Ced, Momo, and Cookie ran as fast as they could to reach the well-lit nearby place but still careful that they wouldn't be seen. They are shivering from the cold atmosphere, and their feet are covered with mud. The rain has finally stopped, but it created small puddles along their path. There are rows upon rows of green leafy plants that towers over them everywhere they look. As they checked the plants carefully, they finally realized where they are.
"I think we're in the strawberry fields." Ced turned to his two companions.
"Yeah, I thought so too. Is that strawberry jam that I could smell?" Cookie replied.
"I don't know, I haven't tried it before." Momo replied and they immediately stopped moving as they felt something moving nearby.
True enough, a couple of children wearing big coats and hats passed by. One of them, a girl with a braided hair, is carrying a puppy in her arms.
"Hurry, let's tell Mama and Papa to let us keep the dog!" The girl said as they ran past the solid books without any suspicion and too much excitement. The two younger children running behind her. The children ran towards a barn with people going in and out of it every minute and disappeared in the crowd.
People in thick coats, jackets, and knitted hats and gloves can be seen loading big boxes and crates into several carriages and giving instructions to the coachmen near the main entrance of the strawberry field. On the further right side, there are items being checked, money being passed around, and horses being fed. There are people walking and running from one house to another, from one barn to another, carrying small, medium, and large items with them.
When the carriages have finally left, the strawberry field seemed to have calm down, so Momo, Ced, and Cookie started to move again. About an hour passed, and with the little progress they made, three sleepy books are now standing next to a big crate piled up with the others in similar sized beside a big barn on the left side of the strawberry field.
"Should we go in?"" Momo asked them.
"I think there are still people inside." Ced said.
Just then, one person turned up. "It's terrible!" She exclaimed. This woman is probably in her early 40s. Her hair is tied in a high bun, she has a thick scarf around her neck, and a regular looking dress drenched with a bit of mud at the back. "Have you heard what happened to Mr. Pax?" The woman asked.
"What?"
"Why?"
"What happened to him?"
Several shocked voices inside the barn can be heard asking all sorts of questions, and people began to gather around the girl who just arrived. The three tired books outside were curious too.
"I hope he'll be okay." "But if he dies…" "Anyone---No one---" "Of course."
"Fourth person in the farm…" "Mr. Basil is there?" " Don't say that!"
"Who took him?" "What about the farm?"
Momo, Cookie, and Ced tried their best to listen to what the people inside the barn are talking, but overlapping voices made it very difficult for them to comprehend everything. The girl who just arrived immediately left with another girl with a flower headband.
"He will be fine, Lucia." The girl with a flower headband said and the other girl didn't respond. She has a serious look on her face and sprinted towards a carriage.
Meanwhile, Bio and Randy have developed a new skill of making shapes out of the few visible stars and the dark clouds from their hideout.
"That looked like a giraffe." Randy said.
"Where?" Bio asked.
"There do you see?" Randy pointing with his left hand.
"That looked more like a headless T-rex that's about to attack a deer to me." Bio replied and Randy looked at him in confusion.
They are sitting right behind a pile of wood planks meant to be used to repair the damaged fence in the dairy farm. They have decided it is best not to keep on moving with little visibility, when there are cow feces lying around who knows where. Unlike the other teams, luck was on their side, because the wind's direction made the rain invisible to their tower of wood planks cover.
Moments later, two large, cargo carriages with two lanterns in the front and one in the back arrived. It stopped at the shed and two people from each carriage came out, one adult and one child.
The adults checked the back of the carriage and closed the door securely afterwards. Each of them picked up one lantern and gave it to their child, they picked up another one for themselves and finally hung one lantern to the left and right corner of the horse shed. They made inaudible conversations, waved at each other, and the two pairs went on their separate ways.
The first pair walked to the left and entered a house not far from the shed. The second pair brisk walked to the right where Bio and Randy were taking cover. They don't have an umbrella or anything to cover themselves and the rain was fast in dominating the back of their clothes.
"Father, is it okay to leave these wood planks out here?" A young voice asked. He is carrying one lantern with his left hand.
"Yes, they will be used as a fence after all. They can withstand a rain." The father replied, not moving his head, and with hurried footsteps.
"What's that—is that---Father, look there are books." The child pointed at the books beside the wood planks. The father looked to his right, but before he could react, the kid has already picked up the books.
"Why would anyone leave books in here? Good thing they are not yet drenched with the rain." The child said while running beside his father as they head towards their house.
They walked a little bit more and passed by so many buildings of varying sizes that seem like warehouses or bottling house. Their footsteps the only ones talking. There was a fence on the right side of the path and the books thought that must be the area for the cows. They turned left at the end of the road where the pathway was narrower. There were series of tiny houses on both sides of the way. They went to the fifth house on the right and tapped their shoes on the side before entering.
His father hung his lamp on the left side of the wall in the middle of the room before closing the front door. While the kid placed his lamp on the table along with the two books. The table looked very full since it was already occupied by food containers, and a strawberry jam. Despite the limited light, the two books saw the entirety of the small house. It has one bed and two pillows. A half-opened cabinet. A small door that seemed to be the comfort room. On one side, there was a small sink and a cupboard. The only window was beside the front door which was providing a little bit of light. There were several clothes and milking items hanging all around the room. A small mirror hangs near the bed and a couple of pictures were taped at the top.
"Father, come and look at these. They are from Mr. Basil's Library. I wonder who borrowed them and forgot to return." The child said as he grabbed one of the chairs. His father stood behind him and stared at the books. Randy and Bio were surprise to realize that it was Jr. and Sr. Felippe who found them. They really look so much alike and both have curly hairs.
"I think this one is about animals, and this one is about human bodies." The child added, pointing at Randy and then Bio.
"Are you going to read them before returning them to the library?" The father asked and the child nodded and yawned.
"Alright then." His father replied and yawned and started to leave. The child began flipping the pages, checking the contents of each book.
"Did you have fun tonight?" His father asked, while walking towards the comfort room.
"I think the lights were brilliant." The child replied while scanning Rand's pages, then switching to Bio.
"Mr. Dacer's milk chocolate tasted really good." He added.
"Don't worry about it. Dacer's a friend of mine. He said he'll give me a bargain price, once it is sold in the market." His father replied after using the comfort room and switched with his son. His father went to bed and began snoring still wearing the same clothes.
Randy and Bio waited for a while to make sure that the father is really fast asleep and the son has locked the comfort room before doing anything. However, when they were about to leave the table, the son came out. He didn't look sleepy and took Randy instead. He was reading for a while when his father murmured, "Kino go to sleep. It's late."
Kino stood up, holding Randy in one hand and turned off the lamp. He took the lamp on the wall. He sat on the floor at the end of the bed, placed the lamp beside him and continued reading using the last lamp. Minutes later, his father rolled in the bed and noticed he was still not a sleep.
"Kino?" His father sat on the bed curious about the light coming from the floor.
"In a minute." Kino replied.
"I told you to sleep." The father replied with a firm voice. Kino took the book and made a dog ear on it then turned off the lamp. As he did, he noticed a paper just below the bed. He took it and reversed the dog ear he made to Randy and used the paper as a bookmark instead. He returned everything back to the table and went to bed.
Ced, Momo, and Cookie are now lying face flat to the dirty ground of the barn. A group of men, who carried the crates piled up outside to the new carriages that just arrived, saw them and threw them inside the barn. Cookie is trying her best not to scratch her cover as she is sure there are many people inside the barn. They could now hear everything that the people inside the barn are saying. Cookie and Ced couldn't help but think of their own personal experience from what they just heard about the three people who died near the creaky bridge.
"Hey, what are we going to these books?" The girl from before with a flower headband said. She also has chubby cheeks and forearms. She has a calm voice and small feet.
"Don't ask me." Said the girl in front of her.
"If no one owns them, you can just keep them, right?" Replied by another.
"No, I don't read. Maybe I'll just give them to Lucia."
"Where is she anyway, Mira?" Asked by a guy wearing a white shirt decorated with dirt since that morning, while Mira's picking up each book from the ground.
"She went to visit Mr. Pax. I'll be going now. Bye, Norman. Good night, everyone!" The girl added as she left the barn and went on her way.
Randy and Bio waited for a while before doing anything. When they were sure that the father and son were sleeping, they began to leave the table. They were hesitant to jump as they are worried, they might make a sound. Randy opened his page and tried to reproduce a bird again, but nothing happened. He is too tired and have used up much of his power, he thought. Bio tried to reproduce the half human body in his cover and failed miserably.
What he created was a swinging, limping half human body that looks like it will collapse any second now. It only has one arm, leg, and foot and a half of a human head. It moves in a gruelling, slow, unstable way of using its arm, elbow, hands, leg, and foot. The half of its muscles and ribs move each time it tries to crawl.
"That's good enough. Let's go." Randy said. Bio motioned the bizarre creature to hold them and put them around its neck and head to the door. The cover copy tried to open the door for about fifty times before actually touching the doorknob properly, unlocking it, twisting it, and pushing it open. It spent another painful half an hour of trying to close the door again, and Bio and Randy's anxiety of being discovered was over the darkest sky that they could see.
As the Sr. and Jr. Felippe went to dreamland, Bio and Randy has left the house. They exhaled deeply and tried their best to navigate around the farm as low as possible and without hitting anything. Bio's creation crawled past the worker's houses to the warehouses and to the farm's gate in the slowest speed possible.
"Where do you think the others are?" Randy asked while looking at the dairy farm from left to right.
"I don't know. I'm not even sure if we can leave the dairy farm with this speed." Bio replied.
"So, do we still follow Titus' plan?" Randy asked again.
"I don't think so, let's just return to the library. We can explain later." Bio said, wanting to go home.
"We'll be lucky if we don't get caught like this." Randy said.
"Let's stay quiet then."
"Yeah."
They stayed silent for the rest of their trip. Furthermore, Randy forgot that Kino has slipped a piece of paper into him as a bookmark earlier.