“I didn’t think about that.”

“You don’t think about anything.”

We had fallen into a pit without relising there was a pit in front of us. We had been walking, there was mist, I hadn’t seen the pit and we fell in, me first.

“I didn’t think there were any tiger pits in these mountains, we’ve been here many times to collect red rasberries and there haven’t ever been any here.” I corrected her to my defense.

“Whatever, you still fell first, I thought you just ducked, in casethere was a branch, so I did too.” She replied sassily.

“Lets just think about how to get out of here, we have to be home by supper and have a handful of berries, if we don’t you know they’ll skin us alive.”

Suddenly I felt a hard kick from Stephine and I stumbled and fell, slaming hard into the wall of the pit and the breath was knocked out of me.

“What did you do that for?” I managed to wheez out

“Don’t remind me what they’ll do, I already know, I watched it happen before.”

“I was exagerrating!”

“Last time someone returned, they were brought to the office and…”

She shuddered.

“What?”

“I can’t say, I’l stay awake for weeks, even when I was so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other, I couldn’t fall asleep.”

Just then something fell from the pit and that was the last thing I saw.