Page 32 of The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan’s Mill #6)

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Dawn seeped through the trees, pale and reluctant, like even the sun wasn’t sure it wanted to be out here.

I shifted in the hollow of the tree where I’d collapsed the night before and instantly regretted it. Every sting from the wasps throbbed, every blotch of poison ivy itched, and my corduroys clung to me like the grabby hands of a swamp creature.

“Well,” I muttered, brushing leaves out of my hair. “That was the worst night of my life… and I once got cornered at a wedding reception by Old Walt explaining his bunion surgery.”

My limbs ached.

My stomach growled.

My throat was dry and all I wanted to do was go home—to my Nook, my bath plug, my tower.

I stumbled out from the tree hollow, trying to pick a direction. The forest stared back at me with a thousand identical trunks and no clear path.

If I was going to get smart about this, I needed a little inspiration from my books.

I scanned through the catalogue in my brain, looking for characters lost in the wilderness, and suddenly it clicked.

“Hansel and Gretel!” I exclaimed.

They were clever enough to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Of course, they were also stupid enough to fall for the old Gingerbread House trick and almost got shoved into a burning oven… but hey, they survived, and right now survival was all I could hope for.

The only problem was, I didn’t have any breadcrumbs.

But I did have—

I shoved a hand into my pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled silk.

Bow ties.

My emergency supply.

They were damp, muddy, limp as drowned slugs, but they were mine… and they would stop me from going around in circles and could even help someone find me. They might just be the thing to get me out of this mess.

“Sorry, my treasures,” I whispered to them. “But desperate times.”

I looped the first one around a low branch and tied it off with shaking fingers. The red silk drooped pathetically, but at least it marked the spot.

Forty or fifty feet further down the track, I tied another.

Then another.

It was a breadcrumb trail in soggy silk. But if anyone came looking, they’d know exactly which stubborn, snarky fool had been here.

And with that, I pressed on into the woods, leaving a trail of bow ties behind me.