On Saturday after she was done with her chores, there was about an hour of daylight left, so Violet saddled up Clive and rode out to the north wood. She was thinking about the little squirrel and wondering how she was doing. It was winter, so maybe she’d be asleep–at least, Violet was hoping she wouldn’t see a little furry red body in the snow. She knew it was only instinct that had made Codger attack, but she still felt badly about it.
She had brought Danforth with her behind her on the saddle because he was a good tracker, and with his short legs in the snow, there was no chance of him catching a squirrel. When they stopped at the edge of the wood, Violet took him in her arms, jumped down, and then gave him a noseful of the straw that had been in the squirrel’s cage for him to smell. She dropped him in the snow. “Go find her, boy!” she said encouragingly. Danforth looked up at her, barked, wagged his tail, and took off into the forest.
When she caught up with him, he was standing at the base of a huge spruce tree on the west edge of the wood. Violet put a hand on her hood and craned her neck back to look at it. It might have been the biggest tree she had ever seen. She looked around. All of the trees here were very old. Their canopy was so dense the ground beneath them was bare of snow–all deep green mosses and brackens. She saw a cluster of bright red mushrooms poking out of a log and behind that, in a clearing, a green mound rising, wreathed in mist and with a great stone sticking jutting up from the top. She felt a chill run down her arms as she realized where she was. This was what Bertie and the boys in the village called the Ghost Wood. That mound was an old tomb, from the time before the Romans, and everyone stayed away from it. There were stories about men who had tried to dig up the treasure and had ended stabbing each other to death, or dying of some terrible sickness. There was a story about two boys who had gone to play on the mound, and only one had come back.
Violet took a step back from the clearing, and Danforth barked then, startling her. “Boy, you scared me!” And she looked at him to see that he was staring up into the big spruce, where, perched on a low branch, was the enormous barn owl.
He hooted once. As clear as day, Violet understood him to be saying, “Follow me.” And then he swept off toward the west, out into the fields.
The Rookery 