“Yeah, I’m not going in there,” Russ said first.
“Nope. Would rather dig. I’m not getting anywhere near that tunnel,” said Mimi.
“Let’s find another way. Let’s just…get down,” March said, and even he shuddered when he looked at that darkness beyond—and he was always the most composed among us.
“This way. Let’s stick to this way. We’re bound to find a way down eventually,” Seth said, pointing ahead, and we agreed. We didn’t really have much of a choice, did we?
Ahead we went.
It was so strange to be there, to measure every step against the floor before taking it, to try to see everything, to try to figure out where it all came from, where it went. Those rings on the bark here and there still took my attention. Iwent close to inspect one of them, and I had this overwhelming urge to just touch it, but I didn’t dare. I just let my fingertips hover close to the surface for a moment, then moved away.
The flowers, too. Some were so bright but some so faded, they made me want to either pluck them and put them out of their misery or find water somewhere to pour on them. I did neither.
We kept moving for a while, and it seemed to me that this forest—orthis treewent on forever in either direction. But then the branches began to dip lower with each step, and eventually, we saw the trunk of the actual Tree of Life that connected everything together.
It was bigger than I could have imagined, the trunk as wide as a house, the bark rough and dry in some places. The rings here glowed faintly with silver light. Not all, but a few.
“This ismassive,” someone whispered from behind me, and we were spreading out the closer we got to it, to see if we could findsomethingto give us direction.
“Look—look at those flowers!”
“Look at these mushrooms. I wonder if they’re poisonous. D’you think we could eat them?”
“Guys, why are some of these rings glowing?”
“Why are mostnotglowing?”
“I don’t know—it feels like they all should.” Mimi said this, and I realized that’s exactly what I was thinking as well. All those faded rings on branches were supposed to be glowing, and they didn’t.
“QUIET!”
The hiss came from nowhere and from everywhere all at once.
My heart about beat right out of my ribcage. We stopped once again, eyes wide open, looking at one another.
“Who…who said that?” asked Helen, and the rest of us continued to exchange looks.
Ihadn’t said anything, not even accidentally, and by the looks of it, neither had the other Hands, but we’d all heard it. We’d all heard that word. That voice.
“Who’s there?” March called, taking another step closer to the massive trunk, hands fisted at his sides, eyes searching…
A second ticked by.
“Quiet,I say. You will wake them if you’re not quiet. They’ve been so hungry…”
All our eyes went to a branch some three feet away to my right, where the voice came from. Where a bunch of mushrooms, and a bunch of flowers seemed to have sprouted together in a space no wider than a few inches.
The flowers with colorful petals and green stems, looking healthier than most of the others around them.
The flowers that had eyes and mouths on their flowerheads.
“Keep your mouths shut,” said a flower.
A flower.
I blinked. Breathed. Allowed myself several seconds to make sure what I was seeing was right.
A flower with yellow petals and an orange flowerhead was speaking. It washervoice, and the slightly shorter flower with blue petals to her side was watching us, too. They had eyes. Small, black, beady eyes, and slits for mouths. They had voices.
