ASTRID

Chapter 6 Shack

"Pfff, these are simple forest mushrooms!" I comfort myself, setting off alone into the woods.

I keep overstepping the toadstools, but every time I do it, I am getting into another "circle". And when I lift up my foot one more time to hop over a few unnaturally great death caps; I realize that I simply cannot do it. I'm slow, and sleepy, and worn out from walking.

"I can rest here a bit and collect myself," and with these words, I sit on a soft hump covered with moss. "I think I've made a wrong turn, that's all. I will surely find the footpath in two second flat... or maybe three..." I'm yawning with my mouth wide open (If Mom were here, she would look at me with disappointment and order immediately to cover my mouth, "Please don't embarrass me here, Sarah!" she would say and probably add, nodding her blond neat head, "So you do things like this at school during the lessons, don't you?").

The dense forest is not in delicate undergrowth: there are no limits to mosses of all shades of green; huge brackens with eagle "wings" leaves and smaller oak ferns like the birds of prey paws; and, of course, low berry bushes.

It's so comfortable to sit on the ground, so I decided to lie down (For just a few moments, no more!). The woodland choir is heard somewhere over the forest crowns and in the branches.

"I wish some really good forest spirit (Not like that sinister hare!) could leave me marks on trees, so I can go by them," I am brooding, while my head is already resting on the cottony moss that immediately took the form of my body like a downy pillow and a mattress. Soft singing of foresters is lulling me to sleep.

Just one more second, just one more minute...

***

"Sarah! Sarah! Wake up, pleeease!" I can hear, as if from afar, Billy's anxious and whiny voice.

"Go away! I want to sleep... I don't want to go to school...tell Dad I'm ill," turning on my belly, I feel the unlike moist of a pillow.

"What are you talking about?! Why are you sleeping here?! I thought you are dead! Ohh, I hate you sooo much!" thank goodness, Billy recovered her new normal angrily irritated voice. She's sitting on her knees and shaking my shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" I slowly stand up and slowly sit on a fallen log, looking at my disheveled sister in surprise. I must say, she's the last person I expected to see way off the beaten path. "I was sure you were showing off and acting on Astrid and grandma in the living room."

"And I am sure you decided to play a little miss runaway: Oh, look at me! I need your attention! Call the police and tick off the entire neighborhood! That trick won't work on me, girl! Forget about the attention!"

"I don't need anyone's attention!" I said, scowling and giving my annoying side-eye she gives me. "I wanted to find Nina. I told you about her before breakfast time. She said she lives in this forest."

"And you believed a girl whom you met only several hours ago?" she's nodding her fair head just like Mom.

"And you monkeyed your ugly Mike whom you met only several weeks ago, having made this ugly piercing."

"Let's go home, silly creature! No one knows we are absent! So come on, hurry up!" she angrily grabs my hand. "We don't want you to be beaten by a spider or some other little bugs. Mom and Dad and EVERYBODY want their golden child to be safe!" she's hissing these words, pulling my arm and making me follow her.

I don't resist, for she's my only hope to get out of the forest and the circles. Actually, I'm very happy to see her here. At the beginning, I am sure she's going to face the mushroom obstacles and become drowsy like me. I'm about to warn her of the forest man and the witch's circles, but Billy seems to be immune. The girl is marching like a universal soldier through the forest, smashing or kicking the circles' "walls".