Every summer, two cousins named Hinata and Haru go to live with their grandparents. Their grandparents work and live on a train. The Periwinkle Turkeywaddle Express isn't like other trains...
Hinata and Haru had just climbed out of their bunk beds, and were now in the unfortunate position of having a pirate standing before them. This was not the quiet and friendly kind of pirate. This was the snarling kind. He had buffalo bones in his teeth.
How did this pirate come to be standing in their caboose? It all started a week earlier, when the Periwinkle Turkeywaddle Express had picked up a load of explorers in Chattanooga. These weren't just any explorers. They had swum to the bottom of Lake Chattanooga and found the Lost Toad of Santo Domingo, the most valuable treasure on earth. They were taking it to the Museum of Things Related to Toads, for safekeeping Every day, as the train chugged through forests and swamps and cornfields, Hinata and Haru would come listen to the different passengers talk about their lives. There were professional rattlesnake jugglers. There were astronauts who'd just been to Mars. One inventor had created a phone booth that shrinks things down to peanut-size Hinata even helped him attach the metal switch that turned it on. But mostly the cousins talked to the explorers about the Lost Toad of Santo Domingo.
"A lot of people would like to get their hands on the Lost Toad," said one.
"Wow," said Haru.
"Especially pirates," another explorer said. "Pirates are very sneaky."
"Gee," said Hinata.
"Pirates' breath smells like sardines," said a third explorer.
"Yuck," said Haru.
"Anyway," said the explorer.
The night before the Periwinkle Turkeywaddle Express arrived at the museum, Hinata and Haru were too excited to sleep. So they quietly climbed out of their beds, hoping to hear one last round of stories from the explorers. They were just creeping to their bedroom door when a very strong smell hit them. Not butterscotch. Not meatloaf. It was...sardines, oozing out from inside their closet.
"Uh oh," Haru said, and that moment the closet door flung open. A snarling pirate leapt out.
"Arrrgh," he said.
"Arrrgh?" replied Hinata, as politely as possible.
"The Lost Toad," growled the pirate. "I want it."
"But we don't have it!" Haru answered.
The pirate turned to the closet door and took a bite out of it.
"Get me the Lost Toad or your nose is next," snapped the pirate.
"Fine, we'll take you to the Lost Toad. But we have to be very quiet," Hinata said.
She and Haru led the pirate through the dark train cars, the countryside rushing past them in the windows. Haru could tell she was thinking carefully as she walked. The wheels clattered on the tracks. Finally they were in the train's storage car, full of crates and trunks.
"There," Hinata said at last, pointing at a narrow door in a dark corner. "The explorers keep the Lost Toad in there."
The pirate snarled one last snarl, opened the door and stepped inside. Haru knew just what his cousin had in mind.
"Now!" he shouted.
At that Hinata flipped the metal switch and there was a flash of light. A great whirring sound came from inside the phone booth, followed by a rattling sound, and then a BLIP. Finally the door of the phone booth opened and the pirate stepped out. He was the size of a peanut. Even his sardine breath was only the size of peanut-sized breath.
"Arrrgh," he said, in a very tiny voice.
Haru picked him up and they carried him to their parakeet cage.
"Play nicely," he said.
"Okay," the pirate said quietly.
Hinata and Haru climbed back in bed and the next morning the train arrived at the Museum of Things Related to Toads. The explorers took their treasure inside, but not before they could say goodbye.
"Thank you for a very memorable train ride," one of them said.
"The Periwinkle Turkeywaddle Express is always memorable," Hinata replied, and then the train chugged away toward another adventure.
The End