Winter Shadows

by Margaret Buffie

  “Oh, no! Where are they? Stop! Stop!” I shouted.

  Gus slammed on the brakes, and I lurched backward, falling onto an empty seat. We must have hit an icy patch because the bus spun halfway around. A back wheel went deep into a snowbank.

  “What the devil!” Gus shouted, throwing the bus into gear and charging down the aisle. “Is everyone okay?” All hands went up.

  I jumped to my feet. “Didn’t you see that horse and sleigh?” I cried. “What’s the matter with you!”

  He ran to the front of the bus, and the door wheezed open. A few kids followed him off. When he came back, his chubby face was red. “What horse? What sleigh?”

  I ran outside, the rest of the kids crowding behind me. There were no tracks in the new snow. It was obvious there’d been no horse. No sleigh. No girl.

  “I – I –”

  Gus looked at me closely, his face softening. “Fell asleep, maybe?” He felt my forehead. “Hey, kiddo, you’re hot as a griddle. Better get your ma to check you out when you get home. You’re Cass Cullen, aren’t you?”

  “I feel sick. I’m really sorry.”

  “Never mind, never mind. Sure everyone’s okay?” he called. Then he pointed at three of the older boys. “You, you, and you. Climb into that snowbank and push.”

  Throwing disgusted looks at me, they did as they were told. The rest of us waited on the side of the road. A few of the kids were snickering and doing finger whirls around their ears. I didn’t care.

  A few minutes later, the bus was on the road again. Gus stood at the front and said, “Okay, there’s no need to take this any further. Cass fell asleep and woke up disoriented. No one’s hurt. It’s over.”

  When the bus stopped outside our place, I thanked Gus. He waved me away. “You just get to bed and take care of yourself there, Cass.”

  As I got up to leave, someone shouted, “Watch out! You might get run over by Santa and his reindeer!” Hoots of laughter followed me out.

  Daisy bolted past me, no doubt to blab to Jean about what happened. When I walked through the gate, I saw she’d slipped and landed sideways in a pile of fresh snow. Only her bright pink boots, jeaned legs, and thrashing pink mitts were visible. Then she was upright, shaking snow everywhere and wailing loudly. I tried to help her up, but she pushed me away.

  Jean’s horsey face peered out the front door. “I have a student in here! What on earth is going on?”

  “Cass pushed me hard into the snow and left me here!” Daisy howled.

  “You little liar!” I shouted.

  “You did! And, Mommy, she made Mr. Thompson stop the bus – just to play a trick on him – and we drove off the road. We coulda been killed!”

  “That’s enough!” cried Jean. “Get in the house, both of you. I’ll be talking to you when Mrs. Carter’s lesson is over.” She slammed the door.

  My throat felt like the skin had been stripped right off it. Daisy ran ahead and was trying to lock the side door from the inside when I thrust it open. The kitchen counter was covered with racks of cooling shortbread. Even through a clogged nose, I could smell the browned sugar that always meant Christmas in Aunt Blair’s house. Mom hadn’t been much of a baker.

  I was taking off my boots, ignoring Daisy’s whining about snow up her sleeves, when Jean walked in. She wore her teaching outfit – twin sweater set, baggy skirt, round-toed shoes, and grim face.

  Daisy perked right up – someone to listen! She whimpered about how wet she was from being pushed in the snow, but her performance was cut off in mid-gripe when Jean put her hand up. “Not now, Daisy. I’ll listen to what Cassandra has to say first.”

  “But, Mommy, she made Gus Thompson –”

  “Quiet, Daisy!” Jean ordered. “What happened, Cassandra? I saw you leaning right over Daisy.”

  “I have nothing to say, Jeannette May.”

  “She pushed me!” Daisy cried. “And before that –”

  “According to you, someone is always pushing you, Daisy,” I said. “I did not push you. You slipped. I was nowhere near you.”

  “Did too!” she bellowed. Then she told Jean her version of the accident. “She was playing a trick on Gus! We coulda been killed!”

  Jean stared at me, hands on hips.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “I fell asleep and dreamed I saw a horse-drawn sleigh. I didn’t sleep much last night and –”

  She shook her finger at me. “You are pushing your luck, my girl, and that luck is running out fast. I know Gus. I’ll call him and check this out. Meanwhile, you had better watch your p’s and q’s.”

  “Wow! Two clichés for the price of one today, Jeannette May. If I knew what my p’s and q’s were, I might decide to mind them. And as for pushing my luck, I don’t have any! If I did, you’d still be living in your own house and not in mine!” I grabbed my backpack, ran upstairs, stumbled into the bedroom, and fell on the bed, my whole body shaking. I closed my eyes and took long deep breaths. When I opened them again, everything had changed.

  The room was cold, even though flames flickered in the small fireplace. I pulled the covers over my head and curled into a tight ball. What was happening to me? I lay there for a while, heart pounding. Soon suffocated by the heat of my own body, I peeked over the top of my comforter.

  The fire still fluttered in the open fireplace. The small shelves on either side of it were filled with rocks, pieces of wood, and books. The room looked cozy … peaceful. I sat up slowly. An ancient woman wrapped in shawls sat on a bizarre chair, with moose antlers for arms, in front of the fire. She turned her head and looked right at me. My panic subsided when I saw her sweet smile. She pointed at the small table. On it lay a book. I recognized Beatrice Alexander’s journal.

  7

  BEATRICE

  Something happened in school that has deeply alarmed me.

  My students were already there, looking like the bright-eyed birds we call kîhkwîsiw, in their gray woolen dresses and white pinafores. I greeted them and was untying my bonnet while they chanted, “Good morning, Miss Alexander!” Once I put on my “Miss Alexander” face, I can often ignore the shadows.

  Two students have recently arrived from an officer’s home at York Factory. Another five will be coming in the spring. Only last week, Miss Cameron asked if I would be interested in taking on the post of full-time teacher. Her assistant, the frog-eyed Miss Stiles who keeps one bulging eye permanently on her watch pin, is forever complaining about too much work and too little time. Will teaching and fussing about time like Miss Stiles be enough to keep the shadows at bay? I don’t know.

  I looked at my girls and sighed. Their thick hair, usually glistening with grease and strung with ribbon, was now carefully washed and brushed. Only moccasins were allowed in the school for warmth in winter, as long as the trimmings didn’t go beyond simple bead rosettes. Most of these girls would be married before they are my age.

  “Have you all learned your parts?” I asked. “At church on Christmas Eve, we must show everyone what fine singers we have in our school!”

  They all nodded eagerly, except for one near the piano. I didn’t recognize this pale girl, with her soft pile of dark red hair. Was she a new pupil that Miss Cameron forgot to tell me about? Although red hair in this half-Scottish community appears now and again, she didn’t look like a mixed-blood child. She stared at me, bewildered. Something about her was oddly familiar and made me uneasy.

  I was about to ask her name when Miss Cameron walked through the door wearing a gray taffeta dress, her chestnut hair bound tightly to her head as always. She is a slim plain woman, just past thirty years, but her skin and eyes are lovely.

  “You made it, my dear. So much snow. How is your grandmother?”

  “Her croup is a little better today, thank you, Headmistress,” I said.

  She put her hand on my arm. “I’m glad.” Then she turned to the girls. “Good morning, ladies!” They curtsied and spoke their greeting as one.

  Suddenly I realized
the red-haired girl was no longer in the room – neither seated nor standing.

  “Did anyone see where the new girl went?” I asked.

  The pupils looked around. One said, “What new girl, Miss?”

  The floor tipped under my feet. Miss Cameron grasped my arm firmly. “Miss Alexander … Beatrice … what is it?”

  “I didn’t eat breakfast. I-I’m a little light-headed. I thought a new girl was arriving for lessons today.”

  “Come to my office when this class is over,” she said in a low voice. “Cook will leave you scones and a pot of tea. You must not neglect your health, Beatrice.”

  “I have to go straight to the library,” I said. “My watercolor class is preparing seasonal greetings for their families, which must be ready for Mr. McQuaker tomorrow. Right afterward, I have piano and violin students to tutor.”

  “Then I will have the tea sent to the library. You must eat, Beatrice,” she said firmly as she left the room.

  I turned to the girls and my next words stuck in my throat, for the red-haired girl was back in the same place, sitting behind a low desk. She wore a garment with a finely knit bodice, a high neckline, and narrow sleeves. Even more shocking, it was the dark red of moss berries. She was holding a book. It looked like – it couldn’t be – my private journal! My heart lurched. The light surrounding her dimmed. She faded away, leaving only murky vapor.

  The schoolroom revolved slowly around me. Ivy’s smug face flashed into my mind. I couldn’t remember if I’d put my diary back in its hiding place. How did this girl get hold of it? Where had she gone? In the distance, someone cried “Miss!” just as the floor rose to greet me. A flurry of hands lifted me onto a chair. One pushed my head toward my knees. When I was able, I sat up, bracing myself to see the wild-haired girl again, but she was not among the concerned faces.

  One student thrust something at me. “Lump birch sugar, Miss,” she said. “Nikâwiy sent it. It will help you. It helps me when ê-nôhtêhtâmoyân.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I took it from the child’s damp palm and put it in my mouth. It was sweet and melted on my tongue. I felt better instantly. I took the other piece she offered, along with a glass of water, and, after a moment, regained my balance. I forced any thoughts of the red-haired girl away. A few deep breaths and a slow walk around the room and the Christmas concert rehearsal finally got started. I played the piano and the girls warbled away, backs straight and faces keen.

  Last night, I ate nothing but one slice of dark bread – the sight of Ivy’s pot of stew, floating in globules of fat, was too revolting – and I had only tea for breakfast. This vision was surely the result of having too little in my stomach and being kept awake by Grandmother’s persistent coughing.

  I’m trying to be rational about what happened. People can have visions when they are starving. I know this from Grandmother’s experiences as a child living in the triangular mîkowâhp of her people. When it turned brutally cold, or when snow fell too heavily, game would become scarce. Many of nôhkom’s kin were plagued by visions and died, including two of her sisters and a number of the elders. One winter, when nôhkom was older, the tribe was forced to take shelter near the fort at Norway House, where they were allowed to camp nearby and trade furs for food. This was where Aggathas met her future husband, John Alexander, who became my Scottish grandfather, a writer at the fort.

  They became husband and wife in the country way. A canny man with many skills, John Alexander rose to chief factor of the fort. Aggathas’s status climbed with him. Years later, they sent their only surviving son – my father, Gordon – to be educated in Scotland. He met my mother there after she arrived from Devon to take care of an elderly aunt.

  But this morning, as I finished the last few chords of the choir’s final song, I chided myself. I was not starving as my grandmother’s family had starved. I was merely hungry and tired. So why was I seeing a girl that didn’t exist?

  “Miss! Are you feeling faint again?” a small voice called out.

  I shook my head and smiled. “Well done, girls. Off you go!”

  In the small library, I gave directions to my next set of pupils, then, a few minutes later, I tried to eat one of the scones left for me. But my stomach rebelled. I did, however, drink the large teapot dry, and, although I was anxious to get home to make sure my diary was safe from Ivy’s prying eyes, I felt more settled.

  The girls worked on their Yule greetings with ribbons, dried wildflowers, scissors, and paste. I wrapped a small watercolor portrait, pressed between pieces of heavy card, with brown paper. It was of my friend Penelope – I’d finished it from memory after I came home. Once I’d completed my task, I turned to the girls and hastened them along. I’d tried to have them emphasize the birth of Jesus in their cards as Miss Cameron is a deeply religious woman. The resulting manger scenes and starry grass plains filled with long-legged lambs – looking more like white-tailed deer – were finally ready. I gathered them up, along with my own package, and put them aside to give to Mr. McQuaker, who would take them north with the dog teams while the weather held. I waited for the red-haired girl to return, but she did not appear.

  As Tupper pulled me home in the waning light, I gazed across the river, striped with lengthening blue shadows. We passed a group of men and two massive workhorses draped in chains, pulling titanic slabs of ice from the river onto a sharply angled dock. I was certain that one of the men was Duncan Kilgour by his height and bulk. There was loud laughing when one of the men slipped and fell.

  On my long journey home from Upper Canada, I’d worked hard at fighting the suffocating thought of another winter in St. Cuthbert’s. The bishop’s wife, a former housemaid from England, had for years used her narrow ignorance of the world to ban anything that smacked of higher education or a social nature in our parish. There had rarely been musical, poetry, or dramatic evenings to look forward to.

  Mrs. Gaskell had suffered the nearest thing to an apoplectic seizure when I once had the temerity to suggest we start a literary society. I may as well have murdered one of my students in front of her, the way she went on about it! When she heard of an evening poetry-reading at one of our neighbor’s, her husband’s reproachful sermon blew over the congregation the next Sunday like the cold wind of doom.

  Thinking of the long days ahead and the strange girl, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. Tupper, sensing my tension through the reins, slowed and stopped. I closed my eyes. Like a swift phantom, a yellow vehicle rose behind my eyelids. As it flew toward my mind’s eye, I saw once again the flash of red hair and the small startled face. I have had this same vision three times since returning from Upper Canada.

  Was the girl in the yellow carriage the same one I saw in my classroom today? It was, I’m sure of it. Did she recognize me? Was it really my journal she held in her hands? Did she read it? I realize how kakêpâtis I must sound as I write this. Papa might say I was having a nervous breakdown. Am I? I am sure Grandmother would say that these visions have a purpose.

  Grandmother told me once how she was visited by a spirit woman. It was the last time she and her family faced starvation. Her younger sister had just died, and Aggathas was breathing her last, when the spirit appeared to her. It told nôhkom to be strong, for there were still many things to do in her life and her family would need her. She recovered to marry John Alexander and give birth to my papa.

  But, unlike me, nôhkom is spiritually strong and filled with an inner calmness that radiates off her. I feel no such tranquility, for I must constantly battle my black cakâstêsimowina.

  This afternoon, as I sat in the carriole, Tupper’s breath puffing small clouds from his nostrils, I wondered if the girl had been sent as a warning to me … if my diary had somehow been left out and been found by Ivy. I clicked my tongue, and Tupper moved forward. In the distance, smoke rose from Old Maples’s chimney like a coiled gray snake. As we turned into the barnyard, I wondered how long it would be before I saw the spirit girl again….

&n
bsp; The only good thing (and yet one that keeps me wondering) about this frightening day was that I found my diary still in its hiding place.

  8

  CASS

  I sneezed hard and the book dissolved in my hands. The old woman was gone. My room was back. My fingertips tingled where they’d touched the leather. It’s all just your fevered imagination, Cass, my inner voice called out. You’re sick! Forget it! Even that niggling voice sounded panicked this time. How could I forget? I didn’t want to think about imaginary old women … about a fire that couldn’t possibly be lit … or a book that appeared and disappeared out of nowhere.

  I paced the room. Okay. I’d held the diary in my hands. It felt real. Think logically, Cass. Think clearly. What was really happening? Was this another life I was seeing? Another time? A ghost? Could a book be a ghost? What about Beatrice’s story? Even I couldn’t make up something as real as that. If I accepted that I’d somehow time-slipped into her life or she had time-slipped into mine, then what?

  I couldn’t escape downstairs; Jean and Daisy were there. I scrambled onto my bed and flopped back on my pillows, dragging the comforter up to my chin, ready to fling it over my face. I thought about Beatrice’s life as described in her journal and realized that she was a nice person. The old woman (her grandmother?) looked kind. So, what did I have to be afraid of? Beatrice wrote things about her feelings that I felt too. I wanted to go over them again in my head, but I couldn’t think anymore. The soft swish of snow against my windows lulled me to sleep.

  I woke up when my cell phone rang. Aunt Blair bought it for me so she didn’t have to talk to Dad or Jean unless it was absolutely necessary.