The Novelle Diaries & The Wampus Cub

Chapter 20: Wild Magic

'Wren, wait! Where are you going?' Rosewaine cried after her friend as she began to chase her through the snow, followed closely by the boys.

'Hagrid. He said he had seen new crates with the logo on it near some abandoned farm buildings a few months ago,' Wren explained, slowing to a fast walk as the snow grew deeper on the track that led away from the village. 'It's just a hunch but I think that must have been where Chirrup and the Hogad escaped from. Seeing as we are out here, I can't miss the opportunity to check if I am right. Something is going on and I have to know.'

'I'm not sure we should be taking the risk, Wren,' Erris reasoned as he looked to the sky and the lowering moon that signalled sun rise in a few hours. 'We have a long way back to school.'

Wren stopped in her tracks and faced her friends with a determined look and said, 'What if there are more animals trapped and injured in those buildings and we can save them. You didn't see the Hogad, it had been ripped to shreds. I have to help if i can.'

In that moment Wren's friends knew that there was nothing they could say that would dissuade her from searching those farm buildings and seeing as they weren't about to let her do it alone, they continued to trudge through the snow drifts towards the abandoned farm.

As the children grew closer to the farm buildings they were able to see the old rotten wood structures in more detail. Several of the structures dotted around the snowy, overgrown farm yard had entirely collapsed, their tin roofs caved in and their wooden slat walls splintered on the ground. Only the largest barn stood sturdy, though the years had eaten away at the bottom of the wooden walls leaving them jagged and rotten. It looked just as abandoned and forgotten as all its fallen brothers. Nevertheless, as the children approached it, they made sure to stick to the shadows just in case, ducking behind an old, rusted tractor before they opened the large barn door.

'It looks deserted to me,' Rosewaine observed.

'It does,' Wren's tone sounded a little uncertain of herself now. She had been so sure that she had put the pieces together and solved another element of the mystery but now, hiding behind old farm machinery in the dead of night, she was beginning to feel rather silly. Wren was about to turn to her friends and ask if they should return to the castle when her eyes honed in on something. A dim light emitted from under part of the rotten wall, orange on the snow outside. It was only faint but in the dark it was unmistakable. This barn was not as deserted as it seemed.

Wren pointed in silence to the light source then without a word began to creep towards the door. Rory followed closely, assessing how to get into the building without alerting anyone to their presence. He was pretty sure that anyone conducting business this far away from everywhere else wouldn't be best pleased with people snooping around.

Rory took the rusty barn door handle in hand then slowly rolled it back on its runners just enough for them to peer through. The interior of the building looked just as unremarkable as its exterior. There were pieces of old farm machinery draped with tarpallings and a bale of forgotten, rotten hay in one corner. However, what caught Wren's eye were the two crates stacked on top of one another on the far wall, each bearing a red, stencil painted logo identical to Chirrup's ear tag. Hagrid had been right. Hicklesons Relocation Services had indeed been operating here at one point. As she scanned the dusty, straw strewn barn for any more clues she felt Rory nudge her side then point to a patch of the barn floor that looked far cleaner. As her vision honed in on it she became aware of the small amount of light trickling through the floorboards from below.

'A celler?' Wren queried to no one in particular.

Rory opened the door a little wider as quietly as he could so that the four children could slip through. They tiptoed across the creaky wooden boards trying to be as quiet as possible then knelt down on the ground to peer through the floor board slats into the dimly lit cavity below.