“This isn’t going to last long,” she said. “What is this place?”
“It leads to a wine cellar we don’t use anymore,” he told her.
In his dreams there were empty bottles and casks and he wondered if they’d be there while he was awake. He shuffled down the ramp, still mesmerized and beginning to wonder if he wasn’t asleep now. He pretended to trip, knocking into Ariana and almost causing her to drop the precious candle. She punched him in the arm and he hid a grin, certain now he was awake.
“Dummy!” she admonished. “Be careful. You want to be stuck down here in pitch darkness?”
Indeed he did not. He always lit the candle in his dreams, and thankfully it had never gone out. “There’ll be another candle when we get there. Come on, this way,” he said, turning at a fork.
He knew the other way was a dead end, but did he really know that? Was he leading them on a wild goose chase down in this dank tunnel? He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they would both be in so much trouble for being down there, and what if it was all for naught?
But what if it’s real? a tiny voice inside him whispered.
His curiosity had been inflamed since he first started having the dreams, but until now, his fear had been stronger. Today would put an end to it. Either way, once and for all.
“This is really scary,” Ariana said as the tunnel began heading downward again. There was a steady dripping sound from either ahead or behind them, that echoed menacingly.
“It gets worse,” he warned, not to frighten her, but because it was true. He heard her stop walking and turned around to see her cast in eerie shadows from the candle. He almost took off running. “Heaven above, you looked like a wee ghost there for a second. What’s wrong?”
“We’re going to get lost down here,” she said. “We’ve got probably less than half an hour before this candle gutters. This isn’t adventure scary, Owen. This could be dangerous if we get stuck down here in the dark.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Tilly, I didn’t see you following us,” he said mildly, going back the few paces and taking Ariana’s hand. She gasped and whirled around before realizing he was teasing her. “There are more candles when we get there,” he assured her again. “Listen, we’re more than halfway. If we turn around now, we’ll surely lose the light.”
“This had better be good,” she grumbled, but picked up her pace.
He hoped it would be, too. So far, save for the presence of Ariana, everything was exactly the same as his dreams. A little bit more trudging downward on the damp and slippery stones and … there. He pulled up short, dropping his cousin’s hand and reaching out, just like he always did in his dream.
Ariana gasped. Before she could berate him for getting them lost, he ran his palm all over the stones of the dead end, hoping, praying, and finally, he felt the vibration under his fingertips.
The tunnel shook and fine dust rained down on them. Ariana dropped to a crouch, trying to protect her head as well as the candle. This was the part in his dream where he was sure he’d be killed every time. Small rocks bounced off his head and shoulders, sharp edges scratched his face, but he kept his hand firmly pressed against the wall. The shaking was much worse in real life and he was slammed against the stones. He felt Ariana tugging at his pant leg, trying to get him to get down so he wouldn’t be tossed about by the quaking earth. A little bit longer …
The wall slid away, just enough for them to pass. The tunnel stilled and the dust settled. He brushed the debris off his jacket and helped Ariana to her feet, pulling the larger pebbles out of her hair.
“It’s a secret entrance,” he said, amazed it was real.
It had been every bit as terrifying as in his dream, more so since the rocks actually left their marks on him, and with an inward groan, he could see on Ariana as well. They were going to have to think of a very good cover story, and even then, they were in for it. But now he knew it would be worth it, because now he was certain the rest would be real.
“I don’t think I’m talking to you anymore,” she said miserably, coughing from the dust.
He reached around the other side of the wall where he found the extra candles he always lit in his dreams. “We’re here,” he said, lighting the candles with the first one. “Don’t give up yet.”
Sure enough, the vast chamber beyond the secret entrance contained rows of barrels and empty wine casks, broken shelving lined with dusty bottles, and at the very back of the room was a stack of crates.
He hurried forward, motioning for Ariana to keep up, but they both had candles now, so if she wanted to sulk about getting caught in a minor earthquake while being trapped underground, then so be it. As he knew she would however, she hurried to catch up, not wanting to be left out of the big reveal.
The third crate from the bottom, second row. He heaved the top two crates off the one he wanted, then pulled it to the ground. The wood was old and easy to pull apart, and inside the crate was a gleaming mahogany box with shiny brass hinges.
“Oh, it’s pretty,” Ariana said, leaning over his shoulder to see what he found. “Is it treasure? Wait, you wanted me to read something.” She gasped and clapped her hands. “It’s a treasure map, isn’t it? I always knew there must be treasure on this land.”
He shook his head, reaching for the box, expecting it to disappear as soon as he touched it. It felt surprisingly normal under his fingertips. He paused and took a moment to look around him, then looked Ariana in the eyes.
There was nothing dreamlike about this anymore. It was real. He still had a chance to turn around and leave— well, actually no, he didn’t think he did. The hungry look in Ariana’s eyes told him she’d knock him out and open it herself if he didn’t, especially after all they went through to get down here. And something about the box seemed to call out to him, or rather the something in the box.
“Open ittttt,” she hissed. With a short laugh, he reached into the broken crate and snapped open the smooth, polished wood of the box within. Just as he knew it would, and yet it was still surprising to him, the huge old leather-bound book lay there. “An old book? I guess that’s exciting,” she said, sounding anything but excited.
He pulled it out of the box, something he’d never yet done in his dreams. He was on his own now, but he didn’t need any nocturnal guidance anymore. He knew exactly what to do.
“It’s magic,” he said authoritatively. So much so that she didn’t laugh at him, merely cocked an eyebrow and scrunched up her mouth. He set one of the unbroken crates down to act as a table and set it on it. “Open it,” he dared her. “You’ll see.”
She looked apprehensive, but he knew she wouldn’t back down. As soon as she reached out her hand, though, he got suddenly scared it would harm her. He slapped his own hand down on the cover, peeling it back to a random page. The sensation of millions of tiny sparks landing on his skin ran up and down his arm, just as a parade of images raced before his eyes. Brilliant colors and streams of light filled the room. It shocked him enough to tear his hand away. He laughed and danced in a circle, not caring that he must look a fool. He was right. The dreams were right. He didn’t know why he’d ever been afraid.
“What happened?” Ariana said, leaning over him with eyes full of terror. He blinked and realized he was lying flat on his back on the cold ground.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “What did happen?”
“You opened that book.” She cast a dirty look over her shoulder. “Then your eyes rolled up in your head and you passed out.”
He sat up and shook his head. “No, that can’t be. I saw lights and colors. I was dancing.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“I’m not crazy, Ariana. Here, help me up.”
She hoisted him back to his feet and with his fingertips, he gingerly turned a few pages until he found a page with an intricately drawn tree on it. Slapping down the palm of his hand, this time he felt a cool breeze ruffle his hair and smelled woodsmoke and evergreen boughs. He peeled his ha
nd back and looked over at her. “Did anything weird happen?”
When she shook her head he motioned for her to try it. After several long moments, she placed her hand carefully on the page and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.
“What was that? Did you smell trees? And feel a wind?”
He nodded and laughed, turning some more pages until he found one with tiny crowded writing. He made out enough words to tell it had to do with fishing, but much of it was gibberish to him. His poor reading ability was partly why he got so many beatings in school.
“Can you read all this?”
Without touching the pages, Ariana leaned across them and pored over the scrawled writing. “This will supposedly fill the pond to bursting with fat, delicious fish all year long,” she said. She pressed a finger to the page. “Nothing particular like fish smell, thank goodness, but touch this one.” She pulled his hand to rest next to hers. “There’s a humming or buzzing or something isn’t there? Goodness, gracious, Owen, what is this thing?”
Tears filled her eyes, and he felt quite the same level of excitement, confusion, and something else he couldn’t explain. It was almost like a yearning. A hunger.
“Let’s try it, shall we?” he asked, nodding to the page. “Father’s always complaining about the pond. If it works—” he stopped. “Do you think it could possibly work?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said. “I can’t believe I doubted you. This is an amazing find. But how did it get down here? Is someone in your family a— a witch? Do you think it’s been here for hundreds of years?”
“It’s got to be at least that old,” Owen said with a shrug, idly turning pages and letting the different sensations wash over him. “And anyway, this is your family’s house, don’t forget.”
She sucked in a breath. “I did forget,” she whispered. Her eyes lit up with an almost maniacal glee. “How wonderful.”
He nodded, feeling intoxicated as well. “Let’s read every page. We can haul it up to the barn and start tomorrow with the pond thing.”
“It’s a spell,” she corrected, always the bluenose.
Still, he was grateful for it, or he’d never get through six pages without his eyes crossing. And he wanted to learn everything this book had to offer, the very first time that had ever happened to him.
Chapter 3
Owen finished making the wall of hay bales to protect them from being seen if any of the farmhands happened to stick their heads up in the loft. He must have done a good enough job because he heard Ariana grumbling about him not being where he was supposed to be. He popped up, grinning.
“I’ve made us a reading room,” he said proudly.
“How did you manage to get the book here?” she asked, suitably impressed. “How did no one see you?”
He shook his head, not sure himself. “I had an idea, but you might think me daft.”
“Well, tell me anyway,” she said in her matter-of-fact way, putting on her mother’s American accent.
He knew the odd affectation was because she hoped to visit that far-off land one day, but he also had a keen intuition that her parents would never allow it. He sometimes tried to ape his father’s slight foreign accent, but he ended up making a mockery of it. Owen was as Scottish as his mother, his aging governess, and all the schoolmasters who had ever taken a whack at him.
He helped her crawl over the wall of hay bales and then hauled the bag she brought with her. “I think this book wanted me to bring it here,” he said, pausing to see how silly she seemed to think this. She only nodded and shrugged so he continued. “You know I didn’t just come across it, right? Even I’m not fool enough to poke around in those old cellars with no good reason. I — I had a dream it was down there.” He didn’t want to admit he’d been plagued by dreams for months. It made him seem cowardly for not checking sooner.
“That seems mad,” she said, running her hand tentatively over the cover. “It was calling you, do you think?”
He did think that, and was beyond pleased she found it a feasible idea. He hadn’t been getting good sleep for so long, he had begun to doubt his sanity a bit. He hurried to tell her the rest.
“I thought for sure I’d get caught this morning because I went back to the cellar so early. There was a gardener right at the edge of the fruit trees and it’s not like I could whip that giant thing behind my back. As it was I had to stop and keep it from slipping every few minutes. Anyway, he looked right at me, but it was as if he didn’t see me. And normally everyone gives me a wave or tells me off if they think I’m doing something I shouldn’t.”
She scrunched her brow, then nodded. “I was having second thoughts about this last night because it did seem scary when I was all alone in the dark, but now I think we should carry on. We need to experiment, see if it’s a load of old rubbish or if those spells in there are real.” Like a tiny housewife, she brushed her hands on her coat and looked around for her bag, ready to get to work. “I brought some things that might be helpful, if we need to translate anything or if there are historical references.”
He whistled at everything she unloaded from the bag. “How did you manage all that?”
Among the many things were a magnifying glass, a sheaf of paper, several Latin books, a map, and a bound journal documenting the history of the area.
She looked sheepish and said, “I hope you won’t be offended but I told Uncle Kostya I was going to tutor you. He let me take whatever I wanted.”
“Why should I be offended? Everyone knows you’re loads cleverer than me.”
She looked down as she lay out a pen and inkwell on a makeshift hay bale table. “Well, ‘cause I’m younger, I guess. And, er, because I’m a girl.”
He snorted, playfully punching her in the shoulder. “You’re less than a year younger. And, wait a tick— you’re a girl? Bother.”
“Shut up,” she groused.
“Ah, that’s it,” he said. “You sounded very American just then.”
She seemed pleased with the compliment, as he knew she tried very hard not to sound British, especially when she was here in Scotland. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t understand many things about her.
He was only glad she deigned to play with him and didn’t write him off for the stupid lout his teachers seemed to think he was. Even his father, who he knew loved him, acted disappointed sometimes when he botched something that Kostya seemed to think should have been simple.
They decided to try the fish spell. It was the first one they turned to the night before, and they agreed it was fate. Ariana carefully wrote it out onto a different piece of paper, listing the items they needed. She sat back and rubbed her eyes after copying all the tiny instructions, and he flipped through the pages, letting the book soak into him.
There was no other way he could describe the sensation. Whenever he tried to read, the letters seemed to swim around on the page. With this book, he was not only able to make sense of the different spells with barely a glance, but they soaked into him and settled in his mind as if he had the knowledge all along. It was an invigorating sensation and calming at the same time, like his mother’s voice when she tucked him in at night.
“I think that fish spell was a good choice,” he said, finally tearing his eyes from the pages. “It doesn’t need too many odd things like some of these do.”
Or horrifying things, he thought to himself, not wanting to scare Ariana off by the spell he was looking down at.
He quickly turned away from the upsetting spell, as even touching the spidery brown writing made him feel queasy. The book was massive, and clearly extremely old. It stood to reason there might be some not-so-good things in it. Everyone made their choices, as his old governess always told him. He and Ariana would choose to pass over the unsavory things, as it also seemed chock full of good.
“What about Grayson and Christian?” he asked as they made their way from the barn after returning the book to its box and burying it deep in a pile of hay
.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the mention of her two-year-old twin brothers. Owen didn’t mind them as much as she did, but he pretended to be annoyed by them to show solidarity. He would have liked a sibling or two himself, but the few times he asked about it, his parents got a haunted look in their eyes and hemmed and hawed until he shut up about it.
“We’re going to have to catch some fish for the guts in the spell,” she said. “If they bother us we’ll chuck fish heads at them until they leave.”
“Perfect plan,” he said. “But what if we haven’t yet caught any fish?” he teased, knowing she’d be serious about his question.
“Then we’ll chuck rocks,” she said cold-bloodedly, making him laugh with delight.
There was a close call as they made their way to the far side of the pond. They saw Farrah with the boys, all bundled up and loaded with a large basket, as if they meant to have a picnic while the sky was still sunny enough to make the winter day bearable.
Farrah looked straight at them and waved. Ariana looked at Owen with such disappointment about being caught that something came over him. He didn’t understand it. It was like nothing he felt before. Warm and powerful. He raised his hand, not in a greeting but to ward them away. Some words fell out of his mouth without any thought attached to them. He heard his voice but didn’t understand the words and, as soon as they were spoken, Farrah shook her head as if she forgot something and led the twins away.
“That was lucky,” he said, feeling a little dazed.
Ariana looked at him with her mouth agape. “What did you just say?” she asked incredulously. “I heard some strange language. It wasn’t French and I don’t think it was Latin, either. Are you studying any other languages in school?”
He shook his head, trying to make heads or tails out of what had just happened. Had he actually said something or had he imagined it? He wanted Farrah and the twins to leave them alone and, like that— like magic, they did.
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