they had vacuumed the place out afterward. He shined his light in every corner but saw nothing. The place was empty. If there had been a secret here it must be long gone.
Then a glimmer on the floor caught his eye. He turned the light on it as he approached. Metal-the bolt on a trapdoor in the floor near one edge of the room. The bolt had a brand-new lock through it.
He rattled it in frustration. New and very strong. He had brought a pocketknife, but using a knife on that metal would be like trying to tunnel through a stone with a plastic teaspoon. Something was definitely weird, though. Why leave the front door unlocked but put some monster big lock on this door? What was down there? How could he get through the lock without making so much noise it would bring everyone out of the house? And even if he cut the bolt somehow, how could he replace it so no one would know? The whole thing seemed almost impossible, and certainly wasn’t going to happen tonight-probably his last moment of freedom before he suffered death-by-monster-squirrel.
When he emerged from the dark silo Tyler was amazed to see how much brighter things looked in the light of the moon. He walked around the silo on the far side from the house, shining his flashlight beam along the walls in the unlikely chance there was another door he’d never seen in all the times he’d gone past the odd building.
There was no other door. There was, however, a gap that had opened up between the walls of the silo and the ground itself, like a narrow moat around a medieval castle.
Tyler got down on his knees and looked into the space between the silo and the earth. The walls of the silo extended far down, almost certainly farther than the floor inside, which meant that if he went down far enough and found a way in, he would be on the underside of that tempting, frustratingly locked trapdoor. The boards were thick, but they were also old and had buckled in places, warped by years of moist soil. He hesitated before climbing down into the narrow space beside the foundations of the silo-if there were going to be snakes or giant spiders anywhere, this would be the spot-but his frustration at the idea of never finding out what was in here was stronger.
It wasn’t easy holding the flashlight in his mouth. Tyler was sure he was going to chip a tooth, but he needed both hands to make it down the crumbling earthen wall and into the soft dirt that had collected at the bottom, up against the silo’s wooden boards. He crawled along, pushing on them one after another.
There. That one was loose.
He braced himself with his feet against the wood on either side and began to pull at it. The nails gave a little. After a while he realized he could use the flashlight handle as a crowbar; soon he began to feel the wood loosen. When the board finally came out he tossed it aside and stuck his hand through, swinging the flashlight around in the gap beyond. Nothing. Still dark. He couldn’t even see the floor or the far wall, but if he turned the flashlight up he could see wood close above him. That must be the floor with the hatch door, he realized. If he could get through, he would indeed be under it!
He managed to work loose the board next to the gap, and after what seemed like another half hour of hard, sweaty work, it came free as well. The last nail pulled out with a screech that did not echo. The gap was just big enough now for him to get his shoulders through sideways.
Tyler had maneuvered his shoulders and arms through the space between the boards when the flashlight fell out of his mouth. He grabbed at it in panic, overbalanced, and tumbled through into suddenly freezing blackness.
Nothing stopped him. Seconds went by and still he plunged downward, as though he was tumbling through the utter emptiness of space. He tried to scream, but no sound came out of his mouth.
Lucinda! His thought was like a leaf whipped in an icy wind. You were right. I’m so stupid…!
Falling. He fell forever. And forever was cold.
Chapter 19
The Secret Guardian
L ucinda had a bad feeling. Actually she had several.
Instead of all of the farm folk being clustered in the kitchen and dining room as they usually were-where she could keep an eye on them, as Tyler had asked-most of them appeared to have chosen this night, of all nights, to be somewhere else. Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar had gone out after dinner on some mysterious special task, the kitchen workers told her, Uncle Gideon was simply absent again, and Haneb was at the Sick Barn looking in on Meseret, who had been acting strangely since she had lost her egg-so much so that everyone was afraid she was sick with some unknown dragon illness. Even the Three Amigos had vanished, perhaps gone with Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar, perhaps just back to their cabin on the far side of the farm or off to the dormitory to play cards with the other farmhands-no one could say. Only old Caesar, Sarah, the cook, and her two helpers, little Pema and tall Azinza, were in the kitchen, the women washing dishes while Caesar prepared to take a tray with tea and sandwiches up to Gideon.
Which meant, Lucinda thought miserably, that Tyler could stumble into any number of people out there and get both of them in serious trouble.
She picked up a dish towel and started drying.
“So where’s Mrs. Needle?” she asked after a while.
Azinza frowned at her. “Child, why do you ask so many questions tonight? Mrs. Needle, she does not like us talking about her.”
Sarah made a snorting noise. “That is the truth. She is secret like a wall with no window, that one.”
Caesar paused in the kitchen doorway, the tray balanced on one hand. “You womenfolk do know that the devil finds work for idle hands, don’t you? And idle tongues too.” Shaking his head, he went out.
“I think Mrs. Needle have tea with Mr. Gideon,” Pema offered suddenly, breaking the silence that followed. She had the habit of looking down and speaking very quietly, so that sometimes you could only hear the soft murmur of a voice, but no words at all. She was pretty, too, like a doll, and although she looked older than Lucinda, she was half a head shorter. Being around Pema made Lucinda feel like a horse or something even clumsier.
“Oh, she’s probably having tea, all right,” said Sarah, her mouth tight and her pale skin flushed with some emotion Lucinda couldn’t quite read. “With her little friend.”
“Colin?” asked Lucinda.
“He wishes that were true,” Sarah said with a snort. “If she paid half as much mind to her fatherless child as she does to that animal, the boy wouldn’t be up to such strange mischief…”
Pema took an audible breath. Even tall Azinza straightened up as though Sarah had said something dangerous. “You shouldn’t talk so,” Azinza hissed. “She hears things.”
It felt like something cold had clutched the back of Lucinda’s neck. “Animal? What do you mean?”
“That… thing,” Sarah said, ignoring Azinza’s warning shake of the head. The usually cheerful cook folded her arms across her bosom. “No, I won’t be quiet. I am a Christian woman, whatever has happened to me. She talks to that creature as if it were her own pet, and what is godly in that? Sits and talks, and I swear that it listens.”
Pema laid a small hand on the German cook’s broad arm. “Please, Miss Sarah. Do not say any more. Azinza is right-it is foolishness to speak ill of-”
“A witch?” Sarah scowled. “There, I said it. Don’t these children have a right to know? She talks with a black squirrel and it chatters back at her, for all to see! And only our good Lord knows what she has done to Mr. Gideon to make him so foolish, so… so… ”
Even as Sarah suddenly, startlingly began to weep, Lucinda ran out of the kitchen in terror.
Tyler was right! Lucinda could hardly breathe. A witch! Mrs. Needle really was a witch!
She ran out into the yard, disoriented in the dark after the lights of the kitchen. She was sickened to think of Tyler out there alone, being watched by who knew what. She stumbled toward the middle of the open space, wishing the moon would hurry out from behind the clouds. She thought she saw the bulk of the silo now, but something was moving, something that caught the faintest sheen of moonlight. Tyler? She wanted to call out but
