Chapter 4: The Mysterious Clearing
As the second week out of the orphanage approached, the sky around the cabins began to darken. One day, there was a huge thunderstorm. It rained so long and so hard, that Ryan was convinced the world had "turned upside-down" and all the oceans were pouring down on them. But of course, that wasn't true.
The rain was still coming down the next day. There was not a dry piece of wood in the whole forest, or at least as far as Tim or Turtle would venture. There was no fire in the cabins, so it was pretty cold. Outside, the rain was starting to flood at a very fast rate. In just an hour, six inches had piled up outside. After a few minutes, it began streaming under the cabin doors. They all tried to stop it, but it was too fast. They moved everything up onto higher places in the cabins.
Soon the rainwater was waist-deep. Lee was having a hard time getting around. It was hard enough for Cathy, with both ankles perfectly fine, but Lee could only use one ankle. The rain still came pouring down.
In two hours, the house was almost filled with water. Everything in the house was soaked. They had no choice but to climb up on top of the roof. They swam around picking up objects and passing them up to the flat roofs. Magically, as soon as the last things were out of the house, the rain cleared up and it was sunny.
Cathy, Turtle, Mike, and Lee's house could stand the water no longer. It exploded in a gush of water, wood, people, and supplies. Tim and Sarah reached down to grab Mike and Lee as they were swept by. Cathy and Turtle struggled to get to the roof of the cabin. They finally made it, but they had no supplies, except the ones Tim and Sarah had. "I hate water," said Turtle.
"I hope our house doesn't do that!" Tim said.
"Well then, we better got out of here!" Sarah said.
They pried off the roof of the house and it became their raft. Then they pushed the roof into the stream of water and flowed deep into the forest.
As they floated into the forest, Turtle picked up a big stick and steered the raft through the trees with it. By now, they had traveled miles into the forest.
"We'll nevew get outta hewe!" Ryan cried.
"Well, maybe we can find some place in the forest to find shelter," Cathy reassured him.
"Look! There's a cave! Steer us over there, Turtle!" shouted Tim.
Mike coughed. He had swallowed a lot of water when his house exploded.
Turtle pushed the raft off a tree and steered over to the cave. They kept on going until suddenly the water was gone and the raft crashed down onto completely dry grass.
"Ow!"
"Hey!"
"Get off me!"
"Get your leg out of my eye!"
Tim stood up and brushed himself off. A foot away was a straight wall of water. Why wasn't it coming in? He walked over to the pile of bodies on the ground and stuck his hand out. His hand was wet.
"This is so weird," said Sarah.
"I'm thiwsy," said Ryan. He saw a pond clear as crystal, on the other side of the clearing. He ran over to it, and took a big cupful in his hands. Before anyone could stop him, he drank it. "Yum! This tastes good! Come twy!" he called.
"Ryan! You shouldn't drink that! You don't know what kind of bacteria is in it!" scolded Sarah.
"So what? It's good!" said Ryan, taking another cupful. "It can't be bacteriasized!" Sarah gave him a disapproving look.
They set to work on making a lean-to between a very large tree and the pond and waterfall. At night, it was very warm. This was just as well, as they had no blankets. All they did have were three mugs, three bowls, a pot, an empty milk bottle, two hats, two scarves and Lee's things: his teddy, his scarf, his hat, his crown and his stool.
The next day, Cathy and Sarah woke at 5:30. It was a hot and sunny day.
They looked around for something to eat. There were no fish in the stream. The ducks sitting by the lake would be hard to catch and prepare. No one liked mushrooms.
"I'll go and look for some things to eat," said Cathy. She pushed a piece of their broken raft into the water, grabbed the big stick and was off.
By the time Cathy came back, everyone knew the forest like the back of their hand. There was a large clearing with many different plants and trees around it. To the right of the lean-to, there was a huge evergreen tree. Next to that, there was a smaller evergreen tree. To the right of that was a wide-open space. On the other side, there was a small bush with pink flowers growing on it. There was a weird tree next to that. Then there was a huge rock. Connecting to that rock was a rock pile with a small crevice underneath it. There was a tree growing on the rock. A marsh plant grew between that and another huge rock. There was a small fallen log with some kind of shrub next to the rock. There were some sunflowers to the right of that, and another open space. After the open space was another small shrub, with some red and white mushrooms growing next to it. Then there was the pond, with rocks surrounding it, and the waterfall with trees growing all around. The clearing was an amazing site.
Sarah was in the lean-to tending to Mike, who was getting worse. He had a bad cough and a worse cold.
"I have some fish for us. I got enough to last us all day, because I don't know if our raft can last another fall," Cathy pointed to the splintered remains of the raft in the open space by the weird tree and the pink-flowered bush. Beside it was a pile of fish.
Sarah came out from the lean-to. "Let's eat!" she said. She started to clean and cook the fish.
While they were eating, some others were approaching the clearing.
"Hey, Alice! You steer bad! When is it my turn?"
"Never! If it's hard for me, think how hard it would be to you, Sonya, you're stupid! You'd just make us crash into the trees."
Suddenly, the two girls crashed into the clearing. "Oh, no! Look who it is! It's our brothers and sisters!" screamed Alice.
"Eww!" said Tim and Ryan.
"Let's get away from here! I'm not hanging around with these losers!" said Sonya, righting their boat and pushing it toward the edge of the water. Alice followed her. Soon they were out of sight.
"See ya!" shouted Tim.
"Did you see that?" Sarah asked. "The water was frozen!"