Chapter 30: Changes
28 January, 2008 – 11:43 am
‘I don’t feel right’, muttered Scarlet.
‘Think mum and dad are worrying about us?’ whispered Thomas.
She nodded. ‘Don’t you? I’m sure they’re out of their heads worrying about us. We shouldn’t really be here. Things have changed so much in such a short space of time though, that I can’t get my head around anything anymore. It doesn’t feel real. Any of it.’
‘I’m sure they’re fine you two,’ smiled Eliza, reassuringly, before she disappeared off into the caravan’s toilet.
‘Where are you going?’ inquired Thomas.
‘Just wait there,’ she said.
Scarlet and Thomas waited, occasionally looking at their watches. After a while, Thomas heard a scratching sound coming from the toilet. Thomas looked at Scarlet and gave a little shrug of confusion.
‘Erm, can someone help me please?’ asked Eliza, from behind the toilet door.
Frowning, Thomas grabbed the door handle and opened it. As he pulled the door open, a big brown Owl hopped out, which took him by surprise, and he let out a little shriek before he realised it was Eliza.
‘I wish I could get used to that,’ complained Thomas.
‘Yeah, me too.’ Eliza said, fluffing her feathers up.
* * * *
From high up in the air, the Winterton grounds – although massive - looked quite small.
Scarlet looked back towards the boat to see if she could get a better view of the Eleven Hags, and smiled as she was rewarded with a picture of a neat ring of white stones that decorated the little hilltop. Further to the north, she also noticed a stack of black smoke rising high into the sky from the edge of Bracken Wood, but failed to realise, as she frowned, that it was her home that was burning to the ground.
Without a further thought, she turned back to look at their destination.
Scarlet and Thomas couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet from the ground as they followed Eliza - in the guise of a large tawny owl - as she flew silently towards the roof of Winterton hall.
The cloudless sky was a deep sapphire and the light of the moon illuminated the skylights in the rooftop clearly.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ Eliza whispered.
They touched down on the leaded roof in complete silence. Thomas crept towards the skylight and carefully peered down; it looked down onto an empty hallway.
‘Try and open it if you can,’ suggested Eliza, hopping to the window.
