The fox had only noticed that Arthur seemed distracted by the house, but she didn't look at the window nor ask what he saw. She was, after all, convinced that he was a bit traumatized from his experience and bewildered by the place in which he now found himself.

"Well, that's nothin' easy -- but nothin' you can't handle," she said, encouraging, and she patted his head with a clawed wing. "She stays locked up in her room nowadays, singing -- you can sometimes hear her when it's quiet. You'll know it if ya hear it."

The fox's voice could be heard clearly, if slightly muffled, within the cottage. Nina scurried around the floor of the kitchen, snuffling in the corners for the hope of a morsel of food. She scratched and whined at a cupboard door, behind which was a covered cake plate full of buttercream cupcakes.

The fox continued: "You take that elevator down to the library, and you follow the eyes. If anythin' tries to stop you, you just gotta tell them you're not afraid, and you gotta mean it. That'll stop 'em in their tracks. And when ya find the gold lady -- well, she's got nobody to talk to. You're a good listener -- she'll like you."

Within the cottage, a small voice squeaked that only Riley could hear: "Lies!" a little mouse poked its nose out of a breadbox on the counter, wriggling. "The gold lady is the terror that keeps us all prisoner! Only her death will free us! We all used to be like you. Children! Children! But now with teeth and tails, we forget who we were, but I remember! I remember! The caged nightingale song of the gold lady! Don't listen, don't listen!"