01_-_The_Alchemyst

On either side of the overgrown path, trees rose high into the heavens
and the undergrowth was surprisingly thick: wild brambles and thorn bushes
scraped at the side of the car, while furze, gorse, and stinging nettles,
wrapped through with poison ivy, completed the impenetrable hedge.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sophie murmured. “It’s just not
natural.” And then she stopped, realizing what she’d just said. She swiveled
around in the seat to look at Flamel. “It’s not natural, is it?”
He shook his head, suddenly looking old and tired. There were dark
rings under his eyes, and the wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth
seemed deeper. “Welcome to our world,” he whispered.
“There’s something moving through the undergrowth,” Josh announced
loudly. “Something big…I mean really big.” After everything he’d seen and
experienced so far today, his imagination started working overtime. “It’s
keeping pace with the car.”
“So long as we stay on the track, we shall be fine,” Flamel said evenly.
Sophie peered into the dark forest floor. For a moment she saw nothing,
then she realized that what she’d first taken for a patch of shadow was, in
fact, a creature. It moved, and sunlight dappled its hairy hide. She caught a
glimpse of a flat face, a pug nose and huge curling tusks.
“It’s a pig—a boar,” she corrected herself. And then she spotted three
more, flanking the right-hand side of the car.
“They’re on my side too,” Josh said. Four of the hulking beasts were
moving through the bushes to his left. He glanced in the rearview mirror.
“And behind us.”
Sophie, Scatty and Nicholas turned in their seats to stare through the
rear window at the two enormous boars that had slipped through the
undergrowth and were trotting along on the path behind them. Sophie
suddenly realized just how big the creatures were—each one was easily the
size of a pony. They were hugely muscled across the shoulders, and the tusks
jutting up from their lower jaws were enormous, starting out as thick as her
wrist before tapering to needle-sharp points.