message had promised, he hadn’t left any obvious means of locating them.
“Only half these buildings show any sign of being structurally sound,” Milligan observed. “The rest are on the verge of collapse. Mr. Benedict had to know Rhonda and I would never let you venture inside the dangerous ones, so we can rule those out.”
“That still leaves a lot of buildings,” Reynie said. “This could take a while.”
“Maybe the stuff isn’t in a building at all,” said Kate, leaning over the stone wall of the well. She pointed her flashlight into the darkness. Twenty feet down she saw a somewhat distorted version of herself, shining a flashlight back up. “Nope, only water. At least we won’t go thirsty if we can’t find the supplies. I don’t know about you all, but that run across the plain left me a bit dry.”
“Dehydrated,” Sticky said, his voice something of a croak.
Reynie nodded. “Parched.”
Milligan produced a flask from beneath his jacket and tossed it to Kate. “Three sips each,” he said. As the children shared the water, they continued discussing the best way to proceed, but no one could think of a more efficient strategy than simply to search every sturdy building until they got lucky. “I was afraid of that,” said Milligan, capping the flask. “Let’s go back and start at the east end. We’ll work our way around.”
The first building Milligan deemed safe to enter was a house, and they moved warily through its dark rooms, searching for clues. Judging from the number of old-fashioned, woven-rope beds in the loft, the place had once been home to a large family. Now it was home to bats and spiders, and its wooden floors were covered with the dust of decades. With a pang the children saw that Mr. Benedict and Number Two had been here — their footprints were in the dust all throughout the house — but they appeared only to have been looking around, for the house was clearly empty.
They searched two more empty houses before entering an unusual stone and mortar building near the center of the village. The building, which appeared to be a kind of storage facility or barn (a much larger barn than the modest one on Milligan’s farm), consisted of a single large, windowless room with high rafters. What made it unusual was the surprising number of thick wooden beams that rose up from the floor to the rafters, creating the very strange impression of a forest enclosed by walls. The beams, set at equal distances throughout the room, were studded with large iron eyehooks that must once have been used for hanging things. On the dusty floor, the footprints of Mr. Benedict and Number Two roamed among the beams from wall to wall.
Kate shone her flashlight around. “I don’t get it. Those eyehooks are all set at the same height — two feet and four feet — but why hang anything so low? You’d have to stoop to take things off a hook.”
“Maybe the villagers were really short,” Sticky said.
Kate snorted. “A village of elf people?”
“The doors and windows are regular size,” Reynie said. He knelt to inspect a couple of the eyehooks, both of which bore knotted remnants of rope. “I don’t think elves lived here.”
“I never said anything about elves,” Sticky said irritably.
“Whatever,” said Kate, “it’s still a weird place.”
“It’s remarkably sturdy,” Milligan said, shining his flashlight up into the rafters, then onto the heavy wooden door with its iron bolts and hinges. “Sturdiest building in the village by far. The roof would hold up even if the walls fell.”
Reynie stood. “I think this was a storm shelter. That’s why there are no windows. That’s why it’s so solid. There are enough beams and eyehooks to string up dozens of hammocks. If a bad storm blew in — and obviously there’ve been some bad storms around here — everyone in the village could come sleep it out.”
“A community shelter. That makes sense,” said Sticky, trying to sound agreeable, though in truth he was frustrated he hadn’t figured this out himself.
Curious though it was, the shelter was empty, and the group moved on. The next building they searched was another house, which also lacked any sign of their friends except footprints in the dust. The house after that lacked even those, and Sticky took one look at the floor and said, “Let’s not waste time here. They didn’t come into this one.” He turned to go out.
Reynie caught his arm. “Actually, Sticky, I’m pretty sure this is the place.” He pointed to the clean wooden floor. “They did come in here. And they swept.”
Kate discovered the supplies in an upstairs closet, along with the makeshift broom that Mr. Benedict and Number Two had fashioned from a stick and a bundle of twigs. The house evidently had belonged to the most prosperous villager, or else to the most ardent and skillful carpenter, for it had two well-built floors, each with several rooms whose doors and shutters still hung squarely in their frames. Mr. Benedict and Number Two must have thought it the perfect place to serve as the group’s temporary home and headquarters.
The upstairs closet lay at the end of a short hallway, and Kate stood at its partly opened door, shining her flashlight over its shelves. She had only just found the supplies and called out to the others, who’d been searching a nearby bedroom and now came running.
A doorstop prevented the closet door from opening fully, so it was with considerable bumping and squeezing that Reynie and Constance crowded in beside Kate to take a look. Milligan simply stood behind them and looked over their heads, while Sticky hung back, too embarrassed to jockey for position. (He’d made himself look quite foolish with that footprint business, he thought, and though no one had teased him — not even Constance — he felt the embarrassment keenly.)
“They must have made several trips hauling all this stuff here,” Kate said as she looked at all the supplies. The closet was a shallow one, little more than a wall of shelves, but those shelves were admirably stocked with water, canned food, nuts, dried fruit, powdered milk, and — most important — graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows for roasting over a fire. (The sight made the children’s mouths water; they hadn’t eaten anything in hours.) In addition to these provisions were two battery-powered lanterns and enough sleeping bags and extra blankets for everyone.
It seemed possible that the next clue would be hidden among the supplies, so after they had all drunk their fill of water and eaten a few hurried mouthfuls of food, they switched on the lanterns and started going through what remained in the closet. It was an irritating task, for the closet door didn’t open wide enough even to let Kate hand things out to them without bumping her elbows. When she’d done this for the third time, she suggested they take the door off its hinges to make things easier.
