Little Bird Lands

by Karen McCombie

  Happily, their number swelled by one the day Caroline gave birth to a daughter. Sadly, it sank by one the very same day when Caroline slipped out of this world…

  “You’re right, Bridie, it’s a grand outlook,” says Ishbel now, with one hand shading her eyes as she takes in the view, and the other hugging me tight at my waist.

  My sisters, Samuel and baby Florence – named for the Italian city she was born in – are visiting us from St Paul where they are very settled. The new towns and cities of the west are full of up-and-coming businessmen who wish to have their portraits painted and hung in their offices and boardrooms.

  “You know, Ishbel and I were so happy to come to America after Italy,” says Effie, who herself stands like a mirror image to Ishbel, her arm slipped similarly around me. Her wavy hair is buffeted in the wind atop Clarice’s Hill and a few loose, red tendrils of it tickle my cheek. “We both felt that we would be somehow closer to you and Father and Lachlan wherever you were.”

  “Though it did seem so very foolish to hope that we might ever find you all,” adds Ishbel with her usual tone of caution.

  “Yet you did!” I laugh as I think of the waves of people from their old countries, leaving all those whisper trails and invisible threads for the people who come next, making this vast land just that little bit smaller.

  “Wait … hear that? Father’s playing his whistle!” says Effie, pointing down towards the newly finished two-storey lumber house and the tiny figures of folk milling around out front preparing for our celebration. “What tune is that?”

  We all pause, trying to catch the lilt. The old dog that followed us up here and promptly fell asleep – even he raises a tired head at the sweet sound of it.

  “Is it not your favourite, Effie, ‘The Fairy Love Song’?” I suggest, remembering the last time I heard it when I woke from my fever in the parlour of the store in Hawk’s Point. “‘If I saw you coming, I would run to meet you…’”

  It suddenly makes me think of Jean Paquette and I wonder if we will ever see him again. But if I have learned anything these last few days, it is that there is always, always a chance. I know that Father has already written to Mrs Drummond, telling her that if the roads of New York City have crept too close to her farmyard for comfort, we would warmly welcome her, Marthy-Jane and the little girl’s home-from-the-war father as neighbours here in Hopetoun County.

  “Oh, my goodness … is that my Samuel dancing, with a baby in each arm?” says Ishbel, scrunching her eyes the better to see the folk below.

  Our Franny and little Florence have delighted in each other since they first met the day of the exhibition in Mr Burbank’s mansion. They are like cousins, though they are not truly kin. But then when have I ever worried about what kin means exactly? Easter and even Miss Kitty have become as much sisters to me as Effie and Ishbel, Dr Spicer like an aunt, or even – dare I say it – much more…

  “Is that safe?” Ishbel frets. “What if he drops them!”

  “I’m sure they will be fine,” I tell her, seeing Easter dance close, ready – as ever – to lend a hand if she needs to.

  But Samuel seems like a doting and careful father. And from what I have seen, Ishbel is a loving stepmother to Caroline’s child. I am sure our old friend would be happy to know that as Samuel and Ishbel grieved her loss, they slowly felt a love grow between them and were recently married.

  “I think we had better get back down,” says Ishbel, clearly not convinced that doing a jig with babies is the best thing for the little girls, though I don’t see Dr Spicer or Miss Kitty or any of the others rushing to their aid.

  “And we’d better lend a hand – all your neighbours and friends will be arriving soon for the house-warming,” Effie adds, setting off after Ishbel, the skirts of their dresses looking like a pair of pealing bells rocking from side to side as they skitter away down the rough path.

  Indeed it looks as if our visitors are beginning to arrive already. I can see the Beatons’ wagon just driving up and Lachlan and his ever-growing pup running to greet them. Our nearby farming neighbours, as well as Mr and Mrs Campbell, are expected too.

  “What a day, eh, Patch?” I say to the elderly dog panting at my feet.

  The scruffy, slightly lame cairn terrier who I never thought I would see again, looks up at me, one ear up, one ear down, as if he is listening attentively.

  “What adventures we have had, you and I…” I murmur to him, thinking of the days he’d trot after Will and myself around the island, to the lochan, the standing stones, to the rocky top of the Glas Crags. And of course he has had his own adventures with my sisters these last few years, accompanying them to Europe and now America no less!

  And what adventures are there to come, I wonder as I wave back to the windmilling figure of Will in the yard, who has spied me up here.

  For a start, I will be teaching school in Hopetoun at the end of summer, though both Easter and I harbour a not-so-secret wish that one day we might follow in Dr Spicer’s footsteps and train to be doctors, if a medical school ever opens in St Paul or Minneapolis. Easter does sometimes worry that being not just a female, but one with brown skin, might make that difficult, but I have reminded her that the Civil War has changed everything.

  She sometimes looks a little doubtful when I say that, but I am certain the time is coming when Easter and I and every girl can do and be what they want if they set their minds to it.

  And you never know, though I love it here in Hopetoun County, one day I might decide to travel further west to see where the next horizon takes me!

  The smile that comes with that wonderful possibility fades a little as I suddenly think of the one person I will never meet again, no matter if I had all the luck in the world. I don’t suppose I will ever travel back to Tornish, or visit the church graveyard, or place my hand on Mother’s small and neat headstone. But then whenever I want I can be there! All I need to do is come up here to the top of Clarice’s Hill, lift my head to the sky and imagine myself lifting, rising, soaring like a migrating bird flying from the warm winds of Minnesota to the brisk breezes of that small Scottish island, where I’ll land by the fragrant purple heather of my old home.

  In the meantime, this trusty old dog here is beginning to weary of my daydreaming when there is the smell of cooking drifting from the campfire and is whimpering his impatience.

  “Come on, then,” I say cheerfully and make to go.

  Patch and I set off down the hill, both of us limping a little, certainly, but both as sure and steady as can be.

  Writing Little Bird Lands – and its partner book Little Bird Flies – has honestly been the most amazing experience of my writing life. Yes, I absolutely knew the story I wanted to weave, but I didn’t realise I’d find myself so totally engrossed in a treasure trove of research as I mapped out Bridie’s adventures.

  Some of the details I uncovered for this novel were small and special, like the beautiful Ojibwe/Chippewa terms for the months of the year. Some were startling, like the attempted terrorist attacks in New York near the end of the Civil War. All have made me even more amazed at the experience of my Scottish forebears, poor farming families suddenly finding themselves thrust into an overwhelming new world, and discovering that “freedom” would be a long and winding road.

  And of course, while I was telling the story through the eyes of a young, immigrant Scottish girl, I had the privilege of finding out more about the history of the particular Native Americans of the region I was writing about, as well as that of free black people in the northern states.

  There was so much I learned about the Ojibwe/Chippewa people that I couldn’t fit into this book. If you’d like to find out more, I really recommend The Birchbark House series of children’s books by Louise Erdrich; they tell the story of an Ojibwe girl and her community in the mid 1800s. I was already a big fan of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which tell the tales of Laura and her white-settler family travelling in the west. Reading about childr
en’s experiences at that time on both sides – Native American and white homesteader – gave me real insight as well as food for thought. You might also like to look at this online classroom resource: www.bigorrin.org/chippewa_kids.htm.

  By the way, nowadays, Native American is the most preferred, respectful term for the USA’s indigenous people, but I used Indian in the novel as this would have been authentic for the nineteenth-century setting. I also describe Jean as Chippewa, rather than Ojibwe; it’s a variation of the same name, but again, Chippewa was more commonly used by settlers in the Michigan region at that time.

  Speaking of homesteaders, I was fascinated to read about black pioneers of the era. Of course the horrors of the slave trade in the American south quite rightly dominate our idea of black history in the eighteen hundreds, but after reading and discovering how many free black people in the north took the opportunity to head out in covered wagons and find farming land in the sprawling prairies of the west, I was inspired to include Mr and Mrs Campbell’s journey as well as write about Easter’s hopes for an independent future of her own.

  It was a privilege to learn what I did along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey you’ve taken with Bridie, and – like her and like me – come to think about the difficulties and dreams of everyone who wants a place to call home.

  This is the tucked away section of a book where people are thanked by an author for their hand holding, rah-rah-rah-ing and general, invaluable efforts to make it the best it can be. And I will come to the people who helped Little Bird Lands take flight, but first I’m going to start by thanking three places which have shaped my writing…

  Authors are daydreamers, and my daydreaming started in Flat 87, Denburn Court, Aberdeen, Scotland. On the fifteenth floor of this high-rise tower block, I’d stare from my childhood bedroom window at the view of the North Sea, with oil rigs dotted on its steely grey surface. I’d stare at the city’s streets below, teeming with local residents, but also with the Americans, French and Dutch who’d settled in my hometown due to the oil boom for which it had become famous. I daydreamed about other people’s lives and stories, and what lay beyond the sea and the horizon. And when I tired of staring out of the window, I flopped on my bed and lost myself in the world of books.

  Cue the next place I’m thankful for… From my window up on high I also looked down on the impressive, granite-built Central Library. It was my wonderland. I’d borrow armfuls of fiction and those stories, those endless stories, were both a gateway and an escape for me. Finding myself transported from a modern bedroom to nineteenth-century America with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series of books was a real game changer. Suddenly, history became accessible; I was walking side-by-side with children who lived in the past.

  Bringing us up to the present, I’ve been an author for many years, writing my own books at a desk in a small room at the back of my terraced house. But staying at home day and night can make your brain stall, so I’m often to be found at my second office, the local garden-centre cafe, which is flooded with light, surrounded by plants and gives me the opportunity to pat the occasional passing dog. In the last few months, fellow customers will have had no idea that the person tippetty-tapping on a laptop in the corner was actually lost in nineteenth-century New York, Michigan and Minnesota…

  And now for the real, live humans! Huge thanks go to the editorial team of Kirsty Stansfield, Fiona Scoble and Maurice Lyon for kindly comments and word-wrangling. I also bow down to art director Nicola Theobald for the delicious look of both Little Bird Flies and Little Bird Lands, and for finding the amazing Jasu Hu to illustrate the covers, as well as Hannah Horn for the incredibly detailed maps inside both books. I also want to give a shout-out to US author Caroline Starr Rose, whose novel-in-verse May B – the story of one gruelling winter in the life of a twelve-year-old pioneer’s daughter – made me even more excited about writing my own pioneer story from an immigrant’s point of view.

  Finally, I just want to say I owe a huge debt to the authors of a zillion non-fiction books about experiences of life in eighteen-hundreds Scotland and America. The same goes for the writers of numerous websites and blogs. There are so, so many I could fill another book with my thanks to them all. With this background of research, I’ve done my very best to give an authentic snapshot of a period of history, seen through the eyes of Scottish émigré Bridie MacKerrie. I’ve tried immensely hard to make sure all the detail is correct, but I hold my hands up if I accidentally got anything wrong.

  My hope is that readers will enjoy walking side by side with Little Bird, of course. But if this novel makes some readers want to explore further – to read about the Highland Clearances of Scotland, the melting-pot roots of modern-day USA, the Native Americans whose home the nation was first – then I’ll be very happy to know they were as curious and as fascinated as I have been on this transaltantic journey.

  First published in the UK in 2020 by Nosy Crow Ltd

  The Crow’s Nest, 14 Baden Place

  Crosby Row, London, SE1 1YW

  Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd

  Text copyright © Karen McCombie, 2020

  Cover and chapter opener illustrations copyright © Jasu Hu, 2020

  Map copyright © Hannah Horn, 2020

  The right of Karen McCombie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved

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  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Nosy Crow Ltd.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

  Typeset by Tiger Media

  Papers used by Nosy Crow are made from wood grown in sustainable forests

  ISBN: 978 1 78800 533 3

  eISBN: 978 1 78800 588 3

  www.nosycrow.com

  “A gripping, moving piece of historical fiction.”

  – Imogen Russell Williams, Guardian

  “A fast-paced adventure, whose elegant prose and cliffhanger chapters should keep even less confident readers gripped to the thrilling end.”

  – Emily Bearn, Telegraph

  The Times Children’s Book of the Week

  Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal

  “This is a quirky, original adventure about friendship and loyalty, betrayal and trust, kindness and greed, told as Maggie’s vibrant narrative, with striking characters and a happy ending in which all siblings are equal.”

  – Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

  The Times Children’s Book of the Week

  The Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week

  Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal