Into Goblyn Wood by Anna Kemp

Author:Anna Kemp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2022-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Before long, the wind dropped, the rain thinned and shafts of sunlight streamed through gaps in the cabin walls. The twins were showing Portuna and Hazel how to load a slingshot when there was a shout from just outside, then many voices, calling and shrieking.

Portuna leaped to her feet, fists clenched and blazing. At the sight of her, tense and ready for battle, the twins burst out laughing.

‘Settle down!’ said Sprout. ‘Come outside and see!’ He ran to the cabin door and flung it open.

Hazel followed the others outside and instantly lurched back with shock. The cabin was not, as she had imagined, on the forest floor, but high in the treetops, wedged tightly between the trunk and branches of a giant beech. They were standing on a platform and sprawling out before them was a rambling treetop village.

Wooden huts perched between the glistening, rain-darkened boughs, and each was strung with dozens of colourful paper lanterns. On top of the huts, small windmills turned quickly in the breeze, and between them – stretching from tree to tree – hung a web of rope bridges sparkling with fresh rain. Everywhere, human children were streaming out of the huts, racing along the bridges and swinging down rope ladders to skid about on the mulchy earth below.

‘The Wild Children!’ Hazel whispered. ‘They’re real!’

‘Course we are!’ said Spud and Sprout in unison. ‘And this is the Den – our home.’

The children were running and shrieking, stuffing fistfuls of wet leaves down each other’s backs. The youngest were barely older than babies while the eldest looked no more than fifteen. There was not an adult in sight. Hazel gazed down at the scene, astonished.

‘Are there really only children here?’ she asked.

‘No grown-ups allowed, that’s the rule,’ said Sprout. ‘Can’t be trusted. Human grown-ups, that is.’ Hazel nodded. She’d never known a human adult she could trust.

‘But… how do you survive out here, on your own?’

Spud whistled sharply between his teeth. ‘Don’t have much faith in children, do you?’ He laughed. ‘We look after the forest, the forest looks after us.’

‘And the Arboreans?’

‘Ha! We’re not scared of them!’ said Spud, with a bit too much swagger to convince. ‘Anyway, Perig and Arden help us out. We give ’em shelter, they help us fight.’

Hazel watched silently as the children leaped and ran on their tough bare feet. ‘Pete was right,’ she whispered to herself in amazement. ‘Oh, he would have loved this place!’

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