Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Buffie
Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938091
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Buffie, Margaret
Winter shadows / Margaret Buffie.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-228-8
1. Métis – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
PS8553.U453W55 2010 jC813′.54 C2009-905850-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
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To all the women of my family tree who lived their lives before me. Aren’t I glad they did! I wish, with all my heart, I could sit down and talk with each and every one of you.
And to my daughter Christine and nôsisim Emily McGregor – my own ôhômisîsis.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1 - BEATRICE 1856
Chapter 2 - CASS
Chapter 3 - BEATRICE
Chapter 4 - CASS
Chapter 5 - BEATRICE
Chapter 6 - CASS
Chapter 7 - BEATRICE
Chapter 8 - CASS
Chapter 9 - BEATRICE
Chapter 10 - CASS
Chapter 11 - BEATRICE
Chapter 12 - CASS
Chapter 13 - BEATRICE
Chapter 14 - CASS
Chapter 15 - BEATRICE
Chapter 16 - CASS
Chapter 17 - BEATRICE
Chapter 18 - CASS
Chapter 19 - BEATRICE
Chapter 20 - CASS
Chapter 21 - BEATRICE
Chapter 22 - CASS
Chapter 23 - BEATRICE
Chapter 24 - CASS
Chapter 25 - BEATRICE
Chapter 26 - CASS
Chapter 27 - BEATRICE
Chapter 28 - CASS
Chapter 29 - BEATRICE
Chapter 30 - CASS
Chapter 31 - BEATRICE
Chapter 32 - CASS
Chapter 33 - BEATRICE
Chapter 34 - CASS
Chapter 35 - BEATRICE
Chapter 36 - CASS
Chapter 37 - CASS
Chapter 38 - CASS
Chapter 39 - CASS
Chapter 40 - BEATRICE
Chapter 41 - CASS
CREE GLOSSARY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
GLOSSARY
OTHER WORDS
1
BEATRICE
1856
The sleigh’s runners hissed over the snow, leather harness creaking in the frigid air, the horse’s hooves muffled, clods of snow flying. Beatrice Alexander sat huddled under a pile of buffalo robes, the reins loose in her mittened hands. She was warm, except for her cheeks growing numb in the icy wind. She pulled her scarf higher and her fur bonnet lower, longing for a cup of hot spruce tea.
As Tupper followed the snow-packed track along the narrow river road, another conveyance suddenly appeared ahead – a strange bright yellow thing with many shiny windows, like a small house on fat bulging wheels.
As it drew closer, Beatrice sat up. That thing couldn’t be real. It was moving under its own power – no horse in sight. Instinctively, she pulled hard on the reins. Tupper lurched to the left and stopped, his breath frosting the air in white gusts.
The apparition moved quickly and silently toward them, snow frothing behind. The great horse trembled, muscles twitching. He saw it, too.
Beatrice held tight to the reins. As the conveyance passed, a girl with a halo of red hair stared down at Beatrice through one of the windows. Her eyes widened, and she lifted a red mittened hand in salute. Then she and the strange device were gone … vanished … fallen from view, into the blowing snow.
2
CASS
My stepmother, Jean, was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home from school, chin in hand, looking out the window toward the river.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “You were way out of line this morning, Cassandra. Overreacting, as usual, by storming out of the house and not listening to me. You like pushing Daisy’s buttons. Well, you can’t push mine. Just remember this, Cassandra: one day it will be too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
She just can’t stop herself from offering up one of her stupid clichés, so I said, “For the hundredth time, it’s Cass. That’s what I want to be called. It’s my name. I don’t need a different take on it from you. As for this toothpaste, it’s already out of the tube, so who cares if it goes back in or not? It’s just toothpaste.” The already edgy look on her face tightened, and that was good enough for me. Don’t tell me I can’t push her buttons.
“I don’t want another shouting match. Just apologize to Daisy, okay? And you might think about apologizing to me as well, Cassandra.” She stood up and walked away, her back stiff, shoulders high.
Stiff should be Jean’s middle name. She told me often enough that she was “bending over backwards” to make a home for all of us, but if she ever actually did bend over backwards, she’d snap like a Popsicle stick. With her angular face, straight black hair, bony hands, thick legs, unvarying twin sweater sets and droopy skirts, she was no match for Mom. It should have made me feel better. It didn’t.
As her footsteps retreated down the hall, I mimicked her way of walking, then stood for a second or two thinking. Did I win that one? No idea. We both knew I wouldn’t apologize to Daisy. Or her. It was her daughter who took my favorite CD, stuck gum on it, then lied about it. The kid was a thief and a bald-faced liar. So why should I apologize?
There was a tea tray laid out on the table with a gloating Santa-head teapot and cups shaped like demented elves on it – for Jean and Dad’s usual cozy little after-school schmooze. Christmas was less than two weeks away – the third since we’d moved out here from Selkirk and the second Christmas since Mom died. Hanging on a peg by the stove was her old red apron, splashed with white snowflakes. Last week, Dad gave it to Jean. She wore it every day now. She figured it was hers. Across the bodice, Merry Christmas! was stitched in white.
Merry? Huh. Not likely. Jean was removing all traces of Mom stitch by stitch. She called it putting away keepsakes for Cassandra. Pieces of furniture quietly vanished into our barn across the road. Jean said Mom’s stuff was too old-fashioned for her “decorating plan.” Luckily, before she started grabbing other stuff, like Mom’s collection of antique pastel paintings, I packed it up and took most of it to Aunt Blair’s for safekeeping. My favorite things I kept in our old blanket box, at the foot of my bed.
Thinking about all this made my blood steam. I snagged the apron off the peg and tucked it under my arm. It would go in my box. When Jean asked, she’d get the truth – it wasn’t hers; it was Mom’s and mine.
I was glad Daisy had to stay late at school. Dad was picking her up on his way
home. I’d be free from the little rat for another hour at least. I turned around, automatically reached for the fridge door to get a juice box, and grabbed air. I kept forgetting the fridge was on the other side of the room now. The big kitchen was only half usable – the other half torn apart. Whenever I saw the workers, they were sitting around with coffee mugs in their hands. But, clearly, they’d earned their money today. The far plaster wall was gone, exposing a huge stone-slab fireplace, its deep hearth black with soot. The faint scent of ashes hung in the air. The broad wooden mantel was big enough to crush ten men, if it fell. The yawning mouth of the hearth was packed with fire tools, blackened pots and pans, and other murky things. Down one side were two cast-iron oven doors.
Jean would probably replace the whole thing with cupboards. I sighed. Mom would have been so excited, making sure the fireplace was restored to its former glory. Me? I couldn’t let myself care. I used to argue every time Jean and Dad changed Mom’s plans, but I wasn’t up for a new fight. I was as burned-out as the silt that sifted down from that ancient chimney.
The sun suddenly streaked through the window, slanted across the opening of the hearth, and glinted off something deep inside. I reached in and touched the faint glitter with my fingertip, surprised to feel it move. I pulled it out and was shoving it into my pocket when Jean’s head poked around the door. She frowned and vanished again. Yes, I am still here, Jean. Dad would be home soon. She didn’t want me getting to him first.
Something I’d refused to admit until that moment hit me with a swift and painful stab. I’d lost not only Mom, but, slowly and surely, I was losing Dad too. I ran up the back staircase that led off the kitchen and came out next to my room. Locking my bedroom door behind me, I fell on the bed and stared at the old beamed ceiling without really seeing it.
I tried to take a deep breath, but it stuck in my throat. I wouldn’t think about Dad. Or Jean. I slid a new CD called Wintersong into my machine and put on my earphones. Sarah McLachlan’s sweet voice floated into my head. Just like last year, I couldn’t listen to our old Christmas music collection because the memories hurt too much, but maybe this one of Sarah’s wouldn’t make me sad.
When Mom was still with us, on the dot of December 1st, in the midst of loud, fake complaints from Dad, our house was always filled with carols, jazz, and Christmas ballads – everything from Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Mel Tormé to the Vienna Boys Choir and even strange ones – like Yoolis carols and medieval motets, which I quite liked. My best friends, Tina and Crystal, didn’t know a single old Christmas song when we were in grade school until Mom made them drink eggnog and listen. They’d giggled a lot at first, but they liked Mom, and soon the eggnog thing became a tradition. They even started buying their own oldies and bringing them over.
I hadn’t really talked to either of them since early September, when Dad married Jean. Both live about ten miles away, in Selkirk. I had to change high schools when I moved, and at first we kept in close touch. Until Mom got sick. Now they may as well be a thousand miles away. I still got a few E-mails asking what was wrong, but how could I tell them I hated Jean and her kid, hated my life, and that I just didn’t want to talk to anyone? I wrote back that I wasn’t mad or anything – I just needed time to get used to things here.
Sarah’s gentle voice flooded my ears. She sang about seeing someone standing in the snow on Christmas morning and how she’d keep that memory alive. All the times Mom and I made angels in the snow together flashed into my head. I pushed them away. But other memories rose up in their place – the ones that are always nearby … the ones that never go away. Mom’s final few days.
Her skin looked translucent the last Christmas Day we shared, as if she were vanishing into the light. In less than two weeks, the cancer took her away. Now, in less than two weeks, it would be Christmas again – the second one without her and the first with Them. How would I ever get through it?
Why didn’t you wait for me, Mom? Why aren’t you here, so I can beg you to forgive me? I swallowed hard. I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t cry – hadn’t been able to since she died. Where are you, Mom? Where have you gone?
When I woke again, Sarah’s voice was silent, the room filled with a dark blue light spinning spidery branch-shadows across the walls. Night meant I didn’t have to see or talk to anyone. On the weekends, I slept a lot – even during the day. No reason to get up. I checked my watch: almost six o’clock. Only a few minutes left before facing Them at dinner. For the first time, I included Dad in that group.
Shifting my position, I felt something poke me in the hip. I dug it out of my pocket and rubbed some of the soot off with my thumb. A small brooch, shaped like a star. How long has it been hiding in the fireplace? Who put it there? I should tell Dad. No, Jean would take it for herself. I walked into the bathroom and carefully washed it with toothpaste and an old toothbrush I found under the sink. It came up nicely. Aunt Blair taught me that.
Back in my room, I stood by a window and examined the little star while gently polishing it with an old cloth. Each gold point was filled with tiny pearls, the center crusted with bits of … glass? Diamonds?
All at once, the floor softened and heaved under my feet, the room lurching in staggered shifts, like a rusty merry-go-round. Nausea washed through me. I groped my way to bed. At the same time, I was sure I heard two muffled voices near me – an old woman’s and a younger one answering. When they stopped, the room anchored itself again.
My heart pounded. The wind was whistling through the cracks in the old window frames. Is that where the “voices” came from? Did my dizziness and nausea come from not eating much all day? I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and forced myself to think about something else – something that would get me back on track.
Like the fact that my room wasn’t my room anymore.
When Mom inherited the house from her great-uncle, Barton Andrews, I was allowed to pick my own room. I chose this one because it overlooks the river. After the cheap siding was stripped off to reveal thick stone walls, we used electric baseboard heaters to keep the deep cold at bay. Even so, pockets of icy air still floated in all the corners of the room. Mom and the restorer had worked out a plan for insulating it and putting up original-style paneling. So far, not done. Facing the river were four deepledged windows. I would tuck myself into one on warm summer days and watch the tawny Red River flow slowly past, but in winter the ledges were rimed with ice.
The next job in line for this room was the removal of the stained and crumbling wallboard around a square bump in the wall – a small fireplace for sure. You could see one tiny edge of pale stone. I’d been looking forward to a fire in the grate on a midwinter’s night. I stupidly said this to Dad a few days ago – with Jean hovering nearby.
“For safety reasons, we won’t open the flue,” she’d said firmly. “So there will be no fires, Cassandra. The fireplace, if we keep it, will be purely decorative.” And she’d looked at me as if I were holding unlit matches behind my back and biding my time.
Maybe she thought I’d push her pest of a daughter into the roaring flames. Maybe she was right. I’d never had the heart be cruel to anyone, especially those who didn’t fit in like other kids at school. And I’d never been a stray-dog kicker. But when Jean and Daisy moved in, Jean’s condescending and Daisy’s obnoxious attitudes toward me, Mom, and the house triggered this horrible coiled thing inside me that flung itself around and blurted out malevolent comebacks. At first, I got a lousy torn feeling after mouthing off. Not anymore.
The wind howled past the window beside me. Beyond its thick icicles was a big maple, snow flying off the heavy branches. Past that was a white slope down to the river, edged by more trees. Mom said the old house had faced winds off the river for well over a hundred and fifty years. This room was my haven after she died.
No more.
Now, across the floor was a second bed, piled with clothes, Barbie dolls, and kid-junk. Daisy’s bed. My stuff had been crammed into a much smaller sp
ace. How I hated the sight of it!
Before the wedding, Dad and Jean decided we’d all live in our place, and her divorce settlement would help pay for the restoration. She’d owned a market garden on her family farm nearby until she and her husband split. Now she taught piano to locals.
The third bedroom should have been Daisy’s, but Jean had grabbed it as her music room, moved in a baby grand piano, and put our old upright one in the living room, which she kept telling me to use whenever I wanted – like it wasn’t mine in the first place. She also hinted she wanted to help me with my grade-ten music exams, so I made sure all my music books were packed away. Like I’d let her anywhere near my love of music.
Dad said that, one day, this house would belong to me because that’s what Mom wanted. But as far as Jean was concerned, it was hers now. There was no way she’d ever give it up. Seeing her swanning around Mom’s house made me sick.
Last week, after another fight with Daisy, I told Dad I wanted to live with Aunt Blair. He and my aunt had a bad falling out after Mom’s funeral, and they still weren’t talking.
“No, Cass,” he’d said. “You’re staying right here with us. Give it time. Your mom would not want you leaving Old Maples.” He was right, so I stayed. Very reluctantly.
When she was a kid, the minute Mom saw the house where Great-Uncle Bart lived, she fell in love with it and the little parish of St. Cuthbert’s. She, Aunt Blair, and I used to come and visit Uncle Bart, and he’d tell us stories – like how, when his father inherited the place from his grandfather, there was a set of turbulent rapids upriver. It was drowned out when a large bridge with power locks was built to control flooding downriver to Winnipeg.
Old Maples was one of the few stone farmhouses remaining from those belonging to retired officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the mid-1800s, all built on strip farms dotted along the banks of the Red River. There were lots of smaller farms, too, given to retired workers called servants of the company, set in long rows like two-mile ribbons, running from the river road’s edge to shared pastureland far in the distance. Except for a few like ours, and a few more cared for by Parks Canada as historic sites, almost all of them were gone now, replaced by modern houses.
Winter Shadows Page 1
