Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  I’m warm. I’m loved. I’m going home.

  About Emily Ann Putzke

  Emily Ann Putzke is a young novelist, historical reenactor, and history lover.

  Connect with Emily

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  Other books by Emily Ann Putzke

  It Took a War

  1861 - Sixteen year old Joe Roberts leads a mundane life as far as he’s concerned. His world spins in the same circle each day: working at his family’s store, taking his sisters on boyish escapades and bickering with his rogue of a cousin, Lucas. Joe can’t understand why his mother allows Lucas to live and work with them after all the pain he caused their family. When war is declared, Joe is quick to join up and become a soldier with the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers, but war is nothing like he imagined. To make matters worse, he must endure having Lucas in the same regiment. Can Joe put the pain of the past behind him? Forgiveness is easier said than done.

  Ain't We Got Fun

  It was never much of an issue for Bess: living contentedly on her family’s farm, despite the Depression which loomed around them. But when her older sister Georgiana takes off to New York City to make a fortune and help Papa out, feelings of adventure and wanderlust strike Bess at home. Through their lively letter correspondence, the sisters recount to one another their adventures, surprises, and heartaches, leaving little room for depression. For in a world of such wonder, ain’t we got fun?

  Resist

  Munich, Germany 1942—Hans Scholl never intended to get his younger sister involved in an underground resistance. Hans knows the consequences for their actions—execution for committing high treason—but firm in his convictions, he’s prepared to lose his life for a righteous cause.

  Death Be Not Proud

  Suzannah Rowntree

  I.

  If only I’d had some warning. If only the thing had come the same way a storm from the north comes—racing down the lake faster than a horse can run, the water whipping from glass to silvered whitecaps under its scudding feet. Or if only it had come like a traffic smash, with the screech of brakes and an agonised honk of the horn.

  But there was no warning. No whitecaps, no screech. Just the crisp air of a night in late autumn, the hectic sound of jazz, and Mr. Hunt elbowing his way through the crowd on the dancefloor to lean his knuckles on my table.

  “Ruby?” His voice was breathless, portentous. “There’s a gent over there wants to buy you a drink.”

  By day, the marquee on Roy’s Island hosts a meek teashop, where respectable businessmen and holidaying families pay too much for tea and buns. But on Sunday evenings like this one, most people with a claim to respectability stay home. Paper lanterns bloom on the rafters. Tom Hunt posts a lookout on shore with a covered lantern to signal if the police decide to join us. Big unmarked flasks come up from the still hidden on the north side of the island, the quartet from Oamaru sets up next to the bar, and the singing and dancing gets louder and faster late into the night.

  Usually someone offered to buy me a drink, but not until after I’d sung. I snapped my lipstick shut and lifted an eyebrow. “A ‘gent’? Anyone I know? You know I’m bad with strangers.”

  Beside me, Kat Johnson snorted. “What a liar you are, Ruby. He can buy me a drink if he likes, Tom. Bill Fisher’s getting Ruby an applejack.”

  But Mr. Hunt kept his eyes on me. “He’s over in the far corner,” he said with a jerk of his head, “and I think you’ll find you know him.”

  Just then the band struck a final chord and the couples on the dance floor milled toward their tables, blocking my view of the corner. I threw my handbag onto the table and got up. “Well, he’ll have to wait. This is my number.”

  Mr. Hunt opened his mouth as if to object, but then closed it again. He hurried to the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, she needs no words of introduction. The nightingale of Lake Wanaka: the lovely, the scintillating Miss Ruby Black!”

  The applause and the catcalls ran through my blood like a jolt of electricity, and I slid into the spotlight with a whoop. The band launched into the jaunty melody of If You Knew Susie, but I’d tweaked the words.

  If you knew Ruby, like I know Ruby,

  Oh, oh, oh, what a girl!

  I dance well and sing better. Some less-than-sober voices picked up the tune and shouted it along with me. I finished the first verse and tapped intently, arms swinging, rumpled black bob storming into my eyes, dress flashing sequined and red in the spotlight.

  I was alive.

  It was May, I remember, and though the weather had been glorious for so late in the autumn, and the poplars and larches on the lakeside went on crackling in a dying shower of orange sparks, the summer season was over. A little snow had fallen in the mountains, but the winter skiing would not begin until the weather became more stable. So for the moment there were precious few tourists, and we had our little mountain lake and our little mountain town to ourselves.

  Or so I thought, beating out the rhythm with clattering heels and toes, until somewhere in the second verse—oh what a chassis!—someone moved under the paper lanterns in the far corner. My heart lurched, as if a great hand had snatched it out of my chest and shot it into the icy lake.

  I was amazed to find that I had not missed a single beat, that my song had not faltered. In another moment I was back inside the music, but my voice and feet quickened. The band scrambled to catch up. The music ran through my veins like liquid heat.

  So that was why Tom Hunt spoke in an awestruck whisper.

  I got to the final verse and stepped out of the spotlight, weaving between tables and chairs to appreciative catcalls. Oh, whoah, whoah, what a girl!—The band hit the final chord. I slid to a stop in front of his table and threw the hair back from my face with a flick of my chin.

  “You wanted to buy me a drink, Mr. Moran? Now’s your chance.”

  Everyone stared at us. In the sudden silence, someone squealed, “Oh, gosh!” Celebrities are rare with us this time of year, but if the King himself was touring New Zealand I’d bet his glory would fade before Dunedin’s favourite son. Max Moran, half back for the All Blacks.

  He sat there, staring at me, dumbstruck.

  “Well? I’m all yours.”

  “Have a seat,” he managed. I pulled out the chair opposite his and sank into it, still breathing hard after the number. The band started into another, and some of the attention slid away from us as couples returned to the dance floor. Max Moran went on staring at me, and I couldn’t read his face at all. At close quarters he looked just the way he did in the papers, with a narrow determined face under an unruly thatch of light brown hair. Perhaps a little wider in the shoulders than one expected.

  “Can you spare me a cigarette?” I asked. I’d left my purse with Kat, and I needed some kind of stage business to occupy my hands while he came out of his trance and gathered his wits. But he shook his head.

  “Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Don’t worry, then.” I swivelled in my seat and prodded a shoulder belonging to the next table. “Hey, Jim! Give me a smoke!” The cigarette was at once forthcoming, together with a match to light it, and still Max Moran only stared at me with a faint line between his brows.

  “I liked your singing.” His voice was abrupt.

  “I’m told it’s something.”

  “But I have to wonder. Why waste a voice like yours on popular songs? You’ve obviously had classical training.”

  Marcie Hunt came up at that moment to ask for our order. I said “The usual,” and Max Moran ordered ginger-beer. I shook my head at him.

  “Pembroke may be off the beaten path, Mr. Moran, but she can afford a little hooch. I can recommend the applejack.”

  “Thanks, but I prefer to stay legal.”

  “What a good boy,” I said, and I meant it to sting. All the same, I was relieved when the stone-faced façade cracked in a smile.

  “Maybe. I’ve come to prefer the right side of
the law.” The laughter drained out of him. “You do, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen.”

  He leaned back in his chair, fidgeting with something in his pocket, as Marcie brought my applejack. I shifted my elbows onto the table. “What have you seen, Max Moran?”

  He waited until Marcie put down his ginger-beer and then leaned forward again, his voice dropping. “Do you really not know me?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Your face is all over the papers, Mr. Moran. Of course I know you.”

  “My name is Max. And I’m positive we’ve been over this already. I know it sounds daft, but you look like—you might almost be someone I used to know.”

  “I bet you tell all the girls that.” I watched the smoke curling from the end of my cigarette. “Almost? If not for—what?”

  “That other girl is dead.”

  It came so matter-of-factly that I shivered, and dragged on my cigarette to calm my nerves. “Don’t tell me that. Where are you staying?”

  “The Lakeside Chalet.”

  “That explains it. I’m a maid there. Sometimes I don’t catch the guests’ names. You probably saw me when you arrived.”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “The girl I spoke of, I knew her in Dunedin. Her name was Wu Xue Bai.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “You should; you said you read the papers. Two years back. She was kidnapped by the Irish mob, they say. They ripped out her heart and sent it to her father. She was sixteen. Gifted, by all accounts, but too young to die.” There was the faintest shadow of an Irish lilt in his own voice.

  “I remember. Half Chinese, wasn’t she? Word is her family runs opium. Do I look so much like her?”

  “You look nothing like a schoolgirl,” said Max Moran. He broke the gaze which had kept me pinned with such uncomfortable intensity, and glanced down at his drink. Something in him changed; the dead girl was swept aside and he picked up the glass. “The other reason is that moonshine tastes awful. You aren’t old enough to know the taste of good liquor.”

  “Who says I’m not? I’m older than I look.”

  “You look about eighteen.”

  “Heavens, you whites. I’m twenty-four. Older than you are.”

  “It must be the Chinese blood.”

  “Korean, actually. There’s a difference.” A trained eye can often spot it—Koreans tend to have flatter faces with higher cheekbones—but Max Moran’s eye wouldn’t be trained. Possibly this Xue Bai was the only Asian woman he’d ever known.

  He blinked. “You’re Korean?”

  “A lot of us came out for the gold. Most folks set us down as Chinese.” A breeze drove across the lake and through the trees, and set the marquee lanterns swinging. The slow burn of alcohol and the glow of dancing faded. I shivered and got up, swallowing the last mouthful of applejack.

  “I think Kat Johnson is going to try to get your autograph as soon as I leave. I can see her over there, champing at the bit.”

  A smile. “Then don’t leave. I hate signing things.”

  “It’s cold and I need to get my wrap. But thanks for the drink.”

  “Xue Bai, wait,” he said.

  The words hung in the air. I turned back to him, the hair prickling on the back of my neck.

  “I want to see you again. Tomorrow?”

  “You mean Ruby,” I said, very gently.

  He blinked and leaned back. “Ruby. Forgive me. How stupid.”

  I hesitated, watching him. There was something odd about Max Moran, some razor-sharp focus that unsettled me more than I liked to admit, even to myself. I didn’t for a moment believe he had made a slip of the tongue. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I’m working from nine till late. You’ll see me.”

  But he wouldn’t get the chance to speak to me. That I would see to.

  No one knows how deep Lake Wanaka is. No matter the time of year it is always clear as glass and cold as ice. Clear enough to count the stones on the lakebed as you swim yards above them, even near town where boats are moored and the black scaup-ducks dive for scraps.

  Cold enough, if you swim too long, to kill you.

  Further out, the lake takes on a wonderful greenish-grey colour, something crisper and more mysterious than the sky, the glacial colour of mountain waters.

  Since the first day I came to Pembroke, I have never been able to resist it.

  The Lakeside Chalet was still asleep and the sun only just up when I flung a woollen coat over my bathing suit and went down through scrub and flax to the shore. Ripples the colour of turquoise lapped against the shingle. I kicked off my shoes and tossed my coat onto the gravel, startling a red admiral butterfly from its perch on a nearby piece of driftwood. Further out, the water reflected gold streaks from the sky and honey-coloured specks from stones on the lakebed. Further yet, the sky’s reflection melted into reflections of the mountains near and far: Roy’s Peak above the town, Treble Cone and Black Peak dominating the far horizon, Mount Alta looming on the right.

  I loved the mountains in all their changeable moods. Right now they rose light and airy into a horizon of purple clouds flushed with pink. The snow on their upper slopes took on the colours of that muted sky, so that the mountains themselves seemed clouds.

  Later the sun would wheel into the blue expanse above me and it would be a glorious day, but by then my shift would have started. And the water would be no warmer.

  I stepped into the ripples, treading carefully over the stones of the lakebed. Apart from the plash and wash of small waves on the shore, there was no sound but the faint and far-off hum of a motor. Someone was out early—fishing, perhaps, from Beacon Point further south toward the town. The water reached my thighs and I began to lower myself by easy inches. There is no good rushing this; the body goes into shock if it’s too quickly immersed. When the icy water hit my lower stomach, my breathing quickened involuntarily. Taking long slow breaths to calm my heart and lungs, I went on sinking, snaking my arms gently into the water, wrapping them around my knees.

  I sat in a crouch, the water ringing my neck like a choker, until I began to tingle with warmth. Then I pushed off and began to swim.

  Stay in cold water too long, and you’ll first lose the feeling in your extremities, then die very slowly as your body slows breathing and heartrate to conserve energy, drifting into a sleep from which there may be no return. Stay in just long enough, and you are shocked into wakefulness, warmth, and an exhilarating sense of vitality. My Taoist ancestors, meditating in the dews of winter to cultivate the life force within them, perhaps knew something of this. I could never sit still for very long but I never felt more alive than on chilly mornings like this, in this elixir of a lake. I sprinted out toward the brown bulk of the Peninsula and turned to come in again, feeling worth about a million pounds.

  As I turned I trod water for a moment to take in the view of the shore.

  The Chalet stood under a sombre darkness of pines with a bright fringe of poplars beneath it. Beyond, the low bulk of Mount Iron stood muted and green against the western sky. To the right, Beacon Point and Eely Point blocked my view of the town, but not of little Roy’s Island on the far side of the bay, sleepy and unadorned this morning after last night’s lights and revels. To the left, the lake narrowed and swept into the Clutha River.

  On the shore above the shapeless mound of my coat crouched the black figure of a man. I thought he was going through the pockets. My heart gave an unpleasant lurch. Then he stood and I realised, first, that it wasn’t Max Moran—too short, too broad—and second, that he was watching me.

  Watching, and waiting for my return.

  Perhaps I was mistaken. I turned right, aiming for Beacon Point, and struck out in a long, scrambling crawl. The point was half a mile off at the far end of a shallow bay. As I gasped for air between strokes, I got brief watery glimpses of the shore and of the black, Homburg-hatted silhouette of the stranger moving along the bank to keep pace with me.

  Once more I stopped and waited, treading water.
/>   The stranger on the bank also waited.

  This was ridiculous. I should swim in now and ask him what the blazes he was doing pawing my things. For a moment I nearly did. He was probably just a passerby on his way to town. Vulgarly curious. Or a vagabond in search of spare change or cigarettes.

  A pretty idiot I would look if it turned out to be a benevolent stranger thinking to return a lost coat.

  Or if it turned out to be a dangerous lunatic bent on murder.

  I took a deep breath and dove, then turned in the water, altering my course again for the Chalet. I crawled as far as my lungs would take me and then broke surface gasping for air. Opposite on the bank the stranger hadn’t moved, but when he saw me he started back up the path to intercept me.

  At that I must have lost my head entirely. It seemed suddenly impossible to return to the shore. I twisted in the water, close to panic, and saw the towering brown slopes of the Peninsula.

  The big spur of a hill, barren and pathless, practically an island, the Peninsula reaches from the east shore of Lake Wanaka toward the mouth of the Clutha. To reach it, my pursuer must either follow me across the lake, or walk for miles by shore, or sprout wings and fly.

  It was not above half a mile across open water from the Lakeside Chalet. In desperation, I turned and struck out for it. At the time, the thought did not seem so wild. The Peninsula seemed to offer safety, and in that panicked moment, with the blood still running hot and fast in my veins, I forgot how little time I had before the lake leeched all the life from me.