Allegra Fairweather_ Paranormal Investigator - Janni Nell [12]
“It does not matter.” She turned as if to go and then turned back. “You are not from the village.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’m from America.” Couldn’t she tell by my accent?
“America,” she repeated. “Is that far away?”
I was so dumbfounded all I could say was, “Yes.” Recovering my wits, I asked where she was from.
In her odd little accent she said, “I am from very far away.”
“What is the name of your country?”
The panic returned to her eyes. “I have been out here too long. Alastair will wonder where I am.”
“Please don’t go,” I said.
“I have to.” She turned those sad, sad, eyes toward me. “He does not like me talking to people.”
I should have let her go, but I felt I was on the brink of something. Stupidly I rushed after her. I grabbed her arm.
She gave a hoarse scream and tried to jerk away. I held on tight.
“Wait,” I said. “I only want to talk to you.”
A wind sprang up. Fallen leaves began to eddy around my ankles. They whirled higher, reaching my thighs and then my shoulders. Soon they were buffeting my eyes forcing dirt beneath my eyelids. I cried out, blinking rapidly to clear the dirt, but it wouldn’t budge.
Justina broke away from me. I could hear her running through the undergrowth, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was getting the dirt out of my eyes.
I took a few steps trying to escape the cloud of leaves, but it followed me, churning up more dirt, more leaves. I couldn’t see but I began to run. I tripped over something, fell heavily and got up again.
It isn’t smart to run blindly through a wood, but all I could think of was escaping the cloud of leaves and getting the scratching, gritty dirt out of my eyes.
I ran and ran. The cloud followed.
Beneath my feet the ground changed from soft and squishy to rock hard. Then there was no ground at all and I was falling.
Apparently I had found Wilson’s Creag.
Falling toward certain death isn’t much fun. Time slows, giving you plenty of it to think about how it will feel to hit bottom. I didn’t like the painful images that entered my mind so I pushed them away. Instead I thought about the possibility of not hitting bottom.
You might think I had little chance of avoiding it, considering I was plummeting downward at a frightening rate. But nothing in life is certain. There are always surprises.
I felt an updraft of wind beneath me. Seconds later I had stopped falling and was being carried upward in a strong pair of arms. Leaning my head against the broad expanse of chest at my disposal, I sighed. Casper.
I couldn’t see him—I was still battling the dust particles in my eyes—but I could hear the steady beat of his wings.
Casper is my guardian angel. He’s been with me, on and off, since I was a child. Because he could appear and disappear at will, I had called him after the friendly ghost. I don’t know what his real name is. I never asked. But I probably couldn’t pronounce it anyway.
As far as I can work out from the little he tells me, Casper once belonged to an old Germanic tribe. He died fighting the Romans sometime during—I’m guessing here—the first or second century AD. He wasn’t immediately eligible to enter Heaven—he had spent most of his life raping and pillaging, after all—so he was put on guardian angel duty. One day, if he behaves himself, he’ll gain enough credits to enter Heaven.
I felt Casper descending. As he set me gently on the ground, I heard the sound of running water, not from a faucet, but natural, like a stream.
“Hold still,” he said, his voice deep and rich with the accent that no amount of tutoring in English could eradicate.
I felt a damp cloth on my cheeks. He wiped gently around my eyes while I blinked furiously trying to dislodge the gritty particles.
“You’ll have to bend over,” he said, “and bathe your eyes in the stream.”
“I can hardly see, Casper.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll guide you.”
He held me around the waist as I bent toward the stream.