He was careful, he slid his blade between the floor and the walls and pried, then he noticed a larger gap and pried there. There was a loud creak before the bottom of the chest lifted and tipped back, revealing a hidden space, full of stuff.
I muttered, “Oh my God, what is… oh my God.” I was shocked looking down on it, letting the things that had been collected in my lap fall to the side.
I reached in to pick up the first thing I saw, the cloak that the little girl in my dream, thatIhad been wearing. Folded neatly on top.
“Torin, what does this mean? I was wearing this in the dream when I was little.” I pulled it to my face and sniffed it. “It smells like peat smoke and… it smells like Scotland. Oh my God.” I put it to the side and picked up the clothes under it, a small linen dress, embroidered at the neckline with the letter A in faded thread. I ran my fingers over it. These were the clothes I had been wearing.Oh my God.I clamped my hand over my mouth, that familiar and frightening tightening happening in my chest.
Oh no.
My eyes settled on a carved wooden toy, I hadn’t thought of it in years, but I recognized it, a carved lamb. Tears spilled over my cheeks. I couldn’t remember the older boy who carved it and gave it to me, not really, but it slammed into me that it had been Max. He had been about ten years old. I could hear his voice in his Scottish accent telling me it was carved from the rowan treeto ward off evil and that he loved me and he was going to keep me safe. Next there was a velvet pouch, I picked it up, pulled the cinched top open, and gasped.
No no no.
I placed it down, quickly, and jumped up, knocking everything to the side.
Torin was already looking inside. “Tis a vessel.”
I nodded. “Torin, it’s true, everything you said is true.”
I took a step back.
Torin asked, “Ye hae gone pale — are ye well, Alexandria?”
I shook my head. “How could they have kept this from me?”
I didn’t know what to do, there were still some things in the chest but I didn’t want to look through it anymore.
This had been enough.
This was freaking way too much.
Torin had the vessel in his hand.
“Is it live?”
“Aye, but the symbols are in a different order.” He dropped it back into the pouch and pulled the drawstring top closed.
“Ye want tae see what else is in?—?”
I shook my head. “No, I… I don’t want… it’s too much, I’m totally overwhelmed and need to not look right now.”
I went to the top of the stairs and started going down.
Torin stood. “Mo leannan, looks like there’s a letter for ye.”
I stopped, halfway down, my hand on the rail.
“To me?”
“Aye, tis sealed with wax.”
I burst into tears and sank down on the stairs.
He met me there and stood beside me, half up and down the steps, holding the letter.
I looked at it in his hand, not taking it, because it looked ancient, fragile, and too fine, addressed to Alexandria, in a fine script looking like something a queen would write to herdaughter, not for me, I was a girl from North Carolina, had lived here all my life, those things in that chest didn’t have anything to do with me…
and that’s the last thing I remember.
