The Library

Three Trials

By the time Allina crossed the lake, it was nearly dawn. She realized that there was no way she could simply stumble across Alejandra and her captors like she'd originally planned. This was, after all, no normal forest. She felt she would never find a way out of the forest, much less find Alejandra, if she simply kept crossing whatever terrain was thrown at her. This, Allina thought, is what the forest wants me to do.

She looked out at the landscape ahead of her: a dry forest of dead trees. If she focused, she could see the tundra beyond that, and prairie hills beyond that.

Instead of continuing forth, Allina stopped. She listened. Something was humming from somewhere close by.

She walked back, then forth. Right, then left. The sound seemed to follow her; indeed, it seemed to be coming from her.

Allina spat out her wand. It pulsed and glowed, and slowly, it began to shift, humming still. It pointed to the left. She picked it up again.

She looked left, sniffing at the air. And to the left she went.

As Allina continued on, the smooth sands of the beach turned to grassy dunes, then the dunes to loamy earth. Soon she was among trees again. Alejandra's wand hummed louder the thicker the forest got.

So dense was the forest that Allina didn't realize she was climbing a hill until she lost her grip and almost tumbled all the way back down. The wand, however, still hummed, so Allina continued on.

Once she reached the peak of the hill, she was gasping for breath and covered in dirt. The forest far below looked puny, unthreatening; it was hard for Allina to believe that she'd just a few hours ago been struggling through it.

She followed Alejandra's wand as it led her through the wood atop the hill. The forest seemed to be a single, living entity, determined to stop her. Moss pulled at her small clawed feet as she tried to walk through it, rocks tumbled to block her path, bushes grew before her very eyes into tangled things, vines stretched out to trip her.

But she walked through the moss and leapt over the rocks and avoided the treacherous vines. Once she managed to fight her way through the bush, however, she found the ground trembling beneath her.

Allina looked down: she was standing at the edge of a great cliff. It was as if some long-ago giant had cleaved the hill in two, leaving a gaping gorge. The outcrop she stood on, fragile enough as it was, shook under her weight. She froze to the spot.

Cracks formed in the rock behind her. Before Allina knew it, the outcrop had broken off, and she was dropping down toward whatever lay at the bottom of the gorge. She scrambled for purchase but found only air.

She leapt toward the cliff, her front paws scrabbling at rock. Her back paws, however, latched into vines hanging off the cliff. Allina righted herself and began climbing up the vine. Cold winds rushed up at her from the bottom of the gorge.

Allina reached the top, exhausted. I could leap over it, were I still human, she thought, cursing her mouse's body. But she noticed there was a tree on her side whose branches crossed over the gorge. Vines hung down from the branches, just a short jump from the other side.

She made her way to the tree. It leaned at a dangerous angle over the gorge, its roots digging into the rock. Allina jumped up and climbed the tree, moving at lightning speed. She looked around, wary of birds that might try to snatch her away.

Allina reached the long branch that crossed the gorge. For a few moments she clung to it, catching her breath. The branch was old and thin and crooked, and it tapered toward the end. She almost didn't want to risk crossing it, but knew in her heart that she would. She must.

Taking a deep breath, Allina picked herself up. She scampered across the branch. It twisted, and once or twice she nearly fell. Soon she was at the far end of the branch, the vine in her sights, clinging to the branch with all four legs. It was too thin to walk on normally. Cold, whispering winds blew from the gorge.

When Allina got to the vine, she stopped. She hadn't really thought about how, exactly, she was to use the vine.

Allina wrapped her tail around the vine and started down, head-first. She picked her way down the vine with her two front paws, then half-climbed, half-fell the rest of the way. The last decimeter or so was a sheer drop. She landed on her side. I'll definitely have a bruise there, Allina thought, but what stood before her interrupted her thoughts.

She was at the edge of the most beautiful grove of trees she'd seen. The ground before her was thick with carpet moss; rocks, overgrown with flowers, sat beside tall trees whose branches were covered with old man's beard. A dense canopy hung overhead. Soft rays of moonlight fell through the leaves onto a quiet stream.

Allina walked forward. It wasn't long before was entirely surrounded by trees and could no longer see the edge of the grove. Before long, she could no longer hear the whistling winds of the gorge: only birdsong, the humming wand, and the sounds of night creatures.

So lost in the beauty of her surroundings was Allina that she didn't notice the wall right in front of her until she walked right into it.

She stopped short and looked up. It wasn't like any wall she'd ever seen. The wall was made only of trees: trees, growing so close together there were no gaps between them. Above, the branches interlocked with each other so that not even a mouse wiggle through.

Allina followed the wall. It never ends! she thought to herself, until she realized she'd walked in a loop. The barrier of trees was a perfect circle.

First, she tried to slip through the gaps between the branches, but got stuck halfway through. Second, she tried to climb the trees, but realized all the tree canopies met in the middle of the circle. Third, she tried to chew through the trunks, but found the bark to be as hard as stone.

Allina went back to where she'd begun. After a while of searching, she saw a rock that someone had pushed away from where it usually sat. The rock had been hiding a hole: a hole large enough for a person to fit through, just barely. In the hole was a ladder made of roots.

Looking down into the hole, then over at the wall of trees, then back down into the hole, Allina made her decision. She started down the ladder.