The Hollow Tree by Janet Lunn Page A

is,” he had assured her. “There are shadows in the forest and there is light. If you know which plants reach for the sun and which shy away from it, you can readily find your direction should you lose it. The forest is easy to read, Phoebe. You need only learn its language.” He had made her repeat what he had told her. “Because, Mouse” — he had grinned at her — “you are sure to be lost in the woods if you ever grow bold enough to really venture into them.”
    Phoebe shook her head to clear it. She looked around her at the sunlight filtering through the deep-green pines, the golden tamaracks, and the bare branches of the hardwood trees. She listened for and heard the woodpeckers tapping, jays calling.
    Glad the early snow hadn’t lasted, she put her moccasins on, although they hadn’t really dried in the cold air, and crunched through the dry leaves to walk slowly around the nearest trees. She inspected their bark carefully. Sure enough, here was a clump of moss on the dark side of an oak tree, and there another on the same side of a maple. And she saw woodpecker holes up and down the sides of some of the pines, and always on the sunny side.
    “It’s true, it’s as Gideon said,” she whispered. “Then this way is west — of course it is, it must be, it leads away from the brook.”
    Gingerly, she put on her wet stockings. She stored her tinder-box in her pocket along with her knife and the message for the General at Fort Ticonderoga. She called George. She poked around among the bushes. He had not appeared when she’d cooked the fish or come to eat the fish heads. She felt a little as though she had been abandoned, but decided that he must have gone home, that he would be better off there, that she was better off travelling without him.
    She knelt beside the deep pool and said aprayer for guidance, and another for Gideon’s and her father’s souls. “And,” she said at the end, “please, God, help George find his way home.”
    Almost as a part of her prayer, she splashed water on her face and drank from the pool one last time. She said goodbye to the brook, turned, and headed towards the west.
    At first she started at every rustle in the leaves, every flutter in the trees. She would peer nervously about her, sure that a wolf, a rattlesnake, or a bear was just at the point of crossing her path, but, as the day wore on, she became a little more confident. She could hear the squirrels, chipmunks, weasels and rabbits, but she got used to them and they scurried away at the sound of her footsteps. The only large animal she saw all morning was a black bear, but it was a good distance away, across a stream, and so busy at a berry bush that it did not see her. All the same, she put her feet very carefully for a long time afterwards so as to make as little noise as possible.
    She travelled all morning and well into the afternoon through dark evergreen forest where the ground was carpeted with needles that felt soft under her moccasins, the scent of pine and hemlock was heavy, and the wind soughed in the high branches. She walked through great groves of maples, oaks, and butternuts, wherethe sun shone brightly through the almost-bare branches. Here the jays and crows kept her company with their loud, cheerful cries, and here she found butternuts on the ground she could crack with a stone and so keep the worst of her hunger at bay.
    She hiked up along swift-flowing streams and down into dark valleys. She trudged for hours up the side of a high hill, where the mountain ash grew thick, its low-hanging branches heavy with scarlet berries that gleamed against the deep-blue sky. For a time she followed a narrow but well-tramped path up a low hillside, but it ended by a pool below a waterfall where blueberries grew. She realized it must be a bear’s trail and hastily retraced her steps. She knew that bears would be feeding on berries and nuts in the high ground this time of year, then looking for likely caves or