"Hey Joe, come look at this place" I barely heard his very light footsteps as he ran down the hill towards me. I was a little worried that he wouldn't stop so stepped a little to the side and my worry was justified when he went running past me before finally stopping a few metres in to the clearing.

"Woah" I looked at him and nearly giggled as he started slowly spinning round in a circle.

"Do you reckon this is the place that Alice was talking about?"
"Hmmm, well as far as I can remember she said

Turn once to the forest where the ground lies clear

And walk past the dark, show no fear

Sabbat's heath is near

In the water an answer to be found

And more questions for one to sound" I swear, it is so unbelievably un- descriptive but then again, I suppose it was probably only written in a few minutes and if she knew she was about to die then fully describing something probably wasn't going to be on the top of her list of priorities. I suppose we ought to use what information we have though.

"Well, we're in a forest, in which we've found a clearing"
"Yep, and we've gone through the dark bit back there where trees got more dense"
"And there's water, in which there is supposed to be answers"

"Well go look then"

"Oh come on, I'm already wet, I don't want to fall in the water again"

"But you're already wet, if you fall in then it won't make any difference"

"Nu uh"

"Oh come on, please" He said, with puppy dog eyes.

"Nope, I won't do it if you wont" with a hand on my hip in a truly childish manner. He growled lightly under his breath and I grinned.

"Fine, come here" He said, walking forwards towards the river running through the middle. The ground was entirely flat and then suddenly stopped and there was a gap where the river ran through. A two foot gap between the edge of the ground and the water level was visible from this distance but I suppose you wouldn't even be able to see the water closer up until standing looking over the bank. It was a slightly odd angle for the ground; we had come in from a hill, to a really large flat circular area absent of any trees that then dipped steeply and suddenly in the middle to a river. Surely it should have just been a straight hill? Like in a valley, aren't the slopes practically straight downwards? Ah well, I would never say that I'm much of a geographer and everything else about this place seems unnatural, why should the contours be regular?

We walked towards the river with Joe slightly in front of me. I was looking at the giant oak tree just on the other side of the river, where the roots showed through the side of the river bank as it dipped towards the water. I was right; I couldn't see the water from just a few steps further forwards again until we reached the bank. I looked down in to the water to see that it was strangely clear, a voice in the back of my head told me that this probably meant that it was highly acidic and I frowned, why does my scientific knowledge have to ruin the mystery?

"Okay, so if you were a mysterious note, where would you be?"

"I don't know Joe; I don't even know what it could have been written on to survive fifty odd years.

"Hey look, there's like a flat circle of wood in there that looks like it has carvings!"

"Okay, have fun swimming then Joe" I said, before shoving him from behind and … YES! I actually moved him and he went flying in to the water screeching all the way. Once he was in the water I could see that it was actually quite deep, maybe four feet at least, which was odd as England had been going through a heat wave at the moment and it hadn't rained a lot recently. I swear, there isn't anything actually normal around here. I looked down at Joe splashing around slightly in the water; surprisingly he hadn't kicked up any dirt so the water was still just as clear. He bent down and grabbed the wooden thing he had been pointing at earlier then straightened up and brandished it upwards at me. It was an odd feeling being about six foot higher up than him.

"Hey, you evil bugger, look, the wooden carving actually has letters carved in to it!"

"Awesome, you just have fun getting back up now then" I looked back up at the oak tree, I don't know why but it kind of felt like I was being drawn to it. I was trying to make out the detailing on the bark when a large splashing sound came from the river, making me jump back moments before Joe's hands appeared where my feet had been. He then proceeded to pull himself over the edge. "Wow, that was impressive"

"Thanks, but now my clothes are muddy and Alice might well kill me" I looked down to see his wet white t-shirt covered in streaks of light brown mud and laughed. "This isn't funny, and I will by all means tell Alice that it was your fault!"

"Well, we've only known each other for what, two days? It's not like she'll go completely crazy on me"

"Ah, you have a point; you're definitely taking all the blame"

"So, does that mean that Alice picked out your outfit or something?"
"No, it means that Alice bought the clothes for me and said I had to take care of them" I just laughed at him, knowing what it was like to go shopping with Alice.

"Hey, speaking of Alice, shouldn't we be taking this 'clue' back now? What time was it that we were meant to meet up anyway?"
"I dunno, it's not like we were ever going to make it on time though, neither of us has a watch."
"Okay, well, let's go!" We walked through the clearing the way we came and Joe was studying the wood. We got about twenty metres in to the forest when I stopped him and pointed out that I didn't know which way it was to get back to the school and that he would actually have to lead rather than just look at the message. He grumbled something about it being interesting before taking charge of the task of getting us out of the forest.

Okay, i am so unbelievably sorry that it has taken so long to update but my life has gone in to total overdrive and i've had so many things to do it's unreal. However, i am now on half term so i should be able to post even if i am meant to be revising all holiday for my year 10 exams and the two gcse's i'm taking this year.

I realise there are a few problems with geography and time scales and stuff in my story but you know, artistic license and all that, just makes aspects of the story work better. (well, in my head anyway)

I have a course all of next week with ESYO and am coaching at a rugby tournament for the whole day tomorrow so i won't be around much but with the removal of general school stress for two weeks and having now taken my french horn grade 7 (meaning that i now don't have to practise for like an hour and a half everyday) things are a little less crazy. And i also have a friend now giving me some ideas for this story (i love suggestions from everybody, it puts a little less stress on the whole coming up with ideas thing) so you never know, updates might become more frequent as support really does help!

Please review!