Hala sat against the damp, stone wall uselessly, scoffing the crumbs from a biscuit tin. However, Freddie crept around the larder, planning their escape. He patted the walls, pressed his ear to the floorboards, and nudged the door every so often, but still found nothing that he hadn’t expected: the walls had no loose bricks, the floorboards wouldn’t be lifted, and the door was locked from the outside, and much too solid to manage to break down. Turning the corner round one of the many food-lined shelves, Freddie exclaimed loudly, as he almost knocked into 4 pheasants, hung from the ceiling with stained string. Disgusted, he sprinted back to where Hala slouched, and she laughed at his panting expression.

Freddie had one more possible solution, and Hala wasn’t being a help at all, so he grabbed a ladder that was leant against the wall, and positioned it next to one of the many high windows that were designed to ventilate the larder. Before he started climbing, Hala interrupted, ‘Look, Freddie, I know Miss Elinor better than you do, and I can tell you that we have no chance of getting out of here. She knows all about our past successes, and will have planned this out thoroughly. Just give it a rest, and we’ll wait until someone notices we’ve been gone for an unusual amount of time, and we’ll be out.’
‘No,’ Freddie protested, beginning to climb the ladder, ‘we are getting out of here no matter what it takes.’ But it wasn’t long before he was back down it, without the face of achievement that Hala had secretly been hoping for.

Freddie sat on the ladder, and Hala clambered on a chair to watch the stars gradually pin themselves to the jet black night sky. The moon was a fragile fingernail, and it was like a spotlight over the shadowy gardens of Woodforest House. She remembered watching these scenes from the roof with her mother and father. Hala sighed quietly, and a flicker of a smile touched her face.

Suddenly, Hala jumped. She must have nearly dosed off. A scraping sound was coming from a floorboard near where she lay. Freddie had heard it too, and held a saucepan in the air like a shield. He signaled a finger to his lips, and slowly tiptoed towards the noise.
‘Hala? Freddie?’ a muffled voice whispered. The pan was replaced in a cupboard, whilst Hala eased the board up, and when the gap was just big enough, Luco squeezed through it, his tongue lolling out of his panting mouth. ‘Please… wind… up…’ he gasped. Without hesitation, Hala reached around his neck and brought out his key, winding it smoothly in his back. A gentle whirring followed, then Luco collapsed on the floor.
‘What time is it? Where have you been? How did you get out? You were with us when we were locked in.’ Hala spluttered, unable to make any sense of the mechanimal’s disappearance and reappearance. Although Luco needed a rest, they all agreed that they needed to get out of there as soon as possible.

After pulling up one more floorboard so that they could all fit down, they all vanished down the passage, Hala with Luco in her arms. It was pitch dark in the underground tunnel, but Freddie had his tiny pocket torch with him, so held that at the front of the short line. It wasn’t long before they all climbed up a rusty ladder and popped out in the woodshed at the other end of the garden. Thankfully, the door was ajar, so they slipped silently through, and ran along the hedge line, as it was still relatively dark, towards the lane. There, they sat at the bottom of an oak, in a pile of leaves.
‘Told you we’d get out,’ muttered Freddie, overly pleased with himself.
‘Bet you weren’t expecting me to play the main role,’ Luco retorted.
‘Someone’s woken up,’ Hala yawned, ‘Anyway, how did you get out, know about the passage, not get caught by any guards, navigate the tunnel all by yourself and arrive with us after several hours without requiring a wind up?’
‘Ah, never you mind about any of that,’ he waved off the questions as if they were dust, ‘but we do need to get that Dream Locket back, and somehow punish Miss Elinor for what she’s done to your family, Hala.’