Once again Samantha was lost. She had thought she knew the island well, but after getting lost two straight days, she knew that wasn't true. She was still a stranger to Eternity, though at least now she knew why that was.
Samantha didn't belong on this island. She belonged on the mainland, in Portland, with Uncle Hector. As soon as she found Prudence and they fixed Uncle Hector's boat, then she would finally go home.
That was if she could find Prudence. At the moment she was more concerned with finding her way back to the village. Wendell would have gone there to get help. If he hadn't, then she could at least get Rebecca or someone else to help her resume the search.
As she walked, Samantha carried the stick she had used on the beast. There could still be more of them lurking on the island and it didn't pay to take chances, as she knew well by now. She had killed two of them, but the next time she might not be so lucky.
After walking around for hours without getting anywhere, Samantha sat down on a rotting log. She looked around to try and get her bearings, but it didn't do any good. She was lost. The best she could hope for was to stumble across something again, as she had the last time when she came upon Pryde's old house.
What a mess she had made. If she hadn't been so mean to Prudence, she could be back in the village-what was left of it-with Uncle Hector. She could be getting some of her questions about her old life answered instead of sitting on a log, flicking ants away before they could crawl up her body.
Not all the fault lay with her, though. If Prudence hadn't gotten it into her head to go out that night, then Samantha could have come back and made things up with her. Why had she gone out? Prudence was terrified of the forest even in the daylight, let alone at night. And why had Rebecca let her go? Rebecca was such a responsible girl, far more so than she should be at her age. Why did she let Prudence go out into the dark alone?
No one had acted very smart that night. Now they had to pay for it; Prudence perhaps more than Samantha. By now Prudence could have been torn apart by Pryde's beasts. She might have fallen off a cliff. She might have fallen and broken her leg or suffered some other debilitating injury. She might be dying-
When Samantha heard someone sobbing, she assumed at first it was her. Then she realized the sound was too far away to have come from her. A moment later she heard Prudence's voice say, "We're going to die here."