Arthur backed hastily away, dumped the shovel into the cart, and vaulted into the driver’s seat, sticking the torch in his knapsack.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Maurice started forward without waiting for Arthur’s command. Arthur grasped the lines, then froze. The gelding seemed certain of where he was going, but the path had moved. Before Arthur had stopped the cart, it had run straight ahead the short distance he could see through the trees. Now it veered left.
The forest had shifted, just like in his father’s stories.
He swallowed. He’d always wondered why, in those stories, nobody noticed the paths shifting before their eyes. Now he didn’t have to wonder. The forest had waited until his back was turned.
“Do you think it still leads to Port Lorne?” he asked the cat in a hushed voice. She rested a paw on his thigh as if to make sure the forest didn’t do away with him as it had Hamish.
The farther the cart bumped onward, the more Arthur saw to unsettle him. They passed a beech carved with the ghostly scars of decades of lovers’ initials, the freshest of which wereBT + HM. Brigid and Hamish. They’d passed by together, perhaps planning to start a new life in Port Lorne as Brigid’s older sister had in Glenwhistle. Thinking the forest so beautiful until it swallowed them.
Swallowed Hamish. Arthur hoped Brigid had found her way back to the village. Black ooze dripped from their initials, staining the beech’s smooth, gray bark. Arthur’s stomachflipped. He rubbed the rowan cross in his pocket like a good luck charm.
Occasionally, he noticed black ooze dripping from another tree. Arthur didn’t want to touch any tree, but the black ooze made him stay particularly far from the ones it stained.
The underbrush rustled. Arthur halted the cart.
“Who’s there?”
He grabbed the shovel, planning to whack whatever came at him at least as hard as Sasha whacked him while playing pirates.
“I warn you I’m armed!”
The rustling reached a peak. Arthur stood in his seat, swinging the shovel before him in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
Freya slipped from the cart, gazing at the underbrush with a twitching tail. She pounced. The rustling stopped.
Arthur lowered the shovel. “Freya?”
She trotted back with a dead squirrel clutched in her mouth, hopped into the cart, and deposited her prize at his feet.
“Er... thank you.” At least it wasn’t something worse. “You can have it. I’m... not hungry.”
The cart rumbled onward. Freya brought the squirrel with her. Arthur wished she hadn’t.
The romantic notions he’d had about the wood dwindled as afternoon wore on and evening shadows crept in. The beautiful golden light of an autumn afternoon faded into menacing grays and blacks. More and more trees dripped black ooze the farther he ventured. Some took on strange forms, branches bent into uncomfortable angles like broken limbs. The path shifted again and again, never when he was looking. At last, it disappeared.
Not knowing what else to do, Arthur drove onward. His muscles ached; without the path, the cart jolted constantly over rough ground. Maurice’s ears twitched back and forth. His gait had slowed to a creep, as if he hoped the forest wouldn’t notice him. Freya had slipped from the driver’s seat into the space between Arthur’s suitcase and the shovel, where she hunkered down until only her golden eyes were distinguishable from the shadows. Arthur pulled his knapsack into his lap like a shield.
The earth rumbled. Arthur shot upright, his back spasming, but he clutched the lines with one hand and his knapsack with the other.
“What was that?”
The cat hunkered farther down in her space. Maurice twisted his neck to look about, ears twitching. He stamped uneasily.
Another rumble.
The forest floor opened behind them.
The horse screamed. The cart backed into the maw of the sudden pit. A rear wheel slipped over the edge.
Arthur swore, stumbled down, threw his knapsack as far from the pit as he could, and grabbed Maurice’s bridle. The cat streaked past and up a tree.
Maurice would not calm down. He reared, wrenching Arthur’s arm.
“Come on, comeon,” Arthur moaned, but the cart slipped backward. Terrified of losing the horse, Arthur fumbled with the harness, then gave up and lunged for the shovel. His suitcase slid to the back of the cart, but he left it. He stabbed at the traces, striking repeatedly until they frayed and broke and slithered free. The cart slid into the pit and vanished, taking Arthur’s suitcase with it.
