Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest (9 page)

“Martha?…Martha?”

Where was she?

Samuel ran downstairs and looked in the living room but the only presence was that of Ibsen, his four legs jerking as he lay in his basket, lost in cheese-fueled dreams.

Martha wasn't in the hallway or the kitchen either. Maybe she was in the washroom, helping Aunt Eda sort out the dry clothes. This possibility led him through the length of the kitchen to the yellow door with the wobbly handle. He opened it and walked inside the small room, which had once been used as a tiny cheese factory. Aunt Eda was grumbling to herself in Norwegian while trying to match socks together on top of the washing machine. After she finished with the washing, she was going to phone Oskar and ask if it would be all right to stay with him until she had found somewhere else for them all to live. These thoughts preoccupied her so much that she was completely unaware that Samuel had stepped onto the stone floor beside her.

“Where's Martha?”

His question made Aunt Eda jump. She turned from her half-rescued pile of washing.

“Good heffens, Samuel. You shocked the life out of me.” Then she remembered his question, and frowned. “Martha's upstairs. In the bedroom. With you. By the way, I haff made a decision. Today we are going to moof—”

“No,” Samuel said. “She's not there. Martha. She's not in the bedroom.”

Aunt Eda turned toward Samuel, and as she looked him in the eye a sudden terror seemed to grip her.

“When did you last see her?” she asked him.

“Ten minutes ago,” Samuel said. “I went to—” He managed to stop himself from telling her “the attic.”

Aunt Eda looked around the small, windowless washroom. After all those years, it still smelled of cheese. “I haff been in here fife minutes,” she said, as much to herself as Samuel. Then, with a sudden urgency: “Look out of the window.”

Samuel went back out of the yellow door and looked out of the kitchen window, with
The Creatures of Shadow Forest
still under his sweater. He saw nothing except empty fields with the fjord and the mountains in the distance.

“No!” barked Aunt Eda, behind him. “The window at the back of the living room!”

They ran toward the living room, but Aunt Eda paused by the doorway.

“Her shoes,” she said. “Her shoes are missing.”

Samuel looked out of the window that was positioned above Ibsen's basket. (Ibsen, owing to the sudden commotion, was now yawning himself awake.)

Samuel strained his eyes but saw nothing except the empty washing line and the grass field sloping up toward the—

He saw something. A figure in the distance. A figure heading straight to the forest.

“No!” Samuel screamed, when he recognized the dark blue of his sister's dress, blowing forward in the wind.

Samuel ran out of the room, down the wooden hallway, shot past his aunt and opened the door. Once outside, he started sprinting up the slope toward Martha and the forest. As he ran he pulled the book from under his jumper and held it tight with his right hand. He thought about dropping it, but if Martha reached the forest, he would need to keep it with him.

“Martha! Martha! Stop!”

As he got closer, he was hardly conscious of the wind that blasted him or the soft muddy grass that pressed into his socks.

“Martha!” Aunt Eda called. Then: “Samuel! Samuel!”

Even his aunt's voice was only half in his mind. It was as if the Samuel she was calling was someone else, running alongside him.

“Marth-aaaaa!” he called.

The only thing he focused on now was his sister, so he wasn't aware of all the muddy hoofprints left by the huldres' stallions the night before.

“DON'T GO IN THE FOREST!” Samuel screamed, pushing the air out of his lungs. He could see her long hair blowing forward like the branches of the tall trees in front of her.

“MARTHA! STOP! CREATURES! HULDRES! TROLLS! IN THE FOREST!”

Martha was only walking, but she was so far ahead that Samuel knew he couldn't reach her.

“MARTHA! NO! COME BACK!”

Martha didn't turn or show any outward sign of having heard her brother. She just kept on walking—neither quickening her step nor slowing down—until she had reached the trees.

And even then she kept on going, farther and farther, until she disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

She had gone.

Samuel kept running toward the space between the trees, where his sister had been visible only a moment before, and tried to see farther into the darkness.

“MARTHA! COME BACK! MARTHA!”

He was running fast. Faster than when he had run to the forest before, in pursuit of the cat. And Aunt Eda was finding it difficult to catch up with him.

True, he'd had a head start. He had shot, shoeless, out of the front door while Aunt Eda was still looking out of the window. But Samuel was running at such speed, and with such single-mindedness, that his aunt's old legs couldn't narrow the distance.

“Don't follow her!” she cried, breathless, as she ran. “Don't go into the forest!”

Of course, her words were useless. The fear of the forest was never going to be as great in Samuel's mind as that of losing his sister.

Even though she had explained to Samuel the story of what happened to Uncle Henrik, Aunt Eda knew that he would imagine he could enter the forest and bring his sister back. After all, Martha had only walked between the trees a few seconds ago. She wouldn't have gotten very far, so Samuel would have every reason to believe he could find her.

But Aunt Eda knew better. She knew that in this instance the usual rules of space and time couldn't be trusted. She knew that whoever or whatever entered the forest never returned. It didn't matter whether it was a white cotton bedsheet or a flesh-and-blood husband—the forest never let go of whatever came its way.

And so when she saw Martha disappear between the trees, Aunt Eda knew she was already lost. The only hope she had now, as she ran up the grassy slope, was in reaching Samuel before he too disappeared forever.

Damn these old legs
, she thought as she struggled against the angle of the ground to gain speed.

“SAMUEL! STAY THERE! SAMUEL!”

But the boy still wasn't listening. He was sprinting ahead with unlimited energy, desperate to catch a glimpse of his sister's long hair or navy dress.

He was nearly there.

“SAMUEL! SAMUEL! STOP!” The words stole Aunt Eda's breath, and seemed to make the ground even steeper.

But then, just when she thought it was too late, she heard something. A noise. Behind. In an instant she recognized it as the jangle of Ibsen's collar.

And sure enough, the dog was there, galloping fast across the grass toward Samuel. It was an incredible sight. The dog who had always been too scared even to point his nose in the direction of the forest was now charging headlong toward it at ferocious speed. It was as if something had been woken up inside him. Ibsen, who of late had shown little interest in anything other than begging for cheese and snoozing in his basket, was tearing across the grass as fast as a cheetah chasing a gazelle.

Not that Samuel was aware of his canine pursuer. For Samuel, everything that was now behind him might as well have stopped existing. He was nearly there now. He could see other trunks of pine trees, farther into the dark.

But just as he was ready to dive headlong into the shadows, he felt something tug his arm.

At first he thought it was Aunt Eda's hand.

“Get off me!” But then he saw the hand had teeth—teeth that weren't letting go of his sleeve.

Ibsen, having jumped into the air to catch hold of Samuel, was now digging his four paws into the ground to stop the boy from running into the forest.

Although the dog was lighter than the twelve-year-old he held on to, he had gravity and the force of two extra legs on his side.

“Get off me, you stupid dog!”

But Ibsen held firm. Samuel raised his arm, causing the dog to stand on only his hind legs. Despite such rough treatment, the steadfast elkhound didn't once let go, or seek a better grip by sinking his teeth into the arm itself.

“Get off! Get off! Get off!” Samuel cried, staring into the dark abyss of the forest.

Samuel kept shaking his arm, and threatened to hit Ibsen with the book. Then he turned to see Aunt Eda running up the hill toward him.

“NO!” screamed Samuel, the word rising with his foggy breath into the cold Norwegian air.

At that moment—the moment just before his aunt's hand would have been able to reach him—Samuel's jumper ripped, leaving Ibsen with a ragged patch in his mouth.

Realizing he was free of the dog's grip, Samuel darted straight into the forest. As he ran into the darkness, he ignored Ibsen's barked warning and the screams of his aunt. A scream so agonizing it sounded like a woman giving birth.

Or mourning the dead.

Martha walked in as straight a line as she could manage, which wasn't very straight at all given the number of pine trees in her way.

She didn't know where she was going.

There was no plan involved with her walking other than to head as deep into the darkness of the forest as possible. So she just kept on walking, through the green plants that brushed against her knees, toward a thin dirt path lined on both sides by little shrubs filled with berries.

And then she heard something.

A kind of squawking.

It was a horrible noise, and it was getting closer.

Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!

That was when she saw them.

Three giant birds, taller than her, running fast on thin legs. The birds had gray feathers and tall, swanlike necks. Their heads were darker gray than the rest of their bodies, with a white stripe on their foreheads and with very long (and very loud) squawking beaks.

As they kept running straight toward her she saw the front bird's fat body and tiny, flightless wings. She kept looking for the other birds' bodies but couldn't see them.

And then she realized.

It wasn't three birds at all.

It was one bird with three heads on three separate necks. A “caloosh” was one of the many creatures described in Professor Horatio Tanglewood's book
The Creatures of Shadow Forest,
but Martha didn't even know anything about this book, as neither her brother nor Aunt Eda had told her about it. (Calooshes, by the way, are as scared of leaving Shadow Forest as humans are of entering it, and never head out into the open, which is why you've probably never bumped into one.)

Martha stared at the caloosh running toward her. Then the bird suddenly stopped. All of its three beaks squawked at the same time as the ground opened up and the bird fell down a hole. Then the ground closed back up again, and looked exactly as it had before. Martha looked around, wondering if there were any other hidden holes in the ground.

“Martha! Martha!” It was the faint call of her brother.

He must be getting close to finding me,
she thought. And she suddenly realized that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe she had been hasty coming into the forest. Maybe she should have listened to Aunt Eda.

She decided to go to her brother, but she couldn't work out where he was. His voice bounced off the trees, making it seem like he was everywhere. She walked a bit in one direction, then another, watching the ground for holes, but Samuel still sounded just as far away.

She kept walking, then started to run, and she sensed she was now getting closer to Samuel.

“Martha! Martha!”

Yes, he was definitely near now.

She ran faster.

One step after another after—

Her foot fell into nothing, and her body followed. The ground had opened up and now she was falling down a hole into darkness. There was a low branch of a tree hanging over the hole but she couldn't reach it in time.

She screamed.

It was the first sound her mouth had made for over a week, and she only made the sound because she had no choice. That is simply what mouths do when they find they are falling down a black hole into apparent nothingness. They scream.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!”

Martha landed on something soft and feathery. In fact, it was so feathery that she had to conclude it was indeed feathers. She looked up at the small circle of light. A hidden trapdoor. It shut as quick as it had opened.

She rolled over and tried to stand up but she only managed to get onto all fours. She clambered over the feathers as her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Her hand reached out and touched the dug-out earth on the side of the giant hole.

There was a soft yellow lightness, getting slowly brighter. Soon she could see the feathers—they were gray, like those of the three-headed bird that had fallen into the other hole.

She looked around her and saw the source of the light. An underground window, with metal bars. Moving closer to the window, she heard voices, and glimpsed the fire of a torch. The torch and the voices were coming closer toward her, down some kind of corridor.

Maybe they are coming to rescue me,
she thought.

But even as she had the thought, she realized it wasn't true. People don't set traps in order to let you go again.

Martha knew that whoever or whatever was coming toward her was not wanting to make friends. So she lay down and covered feathers over herself, hoping she wouldn't be seen.