Hidden Deep (3 page)

We stopped at the base of an ancient tree with gnarled limbs starting close to the ground. Lad took both my hands inside his and pulled me to face him. An excited grin lit his face. “Do you know where we are?”

“Um… should I?”

“This is where we first met.”

“Really?” I glanced around us. “How do you know? It looks the same as everywhere else out here in the sticks.”

Lad laughed. “No it doesn’t, Ryann. Besides,
this
is a special tree.”

He patted the thick trunk next to us. Looking up into its impossible heights, I spotted something about halfway from the top. It resembled a large nest, resting on the thick branches. I glanced back at Lad. And then I understood.

I backed away with my hands in front of me, shaking my head violently. “Oh no. No. You don’t think—I can’t climb up there.”

Laughing at me again, he said, “You’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll be right behind you the whole time. There’s no reason to be afraid. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

I wanted to be brave. I really did. I wanted to keep talking with Lad, get some answers, get my book back. But my limbs were frozen, just thinking of climbing the enormous tree. It had always been like that—I couldn’t even handle the top bunk at camp.

Lad’s large, solid hands settled on my hips. He steered me toward the tree. At his murmured encouragement, I forced myself to lift one foot and place it on the bottom limb, only a couple feet off the ground. I reached up and grabbed a branch above my head. Trembling but trying, I climbed, the heat of Lad’s body close behind me. I couldn’t decide if it made me want to keep moving or slow down. With him shadowing my every painstaking move, I eventually managed to reach the bottom of the structure.

“Good job. Go ahead and climb in.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got both my hands on the lip of the thing and pulled as Lad boosted me from below. I rolled into it. Lad followed. For a few minutes I rested, letting my wild heartbeat slow and my shaky arms recover.

Finally I took a look around. It
was
like a bird’s nest, only for a terrifyingly large bird. Woven from strong vines and small, flexible branches and lined with an incredibly soft greenish-brown fabric, it was roomy and quite comfortable, actually.

Lad smiled at me triumphantly. “Well?”

“It’s amazing. What is this?”

“It’s sort of a hideaway—my special place. I built it when I was young. I still come here when I want to think or have some time alone. No one knows about it. Well, except for you. And… it’s where I keep things I care about.”

He pointed toward a wooden chest on the other side of the nest, weather-worn and old, with strange carvings covering its surface. “Go look inside.”

I crawled over to the box, running my hands over its aged smoothness before opening it. The lid was surprisingly heavy. Inside, a haphazard collection of small objects surrounded a stack of books. A ragged hardcover picture book lay on top.

“Book of Virtues…” I spoke the title aloud, tracing the faded letters with one finger and swallowing back a lump in my throat. “I cried so much over this stupid book. I used to sleep with it every night before I lost it. They got me a new copy, but it wasn’t the same. My dad came out here a couple days later and searched for this one, but he never could find it. I guess now I know why.”

Lad gave me a sheepish look. “I was obsessed with it when I was younger… studying the words and pictures. I assigned magical powers to that book. I thought if I could read it and learn it by heart… it would someday bring you back to me.”

“Really?” I wasn’t breathing well anymore. “Looks like it worked,” I said, hugging the book to my chest. “I’m taking this home with me, you know.”

Lad’s mouth relaxed into a lazy grin. “Well now… I might find it harder to let go of than I anticipated.”

The look on his face made me unsure if he was still talking about the book or about me. He reclined against the side of the nest, watching me, his eyes glowing a bright green unrivaled by the backdrop of leaves framing his head.

Self-consciousness spread over me, raising gooseflesh everywhere his gaze touched. I knew I wasn’t hideous or anything—I’d had dates. But I’d never been the girl in the room who everyone looked at, much less stared at for long uninterrupted minutes. I felt like I should say something but couldn’t think of a thing. Tearing my eyes away, I reached back into the chest and pulled out another book. A library volume. Thoreau.

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads,” Lad said, quoting the author.

And right here in front of me.
Lord help me if the boy didn’t give me a smile so devastatingly beautiful I had to look down before I could think of a coherent response. “So…
Walden. Call of the Wild
.” I picked up another one. “
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Shakespeare, huh? If they had fan pods for classic authors, you’d be first in line.”

I laughed at my own joke.

Lad did not join me. Instead, his face got deadly serious. He leaned toward me. “Fan pods? You’re not in one, are you?”

“Me? No. I never had any interest—”

“Good,” he interrupted, seeming strangely relieved.

“Why?”

“Nothing. I just don’t think they’re… a good idea.”

“O-kay.” I dragged the word out, tilting my head as I waited for an explanation. When it didn’t come, I dropped the topic—it wasn’t my favorite one anyway, in spite of the fact that most of my friends talked of nothing else. I was kind of happy Lad shared my disinterest in celebrities and their rabidly devoted fan pods.

“So, you obviously read a lot of literature in home school.” I lifted one of the books.

“Actually those are for fun,” he said then blushed and looked away, as if embarrassed.

“What? That’s a good thing.”

He shook his head, still not meeting my eyes. “Not to my parents. They disapprove.”

“Really? That’s a first. I’ve never heard of parents who
don’t
want their kids to read.”

“It’s…” Lad waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, apparently eager to change the subject. “… it’s just not what we do. My father thinks it’s a waste of time.”

“Wow. That’s so weird. What about your mother?”

“She’s not as bad as he is, but she has to agree with him. After all, he—”

Lad checked his speech abruptly, and his eyes widened. After a moment, he continued. “He’s the… the head of the family.”

“Okay… that sounds pretty old-fashioned, you know.”

Lad choked on a laugh. “Yes, you could definitely say my parents are ‘old-fashioned.’ Anyway, my mother agrees reading books makes me interested in things I shouldn’t be… interested… in…” He trailed off slowly, his expression turning intense as he stared at me. He whispered, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

My stomach did a small flip.

Lad crawled slowly toward me. My breath caught in my throat as he stopped inches away. He reached out, but he didn’t actually touch me. His palm ran lightly over the side of my head, barely skimming the outer layer of my hair, the heat from his hand radiating to my scalp. He took the end of one straight damp lock and softly rubbed it between his thumb and fingers as if he were fabric shopping and had found a swath of fine silk to be touched and tested.

Lad wrapped my hair once around his finger and then again, reeling me in. Heart pounding, I studied his face, trying to understand the fascination I saw there and trying to decide if he was about to do what I thought he was about to do.

Somewhere in my brain an alarm went off. It sounded a lot like my mother’s voice.

Never want anyone more than he wants you. You can have a man in your life, Ryann, but never need someone. Just let him be icing on the cake.

I was at that moment in serious danger of violating every word of the manifesto I’d had drilled into me for the past year, since my parents had separated. I’d never felt so much wanting of anything in my whole life. I teetered on the edge. I could sense how good it would feel to close that last inch between us and give myself over to the pull I’d felt toward these woods and my shaky memory of Lad these past ten years. Instead, I popped the pretty bubble.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I blurted out.

“What?” he asked softly, drawing back a few inches.

“If your mom and dad don’t want you to read, how do you do home schooling?”

Lad’s face contracted in a grimace. He jumped up, stalked to the edge of the nest, and stopped, facing away from me. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore.”

Well then. Not only had I ruined a very interesting moment, my question had struck some kind of nerve. The silence between us stretched out and became awkward. I thought about the fact that Lad was barefoot and strangely dressed.

When I’d first seen his clothes, I’d pegged him as the indigenous redneck variety of local male. Now, I wondered.
Maybe his family is really poor
. I’d heard of backwoods people living in little more than dirt-floored plywood shacks without even what most would consider the basic necessities. It would explain how I’d seen him out here when I was lost as a child. He hadn’t been a hallucination or even lost himself. His family must have lived somewhere out here in the woods. Maybe even on my grandma’s property. He must have been ashamed for me to know.

I needed to change the subject, get him talking again. I hadn’t even gotten any answers about that night yet. I stood and gingerly made my way across to him and touched him lightly on the arm.

“I’ll tell you a secret about me,” I offered.

Lad turned around, looking alert and interested. “What is it?”

“I’m completely, totally, and incurably afraid of heights.”

He laughed with obvious relief. “Really? I would never have guessed.”

I laughed, too, but in the next instant Lad clamped his hand over my mouth and dropped to his knees, pulling me down with him. His entire body was tense. I heard him hiss some kind of foreign-sounding curse under his breath. After a few moments he removed his hand from my mouth and let me go. “Sorry.”

“What was that? What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Just body-slamming me and cussing for fun?”

“No. Sorry. It’s—I saw something. I should take you home now.”

“You were so all-fired determined to get me up here, and now you want me to go home? Why? What did you see?”

“A deer. I saw a deer.”

“A deer. Well, as far as I know, they don’t climb trees or bite.”

“I don’t want… it to know this place is up here—never mind. It’ll be dark soon. Let’s get you back before those national guards start looking for you.”

“National Guard. It’s singular. You know, a group, a unit? How can you not know what that is?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want it out here. Let’s go.”

Once on the ground, Lad was all business. He scanned in all directions then charged into the thick of the woods. I had to practically jog to keep up.
Wow. He can’t wait to get rid of me now.

I, on the other hand, wanted to slow down, to postpone the end of our journey. My mind was still swimming with questions. I needed to know more about him. I couldn’t exactly carry on a conversation with the back of his head, though, especially as winded as I was from trying to match his impossibly long stride.

As we passed the natural pool, Lad glanced back at me and kept going in the direction of Grandma's log house.
He knows how to get there already
. At the edge of the yard Lad stopped and turned to face me. He looked around then stepped close and spoke softly.

“I followed them when they came and took you that morning. I wasn’t sure if it was all right for you to go with them, but there were so many men, and I was so small. I understood after they brought you here, it was where you belonged. I wasn’t supposed to go close to the houses, but I came back in secret to try to see you again. I watched you in the yard with your family. I heard them call you Ryann.”

I couldn’t get over the way he said my name. He made it sound beautiful.

“Then one day you were gone and didn’t come back. I thought I’d never see you again. And now I can’t answer your questions. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. I’m sorry. You should go in.”

Lad took a step back, his jaw set. He nodded, as if having made an irreversible decision. His speech sounded like an ending.

Filled with a sudden sense of desperation, I stepped forward to re-close the distance between us and wrapped my fingers around his wrists. Lad drew in a sharp breath. I saw the light return to his eyes, and his jaw tightened, muscles flexing under the smooth, unblemished skin.

“Lad, don’t go yet. That night—I don’t know—”

He reached out and took my face in his hands as he’d done when those hands were so much smaller, when my tiny face was so cold. Now his hands were large and warm, and they were trembling.

I stopped breathing, my heart launching into a wild hammering rhythm that seemed to steal all the strength from my legs to power it.

Almost faster than I could process what was happening, Lad brushed his lips across mine in a hint of a kiss then crushed me to his body, his warm mouth grazing my ear.

“Good-bye Ryann.” He released me and was gone.

I looked around me. My book was gone, too. I was left standing alone, shaking, and suddenly cold for the first time in months.