"One more week and the school is over," said Matilda jumping in one leg. "I'm going to miss these mornings," she added, smiling at Ferry and Ben who were walking beside her. "And then, holiday. This holiday is going to be special, I can feel it."

"Yeah..." Ferry mumbled, "but this isn't how I expected the school year to end. I mean we won't have a festivity... And it wouldn't be the same anyway, without Miss Summer..."

Matilda also turned serious, "What are we going to do now? How we're supposed to find Danny? We wouldn't even know where to start..."

"Isn't it dangerous?" Ben asked. "The way he disappeared is so strange... And then there's Billy's story with the unseen girl..."

"Are you scared?" Matilda inquired him. "Because if you are, you shouldn't be in this with us."

"N─no," Ben mumbled. "It's just that we're not ready. We don't know what lies in those woods..."

Ferry agreed in his mind. If Danny was indeed taken by the fairies to their realm, as he thought he was, they would be completely unprepared. Even he, who had so many encounters with the fairies, didn't know the way they thought or behaved. Yet, he did know a fairy.

"Have you seen the veiled lady recently?" he asked his friends.

They looked at him, surprised by his question.

"No, but she doesn't come to town during summer, anyway," said Ben. "My mother said that for some reason, she's coming to town only late in the fall, to pick up the branches fallen from the trees..."

"Why do you ask? Do you think she has something to do with Danny?" Matilda wondered.

"No... I ─ I don't think that at all," Ferry rushed to say.

"Because if you come to think of it, she might be involved somehow. She might have been looking to take her feathers back. She's pretty weird, you know. Nobody knows much about her, nobody is visiting her... Maybe we should tell the police about her."

"NO!" Ferry almost shouted. "I mean... we have no proof she's behind Danny's vanishing..." he said, trying to hide his nervousness. Only the thought the whole town might find out the truth about Lavender Sky made him shiver.

"If you ask me, we don't have any evidence. Except for Miss Summer's map, of course," Ben added. "But that doesn't prove anything. From what she was saying, she was possessed or something."

"Then what should we do?" Matilda shrugged.

"Well, I've been thinking," said Ben, taking his know-it-all attitude, "and we should look for clues of the other cases of mysterious disappearances in town. I think we can all admit there's a pattern here. At least, that's what I've seen the detectives are doing in the movies."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" asked Ferry, suddenly feeling curious.

Ben seemed to have a plan, "First, we should go to the library and search for the local newspaper archive. Such a subject must have been news of the day for weeks, once in seven years."

Ferry and Matilda looked at their friend with admiration; Ben was trying hard to hide his what-would-you-do-without-me smile.

⃰

The local library was located inside a one-room building which was once used as a storehouse. In Goodharts, people were too busy with their day-to-day life to think about reading. Except for the children, nobody ever stepped foot in the library. Truth be told, you could hardly find any good book in there. They were old, donated books by the wealthy people in town. Then, there were old newspapers which didn't present interest to anyone, and eventually turned into a delicious meal of a rodent.

Mrs. Barb Dear, the librarian, was a sixty-year-old respectable lady, wearing glasses with thick frames as any respectable librarian should. That had been her lifetime job, and she was doing it further on with the same boredom she had been doing her whole life. But this job also allowed her to open a small shop of knitted articles, born out of the many hours of boredom spent behind her dusty desk.

When the children entered the library, they were surrounded by a funny smell of dust mixed with decay from old books. In the wintertime, it was difficult to stay inside because of the terrible cold; but in the summer, the hot, frowsty air was unbearable.

Matilda was wearing Ben's glasses so she could have the air of a bookish student. She headed towards Mrs. Dear's desk, all the way to the back of the room, looking really determined. They had all decided they should start the Operation VDS (that was the code name for Vanishing of Danny Stevens) that very day. They needed to find Danny by the end of the school year so that Miss Summer could be off charges of anything having to do with his disappearance.

"What do you want, children?" the old librarian asked with a husky voice, not used to talk to someone for so long. "Shouldn't you be at home, playing? The school is nearly over."

"Dear Mrs. Dear, we have an important project about our lovely town," said Matilda in a sweet voice, giving the old lady a large smile. "And it would be of great help if we could use the old newspapers," she continued in the same sweet tone.

The librarian didn't seem very impressed. In fact, she was rather bothered for being interrupted from crocheting a lovely shawl that would have suited Mrs. Pride perfectly during her evening walks on the Pride domains.

She rose from her chair with difficulty, muttering something about children these days, more interested in books than enjoying the summer. After a while, she came back dragging a large cardboard box that left behind a long track in the thick dust on the floor. She then just abandoned it in front of her desk and went back to her knitting. The children could barely move the box to the reading table in the middle. It was a tottering table with four wooden chairs just as tottered.

"Did you bring everything?" Ferry asked Ben after taking the first pile of papers out of the box.

Ben meticulously took out of his schoolbag a small notebook, a pen that could fit the smallest pocket, and a magnifying glass.

" We must look back seven years, and then fourteen years ago, at around the same date Danny disappeared. And so on. This should be easy," whispered Ben.

Ferry and Matilda rushed to search among the big pile of newspapers.

"Look, I found it," Matilda whispered. "It's from seven years ago, this time of the year."

But as she was reading, her eyes turned teary, and she eventually pushed the newspaper aside. The article was about her mother's disappearance.

"I don't believe these lies!" she said in a loud voice. "My mother left us! She had nothing to do with the vanishings in the forest. It's just a coincidence..."

The boys made desperate signs to keep her voice down or their plan would've failed. Ben took the paper from Matilda's trembling hands and then he analyzed a picture of the forest with his magnifying glass. The paper was old, and it had a yellowish hue. But Ben couldn't take his eyes away from the picture.

"What is it? What did you find?" Ferry asked.

"Look! There! Behind the tree! The light has the shape of a silhouette."

Matilda wrested the paper from his hands and she also looked at the picture. "It's only the light between the trees," she frowned. "Stop rambling, Ben!"

"But look what it says," Ferry interfered. Then he read, "The venerable Mrs. Mildred Cobbs, whose daughter has gone missing over forty years ago, in the same circumstances, says that the  ones responsible for the disappearances are not to be found among humans..."

"Erm... I wonder what was she trying to say," Ben wondered.

Ferry searched again among the old papers. He found the fourteen-year-old newspaper and read, "Mrs. Mildred Cobbs, whose daughter vanished in mysterious circumstances in the proximity of Shepherd's Forest, says the Unseen have been responsible for the disappearances in town."

All children crowded over the newspaper. A picture of the forest, much older and more unclear than the previous one, accompanied the article. Yet, behind a tree, a silhouette of light could still be distinguished.

"Ben, search for a newspaper dated right after Danny's disappearance," said Ferry, his eyes sparkling with impatience.

But Matilda was already ahead of him. She found the newspaper and unfolded it on the table. They all studied the picture taken right after Miss Summer announced Danny's disappearance. This time, the photo was much clearer. A few steps away from the old oak tree, they could see the thin, light silhouette hiding behind a tree. And although they couldn't see its facial features, they could clearly see it was a girl with long, long hair, almost touching the ground.

"That is not the light! It can't be the light in all three photos!" said Ben with enthusiasm. "There is something strange happening in that forest."

Matilda frowned, "What does that mean?"

Ferry stared at the photo. "It means we need to talk to Mrs. Cobbs."

⃰

That same afternoon, they met in front of Mrs. Cobbs's house. After Danny's disappearance, things were getting back to normal, little by little. So the parents were now allowing their children to play almost everywhere they wanted.

The wave of heat wasn't so heavy anymore, now that the sun was rolling towards the twilight. But for some reason, the children felt something overwhelming in the air. Something that wouldn't let them breathe easy. In front of Mrs. Cobbs's house, the sensation felt even more oppressive.

"It looks like a haunted house," whispered Matilda watching the house surrounded by a milky light.

The air was filled with a sorrow-sweet scent. It was the scent of the rotten fruits hanging from the trees. A continuous buzz of the insects which came to feast from the juice leaking from the trees resounded in their ears.

They pushed the gate which opened with a long creak. Ferry only took one step forward when he heard Matilda shouting, "Ferry, look out!"

With a fast move, she threw a stick between the jaws of an iron trap.

"Let me go first," she said.

Ferry had forgotten he was on the land of a fairy hunter. The whole front garden was full of traps, starving for their victims in the air or on the ground. They stepped carefully among no more than twelve traps, trying at the same time to avoid the sweet drops leaking from the trees.

"Do you think it's wise to ask for help from someone so strange?" whispered Ben.

"She's the only one who seems to know something about those disappearances," Ferry whispered back. "If we want to find Danny in that forest, we need to know what's happening there. And Mrs. Cobbs seems to be the only one who knows something. Other than that, we won't get anything from anyone. Because no one wants to talk about that..."

Ben nodded without being really convinced. Ferry headed towards the door, but just when he was to knock on the door, a wailing stopped him. They all heard it. The children looked around, terrified. It seemed like coming from the back of the house.

Without saying a word, Matilda set moving towards the back of the house with big, determined steps. The boys followed, their hearts racing.

"Matt, wait!" Ferry whispered. "It can be dangerous!"

But then, the moan again, this time closer. It was coming from the basement. The wooden shuttered was opened, and it was hitting the outside wall of the house, making a rhythmic sound that sounded sinister in the evening's air.

Matilda carefully opened the shutter, and she revealed a window with a thick, iron railing. She then looked inside, the window too small for them all to look.

"What do you see?" Ben asked, his back against the house's wall like the detectives from the movies.

"I don't know," she whispered. "It's pitch black in there... And there's a funny smell, too..."

"Let me see," Ferry asked her.

He stepped closer to the window, yet not too close because of the iron bars. Indeed, he couldn't see anything inside. He felt a strange smell of moist, frowst, and something else he couldn't define. The basement looked deep. But when his eyes got used to the darkness inside, he could tell there was someone or something there, looking back at him from a corner. He could hear its heavy, rattling breathing. When suddenly, that creature dashed to the small window Ferry was watching from. An inhuman howl emerged, accompanied by a rattle of heavy chains.

This time, the children dashed, leaving behind the old house and the garden full of fairy traps.

They had no idea that somewhere, at the upper floor of the house, from behind the heavy, dusty curtain, Mrs. Cobbs watched without blinking, her hand clenched tight on the handle of her crane.

Thank you for reading this chapter! You know what to do :) Vote, comment, and let me know your theories on this one!