further hesitation,” Hannah said.
“But, Hannah, which way do we go?” Elli asked.
“I’m afraid I do not know, dear children,” she said, rather sadly Elli thought, with her voice trailing off as if she had herself already left their presence for the depths of the darkness encircling them. And, then, as Hannah retreated into the seemingly impregnable forest, the children could just barely hear her final words. “The castle is far to the north, beyond The Mountains. Fare thee well.”
~three~
The children stood looking at Elli, waiting for her to provide direction. As Elli considered their next move, the others noticed at once the slow appearance of the beast, Beatríz alerted to its presence from the slight, tight gasp that came from Alex. The creature was advancing to within several feet of the children, all frozen in place, when Alex stepped quickly in front of Elli in a posture of defense while reaching back to pull out his knife. And then, just as Alex had the knife in front of him, the beast lay down on all eight legs and gave out a tiny pleading sort of whimper, as if asking to not be left behind.
“Wait, Alex. I think he wants to follow us,” Elli said.
“I hear a rumbling not all that far away, and I don’t think it’s thunder,” said Beatríz.
“Then let’s go,” said Elli.
“Wait,” Beatríz said. “Can anyone see anything beyond the fire?”
“No,” said Jamie, “no, not at all, Beatríz.”
“So choose a direction and let me lead. I can move best in the dark, I think. I can ‘see’ with my hands and feet and ears probably better than the rest of you,” Beatríz concluded.
“Good,” replied Elli. “Feel which way I’m facing, Beatríz, and lead on.”
Beatríz stood in front of Elli and then stepped forward into the forest with Elli, Jamie, and Alex trailing close behind by the aid of sound and touch. The beast followed Alex, but at a distance. The forest was dense, with thick vines draping from trees, requiring the children to lift and duck beneath them. They struggled to avoid entanglement, and the going was slow and tiring. The rumbling was not far away, and getting closer. No one said a word. There was nothing to say. The only sounds were those of the forest being disturbed by the four visitors—or, perhaps, trespassers—and the beast. Beatríz stopped to rest, and then all of them stopped and stood quietly, hearing only the slight whispers of their breathing and nothing from the creature following supposedly on their heels. All of them felt a heavy cold wind passing by. Perhaps, thought Elli, it was the same wind that had marked its presence on the staircase, shortly after they had left Peterwinkle. In any event, she had the same feeling that something other than the beast was close and noticing them.
They resumed their slow march. Within a minute or so, however, Beatríz, still in the lead, stopped again. “What is it?” Elli asked.
“The wood has just ended here, and the ground is beginning to slant sharply downward. I’m going to get down on my stomach and feel where it leads, and whether we can go any further in this direction,” said Beatríz.
Beatríz lay down and stretched out her arms in front of her head. She crawled forward just a bit. “Elli—Jamie, Alex. Hold onto my legs and don’t let go. There seems to be some sort of drop-off here, but I don’t know how steep it is or how far down it goes.” Beatríz, now secured by the others, crawled downward until soon she announced, “I’ve hit what seems to be flat ground covered with flattened long grass. Let go of my legs and I’ll crawl a little further.”
Beatríz crawled through the grass for a couple of minutes before she came to the same kind of ridge from which she had just descended. “It seems like a circular depression, maybe thirty feet across. I think I’m at the other side. Why don’t two of you follow along the ridge in opposite directions and see if I’m right.”
The children discovered that they were in some sort of clearing just a few feet below the forest floor, and that the tall grass was pressed to the earth and warm, as if a collection of creatures had lain there recently.
“Well, we haven’t heard the rumbling in a while, and I can’t stay awake any longer,” said Elli. “Let’s get some sleep, guys.” All four of them lay themselves down, one next to the other, as if trying to fit into one bed, each one’s head on his or her backpack and an arm around another.
“Has anyone seen The Beast?” Elli asked, in a tone suggesting that the creature now had a name. All said no. “Goodnight,” Elli said.
“Goodnight,” each of them responded. And all four, with thoughts of home, a deep abiding fear of every next moment, and an inescapable weight of drowsiness, as if caused by the fear itself, went to sleep.
Beatríz was the first to awaken, feeling uncomfortably warm. “Guys! Guys! Is that the sun I feel?”
Alex awoke next, sat up quickly to the sound of Beatríz’s voice, and said, “Yes! The sun! And . . . hewz The Beast!” The Beast was lying, in a coil, next to Alex’s feet, its tiny beady eyes wide open. The creature licked his upper lip between his fangs and waited, as if obediently, for an order from someone. All four sat up, rubbing thick sleep from their eyes. If this were their home world, it would have been noon in the summertime. The sun was high overhead, and the sky around it was light blue and cloudless.
“What do you see?” Beatríz asked the others. The others were looking almost straight up, with amazement showing on all their faces.
“We are in a clearing, as you thought last night, Beatríz,” said Elli, “and the depression pretty well takes up all of it. But the trees—the trees around it are so high that we can barely see the leaves at the top. And the sky is like a small blue hole cut out of the trees, with the sun taking up almost all of the space. No wonder it’s so dark around here, even during the day.
“And the trees are so tall and dense, Beatríz, that it could be noon in the middle of the forest, and still we’d think it was night,” added Jamie. “Heck, it could have been daytime while we were traveling yesterday in the dark. I’m not sure in this forest it makes any difference whether it’s day or night. It’s just always . . . dark.”
In their hunger, they noticed, while the sun was still shining overhead, some yellow berries in the bushes growing tightly next to the forest’s edge. Elli took a closer look, wondering like all of them if they were okay to eat. They looked like yellow cherries, with thin blue lines encircling them, like the rings of Saturn. She picked one apart, and a single seed fell to the ground. Jamie noticed there were lots of seeds scattered about the bushes, including within the depression itself, and that all but a few were clean of any berry flesh.
“Guys,” Jamie said, “other things have been eating these. They must be okay.”
While the quickly waning light remained, the children decided to gather some of the fruit for their late breakfast and then gather some more to wrap in leaves and save in their backpacks for later. The berries were refreshing and renewing, as well as surprisingly filling. There were lots of long thorns growing around each berry, like sentinels standing guard in a tight circle, so Beatríz’s job was to take the berries picked by others and do the wrapping and packing.
They had nearly completed their work, all the while gathering and packing while eating, when the rumbling they had heard the day before at Hannah’s, and again while traveling in the dark, sounded shockingly loud and
