Page 35 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Calla took the shovel from Vivi. She began to dig again.

Minutes later, the spade hit metal with a triumphant clang. Together, the sisters pried the rectangular object from the dirt and pulled it up onto thebench. It was a box, rusted at the edges, but otherwise smooth and undisturbed. There was no lock, only a latch that gave easily when Calla flicked at it. Vivi’s fingers trembled as she lifted the lid.

Tightly wedged inside was a thick, leather-bound book with uneven pages, scribbled over and half torn, as if the author couldn’t decide what to keep and what to discard. The first page revealed words written in French. It was dated May of 1943, the year of K. P.Lý’s disappearance. She recognized the handwriting immediately.

There are many places where I could begin.

It was a journal.Hisjournal.

Vivi bit her lip so hard she tasted the rush of iron in her mouth. There was a creeping sense that the trees were closing in; branches clattering, roots lifting, eyelids of bark scraping slowly open. The world unseen turning its gaze on them, the interlopers.

She bent over the pages, mouthing the words to herself.

Even now, decades later, I see the sheen of a rushing river—

“Well? What does it say?” Calla cried. She pulled the journal closer to her.

“Be gentle!” The binding was falling apart, spine caked in grime. Vivi longed to be back in her lab, where she could slide the pages under glass and examine the ink, the fibers. Samuel would have been the first person she called.You’ll never believe what I found. And he’d have come running, dropping whatever he was doing, because that’s what Sam did for her, for everyone he loved—

“Is it fromLý? You know I can’t read French.”

“Yes. Probably. Let me think, Button!”

“Alors!” The shout, gruff and unyielding, came from a short distance beyond them.

The sisters stilled. They heard the tromping of boots on grass. A gruntof exertion. Something heavy dragged on the ground, thumping as it hit against stones. Vivi flashed to another time in Deer Creek, where the scraping of their father’s boots would announce his arrival, fear darting into the farmhouse like a skittish animal.

“Qui est-ce?” The voice came nearer, now rich in threat.

Vivi and Calla stood quickly, the journal tucked under Vivi’s arm, Calla’s flashlight pointed toward their shoes. They backed away from the bench, trying to fade into the shadows. Vivi’s foot caught on the edge of the metal box, and it made a loud, clanging noise. The dragging sound stopped.

“Fuck,” she breathed.

Then there was a pop in the air. A rifle fired through the night, a warning shot that scattered the creatures who hid in the trees with them. At that moment, Calla dropped the flashlight and everything became dark. The sisters ran.

Near the front of the servants’ cottage, Calla’s ankle snagged one of the fence posts. She fell to her knees, chin clattering on the wood. By now, they could hear the snapping of dogs somewhere behind them. Vivi caught up to her and tugged her sister upright, pushing her the last few inches over the fence. She leapt after her, then dragged Calla the rest of the way, impervious to her whimpers of pain.

They did not stop until they were back on the terrace of Maison de Notre Rêve, lungs swollen with adrenaline. Vivi stopped to look behind her, but no man came through the woods. Was there anyone out there with them, after all, or had she conjured him, as she had summonedLýin the servants’ cottage? Her mind, always her most trusted asset, had become a thicket of unreliable impressions.

“Just breathe,” Calla said. Blood was pooled in the curve under her knee, but she reached out to clasp Vivi’s shoulder. “You’re okay.”

“You heard it too? The shot?”

Calla gave her an odd look. “Of course I did. Americans aren’t the only maniacs chasing each other with guns, I guess.”

“Your chin. You’ll bruise.”

Calla winced, touching the tender spot where it’d hit the fence. “It doesn’t matter. We got what we came for.”

They locked the door to the suite. In the dim room, the roses on the wallpaper took on an amorphous quality, organic blobs of red and pink. The open window admitted a breeze scented with mist and wild oleander, along with a meaty funk, the terrestrial mingled with the sublime.

Vivi and Calla sat on the sofa, heads bent over the journal.

“Read it to me,” Calla demanded.

Back at the farmhouse, Calla used to scoot next to Vivi as she read a chapter book, using her pudgy fingers to sound out the words on the pages.Boxcar. Twins. Salted limes. Trying, as always, to catch up to her older sister. At first, Vivi had been pleased to be the only reader of the two—she finally had access to a space that Calla couldn’t commandeer—but then she saw how every adventure was somehow better with Calla. Fuller, more vividly experienced. So Vivi taught Calla to read and, in the process, opened the world to both of them. But French was another story. Calla had no knack for languages and quickly forgot what little she’d absorbed in her cursory years of it in high school.

“Please?” Calla’s voice shook, as if she was afraid Vivi would refuse.