The Locket (21 page)

“Why do I always hold things in?” she asked, looking up into his eyes. “I don’t understand why it has always been so hard to tell people how I really feel. I’m sad that my father’s gone … it still hurts even after all this time. It’s like a knife running through me. And all the while I hid that knife from everyone, especially the ones who tried to help. The truth is, they only made it hurt worse.”

Christian did not answer right away, mostly because he wasn’t quite sure what to say. He was speechless and a little more than surprised to find this tough, I-can-make-it-on-my-own girl suddenly weeping in his arms. Maybe first impressions did not always tell everything about a person as he was told they do and thought they did. “Perhaps you were afraid.”

When she only cocked her head and looked at him in confusion, he went on. “I mean afraid of letting go. Perhaps you thought that if you talked about him to other people, then you could release your feelings as well as the memory of him. And because you did not want to do either of those things, you chose not to say anything.”

His words hit her like a brick, and when she realized that he was right, she was afraid. But it wasn’t letting go that she was afraid of. She was afraid of letting people know that her father died because of her. She was afraid of letting people know that she was not strong enough. If she had not let her fear get in the way that morning, her father might still be alive. She should have done something when she first heard him say that he was leaving. She knew what was going to happen; she had seen the future. But she still did not say anything. Ironic, isn’t it? How she was so afraid of his death that she let him die?

She allowed him to die because she was terrified. Those words repeated in her mind until she felt as though she were going to be sick. Instead, she decided to wiggle out of Christian’s arms and continue on with the journey. She would not let her fright get in the way of protecting someone else again, especially if it was an entire kingdom on the line.

“I do not understand.”

“Understand what?” she asked, feeling more than humiliated that she had let herself become so vulnerable.

“You said that you had a secret. Was that it?”

“Oh,” she sped her stride. She forgot that she had decided to tell him over course of her ridiculous blubbering. Too late now, she thought. “Okay, this is going to sound a bit … well, crazy. It’s just that I can, in a manner of speaking, tell the future. Not like a tarot card reading, crystal ball-owning psychic. More like random dreams that come to me every once in a while.” She wanted to stop right there and pretend what she just admitted to didn’t sound ludicrous. When Christian continued to wait patiently, she went on. “I tend to have dreams about people dying the night before they actually do. I’ve noticed that it’s only the people who are close to me or whom I’m related to that I dream about.”

Christian nodded, unsure of where he played in all of this. “Then why do you suppose that you were able to wake up from your nightmare of me dying and come to rescue me? Or that you dreamt of me at all?”

She thought about this for a minute and concluded, “I’m not sure.” Then, jokingly, “Maybe I was meant to save you.”

To her astonishment, he was considering the idea. “As I have mentioned, where I come from the people are extremely superstitious. If we told them the story of this, that would be their answer for sure.” Savannah gave him a nervous grin in return, letting out a soft “Oh,” and turned away.

I really do owe her my life, he thought. I cannot believe that this was the very same young maiden whom I met at the edge of the forest. I cannot believe that she is the same annoying, irritable, fiery girl who thought that I had too large an ego. Now she’s … He shook his head and decided it was best not to continue that thought. Better stop now while I still can.

“So do you have any gifts?”

“Gifts? No.”

“Any secrets?”

“Secrets? Of course not. Why would I have secrets?” He was babbling, and she knew it. His voice cracked as he spoke, and his reply was too fast. This meant that, since he did not even think about his response before he blurted one out, there was something that he was hiding.

“Oh come on, everyone has secrets. Just tell me one.”

Christian allowed himself to breath. “Okay, umm, hmm. When I was about six years old, I stole my mother’s necklace.” She stared at him in both surprise and curiosity. “But before you go accusing me of being a bad person, you should know that I stole the necklace to help pay the bill to the local doctor for my friend.” Her face lightened and went from condemnation to sympathy. “My best friend’s grandfather had fallen out of his bed and supposedly broken his arm, so they called the doctor. My friend’s family was also incredibly poor, and I wanted to help. Therefore, I stole my mother’s least favorite necklace and planned on selling it to give to his family.”

“Planned on?”

“Yes, my mother caught me prior to my selling the necklace.”

“Oh, boy. What did she say?”

He grinned. “She was rather disappointed in me. Thankfully she has a kind heart,” he began, casually placing a lavender daisy behind Savannah’s ear, “and once I explained to her my intentions, she paid for the bill herself.”

Feeling comfortable enough again to let a laugh escape past her lips, Savannah gave him a playful punch on his arm. “You should never mess with a woman’s jewelry.”

Christian allowed a slow, charming smile to spread across his face that made Savannah’s legs melt. “So I’ve learned.”

The two of them talked for as long as the rest of the day permitted. They talked about their family, friends, different foods, philosophies, and so much more that it was close to impossible to remember everything. It was shocking to find out that, after their initial impatience with each other, the two of them could have so much more in common than was expected.

By the time the afternoon ended, the cheeriness of the clear, blue sky went with it. Massive storm clouds piled one on top of each other, each grayer and murkier than the first. The brightness of the sun dimmed and hid behind the clouds until it finally set, leaving the sky a navy blue. The stars and moon were hidden under the blanket of dark cotton, leaving them close to no light to guide them through the trees.

Savannah did not think about preparing for a time like this. Subconsciously, she knew that the skies could not stay joyful and blue every day. Yet somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought that a thunderstorm couldn’t happen here, as if it were illegal.

She turned nervously to Christian when a bout of thunder bellowed in the distance. “Chris, what are we going to do about the weather?”

He shook his head. “I am not sure. We could bunch together a few tree branches to make a shelter, but I know the thunderstorms that we get here and, trust me, we would not be safe under mere branches. And from the looks of the sky, we do not have enough time to do anything productive anyway.”

Savannah took a deep breath and sighed. “Oh, boy.” Already the clouds were closing in the last traces of the sky. Soon, they could hear the distant pitter-pattering of the rain. A flash of lightning came before their eyes like a blaze of fire across the sky. “Maybe if we walk far enough, we’ll come upon a shelter,” she suggested when the rain reached them. It was like drops of ice on her bare skin. Then she added, after seeing his doubtful expression, “Hey, we ran into Dimitri unexpectedly. Maybe we could run into something else at random.” This time, he agreed, though reluctantly. A couple of minutes went by, and the delicate sprinkle turned into a strong drizzle, then to a hard rain, and eventually to a heavy sleet.

Okay, it’s raining, she reflected nervously. There is even some snow on the ground, and the temperate has dropped at least twenty degrees. This is definitely not my idea of a fantasy land anymore.

Not long after the rain began to pour did their clothes start sagging, which allowed the wetness of the weather to seep into what was left of the material. She was shivering fiercely, trying her best to keep warm.

About an hour later, the two of them were still scrambling along in the wintery mess, the weather only getting worse. They were growing weary from their constant hike through the forceful wind, and Savannah’s legs were crying from the need to sit down. Rain, mixed with ice, pelted them like daggers, and the darkness made it impossible to see the holes and dips in the ground they were constantly tripping over.

Suddenly, the sound of something cracking broke Savannah’s thoughts and made her jolt. At first, she froze, recognizing that this particular noise did not match that of the storm. When that thought took root, she continued to stiffen with the fear that something was following them. But what else could possibly be following them, especially in this weather? It was too ridiculous a thought that a creature would be so desperate to stop them that it would brave through a giant thunderstorm to do it.

Mistakenly assuming that it was another burst of thunder, she decided to ignore it and didn’t bother to look up to see if Christian’s face gave away any hint of distress from the noise.

It did.

At the sound of the first crack, Christian’s head came up and his eyes frantically searched the wilderness around them for the source. Despite its similarity to the thunder above, somehow he knew that this new sound did not come from the weather at all.

It was difficult to come to any conclusions without the proper light to get a closer look, yet Christian was determined. Squinting his eyes against the dark, he scoped the trees for any sign of a breaking limb or a leaning trunk.

But after a couple minutes of hearing the crack gradually get louder and louder, all at once it came to a stop. Again, Savannah did not take this as seriously as Christian, and when the noise ceased, he tried even harder to find the problem. His head whirled to every possible location, and when he still was unable to find whatever it was he was looking for, he unwillingly decided his attention would be more useful in helping to find a shelter.

Tearing his eyes from the dark and trees, Christian brought his attention to Savannah, wondering how much longer she would last under these conditions.

He was chilled to the bone when he heard the crack, suddenly, come back in full force.

Whipping his head up, he just barely made out the outline of the falling tree … and its direction. Savannah, unaware of the danger before her, continued to tread with her head held down against the sleet.

In that brief moment of time when his reflexes had to make his only, and final, decision, Christian’s heart stopped. The blood draining from his face left him pale as he realized that, if he wasn’t quick, Savannah would be killed almost instantly from the massive tree. Moreover, he realized, in that blink of time, that he was willing to do anything and everything in his power to not lose her.

Barely registering his own movements—and the time he had left before the tree crushed them—Christian yanked Savannah toward him and heaved the entirety of his body weight against her. Landing them into a clearing mere feet away, he kept his body firmly on top of hers to protect her. It wasn’t until they both felt the vibration from the impact, and Christian only felt a slight brush, thankfully, from the branches, that he believed they were safe.

Waiting an extra minute, as a precaution, before he got up, Christian opened his eyes to find Savannah’s tightly closed … and her face breathtakingly close to his. Given the circumstances, he knew it was neither the time nor the place to have any romantic thoughts rushing through his mind. But he couldn’t help the thrill running down his spine from knowing that all he had to do was lean in and his mouth could be on hers.

When Savannah at last gained the courage to open her eyes, she found Christian’s own watching her. The look in his eyes was unmistakable, though unexpected, and it made her blood heat. The way his bright blue eyes filled with craving, and how they dug into hers as if he could see right through her made her forget they had almost been killed.

And now hip deep in a puddle of mud. Savannah’s gaze was the first to break away as she brought her attention back to the situation at hand—and the dirt that covered half of their bodies. “I think you can get off me now,” she said in a voice that wasn’t completely steady.

Taking a second to realize he was still blocking her from getting up, Christian got to his feet and held out a hand to bring her up with him. “My apologies, I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Savannah shook her head to clear her mind. Stealing a glimpse of the fallen tree, and the sheer magnitude of it, she found it was difficult to form words immediately. “No, you didn’t hurt me,” she began after a moment. Then, bringing her eyes back to his, she said, “Thank you. If it weren’t for you, I would be about as flat as a pancake under that tree, and it makes it worse because I knew something was off but I chose to ignore it. I’m lucky you were here to save us both.” Clearing her throat, as she wasn’t used to being rescued, or making a decision that risked her life, she finished by forcing out the rest. “In all honesty, I can’t even begin to express my gratitude.”

Because he knew that she, as well as he, would need it, Christian wrapped his arms around her. Trying as best he could to sooth away her shaking, he stroked a hand over her back for a minute and then brought both of them to her shoulders. As he held her before him, he made sure that she saw his reassuring smile. “Well … that makes us even then, does it not?”

An easy smile crossed her face in response to his own. “I guess so.”

Taking her by the hand, Christian led them away from the mud puddle, away from the fallen tree, and away from the possibilities they both knew were there.

Another half hour or so passed before Savannah’s legs couldn’t handle the strain any longer. She could not count how many bruises she had received from the falling ice, and Christian was not able to keep his hopes high any longer with the chance of finding a nearby shelter. It was becoming useless to even bother to look. After all, who in their right mind would build a house in the middle of an enchanted forest?

Wishing for at least a tissue to blow her runny nose, Savannah lowered her head down to the ground to keep the wind from slashing any more at her face. At first she thought that she was being delirious. Then she decided that she was not seeing things and whipped her head up. “Chris, look at the grass!” she called out over the howling wind.

He did. “Yes, so? What about it?”

“It’s cut down!” she shouted happily. “Not only that, but it’s slightly lighter than the pure green of the grass we’ve been going through, as if someone’s been walking on or using it. That means that there may be people close by!”

Not wanting to wait out in the cold anymore to see if she was right, the two of them bolted through the thickets to find their sanctuary. The chill of the sleet brushed wickedly at their faces as they climbed their way around the trees and branches. “There!” she shouted once they finally came into a clearing.