Softly, Daro said, “She’s going home now, Captain.”
I could only nod, as I imagined the desperate longing that bound all three to their hopes. I had no words for it, but perhaps should not be surprised the poet beside me did.
“The heart wants what it will.” He touched my fingertips. “We both chose this path.”
There were too many meanings in his words. I could only nod. How could I tell him how my heart had been lost weeks and weeks ago? Or, that I was not one to stand wait, and so found myself here, exhausted and freezing. In my heart, I knew I hadn’t set off on this adventure to rescue people I didn’t even know. No, I came simply for the chance to accompany Daro. I clung to the hope of a few more days turning into a future together.
I followed him in silence. Practicalities took over. We plunged on through the maze of trees, climbing ever upward. My legs felt the climb. I was neither used to riding for most of a day nor to hiking hillsides.
Daro swept back a snow-laden hemlock bough and I stepped into a wide, glittering expanse surrounded by crystal-coated evergreens. It might have been a glittering ballroom, so perfect and beautiful did it look. The very first time I had set eyes on Daro Michelson had been in Oceanside’s vast ballroom. I stopped to gaze up the center aisle between the magnificent trees and felt myself transported back in time.
It had been the mid-summer’s eve party; the night of Genevieve’s grand Shakespearean ball. I could almost see the ballroom in front of me, in the beauty of the crystalline forest. I swept forward as if I still wore my long, trailing veil, only this time, I strode along beside the man of my dreams.
Our endless march through the snow continued, but I scarcely noticed.
The boring parts of party preparation and planning had fallen to me. I ordered the food, made the arrangements for the banquet hall, and made the staff assignments. I had wished that I had a less down-to-earth role, especially when I overhead all the other gals setting up the details of their ‘Shakespearean event.’ Oh, they had such fun with their plans. I was the working girl of the group though, so had no room to complain.
The idea for the party came too late for them to order all-new gowns, but they certainly ordered every type of accessory and embellishment ever known and further, started recommending items for some of the gents, particularly for Avery. They’d selected him to ‘play’ the role of Lysander and he needed to be set apart from the more ordinary gentlemen.
They had a white wooden archway constructed inside the dining hall and a gaggle of them decorated it with flowers and twirls of tulle. On the morning of the party they had skipped around with streamers of white silk and satin. They argued over the placement of flowers as if going over battlefield tactics. The main hall became a forest of flowers.
I wanted to admire it but hadn’t a moment.
I was in the midst of wrestling a huge saddle of mutton out of the oven for Cook (as the center piece of the evening meal) and listening to her mutter on about the soufflé (one of the few things she lacked confidence about cooking) and was trying to remember the small items one would expect, when Beryl asked about where to direct yet another delivery.
I rushed out, my face still beet-red from the oven.
Prince Charming emerged from the forest of flowers. Truly, the handsomest man in all the world stood before me. He swung wide the doors for me and stepped back politely. I might have been the grandest of ladies. I forgot my red face and wild hair and grubby apron.
The man offered a hand and I stepped forward and placed my fingers in the palm of his hand. He might have been a bit startled, but I smiled up at him and my heart felt near to bursting.
My prince had been him, Daro, though I didn’t know his name back then. He looked at me as though I belonged in a ballroom, as if I were the princess in this magical world. Suddenly, all of it, grand ballroom, the satins and ruffles and bunches of flowers, were for me. My prince, my party; my dream. I had stumbled into a fairytale.
For a long moment, I had believed.
“Aren’t you attending the party?” Mark DeLaMore had barged up beside us. “Is everything ready for the musicians to come in?” The marvelous illusion and my wonderful prince had faded off without a word.
I glanced over at Daro, wondering if he recalled our first meeting. The summer’s ball had been much of what I expected, though seeing Daro—not even properly meeting him, but seeing him—had changed everything, for always. I trudged on in his wake, with this very different, snowy enchantment all around me. The night of the ball had changed my life, and in fact, was how I had ended up on the Thistle, and then, here.
The party had gone on, exactly as one would expect. Yet, looking back, other little details came to light. I wished I had paid more attention at the time.
Ariel had chased after me, insisting I attend. “Elizabeth, why are you still in a day dress? I told, you, I need you as one of our forest fairies.” She shoved a long trailing veil into my hands and practically pushed me up the stairs. Pushed me? No, I had floated up the stairs. Nothing else mattered. I had found the man of my dreams.
I had turned over the glittering veil in my hands. So splendid! I had become the princess. Surely, my prince awaited?
I had waltzed back down the stairs as an elegant guest, caught up in my own dreaming.
The ballroom, filled now with people, was utterly awash with color. They say people dressed less extravagantly these days, deference to the war and all that, but apparently ‘deference’ did not affect this parties finery. The younger crowd wore their best; mostly off-the shoulder gowns with pearls the preferred jewelry. Most gals were rather light on ‘fussy detail’ as was the trend, but still with miles of fluttery, flowing fabrics. Older ladies kept to their rather more Victorian gowns, with an assortment of lacey frills. Gentlemen were black-tie, of course.
I gaped as the tide of color, scent, and sound filled every bit of space in the great hall. I distinctly recalled looking over the sea of people for Him. Oh, I knew. The man with those dark, wise eyes would not be out on a dance floor. Still, in the midst of all those colors, I had let myself hope for one more bit of magic.
Beryl had peeked from a crack in the foyer door and I had waved at her. She blushed scarlet and pressed her hands over her mouth. She was tinkled pink I’d noticed her.
Avery had popped up at my elbow. “She wanted me to wear ribbons on my wrists. Can you believe it?” He bugged his eyes, and I giggled.
Mark was hard on his heels. “I’ll walk you in.” He offered me an elbow and I smiled too brightly and took it. My own prince had gone.
Oh, silly as I was, I had known Daro wasn’t one of the swells. I knew he wouldn’t be attending the party. Perhaps I wanted anything to be possible. I had had my fair share of the practical, certainly.
“Your scene is right the end.” Ariel barreled over as Mark escorted me through the door. “We’ll do the three scenes and then all the fairies move in to get everyone on the dance floor. You hang out with the spectators until I say ‘All fairies.’ Where is my first troop?” Doraleah and her whole gaggle lined up to follow Ariel, giggling and honking in a mad array of pastels. They all had tulle veils streaming wildly from their hair.
Madame Chatillon stood with her back to an ornate faux Grecian urn, beside the old professor. “So provincial. Lack of fashion sense. So derivative. See how all of them have the same cut, hem. Even they must dress the hair the same! I suppose it is the age.”
I touched my veil (and indeed I had left my hair down.) It felt marvelous hanging loose with the veil hanging down my back. It was also exactly like everyone else’s. Good grief. I could not easily change it now.
Suddenly, the Madame had given a spluttering laugh and turned aside. “Oh, the girl with no taste! No! It is too much!”
Genevieve descended the stirs so replete in embroidered and feathered and rhinestoned ensemble that she shimmered and fluttered and floated with every move. I could more easily list the fabrics and items not used than describe
all those included, and how they wove together in a fascinating clash of styles, colors and sense. She might have started with a dress recalling the extremes of Victorianism, but even they had the sense not to array themselves in every bit of their finery all at once.
Madame Chatillon pressed both hands over her face and desperately tried to block her laughter. The old professor made it all worse by saying, “Why, I believe there are fish scales on her sash” with a perfectly straight face.
I myself turned and dove behind a towering vase that held a massive spray of fronds.
I have no idea how the most of the others managed good grace as Gen made her grand entrance. She pranced in, nodding and smiling in greeting with a giggly lack of dignity, perfectly sure of admiration. I suppose it stands as a credit to all the guests, (or perhaps suggested something about their own lack of fashion sense,) that no one actually collapsed in hysterical laughter.
Mrs. Brookeson, herself the height of quiet elegance in a plain slipper satin of antique blue, had smiled kindly and sent Avery a sharp nod. Avery had marched straight over to offer Gen his arm. The mid-summer’s party had been the very first time he’d appeared to favor her, and most certainly had the approval of his mother.
It should have struck me as more curious, at the time. It seemed ominous, now. Had it been the first step in acquiring a new fortune?
There had been one or two other points I might have taken note of, right then. Mark had said ‘Ariel ordered extra boutonnieres. Mine seems to go nicely with your gown.’ I had paid him no attention, but of course, Ariel must have been in the know on my mother’s matchmaking efforts and likely guessed I’d be yellow.
I had been too caught up in my own dreams. A breeze rustled through branches and brought a shimmer of sparkling snowflakes down, recalling me to exactly the non-magical place my dreams had brought me to.
Lives mattered now—peoples’ lives! My daydream did me no good now…it did no one any good.
With a sinking heart, I realized my mistake. I could not help but slow Daro’s progress. I should not have come. It had been entirely selfish on my part. My legs ached dreadfully but I had to go on. He’d made such an effort. The lives of a whole shipload of people might right now hang on whether or not I could keep the pace.
I shut my mind to my freezing feet and aching legs. I tried to breathe through my scarf, so I didn’t take in great gasping breaths of freezing air. I would not slow the hero. What I would give for a plate of Cook’s little sandwiches and large hot toddy right now! Back at mid-summer, would I have even guessed I might find myself trudging over the island on a freezing winter day? I made myself put such thoughts aside. My comfort did not matter. My feelings for Daro, likewise, had to be out aside for now. Our errand mattered so terribly!
“I can hear it now,” he said at length.
I could hear nothing, in the heavy, snow-muted air of the forest. I trudged on without comment.
“We’re nearly at the base of the falls. It’ll be dark before long.”
Base of the falls? Great stars, we were nowhere near the top of our climb, yet. We strode on to a small cairn marked the end of our trail. Years of hikers’ footprints lead to overlook the falls, and I stumbled there for a glimpse. A narrow chasm cut a plumb line down between the trees. The far bank was steeply undercut, and the water streamed by several feet below the top of the bank. Tendrils of ice hugged the edges, but still an enormous amount of water rushed passed.
“Don’t go near the edge.” Daro unslung his pack and carefully unwrapped his thermos. “From here, it’s a hard climb.”
From here? I could only stand and stare.
The hills rolled straight down into the sea. Plumes of fog twisted up from white capped waves and rounded snow-covered hills dropped abruptly into the sea. Even in the fading light, I could see the shore trail weaving its way northward.
“Our artist would paint this view, and nothing else, if once he set eyes on this place.” Snow covered everything. There was not one dry spot to rest, no handy stump or rock, or one square foot of dry land.
“Trouble Cove is north of Pleasant Bay. We’ll have good views of all the shore along here.”
“We won’t be able to see anything much longer.” Although all day had been chilly, gray and overcast, I could sense the deepening dark and feel the sun disappearing over some hidden horizon. “Will we find shelter under the trees?”
He did not look at me, but pulled out his compass and studied it in silence. Finally, he said, “We may not be in time, if we stop. “
“What?”
He pulled a metal cookie tin from his pack, the sort you get on Christmas morn, and opened it to reveal an array of small items. He selected a matchbook, one match, and carefully tucked away the cookie tin. Next, he pulled a black metal lantern from his pack.
He lifted the mantle with extraordinary care to light the lantern. “This is a miner’s light,” he explained as he fixed the catch. “It works like a lighthouse beacon, on a gas, and shines forward from the mirror behind the glass.”
“It’s bright enough.” The light sent a sure white beam straight ahead.
We would travel through the night? All I could think of was rest. I know it was weak of me, but my legs wanted to stop. I leaned against a particularly large pine, a cold cold pine, and wished I could sit. I had expected we would stop after all this long way. I’d dragged myself along this whole last hour thinking, ‘night is coming, night is coming.’
I took a sip of the lukewarm tea Beryl had packed for us. Why had I insisted on coming along? My efforts were useless. Couldn’t change it now. “Right. Lead on then,” I made myself say. I would have to force myself to follow, somehow.
“Been thinking about Mrs. Buxton’s meat pie in here, this whole last hour or more. I guess we can stop long enough for a bite?”
He was asking me? I nodded and allowed my head to lean against the handy tree trunk. I heard him digging around in the pack, heard the voice in the creak of the ancient tree.
Daro handed me a square of meat pie. Mrs. Buxton had been our cook all summer long, and I could not recall ever tasting a dish finer than her meat pie. The pie or the tree or Daro’s encouragement worked. My legs stopped aching as I recalled our purpose.
We left the edge of the waterfall and marched upward through the thin layer of fresh snow. As the trees grew sparser, the snow grew deeper, until we struggled through thigh-deep drifts in places. The dreamy rest stop became memory too quickly.
Daro broke through the top crust of the snow. I struggled to step into his footprints rather than break through myself. My woolen tights were no match for the snow.
The minor’s light lit our way forward with an odd, luminescent glow.
Thin, wind-twisted trees offered no cover as we struggled yet higher, however, as the hill grew steeper and steeper, there was less snow. Soon, we clambered over little more than bare rock. Thankfully, it was great slabs of granite, solid and unmoving. No loose rocks slipped or tumbled as we made our way upward, and the handholds were secure.
The unforgiving cold took its toll. Even with the thick boiled wool mittens over my ladies’ gloves, my fingers went numb. I wore the edges of my everyday boots to tatters. Daro’s fancy minor’s lantern, fixed to a sturdy helmet, lit his way better than mine. I did the best I could to follow his path exactly, but I at times I almost had to feel my way along.
A long time after we left the waterfall behind, and at a point where I had ceased to think anything at all, I glanced up to try to aim for Daro’s next foothold, and something glittered in the sky above. Actually, quite a lot of things glittered, and I stood a long moment puzzled, too tired to think clearly, before I realized the skies had cleared and we could see the stars.
A finer chandelier I have never seen.
“Stars,” I called to Daro, as if he wouldn’t have noticed. “A gift.”
“Stars,” he repeated. He swung around to look at me. “Your brightness is a gift to me, Captain. You buoy
my spirits more than the light of the heavens.”
Again, he spoke the words the way he quoted poems. I guessed he’d been thinking up those lines as he walked. As he turned away, he said, “What price the light?”
He didn’t mean for me to hear and once, I’d have been gracious and pretended I hadn’t. I put aside such courtesy and said outright, “I don’t understand.”
“Captain…I ask myself every day if I cannot take up a normal life. I can hardly ask you to follow a wanderer.”
Before I could reply he jerked his head northward. “There’s no time. It’s taking us too long.”
Chapter Thirteen
A Way with Light
The steepest stretch gave way to a flat-topped granite plateau. Two great standing stones jutted skyward from the rough center. Scrawny trees with sparse branches sprouted stubbornly through every crack, but no creatures moved. In the hazy pre-dawn light before sunrise, we could make out little more than shadows.
“The island’s blue stones.” Daro nodded to the pair. “For good fortune.”
“Good fortune,” I repeated as we strode by them. We paused at the northern edge of the plateau. The steep green hillside slid down into clouds of fog and we could make out the sea only in patches.
“This lookout is almost legendary.” Daro raised binoculars but didn’t scan the sea. Rather, he studied the very edge of the coast. I couldn’t guess what he hoped to see. Night had barely faded. The fog obscured all but the vaguest detail. To the south, the fog had thinned to thin skeins as if etched by an artist’s brush.
“Trouble Cove is supposed to be a half-moon shape.” He swept the binoculars along the most northern coast.
“Supposed to be?”
“I’ve only seen it on maps. We should be almost above it.”
I looked straight down. Below, a perfect crescent carved out the edge of the coastline. The top of the crescent ended in shallow shoals, while the lower end curved out to sea.
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