The real friction had stemmed from her guilt, Frieda knew. She had betrayed Oona's friendship, taken advantage of her innocence and trust. Her eyes flitted involuntarily to the old cupboard, its marred wooden surface spotted with age, sagging against the crooked floor. She remembered what she had done, and conflicting emotions darted through her mind. Misery, pride, joy, fear and guilt all struggled to reopen her closed heart. She blinked and turned away from the little room.
Pulling on her mittens Frieda plodded back out into the cold, following the tracks carefully. The sheer layer of ice covering the snow had moulded the prints clearly into the ground, as though they had been painted there. Despite the dozens of footsteps made by the police and others, Frieda was able to find the ones she wanted. Straight and sure, the tracks proceeded emptily in a straight line away from Oona's camp on the edge of the reserve, toward the forest. Just before the big rock, the prints stopped abruptly. It was here that Henry, out looking for his sister, had found Oona's old brown coat. Covered with snow and ice, it had been abandoned and flung in a heap next to the rock. A small distance to one side, Henry had discovered her mittens.
Frieda paused here, studying the efforts of the police and the others from the village. It took several minutes of careful observation before Frieda could sort out the correct prints and take up the trail again. They headed directly toward the forest, further apart now, obviously running. Frieda followed them quickly, feeling the pace, imagining some fear that would have made Oona run.
When they reached a huge pine tree standing alone at the forest edge, the tracks suddenly veered to the right. Frieda stopped and stared, amazed at what she saw.
The prints raced around the tree, not once, but exactly twenty times, in ever-widening, almost precise, circles.
Chapter 1
May received the call at 10:30 on a Monday morning. It was a testimony to our friendship that she ignored my obvious, selfish reaction when I found out she had to leave. Somehow, Monday mornings at Burchill Public School were always hectic, unpredictable, and well, as the song goes, rainy days and Mondays always got me, the principal, down.
This particular Monday was packed with events. A raging, purple-faced parent absolutely refused to even listen to anything I had to say. Luckily, we didn't have many of those in town, and as the villagers would say, they tended not to be Burchill born. A child languished in the health room with a suspected broken arm, but her parent seemed to be taking the long way here. Three students, who'd been caught throwing snowballs at a fiercely barking dog on a neighbour's property, were currently writing out their sins at the table in the office. Two classes were being temporarily watched over by other staff while May had begun scrambling to find supply teachers. Our caretaker was busily deciding between mopping up a leaking toilet and checking the temperature gauge in the gym, which was even too cold for running. Not only that, it was one of those frigid, damp days on which central Ontarians expected their babies to be kept indoors, which had already prompted several frantic calls to the office. Not being Burchill born myself, I am sometimes seen to be far less knowledgeable about things like weather than I ought to be.
So when May Reneaux, my only office assistant, got the call telling her that Oona had disappeared, my first reaction was to dismiss the news as another of her aunt's prolonged hunting trips. However, I knew in my heart of hearts that Edgar would not have called May at work if he thought Oona had simply gone off on her own.
Edgar Brennan was in charge of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) detachment in our area. His official title was Chief Superintendent, but we always simply referred to him as the town's police chief. The detachment served our village of Burchill, the First Nation community adjacent to the village, and the provincial park on the other side, as well as the highways that led into the area. Edgar was Burchill born and raised and had worked all his adult life here, so he knew his people very well. If he thought Oona was on a hunting trip, he would never have sounded the alarm by calling May away from the school.
It was not easy to hide my displeasure from May. She had become a very close friend in my four years in Burchill, especially over the last two. She knew me extremely well. However, she was too upset to notice my mood, and luckily when I realized the depth of her distress, my selfishness dissipated, and I made her exit fast and easy.
I spent the entire morning soothing ruffled feathers, checking the weather station, escorting the supply teachers to their classrooms while giving them a quick course on the school's policies, assisting the injured child until her parent strolled in, eliciting apology letters to the neighbour from the snow-throwing boys, calling the school board about the broken gymnasium heaters, and answering the telephone. Two of our most reliable Grade Eight students came down to the office to help over the noon hour, but even with their eager assistance, I was unable to take a breather until later in the afternoon.
I sat at my desk, contemplating this school principal job. Never had I felt so dissatisfied, even though, on the surface everything was going well. I began to drift in my reverie, wondering about the source of my unhappiness and bitterness lately, and actually started guiltily when Dominic, one of the office helpers, told me Mrs. Reneaux was on the line. I realized that I hadn't thought about May all day. When I heard her shuddering intake of breath after my hello and inquiry about how everything was, I knew the news couldn't be good.
Speak, speak to me, all the air, land, water,
speak to me while the earth
locks us together.
Chapter 2
Frieda shook herself and began to follow the tracks, her heart racing uncontrollably. She pushed the fear to one side, taking deep breaths of the cold morning air. She began to concentrate on the skills needed to follow the tracks. Definitely, she found that the prints wound around the tree twenty times, very close together, obviously at great speed. Yet they were precisely made so that they created wider and wider circles. Frieda was puzzled. On the last trek around the tree, the footprints raced off to the left and disappeared into the forest.
For a moment, the native woman stood absolutely still, listening, thinking. Her round face, framed by long, straight hair that refused to turn grey, looked mesmerized. Suddenly, she bent down and took an object from inside her coat. Digging with her knife—the exercise difficult in the semi-frozen ground—she eventually made a large hole alongside the tree. Frieda placed the object inside and carefully put the dirt and bits of debris back where they had been. Straightening, she was pleased with her work. No one would know that anything had been placed here. The searchers were finished with this spot and would never think to come back. Somehow, Frieda knew that she should not take the treasure into the woods with her. Her decision had been made. She was going to follow Oona, and if she found her former friend, she did not want the burden of that object to hinder their encounter.
Mixed with the tracks of the police and villagers, Frieda almost lost Oona's prints several times. Slowly, keenly, she followed them into the trees right up to the edge of the large pond. Here they stopped abruptly, as if Oona had stepped off into the murky water and disappeared through the thin layer of ice, which had closed like scum after her. The police and villagers had spent much time here, tramping off in every direction, wading into the shore of Bahswaway Pond.
Frieda stood and sniffed the air, staring around at every tree and bush, feeling the atmosphere. It was deathly still, as if every animal and bird were in hiding. No breeze stirred the lifeless limbs. Though she stood silent, Frieda's mind was racing.
There had been talk by the villagers that Walking Bear had frightened Oona. They surmised that he had found her trapping and had chased her into the icy water.
Frieda did not believe in Walking Bear, but an ancient fear gripped her anyway as she surveyed the scene. Ojibwa children of Frieda's generation were still taught the lessons of the past. She had been raised with stories of spirits that existed in every animal and in each leaf of every plant. She knew the legend
s of the various clans. She had been ingrained with the notion that sorcerers could arrange with the spirits of the earth to bring punishment upon humans who disobeyed the laws of nature. As an adult, Frieda had rejected many of the native ways and beliefs, but now in the hush of a winter forest, the little girl in her still shuddered.
Quietly, she inched along the edge of the pond, studying every twig of every bush along the way. Her feet slid over the ice without a sound. Her lithe body brushed against nothing as she manoeuvred through the trees. A short distance along, Frieda found the first evidence. It was a small bit of fur, drenched with dried blood, caught on a twig of one of the bushes. The fear grew larger and pulsed through Frieda's head. It was the fur of a bear that she held in her hand.
Chapter 3
"It looks as if she might have drowned." May's voice shook, as she fought off the tears that threatened to silence her. "Henry found her coat and mittens strewn all over. Her footsteps headed straight for Bahswaway Pond and disappeared. But, Em, get this. The footprints wound around a tree twenty times in these weird circles before she ran off into the water. You should hear the stories that are going around. Our people are still very superstitious during a crisis, it seems. I haven't heard some of these legends since I was a little girl."
I sat back in my chair, stunned, thoughts racing. "My God. But isn't Bahswaway just a pond? Wouldn't it be frozen up over the last couple of days?"
May gave a rueful chuckle. "I keep forgetting you're not Burchill born, my friend. That's why it's called Bahswaway—the Echo. The story goes that it was once a huge well that the natives had dug and then abandoned after several children disappeared into it. A pond formed around the well, but it's still very deep where the hole was. It doesn't actually freeze all the way down apparently, even in severe winters. The legend could actually be true, or maybe it's not. But at any rate, the pond is very deep in the middle—" The enormity of what she was reciting suddenly caught in her throat.
I leaned forward. "It's so strange, May. Those footprints, everything. What does Edgar say?"
"He doesn't know what to make of it. Everybody's puzzled as hell. Oona's house looks just like it always does, pretty neat and tidy. It's almost like she's going to come back at any moment. It doesn't look like she'd planned any kind of trip, especially a hunt. Her rifle is still there. And anyway, she always lets me know if she's going to be gone for very long."
Although May's mother had been a wonderful, caring person, she had not wanted her daughter to grow up in the old ways. It had been her Mother's sister Oona who'd taught May to hunt, fish, camp and cook in the traditional native ways. May had always felt very close to her aunt, especially when her mother suddenly died at fifty-eight—an age that was feeling more uncomfortably young to us every day. Oona was now seventy-five years old, although she looked and behaved more like a woman in her fifties. She was still active and spent a great deal of her time in the forest around Burchill. May and I had enjoyed more than one camping trip with her, enthralled by her tales of nature and native lore. Oona was a fascinating person. She was quiet but powerful, able to captivate an audience for long periods of time with her Oral Traditions.
May looked a lot like Oona with her long hooked nose, oval face, straight black hair, light brown skin, large black eyes, all in a short, compact frame. At first glance you might think that Oona and May were overweight, until you noticed the hidden power of their hands and arms and the muscles in their shoulders. Her people had been built for carrying water, wood and dead animals, May would laugh. Too bad she'd been born when she had. Her self-deprecating humour is just one of the many things I love about May Reneaux.
"But the footprints go right into the pond, and with her coat and mittens being abandoned, it just doesn't look good, Em. Edgar is organizing a search party right now. We've got lots of volunteers among the reserve and the town alike, which is really gratifying."
"Everyone loves and respects Oona. She's a towering presence in this community. If something has happened to her..." I trailed off, aware that I was not doing much to cheer up my poor friend. "And if something hasn't, she's going to be really pissed that there's a whole bunch of people coming to find her!"
May laughed. "Won't she be, though? I can just see her face!" She sighed. "Thanks, Emily. You can always make me feel better. I just hope we find her and that she's still alive."
"May, don't come in tomorrow. I can ask Gillian to fill in for you. You're going to want to join the search."
"Are you sure? I hate to leave you in the lurch like this."
"You're not. Really. Gillian will be fine," I assured her, hoping that it was true.
I could hear the relief in her voice as she thanked me. We hung up after I'd promised to see her tonight. As soon as we'd done so, I got on the phone again and called Gillian Hubbard, one of our amazing, generous parents who sometimes helped out in the office. She was quick to say yes, having heard about Oona and wanting to support May.
The rest of the afternoon flew by with far fewer problems. By the end of the day I felt almost normal and had decided not to quit my job after all. I waited until the building was mostly deserted, and then headed home on foot. Most days I did walk to and from the school. In the warm weather I actually jogged. But today I'd had no choice.
My husband, Langford Taylor, was a painter of some note in the region. He had left very early yesterday morning for a showing in a nearby town. In a place like Burchill it would be unforgivable to have two vehicles, and since I didn't expect him until late tonight I was stuck with my own feet as transportation. I planned to return home, change, feed the dog and head over to May's house, but it didn't quite turn out that way.
My horizon is the power of the wild
land, sweet with our ancestors, the natural.
Chapter 4
Summoning her hunter's courage, thinking only of the challenge of the chase, Frieda tightened her grip on her gun and forced herself to go on. There were no interfering prints now, as the police and others had not come this far. They must have assumed that Oona had met death in the swamp. Three more times, along the edge of the pond, Frieda found pieces of bear's fur. Every time it was caught on the twig of a bush, buried from the view of ordinary human eyes, and each time the fur was covered with dried blood. She was quite far into the thick of the forest, well past Bahswaway, when Frieda saw the first print.
Catching her breath, she reeled slightly at the sight of it and sank down to steady herself as much as to study the track. It was huge, one of the biggest prints she had ever seen. Moulded into the ice, it leered at her, as if to test her senses. The track was of a huge bear's paw, perfectly set in the snow, the claws outstretched to grip the frozen ground.
Walking Bear. Protector of Innocent Animals. Half man, half beast. Capable of great strength, of strange powers. Could it be true? Could the legends be right? Frieda lifted her head and stared at the trees towering to a peak near a patch of sky. Everything was still, waiting. She watched her breath coming in small clouds of fear. She was a hunter, a believer in real things, in the senses, in the tangible. She could not be fooled by stories. There was something here that she had not seen.
If Walking Bear were true to his legend, Frieda reasoned, he would not have attacked Oona. Oona was a protector of animals herself, using only the smallest of traps, catching a minimum quota of furs. She barely made enough money to provide the simple necessities of life. In this case, Frieda thought, the pupil had outdistanced the teacher. No, it would not have been Oona that Walking Bear would have been after. Unless...had Oona been holding out on Frieda? Was her innocent demeanour merely a cover? On those long, solitary hunting trips, was Oona doing a lot more than communing with nature?
Frieda straightened up and shook her head fiercely. Walking Bear was a story, made up by frightened and superstitious people to explain things they could not understand. And if Oona were holding out on her, why did she live so meagrely? Frieda was going to understand this mystery. She was going t
o hunt the truth.
Stealthily, Frieda continued her slow inspection of the area. The sun had been hidden by snow clouds and in the shadow of the trees. It was difficult to follow the trail. Still, Frieda was able to find evidence of the animal's presence—a footprint here, a bit of bloodstained fur there, a crushed branch, a clawed tree. Slowly she tracked through the woods, deeper into the forest where the intertwined branches overhead nearly blocked out all light. So fascinated was she by the hunt that she did not realize she was shivering with the cold, dampened by the sweat of fear. When the trail ended, suddenly, without warning, in a darkened section of the forest, Frieda felt the cold pass through her entire body like an electric shock.
All at once, the silence, the aloneness, the fear, closed in and gripped her in an iron fist. All evidence of the bear had disappeared. She could find nothing. No prints, no fur—nothing—nothing. Frieda stood shivering in the semidarkness, unable to think or feel, unable to move.
It was the sudden crunch of a branch that jerked her into motion again, an instinctive, rabbit-like movement, born of fear and helplessness. Gone was the cool hunter's objectivity. Frieda turned and ran like a frightened animal. She got no more than a dozen feet when she was flung heavily to the ground. Her body skidded and bumped on the ice, crumpling in a heap. Her gun flew from her grasp, scuttling across the icy surface. Writhing with a pain for which she could find no centre, Frieda saw the trees begin to sway before her. Darkness surrounded her, her stomach lurched, and her mind closed.
The Emily Taylor Mystery Bundle Page 18