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There was soft, spongy moss beneath her hands and knees as she scuttled through that hole, and she imagined all sorts of insects falling upon her, nestling in her hair and the fabric of her dress. It had been cool in the forest, but the moment she entered that gap it grew warm. Even the moss was warm and moist as though what they had entered was not a tree but some strange organ, the black and beating heart of the wood. And a dark heart it was. She felt that very strongly. There was a smell within, like rotting leaves and human waste, brackish water and drying blood.
It was too close around her and it felt as though it was narrowing, as though it would trap her there. Tamara felt suffocated and her heart hammered in her chest. She could not breathe. Could not swallow. Her eyes watered and she pressed her lips tightly together and she thought that she would die there, in the bowels of that tree.
And then she glanced ahead and saw William looking back at her, luminous silver fire flickering from the fingers he held up beside his face to light her way. They had gone only a few feet and already he was inside the hollow core of the tree. In the back of her mind had been thoughts of tunnels into other worlds, a slit in the tree that would become a winding, twisting path to elsewhere.
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