Page 74 of The Nook for Brooks
Branches whipped my face.
Roots caught my ankles.
I slammed into a trunk, ricocheted, spun, kept going.
The buzzing chased me, louder, hotter, angrier.
I hurled myself through bracken, clawed up a slope, slid back down it, shoved forward again. My chest rattled with panic.
And then—
The buzzing thinned. Faded. And was gone.
I guess they’d chased me far enough and weren’t willing to go any further.
I guess even wasps have a need to return home.
I staggered to a stop, dropped to my knees, chest heaving. Sweat and mud drenched me. My hands shook so violently I had to press them against my thighs to make them settle.
I turned in a circle, dizzy, disoriented. The dark shape of every tree looked the same. Every shadow leaned close. The ground felt like a mess of churned leaves and muck.
“Brooks!” I shouted, voice hoarse. “Brooks!”
The dark swallowed it whole.
“Harry! Dean! Help!” I tried again, desperate. “Somebody—help!”
Nothing.
No answer. No reply. Not even an echo. Just my words vanishing into the dark woods.
Exhaustion crashed over me. I slumped onto my side, collapsing into the leaves, trembling, filthy, utterly lost.
BROOKS
Dawn seeped through the trees,pale and reluctant, like even the sun wasn’t sure it wanted to be out here.
I shifted in the hollow of the tree where I’d collapsed the night before and instantly regretted it. Every sting from the wasps throbbed, every blotch of poison ivy itched, and my corduroys clung to me like the grabby hands of a swamp creature.
“Well,” I muttered, brushing leaves out of my hair. “That was the worst night of my life… and I once got cornered at a wedding reception by Old Walt explaining his bunion surgery.”
My limbs ached.
My stomach growled.
My throat was dry and all I wanted to do was go home—to my Nook, my bath plug, my tower.
I stumbled out from the tree hollow, trying to pick a direction. The forest stared back at me with a thousand identical trunks and no clear path.
If I was going to get smart about this, I needed a little inspiration from my books.
I scanned through the catalogue in my brain, looking for characters lost in the wilderness, and suddenly it clicked.
“Hansel and Gretel!” I exclaimed.
They were clever enough to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Of course, they were also stupid enough to fall for the old Gingerbread House trick and almost got shoved into a burning oven… but hey, they survived, and right now survival was all I could hope for.
The only problem was, I didn’t have any breadcrumbs.
