The Bone Flute

by Patricia Bow

  She jumped off the stone and went to kneel beside the tree. The earth under the grass was cool against her knees, dark and mysterious.

  “Wonder what’s down there?”

  “Dirt and roots.”

  “No, if a house used to be here, there could be all kinds of things buried down there. Old coins. Pieces of china. Buttons. Bones.”

  “Well, we can’t dig for them; it’s a public park.” He looked at his watch. “I have to get home.”

  “What, and leave me to figure things out by myself?” He was already trotting along the cedar chip path toward Grant Street. “Wait! Where are you going?” she called after him.

  “Got to babysit the terrible two. My mom and dad are both showing houses this afternoon.”

  “I’ll help.” She caught up and jogged beside him.

  “What are you, suicidal?”

  “Why? We’ll bring them to the playground. It’ll be fun.”

  “Cam, they’re monsters!”

  She laughed. “Come on, they’re just babies. How bad can they be?”

  By the time they were back at the playground with Mark’s brothers, Camrose was almost wishing she’d gone home by herself. Sweeney was four and Ben was six. They were small, blond kids with round pink faces, and people always fussed over them and said what angels they were.

  “It’s dinosaurs this week,” Mark explained as he pried the two apart. “That’s all they talk about. They think they are dinosaurs.”

  Sweeney smiled sweetly up at her. Camrose forced a grin. “What kind of a dinosaur are you?”

  “Brontosaurus rex,” he said carefully, with the lisp that grownups adored. Then he lunged for her arm with teeth bared. She caught him and held him off.

  “I’m a pterodactyl!” Ben screamed. “You’re dead, bronto!”

  He spread his arms and leaped. Mark caught him and dragged him toward the playground.

  “Last month it was monster trucks, and they kept running each other over,” he shouted over the shrieks. “Listen, you two! If you’re not good, I won’t push you on the swings!”

  They quieted at once. “I want Camrose to push me,” Ben said as he climbed into a swing.

  “No, I want Camrose.”

  “I want—”

  “Quiet! Or Camrose will go home.”

  The creak of the swings was like sweet music. Push, push, back and forth. The gentle motion seemed to soothe the boys.

  “About Terence,” Camrose said quietly. “I’ve been think–ing. If he did hypnotize us in the square, he must have had a reason, right?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Obvious. To stop us talking to that busker. That means he’s somebody we should be talking to. Maybe he knows something about Terence. Like, that thing I’ve forgotten.”

  “What thing?”

  “Don’t know. There’s just something funny about Terence, only I can’t remember what it is.”

  “But if you’ve forgotten whatever it is, how can you remem–ber you’ve forgotten it? If you know what I mean.”

  “Because I can feel it. Down deep, buried. I can feel it scratching to get out.”

  He shuddered. “Sounds creepy.”

  “Yeah, it is. All I know is, about a year ago there was a phone call, some news about Terence that was important. Something about Germany.” She cuffed the side of her head. “I feel all stuffed up and stupid.”

  “Never mind. If it’s important it’ll come ba—”

  A terrifying bellow broke out below Camrose’s nose and rose to a piercing shriek. They’d forgotten to watch Ben and Sweeney, and they’d let the swings slow down.

  “He scratched me!” Ben screamed.

  Sweeney growled and made clawing motions. “He kicked me!”

  Ben snarled and aimed another kick.

  Just as Mark was moving to put a stop to it, someone slipped around in front of the swings and squatted down between the boys. “Oh, it’s the fierce monsters they are, all claws and teeth!” Her voice was a strange, rough purr. “Oh, what a pair of hungries they are.”

  It was the shaggy-haired woman they’d seen yesterday in the park. Ben and Sweeney sat perfectly still and stared at her, wide-eyed. “And mmrrr, what a meal they just ate!”

  She had the strangest eyes, stony black and bright, shining through the brown tangle of her hair. “A whole crocodile you killed, was it?” She clicked her teeth together. They were sharp and pointed. Broken, Camrose decided.

  “Bear,” said Sweeney.

  “I ate a whole elephant,” Ben announced. Normally that would have started a fight, but they just sat there smiling at her.

  “Then they must sit very, very still and digest, or their bellies will hurt. Very, very soft and still, each on his nest, the good little monsters they are.”

  They sat there swinging to and fro, making soft clucking noises. They stayed like that as the stranger stood up and stepped away from them.

  “Wow,” Mark said. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

  “Oh, maybe. Depends.” She had a strange, foreign way of talking that went with her rough voice. Everything she said rolled up her throat and curled around her tongue a couple of times before it got out into the air.

  “Depends on what?” Camrose said. “Be careful, Mark.”

  The woman grinned with all her pointed teeth. “You’re right to be wary. Start early, or else grow wise too late, like Gilda.”

  “You knew Gilda?”

  “I was her right hand, her eyes and ears. Her feet too, some–times.”

  “So you’re—”

  “You have it. I go by the name Miranda.”

  8

  The lost house

  “That’s kind of hard to believe,” Camrose said. You’d never think this woman was ever any kind of a mayor’s helper, to look at her now.

  “Why?” Miranda growled. “What did you expect?”

  “I’m not sure, but I would’ve thought … I mean …”

  “You don’t look like the people who work at the town hall,”

  Mark said.

  “Oh, them! Shiny shoes and all, eh?” She minced on the spot, pointing her scuff ed toes. She was wearing a lot of what looked like coarsely knitted sweaters and vests and a couple of layers of tattered pants, all in half a dozen shades of brown and gray. It was hard to tell what was what because the browns and grays ran together and the ragged bits fl apped.

  Camrose tried to be firm. “Th at’s right. You don’t look like one of them. You look more like … well, um, a street person.”

  “Of course I’m a street person!” Miranda laughed a croaking laugh. “And a tree person, and a river person, and some-times an air person.” She jumped to catch the bar of the swing frame and swung herself up till she was standing on her hands. They were brown hands with short, dirty fingers and long black nails.

  For a moment her strange face jeered at them upside down out of its hedge of hair. “Not a house person, no,” Miranda croaked mockingly. “Not a town hall person.”

  She swung down and dropped onto the grass, but her hair stayed bushed out angrily around her head. “Use your eyes, Keeper!”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  “If you don’t know now, you soon will.”

  Mark took a look at Ben and Sweeney, who were still swing–ing contentedly. “Cam? You know how everybody keeps saying Gilda was kind of strange?”

  “Mm.”

  “Well, maybe it fits that her helper wouldn’t be exactly nor—I mean, average.” He looked encouraging at Miranda. “Do you … you know, need anything? I mean, are you down on your luck?”

  She laughed her throaty laugh. “Me? Never! Of luck I’ve plenty. You might say I am luck.”

  “Well,” Camrose said, “if you really are Miranda, you can help me figure out Gilda’s letter.”

  “Rrrr, maybe.” Miranda turned in a circle on one foot. She seemed to have trouble standing still for more than ten seconds.

  “What did she mean when
she said she lost everything by making the wrong decision?”

  “Everything. Mother, father, sister, house. All burned.”

  “Burned?” Camrose’s eyes widened. “Where did they live?”

  “Why ask me? You’re the brains here, Keeper. Use them!”

  While Camrose stood with her mouth open, too mad to say a word, Miranda added, “I can tell you one thing, at least. Twilight can happen more than once in a day. Remember that.”

  Then she turned and slouched away.

  “Hey! Wait!” Camrose yelled. “Come back!”

  Miranda paid no attention. When she came to the white powdered line on the grass that marked the baseball diamond, she walked along it, one foot in front of the other, as if it were a fence rail and she might fall off. They watched till she’d crossed McKirdy Street.

  Camrose was still flabbergasted. “I can’t believe she just walked off like that! What did she mean about twilight? And why wouldn’t she talk about what happened to Gilda?”

  “Funny. Did you notice? She looks like she never changes her clothes, but she doesn’t smell dirty at all. I got a whiff. She smells like … like cinnamon.”

  “I don’t care how she smells. Big fat help she was!”

  Just then Ben and Sweeney turned back into monsters and started clawing at each other. “Time to go!” Mark herded them away. “We’re having an early supper because there’s soccer tonight,” he told Camrose. “You coming to the game?”

  “Sure,” she said, but her thoughts were busy and far away. The first fight brought her back. After helping him break it up, she said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about what Miranda said. And what the letter said.”

  “And?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what year Gilda was twelve. I think I remember my dad telling me once … ” She closed her eyes, thought, then opened them again. “Right! She was born in 1902, and she’d be twelve in 1914, right?”

  “Works out.”

  “Mark, can I go home with you for a bit? I want to ask your mom or dad a question. Something about houses.”

  An hour later, Camrose stood in the cool limestone lobby of the town hall. They kept the archives in the clerk’s office, which was closed on a Saturday, but Mrs. Shoemaker was right, there was something worth seeing here. Just opposite the public washrooms, in a glass case set against the stone wall, was a display called Lynx Landing in Bygone Days, including things like books and photos and yellowed newspaper ads for corsets and draft horses.

  She spotted the house in the hollow right away. The photo was old and brown, but she had no doubt about it. There were the stone lintels with leaf shapes cut into them over the windows. There was the S-shaped door handle and the brass plate across the bottom of the door. Ivy clung to the walls between the windows. The house stood on a smooth green lawn with trees behind it.

  And it had a name, which surprised her. It was the first time she’d ever heard that houses in Canada could have names. “Ennismor,” they called it.

  Next to the picture of the house was a photo of a bearded man in a heavily carved chair with a woman standing behind him, her hand on his shoulder. Two young girls leaned against the chair, one on each side. They wore long white dresses below their knees, their Sunday best, Camrose guessed. All four gazed out at her with water-pale eyes. None was smiling.

  How glum they looked! They couldn’t have known, could they? Of course not. Camrose pushed the thought aside. People in old photos always looked as if getting your picture taken was a terribly serious business.

  A typed label was stuck up under the picture. It said:

  Robert Kilpatrick, his wife Lillian, and daughters Olivia (left) and Gilda. Tragically, Ennismor burned down in 1914, with the entire household except for Gilda, then twelve. Gilda Kilpatrick Ferguson later became Lynx Landing’s longest serving mayor.

  “So that’s what the letter meant,” Camrose muttered as she turned away. “Gilda became the ‘Keeper’ of this heirloom, what–ever that means, when she turned twelve, and then this awful thing happened. And now I’m twelve and she says I’m it.”

  9

  The truth about Terence

  Camrose kept her eyes open, hoping the crowd at the soccer game would bring the busker, the way it brought the ice cream cart and the Chip Queen truck, but there was no sign of him. She wondered if he’d left town.

  Almost everybody else was there, though. Th ere were no bleachers, but parents and grandparents brought folding lawn chairs and sat along the side lines with pop cans propped askew in the grass and folded newspapers to wave off the gnats and mosquitoes.

  Junior soccer was popular in Lynx Landing. Probably, Camrose thought, because the local team almost always won. One big reason they won, everybody agreed, was the goalie, Mark Shoemaker. The ball never surprised him, and he moved faster than you’d think anybody that solid could move.

  She followed the action with her eyes without really watching. Every few minutes the people around her would jump up and down and yell. In a faraway space inside her head, that buried memory was working its way up through layers of fuzz. Something about Terence … Germany … that phone call …

  Something cold and wet nuzzled her arm. She yelped. Krystal stood there laughing at her, with Nadia giggling beside her, a dripping can of cola in hand.

  “Off in dreamland again?” Krystal inquired.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Mark stopped another goal, that’s all,” Nadia said.

  “And,” Krystal added sweetly, “best news of all, we’ve just voted you class dork for next year.”

  Any other time that would have had Camrose groping for a cutting answer. This time she just shook her head. Don’t try too hard, she told herself. Let it come by itself. Terence, Aunt Alicia … Dad with his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, his mouth opening … saying … “Oh!”

  There it was, out in the open, complete and shocking. The truth about Terence. “Oh my gosh …”

  Krystal snickered. “Completely ga-ga!”

  “Oh, come on, it’s not worth it,” Nadia muttered.

  Camrose pushed between them and ran behind the line of lawn chairs to Mark’s end. The game was nearly over. Soon as he came off the field she’d grab him … “Great game!”

  She whirled around. Terence stood right behind her. His jacket was slung over his shoulder, hooked by one finger. She hovered, then decided to stay put. There couldn’t be any danger, not here with all these people around. She folded her arms to hide her trembling hands. “Okay, so who are you, really?”

  “What? Who on earth do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know. I just know you’re not my cousin Terence.”

  “Ah … so you remember now.” He laughed softly. “Can’t fool you for long, can I? Watch it, Camrose, don’t get so sharp you cut yourself.”

  She lifted her chin and tried to look sure of herself. “I think you’d better explain who you are and what you’re up to.”

  “Mm … ” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I think not. You see, I may not be able to fool the Keeper for long, but that won’t matter, because I can fool anybody else.”

  “I’ll tell Bronwyn.”

  “Go ahead. She’ll think it over—slo-o-owly—and then say, ‘Camrose, you must have made a mistake.’” He pitched his voice high. Camrose felt her face turn red. How dare he make fun of Bronwyn?

  “I could call my father.”

  “Yes, that would be your logical next step. But no matter what you tell him, I guarantee, what he hears will be some–thing different. That’s if you can get through. I hear the phone lines out east are pretty bad lately.” He dropped his jacket to the grass and applauded. “Hey, great save!”

  He folded his arms and settled himself to watch the game. Camrose backed up, but stayed near enough to keep an eye on him.

  He was right, of course. She remembered yesterday evening at the kitchen table and today in Market Square. Terence would have no problem w
rapping Bronwyn around his finger. He’d probably have no trouble sabotaging the phone line, either.

  But why was he doing this? How was he doing it? Who was he? What was he up to?

  Then she remembered something else. He’d called her the Keeper. And so had Miranda. Gilda had used the word too.

  Keeper. Keeper of what? They all knew more about her than she did herself. That wasn’t fair. Her hands curled into fists. Worse: it was just plain wrong, the way Terence had lied and fooled everybody and made fun of them and tried to push them around. Well, if he wouldn’t say what he was up to, she’d watch him and find out.

  Shouts of victory. Game over, and Lynx Landing had won again. Terence stretched, picked up his jacket, looked at the fading sunset and started off toward the woods.

  Mark was in the middle of a crowd of cheering players, all thumping him on the back. They’d be celebrating for a while and Terence was almost out of sight. Camrose bounced on the spot for a moment, then made up her mind and headed for the woods.

  On the cedar path under the trees, she crept forward, the soft chips almost silent underfoot. Just before the path entered the hollow she stepped sideways behind an old lilac thicket and crouched down.

  Next moment Mark scrunched in beside her, breathing hard. “Hey, why’d you run? What’s the—”

  “Shh! He’s in the hollow.”

  “Who?”

  “Terence. Only he’s not Terence.”

  The ghost house was ablaze. This time Camrose noticed that just as there was no sound, there was no smell of burning either. And the yellow light didn’t touch the trees. It looked like a painting that had come alive: fiery yellow house inside a shell of blue that was nearly black.

  Terence had dropped his jacket somewhere, and you could see his white shirt moving around like half a ghost. He was circling the hollow, stopping every few seconds.

  “What’s he doing?” Mark whispered.

  “He’s trying all the windows and doors.”

  “The what?”

  “Of the house.”

  “House?”