Chapter 19

I t is too bad the old apple tree died, thought Elizabeth Fier.

She was kneeling in her green gardening dress, digging with a trowel in the rich dark soil. Heavy leather gloves protected her hands. The apple tree had died, and her brother, Simon, had chopped it down.

Now there was a bare spot in the backyard. Elizabeth thought it looked empty and a bit sad.

But I will take care of that, she thought, adjusting her straw bonnet over her long, dark hair. This flower garden will be even prettier than the old tree. I will fill it with pansies and snapdragons.

As she worked, she hummed a tune her mother had tried to teach her on the piano. She stopped humming as her trowel hit something hard under the dirt. She lifted the trowel out of the dirt, then poked it into the earth again.

There is something buried here, she thought. Maybe some kind of treasure!

A voice inside her head told her it was most likely a root from the old dead tree. But she would soon find out.

She dug around the hard spot, wiping the dirt away with her fingers. She tapped her trowel against it again. It clanged, metal against metal.

A short while later she pulled up a metal box. It had a heavy lock on it, but the box itself was so rusted the hinges had broken.

“Elizabeth!” her mother called from the kitchen door. “Come in and wash up! Supper is ready.”

Elizabeth called back, “I will be there in a minute, Mother.”

The rusty box fascinated her. What is inside? she wondered. Maybe it really is full of treasure.

Carefully she lifted the rusty lid and peered inside. A coarse gray dust covered the bottom of the box. Elizabeth removed her gardening gloves and dipped her fingers into the dust. She touched something solid and pulled it out.

It was a round, silver disk on a silver chain. A silver claw with three talons seemed to clutch the top of the disk. It was studded with four blue stones. On the back Elizabeth saw the inscribed words: Dominatio per malum.

Latin, Elizabeth thought. But she did not know what the words meant. Maybe Simon would know.

What an odd necklace, she thought. But I like it.

She stood up, necklace in hand, and ran inside. Her father, Samuel Fier, and her sister and brother, Kate and Simon, were already seated at the dining room table.

It was a warm evening in late spring, but a fire burned in the old brick hearth. The house was very old; it had been in the Fier family for a hundred years. Samuel Fier and his family lived prosperously there.

“Go wash your hands, Elizabeth,” said her mother, Katherine. She was a plump, pretty, round-faced woman with light brown hair piled on top of her head.

Elizabeth poured fresh water into the washbasin and rinsed off her hands.

Her mother set a platter of sliced turkey on the table, adding, “I wish you would not stay out in the garden so late, Ehzabeth. It leaves you no time to change for supper.”

“I am sorry, Mother,” Ehzabeth replied, returning to the table. She held up the silver disk. “Look what I dug up,” she said. “Isn’t it strange?”

Kate gave the pendant a dismissive glance and said, “It is ugly.”

Kate was seventeen, a year older than Elizabeth. Her hair was a lighter shade of brown and her eyes a lighter shade of blue than Elizabeth’s. But they both had the same pale skin and full, red lips.

Their brother, Simon, who was eighteen, had a very tall, thin body with an angular face, thin lips, and black hair. His eyes, too, were black.

Simon studied the pendant as Elizabeth dangled it before him. “Where did you find it?” he asked.

“In the backyard, where I am digging my new garden. It was buried under the old apple tree.”

Samuel Fier touched the amulet lightly. “I have never seen anything like it,” he said. “I wonder what it was doing buried there. Someone must have buried it for a reason.”

“Maybe it should stay buried,” Kate joked.

Elizabeth ignored her sister’s comment. “I like it,” she said. “I am going to wear it as a good-luck charm.”

She draped the silver chain around her neck.

Suddenly her neck began to tingle. Elizabeth shuddered and closed her eyes. They burned.

When she opened her eyes, the dining room was gone and she was surrounded by fire!

Hot flames licked at her long curls, at the hem of her dress. Fire singed her eyelashes.

I feel faint, she thought. She shut her eyes again and prepared to be engulfed in flames.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20