Berry Picking

It was an especially chilly morning in the village. My mom bundled me up at breakfast, and I watched as the fog whisked along our small street of tiny cottages. My little brother, Misha, ate next to me less silently. 

“I wanna go to camp.” 

I rolled my eyes at his preposterous request, “You can’t go to camp, it’s Saturday.”

He thought this through, huffed, and went back to talking about the Transformers movie he’d made us all watch a few nights prior. I had my mind on bigger things. 

“You meeting up with the girls soon?” My mom asked, pouring me some water.

“Yeah, we’re gonna go berry picking later.” 

“I wanna go berry picking!” Misha piped up. I groaned,

“Mommm, no! I don’t want to take him!” My mom raised a brow as Misha began berating us both with a chorus of ‘not fair's' and ‘I wanna eat berries’ and for some reason “if its cold will the berries be frozen’s.” I did, despite many rebuttals, lose that battle. 

That afternoon, once the fog had lifted and the sun shone in the summer sky, I set out -with my brother tailing behind me- to the first house. Here, we picked up Anya T. – Anya L. would be walking up to meet us, since she lived down on The Hill, closer to The Flats. Anya T. and I continued down the street, little siblings in tow, until we had collected the whole gang of five- to seven-year olds. We met the other Anya down where the trail began, and radioed back to our parents with the walkie talkie that the twins, Chase and Etana, had been given by their parents. Then, determined to get enough berries for a pie or two, we set out into the woods. 

“I don’t want to carry the bowl,” Misha whined, gesturing for me to take it. 

“Ugh, fine,” I said, taking it reluctantly and spotting a blackberry bush ahead: “Oh look!” 

We began picking the berries, which were perfectly ripe at this point of the season, and continued on picking at every berry bush we saw. It did take us quite a while to realize that in our search for berry bushes, we’d lost the path. 

“Uh, guys?” Sabina said, “I think we’re lost.” 

Misha lost his shit. Holding my now hysterical brother with one hand, I reached for Chase and Etana’s walkie talkie with the other. 

“It’s fine, we’ll just radio our parents and they’ll come get us.” I clicked the speak button, “Uh, Ms. Keppel?” Silence. “Ms. Keppel we’re uh,” I looked around at the trees and lack of path, “we’re, like, lost.” Silence again. A peep of static came through as the one bar of service on the radio went out. “Oh, uhm…” I mumbled, looking around at my horrified posse, “yeah there’s no connection.” 

Chase was the second to lose her shit: “Oh. My. God.” She paused, and then stated: “We’re all gonna die.” 

It was very difficult to think of solutions to our problem with a bawling brother on my arm and a sobbing Chase in the background. In that moment, I knew there was only one thing to do. 

“Okay guys pull it together,” I counseled the rest of the tiny humans. “The only thing we can do is keep walking and try to stay going in the same direction. We have to find a road or something we know if we keep going long enough.” 

Anya L. piped up, “Nobody eat the berries! Save them in case nobody finds us.” 

I rolled my eyes, she was always the dramatic one. 

I found Anya L. slightly less dramatic after a while of walking and not a single landmark. Misha was continuing to lose his shit, Chase had calmed down, and I, leading the pack, was nervously repeating to myself all the survival techniques we had learned in camp. 

Suddenly, Anya T. spoke up, “Oh look!” 

She pointed at a sliver of something in the distance, a sliver of something white and… cottage like. 

“We must be near The Flats!” I sighed with relief, and we continued down towards that white and cottage-like something. 

The trees were thicker here, and the ground sloped downwards, meaning we should’ve been closer to the Lake than The Flats. I frowned, opened my mouth to speak, and heard a yelp behind me. Mia, Anya T’s younger sister, had tripped over a tree branch. She was surprisingly good about it. We helped her up and cleaned her off, and she only cried a little. 

“We’re almost there!” I reminded her. 

However, the closer we got to the cottage-like thing, the less cottage-like it seemed. I began to silently panic as I noticed the sky beginning to gradually darken, which was not helped by the discovery that the cottage-like thing was not a cottage at all. 

“Where are we?” Etana asked, looking around. 

The woods here were not as thick, they looked like they’d been cleared long ago and had only grown back a little. The cottage-like thing was just an old wall from what must have been a cottage or a shed long ago. To my complete horror, I noticed something strange on the bottom corner: scorch marks. I froze, scanning the area. As I looked closer, more white cottage-like things appeared in the distance. I spotted something rust-colored behind a tree and, upon coming up to it, discovered it to be a very very old refrigerator. It was mostly black, burned. 

“Oh my god,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I locked eyes with an equally petrified Anya T, saying “We’re in the Old Village, aren’t we?” 

She nodded, maintaining her expression. I looked around at the group, Misha had stopped crying and was now standing silently, terrified. Anya L. had turned so white she looked like one of the very ghosts we were afraid of. 

“Okay,” I muttered to myself. I cleared my throat and spoke for the group, “if we’re in the Old Village, that means the lake is nearby. Once we find it, we’ll know where to get home.” Nobody spoke or moved. Clearing my throat again, I broke the stunned silence, “We have to keep moving. Besides, there’s nothing to really be scared of here.” 

Etana made a noise like a chipmunk that’d been stepped on, and we slowly started out again, towards the direction of the sun, which always set behind the lake. 

After what seemed like forever, I finally saw it. A glimmer through the trees. The end was near. 

“I see it!” I exclaimed, urging “We’re almost there guys! Keep going! See? I told you there wa-” there was a resounding crunch as I stepped on something hard. I looked down, “Is that-” I stopped talking and froze. I had stepped on something pearly white, something that didn’t belong in a forest. 

“THAT'S A RIB!” Chase screeched. Everyone. Lost. Their. Shit. 

“RUN!” someone screamed. We booked it towards the lake. Sparkly velcro Skechers flying, we finally broke out into an unfamiliar clearing. 

But, not all was lost. There was a house. Not a cottage; an actual house. Without another thought, I sprinted to the front door and rang the doorbell. We stood there, panting messes, holding our sobbing younger siblings. Someone answered the door. Thankfully it wasn’t a serial killer. It was just Scott. Scott called our parents, who came down and picked us up. I ran up to my mom and hugged her tight, 

“I thought we were all gonna die,” I whispered to her.

She pulled back out of the hug: “Oh please, you guys were only gone for like an hour and a half.” 

In the end, we did not have enough berries for a pie.