A mute, foundling girl hides from her pursuers with the help of a reluctant recluse. The two of them have nothing in common except deep emotional scars. Who is she? How did she end up unconscious and scantily clothed on Evan's isolated property? Why...
Fairy tales are for dreamers and fools. All my naïve notions of a kind world vanished after the deaths of my brother, my parents, and finally when seventeen months ago, my wife Emily walked out leaving me alone in the world.
Everyone I ever loved abandoned me, each betrayal peeling away another layer of my humanity until nothing remained except the lonely shell of a twenty-four-year-old man. I had no use for my fellow humans because they always disappointed me. I blamed them for my becoming a hermit.
Yet, a tiny spark of longing remained within my core, barely there, waiting to ignite, but I didn't know how to make it catch. I needed to find some purpose grander than my warehouse job to lift me out of despair.
I never believed in guardian angels. I held no stock in divine intervention, but sometimes coincidence couldn't be explained. Maybe greater forces interceded. I could think of no other rational reason for what happened to me on a cold, November afternoon when I stumbled upon a silent stranger.
With hunting season a few weeks away, I decided to scout my property for deer. I knew the skittish animals preferred hanging out in the laurel growing on the backside of my mountain range, but something took hold of me, a troubling feeling I couldn't put into words. I pulled on my wool coat and pointed my four-wheeler west in a direction opposite the laurel. What made me do that? It made me think again of divine intervention, a concept I refused to credit.
My tires crunched over dead, shed leaves. A few weeks prior, the autumn frost did its work transforming thick green foliage into showy hues of red, yellow, and orange. Out of the corner of my eye alongside an old logging road, I spotted a flash of a different kind of orange. Something strange. Something I sensed didn't belong. I turned my machine around to investigate.
The something orange I had seen turned out to be a ginger head of hair, a long, flowing mane belonging to an unconscious girl lying tangled in the midst of tall grass. Shutting off the motor, I dismounted from my four-wheeler and cautiously approached.
"Hello?"
No response. No movement. The girl appeared to be in her late teens, twenty at most. I didn't recognize her. As far as I knew, she wasn't a neighbor. She was blessed with a perfect complexion, a scattering of freckles accenting a porcelain face and having a model's slender build.
Adding to the bizarre nature of my discovery, the young lady was barefoot and wore what appeared to be a sleeveless, ankle-length, white wedding gown and a gold wedding band encircling her middle finger. She looked every bit the part of a newlywed princess who would be more at home on a fashion show runway rather than sprawled akimbo in my wild field.
The initial shock over finding her quickly wore off when I realized the poor girl was underdressed for the cold weather and could be badly injured. Being a natural pessimist, I assumed the worst. "Please, don't be dead." If she was, my property would be invaded by law enforcement and other strangers. They would badger me with questions. Questions I couldn't answer. People and their incessant questions. What a nightmare that would be.
Kneeling, I sighed in relief after feeling a pulse at the side of her neck. I patted the back of her hand. "Miss, can you hear me?"
No response.
Dressed as she was, she had to be cold. I removed my wool coat and draped it over her like a blanket. Stroking her bare arm to get her circulation flowing, I tried again, "Miss?"
No reaction.
I saw no blood, no oddly bent limbs that might indicate broken bones. She didn't appear hurt in any way, but that didn't mean she hadn't suffered internal injuries.
I knew better than to move a wounded person in case of injury to the spine or neck, but the girl was unconscious and could have suffered a concussion. As gently as I would handle a newborn infant, I slipped a hand beneath her crown and felt for lumps or a head wound.
Nothing. Everything seemed normal. Given her youthful beauty and sudden appearance, the old, cliched pickup line crossed my mind: Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
I cursed myself for being stupid.
My imagination remained in overdrive, because I next recalled the old fairy tale trope about waking a princess with a kiss.
"Don't be an idiot," I mumbled. "Fairy tales are for fools. There are no happy endings." Not for me, anyway. From all appearances, maybe not for her either.
I regarded the girl's breathing and found it to be steady and unlabored.
"What am I going to do with you?"
Could she have been thrown from a vehicle during an accident? I climbed the berm onto the old, abandoned logging road and scanned in both directions. No wrecked vehicles. No evidence at all anything had passed by recently. The old road wasn't really drivable given the number of washed-out ruts and encroaching new growth. I doubted any vehicle would attempt it.
So, how had this pretty girl suddenly appeared out of nowhere? Why was she so scantily dressed in that thin wedding gown?
I returned to her and noticed arm movement. She was coming around.
Once again, I knelt at her side. "Miss?"
Her eyelids lifted and my breath caught as I gazed into a pair of piercing, cobalt blue eyes.
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