By the time they got everyone together, the sun was low in the sky. It hadn’t rained in days and the forest floor was prickly and dry. Cicadas chirped in the background as they headed through the trees, Ripley skipping ahead with Bubbles, April with the map, Jo with the compass, and Mal and Molly at the back, holding hands.
Molly breathed in the warm summer air. “Pines,” she sighed.
“I thought Wiggly Woods would be more wiggly!” Ripley chirped.
“Well, you’re very wiggly,” Mal said, “so you can make up for the general lack of wiggliness.”
“On it,” Ripley called back as she snaked through the trees.
“It’s funny,” Jo noted, looking up. “No matter how far we go in every direction, there’s always something new to discover around here.”
April checked her map. “Because Lumberjanes are ALWAYS exploring! So. According to this, we continue due west. At least that’s the direction that seems to cut most directly through this particular forest.”
“Is there a lake coming up?” Molly asked.
“There’s a few,” April noted, running her finger along their trail. “I’m thinking the little-bitty one here . . .” She pointed at a small blue blob. “Is probably Lake Specter. It’s little-bitty so there’s not a name on it, but I have a vibe.”
Jo tipped her head to the side. “Do you really think ghosts took Mal’s socks?”
This was something April had been wondering, so she chimed in, “Good question. I mean, I’m TOTALLY up for a mystery, OBVIOUSLY. But, I mean, it could also be that renegade squirrels took Mal’s socks. Or renegade . . . grouses?”
“Renegade grouses?” Ripley peeked in from behind a tree. “Sneaking into houses?”
“I mean . . .” April wasn’t sure how to say she didn’t think it was ghosts in a way that wouldn’t stop the adventure she was also enjoying. “Maybe?”
“It could be,” Molly said. “I mean, it could be a lot of things.”
“Mind you,” Mal added, “ghosts wouldn’t be the weirdest phenomena we’ve come across here.”
“The position of weirdest phenomena that we have come across,” Jo said, “has yet to be filled.”
“I am TOTALLY OKAY with pursing something based on a story, even if it is a ghost story,” April stated. “I just wanted to say that, out loud. In case we do it again. Which I hope we do.”
There were many fairy-tale creatures from her research that April was still hoping to run into.
Mal looked around. The brush was thick. Sort of endless. It was getting harder and harder to tell which way was the way forward and which way was just a step in a direction.
“What we need,” Ripley said, “is a snack.”
“What we need,” Mal breathed into the hot summer air, “is a sign.”
Which, as we’ve said many times, could be anything. But today, on this day, it was . . .
“LOOK!” Molly pointed up into a tree at a dangling, relatively worse-for-the-wear sock clearly labeled on the bottom MAL.
“A sock,” Ripley cheered.
“MY sock,” Mal added.
“I’ll get it!” Ripley hopped up from branch to branch and plucked the sock from the barb of the pine. “GOT IT!”
“Okay.” April snapped to attention. “So we’re on sock alert. Sock is GO repeat SOCK is GO, we are looking for socks now. Look high. Look low. Sock. Is. GO.”
The socks were strung from the treetops of Wiggly Woods with care, in hopes, one would imagine, that someone would find them. Some clung to pine branches, a few were stuck to prickly berry bushes, one or two were laid out like sleeping slugs on rocks.
It was a tiny bit embarrassing, Mal thought, seeing her laundry laid out in the woods.
“Something put these socks out,” Molly noted.
“I’m going to recall my suggestion that that something was a grouse,” April said. “This does not seem grouselike.”
“Maybe it could be a bunch of grouses stacked one on top of each other?” Ripley offered.
Ripley did a giant bounce and grabbed a sock from a relatively high tree branch. “Maybe something more bouncy?”
April stopped. “Is it weird that we’ve never considered it could be another scout? I mean, maybe this is Hes’s act two?”
Ripley looked up at the branches. “No way. Barney has too much respect for socks for them to do something like this.”
“True,” Jo said. “Also, I feel like it’s just SO unscoutly, you know?”
“Hey! This probably means we’re getting close.” Molly pointed at one sock stuck to a rock on the edge of a small brook.
“You know what else means we’re getting close?” Ripley asked, pointing. “A lake.”
Against her will, Mal let out a small noise that sounded a little like “Lake” and a little like “Oh no.”