nicole found the box. It was wooden, with beautiful carvings all over it, and inside were some very unusual things. A compass, a tiny glowing key, a red velvet cape, some mysterious seeds, and a book with illustrations that seemed to change on their own. The seeds grew into a magical garden overnight. The key opened a wooden door hidden at the garden's edge, and the door. The the door led somewhere else entirely. Through it, Nicole met Angus, a boy living on the same farm, but a long, long time ago. She also met Margaret, a woman who seemed to appear whenever Nicole needed guidance and who turned out to be much older than she looked. Together, Nicole and her mother decided that their family had always been the guardians of of the garden's magic, and that Angus's family had always been the caretakers, watching over the door and helping guardians like Nicole find their way. Angus had known about Nicole long before she ever walked through that door. His family had been waiting for her. And now Nicole is starting something new school. Grade 7 in Kensington Intermediate, with a new friend named Emma, a social studies teacher with questionable ideas about Friday homework, and a boy named Marcus, whose great grandfather once worked on the very same farm. Nicole is doing her best to be a regular seventh grader, but the compass is warm again, and the book has a new illustration she hasn't seen before. Nicole and the Box in The Barn Part 26 Nicole had figured out after three weeks that the school bus had a personality. It was not a good, good personality. It smelled like old lunch bags and something vaguely rubbery that she decided not to investigate further. And it had a specific squeaking noise on left turns that Emma called Gerald. Nicole did not ask why the squeak was named Gerald. Some things were better left alone. He gives homework on Fridays, Emma was saying, because he specifically dislikes the feeling of people being happy on weekends. That's the only explanation. I've thought about it a lot. Hmm, nicole said. I have actually thought about it a lot, and it's the only thing that makes sense. Emma was talking about Mr. Delaney, their social studies teacher, who had assigned two pages of reading and a worksheet due Monday. This was apparently a pattern. Nicole was mostly listening, mostly through the window. The fields were doing that thing they did in October, turning all those particular shades of red and gold that she still wasn't totally used to, even after everything. The red of the soil showing through where the crops had come in, the red of the maples along the fence lines. The island definitely had a look. Back in Montreal, October had been beautiful, too, but differently. All those trees packed into the parks and along the streets, the leaves coming down on the sidewalks in wet yellow drifts, Mount Royal going amber and rust through the gaps between buildings. She loved that. She still loved that. Actually missing it and liking it here at the same time was a weird feeling, but she was getting used to it. This was something else entirely, more open, more red, like the color had more room here. She touched the compass through her jacket pocket. Just a habit now, like checking for her phone. It was cool. It had been cool all week, quiet in a way that felt almost restful, like it was fine with her going to school and doing homework and arguing with emma about whether Mr. Delaney was evil or merely indifferent to human joy. She had a running list in her head of things to tell Angus on Saturday. It was getting long. What a locker was, the specific humiliation of having your gym clothes in a separate bag. The concept of a Chromebook, which she tried to explain to herself twice already and still hadn't done a very good job of. You're doing that thing again, emma said. Nicole looked over. What thing? Where you go somewhere else. Emma tilted her head. Like actually somewhere else your eyes go all she made a vague gesture that Nicole interpreted as glazed and far away. I'm just tired, nicole said. Emma looked at her for a second, longer than necessary, then she turned back to the window. Sure, she said pleasantly. She was going to be a problem, Emma. In a good way. Nicole had known this since approximately day two, when Emma had correctly guessed that Nicole was pretending to understand a joke rather than asking what it meant, and had simply explained it without making it weird. That kind of noticing was useful in a friend. Also a bit scary. Gerald squeaked on a left turn. They were nearly at school. Nicole took her hand out of her pocket and got her backpack ready. Science was third period, which meant Nicole had survived homeroom and French first. She slid into her seat just as the bell rang, which she was choosing to count as on time. Mr. Arsenault wrote ecosystems on the whiteboard in letters that got smaller as they went, like he'd run out of room but hadn't wanted to admit it. Partner project, he said. I'll be assigning partners. Due in three weeks. Local ecosystem. Something you can actually observe. Not just Google Nicole got paired with Marcus before she could do anything about it, which was also how most things happen to her lately. He turned around in his seat, one row over, two up, close enough that he'd borrowed her eraser twice without asking and gave her a thumbs up like they'd won something. She gave one back. They pulled their desks together while Mr. Arseneault finished the list. What about a farm? Marcus said, already writing ecosystems at the top of a fresh page, underlined twice, like an agricultural ecosystem. We could actually go somewhere instead of just reading about stuff. Sure, nicole said. My great grandpa used to work on a farm around here. Actually. The McLean place. He said it the way you said things that were just facts. He always said it had the best soil he ever worked. Nicole looked at him. That's actually where I live. Marcus stared at her. The McLean farm, she said. That's my house. We moved there in the summer. No way. Way. He sat back in his chair, recalculating. That's so cool. My gran has this whole box of stuff from when he worked there. Letters, old photos. Maybe. She keeps meaning to go through it, but she never does. He shrugged. Gran's like that. We should do your farm, he said, already writing it down. Is that weird? The farm's fine, nicole said. Her voice was doing a good job. She was quite proud of her voice. Marcus was already drawing a small cartoon cow in the corner of his notes. It had nothing to do with ecosystems. He added a fence, considered it, and added a second cow. My gran will think it's great, he said, not looking up, that someone's finally living there again. It's a nice place, nicole said. The farm. It's really nice. Marcus looked up, and something in the way she said it made him nod, like he understood something even though he couldn't possibly. Yeah, he said. I believe it. The rest of science passed in the usual Friday way, slowly, then all at once. By the time the lunch bell rang, Nicole had written half a page of ecosystem notes and thought about Marcus Gran's box of letters approximately 11 times. The cafeteria smelled like tomato soup and floor cleaner, which was apparently universal regardless of province. Emma had strong opinions about the Harvest Festival face painting booth, which the student council was trying to make happen despite significant opposition from Emma. Specifically, Nicole was eating her sandwich and nodding at what seemed like the right moments. Then she reached into her pocket out of habit the way her tongue found a loose tooth. The compass was warm. Not warm warm. Not the kind of warm that meant anything was happening. More like a mug that had been sitting for 20 minutes. You could still hold it, but you noticed. Nicole turned it over once in her palm under the table and put it back. And also face pains. Takes forever to get off, emma was saying. So you're basically committing to looking like a butterfly for the rest of the day, whether you want to or not. It's not a choice. It's a trap. Definitely a trap, nicole agreed. She ate the rest of her sandwich. The compass stayed warm. She told herself it didn't mean anything, yet she wasn't totally sure she believed that. She changed out of her school clothes the second she got home. The ones with grass stains had their own drawer now, and went out to the garden. Not through the door, just to her spot by the pond where the light came through the apple tree at this time of day in a way that was almost unreasonably nice. She'd stopped feeling guilty about noticing things like that. The flowers turned toward her when she came through the gate. Still did that every time. She was never going to get tired of it. So, she said, settling onto the grass. Marcus done. She pulled up a stem of something and turned it between her fingers. The garden rustled, which she'd learned to interpret as go on. His great grandfather worked here in the 1940s. She did the math the way she'd been doing it all through last period, quietly in the back of her head, where the rest of social studies wasn't happening. The 1940s. Angus's family had been caretakers since at least the 1890s. 50 years was a long time to still be on the same farm, same family watching the same door. They would have overlapped Angus's family and Marcus. Great grandfather on the same farm at the same time. She chewed on that for a moment. The garden was very still. Nicole reached into her bag and pulled out the book. Most days nothing new was in it. She'd learned to check without expecting anything, the way you checked the mailbox somewhere. Not much. Mail came. She opened it to the middle. Something had changed. Not a whole new page, just a small illustration tucked into the lower corner of a page she'd looked at a dozen times, like it had always been there and had only just decided to be visible. The barn. Their barn. The red door slightly open. Two figures standing just outside. One a woman, one a man she didn't recognize, neither of them looking at the doors, both of them looking at something off to the side, outside the frame. Nicole stared at it for a long time. Then she took out her phone and photographed it carefully, the way her mom had asked her to start doing flat to the page, no shadow, wait for the light to settle. She closed the book and headed back to the house. Saturday couldn't come fast enough. Inside, her mom was already at the stove. The quick kind of dinner, penne with jarred sauce and extra Parmesan. Neither of them had moved the pile of work folders off the table, so they ate standing at the counter the way they sometimes did on busy days. Nicole didn't mind. It was actually one of her favorite ways to eat dinner, though she'd never really say that out loud. How was school? Her mom asked. Fine. Good, actually. Nicole pulled out her phone and opened the photo. Look at this first, and then I'll tell you about school. Her mom took the phone, still holding her fork. She looked at the photo of the storybook page for a moment without saying anything. Then she tilted the screen slightly, like the angle would help. The barn, her mom said. Then after a moment, Nicole. That woman in the illustration. Nicole had already seen it. I know. She looks like Margaret. Her mom set the phone down carefully. Yeah. Her mom handed the phone back and was quiet in a way that meant she was actually thinking, not just pausing. And the man? I don't recognize him. Her mom shook her head slowly. Neither did she. Nicole set the phone face up on the counter between them and told her about Marcus, the project, the farm, the way he'd said shut up, like it was a perfectly normal response. The cartoon cows and the gran who had a whole box of old letters from when his great grandfather worked there that nobody had ever looked through. Her mom listened without interrupting. Do you want to see what's in that box? Her mom asked when Nicole had finished. I want to ask Angus first. Nicole looked at the photo again. If his family was still caretaking in the 1940s, they would have known Marcus great grandfather. Like actually known him. And if there are letters, there might be names, his mom said quietly. Yeah. Her mom poured two glasses of apple juice, slid one over, and they stood there for a moment, looking at the small bright square of the photo screen between them, two figures outside a barn with red doors, looking at something neither of them could see. Saturday, nicole said. Saturday, her mom agreed. And that is the end of this part. Good night. Sleep tight.