“Where are the Loups and the wolves?” David asked eventually, after they had walked for perhaps an hour. The only signs of life that he had seen were birds and insects.
“Not far away, I fear,” replied the Woodsman. “They will scavenge for food in other parts of the forest, where they are less at risk of attack, and in time they will try once again to steal you away. That is why you must leave here before they return.”
David shivered at the thought of Leroi and his wolves descending upon him, their jaws and claws tearing at his flesh. He was beginning to understand the cost that might be paid in searching this place for his mother, but it seemed as if the decision to return home had already been made for him, at least for now. He could always come back here again, if he chose. After all, the sunken garden still remained, assuming the German plane had not entirely destroyed it when it crashed.
They came to the glade of enormous trees through which he had first entered the Woodsman’s world. As they reached it, the Woodsman stopped so suddenly that David almost ran into him. Cautiously, he peered around the man’s back in order to glimpse what it was that had caused him to stop.
“Oh no,” gasped David.
Every tree, as far as the eye could see, was marked with string, and every string, David’s nose told him, was daubed with the same foul-smelling substance that the Woodsman had used to keep the animals from gnawing upon it. There was no way of telling which tree was the one that marked the doorway from David’s world to this one. He walked on a little, trying to find the hollow from which he had emerged, but every tree was similar, every bark smooth. It seemed even the hollows and gnarls that made each one distinctive had been filled in or altered, and the little path that once wound through the forest was now entirely gone, so the Woodsman had no bearings to follow. Even the wreckage of the German bomber was nowhere to be seen, and the furrow it had carved through the earth had been filled in. It must have taken hundreds of hours, and the work of many, many hands, to achieve such an end, thought David. How could it have been done in a single night, and without leaving even one footprint upon the ground?
“Who would so such a thing?” he asked.
“A trickster,” said the Woodsman. “A crooked man in a crooked hat.”
“But why?” said David. “Why didn’t he just take away the string that you had tied. Wouldn’t that have worked just as well?”
The Woodsman thought for a moment before answering. “Yes,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have been so amusing to him, and it wouldn’t have made such a good story.”
“A story?” asked David. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You’re part of a story,” said the Woodsman. “He likes to create stories. He likes to store up tales to tell. This will make a very good story.”
“But how will I get home?” asked David. Now that his means of returning to his own world was gone, he suddenly wanted very much to be there, whereas when it had seemed that the Woodsman was trying to force him to return against his will, David had wanted nothing more than to stay in the new land and look for his mother. It was all very peculiar.
“He doesn’t want you to get home,” said the Woodsman.
“I’ve never done anything to him,” said David. “Why is he trying to keep me here? Why is he being so mean?”
The Woodsman shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Then who does?” said David. He almost shouted in frustration. He was starting to wish there was someone around who knew a little more than the Woodsman. The Woodsman was fine for decapitating wolves and giving unwanted advice, but he didn’t seem to be keeping up with developments in the kingdom.
“The king,” said the Woodsman at last. “The king might know.”
“But I thought you told me that he wasn’t in control anymore, that no one had seen him in a long time.”
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t aware of what’s happening,” said the Woodsman. “They say that the king has a book, a Book of Lost Things. It is his most prized possession. He keeps it hidden in the throne room of his palace, and no one is permitted to look upon it but him. I have heard it said that it contains in its pages all of the king’s knowledge, and that he turns to it in times of trouble or doubt to give him guidance. Perhaps there is an answer within it to the question of how to get you home.”
David tried to read the expression on the Woodsman’s face. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a strong feeling that the Woodsman wasn’t telling him the entire truth about the king. Before he could question him further, the Woodsman tossed the sack containing David’s old clothes into a copse of bushes and started to walk back in the direction they had come.
“It will be one fewer thing to carry on our journey,” he said. “We have a long way to go.”
With a last, longing look at the forest of anonymous trees, David turned and followed the Woodsman back to the cottage.
When they were gone, and all was quiet, a figure emerged from the beneath the spreading roots of a great and ancient tree. Its back was hunched, its fingers were twisted, and it wore a crooked hat upon its head. It moved quickly through the undergrowth until it came to a copse of bushes dotted with swollen, frost-sweetened berries, but it ignored the fruits in favor of the rough, dirty sack that lay amid the leaves. It reached inside, removed the top of David’s pajamas, and held the clothing to its face, sniffing deeply.
“Boy lost,” it whispered to itself, “and child lost to come.”
And with that it grabbed the sack and was swallowed up by the shadows of the forest.
XI Of the Children Lost in the Forest and What Befell Them
DAVID AND THE WOODSMAN returned to the cottage without incident. There they packed food into two leather bags and filled a pair of tin canteens from the stream that ran behind the house. David saw the Woodsman kneel by the water’s edge and examine some marks upon the damp ground, but he said nothing to David about them. David glanced at them in passing and thought that they looked like the tracks left by a big dog, or a wolf. There was a little water at the bottom of each, so David knew that they were recent.
The Woodsman armed himself with his ax, a bow and a quiver of arrows, and a long knife. Finally, he took a short-bladed sword from a storage chest. After only the slightest pause to blow some of the dust from it, he gave the sword to David, and a leather belt upon which to wear it. David had never held a real sword before, and his knowledge of swordsmanship did not extend much further than playing pirates with wooden sticks, but having the sword at his side made him feel stronger and a little braver.
The Woodsman locked the cottage, then laid his hand flat upon the door and lowered his head, as though praying. He looked sad, and David wondered if, for some reason, the Woodsman thought that he might not see his home again. Then they moved into the forest, heading northeast, and kept up a steady pace while the sickly luminescence that passed for daylight lit their way. After a few hours, David grew very tired. The Woodsman allowed him to rest, but only for a little while.
“We must be clear of the woods before nightfall,” he told David, and the boy did not have to ask him why. Already he feared to hear the silence of the woods shattered by the howling of wolves and Loups.
As they walked, David had a chance to examine his surroundings. He was unable to name any of the trees that he saw, although aspects of some were familiar to him. A tree that looked like an old oak had pinecones dangling beneath its evergreen leaves. Another was the size and shape of a large Christmas tree, the bases of its silver leaves dotted with clusters of red berries. Most of the trees, though, were bare. Occasionally, David would catch sight of some of the childlike flowers, their eyes wide and curious, although at the first sign of the approaching Woodsman and boy, they would draw their leaves protectively around themselves and quake gently until the threat had passed.