The Missing Mortals by Ellen Alexander

Author:Ellen Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: middle grade, teens, pre-teen, mystery, action, adventure, young adult, stories for girls, stories for boys
Publisher: BHC Press
Published: 2020-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

I wish Doug and Sebastian were with us,” Emma said wistfully as the two girls set off down the gravel road.

“Well, they’re not, so we’re just going to have to do the best we can without them,” Martha responded. Although she agreed with Emma wholeheartedly, she knew it wasn’t going to do them any good to dwell on circumstances they couldn’t change. They needed to focus all of their efforts on getting back to the castle.

For the next several minutes, the girls walked along in silence. Thankfully, the full moon provided enough light for them to avoid stepping in the road’s numerous potholes. All went well, until a few minutes later, they came to the first fork in the road. Both girls came to a stop in the middle of the crossroad and looked intently in each direction.

“Which way do you think we should go?” Martha asked.

“I don’t know,” Emma said with a shake of her head. “They both look the same to me.”

“Well, we can’t just stand here all night. We’re going to have to make a choice.”

Emma looked down at the road thinking that the tractors might have left some tracks they could follow, but the hard-packed earth revealed nothing. Then she noticed a clump of hay lying on the road on her left.

“Look!” Emma cried, excitedly pointing to her discovery.

“Good eyes,” Martha said. “I guess we go left.”

After that, the girls kept an eye out for more hay. Additional clumps of hay spaced along the road at irregular intervals convinced the girls that they were going the right way. It seemed to Emma as if someone was intentionally leaving them a trail to follow. Maybe on the trip back to the school, Bobby had begun to regret tricking the girls and had decided to help them. Almost as soon as she had the thought, Emma rejected it. It wasn’t like Bobby to be sorry about anything he did. Perhaps one of the others involved in the plot was dropping the hay. With a sigh, Emma realized it really didn’t matter who, if anyone, was helping them. As long as they had a trail of hay to follow, they would be okay.

Emma’s thoughts grew fanciful as she walked along next to Martha. She began to imagine that she and Martha were following the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel. She just hoped it didn’t lead to a witch’s house where they’d find the two children locked in an oven.

Emma shivered as a fresh gust of wind hit her. The temperature was beginning to drop, and the wind seemed to have more force behind it. She began to think longingly of a warm oven.

“Oooh! That wind is awful,” Martha exclaimed with a shiver as she pulled up the collar on her jacket.

“I know,” Emma agreed. “It’s getting colder too.”

“That’s all we need. The wind may blow our trail away.”

Emma hadn’t thought of that. Just as she began to worry that they might lose their trail, a cloud passed over the moon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.