Jamari was soaked. The mossy rock hadn’t felt slick when he tested it before crossing. But like everything else in this forest, the stone had deceived him. It had waited for him to step on with his full weight, and then it had dumped him in the river. Water gurgled around him, catfish splashed, but Jamari could still hear the river and the rocks, laughing at him.
His teeth chattered as he brushed water off his clothes. It was a useless effort; he’d be wet all night. A fire might warm him, maybe, if the matches and twigs didn’t trick him too. He sloshed across the river and onto the dry bank, then recalled a line he had once read from Tolkien: “Not all those who wander are lost.”
Is that right? he asked aloud to no one in particular. And what about those of us who actually are? Five days he’d been in the forest, scraping through thorns and thickets, following the sun’s trail across the sky. He told himself if he just faced forward, he was bound to find someone or someplace eventually.
But the forest had its fingers in him. It had forced him to climb a mountain, the canopy shielding its true height and tricking him into thinking it was only a small hill. He had eaten grubs and mushrooms, the trees tricking him into believing they wouldn’t make him sick.
A hundred yards to his left, an orange fire crackled in the shadows of the darkening tree trunks. A deceitful wind brought the sound of men laughing and the smell of roasting meat. Jamari would not be fooled again. Just another trick, he told himself, and with wet clothes and wet feet, he faced forward and wandered on.
Yikes