"Yes. Look!" He bent to the broken branch before him. His strong thighs tensed; the muscles of his back and shoulders corded with strain. Fresh perspiration broke from his pores as he strained to lift the tiny twig. Then his hands, white-knuckled and trembling, lifted clear; he looked at her again.
"It is so small," he said in a faint, hurt voice. "Yet I cannot lift it!"
Meg sprang to his side; bent to the twig. She was slim, a pale, golden shadow beside Daiv, but she was strong. Her hands grasped the rough bark; she lifted—
And fell forward, thrown completely off balance by that weight imponderable. Coarse soil rasped her knees, but she did not feel the pain. All lesser emotions were lost in the swift, superstitious fear that engulfed her.
"The forest is accursed, Daiv! We must flee!"
Hand in hand they raced wildly across the plain to the shelter of the woodland at its farther rim. The rays of the dying sun cast their shadows long before them, and a dry rattle of mirth seemed to rise from the tangle of unyielding twigs that bruised their feet....
Meg dreamed fear-dreams that night. She was lost in a jungle of trees hard as bone; as she fled beneath them, these trees groaned and toppled toward her, their motionless branches clutching like skeletal fingers. She moaned, cried Daiv's name—then wakened to find him leaning over her anxiously.
"Meg! Listen!"
In the cool morning the sound carried clearly to Meg's ears. A human voice, high-pitched in hideous screaming. A hoarse, grating voice. Meg shuddered.