I became uncomfortably aware again that we were a long way from any other human beings. I turned and looked back the way I had come, then I caught my breath.
A small figure, all dressed in green, was running along the path from the sea, toward the hill we were standing on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RUBY
I grabbed Eldred’s arm. “Is that—is that a fairy?” I whispered. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cursed myself for being so silly. Yet I didn’t let go of his arm.
He didn’t answer right away, but stood stock-still, looking at the little green person. It had reached the bottom of the hill and was starting to scramble up the path. It had bright blonde hair and red shoes.
Eldred began to smile. “You could say it was a fairy,” he said. “More like an imp.”
I could see it better now. It was bigger than I thought. About my size.
It stopped and waved an arm at us.
“Hi, Eldred!” it called out. “Hi, Ruth!” Then it kept climbing.
It was a girl. I let go of Eldred and took a step away, feeling foolish. What was it about this guy that could get me so freaked out that I thought I saw fairies?
She scrambled up the last few yards and threw herself on Eldred in a big, long hug, laughing.
“I missed you so much, Eldred!” she said, pulling away.
“And I missed you, Ruby,” he said, tousling her short blonde hair. “Life’s some dull in Buckle when you’re not here. But you’ll be wanting to meet your cousin Ruth.”
She turned to me, her eyes shining. “Ruth! Aunt Doll said I’d find you out here somewhere. I’ve been dying to—” Then she stopped, staring at me.
I stared back. She was just my size, wearing a bright-green sweater and green pants. Her cheeks were flushed pink with her climb. But her face…her face was my face. Blue eyes, small nose, high cheekbones, slightly crooked mouth, strong chin—it was like looking in a mirror. Even her hair was the same, except it was short and stuck out all over the place.
“Wow!” she breathed. “This must be what Aunt Doll meant. She said I’d be surprised when I met you.” She spoke more like Aunt Doll than Eldred, but I could still hear that slight Irish lilt in her voice.
I swallowed. I felt off-kilter, like something in the world had kind of slipped, and things weren’t quite right. I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re skinnier than me,” I said finally.
Ruby laughed. “I guess. What do you think, Eldred? Isn’t this weird?”
Eldred was watching us carefully, a tiny smile turning up the corners of his mouth.
“I was after thinking she was you, Ruby, when I first saw her climbing up this hill. Gave me quite a turn when she opened her mouth and told me she wasn’t. Your hair’s different. But otherwise you’re a pair.” He looked back and forth between us and shook his head, his smile widening.
I was still staring at Ruby. I couldn’t help it. She was so like me—and yet not like me. Her features were the same, but she was more jumpy and it seemed like she couldn’t stop moving. Whatever she was feeling went dancing across her face—surprise, delight, excitement—whereas I knew that I kept all of that pretty close. It was weird to watch someone else’s emotions registering on a face that looked just like mine.
“Oh, we can have fun with this,” said Ruby, grabbing my hands and pulling me into a little dance. “We can switch places, like in that movie, and play tricks on people.”
“You won’t fool me,” said Eldred. “I know better. You may look alike, but you’re very different.” He smiled at me. It was as if he knew what I’d just been thinking.
“Ruth, now, she’s a sensible girl who doesn’t believe in fairies and keeps her two feet firmly on the ground. Not like you, Ruby, badgering me night and day to tell you stories about fairies and ghosts. You can learn from each other maybe.” He walked over and picked up an old knapsack that was lying on the ground near where I first saw him. “I best be on my way. I’ll see you both later.”
Ruby gave him another hug and I nodded good-bye to him. He headed down the hill into the valley with the dark trees.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s always wandering. He has some rabbit snares along the fairy path. Probably he’s going to check them.”
“Rabbit snares?”
“Yeah, he catches them for food. Haven’t you ever had rabbit?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“It’s yummy. Sooner or later he’ll bring some round and you can try it.”
We stood together in silence, watching Eldred as he followed the fairy path up the valley and disappeared into the trees. I felt suddenly shy and didn’t know what to say to this new cousin who was both strange and familiar at the same time.
Ruby turned and looked at me, eyes wide and curious, like she was memorizing my face. Our eyes met and I looked away. It was just too weird.
I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. “Eldred—is he…umm…I mean, is he—all right?”
Ruby laughed. “You mean is he crazy? No. He’s a sweetie pie. He’s just a little…different.” She started hopping around in a circle. “Aunt Doll says he was stolen by the fairies when he was little and that’s why he’s so odd. But he tells the best stories.”
She stopped hopping and came back to me, looking eagerly into my face again. “Wait till you hear them. His mother was a storyteller. And so was her mother, and hers before that. It runs in the family. He’s got all the stories, from way back.”
I felt uncomfortable with her staring at me like that. I looked off toward the far hill, and the Ghost Road. I looked back at her. “Do you—do you believe the stories he tells? About the fairies and all that stuff?”
She reached in her pocket and pulled out a crumbly piece of bread.
“What do you think?”
I reached into mine and pulled out the bread that Eldred had given me.
Our eyes met. We both began to laugh.
CHAPTER NINE
GANNETS
“Aunt Doll is the best baker,” said Ruby through a mouthful of blueberry muffin. “Wendy’s baking is never as good as hers.”
“Who’s Wendy?”
Ruby took another enormous bite. “My stepmother.”
“You call her Wendy? Not Mom?”
Ruby made a face. “She’s not my mother.”
We were sitting in a little rocky basin, high over the ocean. Ruby had brought me there because it was sheltered. The rocks were on three sides of us, with the fourth side open to the water. We could see for miles, up and down the coast. The stiff wind had whipped the sea into whitecaps and the sun played hide-and-seek with the dark clouds. Ruth had pulled out a little “lunch” from her pocket that Aunt Doll had provided her with for the walk: fresh blueberry muffins smothered in butter.
“Aunt Doll wasn’t expecting me so early, but I was up at the crack of dawn and I just kept tormenting Dad till he finally gave in and drove me here. They’re all having a longer visit with Wendy’s mom in Clarenville, but I couldn’t wait to get here. I wanted to meet you so bad, ever since Aunt Doll said you were coming. Aunt Doll told me about you a long time ago, but I never thought you’d come.” She licked the butter off her thumb and grinned at me.
“Well, I always spent summers with my dad,” I said. “Till this year. And I never knew much about Newfoundland. I didn’t even know I had a cousin, or that our mothers were twins.”
“I guess that’s why we look so much alike,” said Ruby. “Look, there’s gannets!” She pointed out over the water.
A seabird was swooping low over the ocean. It hung in the air for a moment, then plunged straight down into the water.
Another one swooped down and dived. Then another.
“I love the gannets,” said Ruby. “You don’t always see them.”
“I’ve never seen a bird dive like that.”
“You can always tell a gannet because of the way it
dives. And if you’re close enough, you can see they have black wing tips.”
We watched the birds for a while.
“So, your dad got married again? That’s why you’re not with him this summer?”
I nodded.
“So you’ve got a stepmother now, just like me.”
I sighed. “Yes. What’s yours like?”
Ruby made a face. “She’s a pain. She’s always bugging me about something. Dishes. Cleaning my room. Homework. The boys take up all her time. And Dad’s. I can’t wait to get out here to Buckle every summer.”
She frowned and looked out over the wide sweep of the sea. In profile, her face still looked like mine, but from an angle I wasn’t used to. Then she turned back to me and I had that tilting feeling again, like I was looking at myself. This was going to take some getting used to.
“What about your stepmother? What’s she like?”
I wrinkled up my nose. “She’s really nice and sweet, and kind—and I can’t stand her! I call her Awful Gwen. She’s always there. I never see my dad alone anymore. She’s so interested in everything I do. Too interested. Asking me all kinds of questions all the time and trying to be my friend. And cooking all these fancy meals where we have to sit and make polite conversation. Before, Dad and I used to read books while we ate. I miss that.”
Ruby grinned. “Awful Gwen. I like it! Dad tried to get me to call Wendy ‘Mom’ when they first got married, when I was five. But I couldn’t. I always knew she wasn’t my real mother.” A shadow of sadness seemed to pass over her face, like a cloud over the sun.
“Do you remember her?” I said softly. “Your real mom?”
She kept watching the gannets. “Sometimes. I can see her laughing and hugging me, and telling me she loves me. But she looks just like she does in this picture I have of her holding me on her lap, and I’m not sure if I’m making it up or if I really remember her.”
“That’s exactly the same with me,” I said. “I have a picture just like that, of my mom with me on her lap. And then I have a memory of her laughing and talking to me, but I don’t know if it’s because of the picture or if I really remember it. I just hang on to it because it’s all I have.”
“Wow,” whispered Ruby, staring into my eyes. “Ruth. It’s almost as if we have the same memory.”
The mirror effect came back and I almost felt dizzy with it. The back of my neck tingled and a shiver ran down my back.
“I didn’t know…” I began shakily. “I didn’t know till today that our mothers died at exactly the same time. Did you?”
She nodded, never taking her eyes off mine. “Yup. I always thought that was so weird. Aunt Doll says they did everything together. Even dying. Because they were twins.”
I felt my eyes filling with tears even as I saw Ruby’s spilling over. We both reached out at the same time and grasped hands. The sound of the seabirds and the beat of the ocean waves on the rocks below faded away and we were held together in a moment of sadness that felt like it would never end, there on that high hill with the clouds and the wind and the big wide world stretching out in all directions.
“Twins,” I repeated softly, staring out over the water. “Just because they were twins.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE SHEEP
“This way,” said Ruby, leading me down a path that led off down a hill from the main path.
“But aren’t we going back to Buckle?” I asked.
“Yup. This is a shortcut.” The path wound around a couple of low hills, steadily going downhill.
Ruby stopped suddenly and I banged into her from behind.
“Hey!” I said.
Ruby was looking down at an expanse of water that flooded the path. It was about eight yards across, too wide to jump and it looked deep. A brook, cascading down the hillside, had pooled there on the path and widened as it seeped into a marsh.
“The other way was dry,” I said.
Ruby grinned. “I know. I came that way. But I needed to check this out. Come on.” And she started to climb up the rocks at the side of the waterfall. Then she ducked behind a big rock and I lost sight of her.
Scrambling up behind her, I found my cousin standing looking down at a makeshift bridge over the brook: an old piece of broken board balanced precariously between two rocks—one on the edge of the brook, and the other in the middle.
“They did it again!” said Ruby happily, stepping carefully out onto the board, which wobbled dangerously. She made it to the rock in the middle, then took a giant step to another rock and then a last jump took her to the far shore.
“Who did what?” I asked, eyeing the board. It looked like it could tip over and tumble down the waterfall any minute.
“The fairies!” cried Ruby, laughing. “Every year they make a fairy bridge here. It gets washed away a couple of times every summer, but they find another board somewhere and lay it down.”
“Why would it be fairies?” I said. “Why couldn’t it be a human being who makes the bridge?”
“Because nobody ever comes this way, that’s why. Only me.”
“What about Eldred?”
“No. I asked him once. He sticks to the main path, where he can count his sheep. No, it’s the fairies, and I always thank them.” She did a gracious curtsy and called out, “Thank you, fairies!”
I rolled my eyes. Honestly. Ruby was nuts.
“Come on!” called my cousin. “This saves us about ten minutes.”
“I don’t know…” I said.
“Don’t be a chicken,” said Ruby.
I took a deep breath. I’d taken some rough hikes with my dad in the jungles of Costa Rica, the mountains of Spain, the Amazon wetlands…this was just a tiny brook. I put one foot on the board and it quivered.
I put my other foot down. More quivering.
I took another step. And another. Just as I made it to the rock, the board shuddered and tipped, then went clattering down the waterfall. I took a big jump to the rock Ruby had used, and then one more jump to the shore.
I turned and watched as the board caught in some rocks and stuck.
“Don’t worry,” said Ruby. “The fairies will fix it. Next time we come, it will be all set up again for us. Thank you, fairies,” she called out again, giving me a nudge. “You say it,” she said. “And curtsy. They like that.”
I called out a squeaky “Thank you, fairies,” and did a little dipping curtsy, feeling like an idiot.
“Come on,” said Ruby, grabbing me by the hand. We hurried along the path, which led us up another hill, around a corner and smack dab into a flock of sheep.
The sheep all looked up in alarm and went running off down the hill, panicked.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.
“They’re scared of humans,” said Ruby. “Only Eldred can get them to come to him. They always run when they see me, no matter how gentle I am with them.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, watching the sheep. They’d stopped a good way off and were looking back suspiciously at us, as if they expected us to come after them any minute. They were fluffy and silly-looking, with their mouths hanging open.
“Come back, sheep!” I called, holding out my hand. “Come back you silly sheep! We don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s no use,” said Ruby. “I’ve tried. They never come.”
“Hey you sillies,” I called. “I won’t hurt you.”
The nearest sheep took a step toward me. And then another.
“Come,” I called softly. “Don’t be shy.”
The sheep walked slowly toward me. The others watched.
I started walking toward the sheep, murmuring softly, and the sheep kept coming.
“Well I never,” said Ruby behind me.
The sheep came right up to me and sniffed my hand. Its warm breath tickled. The others started edging closer. I laughed softly and patted the sheep on its head. I turned back to look at Ruby, who hadn’t moved.
“It’s a miracle!” sai
d Ruby. “Honestly, they won’t come to anyone else. Not Aunt Doll. Not anyone from Buckle. Only Eldred. And now you.”
I patted a couple of sheep, and then turned back to Ruby. The sheep stopped and watched me go.
“Animals always come to me,” I said. “Cats, dogs, cows. Dad says I have ‘animal magnetism.’ It’s almost funny sometimes. They just make a beeline for me.”
Ruby was staring at me. “I wonder,” she said.
“Wonder what?”
“Nothing. Come on, I’ll race you home.” She took off up the path with me at her heels.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SPITTING IMAGE
Ruby and I tumbled into the kitchen, out of breath and laughing.
“You cheated!” I gasped. “You tripped me!”
“I could have beaten you by a mile,” said Ruby. “I was going slow just to give you a chance. Boy, are you out of shape, Toronto Girl!”
“Ha!” I said, grabbing her by the sweater and shaking her, “I was beating you fair and square until you tripped me at the gate.” Ruby stumbled into me and we both fell backward, into a pair of strong arms.
“Hey!” said a man’s voice as he steadied us. “Looks like you two have made friends.”
I spun around and looked up into the grinning face of a big man with curly brown hair and blue eyes. I took a step back and looked at the floor, embarrassed. I hadn’t been aware of anyone in the kitchen besides Aunt Doll standing at the sink with a tea towel in her hands.
“You’re still here!” said Ruby, stepping by me and throwing her arms around the man. “I thought you’d be gone by now. Aren’t you going to visit Nan?”
“Yes,” said the man, tousling her hair. “I wanted a chat with your Aunt Doll first.” He looked over Ruby’s head at me. “I’m Ruby’s dad. Your Uncle George. Nice to meet you, Ruth.”
“You too,” I said politely. I still felt awkward. I watched as he bent toward his daughter, listening to her chatter away about Eldred and the sheep. He was so different from my father. I couldn’t imagine hugging Dad in public. Or even hugging him at all. My dad wasn’t very demonstrative: he gave me polite cheek kisses and occasionally patted my shoulder. Still—I missed him. Seeing Ruby laughing and hanging on her dad’s arm sent a little sharp pain through me, like someone poking me with a needle.
The Ghost Road Page 3