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of the ride home it made him feel better to imagine that he might.

 
    Between the Pages

    A chill rippled up Norman’s arms and legs. Without opening his eyes, he reached for the covers but found them out of reach—kicked off the bed again, probably. His mom could never believe how he twisted sheets. “Who were you wrestling with?” she always asked.
    It was the whispers that finally made him decide to get up.
    â€œBy the Maker, what creature’s that?” one nervous, hoarse voice asked.
    â€œMust be a bear, by the size of it,” another replied unconvincingly.
    â€œThat’s never a bear. Just look at it. It ’as hardly a hair on it. What manner of bear looks like that?”
    â€œA sickly one, per’aps?”
    â€œAye, mebbe a sickly bear, mebbe.”
    At this point Norman opened his eyes.
    â€œYou’ve done it now, Makkie. I told you to keep quiet. You’ve gone and wakened it.”
    There was a rustling in the bushes in the direction of the voices, but Norman could see no one. Norman’s bedroom did not normally contain bushes, nor was he used to sleeping on damp moss, but it was the sort of things a few blinks usually sorted out.
    He rubbed his eyes and looked out again wearily. Blinking was apparently losing its magic. Norman climbed to his feet from his unfamiliar moss bed. His pyjamas were damp and grimy, but they were still his pyjamas. Nothing else was familiar, though. Pale sunlight streamed through a forest of pine trees. Somewhere behind him was the sound of a swiftly churning stream, but that was it—no other forest sounds, no insects or birds, certainly no people. If there had been people in the clearing when Norman woke, they had run away now.
    Norman took a few tentative steps in the direction from which he had heard the voices. Gingerly, he poked a bush with a stick. No one emerged from it. He had imagined the voices, like he had imagined all of this. And imagined things, he knew, disappeared as easily as they appeared. He wouldn’t worry about the voices, he decided. He’d worry about the forest. There was really only one question: was this the sort of imaginary forest you were supposed to try to find your way out of, or was it smarter just to stay here in this little clearing? It seemed safe enough. Nothing had tried to eat him yet.
    He patrolled the clearing for a while, examining the tops of the trees and straining his ears until he thought he could hear his own blood rushing through his veins. Occasionally he stepped on a twig, making himself jump into a stance that he imagined a ninja or a black belt would take when faced with peril. When no danger presented itself, he stood up straight again and pretended to himself that nothing had frightened him. What he was feeling was not yet fear, but there was something growing in the pit of his stomach, something maybe worse than fear. Fear was for things you knew and understood.
    Waiting finally became too much.
    â€œI can’t stand around in my pyjamas all day,” Norman told himself. Talking to himself out loud might have been meant to calm his nerves, but the sound of his reedy, trembling voice was hardly reassuring.
    The clearing had no obvious entrance. If the bushes seemed less thick in any spot, it was in the direction from which he’d first heard voices, but he could not force himself to go that way.He retreated the other way, away from the imaginary voices and into the imaginary forest. Very quickly he found his route covered with thick, thorny brambles. And only just quickly enough did he discover it also concealed a deep ravine that almost guaranteed a twisted ankle. For a moment he considered climbing a tree to see if he could get a better view, but the saplings around him weren’t quite tall or strong enough for climbing, so, slowly and carefully, he pushed into the bush where it appeared most sparse.
    This was only slightly better than the opposite direction,