They were completely alone.
Just as she had that thought, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. When she turned a little more—pressing her arm into Rhein’s in the process—she saw Cei standing at the corner of the main building, his shoulder casually resting against the dark stone. He was facing them, watching them. Gwen would have bet all her traveling money on it.
“Why does he do that?”
“Who? Do what?”
Gwen shook her head, not even aware that she had spoken aloud. But Rhein didn’t see her denial. He was on his feet, crossing the lawn in fewer strides than it should have taken. Gwen had to run to keep up with him.
“What do you want, Cei?”
Cei pushed away from the wall, his casual pose dissolving as he quietly considered the two of them.
“It’s a free country, Rhein. I was just hanging out, waiting for the bell to ring.”
“We both know that was not what you were doing.”
Cei’s eyebrows rose even as his gaze fell briefly on Gwen’s face. “And what was I doing?”
Rhein shook his head, his hands balling up at his sides as he moved closer to Cei. “Back off, Cei.”
Cei held up his hands. “It’s a small school. Where would you like me to go?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“Is that what you want, Gwen?”
Gwen stepped back slightly, a little surprised that Cei would pull her into this. What did he mean, was that what she wanted? Was he asking if she wanted him to stick around? Was he suggesting that there was a reason for him to be here, for him to be near her? The thought made her head spin a little.
“Why don’t you tell her why you’re really here,” Rhein said.
It was Cei’s turn to step back. He threw a glance over his shoulder, as though worried that someone might overhear them. Then his eyes fell on Gwen’s briefly before he stepped forward, shoved Rhein with both hands on his shoulders.
“Mind your own business, friend,” he grunted.
Rhein laughed. “Just what I thought. You never did know how to handle these things.” He shook his head, amusement written in all the lines of his face. “See you later,” he tossed casually to Gwen as he walked away.
Cei watched him leave, then, without so much as a glance at Gwen, walked the other direction.
Gwen stood there, confused.
When guys fight over a girl, shouldn’t one of them end up with the girl?
***
Gwen wanted to curl up with a good book when she got home after the remaining, uneventful, hours of school. But everyone in the Langley household had chores to do, and she was no exception.
Tony, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that Gwen should take over some of the yard work. He’d bought tons of mulch that he wanted spread around the base of each of the rose bushes in the backyard and the sage bushes in the front, not to mention the trees—he thought the mulch would make them look cleaner, nicer.
Gwen found herself thinking about Rhein as she tore open the heavy bags and dumped the mulch into a wheelbarrow. She still didn’t understand what had happened at lunch. There was clearly some tension between the two boys, but what did it have to do with her? Why were they discussing her like she wasn’t even there?
She had a sense that there was a history there, but she couldn’t imagine what it was. Maybe they’d both gone after the same girl at some point. Gwen kind of suspected that lots of girls had crushes on the two of them. They were the two best looking boys in the school. But could that really be the source of the tension between them?
She wasn’t sure. But she knew tension. And she knew these two guys disliked one another with a passion, there was no mistaking that. As much as she found herself attracted to both of them, maybe this was her cue to exit the situation.
She pushed the wheelbarrow to the front of the house and used a small shovel to scatter the mulch under the bushes. The work felt good—though she would never admit that to an adult—the use of muscles that didn’t get much of a workout holding a book in front of her eyes. And being among the trees, the birds, and the bushes always made her feel peaceful.
She leaned down to smooth out a pile of mulch and noticed a section of the sagebrush that was slowly dying on the lower trunk of the squat bush. She touched it, found the section that had broken free from the rest of the plant.
“Sorry,” she whispered, intent on pulling it completely free. But then the most surprising thing happened…as Gwen looked at the broken branch under her finger, it seemed to begin healing itself. She didn’t know how else to explain it. The wood just seemed to mend itself, growing back together under her touch, the leaves suddenly standing up and taking back some of the color they’d lost.
“What the…?”
Gwen pulled back, a tingle she couldn’t even begin to explain slowly dying on her fingertips.
After a second, she reached tentatively out to the plant and touched that branch again. When she did, the remaining leaves that had not yet perked up, did.
She jerked away again.
“Impossible.”
But the proof was right there in front of her eyes. She looked around the yard until she saw another set of branches that were slowly dying on an oak tree in the center of the yard. She walked over and touched them. Nothing happened at first. But then, slowly, the dying leaves began to slough off the dried sections and replace them right in front of her eyes with fresh, green leaf. It was like watching time-lapse photography, but there was no camera, no speeding up of time. New leaves were growing right in front of her eyes.
She didn’t understand, but it made this bubble of laughter rise up in her chest that she simply couldn’t hold down. She giggled as she moved to a low patch of grass and touched it, instantly turning it into a thriving, green patch just like the rest of the lawn.
“I’ve never seen anyone enjoy yard work quite like you.”
Gwen jerked away from the bush she had been about to touch. She hadn’t heard Tony drive up. She wondered how long he’d been standing there.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, coming up to pat her on the shoulder. “I’m glad to see that we found a chore you could enjoy.”
Gwen forced a smile, her cheeks feeling as though she was using muscles that were not accustomed to such movement.
“Don’t take too long, though. I’m sure dinner will be ready soon.”
“Okay.”
Gwen watched Tony go inside before she focused on the bush in front of her again. She held her finger out, ready to touch and watch—whatever that was—but decided she’d better just finish up her chore before someone else walked up on her.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it, though. What was that? What had she done? Was it her? Had she done something, or was it just some sort of weird coincidence? If it was her, why did she not know she could do something like that? Were their other things she could do?
She could hardly concentrate on her dinner when she finally cleaned up and went inside. She escaped to her bedroom as quickly as she could, curling up on the bed as her thoughts swirled inside her head.
And then she remembered the weird book.
She picked it up and slowly paged through it. Some of the words seemed to stand out to her, words that looked similar to the ones Ms. Dru had written on the board during history class. Gaelic, she had called it. Was this book written in Gaelic?
The more she studied the words, the more Gwen felt like some forgotten part of her understood what was written there. She had known that the word she wrote on her notebook paper meant mother. She wasn’t sure how she knew it—and really wasn’t sure that that was what it meant—but she did. It was as simple as that. She just knew. Just like she knew that this book was important, that it had been meant for her, and that it had something to do with what had happened in the front yard.
She just had to figure it all out.
Chapter 11
Gwen spent the better part of an hour studying
that book each night over the next few days. On the second night, it occurred to her to write down some of the words and use the computers in the school library to look them up. She had little luck at first, but then she found this website that had a translator—English words into Gaelic and Gaelic into English. With a few minor modifications to the words, she was able to translate most of them, which seemed to prove the book was written in some form of Gaelic.
Or it was just a coincidence.
At lunch on Friday, she was sitting under the tree she had come to think of as her own, watching dead grass burst into new life as she ran her fingers over the tiny blades. That tingle that came into her fingers when she touched plants and bushes seemed to be growing, as though whatever it was that made her capable of doing this was growing with each use.
When she was a little girl, she used to imagine that her parents were special, as most kids probably did. She imagined her father was some great prince and he had gone away to fight a very important war. Her mother was a princess, or an heiress, who died tragically after Gwen was born and there was such confusion afterward that Gwen was accidentally abandoned. One day her father would come back for her and she would live the rest of her life in the lap of luxury.
It was just a fantasy. But now she found herself wondering if maybe her mother, or her father, was some sort of…she didn’t know, really. Did witches exist? Maybe her mother was part of the Wiccan community and that’s where this odd ability to heal dying plants came from. Or could there be an even more out of this world explanation for it. Maybe her father was an alien whose own planet was dying and he…
Gwen shook her head, almost too frustrated with the whole thing to even laugh at herself.
Was it even magic? Maybe it was just a strange version of a green thumb.
It would have been more interesting if she had the ability to read minds, or time travel. What good would healing a plant do in the middle of some sort of battle?
Not that she planned on joining the military, or anything like that.
She kept wondering if this was all there was. Could she do something else? She’d tried to move things in her room with her mind. She stacked up some of the books from her shelf on the floor and tried to fling them across the room with just her thoughts, but it didn’t work. She also tried to manipulate the metal her bed was made of. She’d seen it in a movie once, how a girl was able to bend the metal with her mind. But that didn’t work, either.
So she was the freak who could heal plants. Maybe she should consider becoming a gardener instead of a doctor. She’d make a fortune if none of her plants ever died.
Traffic had increased in the back parking lot, indicating that lunch period was nearly over. Gwen stood and brushed off her jeans, self-consciously tugging at the bottom hem of her blouse as she began to walk. It always bothered her how her blouse rode up when she moved.
Goodbye.
The voice reverberated in her head. She stopped and turned, thinking that maybe someone had slipped up behind her. But there was no one there.
Add going nuts on top of everything else.
Gwen sighed as she headed toward the school building again. And, again, the voice whispered in her mind, See you Monday.
She didn’t turn around—she was a little spooked—until she reached the back of the building. When she did, she laid her hand on the stone wall and turned back, but, again, there was nothing there but the tree.
Great. Now she was losing her mind.
Gwen studied the area for a long minute before turning and running directly into Cei.
“I was looking for you,” he said, grabbing her shoulders to steady her. “Ms. Dru wanted to talk to you.”
“To me?”
“To both of us. She has some sort of project she thought we might like to work on with her.”
Gwen glanced over her shoulder one last time before she pulled away from Cei’s touch and began walking toward the front of the building.
“Something wrong?” Cei asked.
“No. I just thought…” She stopped, not really in the mood to tell her foster brother exactly what she’d heard—or thought she’d heard. “Will there be extra credit?”
“What?”
“For the project.”
“She didn’t say, but I’m sure we could use it on our college apps as volunteer hours.”
And everyone knew how good volunteer hours looked.
“What kind of project?”
Cei shrugged. “She didn’t want to explain it until we were both there.”
Ms. Dru was waiting for them in her classroom, the remnants of her lunch scattered on her desk. She was studying something on her laptop when they walked in. She quickly snapped the computer shut when she heard them, as though hiding something from them.
“Miss Reese, Mr. Crewe, so good of you to join me.” She gathered her lunch and tossed it into the trash can as she stood. “The drama department approached me a little bit ago. They want to know if I can provide research on a Welsh story from an ancient text known as the Mabinogion so that they might write and perform a play based on it. They have chosen to do a play based on Blodeuwedd, a young woman created out of flowers and cursed to live her life in the darkness after she killed her husband.”
Ms. Dru smiled at what must have been confused looks on Cei and Gwen’s faces. “It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. We have the basic story, I just need the two of you to find a little information on the time period—which happens to be the same Iron Age we’ve been studying in class—and any reference you can find on the characters in the story.”
“Are we supposed to do this using the Internet?” Cei asked.
“No.” Ms. Dru leaned back against her desk and crossed her arms over her chest, the same position she often adopted while lecturing. “I took the liberty of calling your foster father, Professor Langley, and got permission for the two of you to use his collection of books as well as for him to help you get access to the library at Texas Tech.”
Gwen glanced at Cei. The idea of spending time on a university campus was kind of exciting, she hated to admit. She didn’t want to seem over eager, but it was her dream, after all, to get out of this place and go to a major university. Texas Tech was a good place to start…even if it was still in Texas.
“And, because this covers information we are studying in class, I will take away your worst test grade if you will present a report based off of this research to the class.”
Cei glanced at Gwen, his thoughtful expression becoming something a little softer when he caught her watching him. She quickly looked away.
“So, what do you think?”
Gwen began to nod as Cei said, “Sounds interesting.”
“I’d like to do it,” she said.
“Good.” Ms. Dru pushed away from her desk and opened a drawer in a tall file cabinet tucked into the far corner beside the whiteboard. “I have a copy of the story here, somewhere.” She rifled through the files for a minute, long enough for the bell to ring and the hallway to fill with chatting students. “Here,” she finally said, pulling out several pieces of paper and coming back toward them. “It even has a list of the important characters.”
“Great.” Gwen glanced at the paper before she gestured toward the door. “We should probably go.”
“Of course.” Ms. Dru gestured for Cei to lead the way. As he went through the door, Ms. Dru laid her hand on Gwen’s shoulder, stopping her for a second. “If you have any problems, or questions, feel free to call me. My number should be on your class syllabus.”
Gwen nodded. “Thank you for this opportunity, Ms. Dru.”
“Oh, don’t think twice about it.”
But as Gwen walked away, she could feel Ms. Dru watching her. It felt like more than a teacher’s curiosity. Not that Gwen was good at judging people—as exampled by her misjudgment of Rhein’s intentions, she hadn’t even seen him since Tuesday’s little argument with Cei—but it made the hairs stand up on the back of
her neck just the same.
Chapter 12
Gwen walked slowly through the stacks, her fingers trailing along the spines of books that smelled like…knowledge. It was dumb, she knew, to think that knowledge had a smell. But if it did, she was pretty sure this was what it would smell like.
She was supposed to be looking for something in particular. Cei had handed her a piece of paper with half a dozen card catalog numbers on it, but she was so excited just to be here that she wanted to take a moment to enjoy it.
She moved slowly, thinking about the first time she went to a public library. It was on a fifth grade field trip…some local writer was reading excerpts from his book and the teacher thought it would be great for the students to meet someone who not only liked to write, but who made his living doing it. Before that, Gwen had visited various school libraries, but none of her foster parents ever bothered to take her to a real library, one that had more among its stock than primary readers and simplified nonfiction.
She could remember walking through those doors the first time. It was an annex, one of those store front libraries that are much smaller than the main branch and have fewer books. But Gwen wouldn’t have believed that if someone had told her that day. To her, it was a treasure trove of books, more than she had seen in her short life. She had wanted to do this…to roam the aisles and touch the books, to move in and read every book on each of the many, many shelves.
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