She had collapsed in a clearing. Tall trees stood around her in a circle. Their bodies towered over her, their branches reaching high above their heads. Thick leaves blotted out any view of the night sky. Sucking down air, Wendy tried to regain her bearings. She was completely turned around.

Which way had she come from? And where was Alex? She couldn’t hear his voice anymore. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything—no crickets, no wind, no owls. The silence pressed in around her, broken only by her labored breaths.

Then Wendy heard a faint noise, something she couldn’t quite make out, but it was growing steadily louder. Fingernails dug into her palms as she clenched her fists.

The sounds of breathing filled the air around her. It was like standing in a room packed with people she couldn’t see. She could only hear their breathing, could only feel it exhaled against her skin. Some breathed slowly, others erratically, all toppling over one another and only getting louder.

Wendy’s head jerked from side to side, desperately looking for where the noise was coming from, but no one was there. The breathing turned into indecipherable whispers.

Wendy grimaced against the sound. What was happening to her?

“ALEX!” Wendy shouted, trying to find his voice among the murmurs. Maybe if he heard her, he would call back. “ALEX, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Something cold and wet slid across Wendy’s ankle.

When she looked down, something pitch black had seeped out of the ring of trees. Wendy stumbled back, but her feet sank into the muck, nearly knocking her off-balance. The whispers grew urgent and called out to her. Wendy tried to run, but her feet were stuck. Tendrils reached out and wrapped around her legs, ice cold as they traveled up. She was slowly sinking, being pulled down into the earth.

“No, no, no!” Panic seized Wendy. She tried to pull her leg free, but the shadows snatched her wrists. Sticky claws wound up her arms to her neck. Wendy thrashed as she sank to her waist. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried to pull it off her face, but it just stretched and oozed over her hands as it continued to make its way to her mouth.

As it started to curl over her lips, Wendy jerked her head back, sucked in a deep breath, and screamed for the only person she could think of.

“PETER!”

The blackness closed over her mouth. As it engulfed her, she had only one thought through her panic and searing fear: Was this what had happened to her brothers?

Just as the shadows slid over her eyes, there was an explosion of light. Suddenly, Wendy could see again. Gold sparks sizzled on contact with the blackness. A screech filled the clearing as the substance shriveled and fell away from Wendy in clumps of ash. The sparks disintegrated the blackness but didn’t hurt her.