Armand hadn’t directly told Elsie any of what he had learned about the train from Hamish the bull, but she must have overheard him telling Abigail because when the owls awoke at sunset, the squirrel was gone from their nest, and Eustace the badger said he’d seen her heading across the open field toward the train track.
“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” hissed Abigail. “Well she’s lucky at least the foxes were asleep. A squirrel in an open field…. Why on earth?”
“Dunno,” shrugged Eustace in his loose, badgery way. “I heard her squeaking something about her kittens over in the wood where my old den was, where the train is coming through.”
“Her kittens!” Abigail’s eyes got round as moons. “Why they’ve been out of the nest for three years.”
“Now then,” said Armand. “You still worry about our owlets at times though they have owlets of their own. Let’s just go and make sure she’s all right.”
They heard the barking well before they saw the lurcher pawing at the base of the old spruce, spraying dark soil across the snow like blood. “Oh, please tell me that’s not Elsie in there,” hooted Abigail as the owls circled overhead, trying to get a better look. As they did, here came a girl after the dog, struggling through a drift of snow. Armand recognized Violet, the youngest child of the village shepherd, the one whom Gustav had overheard saying the train was going to take her out out of the village at last. She was shouting something at the dog, but he wasn’t listening to her. When she got close enough, she seized hold of his thick leather collar and pulled him off the hole he was digging. He snarled in frustration, but he came away. And then she reached into the hole with both hands and brought out a little dirty red bundle of fur. She brushed at it, and she was crying now.
Abigail screeched a gasp, and at the very same instant Armand’s sharp eyes caught the tufted ears and white belly in the circle of the girl’s mittened hands. But he also saw with his sharp eyes the quick rise and fall of Elsie’s panicked breast; she was alive, likely pretending not to be for the moment. That was all Armand made out before the girl swaddled the squirrel in her cloak and started trudging back along her tracks to the road that headed back to the village. Codger, chastened, trotted along behind his mistress. And the owls followed, too. It was all they could do.
The Rookery 