What’s wrong, Maren?” Jo asked.
We were sitting in the science lab at school, getting ready for our first field trip. I had hoped for a trip to a theater or an old castle, but instead we were getting a muddy hike through the moors. I wanted to tell her about my strange trip to the angel village the day before, but I still wasn’t convinced it had really happened.
“Nothing, I’m just not sleeping well,” I assured her.
“Oh,” she said, bending down to fasten the clips on her Wellington boots. “That makes sense. You do look tired.”
“I agree, Jo,” Elsie said, shimmying onto a stool next to us. “Maren does look knackered. Like your boots.”
“What’s wrong with my boots?” Jo asked, struggling to close the rusty buckle on her cracked, dull brown boots. Most of the girls were wearing shiny, knee-high, slip-on Wellies with bright, designer colors and patterns. I felt guilty about my new black-and-beige plaid-covered ones, but I didn’t have older brothers to hand me down stuff like Jo, and I wasn’t going to tape garbage bags over my tennis shoes like my grandfather had suggested.
“Everything,” Elsie answered.
“What’s wrong with your boyfriend?” I asked Elsie, smiling innocently but knowing I’d hit a nerve, because as much as she wanted him to be, Anders wasn’t anyone’s boyfriend.
“What?” she practically spat at me.
Stuart joined in, as I noticed he always did to defend Jo. “Yeah, where’s Anders? Is he sick or something?”
“Anders and I are not exclusive, not that it’s any of your business,” Elsie fumed. “And he’s at a funeral with Graham. They had a death in the family this weekend.”
“Oh, it’s not that girl from Culloden Academy, is it?” Jo asked.
“What girl?” I said.
“Some girl died hiking yesterday,” Stuart answered. “They found her body at the bottom of the cliffs. She must have fallen.”
A wave of nausea rolled over me as I remembered Gavin telling me about the girl who jumped to her death to escape a demon. That decided it—my trip to his village must have been a dream, because that’s how my nightmares worked: I dreamed that someone died, and they did. My gran must have put the flower crown in my room, and I saw it before I fell asleep, and it ended up in my dream too. A part of me was relieved, but a bigger part was disappointed.
“No,” Elsie answered. “It was their uncle or something who died.”
Mr. Drackle, our Rural Studies teacher, poked his head into the room and shouted, “All right, people, let’s queue up. The motor coach is leaving!”
After a thirty-minute ride, we disembarked in a lush, green, but very soggy valley. Mr. Drackle had given us brown paper bags and checklists of things we had to do or find. A lot of people groaned, and I heard a few comments about how scavenger hunts were lame, but I thought it sounded like fun—more fun than sitting in a classroom with a textbook, anyway.
We had to find thistle, blaeberry, bedstraw, and butterwort (thankfully, we had pictures of them, or I’d fail hopelessly), a piece of granite, and a sandstone pebble. We needed to identify one animal print, and do a pencil rubbing of at least three different textured surfaces. Extra credit would be given for sketches of anything bearing historical importance.
I was behind in every one of my classes and desperate for extra credit, so Jo and I started out for a small stone building first. Elsie, Stuart, and a couple of other boys seemed to have the same idea.
Once we arrived at the roofless structure, everyone started climbing it, shifting rocks and causing damage to the already crumbling walls. Jo did a cartwheel off a corner.
“What is everyone doing?” I asked her when she landed.
She shrugged. “Just faffin’ about.”
“But won’t you get in trouble? Aren’t these, like, national treasures?”
“They’re just old crofts,” Jo replied. “They’re everywhere. No one cares much about tiny stone huts.”
I was amazed. In America, you couldn’t even breathe near a historical anything, and our stuff was only a couple hundred years old at the most.
We followed a faintly worn path through the valley, which rose and fell along hills studded with prickly plants and purple thistle. I looked up at the bright, cloudless sky and almost ran right into Stuart. He’d stopped to make a pencil rubbing on a flat stone that was, almost impossibly, taller than him. As the lead danced across the paper, it traced a shape I recognized.
“What is that?” I stammered as he removed his paper, revealing the Celtic cross-engraved signpost I’d seen with Gavin. Or thought I’d seen, anyway.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps one of the most famous remaining Pictish stones,” Mr. Drackle said, almost wheezing with excitement. “Left behind by the Pict tribe, believed to have been named such by the Romans for their elaborate blue, full-body tattoos. You’ll all know this towering specimen is called the Maiden Stone, but does anyone know why?” He wisely didn’t stop to wait for an answer. “Legend has it that a young maiden bet her hand in marriage that she could bake a bannock—”
“A plate of scones,” Jo whispered in translation for me.
“—faster than a handsome stranger could build a road to the top of a local mountain. He won, of course, because he was the Devil disguised. She ran away, praying, and God turned her to stone for her safety. That missing piece is where the Devil grabbed her shoulder as she fled.”
The fact that my teacher had a demonic story about the familiar stone confirmed it for me, along with the fact that there was no sign of a village: I had dreamed the entire thing. As I walked past the stone, my head started pounding, and I wondered if déjà vu was supposed to hurt so badly.
The farther I got from the cursed artifact, the quicker the pain subsided. While the class spread out all over the valley, our group followed Elsie toward a marshy bit to seek out the flower specimens.
We were still about thirty yards away from the murky, standing water, when suddenly my boot sank in invisible mud. It was like stepping off a small ledge; one minute I was walking on seemingly normal ground, and the next, the ground gave way. I looked down and saw that my entire left foot had disappeared in the earth, which had greedily closed in around my boot at the ankle. It was so weird; the right foot was standing on a piece of ground that looked exactly like the spot where my left foot was now submerged.
While I stared at the mystery that was my buried foot, the mud must have congealed or turned super sticky, because when I tried to lift my foot out, it wouldn’t budge.
I couldn’t believe my foot was really stuck. In a heroic act of idiocy, I tried to pretend it wasn’t and just walk forward, and almost ripped my leg off. I caught my balance just before I fell and did any serious damage.
“Hey, Stuart!” I yelled.
He turned and saw me standing unevenly, one foot set deeper than the other.
“Och, you’ve found the bog then!” he hollered. He whistled for the others, and then walked back to me.
“This isn’t the bog,” I said, pointing ahead to where the ground actually was all muddy and wet. “That is. This is just dry ground.”
“Then where, might I ask, is your left foot?”
“I must have stepped in a little hole or something,” I replied.
He stopped in front of me and smiled. “Then step out,” he said, crossing his arms across his chest.
“I tried,” I answered. “I can’t. My boot’s stuck.”
“That’s because you’ve stepped in the bog,” he said. “Here, put your hands on my shoulders. Let’s get you out of the boot, and then we’ll get the boot out of the bog. They’ll never come out together.”
I did as he said and eased my foot out of my boot, then hopped one-legged over to Jo. Stuart bent down, twisted my Wellie, and then with both hands yanked it upward. There was a loud sucking sound as the ground resisted, but he was able to free my shoe from its underground prison. He placed it on solid ground next to me with a small flourish. The bottom half of the boot was covered with a light tan mud that dried the second it hit the air. I stepped back into it and thanked him.
“My pleasure,” he said, bowing exaggeratedly.
Elsie came stomping up. “What’s the hold up?” she demanded.
“Maren just met the bog,” Stuart said.
“Don’t you know to watch where you step out here?” she said, disgusted, before stomping off. I couldn’t believe a girl who looked like Scottish Barbie was advising me on hiking.
“I know the bogs are deep,” I said, “but I thought that was the bog over there.”
“The bog is everywhere,” Stuart said.
As we all continued our walk toward the obviously wet bog, I tested each step with my toe before I committed to it. This slowed me down a lot, but Stuart hung back with me.
A bank of mist started to roll in, blocking the sun and giving the whole area a spooky feel.
“This is so weird,” I said to Stuart. “Does the mist always just come in like this, out of nowhere?”
“Yeah, especially over the bog,” he intoned. “The bog is no joke. People have used it for centuries to hide their dirty deeds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like their dead bodies. Dump one in the bog, and no one will ever be able to find it.”
“You’re making that up,” I said.
“No, I swear, there’s no bottom to the bog,” Stuart said, “and the police can’t skim it or anything, so the bodies stay sunk forever. Well, not forever. Every couple of years, it’ll spit a body back up for no reason and everyone will go doo-lally.”
“This is total fiction,” I said.
“It’s true,” he protested. “National Geographic’s done tons of documentaries about bog bodies, because the chemicals in the peat preserve ’em like mummies.”
I did remember an article about mummified bodies, when scientists discovered some ancient dude in the ice in Greenland. Maybe he isn’t pulling my leg.
Satisfied he had my attention, he continued. “A few years ago, a body popped out of the bog that they decided had been in there forty years. So the police started looking through all the missing persons reports from back then. They found that this local lady had disappeared, without a trace, and they went and visited her husband. They told this old man they’d found her body, and he went crazy, thinking she had come back to seek her revenge. He confessed to everything—that he had killed her and thrown her body in the bog.”
“That’s awesome,” I said. “She got him back.”
“It’s even better than that,” he said, “because after he was in jail, the forensics guys figured out the body was actually four hundred years old, not forty. He confessed for no reason.”
“No way,” I said.
“’Tis true,” he answered. “You can ask anyone. The bog is to be feared. Beware the bog.”
“Beware the bog?” I said.
“Aye, beware the bog.”
“What are we looking for, again?” Elsie asked, clearly sick of wading through the wet grass and mud. We’d been wandering the moors for two hours, and still hadn’t found half of the things on our lists. Most of the class was scattered around the bog’s edge now, including Mr. Drackle.
“What are you missing?” he asked Elsie.
“I can’t find the blaeberry,” she whined.
“Ah, the noble blaeberry,” he said. “Also called black-hearts in the nineteenth century. Has anyone read Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native?”
Elsie rolled her eyes and turned away. No one else answered, but as teachers are fond of doing, he continued talking anyway.
“Smashing book,” he continued. “Features black-hearts, of course.”
I wanted to walk away, but everyone else beat me to it, and I found myself stuck standing in front of Mr. Drackle alone. I smiled and tried to listen politely.
“Did you know, Maren, that blaeberries are believed to improve night vision?”
I shook my head. “In World War II, the Royal Air Force pilots were required to eat a half pint of blaeberry jam every two days in preparation for night missions.”
Jo appeared at my elbow. “Sorry, Mr. Drackle, but I need to steal Maren. We’ve partnered up, and I think I’ve found our phyllite rock.”
“Well done. You know phyllite is commonly found at the base of cliffs, while slate makes up the scree on the sides . . .”
I kept smiling as Jo dragged me backward. Mr. Drackle didn’t stop talking even while he strode in the opposite direction to find new listeners.
“Thanks,” I said. “I couldn’t get away.”
“I noticed.” She flashed her famous upside-down grin.
“Did you really find phyllite?” I said.
“No, but we’d better. I need an A to keep up my average.”
I got a strange whirring feeling in my brain, and I stopped walking.
“What is it?” Jo asked.
“I just had this crazy sensation . . . like I’ve been here before.”
“Like in a dream?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I said, trying to sort myself back into the present.
Maybe I had the weird feeling because Mr. Drackle had said “scree,” and I was standing by a bog like I had with Rielly in my dream. If it was a dream. Why do I have to have such detailed dreams? I was sure a normal girl could easily tell when she was dreaming and when she wasn’t.
Jo continued her search while I scanned the valley. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking, and I tripped over a small pile of rubble.
Jo turned back at the noise.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just ran into some rocks.”
“Are they the kind we need?”
“Oh, good question. Let me check.”
She came over, and together we uprooted the plants around the little mound so we could see it better. Once the brush was cleared, it looked like the rocks were set on top of each other to purposefully make a pyramid. I froze. Is it possible?
I started throwing the rocks, digging to get to the bottom.
“Hey!” Jo said. “You’re tossing rocks before you’re even looking at them.”
I stood up. My dismantling had revealed a large knot of rope.
“What is that?” Jo said. She grabbed the knot and tugged. The rope popped out of the dirt and led away from us, leaving a small trench behind. We could now see that it ran all the way into the wet bog and disappeared.
“Hey, Stuart!” Jo called. “Come here!”
Before I knew it, the entire class had gathered around us. Mr. Drackle was directing as the strongest boys heaved on the rope, trying to drag whatever it held out of the bog. I knew exactly what they’d find.
“It’s a barrel!” Stuart said, when it was finally dragged to dry ground and could be inspected. “What do you think is in it?”
People started throwing out guesses. “Gold,” someone said. “Mud.” “Body parts.”
“Butter.” The word popped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Everyone stared at me.
“Butter?” Elsie said. “What the—”
“Ah, yes!” Mr. Drackle interrupted. “Bog butter! She’s right. It could very well be. In ancient times, the Highlanders used to store their butter in the bogs, an early form of refrigeration. We might have a true historical discovery here, class! No one touch it. I’m going to call the news station.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Fantastic find, Ms. Hamilton.”
It had actually happened. I had been with Gavin to his village. I had been to the bog with Rielly. Images of curly-haired angels and bloody demons and a dead girl flooded into my head. I couldn’t deal with talking to the media.
“It wasn’t me,” I blurted out. “Jo found it.”
“Splendid!” he said. “I’m sure they’ll want to interview her!”
He put his finger in his ear, as if his own excitement was causing him to lose his hearing, and walked away chattering into his phone.
“Why’d you say I found it when it was you?” Jo whispered to me.
“I just want you to get your good grade,” I said. “I don’t care.”
She gave me a tight hug. “You’re a crackin’ good friend! You really are!”
I knew “crackin” was a synonym for “super,” but all I could think about when I heard the word was the girl from Culloden falling to her death.
I didn’t know yet that there were worse things than cracking your head open. Much worse.