We stood there for minutes, letting the rain lash our skin, tracing over the letters with our eyes, memorizing their sharp dips and bends.
It was obvious a person had written the poem, our initials-the heart. And while my secret made me aware of why my name had been etched into bark, why Margaret's?
Envy struck me, as hot and as quick as lightning. There wasn't a person who could not notice Margaret's beauty, and while I'd never envied her pale skin over my golden brown, just once I'd wanted someone to not notice how in the sunlight strands of her hair shimmered like threads of gold- she was a faerie's child.
And I was carved from my mother's hips, her spit fire tongue.
"I guess we were right," she said. "Someone is playing a cruel trick on us." She put her hand on her left pocket where her ribbon was, as if to feel if it was still there.
She didn't say it, but I knew she thought who. Who would do such a thing? As we made our way to the sycamore, she grabbed my arm, making me stop. "I bet it's Hunter, Hunter Wright. Remember? He had a thing for you and was upset when you turned him down last year. Or maybe Patrick. I bet he's still upset you saw him wet himself during PE."
She gasped and shook my arm as if I wasn't already listening. "It must be Alice. She didn't like when Jacob asked me out, even though she said it was okay. I bet she staged the whole thing to get even with me." She started ahead, pulling me forward, then stopped. "If someone knows we're here that means our parents must be looking for us." She frowned, and I thought I saw what could have been the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
It wasn't like we didn't know they would be. But standing there in the rain, Margaret reminded me of one of those children who'd been left at the mall. I expected her to say what any child who'd been left behind would say. "I want to go home. I want mommy and daddy." She didn't. Lightning flashed overhead, splitting the sky in two, distracting us from what we couldn't say. When it passed, when our eyes met, all fear had been wiped from her face. Instead, she wore an expression that not even an ax could slice through.
"We shouldn't let them scare us," she said, wiping rain off her face. "They're a bunch of chickens anyway for hiding in the trees."
An image of someone camouflaged in the trees ready to pounce flashed through my mind. "No, we shouldn't let them scare us," I said.
***
Twigs snapped. Grass crunched. Wings flapped. I woke, breathing hard. Sometime during the night, the flashlight had gone out. I couldn't see, but someone lingered in the dark. I felt around in the dirt for the flashlight and my hand closed around Margaret's ankle.
She mumbled in her sleep, "What is it, Ivy?"
There was another snap, but I couldn't tell if the person was walking away or coming towards us. On my knees, I spun, patting the dirt, until I found it. My pulse roared in my ears. I felt for the switch, moved it forward and backwards but nothing happened. "Come on," I said. I heard what sounded like the wings of a monster and felt the tickle of a hundred bugs crawling along my neck.
I held the flashlight against my chest, searching the dark, listening. Something brushed against my leg and I jumped to my feet, wielding the flashlight like it was a sword and I would cut off the privates of any man who tried to harm us. "Le-leave us alone," I said. I swung my arms but hit air. I didn't stop swinging until I couldn't anymore. My arms burned like I'd tried to uproot a tree. I bent over to catch my breath. Other than my own breathing, the only noise came from Margaret stirring in her sleep.
***
"You must have been dreaming," Margaret said the next day when I told her what happened. She popped a piece of her granola bar into her mouth. We had wandered to the brook. The sun had just risen, so except for a few chattering birds, the woods weren't quite awake yet. You couldn't find peacefulness like this anywhere else.
"I felt something against my leg," I said. "And I heard grass crunch and twigs snap." I shut my eyes, trying to relive how helpless I'd felt in the dark. I hadn't slept well the rest of the night. "I heard wings, Margaret," I said, opening my eyes. I didn't bother to say they'd sounded like the wings of a monster bird. I didn't think I'd be able to stand another night in Roving Woods with no light, not even a fire because neither of us knew how to build one. My only real sense of safety was Margaret, and I was sure I was hers.
She shrugged. "An animal brushed against your leg, maybe a field mouse. And I bet the wings you heard were from an owl."
"What about the crunching and the twigs?"
She shrugged again. "Raccoons? They're nocturnal. They must have smelled our food."
Last night, I'd imagined the thing in the dark had the body of a human and the head and wings of a crow. I'd imagined it clawing at my face, picking at my eyes, until I was unrecognizable. Of course, she wouldn't believe me.
I sighed and got to my feet. "Nature calls." She nodded, and I disappeared behind a tree large enough to shield me from view. Weeks ago, I never would have thought this would be my life, sleeping on the woodland floor, basking in the sunlight near a brook, and using a tree as a toilet. But I guess I'd never been glamorous to begin with. And you couldn't get any less glamorous than this. I made sure to do a little shake.
When I went back to Margaret, she had her phone held over her head. "No signal," she said, as she pressed the keys.
"Well of course there's no signal," I said.
She jumped, almost dropping her phone into the brook. She stuffed it into her backpack. I slid down beside her. She played with a strap on her pack, winding it around her finger.
"Margaret," I said.
"I was..." She shook her head. "I wanted to see if..." She twisted the strap tighter around her thumb. It made blood pool at the tip. "Don't you miss them, Ivy?" she asked. "I know it's been a few days, but I didn't think it would be this terrible." She let go of the strap and cupped her chin in her hands. "And now that thing with my ribbon and the tree... I think we should try to get out of here for good."
I didn't say anything but not because I didn't agree. I did. Our chances were slimming the longer we stayed in these woods that wouldn't give us up. Maybe there'd been some truth to the legend of Roving Woods after all.
"I'm sorry," she said, almost whispered. "I miss Benny. I miss waking up in my own bed. I miss pancakes and eggs for breakfast."
"You don't need to apologize." I picked up her granola wrapper and pretended to read the label. I missed home, too. And leaving here would be the safest choice.
After a while of pretend reading, I said, "I think we should try again, too."
Margaret perked up. "Good."
"Yeah," I said, smoothing out the wrapper, watching the way the silver caught the light and sparkled. A few granolas were all we'd had to eat in the days we'd been lost.
Margaret blew two kisses at the brook.
"Two?" I asked.
"One for me. One for you," she said. "And one more for good luck." She blew another kiss.
"Three's an unlucky number," I said, bumping her shoulder as we walked, making her stumble.
She bumped mines back. "It's always been lucky for me."
Margaret had been born in March on the third day. And she thought it made her luckier somehow. She led the way. As we walked, she counted the number of times she'd been lucky with the number three. I figured we had loads of time to find the trail before it got dark. We even had enough time to stop and rest if we wanted.
Finding our way would be easier now that we'd been in the woods for a few days. Now that we'd grown accustomed to it. We wound our way around trees, through mud puddles left by the rain, and vegetation that had sopped up the previous day's rainfall, making us work harder to shove them aside.
The mosquitoes were the worst. The rainfall had made them hungrier. I slapped at them, but my blood must have been especially saccharine. I even envied them, longing for nourishment of my own, a bite of sweetness to distract from the awful taste on my tongue. But I didn't trust the bright red berries we sometimes came across.
I trudged along behind Margaret, picking my mosquito bites, sometimes calling to her to slow down. Every once in a while, as she recalled the number of ways she'd been lucky with the number three, she'd call over her shoulder, "And remember that time..."
I'd make a face, which made her laugh. It made the mosquito bites itch a little less.
It made the fact that we were lost hurt less.