An Occidental Book of the Dead, by J. Michael Shell. Part 2.

He wasn’t sure if his feet were quite touching that so-green grass. Aimed straight and grim, Malcolm was stretching whatever sinew it was he wore to put distance, rapidly, between himself and Aminae’s forest. He was aware at a gut level...no, at a molecular level, a sub-atomic level, of how close he’d come to being swallowed in there. He didn’t even dare think of Aminae. One glimpse of her in his thoughts could stop him in his tracks with a vicious longing. He could not survive another encounter with her.