by kc dyer
Looked like finding Gabe was going to have to wait. Darby started to worry a little when Nan asked her to wear a dress to the art show, but luckily since she hadn’t actually brought a dress with her, they settled on a nice pair of shorts and the hideous sweater Nan had knit Darby last Christmas.
It was a beautiful morning, clear and hot without even a hint of breeze. As soon as they stepped outdoors, Darby’s hair stuck to her forehead, but she kept the sweater on anyway. Gold star for the good granddaughter.
Shawnie’s art show was on display in a little gallery on Grafton Street near the downtown mall. Darby and Nan arrived just after the doors opened, and only a few people were milling around. Shawnie was at the back of the gallery, but when she saw them she waved and came up.
“Mrs. Christopher! Thank you so much for coming.”
“Darby was thrilled to get the tickets this morning, Shawnie,” Nan said, staring at her granddaughter pointedly. “I couldn’t keep her away!”
“Yes, thank you for inviting us,” Darby said, in her gold star voice. She knew a cue when she heard one. Especially when delivered by Nan.
“Let me show you around a little,” said Shawnie.
“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of tying you up on your first day,” said Nan. “We’ll just have a quick peek around ourselves.”
Darby had to give a few mental gold stars back to Nan for that one, saving them the pain of the guided tour. And anyway, she wanted a closer look at the little piece she had seen in the display case at the library.
Almost right away, Darby got lucky. Nan made a beeline over to chat with a friend she spotted, so Darby was free to wander around and try to find the little stone object.
Looking at the artwork, Darby decided the poster Shawnie had put together didn’t really do her own work justice. For one thing, the pictures were all of her husband Michael’s work. Half of the room was taken up with the artwork he’d done. There was a picture and biography of him on the wall, and she recognized him a few minutes later talking to Shawnie. He worked with porcupine quills and sweetgrass, weaving detailed designs on baskets of different sizes and shapes.
When Darby looked at the table set up next to the baskets, she caught her breath. Shawnie’s stonework. The stone had etchings of old symbols, and the little text description said they were called petroglyphs. But mixed in with the petroglyphs were a number of figures carved out of stone. The one that caught Darby’s attention was carved in the shape of a walrus. She picked it up. It was very heavy in her hand but the stone was soft.
Soft and green.
She had a piece of stone that looked just like it sitting on the desk in her room. And her mind flashed to the soft stone lamp in the people’s dark snow house. Shawnie’s initials were carved in the bottom of this walrus, and Darby glanced in her direction. Her mind swirled with questions.
Just then, someone put a hand on Darby’s arm. Nan looked a little startled when Darby screeched, then tried to cover it with a cough.
“My goodness, dear, I’m sorry to startle you. Shawnie has agreed to a five-minute tea break,” whispered Nan. “Perhaps a little warm tea will help that cough of yours, as well.”
Good idea. Darby grinned and followed the two women to a little tea shop farther down Grafton Street, turning over the carved walrus in her mind.
At their small table, Nan set down two cups of tea and Darby chose a glass of chocolate milk. Nan put milk and sugar in her tea and Darby offered Shawnie the small pitcher.
“I didn’t grow up drinking milk,” she said with a laugh. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get a taste for it. I’m lactose intolerant, so that makes it even harder.”
Darby hardly gave Shawnie a chance to stir her tea before she started firing questions. “How come you carve things like seals and walruses out of rock? I didn’t know there were walruses in PEI.”
She laughed. “No—you’re quite right. I haven’t seen any walruses around lately. I’m not from here, though; I was born in Rankin Inlet, so I carve the animals I grew up with.”
“Oh, I thought you were a Mi’kmaq,” Darby said. “I didn’t know you were from the Arctic.”
“My husband, Michael, is Mi’kmaq. He is a member of the Abegweit First Nation and he grew up just outside of Charlottetown in a little place called Scotchfort. But I didn’t grow up here. We met when we were going to art school in Toronto, and after we got married we moved here to be close to his family.”
“So is your family still in the North?” Darby asked, trying her best not to let Shawnie see she was holding her breath.
“Yes, they are mostly still in Rankin Inlet. My family are Inuit.”
Ha. I knew it. Darby felt strangely as though a puzzle piece had just snapped into place.
“Um, so, I’m kind of interested in the stone you carve,” she said. “It’s not much like the stone around here or even the rocks we have where I live in Toronto.”
Shawnie looked over at Nan. “You have a very clever granddaughter here, Etta.” Nan beamed, and Darby briefly had visions of getting out of doing dishes for at least a week.
But Shawnie was still talking. “The rock I use for carving is called soapstone. It’s found mostly in the North. When I work with it, it reminds me of home. I also like to carve on bone, and sometimes I use clay to make sculpture, as well.”
“Michael carves his images into rock too, doesn’t he?” asked Nan. So she had been doing more than chatting with her friend at the show, after all.
Shawnie nodded. “Yes. We both like to produce artwork that reflects our cultural heritage. It was fun going to school in the south, though, and not just because I met Michael there. It was fantastic to see the work of other Canadian artists, and I think they have had an influence on my work as well.”
She told them she had gone to the Ontario College of Art, and Darby spent a few minutes filling her in about some of her favourite places in downtown Toronto. Turns out they both missed being there.
Funny.
After Shawnie went back to her show, Nan and Darby wandered along University Avenue before heading home. As they walked in the front door, Nan handed Darby the plastic bag she had been carrying.
“Here’s a little something for you, my dear, just as a remembrance of your stay with us.”
Darby opened the bag and inside was one of Michael’s baskets with the image of a starfish woven into the lid.
“Thank you, Nan. It’s beautiful,” Darby said. And it was.
“Oh, it’s not very practical, I know, but I’m glad you like it all the same.”
“I do like it, very much,” Darby said.
She was surprised to see Nan’s eyes fill with tears. She leaned across and gave Darby a short, sharp little hug and then shook her head.
“Enough of this foolishness,” she said. “Darby, I brought up three lovely boys into grown men, but I have no experience with having a teenage girl around. Thank you for coming with me today. You have no idea what a difference you have made to our lives this summer.”
And then, because she was Nan, she went straight into the kitchen and cleaned it within an inch of its life.
Darby walked upstairs slowly, and put the pieces of red sandstone and green soapstone into her new basket. She suddenly had a lot to think about.
After lunch, Darby grabbed her board and set off down the street. Forsyth Street wasn’t a long one, but as she cruised along, she had to admit it was more interesting than she had first thought. Some of the houses did look like cracker boxes, it was true, but at least they were different from one another. At home, Darby’s friend Caitlyn Morris lived quite far up Yonge Street, two towns away from Darby’s place, in Richmond Hill. Where Caitlyn lived, the builder decided that originality was an old-fashioned idea. Her house looked exactly the same as the houses on either side, right down to the same tree planted in the same spot out front.
None of that could be seen where Darby stood on Forsyth Street. On one corner was the little store where she ra
n to get milk for Nan and red licorice for herself, if Gramps was in the mood to spot her the cash. Across from it was an empty house with a For Sale sign in the window. Beside that house was Nan and Gramps’s place, with its big tree in the front and its crisp white front porch. And Shawnie’s bright yellow house was next door. On the other side of Shawnie was Fiona’s cranberry-coloured house.
They definitely went for bright house colours in Charlottetown. But somehow they hadn’t seemed so colourful when Darby first arrived. The street itself was tucked in beside Prince Street, and was so small it didn’t even appear on any of the maps of Charlottetown she had seen.
Darby pumped her foot again. Across from Fiona’s house was the old park, and now that she was looking for it, she could see the tiny little graveyard that Nan and Gramps had been talking about the other day. She pulled up on her skateboard for a minute, propped it against a tree in the park and checked her watch. Only 2:30. Plenty of time for a quick look.
The graveyard was behind a church that faced the next street over. Darby’s first thought as she walked through the grass was that it had to be the least scary graveyard she’d ever been in. The grass had grown tall and lush and there were flowers everywhere.
Walking through the grass, her toe caught on something and she went sprawling. It was a gravestone, sunk to just above ground level. After Darby recovered from bashing her knee in the fall, she brushed a few branches and leaves away from the top of the stone.
The inscription was almost worn off, but she could see a name. It said:
Annie (or could it be Hanna?) Rourke Grady, b. 1828, and her infant daughter, Mary. Died 1849. Underneath, it said Dreaming of Home.
Dreaming of home? What did that mean? Darby had never seen an inscription like that. Not that she made a habit of wandering through graveyards. She thought headstones usually said Rest in Peace or A Loving Mother or something like that.
Strange.
She was on her hands and knees, trying to read the inscription on another headstone in the shape of a cross, when someone cleared his throat behind her.
She turned to see Gabe leaning against one of the few large stones that hadn’t actually fallen over yet.
“I did not want to startle you,” he said.
As if.
“Why? Do I look like the nervous type?”
He crinkled his eyes at Darby and pointed. “See that Celtic cross? This is an old Catholic cemetery. I do not think anyone has been buried here for more than one hundred years.”
“Hmm. So my Nan told me. She used to read poetry here when she was a girl.”
Gabe stepped away from the stone. “Truly? It seems an odd place for reading.”
Darby looked around. “I thought so too, but now I’m not so sure. I mean, there is nothing remotely scary about this place. It really is sort of peaceful.” She looked at him. “Kinda like the garden at the back of your house.”
He grinned. “When it is not in the middle of a storm, perhaps.” He trudged toward Darby through the knee-high grass. “There are a lot of peaceful places around here,” he added. “The Island is very pastoral.”
“Pastoral,” Darby snorted. “Whatever that means. If it means quiet, it sure didn’t feel very pastoral last week.”
“Truly?” Gabe said, his face all innocence. “I did not notice.”
“And where have you been since then, I’d like to know?” Darby demanded. “That was the freakiest experience of my life and you just disappeared. Some friend.”
“I was there when you needed me,” he said in a low voice, and turned on his heel toward the park.
Darby hurried along after him. “I needed you when I came back out through the window,” she said. “I had the worst headache of my life. I didn’t see you anywhere.”
“Ah.” He raised his eyebrows. “I have heard that can happen.”
Darby picked up her skateboard and put her other hand on his arm. “Just what did happen back there?”
He shrugged. “You tell me.”
This was infuriating. She opened her mouth to yell at him when she realized she had trailed along behind him all the way to the end of the street. They were standing outside his rusty front gate.
“When you arrived here, you seemed very unhappy. I remember you said this place was awful, not like your home. The people were all old and not interesting. All you wanted was to get away. This is true?”
“Okay, yes, maybe I did say that,” Darby admitted. “But that still doesn’t explain what happened in your backyard.”
“What happened is that perhaps you learned something about the dull people who live here. And maybe you even got away for a little while, hmm?”
Darby laughed. “The people in that hallucination, or whatever it was, didn’t live here, you idiot. They lived in the North. There was a polar bear, if you recall. Not exactly what I’d call dull.” She suddenly realized that if it was a hallucination or the product of a bumped head, then there was no possible way Gabe could know about the polar bear. And yet he didn’t seem confused by her lunatic ranting in the least.
“Whatever you say.” He paused for a moment. “My question to you is do you have enough interest to learn more?”
Enough interest? Enough interest? Gabe had been around for less than fifteen minutes and he was already making Darby nuts. Why wouldn’t he tell her what she needed to know?
“There is no way I am going through that window again,” she said. “You have got to be crazy.”
“Perhaps,” he said, smiling like a loon. “Or perhaps I just want to help open your mind a little.”
“Opening your mind a little is learning how to knit on Friday afternoons,” Darby snapped at him. “Or taking a philosophy class in summer school. I think this qualifies as just a little more serious than that.”
He turned and walked toward the back of the house.
She ran after him. “Where are you going? I just said I wouldn’t go through the window again.”
“I heard you,” he said. “I am just going to inspect it to see if the storm left any further damage.” He turned to look over his shoulder at her while he was walking. “I wouldn’t want any loose stones to fall onto your head.”
“There was no storm,” Darby yelled, following him in spite of herself. “There was no storm and there was no polar bear and I just had a very bad migraine headache!”
By this time she was yelling so loudly her throat actually hurt, but Gabe just stood by the big oak tree, acting as if everything was normal.
Everything wasn’t normal.
There was no cloud or sign of a storm in the sky, but the air still felt charged somehow. The hair on Darby’s arms stood straight up.
Just as she was about to turn on her heel and run home, Maurice came slinking from beneath the big hedge that separated the yard from the back lane. He was stalking something. A bug, maybe? But somehow, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He looked like a small tiger with his black, orange and white patches, creeping along, totally focused on whatever it was he was chasing. And he was getting closer to the old chapel.
All of a sudden, he launched himself forward like a coiled spring and with a loud yowl he snatched something out of the grass.
It was a rat. A huge grey rat that was half as big as Maurice. It was not dead, but still struggling, whipping its head back and forth, trying to bite Maurice with its giant yellow rat teeth.
Maurice sprang to the stone windowsill, and with a single shake as he jumped, he broke the rat’s neck. Then he turned his head in that weird way cats have to proudly display his prize to Gabe, and launched himself off the stone windowsill into the old building.
“That was totally disgusting,” Darby said, turning to look at Gabe. “Are there more rats like that around? Because if there are, I am so out of here …”
But Gabe was no longer standing by the tree. Instead, he’d stepped up onto the windowsill himself, as if checking out where the cat had gone with his dead rat prize.
&nbs
p; “What are you doing?” she whispered.
Even though she knew.
He reached up and ran his fingers along the stones of the windowsill. “No loose rocks here,” he said, and held out his hand.
She stared at his hand and felt the air hum.
“I will stay by your side,” he said softly.
She couldn’t help herself. Her stomach clenched—with excitement or fear or … she didn’t know what.
“I have to be back to help Nan with supper,” she said, stepping up beside him. Her mouth had gone totally dry.
“You’ll be back,” he said, and she felt his warm hand around her cold fingers as they stepped through the window together.
There may not have been a sign of any storm, but the crazy fog was back. It rolled up over their feet before Darby and Gabriel had even stepped across the windowsill and jumped to the floor below.
By some miracle, Darby made a perfect landing on both feet, into what turned out to be a big puddle of fog-shrouded water. Gabe splashed down beside her and she had one glimpse of his water-spattered grin before the fog swallowed him up.
“Remember,” he began, his voice still right beside her ear, but then he was gone.
“Remember what?” she bellowed into the fog, but the mist swirled and circled and filled her mouth and eyes and ears with a roar that sounded like wind and water and smelled like salt.
At least it wasn’t dark. It wasn’t dark, but it was wet. Wet and cold. A cold Darby recognized. It wrapped around her like a blanket, but without any warmth or comfort. She took a step forward and felt her feet splash again, and then the floor tipped straight sideways and she flew through the air with a yell.
She found herself jammed into a corner with a pile of loose rope and bits of rusted iron and netting. Light shone in from around a small hole in the wooden wall through which a rope was dangling. It was also through this hole that much of the water appeared to be flowing. The only difference Darby could see between the wide planks of the floor and the wall was that the wall was more splintery. But only a bit. Her feet were flung over her head in a position her gym teacher would probably have said was good for her flexibility. But at the time, it mostly hurt.