CHAPTER XVIII
THE DEEPEST PLACE IN THE WOOD
It was on the hottest day of all the hot days of summer that Eric found the deepest place in the Forest. He wandered into it while he was looking for Wild Thyme. Ivra had been no good to him that day. She was usually ready to play in any weather; but on this, the hottest day of the year, she stayed indoors, where it was a little cooler, and lying on the settle she drew paper dolls on birch bark, and afterwards cut them out. Yes, even fairy children love paper dolls and Ivra loved them more than most. Eric wanted her to go swimming in the stream, but he teased her to in vain, for she was entranced with the dolls and would hardly lift her eyes from them.
Helma was swinging in a vine swing she had made for herself high in a tree above the garden. One of the Little People was perched on a leaf just over her head, and they were chattering together like equals. Their eager voices floated down to Eric standing disconsolate near the door stone. But Helma usually knew when her children were in trouble, no matter how tiny the trouble, and so before Eric had stood there long or dug up more than a bushel of earth with his bare toes, she leaned over the nest and called to him.
"Why don't you go and play with Wild Thyme? She doesn't mind the heat. Every one else is staying quiet till sundown."
Wild Thyme was a happy thought, and Eric walked away in search of her. But she was in the very last place he would have thought to look on such a scorching day, and that is how he missed her. She was lying full length on the hot burnt grass in the field at the Forest's edge, loving the heat and sunshine, which covered her like a mantle. If Eric had seen her it is probable he would not have known her or stopped to look twice. He would have thought her just a little patch of the flower that is named for her.
So he wandered on and on, looking high and low and all about for her, and he went deeper and deeper into the Forest. The deeper he went the cooler it became, for the forest roof kept out the sunshine. The light grew dimmer and dimmer too. Eric had never been so far in before and everything was strange to him.
He saw no Forest People except a little brown goblin who peered at him from some underbrush and then scuttled away into the darkness of denser brush. Eric had never seen a goblin before, but he had no fear of goblins, and so this one did not bother him at all. He heard others scuttling and squeaking, and one threw a chunk of gray moss at him. He stopped and picked it up and threw it back with a laugh in the direction it had come from.