Page 75 of The Nook for Brooks
But I did have—
I shoved a hand into my pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled silk.
Bow ties.
My emergency supply.
They were damp, muddy, limp as drowned slugs, but they were mine… and they would stop me from going around in circles and could even help someone find me. They might just be the thing to get me out of this mess.
“Sorry, my treasures,” I whispered to them. “But desperate times.”
I looped the first one around a low branch and tied it off with shaking fingers. The red silk drooped pathetically, but at least it marked the spot.
Forty or fifty feet further down the track, I tied another.
Then another.
It was a breadcrumb trail in soggy silk. But if anyone came looking, they’d know exactly which stubborn, snarky fool had been here.
And with that, I pressed on into the woods, leaving a trail of bow ties behind me.
CODY
I woke in a groggy panic.My head ached, my body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, and my mouth tasted like swamp.
For a second I forgot where I was.
A village in Kenya?
A train station in Mongolia?
The foothills of the Himalayas?
Then I heard the chirping of birds, the sounds of a forest waking, and I suddenly remembered—
“Brooks!”
I pulled myself to my feet and looked around to get my bearings, hoping to see a trail or a view of the falls and anything that might orient me. But all I saw was trees… everywhere.
I looked at my compass. I knew the town was south-west from where we had entered the woods. But the needle couldn’t point me to Brooks. And if he was out here, then so was I. I wasn’t leaving him.
I chose a direction at random, then right or wrong I pressed onward, calling out as loud as I could. “Brooks! Brooks, where are you?”
That’s when I saw it.
A flash of murky red against the green.
I blinked, stepped closer, then raced toward it, my chest hammering.
A bow tie.
Dangling from a branch, tied in a droop of silk… but tied with precision and care. It was muddy, it was ruined, but it was unmistakably Brooks’s.
My pulse spiked. I reached out, fingers brushing the fabric like it was a flare in the dark.
“Brooks,” I whispered. “You clever bastard.”
I lifted my head, scanned ahead—and there it was. Another one, a little further on.
