CHAPTER THREE

‘Let's go,’ said Jane. 'We must get to the woods.'

Tom pointed up the cliff, ‘What are we going to do about Andrew?'

‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘Neither of us are capable of climbing that cliff. The priest told me to go into the giant woods where I would find a path up into the trees.'

Just then the quiet of the meadow was interrupted by a strange howl, coming from the west. To Jane' s ears, the sound was less than a mile away. She turned and gazed across the meadow to where the grass formed a horizon, beyond which she could only see the distant mountains. There were no creatures capable of making such a significant howl in sight.

The howl came again, and this time it sounded more like a squeal, and it sounded furious and urgent, like the cry that comes from a wounded animal intent on hunting down the person that had wounded it.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Not needing to be told twice, Tom took off through the long grass. Because he was so skinny and small, he had to take big steps to get over the grass clumps and the stones and the stands of blue flowers. Jane had it easier, but her ankle ached as it rolled on the uneven ground.

Another howling squeal ... closer.

Jane began running.

Then Tom stopped. He was looking up to where a bird was dropping from the sky. At first a small dark bundle, the bird got larger and larger and uglier and uglier. It plummeted toward the Earth with its feet drawn into its body and its wings folded back. Jane didn't know what type of bird it was though it looked like a cross between a vulture and a bat. Fifty feet above the ground the bird spread its wings. The black wings buckled and writhed and fluttered and made a wumping sound like an unfolding parachute. A diamond shaped tail fanned out. The bird adjusted its flight so that it was soaring straight toward Tom. As it got closer its head came into view. It had a head like a monkey, with large round, front facing eyes. Its beak was wide and shaped like a grinning mouth.

Tom put his hands up and held them to shield his face, and his voice squeaked up as he called:

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‘Bugger off,’

A moment before the bird smashed into Tom’s face it swooped up into an almost vertical climb.

‘What the blimey rat was that?’ sad Tom.

The bird rose thirty feet with the feathery tufts that covered its head and chin sweeping back. It did a twisting somersault and dove again, bringing itself into a slow hovering flight ten feet above Tom. It held the position, its wings thumping the air, its back arched, its talons out.

‘Bugger off,’ Tom shouted again.

The bird opened its grinning beak and let out a caw. Then it did something weird. It spoke - like a human.

It said one word that Jane couldn’t properly make out, although the first part of the word sounded like, ‘El.’

Now the bird flapped its wings and its diamond shaped tail rose and fell and its monkey head pointed up toward the mountains. It climbed and climbed, beating its wings, and soon it was above the woods.

Another howl came from the western meadow.

'Let's run,' Jane shouted, but Tom was distracted by something, and stayed rooted in one spot.

Over to the left, down the meadow towards the base of the cliffs was a flock of geese being driven by a small plump girl wearing a white dress. The girl was looking up at Tom, and her face was tense with worry. She put a hand in the air and made a waving motion, summoning Tom to come toward her.

Another terrifying howl came from the western side of the meadow and the geese flapped their wings and honked furiously.

‘That girl wants us to come to her,' said Tom.

'No,' Jane answered, 'We must get into the woods. The priest said we must get into the woods to escape danger.'

From down in the meadow the girl called, and her voice was small and faint. She said, 'Elion.'

Jane looked back down at the gaggle of geese and the girl. For a moment the sunlight lit up the girl, and her hair shone gold, and her left cheek was flushed apple red. She looked angelic with the flowing white gown and a halo of sunlight inside a hazy cloud of microscopic dust. Again the girl waved her hand toward Tom in an urgent gesture, beckoning him to come.Tom turned toward Jane and he had an anxious, longing expression.

'She is calling me.'

Tom sounded bewitched.

'The priest said we must go into the woods,' said Jane.

She began running through thistle bushes and yellow and blue flowers, past Tom and onward until she came lunging out onto a narrow path with a hard yellow surface. She turned and saw that Tom was following. She turned left on the path and kept running. Tom caught her just as she was entering the woods. Almost immediately the sunlight became dappled and green. Ferns grew between oak and maple and pine trees. Trunks as round as barrels held long crisscrossed branches that blocked out the sky. Waist high roots ran, exposed, along the ground. The soil was dark chocolate and covered with pine needles and nettle and fallen sticks and fungi and ants and spider webs.

The howl came again, from the meadow behind.