Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

mean, it’s possible that someone would in a forest like this. Do you know where we are?”
    “Crawford Street, approaching Main.”
    “Oh,” she said. She had made zero forward progress. But on the plus side, she wasn’t stuck to a goose or picking flowers—at least not yet. And maybe not ever, now that she had found the National Guard. She looked at the hidden soldiers with a growing realization: here was her answer to how she could avoid Little Red’s fate. They could help her! She was saved! “I’m searching for my mom,” she said. “I think she’s—”
    “I’ll assign someone to take you out of here, miss,” the army man said. “Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll take care of you.”
    “No, you don’t understand. It will be all right if I can just find my mom,” she said, but the soldier was focused on the forest-street. He wasn’t listening to her. She tried to get his attention: “Sir? Um, sir?”
    “Sir, another one’s approaching,” a soldier said.
    “A victim?” he asked.
    “Can’t tell, sir.”
    Julie crawled forward to peer through the bushes, but the captain pulled her back. “You stay here, miss. We’ll investigate this.” He nodded to two men.
    All eleven left the bushes.
    “Wait . . .” Julie said. They shouldn’t all leave. What if it was a trap, a story bit waiting to entangle them, like New Little Red’s wolf? She crawled forward. She could see a woman standing on the street. The woman wore a business suit, a royal cape, and a crown. She held eleven white shirts.
    Eleven white shirts. Julie knew this tale. How did it go?
    Like moths pulled to flame, the men ran toward the queen. She threw shirts at them. One by one, they turned into swans.
    Oh, yes, that was how it went. She felt sick. “Mommy,” she whispered. “Where are you?”
    Julie had no choice but to keep going. “I hate this,” she said to the trees. The trees were silent—no wind, no birds, no nothing. She had an urge to throw something or shout as loudly as she could—anything to break the awful, waiting silence.
    She crept down the forested street, listening for any sounds of people or bits of story. She guessed it was maybe seven miles from here to the Wishing Well Motel. How was she going to avoid being caught in a story for seven miles?
    The air began to smell sickly sweet, like cough syrup. She saw roses on the bushes. Up ahead, seven-foot stalks of purple flowers leaned against birches. Fat chrysanthemums engulfed the trunks of evergreens. She guessed this used to be Bigelow Nurseries. Now it had spread to cover the entire street.
    This can’t be good, Julie thought. Could she go around it? She looked for a way to pass and saw a stream. Bubbling over in miniature rapids, the stream carved a path through the overgrown flowers. She could walk along it. Heading for it, Julie crawled under a low-hanging flowered branch, and the limbs above her erupted in shaking squawks. She covered her head as scattered petals fell down on her.
    “Help me!” a voice chirped above her. “Oh, please, kind child, help me!”
    Who said that? She looked up and saw a blackbird thrashing against the branches. A tangle of leaves pinned it to its perch.
    “Please, set me free!”
    Oh, no, Julie thought. When creatures asked for help in fairy tales . . . She began to back away. Her sandal sank into the muddy bank of the stream, and another voice cried out: “Down here! Please, kind child, help me!”
    She looked down and saw a fish, stranded. Flopping on the bank, the fish seemed too large to have ever swum in a stream this size. “Save me, please!” The fish flopped pathetically.
    Julie felt a sick, fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had a story found her? What should she do? Should she run? Could she run, or was she already trapped? Julie took a tentative step away and a third voice, tiny and shrill, piped up: “Please, spare us!”
    Ants. She saw them swarming over the mossy