But ten minutes went by, and then another ten minutes. And after nearly half an hour of trudging through the dark and dismal trees, they came to a halt again.
“It’s no good, Roj, there’s something wrong!” Mary exclaimed. “It’s just getting gloomier and gloomier, and I’m usually very good with my sense of direction, but here I feel like I’m just walking around in figures of eight and going nowhere!”
It was very late in the afternoon now, and Roger was getting secretly worried about being caught here in the dark. “What if there’s Wild Wolves or things even worse … now we know there actually are weird and magical creatures living in the Forest of Lundun!” he thought.
“S’pose we better just press on, Roger, or we’ll get caught in this creepy place in the dark,” Mary told him, just as if she’d read his mind.
But after another ten minutes, nothing had changed.
“I think this place is enchanted somehow, Roj!” Mary whispered to him. “I don’t think it wants to let us go at all! Oh, what are we going to do?”
Roger was beginning to feel very scared now. He looked around and realized that he had no sense of direction whatsoever. His heart began to thump in his chest and a lump of fear sat in his throat. Everywhere he looked, there were just the same trees and the same brown bed of needles and cones.
The air had grown even heavier and was full of an earthy, musky scent.
“We’ve got to make a run for it, Mary! That’s all we can do. Don’t think about directions, just run as fast and as straight as you can, O.K?”
“O.K., Roj, but we’d better hold hands, so we don’t get separated!”
Roger grabbed her hand, and they set off, pounding across the flat, springy needle-carpet, the thudding of their feet dampened by the thick layer of mulch and pine needles. But they ran on into nothing but the same surroundings of Fir Trees flashing by but with no sign of the end of the forest in sight.
Then right ahead of them a loud ‘Crrrrump!’ noise erupted, along with a black cloud of billowing darkness suddenly welling up between the trees. Roger immediately swerved away to avoid the billowing tendrils of black smoke.
“Strange, that’s just like the smoke we ran into in the gully, up in the rocks!” he thought.
Then another explosion of the inky darkness erupted in front of them. Roger pulled away to the right, and they carried on running. But then another erupted, and he went to turn left, but another explosion of dark cut him off, so he veered right, running onwards with Mary’s hand clutched tightly in his own.
But again, and again, billowing clouds of the dark smoke erupted, time after time; just coming seemingly out of nowhere, as if born from the very shadows between the trees.
Roger quickly got the idea that something or somebody was doing this on purpose.
But who and why? And were they trying to lead them into even worse peril, into the heart of the Pine Forest for their final destruction, some gruesome arboreal sacrifice to the Pines? Or, were they being helped in some way? There was no way to know.
Mary was gasping, and Roger was getting a painful stitch in his side. He knew that they couldn’t keep running and dodging about for very much longer.
“Come on then, just show yourself, you coward!” he screamed out in pain and frustration. “If you want to kill us at least do it honestly and openly!”
“It’s alright, Roger, Look!” Mary yelled, just as they veered away from another explosion. “There, ahead of us. I think we’re coming out of the Pines now!”
And it was true. There were no more eruptions of dark smoke, and they found themselves stumbling out of the stand of Pine Trees and into a glade full of bushes and, a little further on, were leafy green, deciduous trees they both knew so well; Beech, Elm, Alder and Ash.
Mary pulled Roger down onto the grassy meadow, tears welling up in her eyes. Both lay panting and sweating like two bolted colts just returned from a wild stampede.
After a while, they had both got their breath back. Roger realized that somehow, they had both been guided and saved from the evil enchantment of the Pine Forest. But by who, he had absolutely no idea.
“That was very, very strange… and very scary!” Mary muttered to him.
“Yes, and just how are we going to get back through that place again when we go home?” he replied, rubbing his ribs.
“Look, Roj, we’ve made it this far… and well, I think there’s something here that wants us to make it, you know, all the way to the Smoking Tree.”
“Yes, you’re right, Mary. I sort of have that idea too. O.K, let’s get on then,” he told her. “But which way is it now? I’ve got no idea.”
They, of course, couldn’t see the Smoking Tree at all now, it being well hidden beyond the dense canopy of the trees. And the race through the dark Pine Forest had been most confusing and disorientating, to say the least. But even though they currently had nothing visible to aim for Mary was, in fact, not worried. She had some of Mother Nature’s ‘Uncommon Sense’ in her young but wise head, and so she confidently pointed.
“It’s that way, Roger!”
“And just how do you know that?” asked Roger, feeling slightly annoyed by Mary’s rather nonchalant, but as it happened, quite correct guidance on the matter. And this was because he had been ready to pull out his pocket compass from his satchel, and so show himself to be the resourceful and intrepid Forest Tracker and Scout that he thought he was.
“Moss!” Mary chirped, simply and pointing. “You see over there on that old Beech tree. Moss only grows on the North side of trees, and we’re heading North, so that’s the way.”
“Oh,” said Roger, feeling even more peeved now, and also a little bit jealous of Mary’s far superior knowledge of ‘Nature in the wild.’
Mary walked onward, taking the lead this time and feeling full of ebullience and bravado; She felt very much in her element now. This was more like it. This was a proper Wood.
“Well, we can’t see the Wood for the Trees, but we can sure see the Smoking Tree from the Wood!” she cheerfully called back to him.
Roger just grunted, plodding along behind her and now deciding to just concentrate on discovering any new insects he could.
Mary though loped excitedly along, crying out with gasps of surprise and little yelps of delight whenever she spotted a new plant or a flower she hadn’t known of before.
Of these, there were many. There were strange, perfumed flowers of vivid blues, curious, green, coiling vines and big bursts of spikey red bushes. There were large-leafed, umbrella-like plants too, as well as many smaller, multi-coloured orchids.
Then she came across some very large and garish velvety violets, all the size of tubas, growing out of huge tangles of thick and thorny green, bramble-like stalks. The brambles though, all quivered and shook at them as they passed by.
“I wouldn’t want to get caught up in that lot!” she remarked spryly, hurrying past.
They were now walking through a Botanist’s dream-world, continually coming across brand new and exotic species of flora, completely unknown to Mary. Her old Book ‘The Flowers of Merrie Inglande’, which she’d lost way back in the Good Wood, now indeed seemed totally redundant.
Soon they came to a grove of trees that looked very similar to weeping Willows, but these had hundreds of thin, trailing green branches, full of eerily, glowing, coral-like blossoms of red, orange and yellow. And these flowers were shaped like large, fleshy lips and seemed to mutter and moan at them as they made their way onwards.