Prudence sat in the parlor. She sewed a fancy-work pattern onto a handkerchief. Her hand moved rhythmically and quickly across the fabric, like a well-handle pumping—as if at any moment, she would start drooling out water.

Gregory told her about the game. “…‘The Game of Sunken Places,’” he said. “It says ‘Grendle Manor’ on it, but it looks Victorian, and I always thought that Uncle Max’s family was—until a few years ago when he moved out here—that Uncle Max’s family was just from Boston. I thought it was an old Boston family that had fought in the Revolution and et cetera, et cetera.”

She answered, “Why, yes, Mr. Grendle definitely bought the house after he adopted me. We came out here together to look at it. Oh, I was ever so excited.” A thoughtful expression came over her face. “That is strange, then, about the game.”

“It has the woods on it, too,” said Brian. “There are paths running through the forest, with all these names written beside them.”

“Oh, the woods are lovely!” said Prudence, smiling and laying her sewing aside. “You should go on a brisk walk this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” said Gregory. “There’s a ring of mushrooms, and a river, and a huge uprooted tree…”

“It’s called the Club of Snarth,” said Prudence, nodding.

“That was on the board!” said Brian, excited. “How did you know that name?”

“Dreams,” said Prudence. “I like to go out there on picnics on the Sabbath. But often, I just hear the names of forest places in dreams. A voice tells me.” She stopped and looked at her sewing. “I completely have lost the thread of what I was—”

“Prudence,” said Brian, “what kind of dreams do you—”

Uncle Max banged on the door frame behind them. “Lunch, lunch, lunch,” he said. “Come along. ‘The appointed time is come.’ Promptness is a virtue.”

“Sure is,” said Gregory. “Right up there with dental hygiene.”

“Glad to see you agree,” said Uncle Max. He glared at Brian. “Your friend there doesn’t look so sure. Doesn’t speak much, does he?”

“He’s shy,” said Gregory protectively.

“But is he nefarious?” Uncle Max asked. He turned and walked away.

They went into the dining room.

The lunch hour, like the dinner hour of the previous night, was completely silent save for the clinking of silverware on the plates, the quiet requests, and Uncle Max’s peculiar murmuring between bites. Occasionally, Daffodil would put her teeth on her lower lip and make a buzzing sound.

After Uncle Max pushed his plate away, Brian decided to ask him some of their questions. “Sir, we were looking around, and we found, well—no—we were wondering—we’d like—”

“Yes, spit it out.”

“Did your family own this house before you moved here with Prudence?”

“No, indeed, my boy. When I adopted Prudence, I decided it was time to move out of the city. Too much smoke. Too much noise. People were always breaking windows. Other people, they were always fixing them. I saw this house in the newspaper and decided then and there to buy it. You remember coming out here to see the house when we bought it, Prudence?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Grendle. It looked like a wonderland.”

“Indeed,” said Uncle Max, leaning back in his chair.

Prudence turned to her foster father. “And the boys were wondering something about a game they found upstairs. ”

“What? Which?”

Gregory broke in abruptly. “We…uh…yes, we—”

“We were wondering about pool,” said Brian.

“Special rules,” said Gregory. “Appalachian Slant Pool. The one where two of the legs on the table are sawed off.”

Prudence looked at Gregory strangely, then said, “No, I meant the game you found in the nursery.”

Brian said quickly, “Oh, the Let’s Keep a Secret game! It looks like some kind of card game.”

“With dice,” said Gregory, embellishing with some enjoyment. “A dice/card game. With puppets. The hand puppets.”

Slowly, Prudence nodded. “Yes,” she said tentatively. “All right.”

“No, my boys! I’ve never heard of…Appalachian Slant Pool, and as for the things in the nursery…well, I’ve either bought them at auctions or they were already in the drawers here. Their rules? No idea. No idea, really, children. And I don’t like puppets. I really don’t. Not at all. Big, goggly eyes.”

“That’s all right,” said Gregory. “There are other games to play.”

“Games. Yes. Well. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with infusing a sense of competition in young lads. To strive, my boy, is to succeed. Life is a melee. A battle. There are winners; there are losers. When a game has begun—finally begun—then you know that you are part of it, and so by its end, you shall be one or the other. The winner, the loser. The loser, the winner.” He said, “Life is clamor and action. Sometimes you must show your teeth. Yes?” With his finger, he shoved his lip up like a curtain.

He said, “Sometimes, my boys, you must learn to rend.”

It was a fine afternoon for walking. The skies were vast and blue, and brilliant shafts of sunlight fell lazily through the treetops.

The boys walked up a rise. Huge boulders lay all around them, covered in moss and pines. They were on a path that wound around a hillside. Down at the bottom of the hill, there was a river. For a while, they walked without talking.

Brian had in his hand a list of all the places mentioned on the board. He read out the names as they came to them.

They passed a huge, uprooted tree that sprawled across the path and down the hill. A tangle of roots crowned the tree, looking like a nest of snakes.

“The Club of Snarth,” he said.

“Snarth,” said Gregory. “Great.”

“So that way, to the left, leads over to the Great Cliff and something called the Petroglyph Wall. Then the ink runs out.” Brian pointed straight ahead. “That way leads through the Dark Wood and on to something called Clock Corner.”

They sat and rested on the massive timber.

“I keep thinking about the board changing,” said Brian. “It can’t just be the light.”

“It could be an optical illusion,” said Gregory. “Someone put out a board that looks different at different times. Some kind of trick.”

“But why?” said Brian. “And who? I mean, why?”

“Hey, don’t go yelling at me.”

“I’m not yelling. I just don’t understand it.”

“And where’s our luggage?”

“I have a bad feeling about that,” said Brian.

Gregory sighed and rubbed his face. “Hurg,” he said quietly.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘Hurg.’”

“Oh.”

Brian leaned against the tangled roots, crossed his arms, and stared into the pines, listening to the tick of insects and the calls of birds.

Gregory stood. “It’s as if we’re in a dream,” he said.

“Well,” said Brian, “now we may be competing against someone, too.”

“So we’d better get moving,” said Gregory. “Toward…straight.”

Brian nodded and pulled himself up.

They continued walking down the path.

They had reached the Dark Wood, a mass of tightly woven trees, a tangle of black-limbed, twisted trunks where the only color was the pale green scales of fungus that dotted their tiny branches. Someone had cut a tunnel through the scratchy gnarls. The two stooped and made their way through the gloomy thicket.

“Do you hear steps?” asked Brian.

Gregory paused. They looked forward and back. The floor of the strangling mass was brightened by tiny white primroses.

“Nope,” said Gregory.

Brian nodded, and they kept on going. They walked silently, stooping in the passageway, until they came to a wide, cleared patch, surrounded by the high walls of the dark, leafless foliage. A ring of red-capped mushrooms grew in the clearing, poking their way out of the dark, moss-stained turf.

“This is the Ring,” said Brian.

They stood for a moment and listened to the birds.

“Gregory, listen,” whispered Brian. “Now I’m sure.”

“Huh?”

“Footsteps.”

Gregory looked back into the tunnel.

Branches crackled behind them.

Brian plucked at his sleeve, and they sprinted forward. Through the tunnel that led away from the clearing, they could see an area where the woods cleared out and became brighter; there, on a tall stump, was the white face of a clock.

They raced toward it, emerging from the dark tunnel of twisted branches.

Brian looked behind them.

“Oh no,” he gasped. He turned again and started to stumble farther into the wood. He pelted past his friend.

“What?” said Gregory.

“It’s the man,” Brian answered. “The man from the train.”