A Walk Through a Window

I spent a lot of summers visiting my own grandparents in PEI, and though this is Darby’s story and not mine, a few bits and pieces of my world have lightly dusted hers. Charlottetown and her people have served my imagination richly over the years, and many of her landmarks appear in this story. But there is no Forsyth Street—unless you know the way there, of course; and all the characters in these pages are figments of the warm, summer P.E. Island air.

I’d like to thank all the people who have helped Darby find life in these pages—authors Marsha Skrypuch, Linda Gerber and Kate Coombs, (the usual suspects in my writing world). Thanks also to Michael Hiebert for the loan of Brandon Harris, and to the librarians and archivists at the Confederation Centre Public Library and the Prince Edward Island Public Archives and Records Office. Special thanks for direction and insight into Northern languages and cultures to authors Anita Daher, Richard Van Camp, and Armin Weibe and to
Margaret Anderson, professor of First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia; Stacie Zaychuk, Manager of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre and John Ritter, founding Director of the Yukon Native Language centre.

Thanks also to my kind and careful editor Amy Black and to my agents Carolyn Swayze and Kris Rothstein for their wisdom and patience.

I would especially like to thank the part of Lucy Maud Montgomery who lives on within the pages of her stories. I grew up wanting to be Anne of Green Gables, deploring my lack of red hair, and cultivating every big, beautiful word I could find. I write these words just about exactly 100 years after Anne first made her appearance, and am living proof that the Island and Lucy Maud continue each to offer their inspiration to readers and writers from Canada and around the world.

A word about Beringia …

Darby’s adventures are fictional, of course, and take place in a time long before any written record. But in the real world—the world into which Darby’s story is woven—the northern reaches of Canada form a vast frontier. This place, so rife with mysterious beauty, has been the subject of much fascination over the years.

Beringia is the name given to a vast, grassy steppe that stretched across from Siberia to North America during the last Ice Age, when many of the world’s oceans retreated and were frozen beneath immense sheets of ice. Scientists and historians theorize that the first peoples of North America may have made their way across this region some 24,000 years ago. There is no way of knowing what language these people spoke—it is lost in the mists of history. For the purposes of this story, Darby hears The People use words that come from contemporary Innu, Inuktitut and Tlingit, as a means of honouring
some of the many Northern voices that have emerged from the peoples who may have made that tremendous journey so long ago. If you’d like to find out more about this fascinating place, please look for the Study Guide that accompanies this novel at
www.kcdyer.com
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G
abe was no longer standing by the tree. Instead he’d stepped up onto the windowsill.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

Even though she knew.

He reached up and ran his fingers along the stones of the sill. “No loose rocks here,” he said, and held out his hand.

She stared at his hand and felt the air hum.

“I will stay by your side,” he said softly.

She couldn’t help herself. Her stomach clenched—with excitement or fear or … she didn’t know what.

“I have to be back to help Nan with supper,” she said, stepping up beside him.

“You’ll be back,” he said, and she felt his warm hand around her cold fingers as they stepped through the window together.

E
scape was clearly the only option.

“This is the wrong address,” Darby said to the cab driver. “Just take me back to the airport—I’ll figure something out there.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” the driver said apologetically, and gestured at the scrap of paper clipped to his dashboard. “I’ve been given strict instructions to drop one Miss D. Christopher at this here address. And if I know Etta, she’d be mighty upset with me if I misplaced her granddaughter.”

Great. Darby stared glumly out the window at the scene unfolding outside. “You know my Nan?”

The cab driver popped the trunk and heaved himself out of the car. “Everyone knows your nan, kiddo. She’s a good sport. So’s your grandpa.”

Darby didn’t budge. From the cab window she watched as a woman with vivid red hair stepped up and placed her hand on the shoulder of some guy operating a ladder on a fire truck. Even from inside the cab Darby could see the way the woman’s lips pinched together.

She was talking to Ladder Guy. After a few words he nodded and yelled up to his partner. The bucket lowered with a jerk, the woman stepped inside and the contraption rose up to near the top of the tree.

Bad enough to be stuck in some little one-lobster town for the summer. Bad enough to have to fly here as an unaccompanied minor in a cattle car disguised as an airplane. Bad enough that no one bothered to show up to meet the plane. But when the taxi pulled up in front of Darby’s grandparents’ house it was hard to decide which was worse: a man she had never met perched high in the branches of an old oak tree, or the crowd below, as they laughed, chatted and cheered on the fireman in his cherry picker, trying to talk the old coot down.

Darby recognized Gramps from a couple of old pictures that her dad kept in a bottom drawer. She’d never met either of her grandparents in person—at least as long as she could remember. Nan had to be one of the grey-haired ladies waiting at the bottom of the ladder. She hadn’t seen her face yet, mostly because Darby didn’t want to meet anyone’s eye. Why any of this was happening was a mystery. She could feel her face flaming.

The cab driver opened the door and offered his hand to help Darby out. She ignored it, grabbed her backpack and stepped onto the street. It must have rained earlier, and one of her new white runners splashed square into a rusty puddle by the curb.

Great.

“Was trying to help you avoid that,” muttered the driver, as he stalked around the back of the vehicle.

Darby thought about getting mad at this, but the truth was the scene in the front yard had used up all her available emotions at the moment.

She felt the cabbie’s hand on her shoulder. “Yer grandpa is just having everyone on, Missy. The man has a sense of humour that’s funny as a three-dollar bill.”

She shook off his hand and forced herself to look around the crowd of people. The two grey-haired women stood out from the rest. While everyone else chattered and laughed, they stayed put right near the truck, watching the other lady take her trip up in the cherry picker. Darby took a deep breath, shouldered her pack and headed over.

At the treetop, the red-haired woman was having more luck than Ladder Guy. She had barely said two words before the old man was reaching his hand out to grasp the side of the bucket. He stepped smartly into the cherry picker just like it had been his plan all along.

Ladder Guy steered the bucket down and Darby’s grandfather waved to the cheering crowd as they descended. The shadows began to lengthen and people started to wander away.

One of the old women on the ground embraced the red-haired woman as she stepped out of the cherry picker, so Darby headed for the other one.

“Excuse me,” she said, but the woman did not appear to hear. Darby repeated herself a bit louder.

The lady finally heard Darby and turned in surprise. “Goodness gracious!” she said, peering up into her face. “This must be wee Darby!”

Since the girl was taller by about three inches, Darby felt she could have safely dropped the “wee” part. Sheesh.