Fog Magic
Page 8
“Father, I must go back for a minute. I—left my sweater,” Greta said. Her father gave her a long look.
“Must you?” he asked. Greta didn’t answer. Would he offer to go back with her? Would he tell her to leave her sweater? That she could come back in the daytime for it? After a long pause, he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Run back and get it, Greta. But remember it’s late. Don’t stay long tonight. I’ll wait for you below at the Ezra Knoll.”
Greta watched him out of sight. She stood perfectly still where she was until the fog reached her. Then she turned and ran back over the road she had come. She had never been over here quite so late before, but the lateness only made it more exciting. At the entrance into the clearing, she stopped. It was there! The fog that could blot out and take away scenes and landmarks could also give them back. It had given her back the village of Blue Cove!
A light in every house, blurred and uncertain, but warm and friendly, marked the curve of the familiar little street. Homely sounds, a dog barking, the distant closing of a door came to her muffled in the fog. But there was no sound of the foghorn; that had ceased. She ran along the gravel path to Mrs. Morrill’s door, and stepped into the kitchen. Mrs. Morrill turned in surprise.
“Why, Greta! How late, child, for you to be here! But I’m glad to see you—always,” she added.
“We’ve been having our church picnic over south of the beach,” Greta explained. “And then the fog came in —and the others have gone on. But I—I had to come back. And oh, Mrs. Morrill, it’s my twelfth birthday today!”
“Your twelfth birthday, my dear!” Mrs. Morrill looked aghast for a moment, but she added quickly, “Well, I might have known it would come sooner or later. Has it been a happy day?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” Greta told her, “and especially now that I could come here for a minute, even if I can’t stay. I wanted to see you today—terribly.”
Mrs. Morrill gave her the slow, steady smile that was as reassuring, as trustworthy as the ray of light from a lighthouse.
“Retha will be sorry she missed you. She’s gone up the shore a way with her father. They’ll be home soon but you mustn’t wait. And, Greta, child, I am glad, too, to have you come in on your twelfth birthday. I have a present for you. But I want especially to wish you ‘safe passage.’ ”
“‘Safe passage?’ But—but that’s what you say when —when people go off on a voyage!”
“You are starting on a voyage, Greta! The happiest voyage in the world—the voyage into your ’teens. But I mustn’t let you stay tonight. Wait here, child, while I get the present I have for you.”
Greta stood in the middle of the kitchen drinking in its warmth, its friendliness. Her eyes rested on one familiar thing after another; the corner cupboard with the two egg cups side by side in the center of the lower shelf like a baby’s first teeth; Grandfather Tidd’s glowing dinner plate behind them; the stand before the window with its pots of heliotrope and rose geraniums, and the red and gold lacquered box that held Laura Morrill’s sewing; the conch shell for a doorstop; the ship model on the shelf; the black screen with the strange gold birds that stood before the couch. These were things she knew as you could only know the things you had dusted and handled; she would never forget them because the feel of them would always linger in her hands.
When Mrs. Morrill came back, she put into Greta’s hands a little gray Persian kitten. “Princess would like you, to have one of her kittens to take home,” she said.
The tiny soft thing snuggled sleepily into Greta’s arms. It was as gray and as gentle as a breath of fog, but it brought only dismay to Greta. She remembered the piece of strawberry pie that Mrs. Morrill had given her on the day of her very first visit. What would happen?
“Must I—must I take it?” she asked. There were tears in her eyes and it was hard to keep her voice steady.
“You’ll always be glad you did, Greta, and you’ll love her. Now, my dear—” She opened the door. Greta forgot she was twelve and almost grown up. She threw herself, kitten and all, into Mrs. Morrill’s arms and clung to her like a much smaller girl than she was. Then she stumbled out into the fog.
“Safe passage,” Mrs. Morrill said quietly, “safe passage for all the years ahead!” She gave Greta a last smile and sent her, comforted and confident, on her way. Greta stopped only long enough to pick up her sweater and wrap it around the kitten. She turned up the Old Road toward home without once looking back.
Beyond Old Man Himion’s, Walter Addington stood waiting. Greta held up the kitten for him to see. “Can I keep it? I—I mean, will it keep?” She almost whispered the words.
Father reached into his pocket and when he pulled out his hand he kept it closed for a minute. The kitten reached out an impudent little paw and slapped at his closed fist. Father looked at the kitten and laughed. “All right,” he said and opened his hand wide. On his palm lay an odd little knife. The kitten reached for it, but Father drew his hand back. “I suppose you think you’ve a right to it,” he said, “but you’re wrong. I’ve had that knife since my twelfth birthday and I aim to keep it as long as I live. No wisp of a kitten is going to bat it down a crack in the rocks and lose it for me.”
Greta caught her breath. “Did you get it at Blue Cove, Father?” she asked.
Her father nodded. “On my twelfth birthday.”
Greta thought he wasn’t going to say anything more but after a while he began again.
“I think you’ll keep your kitten,” he said at last very slowly. “On your twelfth birthday, Greta, you grow up, and you put away childish things. Sometimes you’ll wish you hadn’t because you put behind you so many things—happy and unhappy. But the next twelve years can be happier still, my girl, and the twelve after that. And try to remember this—none of the things you think you’ve lost on the way are really lost. Every one of them is folded around you—close.”
“Then tomorrow there’ll only be cellar holes—and always, from now on?” she asked slowly. Her father seemed to understand.
“Cellar holes, yes. But cellar holes and spruce thickets, and rocks piled high. Old Fundy beating on the shore, clouds blowing overhead, and the gulls mewing. The grandest spot of land on the continent—and your homeland. And back here on this side of the mountain there’ll be a gray wisp of fur waiting to purr for you. This kitten should bring you a line of kittens that’ll last as long as my knife,” he ended.
Whether the magic lay in Father’s words or in his understanding Greta did not know. But she felt her heart grow light. “I’ll call her Wisp,” she said happily, “because she’s like the tiny wisps of fog that are left behind in shaded corners of the rocks, sometimes, when the sun burns off the rest. And, Father, your knife and my kitten—it’s fun, isn’t it, to have them and to know?”
“To know?” her father smiled. “Yes, it’s fun, Greta, and all that lies ahead can be fun, too—the growing and the living.”
“I’m glad I’m twelve and growing up,” Greta thought, “no matter what I have to give up. But I’m going back over the mountain. All my life I’m going back to Blue Cove. I’ll take Wisp and her kittens, and their kittens forever and forever. And I’ll let them play in the cellar holes and nap on the stone doorsteps of Blue Cove.”
She slipped her arm through her father’s. With the kitten held close, they walked down the Old Road through the fog toward the lights of Little Valley and the years ahead.
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