Bark splintered as the branches bent like fingers and swatted at us. The faces in the trees snarled, making me stumble backward.
“Run!” I pushed Holly down the path. The bony wooden fingers of an oak tree grazed my arm.
“The path splits up ahead!” Holly yelled. “Which way should we go?”
“We can’t get lost or we’ll never make it back home before Mom.”
“Give me the granola bars you brought.”
How could she think about food at a time like this? We were being attacked by a bunch of hundred-year-old trees! “We can’t stop to eat!”
“We can break the granola bars into little pieces and drop them on the ground to mark the paths we take.”
“Good thinking!” I took the granola bars from my pocket and tossed them to Holly. “You mark the trail. I’ll lead the way.” I glanced over my shoulder. No trees were chasing us. They were still firmly rooted in the ground, and we were out of reach of their limbs. “We can slow down now.”
Holly stopped and bent at the waist, resting her hands on her knees while she caught her breath. “What was that back there?”
I shivered, remembering the feel of the tree’s bony fingers sliding across my back. “The journal said that the forest makes your worst nightmares become a reality. We were talking about the scary faces in the bark and how the branches looked like arms. Our fears came to life.” I was beginning to understand how that guy had gone crazy in here.
“Do you really think everything Mom wrote in the journal is true? The curse? The buried fortune?” Holly asked, grabbing my arm.
I knew it was. All of it. But I didn’t say that. “Just keep your scary thoughts to yourself, and we’ll be fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t exactly sure if that was true.
We pushed through leaves and fallen branches. I was about to step over another fallen tree, when I heard twigs breaking. I stopped and stuck my arm out in front of Holly. The noise had come from somewhere to our left, but a bush blocked my view.
“Stay still. There’s something up ahead. It’s probably a squirrel, but keep quiet until we know for sure.” I tried to sound calm so Holly wouldn’t panic, but a loud cracking sound made my efforts useless.
“What was that?” Holly stepped behind me and buried her head between my shoulder blades.
I was afraid to think of what it might be. I didn’t know if the forest only made the things said out loud come to life or if it could read thoughts, too. I moved the branches of the bush to get a better look. A deer ran through some fallen trees. I let go of the breath I’d been holding.
“Is it bears?” Holly asked.
My whole body tensed. Holly had volunteered another scary suggestion to the forest. I looked around, but I couldn’t see a bear anywhere. Leaves rustled and another cracking sound came from high in a tree. Three large branches fell to the ground in front of us. Only these weren’t normal tree limbs. They were shaped like bears. Big green, leafy bears! Once again, our imaginations had turned the forest into living creatures ready to devour us.
I kept an eye on the bears to make sure they didn’t move. The one closest to me was the largest. The leaves making up the bear’s mouth were spaced out, exposing its enormous green teeth. I wasn’t willing to bet that those teeth would crumble apart like regular leaves. I was way past thinking anything in this forest was ordinary.
Holly squeezed my arm tighter. “What do we do?”
“I don’t think they see us. Let’s back up and go down another path. Move as quietly as you can.”
“Okay.” Holly took a step away from me and stopped. She could see the bears now, and she shivered with fear.
I nudged her with my elbow. She backed up slowly, her eyes never leaving the bears. I saw the fallen tree branch on the ground just as Holly stepped on it. I reached out to her, but I was too slow. Holly’s feet came up from under her, and she fell backward into a pile of leaves.
“Ow!” she yelled.
The bears let out deep rumbling growls. I yanked Holly to her feet. “They see us! Run!”
The bears charged after us. I pushed Holly to run faster, but I knew we couldn’t outrun bears. I followed the trail of granola and got an idea.
“Throw the granola bars on the ground,” I yelled. “Maybe the bears will stop to eat them.” If tree-bears actually ate. They sure seemed to want to eat Holly and me.
Holly turned and threw the granola bars at the bears, hitting one of them on the nose. A few leaves fell to the ground. The bears were stunned at first, but then their noses twitched in the air. All three rushed to the spot where the bars landed.
“It worked!” Holly said.
“Keep running!” We had to get off this path or the bears would follow our granola trail right to us.
We reached the fork and ran a little way down the other path before stopping to catch our breath. I threw my head back and rested my hands on my hips. Holly leaned against a tree.
She looked at her feet, avoiding my eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault those trees turned into—” She paused, and I was grateful that she’d caught herself before she created more bears for us to deal with. “I couldn’t keep my fears to myself. Me and my big mouth.”
I wasn’t sure how much was Holly’s fault and how much could be blamed on our family’s curse. “We know how the forest works now. We won’t say anything that could be the least bit scary. That won’t be hard.” I wasn’t sure this was true, but I needed to convince Holly it was. “Let’s keep going.”
“But we don’t have any way to mark a trail anymore. How will we find our way back home?” Holly asked.
“We’ll take the paths on the left. Then when we turn around, all the paths we took will be on the right side since we’ll be facing the opposite direction. That should be easy enough to remember.”
Holly nodded.
We walked for a few minutes until we came to a stream. It seemed strange that a stream running through a forest would be so wide. What surprised me even more was that the stream had a strong current that crashed against the big jagged rocks sticking out of it.
“We can’t swim across it with a current that strong,” Holly said.
Going in the stream was out of the question. I scanned the surrounding trees overhanging the water.
“How do you feel about swinging across the stream on this rope?” I asked, removing the rope from across my chest. I threw one end up into an oak tree along the stream and looped the rope around a branch so I could hold both ends in my hands.
“Like a rope swing?”
“Exactly! I’ll swing over, and then you’ll grab onto the rope as it swings back.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Holly said. “If we miss, the current will pull us to who knows where.”
I wasn’t giving up. I had to find out more about the curse, and this was the place to do it. “We have to keep going. We have to end the curse.”
Holly took a deep breath and exhaled louder than necessary. She shook her head, almost like she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Okay, let’s do this before I change my mind.”
I smiled. Holly was being really brave considering what we’d already faced inside the forest. I took a few steps backward, as many as the rope would allow, and with a running start, I swung over the stream. My eyes focused on the water, expecting to see a large octopus reaching up to grab me. Thankfully, the forest couldn’t read minds. I landed hard on the other side, but I made it. Now, it was Holly’s turn. She jumped up and grabbed the rope as it swung back to her. Following my example, Holly swung over the stream.
It would’ve worked well if we were the same height, but Holly was shorter than me and couldn’t reach the other side. She started to swing back. Without thinking, I reached for her legs and pulled her to me. We landed on the ground in a heap. I broke Holly’s fall, but she scraped her leg on a rock and had rope burns on her hands.
“Are you
okay?” I asked.
“I’ve done worse,” Holly said. “Thanks for catching me. I was so scared when I saw I wasn’t going to make it.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I couldn’t grab the rope, and now we have no way of getting back across the stream.”
“How are we going to get home?” Her voice was loud and full of panic.
“I don’t know.” This was turning out to be some curse.