by Renee Duke
Guess that explains why Granddad and the others looked a little uncomfortable at first, thought Paige. They knew about this.
A pale Jack said nothing as his cousins stomped on the stairs to alert their parents of their approach, and tried not to look wary when Mrs Marchand sat him down in the living room and said she had something to tell him.
It took her a few moments to begin. She seemed to be choosing her words.
At last she said, “Your mother rang while you were out, Jack. She’s going to talk to you herself first thing tomorrow but, well, I’m afraid your father’s back in hospital. He’s had a heart attack. It wasn’t a bad one, though, and he’s going to be all right.”
“That’s good,” said Jack.
He made no other comment, either then, or during supper, which he barely touched. The DVD Mrs. Marchand put on failed to engage him, and no one objected when he went off to the bathroom saying he was going to get ready for bed.
A few minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Marchand went out to check on the creek and Dane and Paige moved to Paige’s room.
“What a mess,” Paige said as they sat on the bottom bunk, uncertain what to do. “Uncle Gareth having a heart attack is bad enough, even if it wasn’t too serious. But hearts react to stress. If all this adoption garbage keeps up—”
“He’ll have a worse one!” Jack said from the doorway. “And if he does, it’ll be because of me!”
Turning on his heel, he ran into Dane’s room and slammed the door.
Paige jumped up and ran after him. So did Dane but, on this occasion, Paige was faster. She reached the door first but did not try to open it, choosing to knock tentatively instead.
“Go away!” shouted Jack. Neither of his cousins had to see him to know he was crying. “It’s all my fault!”
“No, Jack, no, it’s not your fault,” Paige remonstrated. “Heart problems are heart problems. For all we know, your dad’s heart could have been weak for years. It’s nothing to do with you.”
The only answer was the sound of wracking sobs. Paige and Dane looked at one another helplessly until Dane finally said, “I’m going to get Mum and Dad. We have to tell them he overheard them earlier.”
Mr. and Mrs. Marchand came at once, going into the room without knocking and closing the door behind them. Left to their own devices, Paige and Dane wandered into the living room and sat on the couch.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Dane asked. “Not just about Uncle Gareth. About Jack. Now that there’s a big public outcry, some judge might overturn his adoption and let those people take him back.”
“I don’t think so. Not if it was legal. But all the wrangling’s going to play havoc with him. It already is playing havoc with him. He may be all kinds of clever, but he’s still only nine, and it’s too much for him to handle. I know some adopted kids do re-connect with their birth families, but they’re usually grown up, and want to. There’s no way Jack wants to.”
“That’s for sure,” said Dane. “Right now he’s just thinking, ‘Who are these people, and what are they doing in my life?’”
They talked a little more, then trailed off and just sat looking at each other, lost in their own thoughts. When it started to get dark out, neither got up to turn on a light.
Half an hour later, Mr. Marchand came to join them.
“Saving electricity?” he asked, but he didn’t flick on a switch either, and his voice lacked its usual joviality.
“How’s Jack?” Paige inquired as he dropped into a large armchair. “I saw you come out to get the phone. Did you call England?”
He nodded. “It was barely five in the morning there, but we thought he should talk to Aunt Augusta. Bad idea. He was just as upset after talking to her as he was before. Maybe more.”
“What did you say to him after?”
“Me? Not a lot. Your mother uttered most of the soothing words. Then she just held him and rocked him until he finally fell asleep. That’s what mothers do. Fathers, too. I don’t know if we’re so good at it.”
He looked up at his children and held out his arms.
They snuggled up against him, Paige on one side, Dane on the other.
“You’re good at it,” Paige said softly.
Chapter Eighteen
Mrs. Marchand sat with Jack for some time, not tiptoeing out until she was sure sheer exhaustion would keep him asleep until morning.
It didn’t, however. A few hours later, he half-stirred into wakefulness, aware that his head ached, and so did his chest. Hearts really do ache if you’re really sad, he reflected absently. He then turned his thoughts to the telephone conversion with his mother.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Jonty,” she’d said.
Jonty. The baby form of Jonathan. The one they’d used until his burgeoning sweet tooth, and fondness for a certain nursery rhyme, had caused them to switch to Jack.
Handy Spandy, Jack-a-Dandy,
Loves plum cake and sugar candy.
He bought some at a grocer’s shop,
And out he came, hop, hop, hop.
She probably didn’t even know that rhyme. Her. That other woman. The one who wanted to be his mother. It wasn’t her who’d said it every morning after she’d dressed him, and bounced him up and down on her knee for the ‘hop, hop, hop’ bit. She didn’t know how much he’d liked that. Or how much he loved the woman bouncing him. If she did, she wouldn’t be trying to take him away from her. Or from Daddy. Daddy, who had taught him so many things, and still read to him every night. He missed being read to. He missed Daddy. And Mummy. It was all right being with Auntie Tania, and Uncle Alan, and his cousins, but it wasn’t the same as being home. He had to make things right again. Make them the way they should be. Had to…fix things…
Weariness overtook him and he drifted off again.
Even so, he did not sleep in the next morning. Up before his cousins, he found the adult Marchands sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. His mother had said she would call again, early, so when the telephone rang, he gave his aunt a questioning look and, upon receiving a nod, ran to pick it up.
“Hello, Jonty, love. Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes,” he lied. “How’s Daddy?”
“Much better. He’s sitting up and his colour’s improving. But I’m sure you’d rather hear him tell you that. I’m at the hospital with him now.”
His father added his assurances, but Jack thought his voice sounded strained, even though he was doing his best to make light of things by complaining about the hospital food.
“Won’t let me have hardly anything decent and say I’ll have to be on a special diet once I’m home. Your mother’s promised Doctor Bindal she’ll make me stick to it, so I’ll have to rely on you to slip me the odd cream cake.”
Jack managed a small laugh. He talked to his parents for a while before surrendering the phone to his aunt, trying to lift their spirits as they were trying to lift his. When Paige and Dane got up, he joined them at the breakfast table. No longer obliged to be cheerful, he slumped dejectedly in his seat and displayed no interest in the cereal and toast Mr. Marchand set before them.
“Have to eat something, Jack,” his uncle said gently. “It won’t help your mum and dad if you don’t keep up your strength.”
Jack took a piece of toast, but ate it mechanically, without even putting jam on it.
“I heard it raining in the night,” said Dane. “How’s the creek, Dad?”
“Still high. And more rain’s forecast.” He looked out the window. “I doubt we’ll even get to church and back before it starts coming down.”
After breakfast, the children went down to the family room.
“What do you want to do?” Dane asked Jack.
“Go back.”
“To England?” Dane queried, knowing that probably wasn’t what Jack meant.
“No. Oh, that’s where I want to go, to be with Mummy and Daddy, but like Cousin Ophelia said, you can’t always go where you want
. You have to go where you should be. And we should be back in time, finding that girl.”
Dane sighed resignedly. “Yeah, I know.” He turned to Paige. “Think Mum and Dad will go for another visit to Father Pandosy Mission after church today? Assuming we still go to St. Charles Garnier, and not to a different church.”
“Right now, I think they’ll do just about anything Jack wants.”
She was right, and they did still go to the Catholic church beside Father Pandosy Mission.
Mr. and Mrs. Marchand weren’t enthusiastic about going over to the mission after mass, as, by then, it had begun to rain. They soon gave in, however. They went to look around the Christien House while the children were, purportedly, looking around the Brothers’ House, which Paige told them had been too crowded for Jack to get a good look at the day before.
Today, it was deserted, and seemed a good place for a time transfer.
Anticipating heat, the boys tossed aside the light jackets Mrs. Marchand had made them wear over short sleeved shirts and shorts. Having no idea what kind of attire was appropriate to the era they were currently connected to, modern clothing seemed as suitable a choice as any.
“You’re going to be hot in those jeans,” Dane commented, as Paige folded her jacket and set it down by the door before taking the medallion out from under her blouse.
“Probably, but at least I won’t get my legs scratched up hiking through what could become rough terrain. I see you’ve got your glasses back on. Guess you don’t want to chance losing one of your contacts in the wilderness again, huh?”
“I sure don’t. We were lucky to find it last time.”
They materialized facing in the direction of the creek. Though not as hot as before, it was still a warm day. There was no marmot, or any other type of creature, around this time, but as they moved toward the hills, several figures could be made out in the distance, close to the creek.
Human figures.
Instinctively, Paige ducked down into the tall grass, dragging the boys with her.
“What?” said Dane. “They’re people. We’re looking for people.”
“One person. A girl, who, in our dreams at least, seemed to be waiting for us and presumably isn’t going to be freaked out by us. I wasn’t planning on meeting a whole tribe who have never seen people who look like us. And I’m not talking clothes. I mean skin tone. We’re a few thousand years ahead of the first appearance of white men in these parts.”
Dane pushed some of the grass aside and raised himself up slightly. “There isn’t a whole tribe. Maybe a dozen or so.”
“Currently in sight. That doesn’t mean there aren’t more close by.”
“Do these kind of Indians scalp people?” Jack asked nervously.
“No,” said Dane. “Leastways, I don’t think so. The tribes around here were pretty peaceful. Besides, we’re kids. Even if they’ve never seen anyone who looks like us, they’re not likely to view us as a threat.”
“Maybe,” Paige conceded, “but then comes the next problem. How are we going to talk to them? I remember that ‘way’ means hello, but after that, conversation’s going to drag a bit.”
“I got Mr. Warner to teach me some nsyilxcn words while I was making my dreamcatcher,” Jack disclosed.
“How many?”
“Uh, just two, actually; slaxt, which means ‘friend’, and limlempt—‘thank you’.”
“So you can’t actually say something like, ‘Hi, we’re looking for a girl with some kind of gold jewellery on her head’, and ask if they happen to know her?’”
“No.” He brightened. “But she’s probably over there with them, so it’ll be all right. She’s the Keeper’s Keeper. She’s expecting us.”
“Not here she’s not. In our dreams—in all our dreams—she was up on a ridge.”
“But they might know which ridge,” said Dane. “We have to cross the creek to get to the hills anyway, so unless you want to wait around until they leave, we might as well give it a try. If they turn out to be hostile, you can just say the connecting rhyme.”
They stood up and made their way to the creek. As they got closer, they could see the group consisted of six men, four women, a teenage boy, and three children. The children were naked, the men and the boy clad only in fitted loincloths. Three of the women wore plain garments woven from bark and grasses; the other, who was little more than a girl, had a simple buckskin dress. She was not, however, the girl in their dreams.
Two of the men were standing on small, man-made wooden platforms, the others in the water, or on rocks. All of them were busy with spears, gaffs, and dip nets.
“They’re fishing,” Dane observed. “The salmon must be running.”
The salmon were indeed running. The water was red with them, and the women had already filled several baskets with the day’s catch. At the children’s approach, the entire fishing party suspended operations and watched them intently.
As they came to a halt, Dane held up his hand in what he prayed was not just the movie world’s idea of a friendly gesture. “Way’,” he said.
To his relief, the greeting was returned by all, accompanied by cautious smiles.
“Slaxt’,” Jack added, pointing first to himself, and then the other two.
The smiles got broader. Then a middle-aged man waded out of the creek, handing his gaff to another man as he passed him. When he got to the children, an old woman who had been kneeling on the ground gutting fish stood up and came to stand nearby.
“Slaxt’,” the man, presumably the group’s headman, confirmed.
“Now what?” Paige said to the boys in an undertone.
“We could try sign language,” said Dane. “Not the kind we learned for Dad’s documentary, just gestures and stuff.”
He cupped one hand above his eyes and moved his head back and forth as if looking about. To communicate the idea of a girl, he pointed to Paige and raised his hand a little above her head to signify someone a bit older. He then waved toward all the people watching to show they were looking for a girl like them.
Though they all went on smiling, there was no indication any of them knew what he meant until the old woman stepped forward and tapped the medallion around Paige’s neck. She pointed to the rose on it, and then to her own head.
“Skwkwwilp,” she said decisively. She repeated the word, touching, first, her own mouth, and then their mouths, as though encouraging them to try it.
The nsyilxcn language had several sounds not used in English, so it took even Jack quite a few tries to come up with what, to them, would eventually be ‘Skookaweethp’. Once the old woman found their reproductions satisfactory, she beamed and pointed downstream. She then pointed up into the hills, rotating her hand several times to indicate the girl they were looking for was a long ways off.
“Limlempt,” said Jack.
The old woman and the man both nodded and waved them on their way.
“What do you suppose Skookaweethp means?” Paige asked the boys after they had crossed the creek and were following it along in the direction of the lake. “Rose, maybe? Our language instructor seemed pretty taken with the one on the medallion.”
“Could be,” Dane replied. “Unless it’s the girl’s name.”
“It could be both,” said Jack. “I should think it would be quite fitting for the Keeper’s Keeper to have a name that means rose.”
“Yeah, it would,” Paige agreed.
Once they had wended their way around a bend in the creek, the fishing party was no longer in sight. But something else was. Up on a small hill above them, a large white-tailed deer with magnificent antlers eyed them from beneath a tree. Though unalarmed by their presence, the buck did take a few steps farther up the hill. He then turned, and it seemed to Dane that he was looking to see if they were coming after him.
“I think we should start going up now. He seems to want us to.”
Paige gave her brother a skeptical look. “Really? You sure he didn’t just move because th
e grass tastes better higher up? Following the marmot didn’t get us anywhere.”
“He’s not eating. Just standing there. And the marmot did get us going in this direction.”
They both looked at Jack, who shrugged. “We have to start going up at some point. It might as well be here.”
They had scarcely begun to climb when the deer gave a start, and a raven came swooping down on them, cawing raucously. Paige was in the lead. As she threw her arms up protectively and cast her head down, she saw, just ahead of her, a small patch of ripe berries upon which a dozen or so wasps were feasting. She changed course quickly, but not quickly enough. Determined to defend their feeding ground, they all came at her.
She screamed as they stung, and even though she knew, at the back of her mind, that swatting at wasps tended to incense them further, she could not help doing so.
Jack didn’t know about not swatting, and while Dane did, panic caused him to forget. They both charged in waving their arms and getting stung themselves in the process.
As Paige sunk to her knees, and the boys furiously swatted, Dane became aware that they had been joined by a native youth. The boy clapped his hands, and the wasps either disappeared or dispersed. Dane wasn’t sure which, and at that moment didn’t care. Paige was wheezing and gasping for breath. Her throat was quite obviously constricting and her tongue and lips swelling up alarmingly. In an instant he was beside her, tearing open her fanny pack. He quickly extracted his sister’s adrenaline injector and, in two swift movements, took off the protective cap and plunged the needle end into her thigh.
