Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,22

“Okay. That is weird,” Muirin admitted grudgingly. “Really, really weird.”

“And wrong,” Addie said firmly. “Why would anyone here want us to not look at the tree? Why not just wall it up or plaster it over or something in that case?”

“I don’t know, but I decided that if something or someone didn’t want me looking at the tree closely, then I was going to.” At least now she had their attention. “There wasn’t anyone around, so I went up to it and stared at it for a while. There’s marks on it, and they didn’t look natural to me. But it was hard to make them out, and there was more weirdness, because right after I left the room I couldn’t remember them well enough to try and sketch them.”

Burke mulled that over for a moment. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go and stare at it,” he said, eying her as if he expected her to object. “I mean, if by some crazy chance you’re right, and there still is someone here after the kids—us—you never know how they could be watching.”

Spirit tried not to bristle at the if by some crazy chance part. “Well, how can we get a good look at it then?”

“Actually, I think I can,” Addie piped up unexpectedly. “My Art Class is supposed to be doing sketches around Oakhurst all vacation. I can sketch the tree. I bet no one else is.”

Spirit felt a chill of alarm at the idea of Addie sitting alone in that room, sketching something that had deliberately been protected in some way. What if someone saw her?

Addie must have read what Spirit was thinking from her expression. “Relax,” she said, with a little chuckle. “I’ll keep our sketch hidden by using an onionskin overlay. I’ll sketch the tree without the marks, and then draw the marks on a piece of onionskin that I can hide easily. And I won’t just draw the oak, I’ll draw the Christmas tree, the fireplace, and the Grand Staircase, too.”

Well, that seemed safe enough. “Thanks, Addie,” she said with relief. “I should know by now you’re too smart to get into trouble.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Addie demurred, but Spirit could tell she was pleased at being called “smart.” “You can all make it up to me by actually playing this game instead of faking it.”

* * *

For the last three years, Elizabeth Walker had wavered between thinking she had a really vivid imagination, and thinking she was going crazy. But it wasn’t the kind of crazy she could actually talk to anyone about. She wasn’t anorexic, she didn’t want to cut herself … no, the problem was, since the morning of her thirteenth birthday … she’d been remembering.

It had all started with a bang; she’d woken up from a dream so vivid she’d expected to find herself in a stone-walled room, looking out of a narrow little window that had no glass in it toward a harbor and the sea beyond. But the ships in the harbor—in her dream—bore no resemblance to anything she knew; they were all boats with sails. Not sleek racing yachts, but rough and wooden things like something from a movie about Vikings. The harbor itself was little more than a rocky cove with a single wooden pier.

Her head was weighed down by the two thick braids that hung as far as her knees. She could feel the stones of the floor through her thin leather slippers. And the dress she’d been wearing had been impossibly heavy, made of thick wool—she somehow knew—and trailing down to the ground.

She’d felt … older. In her dream, her body felt foreign to her in ways she didn’t have the words to describe, but that were very confusing. She’d ached for things she couldn’t put a name to, which was why she was looking out the window. Waiting for someone. Longing for someone.

Behind her, there’d been someone moving. She didn’t want to turn to look. Her body—the person she’d been in her dream—didn’t like the person behind her, the person in the bed she’d risen from at the first rays of dawn.

The person behind her said something. It was as if he spoke a foreign language: Elizabeth recognized only one word. Yseult. Her dream-body turned, knowing this was her name.

That was when she woke up.

She’d been almost as confused on waking as she’d been in the dream. Her pink canopy bed, her pink and cream bedroom, the dolls and bears she