by Janet Lunn
There were buds on all the trees, as soft and pale green as they had always been at home. Mary sang as she washed her clothes in the creek and helped the Collivers’ ewes give birth to their lambs—but she thought often of the time only a year past when she had been doing the same in the pasture at home.
The last ice to break up was the ice around the point by the big grey rock. The dark water emerged from its ice prison to slap menacingly against the rock.
Owena returned that day. She said nothing about the black water. She said only, “We are not far,” and Mary took comfort from her words.
Late that night the beseeching voice called again, “Come, Mairi, come!”
She was determined not to hear it. She concentrated on her spinning, which had progressed from bits of thin-thick knobs and strings not much longer than her forearm to skeins of yarn as even and fine as silk—and she had woven a length of cloth on Julia Colliver’s loom that was smooth enough to offer for sale. But it was hard not to rise from her chair and follow wherever that voice so like Duncan’s might lead.
Henry heard only the wind and, blissfully unaware of Mary’s anguish, he chattered in the evenings about the tadpoles he had found in the swamp, the pussywillows that blossomed along the shore, and old Jake Armstrong who had almost disappeared in the mud “right out in front of Miz Hazen’s store”.
The mud was terrible. Neither sledges nor carts could navigate the road and most people travelled through the woods. Mary kept to the road’s edge, hopping from one root to the next, one stone to another, as though she were fording a stream. The children sang happily, “Mud time, mud time, six weeks to bare feet.” The only benefit the soft ground brought was that when the Methodist circuit preacher arrived in the neighbourhood the winter’s dead could be buried. Lydia Anderson’s body was put to rest beside the bodies of her babies. Henry cried for his mother then. After that, he stopped having bad dreams.
People began talking of planting and Mary saw once more the blighted fields and vegetable patches, the frost-blackened trees and frozen fledgeling birds. She told Luke. She told Mrs. Colliver. She told Dan Pritchett. Luke was kinder than the others—he said nothing. Dan laughed and patted her on the head, which made her furious. “Keep such thoughts in your head,” Mrs. Colliver told her sharply.
As the days wore into weeks it grew colder. Mary’s head began to ache again, and her voice took on a sharp edge. In her state of anxiety she forgot the promise she had made to Sarah Pritchett, and, more and more, the stories she told the children had to do with witches and spells and terrible accidents. One day, after the children had gone home, Sarah spoke to her about it and Mary burst into tears.
“What matter?” she cried. “I might as well spin fancy yarns, I cannot make a breathing soul listen to what I know and all the planting will come to naught. There will be no summer, Sarah, I have seen that.”
“There, there,” said Sarah nervously, “oh dear, we’ll have some tea, don’t cry.”
Mary laughed. “Sarah Pritchett, however can you manage to teach at all when the sound of me weeping frightens you so? Och, Dia, I do not mean to frighten the children.”
One evening, after Henry had gone to bed, Simeon burst through the door. “All alone?” He dragged a chair from the table to sit beside her. He was stinking of whisky.
Mary nodded and went on with her spinning. “Ain’t you gonna smile?” He grinned at her. “Ain’t you even gonna offer a fellow something to drink?”
Mary decided it might be wise to give him something to kill the effect of the whisky. She went to the larder and took out several corn-cakes, a bit of cheese, and the ground dandelion roots that made a kind of coffee. She put the food on the table, the grounds in the kettle, and swung the kettle over the fire.
“Come along then,” she said curtly.
“Naw. You keep them things. I want a drink of whisky. Come on, Mary.” He jumped up clumsily, knocking over his chair. He grabbed her around the waist.
For a second she went rigid. Then, carefully and firmly, she moved away. Simeon threw one arm around her shoulders, yanked her head back by her hair with his free hand, and kissed her mouth. Mary shoved. Simeon was large and strong but he was drunk. Mary was small but she was strong too, and sure-footed. She darted to the other side of the table and picked up the knife she had put out for cutting cheese. “I do not think you will be foolish, Simeon Anderson, but if you come after me, it is your ears I will be putting out for the wild beasts to feed on. You will be glad then not to be seen more in this neighbourhood.”
“It’s true what they say. You’re a queer one, all right.” He sneered. “I guess you give my brother all the fun.”
The door flew open and Patty Openshaw burst into the room with Luke right behind her. She threw off her cloak and ran to stand by the fire, rubbing her hands together, stamping her feet. “I was coming along for a dish of tea when I met up with Luke and now here’s Sim. Is that coffee I smell?”
Luke had been looking at Mary, at Sim, at the knife Mary held in her hand. With one step he crossed the floor. “Go home, Sim,” he said. He sounded as though he were talking to a disobedient dog. Sim started to say something, looked at Luke, pushed past him to snatch his coat from the bench where he’d thrown it, and grabbed the door latch.
“Come on, Patty.” He jerked his head towards the door. “I’ll walk you home.”
Patty had been watching the scene, her mouth open, her eyes wide. Before she could reply Mary said, “You’ll have your coffee, Patty.” Her voice was steady.
Patty looked at Luke. Something in the way he was standing, saying nothing, watching Mary, decided her.
“I guess mebbe I’ll get along home now, too,” she said, the laughter and excitement gone from her voice.
A log fell forward onto the hearth. Mary took the stick and pushed it back. She felt a sudden sharpness in her never-ending headache, then the momentary dizziness. In the flames she saw Patty weeping.
She spun around. “Do not go yet, Patty. Luke shall walk along with you when you have had coffee and a bit to eat.”
Patty smiled with an obvious effort. “I guess I won’t stop.” She picked up her cloak and shrugged herself into it.
“Do not go!” Mary shot across the room and grabbed Patty by the arm.
“I ain’t stopping, Mary.” Patty put Mary’s restraining hand from her.
Simeon grinned triumphantly, bowed deeply to Mary and Luke, took Patty by the hand, and led her through the door. Mary started to follow them, stopped, turned to Luke.
“Go after them,” she pleaded.
“Do you want Sim to stay?”
“Luke, I am afraid for Patty!”
“She’s safe enough.”
“But I saw, Luke.”
“You saw! You saw! Mary, Patty Openshaw can look out for herself.”
“If Patty is safe with your brother, Luke Anderson, then so am I and you had no cause to tell him to leave.” Mary picked up the fallen chair and set it soundly on the floor. She gave the fire a violent poke with the stick, sending sparks flying dangerously in all directions.
Luke made no reply. He walked around the room three or four times, pushing his hands through his hair, picking things up from the table, putting them down. Finally he stopped in front of Mary and looked straight at her.
“Mary, if we was to get married I’d come to live here where you like it so much. You and Henry is here by yourselves. Bears and foxes and wolves ain’t the only wild animals you got to be afeard of. Them Indians ain’t the only folks that come visiting unexpected. I know them. They won’t harm you none. But you’re a girl alone and when the men up at the Corners get sitting around the fire in Hazen’s store, drinking and thinking about that, some of them maybe ain’t gonna stop at the thinking.
“Mebbe you can take care of Sim. You know him and he’s not quite a man growed; but some of the men with the same kind of idea is a lot bigger and older and maybe a lot stronger. It scares me, Mary.”
“But it maybe is not the very best reason for getting married, Luke.”
“Mebbe it ain’t the worst, either.” He smiled suddenly. “You know it ain’t the only reason for me asking, Mary.”
“Please, Luke.” She turned away. “I will not marry you. I will marry no man. Not now. Not ever.”
Luke took her by the shoulder and spun her around. “Mary, you can’t marry a deader.”
Mary drew in her breath sharply. “I am not meant for marrying.” Her voice was choked. “I … I am not meant for living in houses all closed and full of smoke. I am not meant for a life of spinning and weaving. I am not meant for living in a forest that shadows the world with its great dark and swallows what is most precious.”
“Then what are you meant for, for God’s sake?” Luke began pacing again.
“I am meant for the hills where my feet know where to walk, and to those hills I will go as soon as ever I can earn my passage money home.”
They glared at each other. “And anyway, Luke,” Mary added scathingly, “I could not marry a lad who paces and paces and paces his life away!”
Luke threw himself through the door and out into the night. An instant later he was back for his coat. There was rage in his eyes. “Pacing’s better than lying mouldering in a grave,” he shouted. He slammed the door.
In a blind fury Mary cleared away the uneaten food and the dishes and set the kettle back on the hearth.
From the loft came the sound of sobbing. Mary clambered up the ladder. Henry was sitting up in bed. In the moonlight Mary could see the tears streaming down his face. He had been crying for some time, silently, into his bedclothes. His face was swollen and his body was shaking with sobs.
“Henry! Do not weep so.” Mary put her arms tightly around him and rocked him back and forth. Through his sobs Henry managed to stammer, “A-a-are you g-going away?”
“I am not! It will be so much time before I have earned the money to buy my passage home, you will be grown with bairns of your own before I do. Och, my wee uan, do not weep.” She held him close, crooning to him and rocking him until his sobs subsided and he fell asleep.
She went to bed then but she did not sleep. Luke’s harsh words, “can’t marry a deader”, refused to leave her, and that night the snow blew through the chinks in the logs and Duncan’s voice that was not Duncan’s voice cried on the wind, “cold, cold, so cold, Mairi, I am so-o co-o-old!” She lay all night with the cover wound around her head to keep from hearing it.
There Is No Summer
The trouble, when it came, was not what Luke had warned about. It began with the children. One morning, early in June, Sarah Yardley did not come to school. This did not alarm Mary. But she noticed the furtive glances darting around the room and the haste with which Sarah Pritchett began her ciphering lessons.
Two days later Polly and Joey Heaton were missing, then the four Bradley children and Matilda Hesse. By this time Mary knew something was wrong. Sarah would not look at her. She fidgeted with her sash, she dropped her bit of chalk. She jumped at every sound. But she would only say, “So many are ill. There is so much croup among the children and so much quinsy.” Henry wouldn’t look at her either and said only, “I dunno,” when she asked him what was happening.
She went to see Patty. “She will tell me,” she thought.
“Patty ain’t here.” Hannah Openshaw’s usually harried but jovial face was guarded. Mary walked slowly back up the road. Something was clearly very wrong.
Luke told her. He came that evening with a partridge for Henry’s board. He had not come to visit or to read in the month and a half since Simeon had behaved so badly, since he himself had again asked Mary to marry him. He had become as distant as before Henry’s near drowning. Mary was too proud and too unhappy to try to make things right. On this evening, though, she stopped him to ask why the children were not coming to school.
“It’s the things you been telling them,” he answered bluntly. “It’s about them terrible critters you say you see, and ghosts, and how you can see what’s gonna happen, and about Sim disappearing. You got them yonkers scared out of their wits thinking you can put spells onto them. And what’s more, you got a parcel of their mothers and a couple of their fathers thinking the same. Here it is June and it’s too cold to plant. Some of the trees have lost their leaves. It’s almost like winter again—just the way you said. You got to see how that scares folks. A whole lot of others think you’re a real loony and they ain’t so sure they want you teaching their children.”
“I did not make the cold come, Luke, and I have invented nothing,” Mary cried passionately. “Well, almost nothing.…” She had remembered the story of the eighty-seven-year-old sheep who had started life as a schoolboy. “But those critters are not here to bother the bairns. I told you that. They.…” Mary took a deep breath. “They have dwelt too long among their own rocks, in their own burns and lochs, those old ones. They cannot pick up their belongings in a scrap of linen and sail off across the western ocean. But ghosts, Luke, they stay among us for good or ill, here as there, rooted to the places where they lived. How can you believe I invented ghosts?” She stopped, remembering something else he had said. “And what do the children say about Simeon? I cannot make Simeon disappear. Henry, do you think I am a witch who can make folk disappear?”
Henry had been sitting, all the while, on the stool by the fire. He looked at Mary, his grey eyes big and dark, rubbing his hands nervously back and forth along the rough cloth of his breeches.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Do you think I can put spells on folk?”
“That’s what you says in school.” The whisper was barely audible.
“Truly I do so, Henry, but it is to keep those big lads behaving themselves. Do you think I would ill-wish the children? Henry, how can you? And whatever do you mean, loony?”
A smile flickered across Luke’s broad face. “It means crazy. Crazy people laugh like loons, I guess.”
“Do they? Do I?”
“Maybe not. Mary, why don’t you take a stick to the big lads, like anybody else. Don’t talk loony to them.”
Mary did not reply. The three of them sat in uncomfortable silence, looking at the fire, looking anywhere but at one another. Mary felt more alone and farther from home than at any time since she had come to Upper Canada. “I think maybe you’d best talk to Dan Pritchett,” said Luke.
“Why?”
“Well, Dan’s kind of sensible. You might tell him as how you was inventing stories to keep the big fellers in line and you’re sorry.”
“I only invented one story and three spells and I am not sorry.” Mary sprang from her chair. “If the children—or anyone—think I am a witch who can make folk disappear—if they think I can make Simeon disappear—but why do they think like this about Simeon? Where is he?”
“Didn’t you know Sim ain’t around?”
“Ain’t around?” she repeated stupidly.
“He’s run off, I expect.”
“Run off?”
“He ain’t the first feller to cut and run under the circumstances,” said Luke drily, “but he ain’t here to show himself to the children you been telling them spells to. So you might better go talk to Dan.” Luke stood up. With a curt “Good night,” he left.
After he had gone Henry went to his loft at once, and very quietly. Mary went to sit by Duncan’s grave. It was as cold as November and the wind was coming up from the east. She didn’t care.
“Duncan,” she said softly, “did they call you loony, too? Do they not feel their mothers and fathers, their dead children, whispering through the grass? Does the laughter of their loved ones not cling to their lofts and sing at their hearths?”
There was only the wind in the trees for an answer.
That night the voice was louder, more insistent.
June was almost over but the days were still growing colder. There was ice along the edges of the bay and the creek. Heavy frost had come ag
ain and most of the plants that had sprung up along the shore and roadsides had frozen and turned black. It was too late for planting. Julia Colliver told Mary that Sam said there’d be no flour to mill for next winter. They were going to have to scout around down the St. Lawrence river to buy it.
“You’re a queer one, telling us all this was gonna happen. You sure troubled a lot of folks with your talk. It’s a good thing, I say, the cows and hens and sheep ain’t bothered by the things you say.”
Besides Henry, only the Morrissay and Colliver children were still at school. Then Dan Pritchett came one morning to tell Mary that she would not be needed any longer, that Sarah could manage alone.
“But Miss Pritchett is no different now from the way she was when I began.” Pushed by her unhappiness—and her need—Mary spoke out boldly.
“All the same, she can manage,” Dan replied firmly, although he looked uncomfortable about having to tell her and he did not linger to talk about it. Mary remembered bitterly Martha Pritchett saying, “Nothing I can ever do for you can repay …,” and Dan himself: “Right glad to be doing some kind of good turn.” She was too proud to mention those words, too proud to argue with him.
Bewildered by Dan’s action, and afraid, Mary did her afternoon’s work, fed Henry his supper, and went in the dark and cold to sit again by Duncan’s grave.
“How will I manage now, mo gràdach? How can I stay here? How can I pay rent and earn money for my passage home if I am not to teach the children? Och, Duncan, he is unkind. They are all unkind.”
“Unkind, unkind,” echoed the wind.
“I cannot go to Dan Pritchett and tell him I have been making stories and spells when I have not,” she thought stubbornly. “Surely he can understand that. Surely he knows I am not daft.”