“Okay, let’s both go back to sleep,” Daddy said. “Don’t go having any more bad dreams.”
“No more bad dreams,” she said. And she meant it. Because no way was she falling back to sleep.
She waited until it was quiet upstairs, then she went into the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight, shoved it into her backpack. She snuck out the back door, crossed the yard, and walked through the woods to the bog, following the path that started at the edge of her yard by the hollow tree. She stopped there, checked the hollow, foolishly hoping that there might be a message inside. Only pine needles and a wood louse.
The night was cool and moonlit. There was a dampness to the air that clung to her.
She got to the bog and found it covered with a fine mist. She thought she saw a figure on the other side, over by where Hattie’s house once stood. She shone her light across the water, then made her way along the edge toward the stone foundation, but there was nothing. No one.
Still, she felt she wasn’t alone.
She took her necklace off, watched it swing in the moonlight.
She hadn’t attempted to communicate with Hattie like this since that first time. It had freaked her out too much. Made her feel half crazy. And, if she had to admit it, she was a little afraid of whatever answers Hattie might give her.
“Are you here, Hattie?” Olive asked, holding the thin leather cord that the silverI see allpendant dangled from.
It began to swing in a slow and steady clockwise direction.
“Am I going crazy?” she asked.
The pendulum held still.
“What am I even doing out here?” she said, more to herself than to Hattie. She was about to put the necklace back on, to give up trying to communicate with Hattie, when the silver circle at the end of the string swung forward, back and forth.
“What does that mean?” she asked. The pendulum just kept swinging out in a forward motion. Weird. She took a step forward.
Yes,the pendulum said, moving clockwise again. Then it went back to moving straight back and forth, only off to a slight left angle. Taking a chance, she took another step in the direction the pendulum was pulling her.
“You want me to follow you?”
Yes.
Olive started to walk, straight at first. Then the necklace swung to the left, and Olive started walking to the left. She was heading out toward the middle of the bog. She’d explored the bog enough to know where the deep places were, but still, it was dark and she felt a little nervous about stepping into a spring.
Then, all at once, the necklace stopped, holding perfectly still.
“Why’d we stop?” Olive asked. “Is there something here?”
The silver circle moved clockwise again.
Olive slipped the necklace back over her head, shone her flashlight down at the ground. She didn’t dare hope, did she? Could it be the treasure? Could Hattie have decided to show her where it was?
Then she got down on her knees and began to dig. She didn’t have a shovel or trowel, so she used her fingers to rip away the grass and peat. She kept the flashlight on the ground beside her, the beam flooding the area where she was digging.
Maybe it wasn’t the treasure but a small piece of the treasure. A little taste. Proof that it was real.
She hadn’t gone down far when her fingers touched something hard. Something flat. Something metal.
The top of a box maybe?
A treasure chest?
Heart pounding, Olive scraped at the mud faster, more frantically. Her fingers were getting torn up, but she dug and scraped until she was able to find the edge of the metal object and pull it out into the light.
An old ax head, pitted with rust.
“Nice,” she said sarcastically. Then she turned, looked out at the bog, and shouted, “Thanks a lot, Hattie. Just what I always wanted!”
