Hero is a Four Letter Word Read Online Free PDF Page B

many nursery stories about this place, about what had happened under its canopy in generations gone by, that Jennet genuinely doesn’t know if the feeling of walking through a wall of magic is her own imagination, fed by the tales, or just the change in the microclimate.
    She stops where she always stops, where her father had always stopped – three steps in, on a small mound left by a rotting log, beside an oak tree that has to be at least as old as the Carterhaugh manor house. Perhaps its brothers hold up the beams of the roof above Jennet’s head as she sleeps.
    She lays her right hand on the bark, in the same place that a dozen generations of Carterhaugh residents have done, and that one palm-shaped patch is as smooth and shiny as a well-oiled banister. She closes her eyes, leans against the tree, and tries not to think about how this is the first time she’s been here since her Da was put in the ground.
    That the last person to touch this spot had been David Carter.
    Without thinking too much about it, without giving herself time and space to feel foolish, Jen presses her forehead against the rough bark above the handprint. She kisses the smooth place in the bark, between her own fingers.
    It smells of damp and wood, of skin and salt, of her lavender hand cream and the bacon sarnie she’d had for lunch, of the rich tapestry of forest and the father she’ll never hear fairy stories from again.
    “That’s new,” a voice with a thick burr rumbles somewhere far ahead of her. If the forest could have a voice, then this is what it would sound like. Old, and Scottish almost to the point of being a stereotype, thick and dark. Male. Curious. Complex and fizzy, like raw ginger on the tongue.
    Jen lingers on the tree for a moment more, refusing to have this moment cut short, refusing to allow her observer make her feel foolish. Then she leans back and stands up straight, and peers into the mists.
    When she has found the blotch of shadow that is different from the rest, she rests a hip against the oak tree. The pose mirrors the speaker’s own cocky posture, a deliberate call-out. Jennet smiles calmly, thinly. “You must be my new gardener, then.” She folds her hands across her chest, waiting.
    “Must I?” the voice is rich and amused.
    “That’s what they’re saying in Selkirk, I hear. Funny thing, I don’t recall hiring you.”
    “Nor would you,” the voice agrees.
    “So what are you doing in my forest?”
    A light laugh, like air through branches. “ Your forest?”
    “My father left it to me,” Jennet says. “Carterhaugh is mine.”
    “Oh, the echoes of time,” the voice says, and his burr is blurry and wistful.
    “Right, whoever you are, I have a mobile with me. Come out, or I call 999.”
    A repressed snort of laughter. “But that is different.”
    “Seriously, now,” Jennet says, fishes the mobile phone from her coat pocket and lifts it demonstratively. The blue glow cuts through the gloom and lights on the figure, just a few paces away. It is thin, slumped, hands shoved in the kangaroo pocket of a hoodie, and when it looks up from under the hood, green eyes glitter in the light.
    “Oh, Maggie, how bold you’ve grown.”
    “It’s Jennet. Who the hell are you?”
    The figure sweeps a deep and ironic bow. “Liam. Ma’am.”
    “Miss,” Jennet corrects with knee-jerk reflex. “And that’s still no answer to why you’re skulking around in my woods.”
    Liam stands to his full height, pulls back his hood, removes his hands from his pockets, and steps into a slanting shaft of late afternoon sunlight. Motes and pollen dance in the air between them, and his hair sparks gold and straw. Jennet lowers her mobile as he spreads his arms, palm up.
    “Do you know who I am?” he asks.
    “No,” Jennet says.
    He grins. “Good.”
    Jennet presses the 9 button twice. The electronic beep is harsh and flat in the small, mist-battened clearing.
    Liam No-Last-Name laughs. “I’m no threat to you,