The cabin began it. This is really all that I can say for sure in the light of what came later. Now, as I sit here in my home study, grading papers and waiting for the world to return to whatever once passed for normal before this new virus overtook us, I think back on that summer, scarcely a year ago, and I know that everything began with the cabin.
We all called it The Cabin, but in truth, it was a large and airy summer house on a hill overlooking Elm Lake. I say 'was,' but it still stands there now, or I believe it does, for I have not been back yet this year. Elm Lake must have been named several years ago, for there are no elm trees to speak of now, Dutch Elm Disease having claimed the last of them some forty years ago. It lies some four hours distant from the small university town where I make my home, in that odd part of the province known as Cottage Country. The lake itself is jealously guarded by the inhabitants, both of the summer and of the year-round varieties, and it has been only recently that some of the cottages have become rental properties, likely to the chagrin of the spirits of those who had, like my own Grandfather, laid their foundations with their own hands.
The Cabin, which, as I say, was a cabin in name only by now, had nonetheless been built as a cabin by my mother's father, Joseph O'Hara, in homage to the humble beginnings of his own family, who, though of course they were descended from Irish kings as was everyone with a drop of Erin's blood in them, had left their land as mere agricultural labourers in a time when all their hard work would yield nothing. Grampa always told us that he didn't want to forget his roots, so he had built his summer place out of stone, though he forbore to thatch it, seeing as he did not know how to do it and knew no one who could repair it if it were damaged. Cedar shingles served him for a roof, though for a long time, the floor was simply sanded wood. In the end, however, the place was added to and changed, and for all the time I have known the house, the old stone cabin has served as a mud room of sorts, a refuge for canoe paddles and boat oars, and anything and everything. In fact, the whole place had become a refuge for anything and everything, and that was why we had a family conference in May of last year.
"I mean," said my eldest brother Oliver as we sat around the big kitchen table in our parental home, "who ever goes there anymore?"
"I miss it," Mom said, "but I just can't be bothered anymore. I make sure that it's kept well, but beyond that, I haven't really been there in at least five years."
"You used to enjoy it, Chris." This was my other brother Max, the youngest of the family. "You and Emily used to go there every year. Didn't you?" At that, I saw my mother dart a glance at him which meant trouble, but she didn't say anything. My friend Emily Dylan had died suddenly the previous September, and while I knew Max well enough to know that he was merely stating a fact, I blessed my mother for jumping to my defence just then.
"My point is that the place is a fire risk," said Oliver, "not to mention all Gramma's stuff we ended up putting there. We can't keep it that way forever without someone checking on it."
"I really think it makes sense to think about selling up," Mom said. "It's just too much for any of us to deal with, and it isn't even as though we really enjoy it anymore. Is it?"
"Are you really suggesting that we sell it?" I was surprised at my own indignation. "Surely we can't just decide something like that tonight. Can we?"
"No," Oliver said, helping himself to more roast beef. "I don't think it would be fair for us to decide anything tonight, but I think we should go there and really figure out what we should keep and what we should throw away, and whether the place would be able to be sold as it is now, or whether we'd have to put a lot of money into repairing it."
"You think we should all go?" Max did not sound keen. "I have so much on this summer. I couldn't possibly get away!"
"WE don't all have to go," I found myself saying. "I can afford to take some time off." What I failed to tell them, and had failed to tell them since Christmas, was that I had been on stress leave from my duties at the university and therefore had all the time in the world.
"Do you think you should go there by yourself?" Mom looked deeply into my eyes just then, and I found it hard to meet that steady gaze. Still, I don't' think I did too bad a job.
"It's fine," I said. "I think it would be just what I need, actually. I wouldn't throw anything away without permission obviously. If everyone agrees, I'll head up there at the end of June." And as is the way with many, everyone was glad that someone had stepped up, and they all gracefully retreated back into their own lives once more, the problem having been dealt with to their satisfaction.
Nothing more was said about my impending trip until the night before I was due to depart. Mom called me just as I was putting the finishing touches to the packing.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Chris?"
"Well, hello to you to, Mom," I said. "I'm fine, really! It'll be good to be alone for a while." Even then, I realize now, I could have said that I had been all too alone lately and I could have asked for help or for company, but ever the stoic, I did nothing of the kind.
"Did you and Emily get there last year?"
"We did," I said, "and we had a lovely time as usual. I know what you're thinking, Mom, and I know it will probably be hard, but I want to do this for you and for myself. Again, I'll call you if I don't know what to do with something. Indeed, I think I'll take an inventory of everything and send you all the list of what I find. Then you can decide what you want kept or thrown away."
"That sounds terribly exhausting," she said, but then she laughed. "Of course, as much as you make your living studying poetry, you run your life on spreadsheets. Don't you?"
"You know I always have," I said. "What can I say? I guess I take after Dad."
"Have you heard from your father lately?"
"No," I said. "He's not talking to me right now. I'm not sure what I did to piss him off, but I seem to be in his bad books just now."
"He was always flighty," she said. "He was never too happy about you picking Literature as your major."
"No," I said. "But I don't know what it was I did to make him give me this latest version of the silent treatment."
"Don't take it too personally," Mom said. "I just thought of him because he lives not too far from The Cabin. I thought perhaps you might meet or something."
"and we likely will meet," I said. "Don't worry, Mom." I'll meet with him if I can."
"And look out for Pete Alderson. He'll see you have everything you need."
"I know, Mom. I'll be fine," I said. "I think I really need this vacation."
"But it's not a vacation, Chriss. Not really."
I often wonder now if she had an inkling, even then, of how right she was going to be in the end.
"I'll be alright," I said. "I love you, Mom."
"I love you too, Chris. Drive safely."
"I'll be careful," I said, and we ended the call.
I finished my packing, but as had been usual with me since Emily's death, I found that I wasn't tired enough to go to sleep. Accordingly, I brewed my usual late-night tea and tried to read. Even though I was on leave, I could not wholly lay my work aside. I had been working on a book about Emily Dickinson's poetry before I took my leave, and it still haunted me. I had hoped that I could finish the manuscript before I again took up my duties in the fall, but not much actual writing had happened. Instead, I had immersed myself in biographies and letters, all the source material as well as critical journal articles and the like for several months now, all to no avail. I reflected that this time at The Cabin might actually fuel my creative engine, and having finished my tea and my latest bit of Dickinson-related reading, I finally fell into bed.
The dream began without preamble. I stood on the back deck of The Cabin and looked out over the lake. At first, it looked as I remembered it. It was sunset, and the lake, which lay in a westerly direction, was blue with red-gold tints studding its gently-lapping waves. A loon was crying somewhere far off, and the air was calm, with only a little breeze to ruffle the water and the many trees on the shore. Then, everything changed. I saw what seemed like a pin-prick of light which rapidly grew into a steady beam. It seemed to come from the middle of the lake, where I knew the water to be very deep indeed, and then, it was like there was an island of light there, an island with an old log house perched high on a hill. I remember thinking that if I just stepped off the deck, I would be able to walk down our hill and across the lake to it. It was a good dream, but sad, because a sudden cloud came up as I looked, and when it blew away, all trace of the strange island and the house were gone. I remember waking with a profound sense of loss. The house had been so inviting, so improbably present. I grieved for it as I struggled into wakefulness and got ready for my trip.
I knew what this dream meant. I was sure I knew. The house was a symbol for Emily Dylan, my childhood friend who had died. She and I had met at school when we were little, and we had remained fast friends throughout the many twists and turns of life. By the time she died, she had become a full-time musician, not making much money, but loving her work in a way that I, though I too had chosen my field of endeavour, never could. Indeed, I had played with her for a while during our undergrad years. She was the musical genius, but I could hold my own singing harmonies and playing a rather indifferent, though musical enough, fiddle. We played Folk music at various functions on campus and we even toured a few book stores for Saturday afternoon concerts. We were called The Almost-poets because of our names: Christina Ross and Emily Dylan. It had come about by accident one day while we were hanging out at my house near the end of high school.
"You could be a poet with a name like yours," I had said.
"I don't know," she said. "The other Emily D. Seems much more interesting as a poet than I have ever turned out to be. You though, you're almost a Rossetti!"
"Christina Rossetti and I have very little in common," I said, "but it's true. We're both almost-poets!"
"That's a great name for a band," she said, and the rest was history.
She had died last fall and no one could say exactly why. There were several working theories, but none of them made sense. All I knew was that one minute, we had been exchanging emails about her coming in to sing some of her settings of famous poetry for my first-years later in the semester, and the next, I had received a call from her roommate, Molly Kendle, that she had died. I spent the next few weeks in a fog of shock and numb stupor, and then I suddenly found that I was unable to teach. Dorothy Morton, my department head, wasn't happy about my taking leave, but when she saw the doctor's note, she had no choice but to grant it. I still kept in touch with people from work, especially Kevin Philips, my former Anglo-Saxon professor and now my colleague, and he had assured me many times that my place was waiting for me whenever I wanted it again. I knew that this wasn't strictly the case, as I had not attained that holy grail among academics known as tenure, but I knew that he was in their pitching for me every chance he got.
Now, as I did a last-minute check on the apartment to see if anything needed cleaning or disposing of before leaving, I felt happy that I was at last going to do something useful. Reading and attending counselling sessions was all very well, but I had felt very self-absorbed for a while now, and being able to help the family with the Cabin project seemed like a good way to step out of myself for a while and to see what the world was really like without Emily Dylan. I hoped I would not be disappointed.
The drive was easy once I got off the main highways. I am a person who prefers taking the back roads whenever possible, but there are times when the highway really is the only way to go. Now that I had found my way onto some of those wonderfully winding and hilly roads which always made me feel as though I was really going to that mythical place in our Canadian consciousness known coloquially as 'Up North,' I was happy. It was true that the Canada Day long weekend was coming up, but I had chosen a day in the middle of the week for my arrival at The Cabin so that there would not be vast hordes of trippers crowding roads. I wanted my coming to be as solitary as possible. I wasn't sure why this was exatly, but I just felt solitude to be necessary.
As I drove, the dream recurred to my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt as though I had dreamed it before, though I could not remember when this had been. There was a deep sense of familiarity about it that I could not account for. Even the house, though inexplicable to the waking mind, seemed somehow familiar. It had appeared like some magic castle out of an Arthurian legend, and there had been a figure, just glimpsed, standing in front of it and beckonning to me. I remembered now as I negotiated yet another S-curve, that there had been an urgency in the summons, but that I had missed my chance to answer it and had lost it forever. But what did all that even mean? It was, after all, just a dream, and there was surely nothing in dreams but entertainment for the mind. That was my thinking then anyway.
I had left my apartment ab 9:00 in the morning and I reached the little town of Elm Lake by about noon. I had been planning to have lunch at The Boat Hook, a lovely little Greasy Spoon which not only boasted a great breakfast menu but also was the home of The Boat Hook Behemoth, advertised as 'the biggest burger you ever saw.' While I had no intention of ordering that monstrosity of carnivorous delight, I was looking forward to a simple hamburger and fries, and was therefore dismayed to find a new sign in front of the remembered building. The place was now called Infusiastic Fine Teas and Baked Goods. I wondered how such a business could survive in a place like Elm Lake, but seeing no other restaurants in my immediate vicinity, I decided to give it a try.
The familiar bell tinkled as I opened the door, but when I entered, I found the interior changed almost beyond recognition. Even last year, Emily and I had shared many a great meal and an even better conversation at the old and pitted tables which Bob Felton had kept scrupulously clean despite their scars. Now, there were little round bistro tables, and where the sound of fryers had been ubiquitous, all you could hear now was the hiss of steam and the gentle cascade of tea into china cups.
"Hello," a cheery voice greeted me as I approached the counter. "Welcome to Infusiastic. Can I interest you in our TEa of the DAy? It's Peach Palm Passion." She was young. I figured this was her summer job and I didn't want to be stern with her, but my first thought was to simply demand the location of The Boat Hook and Bob Felton, as though this girl had somehow spirited them both away and was solely responsible for the crushing of my dreams of a burger and fries.
"I'm not really into all those odd teas," I said. "Do you have something simple like Earl Gray?"
"I think we can manage that," said another woman, emerging from behind the counter and showing me to a table.
"Tanya's new," she said, "but she's keen. I'll brew your tea myself," she said, with a curious air of deference as though I were some sort of celebrity.
"Thanks," I said, taking the seat she had indicated and taking out my phone to check whether I had any notifications. Seeing nothing of importance or urgency, I found my latest Stephen King novel in the Books app on the phone, and read for a while until the woman, whom I presumed to be the owner, came back with my tea. It was in a beautiful ceramic pot with what looked like an excellent spout for pouring.
"I'm Tara," she said, pronouncing it as 'Tahrah,' and I thought I detected a hint of something in her accent.
"I'm Chris--Christina. Do you own this place?"
"Yes," she said, "the previous owner just couldn't keep it going anymore. Did you not see those magnificent golden arches as you came into town?"
"I guess I didn't notice them. It's too bad. The Boat Hook was really a fixture around here. He had even started to sell that Beyond Meat stuff when I was here last year."
"I'm sure he tried valiantly," she said. "Do you take milk or cream?"
"No," I said, pouring the tea, which she had evidently already strained for stray leaves. "This is beautiful tea!"
"I'm glad you like it. CAn I interest you in a sandwitch? I promise they're not small."
"I think I saw some paninis listed on your menu."
"We have wraps as well," she said. "I have a nice Chicken and Pesto wrap, or I do Falafel for anyone of the vegetarion persqusion. We also have salads and such."
I orderd the Chicken and Pesto wrap and ate it heartily. Tara was a good hostess, but again and again as she brought my food or refilled my tea, there was that curious note of deference in all her actions. Bob Felton had never acted this way. It was true that our family had been here, at least as summer people, for a very long time, but No one here had ever treated us the way that Tara was treating me right now.
"Now then, Miss Christina," she asked as I finished my lunch. "Can I interest you in dessert?"
"Not today I think," I said, "but you can bet I'll be back. I'm here for a while."
"I'm glad," she said. "I've heard about you O'Haras. I'm glad you're back this year."
"But I'm not an O'Hara," I protested. "Not really."
"You are as far as the folks hereabouts are concerned," she said. "Never forget that, Miss Ross." It was only as I was walking out to my car that I realized that I had never told her either my own last name or that of my grandfather. How had she known who I was?
I stopped at the Marina store to pick up a few essentials like milk and egs and the like, and I ran into someone I remembered.
"Hi Pete," I said, as I came to pay for my purchases.
"Well if it isn't Chrissie ross who thinks she's the boss!"
"You don't get to call me that anymore Pete," I said with a smile. "We're not ten."
"Well, since no one else is here, I thought it would be alright."
I had first known Pete Alderson as a skinny kid with glasses who teased me, then as a lanky but athletic teenager on whom I had a summer crush when I was fifteen. He had always worked around the marina with his parents who had owned it, but now he was the master, the boss in fact, and though he had developed a paunch and was losing his hair, I still saw the guy I had fallen so hard for more than twenty years before.
"I had Owen Mills check out the old place for you," he said.
"I don't think I know Owen Mills. He sounds like a cereal company."
"He showed up here last fall. He's a great worker. Your mom paid his bill already, so don't worry about that. He's handy with all sorts of tools and odd jobs, but his real job--vocation he calls it--is painting. I'm sure you'll see him around soon enough. He looks like a bruiser--big muscles and all--but he's the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet."
"Alright," I said. "Thanks for the heads-up and thanks for always being there for us."
"Our family learned long ago that when the O'Haras said to jump? We were supposed to ask 'how high?'."
"We can't have been that bad," I said.
"No," he said, "but once we were hired by your folks, we knew we always had to do our best work."
The Aldersons ran the Marina, but they also did a brisk trade as caretakers for the summer people. My mother always said that as long as there was an Alderson in Elm Lake, all would be well. She had loved The Cabin more than any of us, and now that I thought about it, it had been strange that she had been away for so many years. Emily and I had loved the place too, but that was because we had so many good memories of celebrating our respective birthdays there or of coming up on weekends away from university to watch the leaves changing. My mother's love was of a different kind, though I could not even guess what lay behind it as I said goodbye to Pete and loaded my bags into the back seat of my little Honda.
It was about 2:30 by the time I reached The Cabin. It was clearly marked as such, with a sign at the intersection of the driveway and the road. I turned my car into the driveway and eased it gently down the sloping gravel to park it beside the front porch. This was really little more than a stoop, but it was sturdy and had been freshly painted I saw. Mom had evidently spared no expense. Finding the key in my purse, I unlocked the front door and found myself in what had been Grampa Joe's cabin. Nothing was out of place. IN fact, things were exceedingly neat, but I had an immediate sense that all was not right here. I felt cold for one thing, which though the house was stone and kept out a lot of heat, seemed excessive for this time of year. Still, I managed to shake off the strange feeling and to get myself and my stuff into the house proper before too long.
Then, it was time for the ritual. Taking a beer from the pack I had bought at the liquor store before leaving home, I went out onto the deck to drink it. The lake was quiet. The boats which would be ubiquitous on the weekend were nowhere in evidence now, and the sun shone, beginning to slant toward the west now. It was hot but not humid, and the scent of the nearby pine trees was bitter-sweet as I stood by the railing and sipped my stout. Emily should have been here for this, I thought, but she wasn't. No one was here but me, and I wondered if this would be the last time I ever came here. Would we in fact sell it? Why had Mom been alright with that option? The more I thought about how she had paid to keep the place going and how particular she had evidently been with ehr requests to Pete this year, the more I wondered whether she really wanted to sell or was just going along with it to please the boys.
The dream came back to me as I stood there in the quiet day. The lake was an old one, a true glacial lake, not one of those made by man's attempt to tame the rivers for paper mills or the building of canals. It was rocky rather than sandy, and at its deepest point, it was over twelve feet. Though the water had to be tested every year, I had never known it to be found wanting. Indeed, I had seen a note, presumably left by the estimable Owen Mills, that the water had been certified as potable and that the pump was in fine working order. I tended not to go for the bottled water approach to modern cottage life anyway. Far too much plastics waste was generated that way. I had always relied on the lake for my water, and had every intention of doing so again this year. Still, I was glad to see the note. He had excellent penmanship. He must have been around my age or older, I reflected, taking the note out of my pocket where I had stowed it after reading it as I had walked through the kitchen. Nowadays, they don't even teach cursive writing in schools much anymore. The hand looked oddly formal, as though he had left an old-fashioned calling card rather than a simple note about the water. I wondered what he would be like, this artist who was also a caretaker. I still thought that his name sounded like a breakfast cereal company, but I resolved, when and if we met, not to hold it against him.
Having finished my ritual first beer on the deck, I went back inside and started putting my stuff in the room which Emily and I had always used. It was almost a loft space up a steep but sturdy set of stairs, and had always been thought of as 'The Kids' Room.' It had lots of sets of bunk beds ranged around the large space, and there were two big windows, one at either end, which would keep the room cool on all but the hottest and most oppressive nights. There were two bedrooms downstairs, more suitable for adults, but this had always been where I slept when I came here, and I saw no reason that this time should be different. I hoped I wouldn't be too lonely for Emily up here, but then I suddenly was, when I caught a sweet and pungent scent on the air coming through the southern window. Emily had always loved burning incense, and especially the Nag Champa kind. It was this that I smelled now just for the briefest of moments. I wondered if she might have left some here when we had last been, but I found nothing to account for it, and though it made me happy to smell it again, it also made my eyes mist over for a moment.
"Well Em," I said, knowing perfectly well that I was speaking to no one but myself, "I'm here. I wonder what will happen now?"
AS it turned out, nothing much happened for the rest of that day. I puttered around setting the house to rights for habitation, heated up a can of soup for my supper, read more Stephen King and finally went to bed around 10:00 PM. I had no dreams that I could recall upon waking, and when I did wake up, it was to the amazing dawn chorus of birds seeming to come from every direction at once. I also heard my mother's wonderful wind chimes, which wasn't surprising, for a breeze had come up during the night and they were ringing merrily. I have never understood why people find wind chimes to be annoying, but then I am one who cannot stand the sound of running water. Put me near a fountain which is supposed to soothe me, and all I want to do is to void my bladder. So, I suppose there's no accounting for taste.
Up I got, though the numbers on my phone said that it was the numerical equivalent of Stupid O'Clock. The sun had not even thought about rising yet. There was only a pale greyness in the air as I walked down the stairs to put on the coffee. Though I am an avid tea fanatic, there is something about freshly-brewed coffee at the cottage. We had one of those new single-serve brewers, it was true, but I managed to find our old drip coffee maker and its reusable filter, and soon, the kitchen was fragrant with the world's favourite beverage.
I had bought some raspberry scones to go from Infusiastic, and just as I was getting one out to heat up in the microwave for my breakfast, I suddenly saw someone sitting down on our little dock. The Cabin is built on a point. The dock is built on one side of the point in the lee of the land, in a kind of natural harbour. We didn't own such a thing as an actual motor boat, just a row-boat with an outboard, a small sail-boat, an ancient but still serviceable cedar-strip canoe and a kayak that my brother Max and bought three years before for his sun Tanner. The boathouse was not far from the dock and it also served as additional sleeping space for guests.
By looking left along the deck, I could see the dock relatively clearly, and yes, there was a figure doing something down there. He had something under his arm that he now began to set up. At least, I thought he was a he. AT first, I wondered if he were doing some illegal night-fishing, but the more I looked, the more I realized that the thing he was setting up was an easel. I suddenly wondered if he knew that this was our dock. I decided not to be indignant, or at least I thought I had, but by the time I had made my way down the rocky and rooty slope to talk to him, I had slipped three or four times and my pride, if nothing else, had been severely sprained.
"May I ask who you are and what you're doing here?" I couldn't believe I was sounding so prissy.
"Oh," he said, turning from his artistic preparations. "You're here then. I didn't know."
"You didn't know," I said. "If you had known, would you still have come?"
"I don't know," he said. "I might have done." His voice was deep, booming out of his powerful frame like the growling of thunder when a storm is still far away, but there was no menice in it. He clearly knew he had made an error in judgment.
"It's just that there's such a great view from here," he said. "There's a pair of loons that nest on a little island out in the centre. I've been watching them and trying to paint them."
"Paint them," I said, suddenly remembering. "Painting. You're Owen, aren't you?"
"That's my name," he said. "Don't ware it out."
"Pete told me you've been looking after the place for us."
"I have, Miss--Miss O'Hara?"
"Oh no! Don't call me that," I said. "I'm no Vivian Leigh. And you, sir, are no Clark Gable."
"Clearly not," he said. "But I'm sorry. The dawn light was just too good this morning. I had to come."
"I suppose I don't mind really," I said. "I've always been a patron of the arts, seeing as I have very little artistic talent myself. Would you like some coffee? I can put it into a travel mug or something for you."
"That would actually be great," he said and smiled so sweetly that I lost all my suspicion of him then and there.
Having brought him a healthy quantity of coffee and one of Tara's scones, I left him to his painting while I ate my own breakfast and decided what I should do with the day. There were a lot of boxes in the loft where I slept and a good many things in the mud room. The living room was filled with my grandmother Charlotte's colonial furniture as well as her inumerable figurenes and other decorative items. She had been a great collector of porcilan dolls as well as Blue Mountain and Royal Dolton pottery. As I gazed around me at all the accumulations of years, I thought that The Antiques Road Show could get a whole season's worth out of this place.
Feeling that the downstairs was too big a task for me to tackle just then, I decided to work on the loft instead. Before Grampa died, he and Gramma Charlotte had lived here for a while during their retirement years. IN the end, it all became too much for her at last, and when she was moved for her own safety to Happy Acres Villa nearer to where Mom lived, all her things were simply left here to be dealt with later. She had now been dead ten years, and still her things were here, even her cedar chest which was filled with furs which could never pass muster nowadays. I remembered dressing up in them when I was little, but I knew that we would have no use for them now. I decided to do some research into what could be done with old furs whenever and werever I could fine reliable wifi. There were boxes of old papers and old gadgets that had long since ceased to function. There was even an old Fisher Price tape recorder that I remembered having when I was little. I was surprised to find a tape still in it. However, when I opened the door to see if there were any batteries, I found that they were dead. I knew we kept batteries around in case we lost the power and needed to see to start up the generator. I duly found some C cells and I put them into the machine. I had no idea what I'd hear when I turned it on, but when I did, I almost dropped the thing in fright.
"Chris," a voice said clearly. "I don't know if you'll ever find this, but if you do, it means that something's happened to me."
It was Emily's voice, sounding very much alive and almost as though she were in the room with me.
"I was doing research about the history of this place, of Elm Lake in general and of The Cabin in particular. I came across some very strange things, Chris, and I think I may have woken something that was better left lying. I'm not even really sure what it all means, but something isn't right here. I think your Mom knows about it, and that's why she hasn't come back here in so long. I had this dumb idea of writing a song about your Grampa Joe and stuff. Anyway, if anything happens to you because of me, I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry and I love you. Okay? Don't forget that, please! I love you!" And that was it. The rest of the tape seemed empty.
I put the tape recorder back into its box and thought about my arrival the day before. It was true that I had felt cold when I entered the mud room, but that had only lasted a moment. What kind of research had Emily done? Could it be here perhaps? The township had existed here for over a hundred years, and Grampa Joe was by no means one of its founders, being simply a summer resident until near the end of his life. So what could she have meant about having woken something that was better left lying? I looked down from the dock-facing window in the loft and saw Owen Mills sitting stiff as a poker, as though he were listening for something rather than engaged in anything so visual as painting. I knew there was more to his story as well, and I resolved to find out more about him by inviting him in for lunch if he was still there by then.
He was still there and I did invite him in. As we ate cold chicken sandwiches and drank iced tea, I asked him about himself.
"I grew up in a little town like this," he said. "I'm glad I've found my way here. I make my living how and where I can, doing anything and everything, and I paint. I don't know what else I can tell you."
"Would it be rude to ask you your age?" I really couldn't guess it. His face looked chiseled out of marble. His nose was straight and his hair was shoulder-length and pulled up in a ponytale. He wore jeans and a workshirt, and then it was that I noticed the scent which clung to him.
"Is that Nag Champa?"
"Yes," he said. "It's oil I sometimes wear. I find it promotes good vibes."
"Vibes?" I laughed. "Who says 'vibes' nowadays?"
"I don't know," he said. "I guess no one really, but I like it. It works for me. But you were going to ask me about my age if I wasn't offended. I'm not, and I can tell you that I'm forty-two."
"Ah," I said. "The answer to life, the universe and everything! How auspicious. I'm not quite there yet myself."
"It's not all it's cracked up to be," he said, "but my motto is: 'don't panic.'"
"Very sound advice. I'm glad to meet a fellow fan of Douglas Adams!"
"I'm glad to meet one of the O'Hara clan," he said.
"Clan? That makes us sound like a sinister bunch."
"Let's just say that you're known around here."
"Known?" I didn't like how he had said that word. "What could we be known for? We're summer people. The townies don't take much account of summer people as a general rule."
"I've just heard some things," he said. "It's ancient history now anyway."
"Did you ever meet my friend Emily?" I knew my voice sounded harsh and that I was talking far too fast, but I didn't care. His talk of ancient history had dovetailed with Emily's words on the tape.
"I don't think so," he said. "Why?"
"Nothing important," I said, trying very hard to sound nonshalant. "I just wondered."
"I came in September," he said. "Would she have been here then?"
"Uh," I said, fighting a lump in my throat, "no. No, she wouldn't have been here then."
"Well," he said. "May I come back and use your view again?"
"Sure," I said. "Maybe let me know you're coming next time?" We exchanged cell phone numbers and he promised to text me, so that if I were asleep when he arrived, I'd know he was here whenever I woke up.
"I didn't see your car," I said. "Can I drive you home?"
"No," he said, "I have my bike," and grabbing his stuff, he went around the side of the house and wheeled a really fabulous-looking mountin bike out from where he had hidden it, and before I could say anything more, he had mounted and had ridden away.
"Geez Em," I said as I was washing up our dishes some minutes later. "Just what have I come back to? What did you mean about something having happened to you? I mean, you died and it was stupid and senseless, but I'm sure lots of deaths like that occur every day. I hate it, yes, but that doesn't mean that there was anything nasty behind it. You just died. I mean, that's all! You're gone and I miss you, dammit, and that's just all there is!" And as if to contradict my words, just then I felt a gentle breeze caressing my cheek, and on it I caught the scent of Nag Champa again.
"I love you," she had said on the tape.
"I love you too, Em," I said now, and went back to finishing the dishes.
By the time I was done, I had pretty much decided that my whole life here couldn't be spent indoors with old and dusty items of bygone days, so seeing that the afternoon was still and there were as yet no signs of motor boats out on the lake, I got out the little fishing boat we had. It possessed an outboard motor, but it was not currently attached. Besides, I didn't want to use a motor on a day like today. So, putting the oars into their locks, I soon had the boat moving away from our point and out into the lake proper. Looking over my shoulder as I rowed, I could see the island that Owen had pointed out in the morning. It was indeed very small and very lonely, but I knew it was not so easily seen from the dock as all that, and I felt somewhere deep within myself that he had not been telling the whole truth when he had explained his presence to me. Yes, I believed he had been painting, but I did not think that he could have possibly seen those loons without a set of field glasses, which, for all I knew, he had with him but wasn't using at the moment. My obsession with order reasserted itself in the face of all my suspicions. Surely he had not meant me any harm this morning. He was just a somewhat gauche but generally nice guy who happened to be so obsessed with chasing the light for his art that he was willing to trespass on private property. It was weird, but not unheard of.
I tried to let the rhythm of my rowing calm my racing mind, but as I drew near to the centre of the lake, my dream of two nights ago forced itself into my thoughts again, and stilling the boat as best I could with the oars, I sat still and listened. I didn't just listen with my ears, but with my whole being. I did feel something there. I felt it the way you might feel the first deep bass notes of an amplified sound system before your ears can recognize what you're feeling as a sound, let alone music. Something really did seem to be there, and though it felt uncanny, it did not feel evil. Could my dream be trying to tell me something about this place? Then, just for a moment, there was nothing: no son, no breeze, no boat, no me. There was truly nothing. I can't even describe what I felt or what I was doing at this moment, because I wasn't feeling or doing anything. It only lasted for the briefest of flashes, but when the world had again re-established itself, I came back and began rowing quickly for home, but I felt the nothingness fumbling at the edges of my consciousness for a while until I had returned to The Cabin and had found myself something to eat to take away the chilly emptiness at the centre of myself.
"That was weird," I said. "That was just weird!"
Suddenly, I craved companionship. I couldn't stand the silence of the house. Even Mom's wind chimes were still this afternoon. So, getting into my car, I drove into town and back to Infusiastic, hoping, for some obscure reason that I couldn't fully grasp, to meet with Tara there. However, when I got to the restaurant, I saw that the sign in the window had been turned to 'closed,' and though it was not the usual hour for closing according to the sandwich board outside, I supposed there had been some emergency.
"I've got tea at my place if that's what you're looking for," said a deep voice behind me. I whirled around only to see Owen there.
"Are you stalking me?"
"Honestly no," he said. "If you want the truth, I live here. Come up for some tea? I'm sure Tara wouldn't have let you in dressed like that anyway." It was only then that I realized that I had forgotten to change out of the bathing suit I had put on before jumping into the boat.
"Oh God! I look so ridiculous!"
"What's going on?" He was looking straight into my eyes with his piercing blue gaze, and I knew that he had seen more than just a scatterbrained woman who had forgotten to change out of her beach clothes before heading into town for some late-afternoon refreshment.
"Well," I said, "I'm just a bit spooked. Does your offer still stand? I'd love some tea, and perhaps some sympathy if you have it."
"I'll certainly do my best," he said, and leading me around the back of the building, he showed me to a fire escape which led to the upper floor.
"Does Tara not live here then?" I asked, as I walked into what was clearly a man's living space. It was neat enough, but lacked a woman's touch.
"I don't have much in the way of furniture," he said, "but I do have a card-table and chairs."
"That's fine," I said.
"No," he said, in answer to my first question. "Tara doesn't live here. I arrived here just as she was taking over from the previous owners and she immediately suggested that I take the apartment as she had no need of it."
"Do you know where she lives? There's something interesting about her."
"I know what you mean," he said, "but no. I don't know where she lives. I just pay my rent every month and she keeps me stocked with tea and other goodies. All in all, it's a good arrangement."
"I really wanted to see her today," I found myself saying, and it was only in that moment when I knew it to be true. I had gone to the tea shop with the express wish of finding Tara there, and when she wasn't, that gnawing emptiness had seemed to reach out from the lake again.
"What's got you so spooked? I know something has."
By now, we were drinking our tea and I told him my tale, starting with Emily and the tape and ending with the strange experience on the lake. I also happened to mention how difficult it would have been to see anything of the loons on that island from The Cabin's dock, and he almost blushed as he nodded his agreement.
"I wasn't painting loons," he said. "I was painting a dream, if you'll believe me." That made me jump.
"Painting a dream?"
"Yes. I dream sometimes that I'm on that point where your place is. Did you know it's called Bard's Point?"
"Is it really? That seems unlikely for a place around here," I said.
"I know," he said. "It's too Celtic or something, but that's what it's called on the maps."
"Well, so you're standing on Bard's Point," I prompted him.
"Right, and it's sunset, or sometimes very early dawn. Anyway, there's always a little mist in the air, and then the mist seems to solidify, and it's like there's a bridge, and across the bridge is a green place with an old log house on top of a round hill. I almost feel that I can get there, and then it vanishes. I know I have to get there, because there's a figure beckonning me. Something seems to be chasing me, and the figure is trying to give me a way to escape, or that's what it feels like in the dream."
"So you're trying to paint that place you've seen in your dream?"
"I was hoping I could remember enough of it to really bring it into detail, maybe so I could get it out of my head or something. Sometimes ideas for paintings come like that for me, but this one feels different somehow."
"I know what you mean," I said, "though I've only had the dream once, and that was the night before last, just before I left to come here."
"I don't believe in coincidences," he said after a pause in which all that I could hear was the ticking of his travel alarm clock.
"I normally do," I said, "but this is too strange to be one of them."
"I managed to finish the painting today," he said. "Would you like to see it?"
"I would," I said, "if you feel comfortable showing it to me."
"Well, as we're dream-fasted, to borrow a term from The Dark Crystal, I see no reason not to." And, going to his eezle, he turned it from the wall so I could see the house and the bridge, almost like an open drawbridge I thought as I looked at it, and the figure standing at the far end of the bridge in front of the house.
"My God!" I said, letting out a sharp gasp. "I know that person!"
"I do too," he said. "She's my landlady."
"I just don't get this," I said, pacing up and down the room while Owen replaced the easel in its accustomed place so that the painting was no longer visible. "I don't think I ever really got a look at the figure, but she looks right. Doesn't she?"
"She is right," he said. "Quit pacing and come and sit down again."
"But none of this makes sense," I protested. "How can a dream mean anything in real life? Okay, so I get the whole psychological theory of dreams, but what I don't get is this one. It seems like something straight out of C. S. Lewis or something, and I haven't read him since I was ten!"
"You haven't?" This was not Owen's voice. "More's the pity. He ages very well," and Tara herself was with us in the room. I hadn't heard the door open or close, but I supposed I could have been too absorbed in my thoughts to notice.
"I didn't mean to barge in," she said now, "but I couldn't help overhearing some of what you were saying. We can't do any real talking here, I fear, but I'll come to you, Christina, and we'll be open with one another."
"Come to me? Do you mean you'll come to my house?"
"You'll see," she said. "For now, let me just say that I am glad that we three have all met. We all have our roles to play in what's to come."
"What's to come? What do you mean? What about what's come already? My friend is dead and she told me that this place might have had something to do with her death, or she thought it might cause her some harm at any rate."
"I know she did, my girl. I know she did. It was I who urged her to find a way to tell you what she could while she was able."
"You? But how did she know you?"
"We met merely by what you might call chance, though chance is really an illusion. I was drawn here by--by forces of ill intent, let us say--and Emily had stumbled into the middle of those same forces. We met while I was here meeting with the former owner of this place. We--we knew each other."
"What? What do you mean you knew each other?"
"We knew each other. That is all I can say for the present. In the same way i know both you and Owen, and I think you both know each other, but only when the three of us know and are known equally will anything truly be accomplished."
"Why have I dreamed of you often," Owen suddenly asked, "but Christina has dreamed of you only once?"
"Because I have been able to reach you, Owen my lad. That is why," and now I could clearly hear the Irish lilt in her voice. "You have not been clouded by grief or anger, and while you are not a disordered thinker, you do not impose order where none needs to exist. For you, life is poetry. For Christina, it's a puzzle to be solved."
"Ironic," I said, "given my profession." I admit that I was a little stung by her gentle remonstrance.
"I will come to you, Christina," she said again. "Now, I think you should go home and get some sleep. The hour groweth late," and with that, she was suddenly gone. This time, my full attention was on her, and I saw her simply vanish before my eyes.
"What the hell was that?"
"I don't think hell had much to do with it," was all Owen's response. "I do think that Tara, whoever or whatever she is, is right. You should get yourself home and get some sleep. We've been talking for hours." It was true. We had been, but it didn't seem like that to me. Yet, when I looked out the window, I saw that the sun was just preparing to go down, and that meant that it was about 9:00 PM already.
"Alright," I said. I'll see you later, I guess. Remember to text me if you decide to trespass on my dock again."
"I won't forget," he said, "though I think I need a lie-in tomorrow. I'm beat!" He looked beat.
"I'm sorry to cause you such trouble today. I'm sure you're sick of me."
"Never that," he said. "I'm just really in need of a good long sleep."
"Well," I said, "thanks for everything. I'll see you."
"Not if I see you first," he said, holding the door open for me, and I left.
The last ashes of sunset still lingered over the lake as I went out on my back deck, now attired more appropriately, and looked at the night. Tara had said that she would come to me, but what did that mean? Had I really just seen the owner of the local cafe (could you call a tea shop a cafe?) vanish into thin air? I could, I reflected, have sun stroke from being out in the boat in the late afternoon, but I didn't seem to have any of the other symptoms. No, I thought, all my senses confirmed that her disappearance was a real event, though I was at a total loss as to how to explain it.
"You look too hard for explanations, Chris," had been Emily's chief grievance against my sense of imagination or lack thereof for years. "Sometimes you just have to let things be." But she hadn't been able to let things be. Something had prompted her to look for information about the town and this house. But what? How was I ever going to know? Then I remembered that she had spent a lot of time at the town library during our last visit. I wondered if there might be a way to find out what she had been looking at. I had worked at the library one summer, and if Tegan Jones was still the head librarian, she might be able to pull a few strings for me. I resolved to go there as soon as I could.
The dark had drawn in by the time I decided to escape the ravages of the Blackflies and get ready for bed, and though the night was warm, I felt an unbelievable urge for hot cocoa. Finding an ancient can of Carnation somewhere in one of the cupboards, I filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Emily had the trick of making it with just the right ratio of water to powder. I knew I wouldn't do it justice, but I also knew that it would taste good and might go a long way toward driving that emptiness away for good and all.
"If you seek to banish emptiness," I heard Tara's voice suddenly say, "you must replace it with fullness, with something so full that it overflows."
"How did you--" The question died on my lips when I realized how meaningless it was in the light of what I had seen in Owen's apartment.
"Do not worry," she said, coming closer. "I broke no barriers."
"Barriers?"
"Yes," she said. "There are barriers of protection around this house, but they have been breached by others than myself. I simply came through the breach in the wall. This is a place between your realm and mine, child."
"And here I thought that your realm was the tea shop on the corner of Smith and Main," I said, just for something to say.
"It is difficult to explain my nature to you in terms that you will understand," she said, "though the closest thing in your own mythology to what I am might be the fair-folk or the shining ones, also called the greys or the brownies."
"But those are mischievous, aren't they?"
"You have called us so without truly knowing what you were talking about. You only know half the story, and perhaps even half is too generous. What I am trying to say is that this house lies in a place between our realms."
"But why do you have a realm, I mean a different one than ours?"
"Because we do not die, whereas you do. We can be killed, yes. There is nothing under the heavens that cannot be killed, but we are not subjet to death in the normal course of events, and a world of undying beings must of necessity be different from a world where all is mortal and transitory."
"But you own a tea shop," I said, grasping at anything I could think of to anchor me in the here and now.
"I do," she said, and then the kettle shrieked and I began to mindlessly make my cocoa.
"But if your world is so different from ours, how can you live here or exist here at all?"
"I do not deny that it is difficult," she said. "I am like one of your divers. I must carry a bit of my own world about me so I do not suffocate in your heavy air. You may have noticed that time flowed differently when I was with you and Owen. This is what you might call a side effect of our interactions with your kind."
"So what did you mean when you said that you and Emily knew each other?"
"There are some humans who are more open to our ways. No one knows why this should be, but Emily was one of those people. Of course, being open to one like me meant being open to others."
"But how do I know that you aren't one of the others?" I said this hardly thinking of what I was saying.
"You don't, I suppose," she said, "but I know that you have been touched by them."
"I was in the lake," I said, "well, on the lake in my boat today. I thought I felt what I had felt in my dream, something peaceful and warm, but then something cold came in its place and it's never really left me."
"Emily was like a receiver," she said. "She was open because she wanted to be. She wanted to be open to beauty and light and the good things of this world. You, I'm afraid, have been broken open. You have been wounded by her death and now that wound has become infected, or has come in contact with an infectious agent, let us say. Why did you come back here?"
"To settle our affairs here, to decide what to do, whether to sell the place or not."
"Oh, Christina, you must never sell this place! It must stay among the O'Hara's! That was a promise made long ago by your grandfather. As long as an O'Hara comes back here once a year, the barriers will be renewed."
"But I did come back," I said, "even though my mother had stopped coming. Emily and I always came back."
"Yes you did, and the barriers held until last autumn, but they had been weakened when your grandparents were no longer here to keep up the old rituals. I suspect that when your mother realized that she would be expected to continue them, it was too much for her modern sensibilities and she decided that none of it was true."
"None of what? I still don't understand."
"Do you remember the hawthorn hedge that used to grow around this house?"
"Yes," I said, wondering now for the first time in a long time where it had gone.
"Well tending it and mending it when it was damaged by wind and weather was one of the old rituals. You see, your grandfather, by building this house in the shape of his ancestral cabin in Ireland, made this place attractive to both the bright ones and the dark ones of my kind. He was ignorant of this until things began to happen, for it is the dark ones who seek to terrorize you, believing that you are interlopers and inferiors."
"And you? Do you believe that about us?"
"We know that your perceptions are severely limited," she said, "but we generally leave you alone. We seek not to interfere with the pattern of things. It was your grandfather's mother, Meghan Carson O'Hara who found a way to summon one of our kind. There was a song she could sing in the old Language."
"You mean Gaelic?"
"No, something far older," she said. "She sang it at the proper time and in the proper way, and I came to her. YOu have the look of her, Christina. I came to her and told her to plant the hawthorn hedge. She protested this and all of my other instructions, saying that she did not want to lose contact with us, the bright ones, as well as with the dark ones. But thus it is, and thus it has ever been. Banish one kind, and you banish all of us. It is better so, for there are other side effects of our meetings than changes to your perceptions of time."
"So do you want me to plant a new hawthorn hedge then?"
"It is too late for hawthorns now, my lass," she said, and a deep note of sadness was in her voice now like the crying of a seabird far from the shore. "I think you can help, but it will be difficult and it cannot be done all at once. But before you can help, you must be healed of your wounds, and that can only happen in my realm. Take my hand, if you would." I did so, and though we only touched for a few seconds, my mind was filled with a hundred images tumbling over and around each other so quickly that I could not make sense of them.
"I have given you what protection I can for the moment," she said, "and we will meet in dream, which is the only way you can enter the undying realm for now. There, I will be able to heal you. I will make you a doorway of music," and it was only then that I noticed a harp sitting on the floor beside her. "Go to your bed now and I'll play you to sleep."
"Is Owen alright?"
"He will have strength enough to do what is needful," she said, "but only just, I fear."
"But what does that mean?"
"That you will have to learn from him. It is not mine to tell. Now please! Go to your bed and prepare for sleep. I cannot stay much longer." I did as she asked without further questions, seeing signs of a bitter struggle on her face. Though I wasn't sure what to believe, I knew that I liked this woman, and knowing that she had known Emily was somehow a point in her favour as well.
"I just don't understand," I said sleepily as I lay in bed while music filled the room and Tara's fingers moved effortlessly over the strings of her harp, "how a fairy could own a tea shop."
And then, I was somewhere else.
Somewhere else, did I say? Really, I seemed to still be lying in my bed, and I could hear the music of Tara's harp, though now it was removed from me as though she had moved away down a long tunnel.
"Tara?" I found a voice with which to pronounce her name, but it seemed small and insignificant compared to the sound of the music, which even at a distance was vast and noble, beautiful beyond imagination. I was dreaming, I knew, but it didn't matter that I was dreaming. I knew I wanted to come closer to the music, but at the same time, I felt comfortable where I lay and did not want to move. IN the end, however, I did get up, because the music had begun to fade in and out like a badly-tuned AM radio station or one whose signal degrades later at night. I knew that if I lost the music, I would be lost too, so I climbed out of bed and began to follow the sound.
I was dressed in the clothes I had worn when I had first arrived in town. This was at least better than wearing a bathing suit. I made my way downstairs and out to the back dek, and though the sun had been down long before I had gone to bed, it was now sunset, just as it had been in the dream I had had the night before coming here. The lake was calm and the music came clearly to me across the water, and there, in the distance, was the log house, a strong and steady light burning in its nearest window.
The deck boasts two sets of steps. The one on the right takes you down to the ground, and from there, railway tie steps lead down to where you can walk into the lake or put something like a canoe into the water successfully. The steps on the left lead down to the ground where another set of railway tie steps leads down a twisting path to the dock. The point of the point, as it were, is visible from the front of the deck, but there is no way directly down to it, and no railway tie steps are there either. However, as I looked to the end of the land, I began to see something. It was nothing more nor less than a golden bridge, a bridge seemingly made of light itself. I had not seen it so clearly in the previous dream, but here it was, a shining path stretching from land's end to the front door of the inexplicable log house.
"Please,", Tara's voice suddenly said, seeming to come from all around me while at the same time coming from deep within my own mind, "hurry, little one! This is our chance! Come now, or all will be lost!"
Her voice seemed to break some spell which had again held me captive, for I suddenly walked toward the front edge of the deck and knew that if I wanted to, I could step through the thick wooden railing as if it did not exist, and even though the point ended scarcely three feet from the front of the deck, I would be safe, for the bridge of light would uphold me. I knew it as surely as I had known the sound of Tara's voice a moment before. So, without stopping to think, I stepped forward, the railing melting away before me like the lookingglass in Alice, and I was on the bridge. Though now that I was on it, it seemed more like a river, for I found myself being propeled forward. Indeed, by the time I approached the house, I was running, just to stay upright as the light carried me along.
"Good," said Tara. "Now that you're on the bridge, they cannot touch you. Do not fear. You'll soon catch up to us, but you must be changed a little first."
"Changed?" I hardly know if I spoke the word aloud or simply thought it, but again came Tara's voice from every direction at once.
"You will be changed a very little. The bridge is doing it. It is making you lighter and adapting you to our mode of existence."
"But I dont' want to be adapted."
"It is only for a short while," she said, and then suddenly, I was no longer on the bridge, but standing outside her house, watching her playing the harp from where she sat on the porch.
"Good," she said, her voice now coming only from where she was sitting. "It was a close run thing, but you've come. Now we can begin doing things."
"Doing things?" I looked around just then, and was surprised that where it was sunset on my deck, here, the sky wore the hues of early dawn, and I could hear dawn birds singing.
"The night is already far spent," she said. "Come you inside and we'll see what can be done for you."
The house was comfortable and filled with lovely things, though I had a hunch that whatever I was seeing here was for my benefit only, as though Tara was using my own imagination to create the house around us as we entered. Not certain of how I knew this, I was somewhat fearful and asked, again in a small and timid voice:
"Is this house really here? Are these things--well--real?"
"They are for you," said Tara. "Is that not enough?"
"I suppose it will have to be," I said, but it made me wonder about the other kind of undying being, what Tara called the dark ones. Could they shape such a world to suit their darker designs? And how did I know that Tara wasn't one of the dark ones?
"Sit down," she said now, leading me to a seat beside a gently-burning fire, "and I will fix you some breakfast."
"No!" Now, I was really frightened. I remembered reading stories about benighted travelers who had stumbled into a fairy mound and had eaten some of the fairy food, and they had never been seen again. Everyone knew you were not supposed to eat anything of that realm.
"You seek to dishonour my hospitality?" She was not angry, exactly, but I would be lying if I said that she was not indignant
"I didn't mean it," I said, "but it's just that I thought we shouldn't eat your food. It would be bad for us if we did, or so say all the stories."
"Eating our food can be harmful and disorientating to mortals, yes," she said more gently, "but in this case, it is the only thing that can help you now. If I left you to your wounds, they would eventually be irreparable. Now, will you sit down?"
I finally took the low rush-bottom seat she offered me and watched as she moved to make a pot of very fragrant and lovely-looking porridge. AS I watched her, I noticed a glow eminating from her face and from her hands. It did not rest upon her or illuminate her. It simply shone from her as she moved. I supposed this was what the poets meant when they wrote of glory.
"I can see you, I think," I said cautiously after a long silence in which only the fire crackled in its brick bed, "as you really are."
"You see what your mind can bear now, yes," she said, adding what looked like perfectly ordinary berries and honey to the mixture bubbling away in the copper pot over the flames. "What I truly am you are incapable of imagining. Therefore, your brain sees me as I am in your world, with a little of the sheen of my true nature coming through."
"I think I understand," I said, "and this meal is supposed to help me with--what--what I felt on the lake?"
"Yes," said Tara. "They could only touch you because you were vulnerable to them. All of your kindred is wounded, but you have been wounded by grief, and though grieving can be a healthy thing for a mortal, it is never healthy to let it fester. Like lust, it can become an addiction."
"It's true that I haven't been myself lately," I hedged, but her gaze on me was too direct for such nonsense. She reminded me of my favourite teacher in high school when she looked at me like that. Mrs. Clifton had been a hard marker, but she had been fair-minded, and she would not let you get away with anything less than your best.
"Alright," I said, "I've definitely not been myself. I've been drinking more than I should, and I've been taking pills sometimes to help me sleep. They were prescribed for me, but still, it is not my usual way of dealing with upsetting things."
"Emily was dear to you. This I can see," she said, suddenly kneeling in front of me and taking my hand in hers. Now, I was able to hold her hand without being overwhelmed by strange imagery. "I wish with all my heart that she could have avoided what was done to her."
"Done to her? Are you saying that something was done to her?"
"No one in your world will ever find any evidence of it, but yes, my girl. Your Emily was murdered."
"by these--these dark ones?"
"By them and by others. They could not have touched her directly, not to kill her."
"But you said that she was open to them."
"I did," and here she looked at me levelly again, and I saw something deep and vast beyond telling in that look, "but I also told you that I had given her what protection I could from a direct asault. What I had not counted upon was what might happen if the dark ones allied themselves with people in your world. Someone in your world, someone in Elm Lake, is or can be a conduit for the dark ones' power."
"And what is their power?"
"Our power, if you can call it that, lies in word, music, gesture and thought," she said, returning to her work. "We do not seek to dominate, but they do. They tempt, and when that fails, they sneak into a human's mind and influence it from the inside out."
"And you?"
"We watch and try not to interfere. Indeed, there are others like me who would think that I did wrong to help you now."
"Will you be punished for this?"
"I may be, yes," she said, "but there are others who are with me in this venture. They understand that things are out of balance now as long as the dark ones can fully enter your world, "so it is up to us to help you to put things right."
"You're saying that they're here--I mean, they're in the town?"
"Yes, though they would never deign to take human shape. They are working through the humans, though I am not yet sure who are their chief agents. It was this that Emily was trying to figure out."
"But how would she have known about all this last summer before she met you?"
"That you will learn in time, I have no doubt. For now, your breakfast is ready. When you eat it, you will understand more, I think."
Placing a small table beside me, my hostess dished out a healthy portion of her lovely-smelling concoction, and as soon as I tasted it, all my fears of magical food were alayed. The porridge was sweet and hearty, filled with fresh fruits and some kind of herb, tasting something like mint but at the same time nothing like it, that I could not identify. As I ate, the glow on Tara's face became more apparent, and by the time I was finished and had drunk the cup of water she had also provided, I wanted to kneel before her in sheer awe at the splendour with which she was surrounded. She must have sensed my thoughts, for she suddenly said, so sharply that it made me jump:
"No! Never think such things, for though you are mortal and weak, your kind will far surpass us for beauty and splendour in the end. Indeed, we are but pale copies of what you would have been had your race not fallen, and we dwindle into absolute emptiness when compared with what you will be, or may be, when the true balance is restored."
"The true balance?"
"The balance which was broken by your fall. The imbalance we must set right is only a tiny symptom of the greater cosmic wound which was begun when your kind ceased to follow the great pattern."
"Great pattern? If you're talking about the Bible," I began, but she stopped me.
"Your Bible is not the pattern, but a description of it."
"Are you an angel?"
"No," she said. "We have nothing to do with angels, but we are creatures like yourselves."
"How--how is it that you do not die? I'm not a christian, but as I understand it, death came into the world when Adam and Eve sinned."
"We were taken out of your world at that time," she said, "though we would have come to know you in time, I am sure. When you fell, the world was poisonous to us, just as Paradise was poison to your kind."
"Poisonous?"
"Painful. Harmful. I told you in the waking world that when I go among you, I must bring something of my world with me. The dark ones do not need to do this, for they work through humans, rather than interacting with them on a personal basis."
"But then are they what we call demons?"
"They do similar work to that of your demons, but demons are fallen angels. The more they are able to influence in the mortal realm, the more mortal and immortal will mix, and nothing good can come of that."
"But we are mixing right now, and I feel much better. IN fact, I didn't know how badly I had been feeling till now."
"I am glad that I could do something for you," she said, "but we must restore the balance between our worlds, and that means that if all goes well, you and I will never meet again. Our worlds must be separated again, or it is your race which will fair the worst from the mingling."
"If I can help," I said, "Of course I will, but I would be sad never to see you again. I think you saved my life tonight, and I'll never forget that."
"It is true that you were very close to the darkness even before you were touched by only a finger of its power when you were out in your boat. Remember that sometimes grief is the only road to true joy. It can be a gift, you know."
"I know," I said. "I know. But wait! Everything's fading now! Tara?"
"You'll waken in your own bed soon," she said. "Take my hand again. They are trying to prevent your return!" I took her hand, and though everything else faded into blank darkness around me, Tara herself was still with me, glowing like a star in the blackness of space. I could feel her reaching for me with her mind, but I could feel other things reaching for me as well, dark things, cold and slimy things which sought to freeze and paralyze me. Indeed, there was a moment when I knew myself to be lying in bed again, but all around me in the darkness were shadowy beings, and I was unable to move. That had only happened to me a few times before, and that had been when I was a teenager. Usually, I could do nothing but wait for the feeling to pass. Now though, I still felt Tara's hand in mine, and though my mind was filled with a roaring and the jibbering of strange inhuman voices, around and through it all, I could feel Tara beside me and I could hear her playing her harp again.
"Wake, Christina! Wake and do not surrender! They annot harm you unless you allow them to. I have given you what I have to give. Wake now, and take up the fight!"
"Alright," I managed to say, and with that small movement, the paralysis broke and I was myself again. Opening my eyes, I found that the dawn had come even in the waking world, and Tara was nowhere to be seen. Had she really even been there? I looked at my phone. It was 4:30 in the morning. I decided to try and get some more sleep, and by the time I woke up at 7:30, i was definitely feeling ready to face the day. However, all that changed when I walked downstairs and found my mug of cold and congealed cocoa still sitting on the table. I had mixed it, but had forgotten to drink it last night. For once, I was glad of my carelessness, for standing next to the tin of Carnation on the counter was my bottle of prescription sleeping pills. It was open and what looked like about seven or eight of them were gone. Picking up the cocoa, I sniffed it and detected a decidedly uncocoa-like odour beneath the darkly cloying chocolatey aroma. Somehow, I had put those pills into the cocoa and had not known I was doing it. Tara must have seen, and so she got me out of the way before I could overdose. She really had saved my life last night, but the really scary thing was, that if you had asked me whether I was feeling suicidal, I would have said no, right up until I had taken the lethal brew. Perhaps Tara was right. Perhaps I had been influenced by the dark ones.
"Do not surrender!" Tara had said, and I swore as I tipped the mess of cocoa and pills into the sink that I wouldn't. But just how close had I come? I didn't know, and I decided that questions like that were usually better left unanswered.
After flushing the remainder of the pills down the toilet, I tried to start the day as usual by making the morning coffee, but while I waited for it to be ready, I could not stop thinking about how close I had come either to becoming severely ill or to outright killing myself. How had I done that without even knowing it, without consciously deciding to do it? Could I really have been wounded in the spirit, as Tara had said? What was more, was I truly healed now? The dream was still with me despite the shock of what I had found upon waking, but it did not seem to fade as other dreams had done. In fact, as I moved through my morning routine, more and more of it came to the front of my mind, not just what Tara and I had talked about, but how the fire had crackled in the hearth and how the smoke had smelled sweet, as though some exotic wood had been burning there. It seemed so real that I found myself sniffing my hair to see if it had any lingering smoke left in it, but I could only smell the ghost of the last quantity of shampoo I had used. So it really had been a dream then, and yet I knew that Tara and I had actually talked as well. I could still taste the porridge in my mouth, and I felt full in more ways than just being gastrically satisfied would account for. Besides, I did stillll want my usual breakfast. Today, it was frozen berries on top of granola. AS I ate, I looked around the room and felt a renewed sense of purpose. This house still had to be cleaned, and perhaps Emily had left me another treasure somewhere. So, when all was clean and shiny in the kitchen again, I ventured upstairs again to visit the loft.
"Here's where Tara sat to play her harp," I said to myself as I entered the bedroom, feeling absurdly like Scrooge on that famous fictional Christmas Day, and again, I caught the whiff of Nag Champa, and found myself wondering whether there really was an eternity somewhere, a place where Emily might actually still be present. I was a confirmed atheist at the time, but in my current state of mind and heart, I felt that anything might be possible.
"I miss you Em," I said, and of course there was no response. Nothing happened except that a fly buzzed once around my head and then made its way up to the ceiling. Apparently liking what it found, there it clung, not seeming to be in any hurry. Indeed, I understood how it felt. The day was beginning to come on hot, and by noon, I knew that this room, for all its breezy ventilation, would be like an oven and I wouldn't be able to stay. So, leaving my little winged friend to his flyish business, I got down to work.
This time, it was bankers' boxes full of bills I had to sort. It was slow work, but at least my father had kept a meticulous filing system. Each company had its yearly folder, and bundles of years for each company were tied up with rubber bands, so there was no trouble deciding what needed keeping and what needed throwing away. Most of it, in fact, I kept to give to Mom, and very little of it seemed unimportant. Some of it was related to their house in town though, and I decided that this was because Dad could never bear to throw any records away, ever fearful of an audit. He had been an accountant, so I supposed it made sense, but still, I could never think of keeping that much paper around. I was someone who felt smothered by bills. I had not inherited Dad's sense of order in that department, but I did understand it, and suddenly, as I pulled yet another bankers' box out from under the slanting back wall of the loft which was really the roof, I really wanted to talk to him.
Maybe I'd call him later, I thought as I worked through these folders, but I wasn't sure he'd have anything to say to me. He and Mom had split up not long after inheriting The Cabin. I never really understood why they had parted, though I had known for a long time that their marriage was not a resounding success. He had kept in contact with all of his children for a while, but as the years had crept on, he and I had talked less and less, and whenever we did talk, it wasn't pleasant. It seemed like there was something about me that he disliked, but I could never put my finger on it. All I knew then was that he seemed always to be mad at me, so I had stopped calling him after a while.
As I got to the botom of this bankers' box, the neat folders suddenly gave way to some jumbles of papers, and when I looked at them, I found that they were letters. They all began: "Dear Tom," and were from someone signing herself as 'your loving Alice.' Tom was my Dad, I knew, but who was Alice? And why were these letters tucked in with the things that had belonged to my grandparents? Whoever she was, Alice had evidently been here with Dad. Her letters were filled with reminiscences of the lake and of the town. Could she have been the reason that Mom and Dad had divorced? I wondered if I should call either Mom or Dad about this, but decided against it. Instead, I resolved to call Oliver the next chance I could. He was the closest to Dad, so perhaps he knew about this woman and would know what we should do about the letters. In the meantime, there was still more to do before the room became too hot to work in. The breezes which had aided me yesterday were all-but gone today, and the sky as I saw it from either window, lowered wit dark cloud. I knew that this would not deter the boaters and the holiday-makers who would start to arrive soon. This was Friday of the Canada Day long weekend after all Only a severe storm would do that, and while I thought that one might be developing, I wasn't ready to count on it just yet.
One by one, I carried the boxes I had dealt with downstairs and placed them on the coffee table in the living room. By the time I had done that, it was about time for lunch, and I decided to go into town and try my luck at Infusiastic again. This time, it was open, but there was no sign of its proprietor. Owen was there though, sitting at a table in the far corner and nursing his drink as if his life depended on it. AS I came closer, I saw that his face had a decidedly green tint to it and asked if he was alright.
"I'm okay," he said. "Want to join me? Tanya makes a fine Mint Tea."
"I think I'll go with Jasmin today," I said, and went to put in my order. Coming back with my tea and two good-sized croissants, I offered one to him, but he didn't take it.
"Munch away," he said. "I'm drinking the Mint Tea for a reason."
"Partying last night, were we?" His eyes had the bleary and blood-shot look of a first-class hangover.
"Something like that," was all he would say, "but I'm finding my feet again, I think. What about you? How was your night?"
"That," I said, "is a very difficult question to answer," and I proceeded to tell him about my meetings with Tara and their consequences.
"So when you made the cocoa," he said when I had finished, "you had no idea you had laced it with your pills."
"No!" I said. "All I knew was that I had a craving for cocoa, and as I was beginning to get it ready, Tara showed up. I mean, she just appeared, like she did in your apartment. Wait!" I suddenly remembered Tara's warnings. "Should we be talking about this here?"
"I think we're alright for now," he said, "but maybe we should find somewhere quieter. The weekend warriors are starting to invade." He was right. As I looked around, I began to see the parking-lot which served both Infusiastic and a small grocery store adjacent was beginning to fill with cars.
"They don't often come in here to sit," he said, or not that I've seen. "Of course, I haven't been here when it's been really busy either. Still, I know a place. Take that other croissant to go and we'll get out of here."
"Are you alright now?" He was still looking a little green around the gills, but he told me that he was doing fine.
"There's a great little spot around here with a duck pond," he said, and taking my remaining croissant and another cup each of our respective tea choices, we made our way out to my car.
"It's a ways out of town," he said, "but it won't take long."
The spot in question had evidently been a farmer's field at one time, but had been made into a play-park for kids. Indeed, this park was only part of a larger resort about ten kilometers out of town called Clover Meadows. As we turned in, I saw several double-wide house-trailors ranged neatly along little internal streets, and sure enough, there was the duck pond with actual ducks swimming in it. I parked the car and Owen took me to a little gazebo near the pond, and we sat for a while, watching the ducks cavort and splash.
"I had no idea this was here," I said. "What a nice spot!"
"I do some work for the managers here," he said. "They know me and won't think we're trespassing."
"This gazebo looks old," I said, admiring the stone pillars and the carving on the stone bench on which we were sitting.
"It was part of the original farm," he said. "It's supposed to resemble a Greecian shrine or something."
"Well, it reminds me of a place my friend Emily and I might have liked. We were always finding great places to go that were off the beaten track."
"How did she die?" I had heard the question many times before, and always, it had provoked a sense of anger and resentment in me, but when he asked it now, I felt no such thing.
"The doctors never found a cause," I said. "She was just at home making lunch for some friends, and then she died. She had invited me to go, but I had declined, having a lot of work on, and it wasn't till her mother called me later that night that I found out that she had died."
"You were close then?"
"Like sisters. We met in elementary school, and I don't have any sisters. She herself was an only child, but she wasn't spoiled. She was the kind of person who simply made family wherever she went, I guess. I wish you could have known her." In truth, I was wishing she could have met him, because as we sat there looking out at the ducks in the mirky and humid light, I thought that she would have been able to assess him better than I was doing. She had always been the one of whom I had asked permission to date someone new.
"So," I would say after she had met my latest attraction, "does he pass the Emily test?"
Owen suddenly took my hand in his work-roughened one and held it tightly.
"It's never easy to lose someone," he said after a long silence. "You just keep wishing that things would be different, all the time knowing that they can't be."
"Have you lost someone then?" I didn't mean to pry, but his words had struck a deep chord of sympathy in me.
"My wife Catherine," he said. "She was killed by a drunk driver three years ago."
"Oh! I'm so sorry," I found myself saying. I hated that phrase when it was said to me, but it was all I could think of to say in the moment. He took it in his stride.
"She was great! I still miss her, but I've largely accepted it now. Still, there are days."
"So what do you think about Tara and what happened to me?" I felt the need to change the subject at all costs, as I could see tears forming in his lovely eyes.
"I don't know what to think," he said, "but I do think you're idea of going to the library is a good one. I could come with you if you like. sometimes two heads are better than one."
"That would be great," I said. "I think I'll go after the weekend."
"Sounds good to me," he said. "Just let me know when, and I'll be there."
"You know," I said, "you really should eat something."
"Later," he said. "I've got some of my patented potato and leak soup at home. Would you care to join me for dinner?"
"Sure," I said. "I'll get a french stick and a bottle of something."
"I'm afraid you'll be the only one drinking it," he said, "but feel free." Then, without any pretentions, he took out a little wooden pipe in the shape of a dragon and began filling it from a pouch. It was pot, and though I didn't share an affinity for it, I found it soothing to watch the smoke drifting up and mingling with the heat-haze in the sky.
"Have you ever tried it?" He didn't talk like the pot-smoking teenagers did in the movies, all choked and constricted. AS I watched him, I knew he had the look of a seasoned user of the stuff.
"I've tried it a few times," I said, "but I never took to it."
"There was a time when I took to it far too well," he said, "but now it's mostly medicinal."
"Medicinal? Are you okay?"
"I'm managing for now," he said, "but I have Cancer, and the chemo isn't doing what the docs would like it to be doing. The pot just keeps me from tossing my cookies and does a little bit to manage the pain. So far, I've avoided Oxies and the like, but they're saying it's only a matter of time."
"My God Owen! That's shitty! She--she hinted at something like this."
"Who? Tara?"
"Well, yes," I said, suddenly unsure of how to go on. "She said that it wasn't her secret to tell, but that you might tell me something like this."
"I've never told her about it," he said, "but I suppose one doesn't have to tell someone like her too many things."
"Do you still want me to come over later?" I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
"Of course," he said, "and bring your bottle. Don't let my delicate constitution stop you."
"Somehow," I said, taking one last look at the ducks as we got ready to go, "I wouldn't call anything about you delicate, Owen Mills."
By the time I dropped Owen off at his place, the sky had turned a decidedly ominous shade of grey-green with weird flecks of yellow in it, and as I drove home, my phone shrieked into sudden life, displaying a tornado warning for the area. The rain had started by the time I parked the car, and it was not coming down in showers, but in a sheet. Running in quickly, I checked that the power was still working and sat down with a book to wait out what I knew would be a short but intense storm. Hopefully, I thought, it would take the humidity out of the air, and sure enough, twenty minutes later, the rain stopped and the thermometer on the wall outside the kitchen window seemed to have dropped about fifteen degrees. Now that the storm was over, I felt I needed a power nap. So, stretching out on the living room sofa and setting my phone's alarm to wake me in an hour, I Closed my eyes, only to be jolted awake by another attack of sleep paralysis. Even in my panicked state, I remembered that I had not told Owen about this. Indeed, finding the pills and the cocoa had all-but driven it from my mind, but here it was back with a vengeance.
"Oh God," I tried to say. "Oh Tara! Oh Daddy!" NOthing would come, however. It was like I was being held under water, or like I had had the wind knocked out of me by a sudden shock. I knew that I lay on the couch, but I was powerless to move or to do anything to break the spell of panic and terror that was assailing me. All around me I heard those strange inhuman voices, and out of the corners of my eyes, I saw shadowy people coming and going. They didn't seem to be menicing me, but they were just there. Finally, exerting all my effort, I managed to bend my right pinky, and that seemed to do it. I was now fully awake and my phone was binging away to itself, telling me that it was time to get up. Had I really been asleep for an hour? I did not feel refreshed in the least, but I knew that there wasn't much time before either the bakery I wanted or the liquor store would be closed. So, trying very hard to put this latest sleep-related incident out of my head, I changed my clothes and went out.
I arrived early at Owen's apartment, but he didn't mind. Again, the tea shop was closed and there was no sign of Tara. The weather was pleasantly cool and the sky, though not completely clear, had lost its strange cast.
"That was some storm," I said. Then I looked around from where we stood on the fire escape and realized that not a drop of rain had fallen around here. I had clearly driven into the storm as Ihad got closer to home.
"It must have been one of those microbursts or something," he said. "I knew somethign had happened to take the humidity out of the air, but there was nothing to speak of around here. Was there any damage to your place?"
"No," I said, "though a couple of trees lost some branches to the lake."
"At least nothing worse happened," he said, "and at least it's now cool enough for my potato and leak soup to really be enjoyable. It's best on fall days, of course, but I like it any time. More importantly, my stomach likes it, and its likes and dislikes dictate my own these days."
"I understand," I said, all the while knowing that I did not understand in the least, and we went inside.
Over dinner, in wich I partook of my purchased Chardonnay and Owen drank water, I told him about the two incidents of sleep paralysis. He seemed really interested, and as it turned out, it was something he knew about.
"Catherine had incidents like that from time to time," he said. "So I did some research about it. They call it The Hag, or they did a long time ago. I don't think there's actually anything malevolent in it though. It's just the brain and the body mixing up their signals. AT least, that seems to be the most popular hypothesis about it from what I've gathered."
"Have you ever had it?"
"No," he said, "I can't say that I have, though I did have a really weird dream when I was on morpheine after my last surgery to take out the main tumor in my abdomin. I dreamed I was in a town full of clowns, and I hate clowns. I always have. When these ones smiled, it was like they had too many teeth."
"Like something out of Stephen King," I said, polishing off my second bowl of soup with gusto.
"Exactly, only there were hundreds of them! Clown Grammas, clown babies, even clown dogs and cats! It was really unnerving, and it wouldn't just stop. I had to wait till the drug wore off, and then they'd just come and give me another dose, and I'd be right back there in Bozo City! The doctors told me later that it takes people like that sometimes, but I was glad when I didn't need that particular drug anymore."
"I bet! Did Catherine ever find a way to stop her sleep paralysis?"
"I think she achieved her greatest successes by just letting it wash over her without reacting to it, but it was hard. All she wanted to do was panic."
"Yeah," I said. "When I have it, it reminds me of this time when a girl at summer camp suddenly decided that I was going to give her a piggy-back ride without telling me first."
"What was so bad about that?"
"We were in a twelve-foot deep pool at the time," I said, smiling ruefully. "She jumped on me and I had no time to keep myself afloat. So there I was, submerged under the water and unable to force my way back to the surface, and even though I'm sure it was only for about five seconds, it feld like hours. I was sure I was going to die, but then one of our counsellors saw what was happening and told her to get off me. She meant no harm by it, but it was scary all the same. Trying to get out of sleep paralysis is like trying to get free of the water. It's like you're drowning!" I shuddered as I said that last word. I'd always hated the thought of drowning. Although I was by no means a timid swimmer, the thought of surrendering to the water always frightened me. But there were some times when I felt that it would be somehow pleasant to just stop struggling, just stop kicking and flailing with my arms and just let myself sink. How could something be fearful and seductive at the same time? My thoughts were broken by an unexpected question from Owen.
"Do you like your family's house?"
"Do I like it?" I pondered before answering. "In many ways, yes, but well, I really don't know. I mean, Em and I have had some great times there, but there is something about it. It's like a worm-eaten apple I think. It looks fine on the outside, but at the scentre, there's nothing but rot." And I told him about the letters I had found to my Dad from the mysterious Alice.
"I can see why that would upset you," he said. "Your Dad is still your Dad, and knowing that he seems to have cheated on your mother in her own family's house seems monstrous to you."
"Doesn't it seem so to you?"
"Of course," he said, "but I suppose I prefer to reserve judgment as I barely know you and do not know your family at all."
"I suppose that's fair," I said, finishing my second glass of wine and closing the bottle.
"I brought butter tarts," I said. "Can you eat those?"
"I can certainly try," he said. "Who could resista butter tart from the Elm Lake Bakery?"
"Do you think Tara would mind?"
"She's pretty live-and-let-liv about peoples' food choices as a rule," he said, taking a bite of his. Unfortunately, all his valiant talk notwithstanding, he suddenly ran for the bathroom and it was all too evident just what was happening to him in there. I wasn't sure if I should leave, but after ten minutes, he emerged, his face wet and his breathing laboured.
"Sorry," he said, flopping down in his easy chair by the window. "I just can't always tell what will set me off." It was only now that I understood his look earlier in the day.
"I'm sorry I joked with you earlier," I said. "I'll go if you want."
"No," he said. "Not yet. Let me just catch my breath first. Then I'll walk you out," but scarcely a minute later, he had nodded off into what seemed to me to be a very heavy sleep. A part of me wanted to wake him and make him go to his bed, but he clearly spent a lot of time in this chair. So, leaving him to it, I let myself out, but there was no way of locking the door. Just as I was heading down the fire escape, however, I saw Tara coming around the corner of the building.
"I just had dinner with Owen," I blurted as we met. "He had a bad time. He's sleeping, so I left him but now I can't lock the door."
"I'm here," she said. "Don't worry." I wanted to say more to her. I wanted to tell her about the sleep paralysis and the freak storm, but seeing the hard look of resolve just behind her usual smile, I let it go and said goodnight. It had cost her to come here now, I thought. I didn't want to add to her burden. So, I got into my car, leaving Owen to his sleep and Tara to what I felt sure was some sort of guardianship, and headed back to my own place. Tonight, I had absolutely zero desire for cocoa. That, at least, was a mercy.
By the time I got up the next morning, the weekend hordes were firmly in possession of the lake. Boats zoomed back and forth and kids screamed up and down the shore. The day was a fine one, blue and warm even at 9:00 in the morning, and I decided that it was too nice a day to be cooped up among boxes and old furniture. Accordingly, I got the canoe out and checked it for leeks. It had been well-tended over the years, made by a friend of my grandparents whom we all called Uncle Jackie, and I had always been pretty good at soloing, so I felt no fear. If the lake had been choppier than it was, perhaps I would have been less eager to try it, but I trusted this canoe and as I knelt in the middle having pushed it into deeper water, I felt really happy.
The breeze was gentle on my face as I paddled, doing my best to keep to the quieter parts of the lake, though every now and again, some speed-jocky would purposely aim his wake at me to see whether I might capsize. I didn't though, and by the time I had been paddling for three hours, I was well and truly spent. It was then that I realized that I had been concentrating so hard on paddling that I had not noticed the sudden deep silence around me. It was there though, or rather the sounds of the weekend lake were now completely absent. There was nothing but that oppressive sense of the void that I had felt the other day in the row-boat, but as I listened and felt, I knew that the lake sounds and activities were still going on somewhere. It was only me that was caught in this sudden absence of light and life.
I found myself uncertain of which way to go, for even the sun was now dim, and a wind was beginning to rise. Something really strange was happening and I didn't know how to stop it. The canoe began to rock and buck in the buffeting wind, and it was with a mounting sense of terror that I felt it begin to spin. Around and around she goes, I thought incoherently. Where she stops, nobody knows. And then, all at once, that sentiment seemed apt, because whatever was going on here, I knew it had nothing to do with nature as I knew it.
"Help," I screamed, but it was only in my mind, for I found that I was bound still while the canoe spun faster and faster, and I wondered when it was going to be sucked up into this strange whirlwind. "What do I do? Why is this happening?" All my questioning was in vain, of course, because I could not speak aloud. Then another voice seemed to drill into my mind.
"Do you seek salvation, mortal? Surrender, and you will have it!" The voice was cold and pitiless, without caring or compassion, and it was this as well as the word 'surrender' that made me calm my breathing and think.
"Take up the fight," Tara had said. "Do not surrender." She had bidden me to fight, though I scarcely knew the enemy. Here at last, I felt sure, I was meeting it, really meeting it now, but despite all it was trying to do to me, something was forbidding it entry into my mind. Perhaps if I calmed myself enough, I could see through the veil it had thrown over me. Perhaps fighting only made it harder, like panicking when someone slipped a sheet over your head for a joke when you were a kid. Panicking was a sure way to end up on the floor in a tangle of linen, arms and legs, while if you were calm, you could feel your way out of the clinging fabric.
"Tara," I thought. "Tara would be calm right now. I can do it too. Order is real. Order is true." Then, from my teenaged flirtations with classic science-fiction came: "Fear is the mind-killer!" In this case, I felt certain that fear really was the mind-killer. So, taking up the paddle from where I had laid it, I put it into the water, and with that, I realized that I was not spinning at all. It had all been a trick, an illusion to make me afraid. As soon as I felt the movement of the water against the paddle's blade, everything was alright again. The sounds, the breeze, the sun, everything was as it should be, and the canoe itself was drifting placidly upon the calm lake. Looking around just then, I realized that I had made it to the spot in the lake which roughly corresponded to where Tara's house and island stood in my dreams. It was only when I began to paddle for home that the thought came stealing:
"Was this her doing?" I pushed it away as I stroked steadily onward, but it would not entirely be gone and kept returning again and again to niggle at me, as annoying as a restless fly buzzing around your ear.
"Whatever it was," I said to myself as I stowed the canoe and climbed the steps to the top of the point, "it wasn't real. It was some sort of trick of my mind or something. That's all." But I knew that this wasn't true. It had, in fact, felt just like I was in the grip of sleep paralysis, though I had known myself to be wide awake and kneeling upright in a canoe.
"Could this be like what Emily Had?" The thought seemed to come from outside myself, but it had the ring of clarity. During the last few years of her life, Emily had suffered from seizures. They were mental rather than muscular, and when she had them, she seemed to be stuck in a loop until they passed. Was that what had just happened to me? I fervently hoped not, but I decided to be as vigilant as I could until I could determine whether the canoe incident had only been a one-time thing or not.
When I got back inside, I was surprised to find a woman in my kitchen.
"Excuse me?" I was angry. "How did you get in here?"
"I'm sorry," she said, all sweetness and light, but Tom gave me a key and said I could use the place whenever I wanted.
"Oh," I said. "Tom did, did Tom? Well, I'm sorry, but there's some mistake. You see, Tom is not the owner of this house, and he therefore had no right to give you a key." It was only then that I looked at her face. She seemed to be about my Dad's age, but she looked younger around the eyes.
"Have you been here before with this key, Miss--Miss..." I trailed off lamely, fighting back the absurd tears which always come to me when I'm trying to be indignant.
"Alice Carson," she said. "Are you by any chance Christina? Tom's told me all about you!"
"Well," I said, not caring a jot for this woman's sensibilities, "he's told me precious little about you!"
"I just wanted to get away for a while," she said. "I didn't know anyone would be here. I'll go."
"Yeah," I said. "I think you'd better do that. Why isn't Dad with you?"
"Oh well," she said, "we're not seeing each other anymore," and incredibly, she began to cry. "I just thought," she said, sniffing and dabbing her eyes with a mascara-loaded handkerchief, "that I'd take a last look around the place before I returned his key."
"Well, you've looked. Now you can leave."
"I'm going," she said. "I'm going. Sorry again to have troubled you, Christina." I didn't feel one pang of remorse as I watched her sniffing and gulping her way to her car and driving off. I remember picturing her pulling over somewhere to replace her smudged false face, and then I decided to call my father.
The conversation was brief and one-sided, as I only got Dad's voicemail. However, I asked him to call me whenever he got the chance, and for the umpteenth time since he and Mom had split up, I left my cell phone number, I had a sudden urge to tell Owen about the events of this day, but then I remembered how badly he had felt the night before and wasn't sure whether I should bother him. Still, I figured a text couldn't hurt, so I sent a simple 'how are you?' Message to him and set about fixing myself some lunch. His response, when it came, was brief but encouraging. 'I'm alright. Tara wondered if you'd like to join us here tonight after the shop closes.' I wrote back that I definitely would, as I had lots to tell them, and took myself out to the deck for some afternoon reading. When the sun had become too hot for me to stand, I went back in, and despite the incident that had happened yesterday, I lay down for another power nap. This time, nothing untoward happened, but when I woke up, I realized I desperately needed a shower as I was covered with sweat.
Showered and changed, the sun now lying level across my line of sight, I got into the car and drove into town. Elm Lake, like most cottage towns, rolls up its sidewalks about 7:00 PM, so when I got to the tea shop, there were no other cars in sight. The sign had been turned to 'closed,' but when I tried the door, the bell tinkled and I was able to enter.
"Good," said Owen, sounding amazingly relieved to see me. "Now we can lock this place up and talk properly."
"What?"
"There's a lot to tell you," he said, flicking the bolt and ushering me to his usual table in the corner. Tara sat there, looking pale and drawn, but still greeting me with a wan smile.
"What's wrong?"
"She was helping me," said Owen. "I was having a bad time and she helped me. I don't pretend to understand it. I only know that it worked and that it cost her something dear to do it."
"I will be alright," Tara herself said, and her voice, despite her appearance, was clear and strong as it had been a few days before when I had first met her. "Sit down, Christina. I think you have something to tell us, and we have some things to tel you"
"Wait," said Owen. "I'll turn off the lights and get some candles. Then no one will know we're here."
"What is this? Who are we hiding from?"
"Anyone and everyone in this town," said Tara. "They are all open to the influence of the dark ones, and therefore any of them could be their eyes here, or their hands. Now, tell me about what happened today in your canoe."
"How did you know about that?"
"I knew. I also knew you did very well to escape, but I want you to tell me what exactly happened." So I did, trying very hard not to leave anything out, and when I was finished, she seemed satisfied but made no comment. Owen, on the other hand, seemed intrigued.
"So they can create illusions? Or was she really pulled into--into another place?"
"For one who has once crossed the boundary willingly," Tara said, almost as if she were repeating a lesson learned long ago, "it is more difficult for anyone to pull them across without their consent. No, in this case, it was an illusion."
"But how did you know that it wasn't real?" He looked at me with an admiring gaze.
"I only really knew it when I stuck the paddle into the water,"I said, "but there was something about it that just didn't seem real. I think that there are things that are real and things that could not possibly be real."
"What you sensed," said Tara, "was a departure from the great pattern. You have an innate sense of that pattern, whether you know it or not. You will need that solidity in the time ahead."
"Why? What's going to happen?"
"The balance needs to be restored between our worlds. If it is not, the imbalances will only increase and precious things will be lost, perhaps forever."
"But what can we do?"
"A passage has been reopened between our worlds, and it must be sealed again. Do you know why the point on which your family's house stands is called Bard's Point?"
"I never knew it was called such a strange name until the other day," I said.
"It is called so because of what your ancestor did, your grandfather's mother. She sang me into your world during another time of imbalance, and now, though we worked very hard then to set things right, another imbalance was created when your family stopped coming here. Rather, its creation was begun then."
"We think," said Owen, "that your friend Emily sensed this growing imbalance. Something wasn't right here, and so she began to do research into things."
"Yeah," I said, suddenly becoming angry, "and now she's dead. So how does that help us?"
"That death should not have happened," said Tara. "She had been wandering on the border between our worlds for some years, or that is what I have come to believe. I should have done more to set her firmly on her feet in this world, but by the time I realized why she had been able to contact me, it was too late."
"Contact you? She contacted you?" Till then, I had pictured her just happening to meet with Tara here in town when she was here without me last fall. Now though, Tara seemed to be saying something quite different.
"Yes," she said now. "It was Emily who brought me fully into this world. She gave me some of her humanity."
"Wait!" I said, jumping to my feet. "Gave you her humanity?"
"The words were ill-chosen," said Tara, her tone never varying from its usual calm. "She helped me to become integrated into this world in a way that would have been very difficult for me otherwise. She shared herself with me, letting me feel her heart beating, so that I could catch the rhythms of your existence and could match them, at least for periods of time. I must return to my world every so often to rest, but thanks to your friend, I was able to establish a foothold here as well. However, this can only last as long as there is an imbalance between our worlds. When it is set right, I must return to my world and remain there. I've told you this before."
"I know," I said, resuming my seat and beginning to calm down again. "But none of this makes any sense!"
"If you want anything in this life to make any real sense," said Owen, "you're going to be waiting a long time. Now, what about the sleep paralysis?"
"I have seen it myself," said Tara. "It is when you are being pulled by the dark ones into our world. So far, they have not succeeded, but it is certain that they will keep trying. They do not want the balance to be restored, and they know that you are one who could restore it. You are an O'Hara."
"But I don't even know what that means!"
"You will understand in time," she said. "You will understand. For now, all we can do is keep vigilant and continue to learn all we can."
"You helped me," I said suddenly. "You helped me that night, stopped me from doing something harmful to myself."
"I did my best to divert you from following the dark influence which had touched you earlier that day. I am glad that my plan worked, but it may not work again. You must be vigilant, my lass!"
"I want to help you," said Owen. "I hope that I can."
"You already have helped me," I said, "by being a friend. I've missed having a friend these past months."
"This idea of friendship seems a cold and distant thing to me," said Tara, clearly musing. "Yet I know it is something hard-won for you."
"Why do you say that it seems cold and distant?" I was puzzled.
"Because when two of my kind begin to know one another, we do not exchange facts or express interests that we might have in common. There is a joining of souls, a mingling of natures without the persons being lost. We are always two, but we are also one."
"Is that what happened between you and Emily?"
"As far as is possible between a mortal and one of the undying, yes," said Tara, a deep sadness coming into her voice and look. "When she left you, you were broken. That much I can see, but for me, she is still here, still with me. I wish you could understand."
"Maybe I can," I said. "Can we do what you said? Can we merge?"
"I will only do that for you in the greatest of need," she said, "for it costs even more than what I did for Owen last night. That is a mere balancing of influences in the body. This is a dance of soul with soul, and I will not do it unless it is necessary."
"I think I understand," I said. "I just miss her teribly."
"You will see her again," Tara said with such a note of certainty in her voice that I found no words to argue the point.
"Emily always said so," was all my response. She had been a christian, and despite not agreeing intellectually with her chosen beliefs, I loved her for them all the same. They had simply been a part of the person I loved. Without her Christianity, Emily would simply not have been Emily. Still, I had never believed in life after death, and even now, in the presence of a definitely unearthly being, I didn't know what to believe.
"Maybe belief isn't the point," I said, only realizing by Owen's odd expression that I had spoken my thought aloud.
"What?"
"Nothing," I said, "just thinking I guess."
"No," he said. "This is interesting. Finish your thought."
"Maybe," I said, trying hard to capture what I had been thinking just a moment before, "maybe belief in something really isn't the point. I mean, I used to think that faith was clinging to a belief despite everything around you telling you otherwise. But what if faith means clinging to something you once knew, even though the knowing is gone, even when the darkness threatens? I mean, Emily--Emily never lost her belief in God, but she had a very difficult life, especially in the last few years. How could she have done that? Either she was simply trapped in a delusion, or she had once seen something or known something true, real I mean. Maybe for her to have lost her faith in God would have been like me disbelieving in my mother."
"Well," said Owen, "perhaps you're right."
"When she said things like that to me," I found myself continuing, tears coming as I spoke, "I thought she sounded cruel or harsh. I thought she was leaving me outside of her world by saying that she didn't just believe in God, she knew He was there. But all she was trying to do was to describe for me what it was like. God! I miss her so much!"
"I think you have learned something wonderful here tonight," said Tara. "Do not forget it. No matter what comes after, do not let go of what you have learned about your friend and about yourself."
"I'll try not to," I said, "but now, I think it's time I went home and got some sleep."
"I will be with you tonight," said Tara. "You may see me or you may not, but I'll stay with you till the morning."
"Thanks," I said. "I could use the company," and Owen walked me to the door.
I remember that whole night very clearly, and most of all, I remember the things I didn't say. I know now that if I had only remembered to mention the sudden arrival of Alice Carson, what came later might have been prevented. At the time, however, I thought nothing about it, but simply drove home to the Cabin, made the house secure against intruders, and eventually climbed gratefully into bed. Once or twice, I thought I heard the distant sound of a harp, but the night passed without dreams of any kind. Instead, I slept soundly in the arms of peace.
The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully. I tried a couple more times to get in touch with Dad, even going so far as to enlist Oliver's help, but even Daddy's golden boy had no luck. Alice Carson troubled me, but she didn't seem to be a part of what was going on with Tara and the town. She had looked normal enough I thought, just a recently-retired businesswoman perhaps who had once had a thing with my Dad, and it would have been just like him to give her permission to use The Cabin even though it wasn't his to give. I had to find out what he knew about her. I had never heard of her until I had found those letters, and I thought that if she was someone he had broken up with but had forgotten to get his key from, he should know about it, whatever my feelings on the subject might be. Still, by the time the last few fireworks had burst over the lake on Canada Day night, I had heard nothing from or about him or Alice Carson.
The next day, July 2, Owen and I made the trip to the Elm Lake public library to see Tegan Jones. She was indeed still working there, and she greeted me warmly as the best assistant she had ever trained.
"Looking for some summer reading then?" Tegan was Welsh. How she had ended up here as head librarian in such a small town was anybody's guess, but she was good at her job and everyone liked her.
"Well," I said, trying to keep the noise down as per the universal rule, "I think my friend Emily Dylan was in here last summer doing some kind of historical research into the town. I have reason to believe that she wanted me to know about it, but--uh--she passed away last September, and I was wondering what you knew about it."
"I do remember her being in here quite a lot when you were both here last year," said Tegan. "She looked at some of our historical books, it's true. They are for reference only of course, but I know she made copies from them. We only have three of them. It wouldn't take long for you to at least glance at them. Jocelyn, keep shelving those books and I'll be back to check on you in a bit."
"Right, Miss Jones." Tegan was never Tegan to her assistants. I still felt in awe of her no-nonsense demeanour.
"Come with me then, Miss Ross, and you too Mr. Mills. We can't have you loitering about." Owen smiled as he followed me and Tegan led us to the reference room. There, a microfilm reader stood on a desk in one corner evidently gathering dust, and a slightly less-dust-caked computer hulked against the far wall. The reference section was one stack of shelves. There was an ancient Encyclopedia Britanica which I felt sure must have been painstakingly copied by monks sometime in the Dark Ages, along with a few different dictionaries and the aforementioned books on local history. There was Elm Lake, Its founding and Afterward by the Reverend James Matthews, A History of Elm Lake and Its People by John Thomkins, and another small book called Tales of Elm Lake Township by Mrs. Sarah Pru.
"While I wouldn't call this book," Tegan Jones said, taking the Tales from my hand, " a well-researched volume, it was this which appeared to interest Miss Dylan the most."
"It would have," I said. "This kind of thing was right up her street. She was a Folk singer, you know."
"Well, and with a last name like Dylan, how could she not be?" Her soft Welsh accent grew thicker when she said that, so I was left in no doubt that she was not referring to Bob Dylan, but perhaps to Dylan Thomas or simply the fact that Dylan was a fine Welsh name.
"I hope you find what you're looking for," the librarian said, and left us to it, presumably to supervise the young Jocelyn some more.
It didn't take me long to find what I thought Emily had found in The Tales of Elm Lake Township. It was about how Bard's Point had gotten its name, and at the first few words, my blood suddenly went cold.
"It was Meghan Carson O'Hara who was the bard of Bard's Point," I read aloud, and then almost dropped the book, my hand was shaking so much. "Owen! I forgot to tell you something the other night!" And in a tumble of words, I told him about Alice Carson and the letters and her sudden appearance on Saturday.
"But surely there must be a lot of people named Carson in the world," he said.
"I know," I said. "Maybe you're right, but I can't believe I forgot about it till now! I mean, I actually didn't forget about it, but I didn't connect it with this business until now."
"There's nothing that says that it is connected," he said. "Now keep reading."
The story went on to describe how Meghan used to play her harp while sitting on a rock at the very edge of the point, and one time, she stayed there too long during a bad storm, and she fell down into the lacke and hit her head on a rock and was killed.
"Could that be true?"
"Anything's possible," said Owen.
"It says that people sometimes still hear the sound of her harp, and that once, a small fishing boat was fogged in and couldn't find the shore, and they heard Meghan's harp and were saved."
"Tara said that Meghan had summoned her during a dark time," said Owen. "What if the storm was part of that dark time, and what if her act of reaching out to the fair-folk was what really killed her? Tara could have felt that she owed your family a debt."
"There's something more here I think," I said. "I'm sure Tara will tell us in her own good time. What about the other books?"
"They both say that no one knows how Bard's Point got its name," said Owen, turning pages rapidly, "but there are some pictures of The Cabin as it looked when your grandfather first built it." They were indistinct etchings, but they showed clearly how much of the point was still given over to trees at that time. The whole place seemed wilder somehow, and as I looked, I found that I could imagine fairy rings and hollow hills existing there quite easily.
"The Carsons were one of the first settler families to clear land in this area," Owen said. "Both these books confirm that."
"So was Meghan an Elm Lake girl then?"
"It would seem so. She must have married away though, because your people aren't from here, are they?"
"No," i said. "Grampa just wanted to build his summer place here. He liked fishing and needed a place to sleep. It was only later that the family added the rest of the house and it became our family cottage."
"The Carsons and the Aldersons were settler families," Owen said, "along with the Brandices and the Johnsons."
"Only four families?"
"No, there were more, but I think those are the only four left, or well, three. We don't really know about Alice Carson after all." I secretly thought we did know about her, but I kept that to myself.
"Well," I said, "what if the O'Haras stumbled into the middle of something--something weird--that the Carsons et al were doing? What if Meghan told Joe about the town and he helped her to try and stop--stop whatever was going on here?"
"We need more proof I think," said Owen. "These histories are pretty dry going, but we can use them to fill in a timeline, I guess." So, for the next three hours, we combed all three of the books looking for dates and names, and what we found was that in 1855, the town was settled by families like The Carsons, The Aldersons and such. They made their money primarily from fishing but also from farming. Then, in 1868, the fish stopped jumping and the cotton (substitute corn and potatoes for cotton) was no longer high. There were five really bad years, but by 1873, all was well again. In fact, all was so well that the town soon doubled in population. The strange thing was that nothing natural--no weather event or insect infestation or anything--could account for the leen years, and similarly, nothing could account for the sudden return of fecundity.
"There is a tale here," i said, "from around that time. It seems that some folks around the town thought that the Carsons were a little touched, and when the crops failed, their diagnosis changed from 'a little touched' to 'a little strange,' and then to 'witches.'"
"Don't tell me they burned someone alive!"
"No, it didn't come to that," I said, "but a few of the townsfolk wanted to do it. I don't know where MRS. Sarah Pru got her information, but she claims that one of the Carsons, Mitchell by name, left the town under threat of death. He was only sixteen, and he didn't get very far. He died of exposure less than ten miles from food and fire."
"Is he a ghost now too?"
"Well, that's the sort of book this is," I said, feeling absurd for coming to the defense of the redoubtable Sarah Pru. "But still, leaving that stuff aside, things like this can happen in these little places, right?"
"Forget little places," he said. "Remember Germany in the 1930s?"
"Then you agree with me," I said.
"Sure," he said, "about the drumming out of town, not about the ghostly stuff."
"So," I said, referring to the sheet with our improvised timeline on it, "in 1873, things got better and basically stayed that way. Right?"
"Right," he said. "Your grandfather built The Cabin in the the late 40s. Right?"
"Right. He had lied about his age to enlist in the war, and by the time he'd come back, he was only 20. I guess his Mom might have been my age at the time, if she had married young."
"True," he said. "That fits."
"Fits what?"
"Oh, just something I'm thinking about," he said.
"My Mom never knew her grandmother," I said. "Her grandfather didn't seem to be around either when she was growing up. Oh, it's all such a jumble!"
"I think it'll come clear in the end," he said, "but I'm pooped. Want to get out of here?"
"I think we have what we came for," I said, taking the timeline sheet along with several copied sections of the books with me.
"Thanks Tegan," i said as we walked by the circulation desk.
"Any time, Cariad," she said. "Come back again!"
Tara presided over her kingdom of leaf and pastry when we arrived. It was relatively empty, and looking at the clock on the wall, I saw why. We'd been in the library till well after lunch.
"We've been doing some digging," Owen said as he paid for our meals.
"Good for you," she said, handing him his change. "Did you find anything interesting?"
"Quite a treasure, actually," he said, and we went to what was fast becoming our usual table to wait for the food.
"I meant to ask before," i said when we were seated. "How are you doing today?"
"This is one of my good days," he said. "I never know how long they'll last, so I try to make the most of them when they come. If I'm feeling well tomorrow, I might come to your dock again to paint."
"What this time?"
"Just the lake at dawn I think," he said.
"Well, it sounds good to me," I said. "All I'm doing is going through more of my parents' and grandparents' things, and hoping for a call from my Dad about Alice Carson." And just then, faster than you could say 'speak of the devil and he shall appear,' the bell over the door tinkled and in walked the lady herself. She must have startled Tara, for I heard a china cup smash on the tiled floor of the kitchen.
The shop was small and the classical music drifting from the radio was by no means loud, so I was able to catch much of her conversation at the counter.
"I'm sorry," she said now. "Did I frighten you? I was just looking for a good cup of Rosie Lee." It was odd hearing the cockney rhyming slang coming out of her very Canadian mouth.
"I'll get it for you," said Tara, but her words were clipped and hard. Something was definitely amiss.
"I'll take it to go, I think," said Alice. "Something regular. English Breakfast or something?"
"I have just the thing," said Tara, and before long, she had emerged again and I could hear the beeping of the ash register and Alice paid and took her drink.
"Thanks very much," she said. "I'm sure I'll see you again."
"Yes," said Tara, her voice now faltering ever so slightly.
"That wasn't good," I said to Owen.
"No," he said. "I could see what was going on, and that definitely was not good!"
"Be careful," Tara said as she brought our food. She had composed herself, but only just, I thought. "Be careful, both of you! It's beginning."
"What's beginning?"
"The thing that always restores the balance. That woman who was just here is not merely human. She has given herself voluntarily to the dark ones. She must represent them as I must represent my people, and you, I'm afraid, are both caught in the middle. If it were possible, I would bid you both leave now, but I know that your being here is part of the great pattern of things, and I must not do anything to change that."
"But what if we did decide to leave?" I was on edge now and hardly knew what I was saying. "What if we did just get into my car and go? What would happen then?"
"She'd be left all alone," was Owen's swift repost. "We can't do that to her, at least I can't!"
"I know," I said. "Neither can I, of course. I just--I'm scared. That woman scares me. Did you know that she has been in The Cabin?"
"When?" Tara's eyes suddenly blazed green fire. "When was this? Why didn't you tell me?"
"It was Saturday. She said she had a key from my father, and I found letters from her to him in a box of old papers the day before. I never clued in about her until we were doing our research in the library today. Why? What's the matter? I don't think she did anything." I heard the defensive tone creeping into my voice and tried to still it. "I mean, I guess she could have done something while I was--well--distracted out in the canoe."
"You were distracted for a reason," said Tara, herself calming down again as well. "You were not meant to interrupt her, but you were able to break their influence on you."
"But what could she have wanted there? Do you think she really knows my Dad?"
"The only way she could properly cross the threshold under normal circumstances would be if she were invited in. So yes, I think she does know your father and I think his inviting her in was when things started to go awry. At least we now know the one we seek, but she will have others working with her. They will try to stop us doing what must be done."
"And what is it that must be done? I found out today that my ancestor, the Bard of Bard's point, may have been killed by falling into the lake from the headland during a bad storm. What do you say to that?"
"I say that your information is correct. She returned here years after she had left to be married, and the dark ones knew she had come back. She left this place not long after she had summoned me, and knowing that they could not get to me, the dark ones took their revenge on her when she returned. She had known that this would happen, but she wanted to make it safe for her son to have his special place here. She and I met on that point for the last time just as your grandfather was laying the last stone of the foundation of your cabin. I told her that I would watch over the O'Haras until the balance was fully restored again. She had tried to do this herself, but the town was too strong for her, and would have sent her off to die in the wilderness if she had not left of her own accord."
"But you said that the trouble began when Grampa Joe built The Cabin. Something about his little piece of Ireland attracting your kind."
"Yes," she said, "but the truth is that the dark ones had already been here. They had bargained with the townsfolk to save their livelihoods of field and water, and they demanded payment. Meghan was to become their latest victim, one whose will would be sacrificed to theirs, but she avoided that fate by reaching out to me. I protected her when she was young, and she managed to leave this place. I told her never to return, but when it was clear that her son had been drawn here, I knew that your family was a part of the pattern, and I also knew that she would have to be killed by the dark ones."
"Wait!" Something had suddenly clicked into place for me. "Was Emily like Megan? YOu said she was, right? Did the dark ones want her next?"
"No, child," said Tara. "They were only beginning to know just who Emily was. Her death was hastened by her interactions with me, I'm afraid."
"Did she know that that would happen?"
"She did. I told her that she should not merge with me, not even for a minute. She was determined to help you though, and she knew you needed an ally. She also knew that she could no longer be that ally. She was very ill, Christina."
"I can't believe what I'm hearing! You mean that all these people died for you so that you could face down Alice Carson and restore this balance?"
"Your mind would see it like that perhaps, yes," said Tara, and she suddenly seemed to wilt before my eyes. "You do have free will in this, my lass. You may leave now and let come what may. But there will come a time when leaving is impossible, so you should decide now. Whatever you decide I will respect. You are the daughter's daughter's daughter of Meghan Carson O'Hara. I am your servant. Things will move quickly now, so make your choice." And without another word, she returned to her counter.
"Well," Owen said when she had left. "What do you make of all that?"
"I can't leave," I said. "I know i can't. Seeing what that woman was able to do to her, Owen! I can't let that happen!"
"I'm glad to hear you say that! You really frightened me before."
"Apart from anything else," I said, "I know that Emily has left something else for me to find. She wouldn't leave that tape and then leave nothing else. But what did Tara mean about her being very ill? She never told me about any illness, apart from the odd collection of symptoms she had begun having in the last few years. Those seizures were freaky."
"Freaky, Professor Ross?"
"I know," i said, "but it's the only word I can think of. She would just stop in the middle of whatever she was doing, and either she would get stuck on a word or else almost go rigid, not in terms of her muscles but just in terms of herself. She would sit perfectly still for thirty seconds or more. Then, it was like nothing had happened. If a word had been cut off in the middle, you'd hear the last part of the word and then the last part of the sentense she was saying before the seizure started."
"And no one really knew why she was having them?"
"Oh, there were lots of theories, but just like her death, the cause was always undetermined. And if she did hasten things by helping Tara even after Tara told her not to, then that would be just like Emily. She deserves whatever i can give to finish what she tried to start last year."
"Alright then," he said. "What's the plan?"
Of course I had no plan. I said as much to Owen that day in the tea shop, but he was not daunted.
"Maybe you can't plan for something like this," he said. "Maybe it's like Tara says. There's a pattern which will show itself a little at a time, and it's only our job not to mess with it."
"But how do we know if we are messing with it?"
"That's a question I can't answer," he said, "except to say that it's like a painting. Sometimes if you try to make it too perfect, you ruin its essential beauty. If you force something, it will never come right. Your job as an artist is to work with your medium, let it use you."
"Emily used to say the same thing about song-writing," i said. "I was never gifted with such an artistic way of seeing the world. I want things to fit neatly into boxes, and when they don't, I get frustrated and anxious."
"But wanting to find a pattern as you do," he said, "perhaps you're uniquely qualified to recognize how this one is supposed to play out."
"I only wish that were true," I said, "but I suppose we could try to find out where Alice Carson is staying. Couldn't we? I mean, she'd have to stay somewhere nearby, wouldn't she?"
"You'd think so," he said, "but I'm not at all sure she's completely within our world anymore. Still, I'll ask around."
"You can't just ask around," I said, "or they'll know why you're asking."
"They already know you're here," he said. "I told you that before. What harm can it do just to ask?"
"I hope she hasn't gone back to The Cabin," I said, suddenly fearful. "I have no way to keep her out."
"I don't think she'd try that again," he said, "but I do think she knows that you're the key to stopping her, whatever she's planning."
"She's planning to take out Tara," I said. "Didn't you see her after Alice left?"
"I guess I did," he said. "She's all that's standing in the gap, I guess, the gap that was never fully put right."
"Exactly," I said. "We have to stand by her and hold the line somehow! But all we can do is go about our normal lives until whatever happens happens!"
"It's very frustrating," he said.
"It's bloody maddening is what it is!" And that was the end of our conversation.
The next day, I suddenly had a thought about the Nag Champa scent I kept smelling when I was in the loft. Going up there after a hasty breakfast, I prowelled around every corner, and I noticed that the scent was stronger under the northern window, the one looking out to the place where I had put in with the canoe on Saturday. Moving a couple of boxes, I felt the boards of the floor and discovered that one was loose. Feeling certain that I was right, I yanked on this loose board and it came away easily, only giving me a couple of slivers in the process. Then, feeling around the hole, I found, nestled securely between the joysts beneath, a tin box that I remembered well. 'Emily's Treasures' had been painted in gold on the lid, and inside, instead of the rock from a beach in Victoria and other such things that I remembered, there were three spiral-bound notebooks tied together with twine. Tucked in with them were a few sticks of Nag Champa, and it had been these that I had been smelling all along.
"Em," I said, now knowing that I spoke directly to my friend though also knowing that the incense had had a very earth-bound reason for being present in my family's summer house, "you're amazing!" I didn't even realize that I had used the present tense, something I had tried hard to get over during the past few months.
"Owen?" I had run downstairs and was now out of breath. He had come over to paint as he had said he would, but now, I saw no sign of him on the dock. Where had he gone? Wildly, I thought of Meghan Carson O'Hara tumbling headlong into the drink from her perch on Bard's Point. Had Owen gone the same way? Then, all at once, my fears were relieved when he came sloshing up from the northern side of the point.
"I went for a dip," he said. "I'm hot!"
"Yes you are," I couldn't help saying. His shirt was off, and despite his obvious thinness and the scarring I could just make out around what must have been his Cancer surgery sites, he looked toned and tanned, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the passion I felt for him.
"I can't believe you just said that," he said, climbing up onto the deck where I stood, Emily's notebooks in my hand.
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. It was just the truth."
"I'm glad you think so. Now, if you'll just let me get dry and cover up some of this hot bod, I'll come out and lookat what you wanted me to see."
"You do that," I said. "I'll be waiting," and I suddenly began blushing at the unaccustomed flirtatious tone in my voice. "God! I sound like Mae West," I said as he walked into the house to find a towel.
"Yeah," he said, "you do! Keep doing it!"
When he was dressed and dried, we sat together in the big Muskoka chairs on the deck and looked at Emily's notes. They contained pretty much what we had already found, but there were also a few copies of email conversations between Emily and Sarah Pru's niece, Stephanie Temple. It seemed that Sarah had been an ameteur folklorist and had, at one time, held the coveted post of Head Librarian in these parts. Stephanie had explained that though her aunt was still living, she was quite frail and her mind was all-but gone. Emily had clearly tried to find a way to talk to Sarah, but Stephanie Temple had told her that her Aunt was non-verbal now. I found this disappointing, but turning the page of the third notebook, I found Alice Carson's name heading it.
Improbable as it seemed to me, Emily had spoken to my Dad and he had told her about Alice Carson. They were no longer seeing each other, he had said, but Alice had never returned his key to The Cabin. He figured that it was a small price to pay for having avoided the need for a marriage settlement, but he had clearly been annoyed at Emily's prying, and here at last, I thought, lay the source of his annoyance with me lately. All the same, knowing now just what Alice Carson was, I wished I could see my Dad and be sure he was alright.
"Wow!" I said, closing the last book and sighing. "I can't believe she did all this! How did I not know?"
"Because she clearly didn't want you to know, not at first. My guess is that she only left you the tape and all of this when it was clear that she couldn't see things through herself."
"I suppose your right," I said. "It makes sense when you say it like that. Still, I thought we knew everything about each other."
"She must have hated keeping this from you," he said. "She must have really found it difficult, I mean emotionally."
"Yeah," I said, "I guess so. Well, I guess we know all we need to know. Right?"
"Except how to fix this!"
"Right," I said, smiling. "There is that. She keeps saying we'll find out, but all we seem to be doing is just waiting."
"Well," he said, "I do know that Alice Carson is staying with the Aldersons at their place on Briar Road."
"How did you find that out?"
"I just road past there on my bike and saw her there. She appeared to be doing a little light gardening."
"Ah," I said. "How domestic of her."
"I thought so," he said, taking out his pipe and preparing to smoke.
He left a few minutes later, and I went in and tried calling my Dad again. This time, a woman answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi," I said, thrown off by the female voice. "Is this Tom Ross's phone?"
"Yes it is," she said, "but Mr. Ross is sleeping just now." Sleeping? In the middle of the day? I tried not to let my impatience out.
"Could you wake him up and tell him it's his daughter calling?"
"I'm sorry," the voice said again, "but he really can't be disturbed just now." I thought she sounded like either a secretary or a nurse.
"Ellen?" Noises off. "Who is it?"
"It's your daughter, Mr. Ross."
"Chrissie? Give me the phone, Ellen."
"Really, I don't think you should--" Noises of shuffling and skuffling as the phone was being fought over.
"Hi. Chrissie?"
"Daddy?" Despite my early professions of indignation toward him, hearing his voice made me suddenly go to pieces and become a child again for a moment. "Are you alright? Why were you sleeping in the middle of the day?"
"Oh," he said, "it's just a little bug. Nothing to worry about. Ellen's taking care of me."
"Who's Ellen?"
"She's a nurse, hon, but don't worry. Everything's fine."
"It can't be fine if you have a nurse with you," I protested.
"She's just here as a precaution," he said. "She came hihghly recommended. Now, what can I do for you?"
"I want to know about you and Alice Carson. Did you know she entered The Cabin without my permission last Saturday?"
"Are you at The Cabin then? I thought you all were giving up on that place."
"Well, I'm here, and so is Alice. She says she had a key from you. Is that true?"
"It was true, once upon a time," he said, "but she gave it back to me. I'm sure she did."
"That's not what Emily heard." He was clearly taken aback by this.
"Emily? What do you mean?"
"I mean she talked to you before she died, and you told her that a key to The Cabin was a small price to pay for having avoided a marriage settlement with--" I looked up his exat words as Emily had reported them--"that gold-digging harpy. So which is the truth? Did you or did you not receive her key after you broke up?"
"I guess she didn't give it back to me," he said. "She's nuts though, Chris. If you see her again, I want you to run the other way or call the police or something. Alright? I'm sorry she scared you. She's a crazy woman!" You don't know the half of it, I thought of saying but didn't.
"Hey Dad," i said, pausing for a beat or two to collect my thoughts, "why are you mad at me?"
"Mad at you? Me? When have I ever been mad at my little Chrissie-bear?"
"But you were. You never answered my calls and you never called me back. Something must have gone wrong."
"It was that crazy Alice woman," he said. "She was doing something to me. I don't know how else to put it. She made it so I never thought about you, you especially I mean. I know that sounds bonkers, but it's the truth. I swear!"
"I'm sure it is," I said. "Dad, thanks. Okay? And get better, whatever it is."
"I'm workin' on it, Chrissie-bear," he said. "We'll talk soon, and if that Alice is still where you are, you get the hell away. Alright?"
"I will," i said, saddened by my need to lie to my father and touched by the evident concern in his voice.
"Good," he said. "I love you, Chris."
"I love you too," I said, and we ended the call.
Mom couldn't believe it when I told her about talking to Dad later on that night. I left out the part about Alice Carson still being in town, but I told her about her showing up out of the blue on Saturday.
"He does meet some strange ones," was her typically dismissive response. "So how are you coming with the inventory?"
"Oh, just chipping away," I said. "Chipping away, but the more time I spend here, the more I wish I had the money for the upkeep myself. It's really a great place, Mom!"
"Once I found out that your father was using it for a lovenest," she said, "I just couldn't go back there." And here I had thought her aware of the strange forces gathering around this place. Well, you know what they say about assuming. I thought it best to keep her ignorant.
"Yeah," I said. "I can see how that could spoil things for you. Well, I'll keep working away and I'll call you again in a few days. Alright?"
"Sounds good," she said, "and so do you. You're sounding better than I've heard you sound for a long time, Chrissie. I'm glad."
"So am I," I said. "Talk soon, okay?"
"Okay." We both said 'I love you' at the same time and then I resumed my reading. This time, it was a copy of 'Till We Have Faces' by C. S. Lewis. I'd found it in a box in the loft. It smelled wonderfully musty, and as I read it, likely breathing in parchment mytes as I did so, I remembered that Emily had said that someone should make an incense called Essence of Library, and another one called Attar of Music Room. She had lots of ideas like that, impossible, impractical, but all the same enchanting. This book was a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche as told by Ovid. I enjoyed the narrator-protagonist while also identifying with her so much that, when Psyche was lost to her after she acquiesced to her demand that she bring a lantern into the chamber where her husband, the god, slept despite his command that he should not be seen by Psyche, I had to shut the book because I couldn't stop crying. It was in this state that Tara found me, appearing again just as she had done on the night of the cocoa and the dream.
"You are troubled, little one," she said, sitting beside me on the couch.
"I just can't believe I was always so mean to Emily about her beliefs," I said, showing her the book.
"I told you he aged well," she said, taking it from me and putting it on the table so I wouldn't wet it with my tears.
"And then there's you," I said, taking her hand. "I dont' want you to be hurt!"
"If I am hurt," she said, "I will heal. Do you notice how you can hold my hand now and not be overwhelmed?"
"Yes," I said. "I thought that only applied in dream, or in your world."
"Not now, for you have opened yourself at last. You have stopped closing yourself off to avoid further pain, and it is this vulnerability that is also your protection. You have fear, but you are not subject to it any longer."
"I hope you're right," I said, "but I don't feel strong or brave."
"but you will be when the time comes for testing. You will save us all in the end."
"And what about Owen?"
"He will be the saving of you," she said. "Don't shut him out, my lass. He is one of the good ones."
"Why did you come?" I asked. "I was just crying over a book. That surely can't be the reason."
"No," she said. "I am here to see whther the dark ones have done anything to this place. From what I discern now, they have not. Still, we cannot be too careful," and taking up her harp which she had again brought with her, she began to play and sing. To my astonishment, it was Emily's setting of 'The Hound of Heaven' by Francis Thompson. She sang the entire song through and then I saw what she had meant about Emily being a receiver.
"That music is your music," I said.
"It is, yes," she said, "but Emily heard it. It is one way we are allowed to interact with your kind. The dark ones do it too, but never so successfully."
"Did you make her write that song then?"
"No no! She simply heard the music in her mind and used it. When I heard her singing it last fall, I knew that she had the gift of summoning, and I came to her. It was Emily who thought up the plan for me to start the tea shop."
"Infusiastic! I remember now!" I said, almost jumping up and down with delight. "She had always wanted to name a tea shop that! How could I have forgotten?"
"You remembered when you needed to remember. It is the way of things. Now, will you be alright?"
"I'll be fine," I said. "I'm tired."
"Good," she said. "I'll see you again soon."
"Thanks, Tara," I said. "Thanks for everything. I feel safe with you." The next time I saw her, I felt anything but.
The actual moment of crisis came, as all such moments do, without preamble or preparation. It was a couple of days after I had found Emily's notebooks and Owen was again with me. We had decided to take the row-boat out to see what we could see. It was getting on toward sunset, and there was not a cloud to be seen as I took the oars and headed the little craft out to the end of the point, that spot where my ancestor had met her untimely end.
"I think those loons have a baby now," Owen said. "I don't want to go too near, but I would like to make a sketch of them if I can for later use." Indeed, he had brought his sketch pad and a pair of binoculars, but I couldn't help wondering if he had something more in mind. The best place to see Loon Island, as we had christened it recently, was right where all the strange experiences had happened to me. Still, I thought, maybe he hadn't made that connection. Anything was possible.
The lake was again calm, the afternooon breeze having died to barely a whisper, and I found it easy to keep my direction as I rowed.
"This is nice," he said, sitting forward in the stern and looking into my eyes. To this day, I know that we were about to kiss. I know it as surely as I know what actually happened instead, because that was the last time I saw Owen Mills alive. His lips were about to touch mine. I knew it and was ready for it, but then we were there, we were in the centre of the lake, the place where all the weird shit had happened, and it was happening again. Suddenly, the boat seemed to elongate until I was looking at a tiny version of Owen who was miles away. Then, when the boat came back into focus, he wasn't sitting facing me anymore. Instead, Alice Carson was there, and she was smiling gleefully. Suddenly, I thought of Owen's Morpheine dream of the clown-town, where everyone smiled but they seemed to have too many teeth.
"You're mine now," Alice said. "I had your father and I know his seed, and you are definitely his seed, little girl!"
"Where's Owen?"
"Where you'll never find him! His friend had time to save him, but she evidently didn't give a damn about you. It was the same thing with your ancestor and your friend Emily, you know. The one you call Tara just doesn't care. She only uses people to get what she wants!"
"Pot, Kettle," i said, through clenched teeth, for it had suddenly grown very cold in the boat, and again, except for Alice's voice, there was only silence. I tried to think about Tara or about Owen, but I couldn't bring them clearly before my mind. Then I thought about the sleep paralysis incidents. They passed more quickly when I didn't fight them. Could that work here too? No, I quickly decided, because I could feel Alice, or the thing that was working through her, trying to burrow into my mind. She--it wanted me to stop fighting, to let it win. But Tara had said that my willingness to let myself be hurt again was my strength. Was I supposed to let it win? What had she meant?
"You know you're not strong enough to fight me," Alice said, and I was suddenly reminded of Mrs. Danvers from the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. She too had tried to make the heroine give up, and suddenly I saw what I had to do. If I plunged into the lake, all this would be banished like the illusion it so clearly was. So, without saying anything more, I simply stood up, gave her a parting smack with my oar, and jumped off the boat, capsizing it in the process. The only trouble was that when I raised my head above water, there was still only darkness and silence, and even as I tried to kick my feet, I felt them being bound still. My fingers lost their grip on the oar, and because I had been foolish enough to go out in the boat without a life jacket, I found myself sinking slowly into the deepest part of the lake, which some estimates put at about sixteen feet. There would come a point, I thought in the strange, slow way of one in shock, when, no matter how hard I tried to kick for the surface, my oxygen would run out before I got there, and that was good. That was just as fine as paint, whatever that expression meant. Then, just before my mind forsook me entirely, I heard the distant sound of a harp and a voice singing, and my feet began to move and my arms began to churn. Up I went, kicking and beating at the water, and soon, I had found my way to the surface. But was this the lake I had plunged into?
"Come Christina, Meghan's Daughter," said Tara's voice clearly across what seemed like miles. ""Swim for all you're worth! I am unable to come to you, but I know you can make it! Swim! You must!" Doing as I was bid, I was surprised to find my oar floating placidly on the calm water. I could hear the loons crying on their island, but there was no sign of Alice Carson. I fervently hoped that I would never see her again, but knowing my luck lately, I didn't cling to that hope with any great intensity.
"Come, daughter! Come little one!" Had Tara just called me 'daughter'? What did it matter what she had called me? I had to swim or sink. That was the only thought that stuck, so I swam, now clinging to the oar and now carrying it. Eventually, I reached a place where I could touch the bottom, and there was Tara herself, standing as large as life outside her log house.
"Come quickly," she said, taking my hand and leading me out of the water and into the warm. "Even here, I cann't promise you safety, but you may perhaps be able to gather your strength."
"Where's Owen?" Now that I was no longer in the clutches of the lake, my only thought was for him.
"I managed to save him," she said, "but he didn't make it."
"What do you mean?"
"He bade me save you, little one. I could have helped him, but then I would not have had the strength to call you here. He insisted that I leave him and find you."
"But where is he? He can't just be dead!"
"You will see him soon enough," she said, "but you mustn't mourn now. There is too much to be done. Your captor will be looking for you."
"But she couldn't find me here, could she?"
"Not normally, no, but the way things are now, she may very well follow us here, and if she does I must get you to your own world as soon as I can, for the firs thing she'll do will be to strip away the protections I've put in place to filter your perceptions of this world. If you were to see this world or myself in truth, I fear that your mind would break."
"That is a very good assessment," said Alice's simpering voice from the doorstep. "It is true that even now, I cannot cross the threshold of this house, but then, it isn't really a house, now is it?"
And suddenly, my mind was assaulted by a thousand swirling images tumbling over and around each other, and Tara, who a moment ago had seemed safe and familiar, now seemed strange and monstrous, a thing of shifting perspectives and coloured lights. She was like a tornado to my senses, and her voice, when it came, though I could still hear it in my mind, sounded to my ears like it was in multiple registers at once, as though a whole stadium of voices were speaking. Still, even with that, her words were understandable and clear.
"I will stop this," she said. "Just do your best to close your eyes at least." I did so, and things cleared a little, but not enough for me to function with any degree of sanity.
"You thought you could train another one, did you?" Alice was speaking to Tara now, and her voice was still clear, though I thought i could sense something vast, some huge power speaking through her. "Do you not know that these are but mortals? Instruments to be used and tossed away when they are no longer needed?"
"Do you not know, corrupted one," said Tara, and I heard her voice as I had heard it that first day in the tea shop, "that since the pattern of all things made himself mortal,, mortality has become the way to immortality? We, though imoortal, are a diminishing people. The sooner you realize that, the better for everyone."
"You will be killed this time, you know," the Alice-thing said. "The minute you come where I can reach you, you will be dealt with."
"No she won't," I said. "Not if I can help it."
"Christina," Tara said, "leave it to me."
"No," I said. "I think we've left things to you for far too long. It's time for me to do something, to stand up for my family and for my friends, and for Owen too, whatever he was going to be had it not been for this--this being here." My voice sounded small and weak to my own ears, but Tara nonetheless respected it. Stilling my breathing and stilling my mind, I opened my eyes, and despite knowing what the other was trying to do, I was able to see things clearly as Tara had meant me to see them.
"You were my oar in the water this time, my friend," I said to her as we clasped hands, and then, I opened the door.
There stood Alice, now seeming tall beyond imagining, cloaked in darkness itself, and then Tara stood there beside me, herself grown tall, but a pillar of light instead of darkness.
"Stay close," she whispered into my mind, and then all was madness. Power flashed back and forth, lightning from Tara's hands met dark fire from Alice's, but still, Tara seemed to be holding herself in check.
"I will not kill you, mortal," she said. "You are in the grip of the dark ones, and I will not kill you."
"But if you don't kill her," I ventured, "how is this going to end?"
"It will end when she dies," said the Alice-thing. "I am not just myself, you know. I am many whereas she is only one."
"She maybe only one," I said, "but she is not alone. We will restore the balance whether you like it or not."
"Wretched fool! Do you not understand what it means to restore the balance? A life must be taken! That is how it has always been."
"A life has been taken," I said, "or rather given. Owen Mills gave his life so that I could be saved."
""Ah, but he did not give that life to us. Even Meghan Carson did that in the end."
"Do not dissemble!" Tara's voice was huge now, huge and cold as the far-off stars, but still her own. "Meghan Carson never belonged to you. She simply gave her life so her family would be safe, and now you have broken that bargain."
"I myself have had enough of bargains," I said. "Whatever I have to do to close this gap for good, I will do!"
"Oh, there is no closing it for good," the Alice-thing sneered. "Didn't your precious Tara tell you that? It's a cycle! Everything's a cycle for you people. We just follow where you lead us."
"Whether it is or it isn't," I said, "I will end this right now."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"With my help," said Tara. "I stand with her and all her kind against you and all your kind. I would even save Alice if I could. Now stand aside. I am taking my friend home!" And as though whipped, the Alice-thing moved aside and the bridge of light was there. Again, I was pulled along it till I reached my deck, and there, just inside the patio door, lay Owen, his features relaxed, a beatific smile on his face.
"Well," I said, turning to Tara so I wouldn't have to look at him. "What do we do? How do we close the gap?"
"You let me go, little one."
"Tara?" Her voice was very weak and as I looked, parts of her seemed to shimmer in and out of existence.
"I will be healed," she said, "but I am wounded now, and it is my wounding that will set things to rights, at least for the present."
"But how?"
"When they wound one of us," she said, "they wound themselves in the process. It is always how it happens, but before I go, I would give you something, little one. Take my hand, please!" I did so, and when she finally let me go after a moment of eternity, I found that I could see her house the way I had only done in dreams hitherto.
"You will now be able to perceive the places where our worlds intersect," she said, her voice growing fainter and fainter. "It may be that you and I will meet again, but if we do, I believe it will be far from here. Still, one can never tell what the pattern will bring. Hold fast to your common sense, little one. I feel you may need it among the shifting sands of your ever-changing world."
"But Tara!"
"Fare you well, my lass! Stay true!" And with that, she was gone.
And that's all really. That's what happened. I knew I had to write it now, because dark things are moving again around the edges of my vision. I know that something big is coming, and there are still the others in the town of Elm Lake that I have not yet dealt with. I hope that I will meet with Tara again, but that hope grows fainter and fainter with each passing day. Still, ever and annon, when I'm feeling lonely or sad, when the world seems too much with me, there will come to my ears a well-remembered voice and the distant sound of a harp, and I will weep tears, though they are not tears of bitterness. I think I have done with bitterness, but like everything in this world, perhaps it too is a cycle. Who knows? Perhaps Tara still waits where all lost loved ones wait, somewhere where there is food and a fire and fellowship, somewhere out of the raging storms of life, somewhere in the dreaming place.
THE END