The sun came out from behind the clouds, and it got brighter again. The fog over my mind lifted as well, along with the urge to turn back.
I glanced behind me. The woods appeared unchanged. The tiny steeple of the town church rose above the trees, barely tall enough to be visible. Taking a few steps in the direction I’d come, the pressure in my ears built again.
Definitely magic.
I shivered, and not from the cold.
No time to figure it out now. The sun set early in the winter. Peeking through the branches, it brushed the tips of the trees. Dusk would come soon, and it’d be fully dark in another fifteen to twenty minutes. Maybe less.
Above the tree line, in the opposite direction of town, a tall tree caught my eye.
It rose high above the rest, like an ancient redwood, except we didn’t have redwoods in Selmo. How far had we walked, exactly?
When I dragged my eyes back down, I’d lost sight of them.
I broke into a run.
This far out in the woods, I felt small and helpless.
A fleeting glimpse of Rissa’s purple coat had me blinking back tears.
I squeezed the sides of my phone—hard. The pressure on the buttons made it unexpectedly light up, and at the bottom of the screen, where the cracks barely reached, a bright red button said,EMERGENCY SOS.
I gasped and hit it.
Nothing happened.
My eyes went to the top right corner—no signal.
Not even one bar.
I groaned.
Shoving my useless phone into my coat pocket, I gave up and gripped the hoe with both hands.
Keeping an eye on their flashy coats, I slowed when they stopped moving. Was this my chance? Had they seen me coming?
At the edge of a clearing, I hid behind a tree, trying to decide what to do, but I wasn’t fast enough.
One second, they stood at the base of that huge tree.
The next, they’d vanished.
