Read Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest for Free Online

business without being distracted. In other words, he can follow the scent.
    What I’m driving at in sort of a roundabout way is that I got so busy dodging forest monsters that, dern the luck, I lost the scent.
    As you might expect, we have a response to that problem. When we lose a scent, we turn around and backtrack until we pick up the scent again.
    I turned around all right, but once I turned around, I found myself . . . well, turned around, you might say, and it’s a well known fact that you can’t backtrack if you’ve lost the track and don’t know which way is back.
    All at once I found myself basically lost. I had lost the scent, the trail, my sense of direction, my sense of well being, my courage, my confidence, my curiosity, and my devotion to duty. But most of all, I had lost all desire to be where I was.
    Fellers, I was lost and scared, surrounded by forest monsters and strange sounds—hoots and tweets and cheeps, twitters and crackles and slith­ers, coos and moans and sighs, whispers and lispers and laughter.
    Why didn’t I leave the forest? There’s a very simple explanation for that. A guy can’t leave what he doesn’t like unless he knows where to find something better. And I didn’t.
    Completely lost and turned around is what we’re talking about here, an important mission so badly botched that I would dearly love to drop the whole subject. I mean, it’s embarrassing to be the Head of . . . 
    Better mush on with the story.
    Okay. I was lost, I admit that. And with no better plan in mind I chose one direction out of the hat, so to speak, and went stumbling through the vines and so forth, hoping that in the process of stumbling I might stumble onto a more coherent plan of action.
    I hadn’t gone far when, all at once, I thought I heard a voice. At first I dismissed it as just another of the many spooky sounds of the forest. But then I heard it again, and this time I couldn’t dismiss it.
    â€œOh my goodness!” said the voice. “Who should be coming through the forest but Hank the Rabbit!”
    â€œHuh? Who said that?”
    â€œI did. I think I did. Or maybe I didn’t. It de­pends on what you heard.”
    â€œI heard someone say something about Hank the Rabbit.”
    â€œOh yes, ’twas I who said that.”
    â€œYeah, well, there’s a couple of things we ought to get straight right away. Number One, I can’t see you and it makes me uncomfortable to carry on a conversation with nobody.”
    â€œIf you’re talking with nobody, and if nobody hears, then nobody cares, so it really doesn’t matter, does it?”
    â€œWell uh . . .” There was something familiar about that voice. Hadn’t I heard it before? Seemed to me that I had, but I couldn’t place it. “I’d feel more comfortable if I could see you. Tell me where you are.”
    â€œI’m here and you’re there, and we don’t know any more than we did before, so what’s the point of knowing where we are?”
    â€œI’d like to look you in the eyes, is what I’m saying.”
    â€œWell of course you would. Find me and you’ll find my eyes. Or find my eyes and I won’t be far behind.”
    â€œYeah, but . . .”
    â€œBut you can’t find either one—I or eyes—so I will look you in the eyes while your eyes look for mine.”
    I sat down and peered into the gloomy vine-covered gloominess of the forest. Couldn’t see anybody.
    â€œYou know, you have a way of confusing words, and it seems to me that I met somebody once who talked that way.”
    â€œOh my goodness, who could I be?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know. That’s what I was fixing to ask.”
    â€œGo right ahead and ask.”
    â€œOkay. Who could you be?”
    â€œWell, I could be a tree if I had roots. Or I could be a cloud if I could float. Or