Chapter III.

Over The Mountains And Through The Woods

As Ramus had promised the night before, we spent the next few days resting in the cave. Luckily, our new goat got along well with our dog Wolfen.

"Uh, Julian," said Jasmine. "The goat's a female. You'll have to come up with a feminine name for her."

"Really?" I asked. "I thought it was a he."

"Male goats don't have utters though," Jasmine pointed out. "Which is just as well, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to get milk from her."

Surprised, I looked. Jasmine was right. The goat did have an utter, so was obviously a girl.

"Uh, ok, we'll call her…um…Carmen. Yah, Carmen the goat, I like it." Our mother's name had been Carmen, because she was from Spain, so I decided to name our new pet after her.

"You're naming the goat after mother?" Ramus asked.

"Uh, yah, is that a bad thing?" I asked, expecting Ramus to find something wrong with the idea.

"No, no, it's fine," Ramus replied. "I think mother would like that."

That was a shock. Ramus didn't usually agree.

Heidi dug off some of the snow near the cave so that Carmen could have a patch of mountain grass to graze on, until we moved on.

We spent the next few days at the cave doing mostly nothing. The day before we left, Ramus hiked down to the village in the valley, to get us food for the remainder of our journey. I didn't know where exactly we were headed, but Ramus and Jasmine seemed to want to get us as far away from the Mediterranean Sea as possible.

Finally, by dawn of the second day, we gathered up our food, and blankets, and took Carmen and Wolfen with us, and we began the treacherous journey over the mountains.

In all honesty, it wasn't very difficult getting across the Balkans. The mountain tundra was frigid and snowy, but the path we took getting through wasn't so bad. We avoided the tall peaks, and took the easy routes through all the valleys and canyons. Finally, after a few days of traveling through what seemed like endless highlands, the ground began to flatten out, and large deciduous trees soon took place of the mountain pines. It began to get extremely humid, something that we hadn't experienced before in Turkey and Greece.

"Where are we?" I asked Ramus, who was leading us.

"Not sure," was the only reply I got.

We continued for a while, until the land became completely flat, and the only reminder of the mountains was their distant outline against the setting sun behind us.

It was beginning to get dark, but not just because the sun was going down. The forest here was so dense that it blocked out almost all sunlight. It was a bit creepy. I had never seen this many trees in my life.

That night, as we set up camp in a small forest clearing, I tried hard to ignore the strange sounds woodland creatures. I had never felt so isolated from civilization in my entire life.

Early the next morning, the first thing that I remember is that I was extremely hungry. We were running low on our food supply, and had been fasting for the past few days. It had defiantly taken it's toil on me, and I was famished. When I reached for the leather bag that contained our bread and vegetables, Ramus stepped on my hand, reminding me that it was for later.

"Can't we just have a little?" I begged him.

"We have to save our food until we find a town. Unless of course we can find a stream to catch fish, but we didn't bring any of our fishing gear with us, so that's a problem."

I was about to grumble some rude reply, but decided I'd best not waste my breath. No matter what I told him, Ramus wasn't going to listen.

"Hey, you guys, what's that?" Jasmine asked, suddenly.

"What?"

"Listen," she said, "it sounds like music."

I paused and concentrated on listening to whatever it was that Jasmine was talking about. It was very faint, but I could just make out the sounds of a violin and a flute somewhere in the forest.

"It must be other people," Jasmine reasoned, "let's go find them."

We gathered up our stuff, and the animals and headed toward the sound of the distant melody. Soon, we could smell smoke, and when we looked up, we could see a faint trail of it floating over the treetops. That meant there was a camp nearby.

We continued to follow the sound of the music, and soon came to a clearing. In it, were a circle of wagons and colorful tents, all positioned around a roaring campfire. There were people too. They were dressed in colorful clothes and dancing around the fire to the beat of the music. Some of them were shaking tambourines and castanets as they danced.

"Who are they?" Heidi whispered.

For once, Ramus couldn't answer the question. None of us had ever seen people like this before.

Tied to some of the wagons were some of the most beautiful horses I had ever seen. They were tall, with long manes and in a kaleidoscope of colors. There were also several chickens pecking at seeds around the fire, as well as some sheep and pigs wandering around the camp. They appeared to be travelers, just like us.

That's when one of them noticed us watching them from the trees. In a foreign language that none of us understood, he alerted the rest of the people, and before we knew it, they had all stopped dancing and were rushing toward us. Some of them carried clubs and knives.

"We should get out of here, RIGHT NOW!!!" I hollered.

I didn't have to say it twice. We all began running in the opposite direction. But, escape was futile because several of the travelers had mounted horses and had run in front of us, blocking our escape route. There was no way out…