"I don't want to go poking around the woods any more today!" whined Bethany, and from the look on the majority of the other kids' faces, they felt the same way. Looked like Ethan had been right on the money. "It wasn't fun like I thought it would be!"

"Fine, fine!" said Jonathan with a wave of his hand. "Kylus or Sandra, can one of you come along? I don't think anyone else needs to go out again this afternoon, though." Ugh, what was he going to do with the other kids, though? Most of them had been in a weird mood even after eating lunch. He'd finished up the dishes to find them actually fighting with one another, which was a first, and although they'd settled down to eat the meal was a bit more subdued than normal. They'd been so well-behaved that he'd forgotten they were just a bunch of kids. Hm, conjuring lunch had really taken it out of him, but maybe he had enough juice in the tank for one minor bit of magic. "Hey Abigail," Jonathan said, "can you focus on your desire for something fun to do real quick?"

Abigail shrugged then nodded. He'd take it. Jonathan enlivened his magic, reached out to Abigail's desire—sure enough, it gave him a similar feeling to when he'd summoned the soccer ball—but instead of letting the magic manifest whatever she was focusing on, he took control of it and a small, colorful box appeared in his hand.

The weirdly combative mood that had been floating around vanished like mist under the sun as eight pairs of eyes locked onto the box with intense curiosity. "What is that?" asked Yanni.

"This," said Jonathan, hoisting the box into the air where they could all see, "is a little game called Uno."

He opened it up and pulled out the cards, which were in shrink wrap. That was annoying; apparently he'd imagined a new deck of Uno cards, and now he was going to have to figure out how to dispose of the plastic. At least none of the kids were young and stupid enough to put it in their mouths. There was also a rules insert, although when he glanced over it the rules printed appeared to include the house rules that his family had always used growing up. That was a little weird.

"How does it work?" Kylus had the exact same fascinated look on his face as Yanni, which was amusing.

"Well, first you shuffle the deck and then deal out seven cards to every player. The goal is to play all of your cards first, and you can play a card if the color or the symbol matches…"

Explaining the rules for Uno went well enough, but when Jonathan sat them down for a practice game before he and Sandra headed back into the woods (she'd rolled her eyes and agreed to come in the face of Kylus' pleading), he ran into an unexpected snag. The cards were of course printed in English because that's how he remembered them, so the numerals and things like "Draw 2" weren't legible to the kids. They could match the numerals like shapes, but Jonathan had to go over what the various cards meant and point out the difference between "6" and "9". Fortunately, the action cards all had icons that were easily recognizable, so it wasn't a big deal, and he and Sandra left a rather cut-throat round of Uno behind them.

Hopefully it didn't come to blows. There'd been that one memorable Christmas when he was about eight that forever went down in family history, and for several years after that Uno had been banned whenever Uncle Frederick was visiting.

In any case, he and Sandra were well enough out of it. Jonathan surveyed the woods in front of them with a frown. "Sandra, what did that creek look like? Think we could walk along it in the woods without too much trouble?" He really didn't want to go circumnavigating more absurdly large patches of thorn bushes.

Sandra tilted her head in thought. "I think so? We didn't do much more than stare at it from the road."

"Good enough. It wasn't very much fun walking around the woods, and I want to see where that creek leads."

They set off up the road.

Jonathan looked around with interest as they traveled. Although the road had started out fairly broad where it ran in front of the orphanage, as it entered the woods it shrank down to only about half its width and reverted to plain dirt. It would probably serve horses or people walking well enough, but a wheeled contrivance would be tricky.

The woods were encroaching on the road, as well, just as Ethan had mentioned, so in places it was reduced to little more than a track. Jonathan would have loved to explore and try to figure out why exactly there was a road running here in the first place, but it didn't seem likely in the near future given he'd have to drag the entire gaggle of children along. Although come to think of it, extended camping trips would be pretty easy as long as he conjured up a base set of equipment beforehand. No need to pack in food when he could just conjure what they needed as they needed it.

Probably a good idea to have water on hand, though, just in case something happened to him or they got separated.

In any case, that was a musing for another time. After working their way along the path for fifteen minutes or so, Sandra and Jonathan reached the creek.

Jonathan could see why Ethan had been hesitant to cross the bridge. The creek wasn't huge, but it was wide enough he doubted he could jump across and was moving along pretty quickly. The bridge had seen better days; at some point in the past year or two a tree branch had fallen on it and taken out a solid chunk from the middle, then jammed in the creek in such a way that it was obstructing the remaining segment. The boards all looked quite weather-beaten, as well. Jonathan could easily imagine the whole edifice falling apart under his feet.

"Yeah, we're not crossing that thing."

"Good," said Sandra. "I don't want to get wet."

Jonathan grinned and pointed along the near side of the creek to the right. "Let's follow this creek for a bit and see if it does indeed run parallel to the orphanage's land. If it does so for long enough, it might make a good place to congregate if we need to flee into the woods for some reason."

Following the creek was unfortunately not as easy as Sandra had made it sound. Although the area near the bridge wasn't too overgown, they came across multiple trees growing right up against the water that they had to detour around, as well as one portion where the creek curved away and they found themselves at the foot of an embankment that would be very difficult to climb, forcing them to backtrack.

Fortunately, although it did have a few twists and turns the creek did appear to run more or less parallel to the edge of the orphanage's property, so Jonathan was hopeful that they could use it as a landmark.

About twenty minutes after they made it away from the steep embankment, the creek widened out and slowed down and Jonathan and Sandra ran into yet another thicket of brambles. This one grew right out over the water, and was high enough that Jonathan couldn't see over the top. As he and Sandra followed the edge of the thicket, however, Jonathan noticed that there were several trees growing out of the middle of it between the outer border and the river. When they reached the far side, instead of continuing on Jonathan stopped and looked back at the thicket in thought.

"Hey Sandra, does it look to you like this thicket is this thick all the way through?"

Sandra gave it a look. "I'm not sure. Those trees are growing out of the middle of it, though, so…maybe not?"

Jonathan crouched down and carefully shifted some of the leaves aside. Good grief, the branches of whatever bush this was were almost as thick as his wrist in places, and sported thorns that rivaled his fingers for length. "No one in their right mind would try to push through this thing," he muttered. "Sandra, I want to try something; can you please focus on wanting to get into the middle of this thicket for me?"

"Sure, I can do that." She fell quite, presumably doing as he asked.

Jonathan enlivened his magic, pulled in the smoke around Sandra, and thrust a hand at the branches in front of him, imagining them moving aside.

Rather than parting, however, the branches immediately in front of Jonathan disintegrated, filling the air with a smell somewhere between burning plant matter and thriving weeds as a space roughly waist-high and a couple of feet deep vanished into powder.

"Well, that'll work," said Jonathan to himself. He wasn't going to be able to clear a path all the way to the center today—he still wasn't quite back to full capacity for magic—but it looked like he could. "Okay, Sandra, I want to try something a little different. Can you try to focus on wanting the thicket to grow back?"

"Uh, I guess?"

Jonathan reached out to Sandra's desire, which wasn't as thick as usual. Seemed like she liked these brambles just as little as he did, but it did the trick. Power from the Infernal Realms flowed, and Jonathan intentionally focused hard on just the nearest branches growing.

Although, he had to quit part-way through, it worked! More bramble branches sprouted from the exposed wood along the edges, and even grew out of the dirt underneath, reaching upward almost a foot in the time that Jonathan was able to channel power. He carefully pushed aside some of the branches, and sure enough there was still an empty space behind them. He still scraped himself pretty badly on a thorn as he withdrew his hands, though. He was pretty sure he was going to really hate this plant before all was done.

"What are you thinking?" asked Sandra.

"Well, these brambles are awful," said Jonathan, "but if we're right about them being less thick in the middle there where the trees are, then I think we might be able to clear out a path and the center with a combination of magic and the proper tools. Since I can grow them back with magic, as well, we should be able to create an entrance that's obscured; maybe something low to the ground where you have to crawl in, so an adult isn't likely to find it. Then if we stashed some tents and other supplies in the middle there we'd have a bolt-hole that both hides and defends anyone inside."

"Oh, like the Witch Herschel!" said Sandra. "That could work!"

Jonathan wasn't sure what this witch Herschel was about; maybe a local folk tale.

Well, they had a long walk back… "I've never heard of a witch named Herschel. Isn't that a boy's name?"

"Well, yeah, Witch Herschel was a man."

"Tell me the story while we walk back?"

Sandra looked upstream with deep disapproval. "I suppose."

Score, Jonathan hadn't been looking forward to another bout of semi-awkward silence. Sandra was always so reticent.