'Can you remember our aunt's name?' Moira asked out of the blue. The twins were on the glowing path again.

'Actually, I can't... Can you?' Faolan replied slowly.

'Would I have asked if I could?'

Probably not, Faolan thought. 'I'm sure it's in the letter Father gave us.'

Silence fell on them again. It was too dark now to read the letter anyway, so this had to wait for the next day. Now that the twins were up on their feet from midday to midnight, they noticed the difference that night-time brought onto the forest clearer than ever before. In daylight, young green leaves stretched for as much sunlight as they could get while little birds and all sorts of insects were flying around and singing their own melodies.

When the darkness came, in the short time before the glowing started, the forest went absolutely silent. Even the twins walked more carefully without noticing it, it was as if everybody tried not to wake each other up. And then, when the silence was complete, the forest started glowing. Always in the same order, at first only those leaves they touched shone weakly, but soon all plants and creatures of the night radiated the intangible light in a growing radius around them. The brighter everything shone the calmer Faolan became and the more alarmed Moira seemed.

After a few days, they finally found the mountain that lay between them and their destination. It didn't just slowly rise as an ordinary mountain would, but it just appeared in the middle of the forest, showing a high stony cliff. There was no way over it and as far as Faolan could see no way around it either. The cliff went on to both sides until it disappeared in the distance.

'And now?' Faolan asked more himself than anybody else.

'How would I know? This was your idea after all.' He stood there thinking. From where they were standing, the sun had long disappeared behind the mountain, although it wasn't that late yet and the sky itself was still bright.

'Well, the mountain looks as if it would never end either way. We'll have to walk around it somehow but basically, both ways are rubbish.'

'Great. You choose, genius,' Moira said and sat down on the ground. She took a few things out of her bag and started preparing her lunch.

They were sitting there until nightfall, since they didn't know where to go from there on.

Stupid mountain, Faolan thought to himself. The grass they were sitting on started glowing weakly. I wish there was a way through it, he heard a voice say in his head. The thought made him laugh. It was silly to wish a mountain away. The only thing that was really steady and could not be fought or removed by anybody was the earth with its mountains, he thought. The only way over this mountain was having wings, which neither Faolan nor Moira had.

'Look!' Moira said and jumped up. She pointed at the cliff and Faolan followed the imaginary line between her hand and what she was pointing at. It took him a while to realise what he was looking at. Where the mountain was closest to them, a glowing path made of strong roots was digging a tunnel into the stones. Faolan stared at it with his mouth open. He got up and walked closer. The roots moved like huge arms, digging even deeper into the mountain. Their light grew stronger when he touched them and he felt a power rush through him as he had never experienced before.

'That's great! If we just follow the plants, they might dig a way through to the other side for us!' he cheered.

'And why would they do that?' Moira said sceptically.

'Because we asked nicely?'

'We didn't ask...'

'Does it matter? It's our best chance!'

'No it isn't. Are you out of your mind? This mountain could go on for kilometres, the plants might as well just stop somewhere, we could get stuck in there. No way I'm going through there,' Moira said and crossed her arms. 'You go, if you like, but I'll go around it.'

Even though Faolan saw her point, he still didn't want to give up. So far, the forest had always helped him. 'Why would the plants be digging into the stone then if not to let us through?' he said in a last attempt to change her mind.

'Because somebody makes them do so. This could be a trap. Forests don't glow, they don't help people and they don't dig holes into mountains on their own!' Moira shouted. In the distance, nightly hunters turned their heads in the direction the sound had come from and started running.

'So you're saying there's an evil witch casting spells to guide us precisely where we want to go? I thought you didn't believe in magic.'

'And I thought you did.' The twins stared at each other.

'Alright, we have three ways to go,' Faolan said after he'd calmed down a little. 'left, right or straight ahead. You said I had to choose, I chose straight ahead. If that's not where you want to go, then tell me, do we turn left or right?'

Moira hesitated. 'I say we turn right.' She tried to sound convinced but for once, she failed.

'Are you sure?' Their discussion went on until they heard loud howling nearby. Faolan's eyes widened and Moira held a finger to her lips. They quickly gathered their stuff and in silent agreement ran to the entrance of the tunnel.

Then, Faolan made a mistake; he looked back and saw glowing red eyes, loads of them. He stumbled and fell over only a few steps away from the tunnel. Shock filled his heart and he couldn't move his legs as he saw the eyes quickly advancing. Suddenly he felt Moira's hands on his right elbow; she dragged him back on his feet and pushed him into the tunnel, where he slowly regained control over his body.

As soon as they were both inside the glowing tunnel, the plants behind them started growing fast. They were stretching and reaching for the top of the entrance, from where on they closed it like a huge spider web, growing ever thicker and stronger. The red eyes had arrived at the entrance of the tunnel now and the twins stumbled a few steps backwards, not being able to take their eyes off the scene in front of them.

A huge red eye with a pupil darker than the night appeared in one of the last holes of the almost covered entrance. Then they heard a growl that echoed from all sides in the tunnel. Big leaves were growing everywhere now and soon there were no holes left and the sound of scratching claws from the other side slowly died away.

'I guess that means we go straight ahead then,' Moira said. Faolan looked at her and swallowed.

The darkness was eagerly pushed away by the blue light spreading from the roots to all sides of the tunnel. With great effort, the twins moved on deeper into the mountain. The air around them was cool and wet and Faolan pulled his coat tighter as they walked on. With every step, he grew a little braver and soon he walked in front of his sister, who didn't like the thought of having so much weight above her head.

'It could crush down on us at any time,' she whispered. There was no trace left in her voice of the bravery she usually showed.

'But why would it? It could just as well crush down behind or ahead of us or it might just hold. The roots are still there. Look at how thick and strong they've grown, I'm sure they'll hold the mountain back,' Faolan said, not sounding like himself at all. His sister wasn't happy with his answer, but she kept her mouth shut from then on while he was holding a monologue about anything that came to his mind. He was trying to distract her, but since everything that was around them scared her, it didn't really help.

When they got tired, they stopped and ate a little bit. They had lost all sense of time and Faolan forced himself to keep quiet about the fact that they didn't have much food with them and even less water. If they didn't come out of the mountain the next day, they were doomed to starve in there.

After only a few hours of sleep, the two of them woke up again. The plants around them were shining very brightly now and for a moment, Faolan wasn't sure which way they had come. Panic arose in him, but when his sister was ready to move on, she seemed to know exactly which way to go. He only dared to ask her later that day how she had known which direction to take.

'The air moves in here. Imagine it to be a stream of water, it usually comes out of the mountain at some point. We know where it came in and now it's trying to fill the empty space which the roots create ahead of us. So we just walk the way the air goes too,' she explained. It didn't seem very convincing to Faolan but it had to be good enough.

The later it got, the more worried Faolan became. This tunnel could go on forever; they might never reach its end. There were only a few drops of water left in their supplies and he became thirstier and thirstier.

I wish there was a stream somewhere here, he thought. If the water comes out of the mountains, then it must be somewhere inside them.

Only a few steps after, he thought he could hear the sound of water dropping from the ceiling. The sound echoed from all sides and after a few more steps the drops formed a tiny stream running down the walls, filling bowls formed by the roots on either side of the tunnel.

'That is... weird,' Moira whispered. Faolan nodded. Did somebody read his mind? Somebody who was a master of magic?

'Well...' he started. 'If it's already there, we might as well drink it.'

'And what if it's poisoned?'

'Really? We're walking through a tunnel formed by giant glowing roots and the first thing you worry about is whether the water which has magically appeared is poisoned?'

Moira answered with a cruel look. To demonstrate that she wasn't scared, she drank a few gulps and then filled her supplies. To Faolan's surprise, the water was glowing just as much as the plants were, but the glowing stopped once he put it into the waterskin. Just to try something out, Faolan wished for a cake and freshly grilled meat. Instead, he got violet berries suddenly growing from the roots all around them. His mouth stood open and his sister just looked at him in surprise.

'Did you do anything?' she asked.

'Not really, no.'

'Well, I guess we can now wander this place for the rest of our lives. Somebody seems to want us to live on.'

'Somebody or something...and for now, at least,' added Faolan.

//This week's chapter already uploaded Saturday (late) night instead of Sunday because I'll be busy tomorrow, hope you enjoy it, if you do, be sure to leave a vote and comment below, thanks!