The Ender by Heather Kindt

Author:Heather Kindt [Kindt, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-73541-713-4
Publisher: The Parliament House

They needed to move quickly, but Laney paused at the edge of the woods. Looking down onto the forest floor, an ominous feeling overtook her. It was the same feeling she encountered when she first entered Natalie’s book—the feeling of being a spider in a glass jar, waiting for its fate to be presented. Beyond the edges of the book, the dark shadows dissipated, creating a more solid world, but stepping into the forest, the book could come crashing down on them with the flick of a pen.

“Do you feel that?” Natalie kept her feet planted on the more permanent ground a few feet from the edge.

Nick picked up a rock and tossed it into the woods.

“What did you do that for?” Natalie placed her hands on her hips before giving him a light shove with her hand. “Do you think it’s electrified?”

He raised his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Laney drew in a deep breath, ignoring their antics before lifting her leg to enter the book world. She was now exposed and completely visible to the woman who wanted to kill her. This thought terrified her, but the thought of leaving William to the Wanderer’s whim terrified her even more. “We don’t have time to be concerned about traps. We need to hurry.”

Crossing the forest floor, they kept their pace to a jog. Smoke still rose from the burnt-out shell of the cottage like snakes twisting their way to the sky. The threatening pines bent closer and closer to them as they weaved down the path toward the other side of the woods.

“We should be out by now,” Natalie complained, maintaining her spot between Laney and Nick. “I know my book. We’re supposed to be there already.”

“Maybe we made a wrong turn.” Laney scanned the forest behind them, searching for any sign of a break in the trees. “I know when we crossed it before, it seemed pretty straightforward.”

“That’s just it.” Natalie ran ahead to look beyond a thicket of raspberry bushes. “It’s a children’s book. Yeah, I created the forest to be a scary home for the wolves, but it wasn’t this detailed.”

Nick crouched down to the ground with a troubled look on his face. He ran his fingers through the dirt. “If this is the path you took before, we’d see footprints in the dirt.” Jogging up past Natalie, he scoured the trail with his eyes. “There’s nothing. No one’s been through here, at least since the last rain.”

Their situation had the Wanderer written all over it—literally. She turned the forest into some type of impossible maze to keep them from reaching William. Her heart gave in to despair, but she also knew she wasn’t going to give up as long as there was even a small sliver of hope.

“Natalie, you know your book better than anyone, even the Wanderer. Instead of following the directions we think we know, maybe we need to go with your gut.” It probably wouldn’t work, but Laney couldn’t think of any other way to outsmart the woman with the pen in her hand.

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