The Rock Read Free

“Do you know how to climb, too?”
    “Of course,” Jamie said, as if surprised that there was even a question.
    Thommy was amazed that Jamie didn’t split the seams of his fine doublet with the way his chest and shoulders seemed to puff up.
    Ella gave her brother a funny look and opened her mouth as if she were going to argue, when Jamie cut her off. “Do you want to go or not, Ella?”
    The little girl let out a cheer of delight and linked her arm with Jo’s. As if they’d known each other forever, they skipped off ahead, not giving Jamie a chance to change his mind.
    The two boys took one look at each other, shook their heads in tandem as if to say “lasses,” and followed.

    As it turned out, before the day was over, the two girls weren’t the only ones who were fast friends.
    The boys swam in the burn for a couple of hours while Jo and Ella sat on the edge with their toes in the water, when one of the other boys from the village—Iain, the constable’s son—suggested they play a game of hide-and-find.
    The dense forest of big, domed oak trees, downy birch, and hazel trees, with the thick bracken and mossy underwood, was ideal, providing plenty of places to hide. It had been a warm spring, otherwise the ground would be a carpet of faerie flowers. The blueish purple flowers that were shaped like a bell had been his mother’s favorite.
    Thommy had played it many times before, but he explained the rules to Jamie. All the boys except for one would hide. The one who didn’t hide—the finder—would have to cover his eyes and count to a hundred before trying to find them. The rest of the boys couldn’t move once the hundred count was up.
    Jamie, apparently confident in his tracking abilities, volunteered to be the “finder.” It was then that the trouble started, when Ella—who apparently wasn’t used to being excluded—objected to the no-lasses rule. Although it really wasn’t a rule because up until that point they hadn’t needed one: all the village lasses had understood that they weren’t included.
    “But that’s not fair,” Ella said with a surprisingly mulish look on her cherub’s face. “I’m smaller than all of you, I can hide the best.”
    The boys looked at each other as if she were daft. Everyone knew lasses didn’t best lads. They instinctively looked to Jamie to do something. Normally, they would look to Thommy, but under the circumstances he was happy to defer his role as leader.
    Jamie tried reasoning with her, but when that didn’t work, he grew frustrated and just told her that was the rule, and if she didn’t want to follow it, they would go home.
    That stopped her. Ella slammed her mouth shut, pursed her lips together as if sucking on a lemon, and plopped down angrily on a rock with her small arms crossed in front of her. The wee lass apparently had a stubborn streak.
    The other boys looked relieved, and Jamie tried to act as if her agreement had been expected, but Thommy thought he detected a whiff of relief.
    Jo, who could normally be counted on to be reasonable but had been surprisingly vocal in her support of her new friend, shot Jamie a disappointed look (his star apparently having dimmed), and sat down beside Ella to wait.
    At least that’s what they were supposed to do, but when Thommy and Jamie came to collect them after the game was done (Jamie had been correct in his estimation of his tracking skills), the girls were gone. Apparently stubborn and willful, he amended.
    At first they were more annoyed than worried. The other lads had gone home, so he and Jamie split up, Jamie yelling threats to his sister, while Thommy yelled some of his own to Jo.
    Thommy found Jo after a few minutes. She’d picked a good hiding place under a fallen tree covered in a veil of moss, but she’d neglected to ensure her skirts were tucked completely out of view.
    It took far longer to find Ella. Actually, they didn’t find her. Jamie finally had the smart idea to shout out that she’d