“I think I found another one over here,” a voice boomed, sing-song and cheery as it rebounded through the canopy of twigs like the damning omen it was.  A rustling was heard below: leaves being flung sky-high and sticks snapping under designer sneakers.  “I can’t reach him, though.  He crawled up too far under the roots.”

“Oh, just forget him, then.  I hear, like, a bunch of them running around down here,” answered another voice in a slightly higher pitch.

Garth, heart tightly constricted with dread inside his icy chest, held his breath as he perched on a branch thick enough not to creak as he stealthily made his way back toward the main stalk so he could begin ascending higher up the tree.

He had been foolish.  Selfish.  He’d wandered so far up not even out of necessity but out of his own hubris.  Climbing wasn’t difficult for him; among the makeshift tribe of shrinkers who made their secret home in this corner of the orchard, he was probably the fittest, and wasn’t shy about showing it off, even if it was to the benefit of everyone else when gathering food.  It made sense that if anyone was going to go for the freshest apples, it should be him.

Still, there was a plentiful fruit stockpile buried nearby in some of the root-supported tunnels the group used for sleeping quarters.  It was a good season, and they hadn’t wanted for food, and yet Garth had taken the opportunity early in the morning to venture outside and forage, which he had spent the last three years of guarded freedom learning through personal experience was the absolute worst time to do so.  Not only that, he’d done it without telling anyone else where he was going beside his friend Tom, who’d insisted on coming to ensure Garth didn’t injure himself on the climb.

It was because of this gracious act that the inch-and-a-half tall Tom was now clenched in the sweaty palm of a pigtailed visitor to the orchard, most likely never to see his friends or surrogate family again.  Depending on the girl’s idea of fun or her dietary preferences, he might not see much of anything ever again.

The attack had been swift and with little warning, in spite of the delighted voices giggling garishly from far down the aisle of trees.  Garth and Tom were already most of the way back down the wooden tower, just under five feet away from the ground, when the two girls had finished their footrace into this distant corner of the orchard, which tended to be left alone by the general public due to its distance from the parking lot.  They didn’t look very old, but age was never a safe consideration to make in deciding whether a person would treat a shrinker with any degree of humanity, and Garth’s fears of the youths’ intentions were confirmed almost immediately.

“Are you sure this is the corner your sister said they were in, Leann?” one asked.  “I don’t see any.”

“Yes!  Now pipe down, or they’ll all just hide in their little holes, and we won’t catch, like, any,” Leann hissed, shushing her friend with a finger over her lips.  “They probably already know we’re here, so look fast.”

The girls were right: the community would’ve noticed their arrival, thanks to a series of intricately constructed junk structures underground that vibrated when potential predators were above, informing most of the more cautious shrunken inhabitants to take cover.  Garth, at least, was grateful for this, but it wouldn’t do any good for any shrinkers that happened to be wandering around in the grass in the late morning.

Above all else, it was practically a death sentence for himself and his friend, who at this moment were vulnerably hanging from a precarious set of jutting bark chunks on the longest segment of the tree without ledges.

Totally exposed.

Garth and Tom both froze in place, grateful to have chosen to wear their brown scrap outfits to more easily blend with the tree, and hugged themselves to the rounded surface.  They heard the grass rustling right behind them, could feel the shadows dancing against their backs as the girls walked right by.

“What kinds are they supposed to be?” one girl whispered, her hair held back behind her head with a white headband and rubber bangles adorning her thin wrists.  “Did she say?”

“I’m not sure, but I think, like, really little ones.  Stacy said she found a two-incher further away from here, and made him tell her where he came from,” Leann giggled.

Garth’s blood ran cold.  Jeremy had wandered off too far about three weeks before and hadn’t been seen since.  A couple search parties had been sent out under cover of darkness, but the grim understanding shortly after was that he’d been snatched up.  This boldly announced statement of Leann’s seemed to confirm it.

“Why would he do that if all his little friends live here?”

“Well, like, she had to sit on him a few times,” Leann explained coolly.  “He didn’t want to tell her at first.”

“Ohhh,” the other girl said.  “That makes sense.”

“No kidding.  My sister’s butt is huge,” Leann reported, and with the snort both girls devolved into amused cackles.

Garth studied the ground far below.  Continuing the descent would be suicide, and staying at chest level with the visitors might be even worse if such a thing was possible.  Hushed, the pair waited until the girls had disappeared around a pair of closely intertwined trees and mostly out of earshot.  Wordlessly, then, Garth shoved Tom in the back, and the both of them scrambled back up the bits of wood, hand over hand, as fast as they could move without snapping the holds.

“This was a bad idea,” Garth grumbled to himself.

“I know,” Tom agreed.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

They’d just managed to clear the lengthier part of the climb, with Garth pulling himself onto a higher branch coated in leaves so he could reach back down to give Tom a hand, when through the brush he could make out the forms of the two girls in their loud pink tank tops rounding the corner again, closer than he’d anticipated given the path they’d taken.  Quickly, Garth extended an arm toward his friend, hoping reality could be cheated, even though he’d already seen the whites of the girl’s eyes squared onto their perch.

“Savannah, I think I see one,” Leann whispered happily, her voice carrying in their direction on the soft breeze.  “He’s, like, just hanging onto the tree.”

Tom paused, wincing as though he’d been struck by a blunt object across the skull, and didn’t accept the offer to be pulled up, retracting his hand back to his chest and over his heart.  His eyes moved downward, away from Garth.

“Give me your fucking hand,” Garth ordered in the near-silence through gritted teeth as he realized what Tom was doing.  His neck glistened, and his chest heaved as he gasped for breath after enraged breath.

Shaking his head slowly from side to side, Tom looked back up at Garth one final time, a look of finality glazed over his irises that made his friend grow even colder than he already was.  Garth’s muscles tensed, and for a moment he considered lunging down at Tom, tackling him against the wall to face the danger he’d brought upon them as a team, no matter how damningly fruitless a gesture it would be.

“Climb,” Tom mouthed.

An instant later, a massive hand blotted out the distant visage of grass below the tunnel of leaves and brush, youthful fingers outstretched and creased palm opened to receive its tiny prize as it rose toward Tom.  The fourth digit was adorned with a small silver ring with a turquoise birthstone embedded in it that glinted blindingly in the sunlight.

Fighting the urge to let his throat explode with a furious battle cry, Garth reluctantly took his friend’s selfless gift of distraction and yanked himself up onto the twig, throwing his body into a thicker patch of leaves, where he’d be completely concealed.

Once he was braced safely, he peered through the thicket in time to see an enormous thumb and forefinger pinching gingerly around Tom’s sides, plucking him gently like a rare insect from the wall of the tree.  The unfortunate capture was then lowered down into Leann’s opposite hand, a field of soft flesh unto itself due to its sheer size.

The girl observed him for a moment, shifting her arm into the sun to give the miniscule man a natural spotlight.  Garth couldn’t see her eyes, but he could definitely hear the intake of adoring air as she relished the thrill of cradling such a dependent creature in her hand.  A moment later Tom was swallowed up by a wall of curling fingers and shadow.

“Did you get him?” Savannah squealed.

“Yeah!  Take a look!” Leann giggled, softly squeezing her fist with just enough restraint that her prize wouldn’t be mulched against her all-encompassing palm, before proudly opening it again to reveal the contents.

“Awww, he is a really small one,” came the reply.  “You were right.  I bet he can’t be more than, like, two inches.  Probably less.”

“That was an awfully high spot you were at, little shrinker,” Leann cooed in a baby voice obviously intended for Tom, despite probably being around ten years younger than him.  With her pinky finger, she did her best imitation of tickling his stomach, though all it really did was pin him pitifully into her skin.  “You might’ve fallen right off the tree, and gotten smooshed under our big giant shoes when we walked by.  Wouldn’t that be sad?”

“So sad,” Savannah concurred with a sigh.

Garth bit his fist and choked out a few choice curses under his breath, his eyes welling with tears, and began observing the branches above through the glistening haze.  Even now, he was just above eye level for the two girls, and he would have to keep going up and just wait out the invasion if he hoped to make it unmolested.  With a heavy sigh, feeling the guilt like a jagged stone lodged in his throat, Garth leapt up the tightly wound twigs, fighting for every handhold with just as much difficulty as he was fighting for oxygen.