The Hollow Tree by Janet Lunn

over a bush to dry, that she felt brighter for her drink and her wash in the pool but that she was very hungry. How she wished she had brought with her that ham and johnnycake she had spurned in Aunt Rachael’s kitchen. What was she to do? She knew she had to eat. She looked around her as though a well-stocked larder might suddenly appear among the trees and bushes.
    It’s hopeless, she thought. It truly is hopeless. I will have to go back.
    Go back. It was, at the same time, a wonderful and a dreadful idea. Anne might already be sorry she had screamed at her and hit her. Anne’s hysteria never lasted very long. And Aunt Rachael would be needing help with the boys. And, oh, the sorrow would not seem so unbearable among the others who had loved Gideon. But, if she went back, she would fail Gideon again and could never atone for having carried that accursed letter to Polly Grantham. And those families who names were on that list would lose everything. No, she could not go back.
    But, I must eat, she realized all too painfully, and I must plan. She leaned against a tree while she took stock of her situation. There wasn’t much to take stock of. She had no spare clothes, no provisions or cooking utensils. She had no map to help her find her direction. She had two things: in her pocket she had the tinder-box she had taken from her father’s desk and, amazingly, she had left Orland Village with Aunt Rachael’s paring knife gripped tightly in one hand. Through all those long hours climbing the hills beside Trout Brook she had never let go of it. It had lain beside her while she slept and was there now, on the ground where she had left it. She moved over and picked it up.
    “I have a knife,” she crowed. “I have a knife. With a knife I can make a hook, and with a hook, and a stick and a length of vine, I can catch fish.”
    The pool was like a large, deep basin, with tiny streamlets trickling into it from above and Trout Brook pouring out of it over the rocks below. And there were fish. As soon as the thought of catching them struck Phoebe, she saw the fish, then wondered how she had not really noticed them earlier. There were trout and they were moving like shadows deep among the rock caves and passages under the clear water. She thought, as she had often done before, how beautiful a trout was, red and green and silver, luminous, as she’d always imagined jewels to be. It was a shame to have to catch one. But she was very hungry, so she set to work at once to fashion the hook and then find a stick and a length of vine for a rod and line. It was not difficult, it did not take long, and she was soon settled by the pool with her fishing gear.
    Within minutes her first small trout was flopping on the ground. Almost at once she had three more. Quickly she gathered a pile of twigs and leaves and, with the help of the flint and steel from her tinder-box, kindled a flame. She set the fish over the fire on a little stick frame. They smelled so good cooking that she ate them burnt on the outside, raw on the inside, spitting almost more bones than she consumed flesh,and not caring at all. She hardly tasted them, she ate so fast. But she felt better and not quite so cold. She was ready to resume her journey.
    “I wish the sun were not so far away,” she grumbled, “or, at least, that the trees were not so high, so that I could see where the sun is. Then, I think, I would know which way is west.”
    As if he were right there beside her, she heard again Gideon’s voice explaining: “One has but to look for the moss when one is unsure of one’s direction in the wild. You see, moss grows on the north side of a tree, away from the sun, always away from the sun. Spiders, to the contrary, prefer the dry, south side of a tree. Woodpeckers, particularly those great pileated woodpeckers, always tap the east side. They seem to enjoy the morning sun.”
    She had laughed at him. “There’s no sun in the deep woods.”
    “Oh, indeed there