Wrede, Patricia C - Enchanted Forest 02 Read Free Page B

he wanted. In fact, he had to concentrate hard to keep from casting a spell or two with all that magic crammed together in his hands.
    Pulling gently on the invisible threads, Mendanbar stepped slowly backward out of the Enchanted Forest. The brilliant green moss followed him, rippling under his feet. The trees of the forest wavered as if he were looking at them through a shimmer of hot air rising off sunbaked stone. He took another step, and another. The threads of magic felt warm and thin and slippery. He tightened his grip and took another step. The trees flickered madly, as if he were blinking very rapidly, and the moss swelled and twitched like the back of a horse trying to get rid of an unwanted rider. A drop of sweat ran down his forehead and hung on the tip of his nose. The magic in his hands felt hot and tightly stretched. He stepped back again.
    With a sudden wrench, everything snapped into place. The trees stopped flickering and the moss smoothed and lay still. The forest closed up around the burned-out clearing, circling it completely and cutting it off from the outside world. Mendanbar gave a sigh of relief.
    “It worked!” he cried triumphantly. A breeze brushed past him, carrying the sharp smell of ashes, and he sobered. He hadn’t repaired the damage; he had only isolated it. “Well, at least it should keep people from wandering into the Enchanted Forest by accident,” he reminded himself. “That’s something.”
    One by one, Mendanbar let go of the threads of magic he had pulled across the gap. He felt them join the other unseen strands, merging back into the normal network of magic that crisscrossed the forest. When he had released the last thread, he wiped his hands on his shirt, then wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve.
    “Are you quite finished?” said a voice from a tree above his head.
    Mendanbar looked up and saw a fat gray squirrel sitting on a branch, staring down at him with disapproval.
    “I think so,” Mendanbar said. “For the time being, anyway.”
    “For the time being?” the squirrel said indignantly. “What kind of an answer is that? Not useful, that’s what I call it, not useful at all. Finding my way across this forest is hard enough when people don’t make bits of it jump around, not to mention burning pieces of it and I don’t know what else. I don’t know what this place is coming to, really I don’t.”
    “Were you here when the trees were burned?” Mendanbar asked. “Did you see what happened? Or who did it?”
    “Well, of course not,” said the squirrel. “If I had, I’d have given him, her, or it a piece of my mind, I can tell you. Really, it’s too bad. I’m going to have to work out a whole new route to get home. And as for giving directions to lost princes, well, it’s hopeless, that’s what it is, just hopeless. I’ll get blamed for it when they come out wrong, too, see if I don’t. Word always gets around. ‘Don’t trust the squirrel,’ they’ll say, ‘you always go wrong if you follow the squirrel’s directions.’ They never stop to think of the difficulties involved in a job like mine, oh, no. They don’t stop to say thankyou, either, not them. Ask the squirrel and go running off, that’s what they do, and never so much as look back. No consideration, no gratitude. You’d think they’d been raised in a palace for all the manners they have.”
    “If they’re princes, they probably have been raised in palaces,” Mendanbar said. “Princes usually are.”
    “Well, no wonder none of them have any manners, then.” The squirrel sniffed. “They ought to be sent to school in a forest, where people are polite. You don’t see any of my children behaving like that, no, sir. Please and thank you and yes, sir and no, ma’am— that’s how I brought them up, all twenty-three of them, and what’s good enough for squirrels is good enough for princes, I say.”
    “I’m sure you’re right,” Mendanbar said. “Now, about the