The last two pages were stuck together. I slipped them apart with my forefinger, careful not to smear any of my blood on the book.
The final sticky corner gave way, and instead of more drawings, I found my name.
My Dearest Maren,
It breaks my heart to write this, because I know if you ever have to read it, that means I’m dead and, worse, you’re in grave danger. I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you, my darling girl, but remember you are not alone. You will never be alone. All of heaven will be with you, watching you and guiding you. I can’t tell you much more here in case this journal falls into the wrong hands, but know that the longer you possess it, the more danger you are in. Deliver it quickly. Be careful whom you trust. Things and people aren’t always what they seem.
All My Love,
Mom
The letter from my mother shattered my carefully constructed walls. Tears that seemed to come up from my heart spilled down my cheeks as I tried to keep my sobbing as inaudible as possible. I couldn’t stop a giant teardrop from escaping, though, and it fell onto the page, near the word Love. Without thinking, I brushed it away. The ink smeared, and I cried out, sick to have ruined something so precious, one of the last words from my mother.
My bedroom door rattled under a sharp knock, and I lurched, slamming my elbow against the corner of the armoire. “Maren?” my grandmother called out. “Are you all right?”
I slammed the journal shut and dropped it back into the box. I pushed the package under my bed and jumped up. I didn’t want my grandmother to see me crying or try to comfort me. I didn’t trust her yet, and according to my mother, I wasn’t supposed to trust just anyone. Was her warning meant to apply to grandparents I’d only just met? Maybe.
“Just a minute,” I called. I checked the mirror and wiped my cheeks with my sleeve, thankful I hadn’t been wearing mascara.
I opened the door, a fake smile plastered on my face.
“Your grandfather wanted to show you my old golf clubs,” my grandmother said, peeking over my shoulder to see if anything was amiss. “See if they’d suit you.”
“Great,” I replied, leaving the room to prove I was fine. I wasn’t, of course. I didn’t know if I’d ever be “fine” again. Especially not in Scotland. But I’d become great at pretending.
CHAPTER 4
Even though I knew it came from an animal, still the screaming sounded like a girl in terrible pain. I ran through the woods, branches scratching at my face, trying desperately to find her.
I saw movement in the brush to my left. I turned and pushed the scraggly bushes open like a curtain. She was there, lying on a carpet of pine needles and blood. The baby deer. An arrow was sticking straight out of an oozing wound on her neck.
As soon as I burst into the little clearing, I was greeted with complete silence.
I’d had the dream about the baby deer three times in the last week, and it was starting to wear me down. Every time, I arrived too late to save her, and woke up with a sick heart and even sicker stomach.
As if the recurring dream wasn’t bad enough, I was haunted by a thought that would pop, unwanted, into my head during the day. Find the fawn, it echoed. I had to do something about it. Maybe if I could find the deer in real life and see that she was okay, the nightmares would stop. It sounded crazy, even to me, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t sit in my bedroom crying about my mother’s desperate letter to me one more day, and I couldn’t dream about someone or something dying one more night.
The forest across the lane from my grandparents’ house looked like a good place to start. I was going to walk until I found the familiar clearing or it turned dark—whichever came first. Since the sun stayed up until eleven p.m. in Scotland this time of year, I was hopeful.
Up close, the trees were phenomenal. They were some kind of evergreen, although nothing like Christmas tree pines. They twisted hundreds of feet up into the sky like giant strands of black licorice. They were crazy fairy-tale trees. I imagined if they wanted, they could yank their roots up out of the mud and walk away.
The forest floor was soft, covered in a dusting of pine needles and dewy, green moss. Everything shimmered like it was never completely dry. I found a small stream and followed it uphill.
As I rounded the top of a knoll, I spotted her: the tiny deer from my dreams. She was standing alone, pulling strands out of a patch of grass and eating them, quietly, daintily. It might have been my imagination, but a perfectly straight sunbeam seemed to shine directly on her.
I froze. I knew the tiniest crunch of a broken twig underfoot would send her bounding off, and I didn’t want to lose her. It was silent, except for the gurgling of the brook and the whistle of a . . . THWACK!
I screamed like I had been shot, even though I saw the arrow lodged in the tree bark, still quivering from impact. The tree was a good twenty feet away from me—I was nowhere near in danger—but I’d never been shot at before. Before I could scream again or decide which direction to run, a thickly accented male voice bellowed, “Crivens!”
I couldn’t see anyone. “You didn’t have to holler like that!” the voice continued. “Now you’ve cost me my supper.”
As if disengaging invisible powers, a young man emerged from the woods. I had been staring in that exact spot and didn’t see him until he came crashing toward me. He wore a rough-looking kilt of green-and-brown plaid. The pattern clearly did a perfect job of camouflaging its wearer.
Even though I knew the boys back home would mercilessly call it a “skirt,” there was nothing girlish about Scottish kilts, especially this one. Its ragged edges fell across his tanned knees in a way that was more masculine than any pair of jeans. His hands were as rough as his clothing, but he gave the overall impression that he could take care of . . . anything.
As he got closer, his eyes flared for just a second as if he recognized me, but then the look passed. I desperately wished I did know him.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered, taken aback by how beautiful he was. I’d never thought that word, beautiful, about a boy, but it popped into my head instantly, and in this case, it definitely applied. He was the most breathtaking guy I had ever seen, and—thank you, God!—seemed to be about my age. His wavy, chestnut-colored hair fell over his forehead, but not enough to hide his dark blue eyes. He was tall and broad shouldered, but had a thin waist. He carried his bulging frame like he was wearing football shoulder pads, but I could see from where his white tunic shirt hung open at his chest that he was all bare skin and muscle.
“You should be,” he answered. His accent was thicker than anyone else’s I had heard in Scotland, but I had no trouble understanding him. In fact, the way he spoke, his particular cadence and rhythm, seemed to suck the breath out of me. He was literally making me dizzy.