The Search for Shiloh, Part Two

So Ruthie and I stood there at the edge of the Westport Woods about to leave the bright sunshine and cross over into the dark.  The air was heavy with the smell of lichen and moss and the ground itself seemed to rustle, beckon almost.

 A rabbit (ogre), I told Ruthie.

Maybe a fox (fire breathing dragon), she told me.

Surely nothing that could do us any harm, we agreed, and together we took the first steps into the forest.  We were on a search for Shiloh, the old man who was supposed to live in a cave and keep the woods and the animals safe.  A few feet in, with the sun just flickering through the tops of the trees, we were seeing him everywhere and nowhere.  Every shadow seemed to take form and every tree appeared alive.  We imagined hidden yellow eyes following us from behind the dark boulders, watching and waiting and I think we were both beginning to regret all those Saturdays with Uncle Bernie's stories of mayhem and madness and blood.  With shaky voices, we repeated the spell Glenda had taught us and sprinkled more of Rowena's magic herbs on the damp ground.

We mean you no harm!  Ruthie suddenly shouted and squeezed my hand in a death grip.

We're only eight!  I hollered, as if it were a magic age.

 But the woods didn't answer.

A few feet further on, there really were yellow eyes - an owl sitting on a high branch glared at us and hooted in alarm.  The leaves beneath our feet moved and a turtle emerged, crossing our path with slow, even turtle steps.  Something howled in the distance, a lonely and forbidding wail and then just for a moment we saw a shape that might've been a man - it stood tall and unwavering in the small clearing ahead of us with another shape that might've been a deer at its side.  Both were gone in an instant, magically and silently melting into the trees and underbrush.  Ruthie seemed frozen in place and I could hear my heart frantically pounding, roaring in my ears like the ocean.

Wasn't real, she muttered.

Was so, I whispered back.

Under different circumstances we might've argued til the cows came home but this day it didn't seem to matter much who was right.  Still hand in hand and moving very slowly and deliberately, we backed up, one careful step a a time.  The forest began to feel as if it were closing in on itself and imagining that our escape route might be cut off, we instinctively dropped hands, spun around, broke and ran for the light as if the devil himself was at our heels.  By the time we reached the ferry, it had all begun to slip away and we were starting to feel foolish, beginning to suspect that our imaginations had outrun us.  In the way that children have of making decisions without words, we decided to keep this particular misadventure to ourselves and when Cap lifted us into the wheelhouse for the crossing and gave us a suspicious look, we pretended not to notice.

We were back on our own island in no time, skittering off the scow like water bugs and running for home.