Winter Shadows (4 page)

He grinned at her and, with a quick nod toward me, walked out
.

“What will you share with him?” I asked
.

Grandmother’s dusky crumpled face peered out from under her gathered bonnet. “Can I have no secrets? You will be late, nôsisim. Go to your teaching. It will help you be content away from this unhappy house.”

I’d accepted the teaching position at Miss Cameron’s School for Girls a few days after returning home. Following the incident with the brooch and other unhappy events, I knew I could not stay in the house with Ivy every day. I now have a plan for the small wage I earn. I hope to save enough so that one day nôhkom and I can go to the settlement at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers and find a small house or a few rooms to live in. I’ve heard that teachers are needed more and more in the growing center. We must get away from here!

Although she is up here all hours of the day, Grandmother knows what is happening below stairs. She also knows my shadows are back. But I say nothing. I keep my plans to myself. Aggathas Alexander is too old and frail to take her granddaughter’s worries into her weary heart
.

“As long as I have you, nôhkom, I’m happy.” I kissed her soft cheek. “I wish I could stay and care for you all day. “

“Do not worry about me. I can stand up to that skinny
mac- âya
below stairs.”

“She
is
wicked. And with you feeling so much stronger, she’d better watch out!” We laughed, but we both knew she was no match for Ivy. I threw my pinafore on the bed, straightening everything quickly. “I’ll try and come home midday.”

“No! No! I will use the chamber pot. I need only fire, food, and my memories. I will see you tonight.” She lowered her voice. “Little Dilly comes up and talks to me, and I can send her to fetch things. She is homesick and finds comfort with me. I get to talk in my own tongue, and I find comfort with her.”

That made me feel a bit better. I’d have to keep that little secret from Ivy, though, or the poor child, Dilly, would suffer for it
.

Before leaving for the Upper Canada school five months earlier, I had shown Papa and our daytime help, Mrs. MacRay, how to care for nôhkom. Papa was busy then as the main builder of stone houses for the entire Red River area and one of the leaders of our community. Why he suddenly up and married Ivy, the Widow Comper, a month after I left, is a mystery to me. Ivy brought to their union her late husband’s poor farm, a sour disposition, and a close-fisted, yet grasping hand. One of her first acts as mistress of the house was to release kind Mrs. MacRay from her duties
.

Farmer Comper had been known as a grim, short-tempered man living with his Indian wife and two small sons in virtual isolation on his small farm. Five years after his country marriage took place, his young wife suddenly died. He had never been involved in our community and
,
clearly, no parish woman would marry him, so one day he up and left, returning two months later with a thin dark Scottish widow by the name of Ivy Kilgour. Not long after Farmer Comper’s death from a heart seizure, my father became Ivy’s third husband
.

Soon after he and Ivy wed, Papa fell off a scaffold in the church, whilst hanging a wrought-iron chandelier. The doctor from the Lower Fort told him that his spine was damaged – perhaps permanently – and although Papa has hopes for a return to full health, his new and leaner financial situation forced my return home
.

I was shocked to find nôhkom so weak, with running bedsores on her narrow back and thin shanks. I pressed her to tell me about Ivy’s treatment of her, but she refused to say anything
.

I immediately called in our local healer, Mrs. McBride. Ivy had objected at first, but I told her that Papa would soon know about nôhkom’s condition. She’d blustered her ignorance of any “condition” at first, but soon grew very quiet on the subject. No doubt, working out her defense. I was angry with Papa for accepting Ivy’s lies, but I also knew he had been distracted by the loss of his work and his own physical pain. I made sure, however, that he saw his mother’s scarred back
.

I could tell, like me, Mrs. McBride was aghast, but she quietly set to work on nôhkom. I so love this plain, unfussy woman. The last time she came, she was satisfied that nôhkom’s open sores had finally healed, thanks to her hot poultices of alumroot and my turning nôhkom regularly when she was in bed
.

Mary McBride came as Mary Macfarlane from the island of Islay in Scotland, where she had been a healer and midwife. A short, broad, cheerful body with rusty flyaway hair and red cheeks, she had just turned thirty when she’d married a widower with five children – James McBride – a kindly Rupert’s Lander and a great friend of my papa’s. At the time, she was working in the settlement as a midwife. She moved to St. Cuthbert’s with Mr. McBride and became a willing student of the Indian shaman who visits our village. We have one English doctor for the entire settlement, and as he must tend to all families, from the river forks seventeen miles away to the Lower Fort six miles past us, he has come to rely on Mrs. McBride for much of our parish health concerns
.

Note to myself: Call by her farm soon and buy more
winsikis
- which she calls snakeroot – for nôhkom’s persistent cough
.

When I’d helped Mrs. McBride put the final steaming poultice on my grandmother’s back a week ago, she’d looked at me intently. “Can I help you, lass? Are you no’ sleeping well? You need a tonic, I think. Do you no’ have some Laborador tea around?” When I shook my head, she added, “Well, I’ll leave you a mixture of that and dried birch leaves – makes a good all-round tonic, that does. If that doesna help, I’ll make you a tincture of valerian. I used that a lot back home. I think you might need it.” She chucked me under the chin and left
.

Her concoction of leaves helped give me a bit more energy, but the shadows remained. I couldn’t ask for the other medicine. We owed her enough for nôhkom’s treatments as well as the massages and specially prepared mixture for Papa’s
constant pain – and Mrs. McBride deserves every penny of the small amount she charges. Besides, what could possibly help disperse this darkness in my mind? I must find my own way out of the shadows
.

As I settled nôhkom, making sure she had everything at hand, the guilt I still felt for having left her to go to school in Upper Canada flooded me again. I couldn’t talk to Papa, who was dealing with too many dark things of his own
. What does the future hold for us all? For me?
I wondered
.

“Go, child, or you will be late for sure!” nôhkom called
.

Unable to speak, I gave her a hug, gathered up my books and papers, shoved them into my pouch, and ran down the stairs. I heard Ivy’s and Papa’s voices in the kitchen. Suddenly Ivy’s grew shrill and Papa’s silent. A dark wing fluttered across my vision. Dressing quickly in my outer clothing, I grabbed my snowshoes, wrapped a warm scarf over my fur bonnet, and escaped into the snow
.

W
ith Daisy asleep in her bed, I sat against my pillows in the dark, letting Debussy’s
Clair de Lune
flow through my earphones. I’d learned to play it on the piano because Mom loved it so much. Suddenly, on a swell of music, I knew my heart was about to burst. I shut the music off, picked up the little star brooch, and, holding it tight, fell asleep, only to be woken up by raspy murmuring followed by heavy coughing. Daisy must be getting a cold. That’s all I needed – a snottier than usual roommate.

I lay there, groggy and dry-throated. The room was freezing.
Have the electric baseboards gone off again?
Outside my window, snow was falling heavily and silently, the moon’s light glowing dimly behind it. I could see Daisy’s fat little mound in the middle of her bed.
Have I been talking in my sleep and woken myself up?
I used to do that a lot when Mom was sick. Dad would always appear and stroke my sweating forehead until I fell back to sleep. Neither of us ever spoke. We knew why it was happening.

I was about to sit up when my bed tilted, and the room started to lurch around me. Then, just as quickly, it stopped. I was dragging in a shaky breath of relief when I realized that a small table stood where my desk should be. Daisy’s bed looked different too – bigger, chunkier. Low flutters of red and orange bounced off the spot where the wall jutted out.
The fireplace? With a fire in it? How could that be?

I pushed away the heavy comforter and stepped down, stumbling over a fur rug. I could hear a distant sound of rushing water outside. A book lay open on the table. I felt no heat from the flames as I moved closer to the fire.
A dream. That’s what this is!
I touched the book with a fingertip. Cold and damp. A page covered in handwriting shimmered in the dim light.

I scuttled back to bed with it under my arm. The comforter was not mine, and a fur rug was piled on top of it.
Don’t panic, Cass. It’s just a dream!
I climbed onto the lumpy mattress and reached over to turn on my lamp. There was only a candle stuck in a metal holder, a rough tin cup beside it bristling with long wooden matches. I scraped one against the cup. It fizzed into a pale flame, and I touched it to the wick. The book was a journal of some sort. On the first page, in small scripted writing, was
Meditations of a St. Cuthbert’s Parish Daughter, December 8
^th
, 1856, Old Maples
. The writing was tight and hard to read in places, but I caught the gist of it quickly.

A hundred and fifty-four years ago, the writer – a girl a bit older than me – lived in this very house! The diary
had been started a few weeks after she returned home from a private school in Upper Canada. She described her life with her father, grandmother, and horrible stepmother. She also described something called her shadows.

Is that what you have in your head, Cass? Shadows? Is that why you’re so down all the time? Where did this diary come from? How did I
–

“I’ve been watching you,” a voice called. “You’re acting weird!”

I quickly slid the book under my covers. Daisy was sitting up, pointing an accusing finger. My bedside lamp was on, the candle gone.

“You acted like you were reading a book, turning pages that weren’t there. You looked really crazy!” Daisy’s mop of dark hair stood on end, her cheeks flushed.

I was chilled right through to my bones, even though the air was much warmer than before. All my furniture was back in place, the fireplace covered in its cheap siding.
Nothing’s changed, Cass. It never did change; it never really happened
.

“See, you’re still acting weird,” she cried. “All googly-eyed!”

“Go back to sleep.” I turned off the light and burrowed deep under my covers.

“I’m going to tell Mo-om,” she sang. “I’m going to tell her your craaazy!”

After a few more threats, she shut down. When I
heard soft snoring, I searched for the diary. It was gone.
Okay … if I wasn’t dreaming, what else could have happened? Was I seeing things that weren’t there? Hallucinating? Doesn’t that usually mean a person is going crazy? I’m pretty sure I’m not nuts. Not yet, anyway. No. Had to be a dream. Definitely
.

The next morning, I woke up surprised that I’d actually slept with no new dreams at all. I searched the bed thoroughly. Still no diary.
Confirmed. It was all a dream. Wicked stepmothers are even in my dreams now. Soon I’ll turn into Cinderella
.

I got ready for school and clumped downstairs to the kitchen. Jean was sipping tea while Daisy whispered furiously at her. I grabbed a cheese scone, nuked it, and sat down.

“That’s enough, Daisy, thank you,” Jean said, her eyes on me. I blinked right back at her, then bit into my jam-smeared biscuit. “What are you up to, Cassandra?” she asked, as if genuinely puzzled.

“Eating breakfast, thank you, Jeanette May.” I’d learned her full name when the minister announced it at their wedding.

“You know, Cassandra, you don’t pull the wool over my eyes. You may be able to pull it over your dad’s eyes, but I know what you’re up to.”

“Yeah!” cried Daisy. “We know what you’re up to!” But she suddenly looked confused. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t have the energy.

I swallowed my mouthful. “I wouldn’t know what wool to pull over your eyes, Jeanette May. I don’t even knit. And by the way, when you figure out exactly what I’m up to, let me know, okay? I bet it’s far more interesting than I think it is!”

I grabbed my jacket, hat, and scarf; stuck my feet into my boots; threw my backpack over my shoulder; and walked out the door to wait for the school bus.