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CHAPTER 1

INTO THE FOREST (AND BACK OUT AGAIN)

Beep. Beep. Beep. My eyes flew open as I rolled over on my bed to punch the black alarm clock that sat on my nightstand, glaring at me with its red numbers: 5:00 a.m., it reminded me. Yawning, I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on a casual pair of jeans and a simple blue tank top — not in the least bit flashy, but definitely comfortable to move around in. I lazily tied up my long, wavy, dark-brown hair in my usual side ponytail before stopping by my open window to look outside at the quiet forest on the other side of the empty street, across from my house. I couldn't help but smile as I grabbed my little black pocketknife and walked downstairs and out the front door to meet my friends, thinking about that crazy day three years ago, the day that had completely changed my life ...

The four of us — that's Zach, Connor, Luke, and I (Ashley) — were only six years old when we became the first people ever to go into the mysterious woods and come out alive. I always thought our young age was one of the reasons why we survived, the other being luck, but maybe there was another reason too; we just didn't know it.

We lived in the Woods, named after the sprawling forest that stood rooted beside the wonderfully rugged establishment. Although the forest itself was huge, the town was very, very small — only one main road lined with six tired-looking shops facing the forest and twenty-something ancient houses lined up in rigid rows to the south. There were no real stoplights, and all the children were forced to take a twenty-minute bus ride to the school in the bigger town nearby, called Pine Grove. Naturally, the Woods was one of those cute but clichéd towns where everyone knew everyone else, no one had fences of any kind to keep each other away, and gossip traveled like wildfire.

The bad part about living in such a small town, however, was that someone was always poking his nose into somebody else's personal business. Keeping secrets was awfully difficult when all the families had known each other for generations.

Yearning for freedom and new experiences after high school, most teenagers went to out-of-state colleges or traveled the world with friends. Somewhere out there, in those huge, unfriendly concrete jungles called cities, they would find jobs, settle down, and possibly even start their own families. However, one day in the future, each would receive a call that he knew deep down inside himself to be inevitable, a call that would inform him that his parents were aging faster than ever. Most of these formerly hopeful teenagers would then return to the Woods, perhaps bringing their own new families along to settle permanently in their exact same childhood homes, or perhaps they would rekindle a relationship with a still-single high school sweetheart who had come home for a similar reason. They would take over their parents' beloved shops simply because they hadn't realized how much they missed the playful gossip and the lazy atmosphere of the Woods, but even more so because they felt obligated to keep the old businesses alive, thus passing down both the businesses and the houses from generation to generation, creating a timeless fog surrounding the tiny town. It was far too comfortable and easy to cross into the hazy isolationism of the Woods.

The fact that the growth of our beloved town had been stunted in this fashion was only partly due to the forest being a real death trap. Before Zach, Luke, Connor, and I went in, more than forty people had walked in confidently (the last one had gone in more than thirty years ago) but had never come out. Decades ago, someone finally decided to put out a large danger, do not enter sign in front of the forest. However, the sign didn't help as much as the former mayor had foolishly expected, and so the devastating disappearances did not cease; just as families in past centuries had more children in the hopes that some would survive long enough to reach adulthood, the families in the Woods began to do the same, often involving the whole town with the decision — it takes a village, as the saying goes. Still, children of all ages were constantly reminded by their elders never to go into the forest, and most children listened. Until the four of us beat the odds, that is.

That sunny day had started out like any other Friday. Zach, Connor, Luke, and I had walked to the school bus together like we always did. There was no fear of kidnappers preying on young children in the Woods, since word of a stranger in town would spread in a matter of minutes. Plus, the four of us lived in the only houses on our side of the street, and we had been best friends since we had first met. We would race to back each other up in a heartbeat if trouble should ever arise. It didn't matter that I was a girl; the guys had learned early on that although I was of the opposite gender and most likely had cooties, I was not to be messed with. My bite was just as bad as my bark, if not worse.

After school that day, the four of us raced home from the bus stop, eager for the weekend to be ours. We lived for the freedom to do whatever we wanted, whether it was going shooting with my BB gun or having a war with our wooden swords. In a beautiful, sunny place like the Woods, we hardly ever spent any time inside. We saw less of our parents that way; it was better for them and for us.

When we reached our street, we stopped to catch our breaths in front of Zach and Luke's quiet house. The two were twins, though they didn't look much alike. They were about the same height and argued a lot, but the similarities stopped there. Zach was a natural-born leader, and with blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, he was a total girl magnet (just how he liked it), though once in a blue moon he liked to take a break and go sulk in a corner somewhere when his popularity became too much to handle.

For Luke, on the other hand, the party never stopped, and he would mess with his brother all day if you let him. However, his short temper was a beast not even his brother would dare provoke on a daily basis. Luke's hair was slightly longer than Zach's and jet-black, and he had teal eyes that matched the color of the sea. Unlike his brother, who preferred staying on land, Luke had no fear of the water. Even though he had been to the beach only once, and had swum only once or twice in a swimming pool since then, the water was obviously his true home. He still dreamed of visiting it again, and he talked about it all the time.

When we had all caught our breaths a minute later, Zach grinned at us, showing off his pearly-white teeth, and said, "We should go into the woods today, I think." Luke, Connor, and I rolled our eyes immediately. After all, Zach liked to suggest this idea to us at least once a week, but we had never listened until that fateful day.

I shook my head. "You know it's against the rules." As the smartest one in the group (and the smartest person in the entire world, though I didn't know that yet), considering my gift for absorbing every piece of knowledge I had ever come across, I was responsible for giving the boys reality checks every once in a while.

Zach only laughed and stuck his tongue out at me. "I bet you're just scared," he teased.

I shook my head again and stepped back, gesturing toward the dark-green forest behind Connor. "If you want to die, go ahead. But I wouldn't recommend it." That time, for whatever reason, they didn't listen to my words of wisdom.

"I think I will," Zach said, raising his dark eyebrows at my challenge. Then he turned on his heel and ran straight toward the forest, with Luke following close behind. I simply watched in shock as their red and white shirts disappeared into the trees.

My jaw dropped open, as I found myself too surprised to speak, but Connor, who was usually my comic relief, snapped me out of my trance when he yelled, "We can't let them go in there alone!" The next thing I knew, I was running with the blond son of the town's mayor past the first few moss-covered trees.

We were about two hundred yards into the dark forest when Connor and I bumped right into Zach and Luke, who stood like statues gaping at something to our left. Slowly, Zach raised his tan, shaking arm, and I followed the invisible line to where he was pointing and found myself looking straight at a large, black creature sniffing at a dusty human skeleton lying in the grass about a hundred feet away. The monster had the torso of a man but the legs and head of a bull, complete with huge horns that curved upward. This creature was a Minotaur, although at that moment I wasn't too concerned with what it was called, only that it was going to kill us.

The four of us stood frozen, scared (though we were too proud to admit it) that we would make even the slightest noise, thus causing the Minotaur to come after us. I thought we were surely dead meat when a shirtless boy who looked about our age popped out from behind a tree.

Well, I thought he was a boy at first, but then I noticed that he had short goat legs covered in reddish-brown fur. "Psst," he whispered. But all of a sudden, when he realized he had our attention and we were distracted, he grinned and yelled out "Boo!"

With that, the Minotaur looked up in our direction, and its red eyes instantly locked on its next targets: us. I had just enough time to turn around and glare at the half-boy, half-goat, who was cackling uncontrollably as the Minotaur ran straight at us. Deep down inside, I knew little kids like us could never outrun a giant bull creature, so without really thinking about what I was doing, I picked up a small stone from the ground and threw it as hard as I could.

To this day, I honestly don't know how I mustered the strength to do it, but the high-velocity stone hit the Minotaur squarely between the eyes, actually denting its skull, and the confused monster paused just long enough for Zach, Connor, Luke, and me to get away safely. The young half-boy had already disappeared deeper into the misty woods, probably thinking we were as good as dead.

Breathless, we tore out of the woods and across the empty street toward Zach and Luke's newly repainted dark-green house with white trim. Through the kitchen window, I could see their mother wearing a horrified expression as she watched us trample over her freshly mowed lawn and burst into her humble home.

Their mother, a blue-eyed woman with dark curly hair, stepped into the living room, hands on her hips. Her name was Martha, but she was like a second mother to Connor and me, so most of the time we called her Mom as well. It was just easier that way. Usually she was calm and kind, but not at that moment. "What in the world were you children doing in those woods? Do you realize you could've been killed? Were you even thinking about what that would mean to your families?" Still too shocked to speak, the four of us exchanged frightened glances, silently agreeing never to tell anyone about what we had seen. We were six years old, but we weren't stupid; we knew no one would believe us. Monsters weren't supposed to exist, even if we still believed.

Luke and Zach's mother paused to shake her head and smooth out her wrinkled red skirt, then continued, a bit calmer this time, "No, obviously not. Luke, Zach, you're both grounded. Up to your rooms, now." Obediently, Luke and Zach left the room and walked up the stairs, looking back at Connor and me, their eyes filled with a mixture of sorrow and fright. "Connor and Ashley, I will be talking to your mothers as well. That was a very dangerous thing you did today," I heard Martha say, but I wasn't really paying attention to her anymore.

By the end of the day, our respective punishments had been formally handed down. Yes, the four of us were grounded for two weeks, and although our parents tried to keep things quiet, news travels fast in small towns, so by the next morning the entire county knew that four first graders had beaten the odds. We had even made the front page of the newspaper and were interviewed multiple times, but none of us kids had much to say and the county was so small that this really wasn't much of a feat. My unstable father, secretly proud of me, still kept a few of the newspaper articles, but he had hidden them behind a bookcase in my room long ago, for my mother was still terrified at the mere mentioning of the wretched forest. Her sister had been lost in its depths when she was only my age.

That week, more than twenty people of all ages (including two former classmates of ours) from all over the state went into the forest, thinking that they too could beat the odds. None of them came back out. None at all. After that devastating week, the woods were once again free of humans; no one in the entire state of Washington could deal with more deaths.

Of course, the fact that we were the sole survivors only made the four of us cockier and more curious than ever. Our rebellious teenage years came early, Martha liked to say. Within that week, we started sneaking out of our houses late at night to meet by a large tree behind my house, where we would discuss the day's events, like who had died and when exactly they had gone into the forest. We would talk about why we were the only ones to come out of the forbidden forest alive and, yes, when we would go back in. It was probably a stupid idea, but we had to find out if it was just because of luck that we had survived or not. To be honest, I always thought the four of us were too brave for our own good.

* * *

When our punishments had finally been lifted and it was summer, the four of us decided to go back into the woods. But this time we were prepared, more or less. Armed with wooden toy swords and a compass, we strode across the street while our parents were working, or maybe shopping, but it didn't really matter to us as long as they weren't watching.

"Ready?" Zach asked nervously, halting just outside the forest. Even our fearless leader seemed to doubt himself for once. Connor's signature goofy smile was absent for probably only the second time in his entire life, and Luke was just biting his lip and dragging his foot through a small spot of mud. Nevertheless, the three of us ignored the fear tugging at the back of our minds and reluctantly nodded in unison.

Zach let out a shaky sigh and stepped past the first tree. We stopped and looked for monsters both to the right and left of ourselves, as if we were crossing a busy street. I heard Connor take a deep breath in relief, and then we stepped past the second tree. Again, we stopped to look for monsters, and again we saw nothing but pine trees, lush grass, and silver mist. Slowly but surely, we made our way through the thick brush, paving our own trail. We were undisturbed except for the occasional call of a bird ... and the random bloodcurdling screams, which made all four of us stop in our tracks every single time we heard one. We could only hope that the shouts didn't belong to anyone we knew.

Suddenly I heard an awful crunch to my left, and Connor screamed. A high-pitched, girly scream. I couldn't help but laugh. Zach and Luke quickly joined in as I said, pointing to Connor, "You scream like a girl!"

Connor was frowning, and his hazel eyes looked very upset as he defended himself. "I just stepped on a skeleton! I bet you would be screaming too." Zach, Luke, and I then glanced down at Connor's red Converse shoes where a bunch of old, cracked bones lay next to a skull, covered in leaves and grass and cobwebs. The decomposed body had obviously been there a very long time.

Noticing the same thing I had, Luke snorted and shook his head. Zach apparently took this as a sign that everything was okay, and he was about to step forward when someone, or rather, something popped out in front of us. We all jumped. It was the same half-boy, half-goat who had almost gotten us killed before.

"You guys came back here?" He sounded amazed and wore a shocked expression on his face, his bushy eyebrows raised in perfect parabolas. He narrowed his brown eyes and continued, "Gods, you four are tough. I like that. I can't even believe you escaped the Minotaur. And my screaming didn't scare you at all?"

Zach shook his head in amazement and confusion. "No! What's a Minotaur? Wait — what are you anyway?"

The half-goat gasped and covered his mouth with his dirty hands, appearing moderately offended. "My name is Pan. I'm a satyr, of course. Haven't you ever heard of them? We live all around here."

Luke snickered. "Pan? What kind of name is that?" I quickly punched him in the arm to keep him from saying something that might get us killed, but Luke just laughed harder, his bright eyes shining.

Connor sighed and said, "Ignore him," but I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh as well.

Meanwhile, Pan the satyr frowned and ruffled the mop of curly brown hair on the top of his head. "Sounds like you freaks need to study your Greek history."

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Excerpted from "The Forest Gods' Reign"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Alexandria Hook.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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