The Curse of Deadman's Forest (41 page)

“You … no hurt!” Jacinda said with a rather pronounced accent as she shivered against the apparent cold and clutched a small satchel that Ian suspected held her very few belongings. Ian realized that since she’d stumbled through the portal from her home in ancient Greece, she’d become a poor urchin struggling to survive somewhere in England.

“Of course I won’t hurt you, darling!” claimed the woman. “Why don’t you come along with us and we’ll make sure you get a good hot meal and some warm clothes?”

“Yes, little girl,” said the gentleman. “We have a very large house and plenty of room. Come along with us and we’ll take proper care of you, all right?”

Again the mist swirled and the figures dissolved. When they re-formed, Jacinda was at least eighteen, looking happy, healthy, and incredibly beautiful. Ian was quite surprised by her transformation, in fact. And the scene astonished him further when it revealed a familiar face. “Oh, Fitzy,” she sang to a much younger version of Major Fitzgerald sitting next to her. “Whatever would I do here at school without such wonderful company as yourself?”

“I suspect you’d die of boredom, Cinda.”

Jacinda laughed merrily and took his arm. “Now, tell me about this very handsome school chum of yours. What’s his name again?”

The young Major Fitzgerald frowned. “Are you referring to Phillip?” he asked, and she nodded. “Oh, dear, Cinda, don’t tell me you fancy
him!”

Jacinda smiled coyly and laughed. “Of course I fancy him, Fitzy! Why do you think I insisted you invite him to the races on Saturday?”

The young Major Fitzgerald pouted. “The man’s a lout,” he warned. “He’s not good enough for you.”

But Jacinda seemed unperturbed. “He’s adorable,” she said wistfully. “And I believe I shall marry him one day.”

It was difficult to discern in the fog, but Ian could swear that the major looked hurt. Before he had a chance to scrutinize it, however, their two figures dissolved again, only to re-form a moment later. This time the pair were standing in
a parlor. Jacinda looked stricken and Fitzgerald held her hand, attempting to soothe her. “There was nothing anyone could have done, Cinda. We warned Phillip not to go out in those rough seas, but you know how much he loved to sail.”

Jacinda’s knees buckled, and Major Fitzgerald caught her before she collapsed to the floor. Carefully, he moved her to the sofa and set her down gently. “There, there,” he said, patting her hand. “I’m so terribly sorry, my dear.”

“Where will he be buried?” she asked after a bit, her voice pained.

“His family is having him shipped back to Switzerland. He’ll be buried in the family cemetery.”

Jacinda’s lips trembled and she began to cry. “It’s all ruined,” she moaned, clutching her stomach. “Everything is ruined!”

Again the shapes dissolved and re-formed. This time Jacinda appeared holding a small bundle swaddled in blankets. She sat at a table across from Fitzgerald in what appeared to be a large teahouse. Her face was crestfallen, and her features pinched.

“I’m so sorry to hear about your parents,” he said softly. Jacinda stared down at the table and hugged the baby in her arms. “When news of the accident reached me, I knew you would need your Fitzy.”

Jacinda leaned over and gently placed her baby in a pram. Fitzgerald reached across the table to take her hand then, but Jacinda pulled it away. “Don’t,” she warned.

“Please,” he begged. “Please come back to London,
Cinda. I know that your father’s sister has claimed his estate, and that you’ve no money and no prospects.”

Jacinda swallowed hard and glanced again at the baby in the stroller.

Fitzgerald continued. “We can be married. My family might not approve, but if I insist, they’ll never stand in my way. And I’ll even claim the babe if you like; just come back!”

Jacinda closed her eyes, as if to shut him out. When she opened them again, they were hard and firm. “No, Fitzy,” she said. “I cannot.”

There was a long silence as Fitzgerald sat stunned on the opposite side of the table. “But why?” he asked.

Her features seemed to soften then and she said, “Because as much as I adore you, I don’t love you. And because this child is not yours; she’s Phillip’s. And while I must confess that I most appreciate your offer, marrying you would only put all of us in the gravest jeopardy. I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you, Fitzy. I simply couldn’t.”

“What kind of danger?” he asked earnestly. “Jacinda, what kind of trouble have you got yourself into?”

Jacinda shook her head. “It is nothing I can talk about,” she said, and again her features were hard and firm.

Fitzgerald stared at her with a mixture of hurt and confusion on his face, but he did not press. “Where will you go?” he finally asked.

She sighed. “There is a place by the sea that I went to
many years ago,” she said. “A quiet little village I remember from my childhood. I’d like to take my daughter there. Raise her and keep her safe. And someday, I shall tell her all of it. All of my story and the secrets of my past so that she might learn from my mistakes and be the stronger for it.”

And then Jacinda did something that shocked Ian down to his socks. She reached to a familiar-looking necklace at her neck and gripped the thin crystal there, exactly as he’d seen Theo do a hundred times before.

“Will you send word to me and tell me how you are?” Fitzgerald asked.

Jacinda smiled sadly. “Yes, Fitzy,” she said. “And in the meantime, I had hoped that you could hold on to something for me, to keep it safe?”

“Of course!”

Jacinda reached into the baby carriage and pulled out the small silver box with little balls for feet. “This is a priceless family heirloom that I’ve had since I was a young girl. I’ve held it all this time and kept it safe, but I worry that where I’m going, it might fall into the wrong hands. Will you keep it for me until I ask you for it again?”

Major Fitzgerald gently took the box from Theo’s mother. “It would be my greatest honor,” he promised, and his figure dissolved into nothing.

Ian blinked when he realized that the foggy figures of Jacinda and Fitzgerald were completely gone, and it took him a moment to understand that no further shapes would form. As he was about to ask the mist after his own parents, he heard the third and final bell.

Crestfallen, he had to swallow his disappointment quickly, because he knew they would have to leave. But when he looked beside him, he saw that Theo was openly sobbing. He felt terrible that he’d all but ignored her up to that moment, so he wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly. “Shhh,” he said. “It’s all right, Theo. There, there.”

“She loved me,” Theo cried. “My mother truly loved me!”

“Of course she did!” he assured her.

Theo lifted her chin and looked up at him desperately. “Then what happened to her? Why did she leave me out in the rain like that?”

Ian opened his mouth to say something, but words seemed to fail him. “I’ve no idea,” he finally admitted. “But now we know that your mother actually knew Laodamia, and from what the mists showed us of her origins, she seemed to be in a bit of danger from her early childhood.”

Theo sniffled loudly and wiped her tears. “Yes,” she said. “Her father had been taken away, and others were searching for her.” A thought then seemed to occur to Theo and she asked, “Do you think that whomever my mother was afraid of when she was younger could have come through the portal after her, Ian?”

Ian inhaled deeply while he considered that. “Given the magical properties of the portal, Theo, I believe anything is possible. And to answer your earlier question, I believe your mother would only have left you in that field on that stormy night if she was truly desperate, and perhaps she thought she was leading danger
away
from you.”

Theo buried her face into his chest and sobbed anew. Ian wondered if it had been a good idea after all to ask the mist for Theo’s history instead of his, and that was when he felt a wetness around his ankles and realized that while they’d been standing there, they’d also been sinking.

“Come on,” he said, pulling away and grabbing Theo by the hand. “We’ve got to go. The third bell, remember?”

Theo sniffled and attempted to take a step. As she struggled to lift her foot, there was a great sucking sound. “Ian!” she said. “I’m stuck!”

Ian pitched himself forward, groaning while he leaned into the effort to free his own feet. After straining nearly all his leg muscles, he finally got one foot free, and then the other. He reached back, grabbed Theo’s hand, and heaved, but their combined weight only pushed them both deeper into the bog. “We’re sinking!” Theo cried.

Ian thrashed about, trying to keep them on top of the slippery, cold mud, but his efforts just made things worse. Before long he was panting heavily, and as he looked wildly around, he realized that the last threads of the mist were quickly disappearing, replaced by the bright glow of the sun.

“It’s no use!” he said after straining forward a few more times. “Theo, I can’t work us free!”

Theo held up one of her hands and begged him to stop moving. “I’m lighter,” she told him. “If I can make it over there to that tree, I might be able to extend you a stick or a branch.”

Ian turned to see where she was pointing. With a bit of relief, he noticed that just six feet away was an old gnarled
tree. If Theo could somehow manage to make it there, they might have a chance.

He watched with amazement as she leveled out her body and made swimming motions. After a few strokes, she was to the tree, and after searching some of the lower branches, she pulled free a long stick and leaned out over the bog with it. “Reach for it!” she ordered.

Ian took a deep breath and leaned forward like he’d seen Theo do. He took two strokes and felt himself move forward. He took a few more and moved closer still. Finally, after eight more strokes, he managed to reach the stick, and with a groan, Theo pulled him to the tree.

He sat on its exposed roots for a bit, catching his breath. “Good work, Theo,” he said when his chest finally stopped heaving.

“There are some downed logs behind the tree,” Theo told him. “I believe there’s enough of them to see us to firmer ground.”

Ian leaned around the trunk and saw that the logs stuck out of the mud like stepping stones. After resting a bit longer, the pair made their way carefully, log by log, to the edge of the swamp and onto firm ground.

“There they are!” they heard Carl shout from nearby. A moment later the earl, Carl, and the schoolmasters were beside them, shrugging out of their coats to wrap round the shivering pair.

The professor puffed his way over a short time later. “Oh, my!” he said when he took in their muddied appearance. “You stayed past the third bell, didn’t you?”

At the mention of the bells, Theo dissolved again into a puddle of tears. Ian wanted to tell them the story that had unfolded in the mist, but couldn’t seem to form the words. Instead, he shrugged and shook his head. “It’s Theo’s story to tell,” he said.

Everyone looked curiously first at him, then at Theo, until the earl wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up, and said, “Come, lass. Let’s get you back to the inn for a warm bath and some clean clothes. And when you’re ready, you can tell us what Avalon revealed.”

M
agus the Black woke with a start. Surrounding him was complete darkness, which worried him for several reasons. First, when his sister Lachestia had killed the injured soldier instead of the young Guardian, Magus had lost his temper and had pelted her with bolts of fire.

He had not anticipated that his sister would defend herself so ferociously. They had fought for two terrible days, and at the end of it, Deadman’s Forest was left a singed, smoking ruin, and whatever had remained of the Eighth Armored Panzer Division had also been annihilated—but no bodies would ever be recovered, as every man to the last had been buried.

Four times within those two days, his sister had sucked him under the earth—the only place Magus the Black truly feared—and he’d managed to claw and burn his way out. But when there was no more forest to offer him cover, Lachestia had cornered him within a semicircle of fallen stones.

Even cracked and broken, the megaliths held power, and
it was enough to sap his strength so that when she struck at him for the fifth time, Magus had been knocked unconscious.

Thus, his darkened surroundings were a mystery, except that at the moment, he was not being smothered by dirt. With a snap of his fingers, he created a flame to see by, and his brow pulled down into a grim frown as he stood and turned around in a circle.

It was worse than he’d imagined. Magus was entombed.

The flame at his fingertips flickered and dimmed, and he could have cried out in anger and frustration. On all four sides, overhead, and under his feet was rock, and not just any rock. He was encased in the magical stones of his mortal ancestors—and the lettering facing inward was slowly but efficiently extinguishing his power.

“Lachestia!” he screamed.

A slight rumble—a small tremor, really—reached his ears. His sister was somewhere nearby—keeping watch and exacting her revenge.

Magus sighed heavily and sat down on the hard ground to think. He was determined to get out of this makeshift tomb, and he vowed that when he did, he would make all his sisters pay.

S
everal days after returning from the Isle of Anglesey, Ian sat with Theo and the earl in the earl’s library, waiting on a visitor. Theo fidgeted nervously and several times she looked intensely up at the earl, as if seeking his reassurance.

He smiled back at her every time and even nodded once or twice, letting her know that he had complete confidence in the way the meeting would proceed. As the clock on the wall struck half past noon, there was a knock on the door, and when the earl called, “Come in,” Binsford entered with a bow.

“Major Fitzgerald is here to see you, my lord.”

“Please show him in, Binsford,” instructed the earl.

Theo squirmed again, and Ian reached out to squeeze her hand. The earl had told them both to let him do all the talking, but still, Ian thought he might be just as nervous as Theo.