Page 21 of Silver Linings (Legendary #1)

Almost impossible to find, as far as he was concerned, and he’d always thought he knew what he was doing when it came to wandering around in the woods.

Then again, even though the trees in the San Bernardino National Forest were pretty impressive, they couldn’t begin to compare to what grew here in the Pacific Northwest in terms of sheer density.

“Well, it’s beautiful,” he said, then got out his phone so he could take some pictures.

“It’s a good place to take a breather,” she agreed, and drank some more water.

He probably should have been hydrating as well, but he found himself drawn closer to the trees, making sure he got plenty of photos of the oak grove.

Since Sidney had said this spot was an open secret, he didn’t think they’d be giving too much away by publishing the best of these photos in their planned pamphlets and posters and flyers.

But when he stopped only a few feet away from the largest oak, an enormous specimen that looked as if it had been there long before European settlers ever reached this part of the world, he found himself frowning.

“There’s something scratched into this tree,” he said, and at once, Sidney returned her water bottle to her belt and hurried to stand next to him.

“What is it?” she asked, although she sounded more irritated than curious.

“Some jerk who decided to leave his initials on something that’s been here for five hundred years?

I swear, no matter how much you tell people to leave no trace, there’s always some asshole who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. ”

Ben could understand her annoyance. If he had five bucks for every time some uncaring tourist had carved their initials into a petroglyph or on an ancient pre-Colombian stone wall, he might not be a millionaire, but he would have definitely earned enough to pay for his trip to Silver Hollow.

However, what he saw scratched into that tree only made him frown. This was no “Kevin loves Susan” or “R.L. was here.”

No, the symbols carved there appeared to be Celtic. He had to admit he wasn’t entirely certain, just because the ancient European civilizations had never been his area of specialty.

“What are those?” Sidney asked as she drew closer. Her irritation appeared to have given way to confusion, which he completely understood. “Some kind of runes?”

“Not exactly,” Ben replied. Although he was no expert on Norse civilizations, he still knew enough to recognize that those symbols weren’t runes…at least, not the kind that most people would recognize as such and would use for divination or other arcane purposes.

No, the more he looked at the marks, the more he was convinced that they were Celtic in origin, even if that determination didn’t begin to explain what the symbols were doing out here…or why someone had felt the need to scratch them into this tree.

Except he thought he remembered that the ancient Celts believed oak trees were sacred and would conduct some of their rites in oak groves. Was that what had happened here? Was Silver Hollow hiding a secret cult of pagans who came out to dance in the moonlight in this sheltered spot?

Almost the same moment that thought crossed his mind, he immediately dismissed it.

Anyone who hiked all the way out here to perform a secret ceremony would have to be awfully motivated, and somehow he couldn’t imagine any of the residents he’d encountered over the past day and a half doing anything quite so wild.

Then again, people could surprise you.

“They might be Celtic,” he said, and Sidney frowned.

“We’re in northern California, not ancient Wales.”

“I know,” he replied, and did his best to suppress a smile.

Actually, he was a little surprised she knew even that much about the Celts, since it didn’t seem as if she’d included much study of ancient civilizations during her time in college.

No big surprise, considering how she’d intended to earn a DVM degree.

“And this isn’t my field of expertise, so I can’t begin to say what these symbols even mean.

I suppose the best thing to do is to take some photos of them and then upload the images to Google to see if we can cross-reference them that way. ”

“That’s a good idea,” she agreed, then moved closer to the tree even as he was beginning to pull out his phone again.

But her foot must have caught on a root or maybe a stone hidden in the lush grass, because she tripped before he could even react, falling to the ground with her hands outflung to catch her weight.

“Are you okay?” he asked at once, hurriedly shoving his phone back into his pocket.

“Fine,” she said, although he noticed the way she gritted her teeth as she uttered that single syllable…and the way she winced as she climbed back to her feet.

Blood trickled down from the palm of one hand. “You’re hurt!” he exclaimed, and she made an annoyed sound.

“I guess I am,” she said, looking down at her bloody palm with almost clinical disinterest. “I suppose I should be glad it was my hand that got it and not my knees. That would have made walking back to the trailhead a lot more difficult.”

He supposed she was right about that. Still, even though she sounded dismissive about the whole thing, he knew they couldn’t leave her wound untreated.

“I have a first aid kit in my pack,” he told her. “Hang on a sec.”

She shook her head, expression still one of mostly irritation. “I have one, too. It’s fine.”

But he’d already gone ahead and slung his pack off his shoulders, and immediately pulled out the kit he carried with him at all times.

It wasn’t too elaborate, just some Band-Aids and alcohol wipes and a bundle of gauze, but he hoped it would be enough to get her cleaned up and the wound on her hand covered so there wasn’t any danger of her reinfecting the gash she’d just received.

Probably from an exposed tree root, he thought. If she’d fallen on a rock, the damage would have been a lot more severe.

“Let me take a look at that,” he said.

For just a moment, she hesitated, as if she was trying to decide whether protesting further would do her any good. But then she gave an audible sigh and extended her hand.

“It’s really not a big deal.”

He didn’t respond, and instead only came over and wiped down the wound with one of the alcohol pads he’d taken out of his first aid kit. The gash didn’t look very deep, but it was ragged and kept wanting to bleed.

In a way, that was a good thing, just because it would help to get the cut cleaned out.

Her hand was warm against his skin, so he doubted there was any risk of her going into shock.

It was a pretty hand, long and slender, with graceful fingers.

No polish or rings, which didn’t surprise him very much.

He had a feeling it would take a while to truly know Sidney Lowell, but he could already tell she didn’t have much time for jewelry or manicures.

Was that a shudder he sensed as he went over the wound again with yet another alcohol wipe? Maybe. It wasn’t too odd, he thought, just because that gash looked like it hurt plenty, and she was probably having a hard time holding herself still while he worked.

Or maybe there was an entirely different reason why that tremor had gone through her as he continued to hold her hand.

Well, he could speculate about that later.

For now, he knew he needed to focus on getting the wound properly bandaged and then putting the used-up alcohol wipes and the Band-Aid wrapper in the little bag he brought along on hikes so he wouldn’t have to worry about disposing of trash while he was on the trail.

“Better?” he asked once he was done, and she nodded.

“Yes.” A pause, and she added, “Thank you. I suppose I’m just kicking myself for being so clumsy.”

“You shouldn’t,” he said immediately. “You were looking at the symbols on the tree, not at your feet.”

“Exactly,” she returned, mouth quirking up at one corner.

All right, he supposed she had a point there. Before he could respond to her remark, however, she spoke again.

“Speaking of which, you should go ahead and take those photos now. It’ll be interesting to see what Google thinks of them.”

That was for sure. Again, he got his phone out of his pocket and took a series of photos, first far enough away that you could see all the symbols at once, and then as close up as his phone could manage, doing his best to make sure the images were clear and sharp enough that the artificial intelligences at Google wouldn’t have any trouble analyzing them.

After a few minutes, though, he was satisfied that he had enough images to work with, so he put his phone back in his pocket and turned toward Sidney.

“Do you need to rest some more, or should we start back?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, I hope I don’t trip again because I’d hate to land on this hand, but I didn’t mess up my knees or anything.”

As if to prove her point, she started moving across the oak grove toward the spot where they’d emerged from the woods. Ben shouldered his pack and followed, brain going a mile a minute.

Who would have come all the way out here just to scrawl those symbols on the trunk of that ancient oak? They weren’t new and sharp, but neither were they blurred with age, telling him that whoever had done it, they must have come to the oak grove within the last couple of years.

Sidney had said that this spot wasn’t completely unknown to locals…or even to hikers who knew what they were looking for…which meant the pool of possible culprits was just large enough that they’d probably have a difficult time discovering who was responsible for making those marks.

If it even mattered at all. It didn’t seem too far-fetched for him to believe that someone who was a modern-day pagan had learned about the grove and had decided to make the trek so they could pay homage to the spirit of the forest. Those carefully carved symbols probably had nothing to do with the shimmering white horse that was supposed to haunt these woods.

On the other hand, they just might turn out to be the one clue they’d been looking for.