Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy by Nancy K. Duplechain Page A

fawn, afraid to touch it at first. It made a strange
sound, and she couldn’t tell if it was wheezing or crying. Before she knew it,
tears were falling down her cheeks. She cradled the fawn’s head in her lap and
stroked its soft fur.
    “I’m
sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
    Daddy killed a
buck every fall. Just one. It was enough to feed the family all winter. He
didn’t take pictures with it or put its head on the wall. He only took what he
needed, and they always thanked God for the gift that was provided. He never
shot at a doe, especially one with fawns.
    She cried for
the little thing in her lap and watched its chest rise and fall rapidly. She
prayed for its pain to end, for its suffering to go away quickly. Over and over
she repeated her prayer, “Please, God, no more pain.”
    She was hardly
aware of the warmth in her hands.
    As she stroked
its fur and sobbed, she was finally aware of the heat, but there was no pain.
Soon, the heat was inside of her, and she felt like she would burn up. Through
blurry eyes, she saw something miraculous happen: tiny silver pellets bubbled
up from the fawn’s wounds and spilled out onto the red and brown leaves. The
blood ceased to trickle, and the animal’s breathing slowed.
    She sniffled and
stopped crying. The heat in her hands subsided, and the fawn shakily stood up
and blinked at her.
    When Daddy came
home from work later that day, he was introduced to his daughter’s new pet.
Mama couldn’t help but giggle at his expression.
    “Can we,
Daddy?!” his daughter begged.
    After some
coaxing from Mama, he said, “Okay, Lyla. But just until she’s big enough
to take care of herself, okay?”
    “Yay!”

    ***
     
    “Hey, Lyla!
Heal this !”
    She turned
around just in time for a dead mouse to hit her in the face. Ignoring the
laughter from the kids around her, she scooped up the mouse, thinking it might
have been alive, but it had already passed. The boys had been teasing the girls
who all screamed at the sight of it. Lyla was the only one who didn’t scream
and carry on. This made her a bigger target, and now even the girls laughed at
her.
    Not wanting the
boys to keep throwing it around, she tossed the little body over the fence,
careful to aim for the flower bed.
    “You gonna
date that mouse, Lyla?” It was Logan Williams, the one who bullied her the
most.
    “I bet you
wanna marry it, huh?” added Taylor Marcantel, who had a huge crush on
Logan. She stood there with a disgusted sneer on her face, a hungry look in her
eyes. It was the look kids get when there’s a fight about to start—when they want a fight to start. It was the look of a pack of wolves getting ready to take
down a deer.
    Lyla tried not
to show her embarrassment but felt her cheeks flush anyway. She didn’t want to
give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry, so she walked away with her head
down, counting the lines in the cement walkway to keep from hearing what they
were shouting as they followed her.
    Taylor and her
best friend Tanya skipped on either side of Lyla and sang in unison to the tune
of Frosty the Snowman : “Ly-la, the freak show! What a stu-pid,
ug-ly girl! She makes love to mice and to the rats that eat her eyes and nose!
Oh, Ly-la, the freak show! …”
    She saw Miss
Doris and Miss Lydia on duty by the gym. They were chatting with each other,
laughing about something. Lyla kept a calm, even pace and changed course for
the gym. If she ran to tell the teachers that would just make it worse later.
But if she got close enough to them, the other kids would hang back.
    Taylor and Tanya
stopped their singing, but kept skipping. Logan’s best friends, Bobby and
Skeeter, hung behind him, laughing because Skeeter had just spit in Lyla’s
hair.
    Why won’t the
teachers look this way? Why don’t they shut up for two seconds and look this
way and see what they’re doing to me?!
    Logan said,
“Why are you so ugly, Lyla? Why are you so stupid? I’m gonna