An extremely long hour passed the two women by, their calls answered only by the whistle of wind through the trees and the distant cry of unknown birds. Paulette's flashlight, a sturdy and absurdly expensive metal hiking flashlight , was as useful as a box of matches would have been. The flashlight had been designed for battery life, durability, and illuminating a wide but relatively short area in modest light, not to act as a searchlight looking for a needle in a haystack. Even at its most focused setting, the light barely traveled forty feet from Paulette in a pretty wide cone, and was just as bright as her friends' cheap plastic flashlights that they had probably bought from a grocery store or a pharmacy. The Collector hadn't brought a flashlight of her own, her "natural forrest sense" apparently making her too proud to carry one, and as such she was all but useless in the search.
"Julia!" Paulette called for what had to be the hundredth time, only to be answered by silence for the hundredth time. Her shoulders slumped. Was her sister really gone?
"She may have fallen into some mud and can't answer, or rolled down at an angle and is far left or right of us." The Collector said in Clementine's soft little voice, trying and failing to comfort Paulette. "Don't worry, she doesn't have to breathe, drink, or eat like this. If she isn't hurt, we have all the time in the world to find her.
"If she isn't hurt." Paulette repeated bitterly.
The Collector sighed. "Look, it's dark and we're tired. We'll have a better chance of finding her if we go out looking for her fresh in the morning. I can offer you some boarding if-"
"No." Paulette answered immediately. "My friends and I aren't going to be the Hansels and Gretels to your witch, bitch."
Clementine's face contorted into a sharp frown. "Look, I'm not the monster you think I am. I-
"You just kidnap and paralyze people, then hold them against their will in some dungeon forever." Paulette interrupted again, not wanting to hear The Collector's sale's pitch.
"I've never lost a head before." The Collector continued, her tone making it very clear what she meant by 'lost'. She looked Paulette in the eyes. "and I never want to know what that feels like. I love them, all of them, and I want them to be safe. I swear, on my life, that I'm not going to snag you or any of your friends while we're looking for your sister. And once we do find her, I'll return her to her body and I'll let you all leave my forest intact. I'll take you if you come back, obviously, but if you come back after tonight... I have to assume you wanted to be taken."
Why did Clementine's eyes have to be so big and cute? It was like looking at a kicked puppy. "I'll talk it over with my friends." Paulette said, after a long pause. Pulling out her phone, she saw that yup, still no signal, and promptly began walking back up the hill. "Wait, we should probably mark this spot, make sure we remember where we last left off."
"Good idea." The Collector said, pausing for a moment before removing Clementine's head. Climbing up a tree and setting her in one of its higher branches, Clementine began loudly whistling at a high pitch. Not a musical tune, just a single continuous exhale that Paulette watched her make for almost an entire minute before she remembered what The Collector had said about heads not needing air and realizing that Clementine could do this indefinitely. Climbing back down, The Collector pulled out her phone and typed "We'll be able to hear that from a long way off. Can I walk with you back to your group?"
"I... guess?" Paulette said, realizing that she wouldn't have questioned The Collector's intentions if she hadn't brought attention to them. If she was going to kidnap the three of them, it would've made more sense to kidnap the isolated Paulette, then go back on her two distracted friends rather than taking on all three at once, which seemed to imply that she could trust The Collector to keep her word, for now, but it still felt wrong to allow her sister's kidnapper follow her. Paulette began marching back up the hill, not looking back to see if The Collector was keeping up but knowing full well that she was.
For lack of a voice to speak with, the two walked back to the trail in complete silence, both engrossed in worry over Julia. Reaching the path once more, and finding themselves about a mile ahead of where Dianne had been left to hold down Julia's struggling body, the two walk up the trail in continued silence. As they approached the spot where Paulette's friends had been left, they saw...
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