Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [36]
He hadn’t had an opportunity at the time to take the blade out and examine it. The woods were too dark and thick. And since then his joy at having it was dimmed when the sword in its sheath seemed determined to catch on every high root or low branch. For what must have been many miles, the sword, like the heavy pack on his back, became nothing more than another burden to be wrestled through the forest. The group walked single file, and Max had been assigned to guard its rear. “Squire Peep and I will watch for dangers ahead,” his father had said, “and you must look for those that might try to sneak up on us from behind. I hope you realize what a great trust we’ve placed in you, son.” Max did. He knew his father trusted him enough to risk his life guarding a line of screeching, squabbling girls, but not enough to reward him with Frost, which was his birthright.
So Max walked in the rear, making his plans and biding his time, his resentment growing toward every one of those in front of him, who could have warned him about this root or that whipping branch, or any other of an endless number of invisible obstacles in his path. But they didn’t and so he entered every further misdeed into his mind’s ledger, against that time when all accounts would be balanced.
They’d walked throughout the night, and then, after too short a rest, throughout the day that followed. Day was almost as dark as night under the wood’s canopy. It was ever and always a shadowed, haunted place. Max had heard every manner of hoot and caw and grunt of beasts, and once even a growl of something not too distant, which had so frightened him that he froze in place for so long that he nearly lost the rest of the group ahead of him. He only found himself able to move again when he heard the thing pad off, away from him, grunting quietly with every heavy step.
AND NOW, AT THE COMMENCEMENT of the second evening, they stopped to make a real camp, to sleep for the entire night, before setting off again with the new day. They lit a fire and built it up into a big one, to keep them warm and the beasts away, unconcerned that there’d be soldiers to spot it — not this far into the woods. “I think we’re distant enough to be safe from pursuit,” Mr. Peep said. “No army is likely to enter the terrifying untouched parts of the Black Forest, simply to chase a few scattered runaways. We didn’t harm any of their men before we fled, and as far as they know, we didn’t make off with any great treasure. I think they’ll be content to let the forest have us.”
Mr. Peep had also said some confusing arcane things about finding their way by examining which side of the trees had moss growing on them. This made no sense to Max but seemed to please the others that Peep knew his business. “And I can only do that by daylight,” Mr. Peep said, “so we’ll have to stop at night from now on. Otherwise we’d have no way of reconfirming which way is west and might become forever lost in these great woods. Remember, west to the river and then upstream to Hamelin Town. That’s our plan.”
While Mother and Mrs. Peep worked to fashion their dinner out of the supplies they carried, and the daughters chattered and complained and pulled off their boots to examine their poor feet, Max sat apart on a moss-crowned rock and thought his thoughts, which alternated between despair and wary satisfaction. At that moment he went over in his mind every frightening tale he’d ever heard of what lurked in the depths of the Black Forest. There were ghosts out here, spirits of the dishonored dead, doomed to spend eternity in this evil place, feasting on the souls of those who wander into it. And there were witches, who conjured evil spells and ate children as their only diet. And there were giants and ogres and every other sort of monster. What was that thing that had come so close to me in the night? Max asked himself. He could still hear every note of its rumbling growl, a noise that could only be made by something big and deadly. It was a foolhardy decision to enter this place,