“Pfff, these are simple forest mushrooms!” I comfort myself, setting off alone into the woods.

I keep overstepping the toadstools, but every time I do it, I am getting into another “circle”. And when I lift up my foot one more time to hop over a few unnaturally great death caps; I realize that I simply cannot do it. I’m slow, and sleepy, and worn out from walking.

“I can rest here a bit and collect myself,” and with these words, I sit on a soft hump covered with moss. “I think I’ve made a wrong turn, that’s all. I will surely find the footpath in two second flat... or maybe three...” I’m yawning with my mouth wide open (If Mom were here, she would look at me with disappointment and order immediately to cover my mouth, “Please don’t embarrass me here, Sarah!” she would say and probably add, nodding her blond neat head, “So you do things like this at school during the lessons, don’t you?”).

The dense forest is not in delicate undergrowth: there are no limits to mosses of all shades of green; huge brackens with eagle “wings” leaves and smaller oak ferns like the birds of prey paws; and, of course, low berry bushes.

It’s so comfortable to sit on the ground, so I decided to lie down (For just a few moments, no more!). The woodland choir is heard somewhere over the forest crowns and in the branches.

“I wish some really good forest spirit (Not like that sinister hare!) could leave me marks on trees, so I can go by them,” I am brooding, while my head is already resting on the cottony moss that immediately took the form of my body like a downy pillow and a mattress. Soft singing of foresters is lulling me to sleep.

Just one more second, just one more minute...

***

“Sarah! Sarah! Wake up, pleeease!” I can hear, as if from afar, Billy’s anxious and whiny voice.

“Go away! I want to sleep... I don’t want to go to school...tell Dad I’m ill,” turning on my belly, I feel the unlike moist of a pillow.

“What are you talking about?! Why are you sleeping here?! I thought you are dead! Ohh, I hate you sooo much!” thank goodness, Billy recovered her new normal angrily irritated voice. She’s sitting on her knees and shaking my shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” I slowly stand up and slowly sit on a fallen log, looking at my disheveled sister in surprise. I must say, she’s the last person I expected to see way off the beaten path. “I was sure you were showing off and acting on Astrid and grandma in the living room.”

“And I am sure you decided to play a little miss runaway: Oh, look at me! I need your attention! Call the police and tick off the entire neighborhood! That trick won't work on me, girl! Forget about the attention!”

“I don’t need anyone’s attention!” I said, scowling and giving my annoying side-eye she gives me. “I wanted to find Nina. I told you about her before breakfast time. She said she lives in this forest.”

“And you believed a girl whom you met only several hours ago?” she’s nodding her fair head just like Mom.

“And you monkeyed your ugly Mike whom you met only several weeks ago, having made this ugly piercing.”

“Let’s go home, silly creature! No one knows we are absent! So come on, hurry up!” she angrily grabs my hand. “We don’t want you to be beaten by a spider or some other little bugs. Mom and Dad and EVERYBODY want their golden child to be safe!” she’s hissing these words, pulling my arm and making me follow her.

I don’t resist, for she’s my only hope to get out of the forest and the circles. Actually, I’m very happy to see her here. At the beginning, I am sure she’s going to face the mushroom obstacles and become drowsy like me. I’m about to warn her of the forest man and the witch’s circles, but Billy seems to be immune. The girl is marching like a universal soldier through the forest, smashing or kicking the circles’ “walls”.

It’s not like Billy to give up so easily: and we are bolting like arrows, but the forest is an endless maze of trees and bushes. Unfortunately, the circles are closing in around us.

Billy stops at last. We are standing hand in hand. She’s turning her head trying to understand where we are now.

“Billy the Explorer on her quest!” I am sniping, holding her hand even tighter.

“And you must be my monkey then,” Billy retorts, but doesn’t keep her hand off me.

“What are you planning to do now?” we are in the middle of the hugest circle. Maybe it is a silly trick of the light, but through the brown-green limbs of trees I can see glowing azure eyes. A lot of eager eyes.

“One of only two: freeze and hope they might get tired and go away; or we dash as fast as we can,” my sister’s voice is calming, but I see her chin trembling.

“Dash,” I am pipping.

She winks, giving a light nod in agreement, “Ready Steady Go!”

And just when we start to move, and Billy’s fancy bracelets give a soft “din-chin” sound, one of the creatures that was hiding behind the trees rushes towards us. The only thing I could mention before my sister hugs me in order to hide is a dark bat-like body and wings.

Billy is screaming, but not because the creature grabs her. Prince Erik is here! He quickly catches the bat’s wing and easily throws it away.

“Go to the wood cabin and wait. It will take you about seven minutes to get there. Make a left: the house is just behind the hazel shrubs,” he looks serene. The lion tail faces the creatures in the shadows.

“Sure!” says Billy and turns in the opposite direction.

“Billy, we must listen to him! He can help us to get out of this place.”

“I’m not going to listen to some forest dude,” she’s trying to pull my hand again.

“He’s Astrid’s boyfriend! I saw them on the porch yesterday,” I am hopelessly persuading her, pulling her back to me.

“I don’t care if he’s Queen of England! We are not going! You are not going, and that’s final. You are my younger sister, and you have to listen to me!” she’s dragging me again. I just can guess what our pulling must look like to Prince Erik.

“You are telling me you are my sister just in time to make me obedient when you need it!” I’m blushing.

On the branch, a little bit above our heads, I see a familiar rusty muzzle. Nina! That must be my squirrel girl. She turns her small head with funny ears, as if she wants us to follow her, and starts running and jumping from one twig to another. I am scurrying not to lose her sight, knowing that Billy, doubtlessly, will run after me.

I am not sure what I’m more afraid of: strange bats with bright azure eyes that were left behind with the lion tail or Billy who is chasing me now and saying bad words about me and the squirrel, promising what she will do when she catches us. That’s, definitely, what gives me the strength to run faster.

Astrid’s boyfriend is right: his wooden shack hides behind the hazel shrubbery. The house looks very old: no stone or glass, just roughly-hewn logs and peculiar carvings on the window shutters.

The squirrel jumps from the thin hazel branches and turns into a human in front of the door. And again I lost the chance to see her transformation, for last time when we were in the kitchen, I turned to Astrid; this time she did it the very moment I winked. That’s so unfair!

It’s simple inside. Maybe that is because all the way to the shack I was imagining a kind of witcher’s den with a cauldron, potions, frogs and rats. But as I’ve said before: the log house is very human: a wooden bed, a hearth, a rocking chair, two stocky bookshelves, something resembling a cupboard, and a white birch table with two crudely made chairs. A funny striped carpet is the only thing that stands out.

Billy has put on her favorite mask of indifference again; she’s fumbling for something in her polka dot pajama pants. Nina’s shifting from an animal into a human was not that impressive for my sister.

“Do you live with Astrid’s boyfriend?” I ask Nina.

“I live in the old hollow tree. Sometimes I sleep in the attic when I don’t want to be a squirrel, but I like sleeping with my head on the tail,” the squirrel girl can’t stop looking at my pockets.

“Oh, right! I forgot,” I take out a little package with nuts and give it to Nina. “Do you think we could help him?” I ask, nervously looking through an open door.

Billy stops fidgeting and look at me, “And who will help us, Sarah? Astrid’s maybe-man-friend can do everything himself. How do you imagine your help, ah? Are you going to run around him in circles and cry?” she sniffs and turns to the redhead, “I think I’ve left my phone at home. Do you have internet access or at least a house phone?”

“Internet access,” Nina giggles, “You’ve always been so hilarious, Billy! You are Billy, are not you?” the girl looks at me as if to confirm this fact.

“I see you have not changed either,” says my sister, squinting her eyes.

“You know each other! I knew it!” I am crying in astonishment. “Why would you not tell me about this? You just want to spite me, right?”

The quarrel is not supposed to happen, since Prince Erik breaks into the shack like a hurricane and slams the door behind him. He looks slightly scraggly like a real lion with a rich mane.

“Close the shutters!” he orders the squirrel.

Without delay Nina dashes to fill his request. The room darkens coloring the floor and our faces with striped light beams that are coming through the cracks in the ceiling.

“Attic!” gasp Billy and Nina.

The girls race each other to the ladder that resembles the wall bars. Billy is leading. No wonder, she wants to impress everybody, but Nina is cheating. The redhead turns into a squirrel, whips up Billy, and uses my sister’s head as a trampoline to jump on the “monkey” bars.

Nina is a girl again; she’s smiling radiantly and is about to close the attic door. This whole race is just a game for a squirrel, and she seems happy to play with Billy. But my sister’s face is poppy red, and she’s obviously bitter about Nina.

“Guys!” I shrill. Everybody forgets about the fireplace. And a creature that is crawling out is nothing like Santa.