“Wait a minute,” she said to Kyle. “Stay with the kids. I won’t be long.”
Inside the shop it looked as it always had – the shelves, the jars, the chandelier. “Hello,” she called. “Mr. Strundale?” She still had so many questions, and only he would be able to answer them.
A woman stepped from the back. She was tall, perhaps fifty or a little older and dressed in a mandarin-collared black jacket and matching trousers. Bright green silk adorned the turned-back sleeves. Her white hair was in a loose chignon at her neck. Finnick dashed out from behind the counter and flipped over on his back in front of Badger, chirping with delight. Badger, in turn, tail wagging and butt wiggling in paroxysms of joy, began licking the little fox’s face.
“May I help you?” asked the woman.
“I’m looking for Mr. Strundale.”
The woman’s face became serious. “Ah, you must be Maggie.” She walked over and put her hand on Maggie’s arm. “I’m so sorry, my dear, but Mr. Strundale has passed away.”
What Maggie felt wasn’t precisely surprise. It was more that something she’d already known clicked into place. It explained things in a way, she thought, as the stone in her chest grew heavier. It explained how Mr. Strundale had come to be with Mr. Mustby. Even the raven shape. Somehow that made sense. And yet, of course, it explained nothing. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“He was so fond of you. So proud of you.”
“He was a dear friend.”
“And so he considered you to be.” The woman’s touch on Maggie’s arm was warm and reassuring. “May I get you a cup of tea? Something calming, lavender perhaps?”
“I can’t stay. I’m just back.”
“I understand.” She looked out the window at the gaggle of children on the sidewalk and smiled. “I see your time away has provided you some new responsibilities.” She held out her hand. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Clara Strundale, Mr. Strundale’s niece. This business has been in our family a very long time and we trust it will continue so. I hope you and I will be friends. You’ll find I’m quite good with children and I’m so fond of them.”
A spasm of relief washed over Maggie. At least there would be someone nearby who knew something about children. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. I’ll come back in a few days when we’re all settled.”
“I’ll be here.”
Maggie thought she had a lovely smile. Motherly, almost. It would be good to have a friend.
“You okay?” asked Kyle, when she stepped outside, wiping her eyes.
“A friend has died.” Would she try to explain to him about Mr. Mustby and Mr. Strundale? No. She doubted she could explain it to herself. “Come on. We have to get the kids sorted.” She’d find Alvin as fast as she could. Maybe he’d have answers. “Bath and toast and tea, I think,” she said, because she had to say something or she feared she’d be overwhelmed. Her bones felt as if made of lead. Her feet felt like boulders.
The little parade reached the Grimoire, and never had Maggie seen a more beautiful sight. The place seemed to gleam, somehow, in a way it never had before. The flower boxes with red geraniums in them, they’d not been there before. Her heart thudded. Could it be that someone had taken over the shop while she’d been away? What would she do if it wasn’t her home any longer? What would she do with all these children?
She opened the door and stepped in. She frowned, blinked. Things were different. For one, the place seemed cleaner, fresher, less cluttered than she remembered. And on the walls over the windows were trompe l’oeil of lush green ivy, dotted here and there with butterflies and tiny birds.
Alvin appeared from the kitchen and stopped in his tracks. His mouth opened, then closed and opened again. “Maggie?”
“’Fraid so.”
How good, solid and real his arms felt.
“By God, you have a lot of explaining to do!” he said into her hair. “I don’t know whether to yell at you or never let you go.”
“I vote for the latter.”
Alvin pushed her back to arm’s length, his face a fluid mask of joy and fury. “Are you all right? Are you? Not hurt?” He patted her arms and head. He held something in his hand, but she couldn’t see what it was.
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I’m all right.”
He crushed her to him again and then stepped back. “Let me look at you.” His hands were on his hips. He had a tea towel tucked into the waistband of his pants and a wooden spoon in his hand.
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“I’m cooking, but that’s hardly the question.” He glanced at Kyle. “Maggie, where have you been?”
“It’s a long story. I was looking for Kyle.”
“Hello, Alvin.”
“I thought as much,” Alvin said. “You’re the worse for wear.”
“I don’t really know what I am, to be truthful.” Kyle patted the ruined side of his face. “It’s bad, I know, but not as bad as it could have been.”
“Awful as that?”
“Worse.”
“And who are all these?”
“Um, they’re children. From the Forest. Orphans, or near as can be. Peter and Mindy and Billy and, well …” She realized she didn’t even know the names of the other two boys. “I’ll explain everything.”
Alvin turned back to Maggie, “I’ve been worried. Strundale sent word to me after you’d left and he took ill. And Badger. I thought he was gone for good. Took off as soon as Strundale died. Oh God, sorry. Did you know?”
“I just found out. I met his niece.”
“She’s good people. I like her. We’ll miss Strundale, though.” He shook his head sadly. “Anyway, I tried to follow Badger, thinking he’d lead me to you, but he was too fast. Has he been with you all this time?”
“Most of it. I have no idea how he found me. I went through a strange door and found myself in another place entirely. Seems impossible. I was in such a strange place.”
Badger sat and opened his mouth as if laughing. Maggie supposed she’d never know.
“Dogs know things we don’t, I’ve always thought. See things, and such.” Alvin frowned. “What kind of strange place?”
She tried to find a succinct way of explaining it. “Not quite this world. Another world entirely, I think.” How ridiculous that sounded.
Alvin, however, did not laugh at her. “In the way the Grimoire is not like the rest of the street, the rest of the city?”
“Yes, I suppose. A bit like that, but more. I can’t believe Mr. Strundale’s gone. What was it?”
“Not sure, really. Heart? He just slipped away. Went into a coma and never came back.”
The idea she’d never see him again hadn’t quite sunk in. It would, she knew, in the days to come. And yet it didn’t rend her in the same terrible way Mr. Mustby’s death had, and not because she loved him less. Partly, she was simply too tired to feel much of anything, but also, Mr. Mustby had said death was a less final state that most people imagined. “He was a friend,” she said. She almost said, is a friend.
“I looked everywhere for you,” Alvin said. “I’ve never been so worried about anyone or anything. And when I couldn’t find you I moved back in here. Assumed if you came back anywhere, it would be to the Grimoire.”
He might have said more, but at that moment Mindy walked past them into the kitchen as if she owned the place. “I like it,” she said.
Alvin’s brows shot up. “Seems they’re in the right place.”
“She’s bossy,” said Peter, who, along with the other boys, followed Mindy.
“Is it their home now?” asked Alvin.
“I believe it is. How do you feel about that?”
He laughed. “Well, I suppose that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I woke up with a sudden urge to cook soups and stews and pies, of all bloody things. All day I’ve been waiting for something to happen, and this seems to be it. I’d say we’ve just become a rather large family. I can’t remember the rooms on the third floor – the old nursery – ever being in use but I guess they’ll come in handy now.”
Maggie laughed. “I could use a cup of tea, and I think Kyle needs to sit down.”
“Come on.” Alvin guided her by the elbow as though afraid he was going to lose her again.
“You’ve redecorated, I see. Did you do these?” she asked Alvin, pointing at the trompe l’oeil birds and butterflies.
“You haven’t been gone that long,” he said. “They’ve always been there.”
She followed Alvin into the kitchen to find the five children around the table, eating buttered scones and strawberry jam.
Alvin looked a bit sheepish. “Seems I’ve got a knack for cooking, which I suspect is going to prove useful.”
Mindy grinned and said, “I told them you’d come back.”
“Would you make that tea as strong as possible?” Maggie sat on a stool by the window. She looked out into the garden. It was the perfect size, with the perfect tree and the perfect spot to sit.
* * *
THEY ATE SUPPER AND BATHED THE CHILDREN AND PUT them to bed in their rooms, which looked as bright and clean and fresh as did the rest of the shop – four boys in one room, and the delighted Mindy in a room of her own. The children wore some of Alvin’s clean T-shirts.
Kyle paced from room to room, and through the stacks of books for the longest time, unable to settle. He kept muttering that he didn’t deserve any of this and would spend his life making amends. “Where do I start?” he kept asking. “Where do I start?” Maggie finally took him by the shoulders and told him to sit by the fire. Alvin pulled up a chair and joined them. She told Kyle she would never have learned the things she’d learned about herself – how she could resist temptation, and be patient, and trust others, and be brave even though she was terrified – had she not gone to find him. “It is,” she said, “as far as I can determine, a matter of faith.” She told him what she truly believed: that if it wasn’t for him, elysium would still be among them, and Srebrenka would still be causing more and more pain to feed her insatiable hunger. “It’s all so much more complicated, so much more interconnected, than we can see,” she said at last. “We are all responsible for the mess in the world, and we are all responsible for cleaning it up. It’s not either-or, is it? It’s both-and. We harm and we heal.”
Kyle laughed, and his face was brighter, the strain in his features less. “Well, look who got all wise.”
And with that she was able to persuade him to climb the stairs, and eventually he slept in the room always destined to be his. She watched him from the doorway for a few minutes. He fidgeted and tossed in his sleep. Healing the body was one thing, healing the mind and soul would take time, with him as it had with her.
* * *
AT LAST, MAGGIE AND ALVIN LAY IN BED, THEIR ARMS around each other. Badger sprawled on Maggie’s feet. They had spent hours talking, Maggie telling her story as Alvin listened and asked questions, and told her how it had been without her, and the dreams he’d had of his uncle telling him it was time to come in off the water.
“He gets around, your uncle.”
“Uh-huh. Suppose I just took it for granted. It’s the way he is.” Alvin snorted. “It is a twist, though – here I thought I was the wanderer.”
Even as she talked about all that had happened, all the places she’d been and the people she’d met – the flying caribou and robbers and Aunt Ravna who made clouds and the roads that disappeared behind her and the snow palace and the mirror and the fountain – she felt it slipping away, fading, becoming thin and vague. It would be easy, she realized, to forget it all, the way one forgets a dream during the passing of a day.
“If you told me I’d made it all up,” she said, “I might be inclined to believe you.”
“Except that Kyle’s here.”
She smiled. “There is that.”
“You’ll have to decide if you’re going to believe your experience or not,” said Alvin.
“You sound just like your uncle when you talk like that.”
He hugged her tight. “There are worse things.”
“We’re a family, I guess,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“Nope. But there’s going to be some legal stuff, paperwork and so forth, getting them into school, if we’re going to be able to keep these kids. It’ll be a long haul.”
“They’re supposed to be here, though, surely. Since they’re here.”
“You brought them.”
She hadn’t considered that. “But it seems like the nursery was there just waiting for them, and then your sudden culinary instinct.”
“Yes, there is all that. And I suppose if the social workers and so forth find their way here it will be meant to be.”
“So, it’s back to that, to faith, then.”
“Seems so.”
“You didn’t answer me. Do you mind?”
“I never thought I’d want to be here,” Alvin shifted a bit. “But when you disappeared, and I thought of never seeing you again, all I wanted was to be where you’d been. Now, I can’t imagine not being here. Kids and all. Besides, it seems like all the real adventure happens around here, doesn’t it?”
Maggie nuzzled into his shoulder and drifted off to sleep. Adventure? Maggie dreams …
* * *
AT THAT MOMENT, DOWNSTAIRS IN THE SHOP, A SMALL golden light flashes and a book appears on the desk. The book is blue, the colour of the centre of an iceberg. On the cover are the words The Grimoire of Kensington Market.
Tomorrow, when Maggie notices it she will open it and read, with laughing astonishment, the opening line:
People didn’t wander into the Grimoire. It wasn’t that sort of bookshop.
Acknowledgements
To begin, although surely some readers have already noticed this, I took inspiration for this tale from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” a story that has stayed with me since I first read it as a child.
This book has taken me longer to write than any other work. Ten years. And so, of course, there are many people to thank.
First, I’d like to thank Sister Rita Woehlcke, who encouraged me to go and sit by the ocean for a while and allow my soul to heal after the suicide of my brother, Ronnie. It was there, in 2008, that the first glimmers of this book appeared. Sister Rita continues to be an anam cara if ever there was one.
Hat tip to Kate and Joe Zuhusky, who allowed us to rent their beautiful house by the sea time and time again. So much inspiration has come from that place. Ron and I feel you are family.
And a tip of the teacup to Paul W. Meyers for that story about the Korean sea slug. Just can’t make this stuff up. You and Debbie must come for dinner. Tell me more stories!
I would also like to thank early readers Maria DiBattista, Susan Applewhaite and John Foster for taking the time to give me their excellent feedback. Much appreciated.
Many a dark night of the soul has been part of the writing of this book, birthed as it was by the suicide of my brother, Ronnie. I would be remiss, indeed, if I didn’t offer love and thanks and deep respect to my parents, Bill and Carmen Seguin. Their ability to survive yet another loss and to keep their love intact has been a miracle in my life.
Also, I would like to thank Lily and Elliot Kraus, Lynne and Van Davis, Mary and Paul Gerard, Jill and Felix Aguayo, Angie Abdou, Michael Straw, Chantal Cartier, Bernard Applewhaite, Lynn Robinson and so many more friends for their patience, kindness, humour and understanding as I wrestled with this angel.
I bow to Natalee Caple for intr
oducing me to Noelle Allen.
My agent, David Forrer, has been my constant champion and guide for a long time, and my affection for him only grows.
Most exuberantly, my gratitude to Noelle Allen, for giving this book a home at Wolsak & Wynn, and of course to my editor there, Paul Vermeersch, of the Buckrider imprint, who made the editing of this book such a unique pleasure. Paul, your gentle hand, your keen instincts, your humour and your knowledge of the craft have been a revelation. I hope we work together for a long time. A mighty hat tip to Kate Hargreaves for the wonderful cover design. I adore it! And finally, many thanks to Ashley Hisson, copy editor extraordinaire, who made sure my spelling mistakes and grammatical stumbles didn’t make it into the public arena. Whew.
LAUREN B. DAVIS is the author of The Grimoire of Kensington Market; Against a Darkening Sky; The Empty Room, named one of the Best Books of the Year by the National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press, Amazon and the Coast; and Our Daily Bread, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Globe & Mail and the Boston Globe. Her other books include the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Radiant City, a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and The Stubborn Season, one of the Top Fifteen Bestselling First Novels by Amazon and Books in Canada, as well as two short story collections, An Unrehearsed Desire and Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives.
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