Winter Shadows (9 page)

Sometime later, I sat up wide-awake and clicked on my light. Daisy wasn’t in bed. It was only 6:30
P.M
. As I lay back on my pillows, my light suddenly went out. When it flickered on again, I was no longer in my bedroom, but sitting on a wooden chair, looking at the back of a line of gray dresses and white apron straps, edged in a hazy glow. One of the dresses turned around. It belonged to a young girl with a round face and dark skin, her black hair held back with a blue ribbon. She whispered something to a girl behind her. I could tell they didn’t see me. There were more than a dozen girls in three rows. Facing them, wearing a long dress with full sleeves and a pleated bodice, was a tall young teacher. My star brooch rested in the center of her plain collar. It was definitely the young woman from math class – the same one we’d almost hit with the bus!

Where was I?
Slowly everything came into focus. In front of each girl was a music stand. Small wooden tables ringed the space. A classroom. The young teacher was talking to the girls, but I heard only a soft, windlike sound. Her smooth hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a braided knot. Her mouth was small and curved, her cheekbones sharp, and her black eyebrows tipped up at the ends like a blackbird’s wings above dark eyes. She had skin as smooth as caffe latte.
Would she see me this time?

It was like looking at one of those scratchy old movies on TV, but in pale muted colors. Suddenly the teacher looked right into my eyes, then at the brooch pinned to my sweater. Her face went a chalky gray, and her hand flew up to her own pin. She looked like she was about to faint.

Dad stood over me with a tray. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly in and out to calm my racing heart. Struggling into a half-sitting position, I made sure the pin was covered by my comforter. I didn’t want any questions. On the tray was a bowl of chicken noodle soup, two red pills, and a glass of orange juice. I was so sticky, hot, and disoriented, I could hardly focus.

“Better get into your pajamas, honey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Both ears hurt,” I mumbled around the first spoonful of soup. I wasn’t sure I could manage a second.

“You always get an ear infection with a cold. Peter Graham says he’ll drop by on his way to the hospital tomorrow.”

“You can head downstairs, Dad. I’ll take the pills and go back to sleep.”

“Daisy will stay in our room. We don’t want her getting sick with the holidays starting.”

“Oh, no,
we
wouldn’t want
that.”

He gave me a look of weary sadness and left. The soup was salty and felt good on my throat, so I ate a few more mouthfuls.
Why did I keep dreaming about a time so long ago – a time I knew nothing about?
I wished the diary would appear again. In it, Beatrice said she was getting ready to teach at a nearby school, and clearly I’d just dreamed my own version of that very place.
What was really going on in my head? Or in this house?

I
stepped inside fresh footsteps in the snow to find Minty, a buffalo cape over his shoulders, standing by our back door
.

“What are you doing out here in the cold? Come into the house.”

“Waiting for the mister to take me home on his horse. Mine is sick.”

“Mr. Kilgour? Where is he?” The boy shrugged. “Come in and wait by the hearth,” I said. “At least you’ll be warm.”

He shook his head. “Mister’s mother don’t like me.”

“Doesn’t like you,” I corrected, then added quickly, “but she must like you. She’s been your mother for years.”

He looked away. “I am
ininiw.
Missus hates Indians. Even
âpihtawikosisânak.”

Like me – I am a half-breed, too,
I thought. But she doesn’t hate Papa. Not that I can see, in any case
.

I looked at the lad, his fur hat topped with snow. How could any woman not feel affection for such a gentle boy?
But this is Ivy, remember,
my inner voice murmured
.

Minty had received some schooling in St. Anthony’s, but
he needed more now that the settlement’s society was changing so quickly
.

Note to myself: Begin to tutor Minty right after Christmas. Ask Papa why he hasn’t done it before this, although I think I already know the answer
.

I smiled at the boy huddling under his buffalo cape. “I won’t leave you alone with her until Mr. Kilgour arrives. Do come inside. I insist.”

He allowed himself to be pulled through the door. I prayed Ivy was busy elsewhere in the house. But she was there – scrabbling furtively in a wooden crate on the kitchen table. As she swung around, startled, Duncan Kilgour walked in behind us
.

“There you are, Minty. What have you got there, Mother?”

Ivy glared at me and then at a box. “I thought it was for Gordon, so I opened it. And I don’t feel bad about doing that! I don’t!”

“Mother, it clearly says
M
iss
B
EATRICE
A
LEXANDER
, O
LD
M
APLES
,
on the outside of the crate!” I was surprised Kilgour was chastising his mother in front of me, but then it struck me that Ivy had opened something addressed to me. How could she!

“What’s hers is her father’s,” she cried, “and what’s her father’s is mine!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kilgour growled. “You’ve even opened one of the gifts.”

I looked at him surprised. Why was he supporting me?

Inside the box were cloth-wrapped bundles of dried fruits, peels, raisins, and unshelled nuts, tagged with paper markers. A tin of tea, small glass vials filled with spices, a crock of
Stilton cheese, and a box of sugared confections, whose wrapping was in tatters, lay alongside them
.

I lifted up the broken lid. “I can’t see a note of any kind. Who is this from?”

Ivy threw a small white card on the table. On one side was a little deer, with a red ribbon around its neck. On the other was written
To
DEAR
B
EATRICE, FROM HER FRIEND
P
ENELOPE
. H
APPY
C
HRISTMAS!

“How lovely!” I said. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to make a fruitcake again. But now I can!”

Dilly walked into the kitchen at that moment, mop and pail in hand. “What is fruitcake, Miss?” she asked
.

“Never you mind! Get back to work!” Ivy snarled
.

“It’s a special cake for Christmas, Dilly,” I said, ignoring my stepmother. “Come and see what my friend Penelope from the settlement has sent me from her father’s store.” I held open a bag of translucent glacé cherries for the girl to smell
.

“Mmm,” she said, smiling nervously at Ivy. “Smells good.”

“Such an uncommon treat to look forward to, Miss Alexander,” Kilgour said. “Mother, I know you have eggs layered in salt. Give Miss Alexander as many as she needs. I’ll make it up to you.”

“No. Those eggs are mine. My kitchen. My eggs. And I don’t hold with rich foods for the Lord’s birth. I won’t allow it.”

“Mother, you will give Miss Alexander the eggs.”

I frowned. Why did he continue to argue? Surely not for my sake
.

“I will not,” she said
.

“It’s of no consequence,” I said. “My mother showed me how to use crystallized snow in place of eggs. It works quite well.”

“You will get eggs,” Kilgour said, giving his mother a stare of such intense disdain that it solidified my thought that this had nothing to do with me
.

“I can give her only a few,” she muttered
.

“That will do, thank you, Mother. Miss Alexander, you wouldn’t also consider making shortbread, would you?”

I hesitated, then decided to play my part
.

“Indeed, I would! And there might be enough fruit for a small plum pudding. I’ve kept all my mother’s receipts.”

Ivy bristled, Dilly smiled, and Duncan Kilgour smacked his lips deep inside his beard. Minty, who still wore his buffalo cape, studied the box with interest
.

“I’ve got a good-sized goose to kill,” Kilgour said, eyeing his mother. “That will be my contribution – and I will catch you a whitefish as well, Miss Alexander. Do you need anything else? A Yule log, perhaps?”

Ivy stood, arms crossed, face red with anger
.

“We had a decorated balsam tree when I was a child,” I said in a subdued tone. “Mama took the idea from her friend in the settlement. Even Queen Victoria has one during the Yule season. Penelope’s gift brings back so many memories, and…”

“Why haven’t you continued with these traditions?” Kilgour asked. “Wouldn’t your mother have wanted that?”

I shrugged, not wanting to explain how painful our Christmases had become without Mama’s lively presence. Besides, I didn’t want this charade with Ivy to continue any longer
.

“That first wife was a Church of England worshipper,” Ivy spat out. “Presbyterians like Gordon and me don’t care two pins for their papist ways. You’ll soon see a decent kirk built down the road. We’re forced to worship in the only one we have, but we don’t have to like it!”

The woman was her own worst enemy! I smiled bitterly. It was my father who had designed and built St. Cuthbert’s Church for the Missionary Society ten years ago, and he has worshipped in it faithfully every Sunday since
.

Ivy snapped, “Don’t you snigger at me, missy! You didn’t have any Christmas nonsense after your mother died because your father could finally – gratefully – return to his true roots. You mother’s death freed him.”

I turned my back on her and lifted the wooden crate. I’d had enough of both of them! It was heavier than I thought, and I lurched to one side before finding my balance. “I will take this away and ask my grandmother to watch over it so nothing else goes missing. We’ll all share what is left of the bonbons on Christmas Eve.”

A sharp intake of breath from Ivy told me the barb had struck home
.

Even as I write this, I ask myself again why I didn’t just ignore her. I know she will get even somehow
.

Note to myself: Keep a sharp eye out, so Dilly or Grandmother do not become scapegoats for me
.

I refused Duncan Kilgour’s help, staggered out of the room, and stomped up the stairs, wishing my moccasins had military cleats on them. When I banged into my bedroom, I called out to Grandmother, but there was no response
.

For a moment, the floor tilted under me. This wasn’t my room, and yet I knew it had to be. Disoriented, I called out again, “Grandmother? Nôhkom?”

A new moon glinted its thin light through the windows. The hearth was shrouded in something pale, and the room was very warm. Where was Grandmother?

Someone was in my bed. Had Grandmother become confused and climbed into the wrong one? I reached toward my night table for matches, but found, instead, a strange porcelain lamp with a cloth-covered shade and beaded trimming. Where was my candle? The figure in the bed stirred, and a long pale arm stretched out and pulled the tassel on the lamp. Light flowed across the bedcovers
.

I stared at the young face looking back at me and could only register, somewhere in my mind, that the dark red hair flowing over the slim shoulders belonged to the girl from the yellow vehicle – the same girl who had vanished from my classroom. She looked ill. How did she get here? Why was she here? How had she made the lamp into instant light by simply pulling a short tassel cord? She said something to me, but it was only a low murmur in the growing darkness. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t – the box dropped from my hands with a distant rumbling crash. I heard faint shouting – nôhkom calling my name – and then silence
.