Snowfire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I hurried my steps, picking up this change of subject. “What is Shan like?”

  “Oh—different from me. Different from anyone. She loves the woods. In the wintertime she doesn’t stick to paths. She wanders all over. Do you know the story of Undine? Shan read it to me once. I think she’s like that. Only she belongs to the woods, not to the water. Clay says she’s a dryad. He says mortals can’t live with dryads. Sometimes I—I’m afraid of her. I don’t want to turn into a tree.”

  “How did your mother feel about her?”

  “My mother didn’t think about her at all. Not unless Shan did something she didn’t like.”

  “What a curious thing to say,” I ventured. “I mean, to live in the same house with someone and never think about her. I don’t believe that’s possible.”

  “It was for Margot.” Again Adria’s voice had hardened. “When I was little, I guess she thought mainly about my father and going to all those fancy places and wearing beautiful clothes. My father is rich, though not as rich as Shan. But after Margot was hurt in the car accident she never thought of anyone but herself. Even Shan says that. And, of course, of getting even with my father.”

  These were sadly mature thoughts for a little girl of eight.

  “Do you really believe that’s true?” I asked.

  She scuffed along beside me, kicking at the snow. After a moment she shook her head. “No. Margot thought about me too. I know she did. But she wasn’t angry with me then, the way she is now.”

  It was my turn to dart a look at the child. She was staring calmly ahead, indifferent to my response, talking almost to herself.

  “Now of course she’s furious. Because she knows what I did.”

  “If she knows, Adria—that is, if there’s anything to know—she’s more forgiving now. I don’t think you need to worry.”

  Her tone grew a little frantic. “Shan says people can come back, you know. Especially those who die violently. Shan has seen that ancestor who threw himself from the tower of Graystones. She’s seen him on the tower stairs a few times. And she says Cinnabar—”

  She broke off, as though realizing she had said too much, and hurried ahead of me along the path, rejecting me as though I’d suddenly become dangerous to her. I could see why Julian was disturbed over the effect Shan must be having on the child. But I dared not argue against Shan. I must do nothing which would put Adria further away from me.

  “Cinnabar came to see me last night,” I told her.

  She whirled about on the path. “She did? How did she behave?”

  Now I recognized the reason for the feminine pronoun, and I could have shaken Shan for putting this idea of reincarnation into Adria’s mind.

  “The cat was on my bed when I went up to my room last night. It didn’t seem pleased to see me. When I suggested leaving, it walked out of my room. I wonder how it got there in the first place?” I found it difficult to keep saying “it,” but I had to tread with caution.

  Adria pulled doubtfully at a strand of black hair that hung over one shoulder. “That’s very queer, isn’t it? After she had to be in a wheelchair and the farmhouse was turned into a lodge, Margot never went there. So last night she must have wanted to see you about something. I expect she can walk right through closed doors, if she wants to.”

  This was going too far and I had to object. “Adria dear, the cat is only Cinnabar. I think perhaps Shan put him on my bed. Though I don’t know the answer to that either.”

  But I had lost her. She flung away from me and ran toward the house, which was coming into view ahead. I followed her slowly, feeling more disturbed than ever. Increasingly, I was drawn to this tragic child, yet I was torn because my first loyalty must be to Stuart, and if Adria had really had anything to do with her mother’s death, the truth that would save Stuart had to come out. At what cost to a haunted eight-year-old? It was as if there were walls all around, pressing me in.

  As I walked toward the house, the sight of its stark tower and cold stone chilled me all over again. Graystones seemed a place dedicated to death and tragedy, and I felt a reluctance to set foot inside its walls.

  Adria was nowhere in sight when I rang the bell beneath the arch of the front door.

  This time a maid let me in—a cheerful young girl from the village, who was apparently expecting me, and whose informality might have given earlier residents of the house a turn.

  “You’re Miss Earle, aren’t you? Come on in. Mr. McCabe’s in the library over there, waiting for you.”

  She wasn’t going to announce me, but this time I knew the way. I thanked her and went to the open door. Julian sat in an easy chair with a magazine on his knees, his dark head with its wings of gray bent over the pages he studied. Beyond him, the door to Margot’s room was no longer locked, but stood open a crack. When Julian saw me and stood up, dropping the magazine to a table, I noted the photograph of a skier on its cover. A devotion to skiing was something I would never understand, but I was well acquainted with it, thanks to Stuart. Today I could even pity Julian a little because of all he had lost. But today he no longer seemed the dark, dynamic presence I had glimpsed in a mirror last night, and I was glad to have that image dispelled.

  He smiled at me gravely. “Thanks for coming, Linda. You don’t mind if I call you that?”

  “Clay tells me it’s the ski thing,” I said lightly.

  He overlooked my false flippancy. “I saw Adria come running in just now. Did you meet her on the way here?”

  I nodded. “Yes. She was telling me about Cinnabar. I tried to tell Adria that Cinnabar is only a cat, but she ran away from me.”

  A tight look pressed whiteness about his mouth again, but he said nothing.

  As if he had heard his name, the big orange animal slipped through the crack of open door from Margot’s room and strolled leisurely into the library. Julian looked a little sick.

  “I’ve got to lock up that room for good. Shan keeps putting the cat in there.” He watched while Cinnabar crossed the library, indifferent to our presence, and leaped onto a window seat, where he began to wash himself.

  “I think she put him into my room at the lodge last night,” I said. “What is she trying to accomplish?”

  “I’m not sure. Shan’s motivations are never exactly obvious. But she may be wary of any friendship between you and Adria that might shut her out. My sister has been taking care of Adria from the time when she was very small.”

  “Your wife permitted that?” I said, venturing.

  He got up and closed the door to Margot’s room. It was as if he closed the door upon my questions.

  “How did it go with you at the lodge last night?” he asked as he turned to me. “Did you have any trouble with your duties?”

  He was not, I realized, making idle conversation. He was curious about me, probing lightly.

  “Clay seemed to think I was all right,” I said. “You have a pleasant group of people coming to the lodge. Perhaps I’ll be more at ease tonight.”

  “I keep wondering why you’ve sought out this sort of work. Why this instead of a law office?”

  “I love the country,” I said readily. That was true enough.

  “I suppose I can accept that, since the country is my own choice.”

  “You’re lucky to be able to choose,” I told him.

  I wished I could be more at ease with Julian McCabe. I’d been thrust with strange intimacy into life at Graystones—for reasons he could not guess—and I found it hard to relax and behave naturally with any of them.

  “It’s too bad Shan has never married and had children of her own,” I went on, still venturing. “Then she wouldn’t be focusing so exclusively on Adria.”

  My timing couldn’t have been worse. Shan herself came through the door from the hall at that instant, and she had heard my words.

  She was floating in chiffon again—this time pale watercress green over brightly flowered pants, and with several strings of beads hanging about her neck. I was reminded
of a hippie dressed by a couturier. Her gray-green eyes turned in my direction and there was no liking in them, though her manner was one of amusement when she spoke in her low, beautiful voice.

  “But of course I’ve been married, Miss Earle. I was married several years before Adria was born. Unfortunately, I had to—dissolve the attachment, and I took my own name again afterward. But we don’t talk about that I’ve forbidden it. As for my focusing on Adria—who else would, if I hadn’t? Not her mother, certainly. And her father was away a lot every winter. Not that I have to explain any of this. Adria is my child. Possession and all that.”

  Her tone was gentle, as though she explained something to someone immature and not entirely bright. She relaxed into a chair and regarded me with interest, waiting for my reaction. I couldn’t have been in a more awkward and self-defeating spot, and I was grateful to Julian for coming to my rescue.

  “Of course we’ve been discussing you,” he told her. “What is happening to Adria can’t go on. Miss Earle has had some experience with disturbed children—which Adria is on the way to becoming. But more important than experience is her natural instinct to take the right course with Adria. I think we must make use of this if Miss Earle is willing. In any case, there must be no more of your putting fantasies about her mother into Adria’s head, Shan.”

  His sister remained undisturbed. She noticed the cat on the window sill, still busy with his toilet, and snapped her fingers at him.

  “Cinnabar, come here! Come, Cinnabar! You belong in on this fascinating discussion.”

  Cinnabar stood up and stretched rather haughtily. Then he sprang from the window sill and padded across the room to leap into Shan’s lap. She laughed softly, huskily, and he pricked up his ears at the sound.

  “You see?” Shan said to her brother. “Cinnabar is listening. What you were saying is important to us, isn’t it, Cinnabar?” Her fingers scratched the cat gently between the ears, and he began to purr, the sound deep as a boiling kettle. He was entirely indifferent to the emotions around him, concerned only with his own pleasure. As Margot had been? I wondered wryly.

  But Julian had had enough of the cat. He moved to pluck Cinnabar from Shan’s lap and put him firmly into the hall. Then he closed the library door with a slam and stood with his back to it, as though the cat might somehow come through again in spite of him.

  “You’ve got to stop this, Shan! I won’t have you playing this terrible game with Adria. You’re terrifying her. I’ve turned to Miss Earle because I’m at my wit’s end.”

  There was a tense silence. Shan bent her head like a child who has been reprimanded. This time he had reached her, and I saw the shine of tears before she closed her eyes.

  I put my prodding question gently in the long silence. “Miss McCabe, do you believe Adria actually pushed her mother’s chair down that ramp?”

  Julian stiffened, and Shan’s head came up as she stared at me with a pale resentment that seemed all the more deadly for being contained in a veil of gentleness. “I haven’t any doubt of it. Though none of this is any business of yours.”

  “But then what about this young man who’s being held in jail and will be brought to trial? Are you going to sacrifice him to protect Adria?”

  “Of course!” Shan cried. “I’m not going to tell anyone else that I think Adria might have pushed that chair. Do you think I want to destroy her? I only want to comfort her, help her.”

  Her indifference to Stuart’s plight made me reckless. “Do you think it comforts her to believe her mother has come back in the form of a cat to torment her?”

  Shan’s eyes were wide with innocence. “But, Miss Earle—what if it’s true?”

  Julian started to shout at her, and then stopped himself. I wanted to shout at her myself.

  Julian flung up his hands in despair. “We don’t need to discuss any of this, Linda. The problem is Adria and her own self-torture. Which you’ve helped to inflict on her, Shan. There’s no getting away from that.”

  “I’ve inflicted nothing on her!” Now Shan’s outrage was anything but pale. “She came running to me on the stairs that day and she said her mother was screaming because she’d hurt her. What else is there to believe?”

  “What I want to believe,” Julian said more quietly, “is that Stuart Parrish went into that room and pushed Margot’s chair. What I want to believe is that the right man is sitting in that jail.”

  I almost cried out a denial, barely managing to hold it back.

  “I know what you want to believe,” Shan said. “And I think that’s just fine. Though sometimes I wonder what Stuart thinks of you. After all, you were supposed to be his friend. You brought him into your house. You trained him to the point where he was about to become a champion. Because you could no longer be a champion! Yet because Emory makes wild claims, you drop Stuart and refuse to go near him. He’s had too much pride to ask you for help. He’s never made a move in your direction since you dropped him, but I wonder what he thinks.”

  This was an unexpected championing and I was momentarily grateful to Shan. I could have told them both what Stuart thought. I could have told them that he still believed Julian would come to his aid. But once more I could not speak out. I knew now that my first instinct had been right, and that Julian would do nothing to help my brother.

  I looked up from the clenched hands in my lap and found his eyes gravely upon me. “We’re upsetting Miss Earle, Shan. Linda, I’m sorry. But perhaps it’s a good thing for you to see the strain we’re under just now. Perhaps you’ll forgive us for our impossible behavior and recognize our need where Adria is concerned.”

  With an effort I kept my voice from quivering. “If I’m to be of any use I need to know more than I do. Why did Adria and her mother quarrel that day?”

  Now Julian was impatient with me. “What does it matter? Let’s not dredge up old troubles. They often argued. The only thing we need remember is that Adria adored her mother, no matter how rebellious she might be at times.”

  Shan was watching me and she paid no attention to her brother’s words. “I’ve always wanted to know the answer to that question myself—but Adria has never been willing to talk about it, if she even remembers. Which I doubt.”

  We were all silent for a few moments. Julian’s attitude, and the emotions which drove him, were at last coming clear to me. He longed to believe that Adria hadn’t pushed Margot’s chair, and that Stuart was guilty. He wanted as a father to do everything possible to save his child. Yet when he looked at her, some dreadful gorge rose in him, and he saw her as the instrument of Margot’s death—and he still loved Margot. He couldn’t believe in Stuart’s guilt, as he wanted to, and he felt a little guilty about this. Here was something I might be able to take advantage of when the chance came my way. I hated the person I was becoming—always calculating, always ready to snatch at the easy chance. I didn’t want to be like this—and yet it was necessary.

  There was no further discussion because at that moment Adria opened the door and came into the library. She had put on a dress of the same watercress green that matched Shan’s chiffon, and as she entered the room she glanced from one to another of us knowingly—a child who was all too aware of the adult emotions surging stormily around her.

  “Were you having a fight?” she asked sweetly. “Daddy, you do look mad. And Shan’s going to cry.” She looked at me, her eyes appraising. “Miss Earle looks as though she might go off like a firecracker.”

  “And you,” I said coolly, “are a little girl who hasn’t yet grown up enough to understand that other people besides yourself have feelings.”

  Shan gasped softly, but Julian said nothing. I was aware of the way he watched me. Surprisingly, Adria came to stand beside my chair.

  “You don’t really like me, do you?” she said, clearly interested, as though I were a novelty she had never experienced.

  “Not all the time,” I told her, smiling to soften my words. “Though sometimes I do—very much.”

&n
bsp; She gave me her most winning smile in return and spoke triumphantly to her father, as though she had scored a point. “Daddy, I’ve invited Miss Earle to come skiing with us this afternoon. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” he said stiffly. “If Miss Earle wishes.” But I could not tell by his face whether he wished it or not.

  “I’m not very good on skis,” I warned him. “I’m not even intermediate. You’ll both be impatient with me. But I’ll go to the slopes with you, if Adria would like that. Then you can ski off on your own and pick me up when you’re ready to go home.”

  Adria regarded me with a kindly air. “Don’t worry—we’ll teach you how to ski better. It’s fun to be good, you know. And Daddy—is it all right if I call her Linda? She’s a friend, isn’t she?”

  Shan made a sound of displeasure, rejecting such intimacy, but Julian smiled in rather touching relief.

  “Yes, Adria, Linda is your friend. And I don’t think we have to be Victorian.”

  At least we had relaxed to some extent and left dangerous topics behind. If Shan was not pleased with this new turn she seemed to recover herself sufficiently to behave more pleasantly toward me, and the climate had changed by the time we went into the dining room for lunch. The change was welcome. My nerves felt raw from irritation, and I could sense Julian’s inner torment all too well.

  I found this room the pleasantest in the downstairs area. It was light with apple-green wallpaper, and the furniture had the grace of good Duncan Phyfe. The mantel was of veined pink marble with figures of Chelsea porcelain set upon it. Below, a wood fire burned, giving additional light and life to the room. Julian sat at the head of the long table, with me on his right and Shan at the far end. Adria was across from me, and she seemed unexpectedly bent upon charming me, coaxing me to like her. I did not trust her at all, yet something in me yearned over her. Her own bravura attitude gave her away. She was a lost little figure, for all that she was surrounded by Shan’s doting and her father’s tortured concern. Perhaps my directness was good for her. I mustn’t capitulate to the point of foolish indulgence as the others had done. Someone needed to pull her back into the real world. I thought of Stuart and his gay confidence in Julian, his assurance that his predicament was more amusing than frightening, so that he was not trying to fight as he should. A wavering glimpse reached me of some similarity between Adria and Stuart, even though they were so different, but it was no more than a flash and I could not see it clearly or understand its meaning for me. Mainly I felt a growing urge to uncover the real Adria buried beneath the levels of artificial charm and frightening emotion. I had the feeling that she could be an attractive, happy, intelligent child, granted the opportunity. What had to be discovered, no matter how great the cost, was the truth about the pushing of that chair.