by Janet Lunn
One crisp afternoon in early November, when the leaves were gone from the hardwood trees, when all the flowers but the Michaelmas daisies had blackened under the frost and only the late apples were still on the boughs, Henry pleaded with Mary to let him go with Moses Openshaw to his grandfather’s cider mill five miles north of Collivers’ Corners. Mary saw both the rebellion and the longing in his eyes, thought how safe he would surely be at Moses’ grandfather’s, and said he might go.
She was washing Mrs. Colliver’s china teapot when the dizziness came. The teapot crashed to the floor. Mary slumped against the table. She recovered at once. Still clutching the dish rag, she ran from the house. Her heart thumping, a prayer repeating itself in her head, she raced down the road. She reached her meadow and stumbled across it to the point. Henry was floating face down in the water.
In one frantic movement Mary fell to her knees, scooped him out of the water, turned him over her knees, and whacked him again and again on his back with all the strength she had.
For a few moments Henry made no response. Then he began to sputter and gasp and spew water. His arms flailed and he arched his back. Furiously Mary went on pounding until he began to cry. Then she leapt to her feet, dragging him with her. She set him on his feet and shook him. Her hair had come loose from its braid and was blowing around her face in long, black, wet strings, tears were running down her cheeks, and her clothes were almost as wet as Henry’s.
“How could you?” she cried. “I told you, Henry, I told you. You promised me. Yon water is black. It is evil. Do you never, never go near it again should you live to be five hundred years and more. Do you understand?” By now she was shouting in Gaelic, am feasd! never! never! and a lot more Henry could not possibly understand. His teeth chattered, his head was bobbing dangerously on his neck, and his eyes were huge with terror. Water streamed from his clothes.
For a second Mary relaxed her grip. Henry pulled loose. Sobbing, he ran up past the house, across the road, and into the deep woods.
“Come back,” shouted Mary. “You come back!” But Henry did not. Mary raced after him. At the edge of the forest she stopped short. She took a deep breath and tried to force herself into the trees, but no matter how she tried, she could not make her feet take another step.
“Henry,” she screamed, “come away out of there.”
There was no reply.
“Henry!” She waited. Her ragged breath began to slow. “Henry!” She pushed her wet hair from her face, wiped her tears with her sleeve. Her voice softened. “Henry, please.”
Nothing.
“Henry, do you not see how feared I was? I did not mean to hurt you but you were set to drown. Och, Henry, I do care so much for you. Please, mo gràdach, come away out of the trees.”
Nothing.
Numbly Mary sat down on the road. She drew her knees up and rested her head on them. In a few moments she began again. She called, cajoled, and pleaded for almost an hour. Then Luke came swinging along the road, a partridge over his shoulder.
“Luke!” Stiffly Mary got to her feet. “Henry …” Mary began.
“What’s happened?” Luke grabbed her by the shoulders and she thought, for a second, that he was going to shake her as she had shaken Henry.
“He is not hurt,” she said quickly, “but Luke, he has gone into the forest and he will not come out.”
Luke stared at her, open-mouthed. “Are you so afraid of the woods you won’t go fetch him?”
“I am.” Mary was too upset, too tired, to let his words hurt her pride.
Luke plunged into the woods and was soon back, grim-faced, dragging Henry. Henry’s face was red and swollen from crying, his lips were blue, and his teeth were chattering. His clothes were still wet. Timidly Mary put her hand towards him but Luke did not stop. He trotted Henry across the road and into Mary’s cabin. Mary followed, her footsteps slow, her body drained of all thought and feeling.
Inside Luke sat down on the first school bench. He stood Henry before him, holding him with an iron grip.
“Luke,” Mary began hesitantly. He paid no attention.
“What set you hiding from Mary?” he demanded.
“She—she shaked me.”
“How come?”
“I got drowned.”
“What?”
“I went into the water where she said I wasn’t to,” Henry whispered.
“You fell in?”
Henry nodded. Luke looked at Mary’s tired face, her wet, bedraggled state. “Did Mary have to fetch you out?”
Henry nodded again. By this time Luke’s face was as white as Henry’s. Deliberately he stripped off Henry’s wet clothes, turned him over his knee, and spanked him hard, three times. Then he stood him up. Henry’s chin quivered, but he made no sound. He did not look at either Luke or Mary.
“He got any clean duds?” Luke demanded.
Mary brought them, although by now she had begun to resent the fact that Luke had had to rescue Henry, that Luke had had to discipline him. “Luke, I can take care of him.”
“Henry, look at me.”
Henry looked up.
“Henry, I ain’t whupped you on account of you fell in the bay. I whupped you on account of you ran off and hid where you knew Mary wasn’t going to come. Do you see that?”
Henry nodded.
“You got something to say?”
Henry shook his head.
“Well.…” Luke pushed a hand through his thick hair. “If you ain’t hot enough from the hiding, you best go set by the fire.” He left the house.
He was back within two minutes. “Some varmint got the bird I brung for your suppers,” he said disgustedly.
Still shaking from cold and fear, Mary had put the kettle over the fire. When she saw Luke about to leave again she said, “There will be salmon and tatties and squash and berry tart enough for three.” Then she climbed the ladder to the loft to change her own clothes, wishing she hadn’t ran from the Collivers’ without her plaid.
They ate their dinner with few words spoken. Afterwards Mary went outside to bring water from the creek. Luke followed her.
“You could let me carry it,” he said quietly. Mary gave him the kettle and stood shivering while he dipped water into it from the bark bucket.
“Be ice over the creek by morning,” he said. “Ain’t you got a wrap?”
“I left it at the Collivers’.” Suddenly Mary felt warmer. Luke had forgiven her for speaking so unkindly to him the night he’d brought Henry to her. “Luke, he was floating—” The catch in her throat stopped her words.
“I figured.”
They went back into the house. Henry had gone up to the loft where he slept. On the table was the bit of bark Mary had given him on which to practise his writing. He had written on it “NO STORIE”. Mary dropped into the chair and put her head down on the piece of bark. Luke stood with his hands in his pants pockets, whistling under his breath.
After a time Mary raised her head. She stood up. Resolutely she faced him. “There is something here,” she said. “There is an evil spirit, Luke. It lives in that bit of water and it calls to me. It calls in Duncan’s voice but it is not Duncan and I am afraid. I was afraid for Henry. I tried to watch him, but it reached out for him. I know you will think I am daft but I am not.” Braving the incredulous expression on his face, she continued. She told him again about growing up in the hills with Duncan, about Duncan’s leaving home, and about hearing him call after four years. She told him about Mrs. Grant’s prophecy. She told him that she was learning to spin and weave properly so that she could earn her way home. She told him again about seeing Dan Pritchett’s barn on fire and locking herself in the privy so that she wouldn’t have to warn anyone, and about seeing him, Luke, carrying Henry, and how she had seen his mother in the snow. She told him that she needed to be in Duncan’s house, “to feel his presence once more, to know he is at peace. But there is only the black thing that calls and calls me in Duncan’s voice.” Her voice was low
and throbbing. “And it would have taken Henry if I had not known—and I broke Julia Colliver’s grandmother’s teapot so I may not have work now.” She told him, at last, that she had thought the gifts he had brought had been gifts from the fairies, the old ones. “And it was good of you, Luke, and I was without thanks or kindness and I am sorry for it.” She stopped. She drew a deep breath and waited as though for a verdict.
“You kind of took care of Duncan, didn’t you?” was Luke’s only reply.
“I did not. It was Duncan who was the strong one. He did not like that I had the two sights but he did not look askint at me as some do.”
“I wish I could make you feel better about him being gone and I wish I hadn’t of talked to you about marrying when you was still so sore grieved,” said Luke. “I don’t know about all of them other things you was saying. I see you really believe they’re so and I guess I’ve got no cause to say they ain’t. I know others—the O’Haras and their old gran down to Soames and Mrs. Hennessey at the Corners—talk like that but it always sounds like yarning to me. I guess I can’t say you don’t see the things you say you do,” he conceded with obvious reluctance. “I guess I just don’t know. I mean, folks hereabouts won’t let a load of hay go by without wishing on it and they look at a new moon with a mite of caution—careful about black cats crossing in front of them and the like, too, on account of nobody wants to cross Old Mr. Scratch, just on the chance of spending all hereafter jumping hot coals for him. There’s plenty of folk who talk about ghosts and there’s sure plenty with an appetite for grisly stories. But the way you talk about them things, you make ghosts and them strange critters and such sound like they’re neighbours. It’s downright scary to hear you sometimes, Mary. But when it comes to something in the bay that’s out to get Henry—come on. You can easy let your sad feelings about this place make all sorts of things plague you. You’d be a sight better off if you was to put some of them ideas away. And Mary,” he added, in such a low voice she had to strain to hear him, “you’d be a sight better off if you was to live somewhere else.”
Mary looked up. In Luke’s eyes was an unmistakable look of love. He cleared his throat. “Henry won’t go near that patch of water again, you can bet your life.” He moved towards the door. “And Mary, if it’ll make you feel better I’ll keep my eye on Ma. Good night.”
Mary stood where she was for a long time after Luke had gone. No one had ever looked at her like that. She had known that the boys who had come courting at home had cared about her. And there had always been Duncan, so much a part of her she had never thought about how he felt about her. But Luke was different—disturbing.
When Henry got up the next morning he did not favour Mary with looks of love. He would answer “yes” or “no” to everything she asked and that was all.
“He is like Luke,” Mary thought exasperatedly. “When he is crossed he does not speak.” When Duncan was angry, he would say he would not speak but his words would come stinging like a hive of wasps. The thought flicked through her mind that she liked Henry’s—and Luke’s—way better.
She sat down with Henry the morning after the accident and tried to get him to tell her how it had happened but he would only say, “I don’t know.” She told him she was sorry she had shaken him so, to which he said nothing.
But on the evening of the third day he came to her after supper. He stood in front of her chair.
“If a body drownds dead, can they still walk?” he asked.
“It cannot.” Mary put down her spinning. “It must lie in a wooden box cold and still as baby did when he died, and then be buried in the ground.”
Henry burst into tears. Mary took him on her lap and they comforted each other for the thing that had almost happened but had not.
A Swift Magic
In the middle of the night Mary was wakened by a strange sound. She sat up, listening. From somewhere there came a deep, slow boom—boom—boom. She got out of bed, threw her plaid around her shoulders, went outside, and gasped from the cold.
The moon was full. The sky was clear. There was no wind. The ground was covered with a crackling silver-white frost. Each blade of grass, each stand of yarrow, tansy and milkweed, each twig and branch of every bush and every tree glistened in the bright, white light. The bay had frozen smooth and hard, as though a hand had pulled a sheet of glass over it.
There were no animal sounds, no bird sounds. Even the wolves in the forest had stopped howling. In all the world there was only that eerie boom—boom—boom and it came from somewhere deep in the bay. It seemed that, in the silence that had come over the woods and the water, the earth’s heartbeat could at last be heard.
Mary felt she had surprised a moment in the earth’s turning that no person was meant to witness. Yet, at the same time, she felt herself to be such a part of the turning that she could feel no separation between herself, the earth, the sky, the water, and that booming heartbeat that gave life to them all. A tremor ran through her, she became aware of her separate self once more, and of the piercing cold. Shivering but full of joy, she stayed for another few minutes, dancing up and down to warm herself.
Back inside, she built up the fire and sat for a while, her body warmed, her spirit full of wonder. While she did not clearly form the thoughts in her head, she felt that the heartbeat of the fairy hill in her own Highland glen and the one deep in Hawthorn Bay were the same. “Surely nothing bad can happen to me now?” she whispered and went to bed smiling.
Henry woke her in the morning. “We got winter!” he crowed. “Get up! Get up! We got winter. Mary, wake up!” He pulled her nose.
Mary laughed out loud. She gave him a shove and got out of bed. “We did get winter.” She shivered as her feet touched the cold, rough boards. “I saw it come in the night, Henry. It came in a swift magic.” She gave him his jacket and her wool stockings, stuffed her own bare feet into her shoes, wrapped herself in her plaid, and out they went to explore the winter.
The bay was silent in the bright sunlight but the sparrows and juncos were twittering in the shimmering bushes and among the branches of the willow and birch trees along the shore. Frost still covered everything and the cold had made the air so clear the houses and barns across the bay could be seen through the bare limbs of the hardwood trees as though they were only a few feet away. Henry ran to slide on the ice. Across the bay the Morrissay and Bother and Heaton children were shouting happily and doing the same. There would be no school this day. Mary stood on the big grey rock and looked down through the ice at the leaves and twigs caught there, and at her own reflection, as clear as though seen in a fine silver-backed mirror.
She saw, to her surprise, that she looked like the same girl who had once, many ages ago, looked at herself in the waters of Loch Ness—the same black hair and eyes, same pale complexion, same little nose and wide mouth—but this girl’s hair was in a braid hanging over one shoulder, the way the Canadian girls wore theirs, and somehow, though it had really only been six months, this girl looked older. The corner of her mouth twitched and she smiled. “I think,” she murmured, “nothing bad can happen to me now.” She ran out onto the ice after Henry.
They chased and slid and laughed and suddenly there was Luke rounding the corner of the cabin with a bundle in his arms. With a whoop he dropped the bundle and raced down to the bay. Zeke Pritchett’s puppy came barking out onto the ice in front of Mary. Down they went together. Mary’s shawl got tangled around the dog until he became a writhing mass of wool and tail on the ice, yipping and howling through the thick cloth. Finally Mary managed to unroll the wriggling dog from his prison. He was so happy to see the world again that he jumped at her face, licked her nose, her eyes, her mouth, and knocked her flat on her back.
“Och,” Mary laughed self-consciously. She stood up, brushing herself off, and looked at Luke. He smiled happily at her.
“We have not had our breakfasts yet,” she said. “Henry will be getting cold. Come away in now, Henry.”
“One
more slide,” pleaded Henry.
Half an hour later, over their bread and porridge and a bit of fish left from supper, Mary told Luke about the strange booming in the night.
“It’s always like that when the freeze-up comes sudden. I don’t know why but it is.” Luke’s face echoed the wonder Mary had felt. “It ain’t easy, this here country, but it’s grand,” he went on. “When Pa and Ma come here there wasn’t nothing but wilderness on the whole island, or anywhere else this side of Lake Ontario—or the other, I guess—just trees.” He grinned at Mary. “And beaver meadows like this one, or swamps that got burned out by lightning. Grandpa and Grandma Anderson and Grandpa and Grandma Grissom all made their places more’n thirty miles from here—down near South Bay. Nice farms they got started. Pa was the youngest boy and there wasn’t room for him, so after him and Ma got married and got the grants the government gives all them as was children of the Loyalists, they come along up here. Pa’s all but killing himself making that farm and Ma.…” He stopped. He stuck his thumbs into his suspenders. “Well, you know how it is with Ma. Nope, it ain’t easy country, that’s sure, but it’s beautiful the way winter comes all shining and spring comes a-rushing in, and summer in the woods is something grand. You might get to like it if you was to give it a try.”
Mary could imagine Luke in the summer woods, his russet hair, his tanned face, and his easy stride, as much a part of his surroundings as the squirrels or the deer.
“I might.”
“Henry,” said Luke, “Pa’s mending harness and cleaning the stalls this morning. I have a mind to go grouse hunting. D’you want to come?”
“Yep, I do.” Henry’s face lit up and he scrambled from his bench.
After they had gone Mary sat for a while, hearing the silence they had left behind. The day was still beautiful but suddenly it had lost its excitement.
The cold did not abate and winter came up the bay in gales and snow. Mary found that her old plaid was not much protection against the bitter cold of Upper Canada and that her feet were red and stiff. When Owena came next, Mary traded some of her rough weaving and a few oat bannocks for warm deerskin moccasins for Henry and herself. She knew the trade was probably unfair but her feet were cold and she was afraid Henry would get sick and she promised Owena she would make it right as soon as she could.