“Tell me,” said Ruby, handing me a crumpled handkerchief. “Tell me what happened.”
After I blew my nose, I felt a little better.
“It’s just so hard, Ruby,” I said. “They were just as real as you are. They were right here. I’m afraid soon I won’t be able to tell the difference between what’s in the present and what’s in the past.”
“Just tell me,” said Ruby.
And I did.
When I had finished, Ruby looked almost as sad as I felt.
“They thought they could break the curse by marrying Dad?” she said, shaking her head. “By stopping the feud? I guess it didn’t work so good. Seems like the feud is alive and well. Look, Ruth,” she said, getting to her feet with a big sigh, “we can only do our best. And we need to get to Slippers Cove. It’s a long walk.” She started rummaging in the chest of drawers. “We better take some extra sweaters,” she said, tossing me one of hers, a thick blue one. “Just in case.” She pulled her knapsack out from under her bed and stuffed another sweater into it. Then she hauled out a couple of turtlenecks and threw me one.
“Put it in your knapsack,” she said. “It won’t hurt to be prepared. The weather can change so fast.”
I dried my eyes and finished packing. Ruby was right. I couldn’t lose hope now.
When we got downstairs, Aunt Doll doled out the food between us and then started clucking about the possibility of rain. Ruby made a strong stand.
“If we wait for the weather to be perfect, we’ll never go,” she said. “This is Newfoundland, after all. And Ruth wants to collect some flowers for her dad.”
I nodded, trying to look innocent. It couldn’t have been very convincing, because Aunt Doll said, “Oh, get on with you. I know you’re up to something. Just be sensible and stay safe and don’t go near the edge of cliffs or play on the rocks near the ocean.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “I know all that, Aunt Doll. And we’re not up to something. We just want a good long hike.”
I nodded again. Aunt Doll looked doubtful. “Make sure you’re back before dark,” she said, and then settled into her chair with her pink newspapers. “At least I’ll get some peace and quiet,” she said, with a contented sigh.
Ruby turned her back on Aunt Doll and winked at me. Then we set off.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHOCOLATE BROWNIES
By the time we got outside and started down the road, the sun had disappeared and the wind was bitter. We had sweaters and jackets on, with raincoats in our knapsacks, along with what seemed like a huge amount of food, including crusts of bread in our pockets to keep us safe from the fairies.
As we walked, the sun went in and out behind the clouds. When it was out, I was too hot and tied my jacket around my waist. A few minutes later the sky would darken and the wind would cut through my sweater, and I’d put my jacket on again.
Ruby led the way, up the hill into the next valley, then along the road to the top of the hill where I’d met Eldred a few days earlier. It seemed like weeks ago. We stopped for a while on the top of the hill, catching our breath and having a drink. Aunt Doll had given us each a thermos of water and a bottle of lemonade. We investigated the lunch.
“It’s too early to eat yet,” said Ruth, not very convincingly. “She made chicken sandwiches,” she said, pulling out a packet of wax paper, “and she’s put in brownies and partridgeberry muffins—” She looked up at me with a grin.
“Okay, give me a muffin,” I said, and we sat and devoured a couple. The sun was shining on the far hill, where the Ghost Road climbed up over the rise.
Ruby followed my gaze. “You can see it?”
“Yup,” I replied, pointing. She stared, but shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
The path we had been following veered off to the right, to the Fairy Path where Eldred had been heading, and then curved up through the valley, half-shadowed by trees. I turned back to the Ghost Road.
“You see those two tall trees, there on the left side of the hill?” I said to Ruby.
“Yes.”
“We should head for them. The road goes up beside them.”
She started down the hill, trying to pick out the easiest way. It was slow going. We couldn’t really see where we were stepping, because of the juniper and Virginian rose that grew low to the ground. They formed a kind of cushiony mat, but every time I took a step I wasn’t sure how far my foot would go down. There was a profusion of wild flowers, most of which I recognized—white yarrow, bright-pink bog laurel, yellow potentilla—and a few I didn’t. But I didn’t want to take the time to pick any specimens. We had to keep moving. We had a long way to go.
Slowly we made our way across the valley. It was wider than it looked from the hill. It was hard to get perspective, because it was mostly rock and low bushes, with a few stunted trees scattered around. On the left, the ocean stretched off into the distance, a deep navy blue studded with whitecaps. The sun stayed out, and soon we were down to our T-shirts.
As we got closer, the Ghost Road grew more defined. It looked like a silvery ribbon, twisting up over the hill. A stony road. Every so often Ruby would stop and shield her eyes from the sun, trying to see it. Then she’d shake her head and go on.
At the bottom of the valley the ground got marshy, and although we tried to pick our way around the wet spots, we sank in above our ankles in a few places, and soon our shoes and socks were soaked.
“Never mind,” I said to Ruby. “I brought some dry socks and we can change into them later on.”
“Good thinking, Twin,” she said.
As we started to climb up the opposite hill, I began noticing signs of a faint path. The walking got easier.
“Ruby, can you see that we’re on a kind of road now?” I asked. She looked down at the ground.
“Sort of,” she said. “But I still don’t see anything up ahead.”
We kept climbing. Finally we reached the tall trees I’d pointed out to Ruby from the top of the hill where I had met Eldred. They weren’t tall by Ontario standards—only about fifteen feet. But they stood out on the mostly treeless hill. The Ghost Road was clear now, to me, anyway: a rough track, sprinkled with stones, that led up and over the hill.
We stood and looked back. Now I could make out a faint track behind us, going down the hill and across the valley, where we had come from. It was like the shadow of a road. I tried to point it out to Ruby, but she still couldn’t see it. We turned and I led her up to the crest of the hill.
A series of meadows opened up below us, dipping down toward the ocean and then climbing into the distance. The Ghost Road twisted along, steadily drawing closer to the water.
“Do you see it?” I asked Ruby. She squinted against the sun, which was sparkling off the water now.
“Nope,” she said. Then she flopped down on the grass and opened her knapsack.
“Definitely lunchtime,” she said, and hauled out a packet of sandwiches.
I joined her and we ate in silence, the sun warming our faces. It was very peaceful, sitting there on the hill, with the world spread out beneath us. It was almost as if we two were alone in the world. There was not a house or another person in sight. The hills and the meadows and the sea stretched on and on, into the distance.
“Funny no one’s ever found it, all these years,” I said. “I mean, at the beginning, the road must have still been visible and they could have got there easily. And then once it faded away, you’d think they could still find it, just by walking along in the right general direction.”
“Eldred told me no one wanted to go. People thought it was haunted by the spirits of all the people who died there in the flood.”
I shivered. “Just what I need. More ghosts.”
Ruby looked thoughtfully out over the ocean. The sun was just disappearing behind a bank of clouds. Now that we were sitting still, the breeze was a little cool. I shifted uncomfortably on the rocks.
“Don’t you think we should get going, Ruby? We�
��ve only been gone about two hours and we still have a long way to go. And it might rain…”
She turned abruptly away from the darkening sky and started rummaging around in her knapsack. “In a minute. There’s one more thing we need to eat to give us some energy,” she said. She found what she was looking for and hauled it out, grinning at me.
“Chocolate brownies.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
THE SHIP
We walked for another hour or so. The sun emerged from behind the clouds for a while, and it grew warmer. Although grasses and low bushes had grown over the Ghost Road in places, it was still easy enough for me to follow. A seagull screamed overhead. I looked up. The bird swooped out over the ocean, then hovered in a wind current. I looked beyond it, where something was slowly moving across the water.
A fishing boat? I’d seen a few near Buckle over the last few days, but today the sea seemed pretty rough for a boat to be out. I shaded my eyes and squinted into the distance.
A sailboat? White shapes ballooned out from tall masts. A tall ship? I caught my breath. Ruby had told me that she’d seen a tall ship in St. John’s once, a replica of an old schooner, and people paid to go sailing on it. But why would a tall ship be here on this remote part of the coast?
Suddenly the dark clouds that had been hovering in the west were quickly filling the sky, and the wind had picked up, and it was starting to rain.
I looked back to the ship. It was rocketing up and down on a wild sea, and suddenly it seemed a lot closer, and I could hear people screaming—and a hissing kind of shriek, rising and falling in the wind. “By water,” it howled. “By water!”
“Ruth,” said Ruby, shaking my arm. “Ruth!”
I turned and she was there beside me, solid and real and safe. The sky was just cloudy, not dark, and there was no sign of the sailing ship.
“Cathleen,” I said. “I thought I saw it—in the storm. Just for a minute.”
Ruby shaded her eyes and scanned the ocean. “There’s nothing out there,” she said.
“We better keep going,” I said, and turned back to the road. I felt a sick sense of apprehension, like I was going to the dentist and getting closer and closer with every step. I didn’t want to see any more shipwrecks, or visions, or ghosts, but I knew without a doubt that I was walking right into them.
We went on. The terrain was getting rougher, and the road wound a path through rocky outcrops and dipped closer to the edge of the cliffs. They towered a couple of hundred feet above the water, and seagulls and gannets swept along and dived for the surface. Huge waves crashed and swirled against the jagged coastline. There was no sign of any break in the cliffs ahead.
“It would be hard to get a boat in anywhere along here,” said Ruby.
“Maybe that’s why Slippers Cove is hard to find from the water,” I said, remembering the painting in Clarence’s study. “You can’t get in close enough to see the gap in the cliffs.”
“I suppose,” said Ruby. We walked along in silence for a while.
Even with the shadow of my latest vision clouding my thoughts, and my worry about what lay ahead, I felt my spirits lifting. There was something in the wild pounding of the sea below us, the calling of the seabirds and the blustering sky above us that filled me with joy. It was so beautiful and lonely and vast. I was part of it, the way I’d never been part of anywhere else I’d ever been. I belonged here.
I stopped and gazed out at the ocean. “It’s so beautiful,” I said softly.
“I know,” said Ruby. “It’s the best.” She sighed. “Hey, are you hungry? I think there might be some brownies left.”
We stopped and dug in the knapsacks again. We polished off the brownies sitting against a rock with the sea spread beneath us and the warm sun on our faces.
“I’ve been all over the world with my dad,” I said. “And been to all kinds of beautiful places. But this is different. I feel it in my bones. Like I’m part of it.”
Ruby nodded. “I know. That’s exactly how I feel. The rest of my life, outside here, feels like a shadow. Or a black-and-white movie. But when I’m in Buckle, it’s in color.”
I watched a gannet stop in midair and then drop like a stone into the water in an effortless dive. I thought of my room in Toronto, and school, and Dad and Gwen. It all seemed gray and unhappy compared with sitting on this cliff beside Ruby, with miles and miles of emptiness all around us.
“I don’t know how I’ll be able to go back,” I said.
“Well,” said Ruby, getting to her feet, “we can’t think about that now. Today we have to find Slippers Cove.”
“You’re very practical, aren’t you?” I said, smiling up at her. Her hair was blowing every which way in the sea breeze and her eyes sparkled.
She reached out a hand to me and pulled me to my feet. “Come on, Ruth,” she said. “It can’t be too much farther.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
LADY SLIPPERS
After about another fifteen minutes of walking, the Ghost Road curved inland away from the sea, and soon we were walking downhill through an area thick with trees. The sky darkened and the trees crowded up on either side of the road, so we couldn’t see very far ahead. In some places small trees had sprung up in the middle of the road, and we had to step around them.
My eyes were on the ground ahead of me when something caught my eye off to the left. I looked up and saw a splash of yellow in the gloom. I stopped.
“What?” said Ruby, who was right behind me.
“Look,” I said, pointing. “Yellow lady slippers.”
There was a patch of them growing together just under the trees beside the road. Hanging from slender green stems, they seemed to be glowing from within like small magic lanterns.
“They’re so pretty,” said Ruby. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“Cypripedium,” I said automatically, “meaning ‘Aphrodite’s sandal.’ Lady’s slipper, get it? It’s a kind of orchid,” I said.
Ruby went closer and stared at it. “They do look like little shoes,” she said. “Fairy shoes.” She started back down the road.
“Just hang on a minute,” I called. Then I waded through the tall grass and carefully picked a couple of the stems with the nodding flowers and folded them into my notebook.
Ruby was up ahead, watching me, a funny look on her face.
“Well, we did tell Aunt Doll we were going to look for wildflowers,” I said, apologetically, as I caught up with her. “They’re a little rare and I might not get a chance to find another one.”
“That’s okay, Twin,” she said. “I get it. You’re a flower collector. But now can we go and break this curse? We must be nearly there.”
I gave her a little shove. She laughed.
About five minutes later she stopped suddenly.
“More fairy shoes,” she said, pointing into the woods at another patch of glowing flowers. This time they were dark purple.
“Wow,” I said. “This must be the perfect growing conditions for them. I know they like woods and wet patches, and—oh!”
“Slippers Cove!” We both said. And then “Jinx!” And we laughed.
“I never thought about why it was called Slippers Cove,” I said. “I just assumed it was something to do with slippers, like you wear on your feet. Not the flower.”
“Me neither,” said Ruby. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“I just need to get a couple of samples,” I said, stepping off the road and into the woods. “Won’t be a minute.” I bent down to pick a flower, taking care not to touch the leaves, when something moving gently in the shadows beyond the lady slippers caught my eye.
It was another clutch of wildflowers, growing closer to the ground. Each stem had two delicate mauvy-pink flowers nodding in the breeze.
“Twinflowers,” I whispered, and then raised my voice. “Ruby, come!”
“What, what?” she said in an excited voice, galloping up behind me and looking from left to right, as if she expe
cted to see a crowd of ghosts coming out from behind the trees.
“Twinflowers!” I said, pointing to them.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “What are twinflowers?”
“They were the other dried flower in the trunk, with the lady slippers,” I explained, tucking the purple lady slippers into my sketchbook and stepping over to the patch of twinflowers.
Ruby came with me and squatted down to look at them while I picked a couple.
“They’re so pretty,” she said, touching one of the nodding flowers.
“Yes,” I said, and our eyes met.
“They were here,” I said. “Or at least Molly was. Someone picked them and the lady slippers and dried them and put them in the trunk.”
“Where they’ve been all this time,” said Ruby. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
We went back to the road and kept walking. Over the next ten minutes, the road led steadily downhill through the woods, and we saw several more patches of Cypripedium—yellow, pink and purple. I’d always loved orchids and I hadn’t seen many lady slippers in my travels with Dad. These were lovely, a touch of color in a landscape that was growing darker by the minute.
I felt a sprinkle of raindrops on my face.
“Uh-oh,” said Ruby, and we stopped to haul our raincoats out from the bottom of our knapsacks.
Just in time. It started raining in earnest. Water dripped from the trees and small puddles formed on the road. We kept slogging on, but the stones were slippery underfoot and the road uneven as it wound down a steeper hill.
It was hard to see anything now because the rain was falling in a thick curtain around us. A fast-running brook appeared on the right, and then suddenly we were out in the open again, and a fierce wind off the ocean stopped us in our tracks. Cliffs loomed up around a small, sheltered harbor. The rain driving into my face felt like hundreds of tiny needles and I couldn’t breathe in the wind, which seemed determined to knock me off my feet. The ground was steep and slippery, and I started to slide.
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