RAVEN'S GATE: Book One of THE GATEKEEPERS
Anthony Horowitz
Scholastic Press
(Horror/Fantasy)
ISBN: 0439679958
256 pages

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Matt made a decision, stepped off the road, and took twenty paces forward, following a single path. The pine needles crunched underneath his feet. Provided he didn't turn left or right, he would be fine. He would let the trees guide him. And if he thought he was getting lost, he would simple follow the same path back to the road. And yet, he stopped to catch his breath. It really was extraordinary. He felt as if he had stepped through a mirror between two dimensions. On the road it had been a cool, bright spring morning. The atmosphere in the wood was strangely warm and sluggish. Shafts of sunlight, a deep, intense green, slanted in different directions. On the road, he had heard the twitter of birds and the lowing of a cow. In the wood, everything was silent...as if sound was forbidden to enter.

Already he saw that he should have brought a compass with him. At the very least he could have brought something to help him find his way back: a knife or a tin of paint. He remembered a story he'd been told at school. Some Greek guy-Theseus or someone-had gone into a maze to fight a creature that was half man, half bull. The Minotaur. He'd been given a ball of wool that he'd unraveled, and that was how he'd found his way out. Matt should have done the same.

He turned around and, counting out loud, he retraced the twenty paces he had taken.

The road wasn't there.

It was impossible. He turned around. The trees stretched on endlessly. He looked left and right.

The same. He took another five steps. More trees, all of them identical, running as far as the eye could see...and farther. The road had disappeared as if it had never been there. Either that, or somehow the trees had grown. That was what it felt like. The artificial wood was all around him. It had captured him and would never let him go.

He took a deep breath, counted twenty paces forward, then turned left and walked another ten. Still no road. It didn't matter what direction he looked in. Everywhere he saw the same thing. Tall, narrow trunks and dark green needles. Gloomy corridors between them. A hundred different directions but no real choice.

Excerpted from RAVEN'S GATE © Copyright 2005 by Anthony Horowitz. Reprinted with permission by Scholastic Press. All rights reserved

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