The Book of Dreams

by O. R. Melling

  By the time the bus stopped in Creemore, Dana had stopped thinking in circles about the quest and had returned, instead, to daydreaming about Jean.

  “Look at you, smiling away!” Gran Gowan said as Dana stepped from the bus. “We’re going to have great fun together!”

  • • •

  At her grandmother’s house, Dana discovered that her day was booked. A heap of pumpkins spilled over the kitchen table, surrounded by bags of flour, pie plates, rolling pins, and spices.

  “I got the pumpkins from the Hamilton Brothers since the Farmers’ Market is shut. Some of these will be jack-o’-lanterns,” Gran Gowan said, sorting out the biggest pumpkins. “If they don’t get smashed by hooligans, I’ll make soup, scones, and muffins out of them after Halloween. It’s a wicked waste to throw out a pumpkin without using it for something.”

  Dana was happy to bake. Her grandmother had often promised to show her how to make pumpkin pie. Though Gabe was a good cook, pastry-making was in a league beyond him.

  “Of all the cooking skills, this is the one you have to be taught,” Gran insisted. “The battle is won from the start with technique and confidence.”

  Dana knew she was learning from the best.

  “Pastry dough can tell if you’re afraid of it,” Gran continued, “and if you are, it’ll play up! You’re a Gowan. Stand strong. Show it you’re the boss, but not with an iron hand. That never works, not in pastry nor politics. The true sign of mastery is a light hand. Now, we start with good flour, none of that self-raising nonsense. There’s something just plain wrong with flour that raises itself.”

  She sifted the flour from a height above the table and added a pinch of salt. Then the real work began.

  “Everything must be cool, including yourself,” said Gran. “Open the window if the room gets hot or steamy. Margarine and butter will have to do for the fat, as I’m guessing you and Radhi won’t take lard. Pinch it in with your fingers. Softly. Softly. And speedily. The less you handle it, the better.”

  Lost in a mist of flour, Gran sprinkled and stirred and made up the dough. Move for move, Dana matched her actions till each was wrapping her own bundle in foil.

  “Let it rest for half an hour in the fridge while we prepare the pumpkins.”

  This piece of work was messy but fun. They cut off the tops of the pumpkins and scooped out the orange gloop clotted with seeds. Being an easier job, it didn’t demand concentration and freed Gran Gowan to vent her mind.

  “Of course I’m over the moon about it,” she said.

  “Radhi will make a wonderful mother and it’s about time they started on a family, those two. I just don’t appreciate being the last to know.”

  “He planned to tell you at Thanksgiving, Gran, but then we didn’t come. He wanted to tell you in person.”

  “Hmph.”

  The pumpkins were chopped into chunks and the leathery rind hacked away. Rough and malleable like turnip, the pale flesh was cut into cubes and boiled till soft. Then they mashed it into a mix with Gran’s ingredients.

  “Sweetened condensed milk, that’s the trick,” said Gran, “along with brown sugar, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. This is a melt-in-your-mouth recipe, a Gowan specialty.”

  It was time to roll out the pastry.

  Gran Gowan held her rolling pin like a sword. Beside her, the knight’s page, Dana wielded the dredger.

  “Use it liberally,” Gran ordered, “on anything that looks like it’s sticking. Not on the dough, mind you. Never on the dough! Shake it on the pin or the pastry board. Here, you do one. Roll gently, gently—yes! you’ve got the knack!—now roll it right onto the pin. Good, now unroll it on top of the tin and press it in.”

  They worked for hours. Pie after pie went into the oven till the kitchen was filled with the sweet musky scent of baked pumpkin.

  “There has to be enough to go around,” Gran explained. “We’ll freeze a batch for Halloween, then give the rest away. There’s your family, the girls, Mrs. Mumford up the road who’s too blind to bake anymore, Mr. Nalty who just loves my pumpkin pie …”

  At last they were sitting down, exhausted but pleased, with cups of tea and scones in front of them.

  “So, I hear there’s a boyfriend?”

  When Dana didn’t respond right away, Gran fixed her with a stare.

  Dana knew what the look meant. She would have to surrender some information about Jean. After all, she owed her grandmother. The Triumph Herald was once again in the driveway, shining like new since its restoration, paid for by Gabriel of course. Since the night it was damaged, not a word had been uttered about the incident. “Grandchildren are forgiven far more quickly than children,” was Aunt Yvonne’s assessment. But there was a price for everything, even forgiveness.

  Dana mumbled. “He’s a … a friend … from school … a boy … friend.”

  Gran raised her eyebrow, noting the faint flush. “Hmph. And your boy ‘friend’ is French, I believe?”

  “Oui. I mean, yes.”

  “Roman Catholic, I suppose?”

  “Gran!”

  “Well, they all are, aren’t they? I’m just saying what I’m saying. No need to get all het up about it. I married one myself, didn’t I? It’s in your blood, that’s all. The Faolan streak.”

  It was an ideal opportunity to mention Jean’s arrival the next day, but Dana couldn’t do it. She was so used to keeping everything about him a secret, she could hardly bear to mention his name out loud. It didn’t help that her grandmother was not the most sensitive of confidantes.

  “Tell me about Granda Faolan,” Dana said instead, creating a diversion.

  “That Irish charmer.” Gran sighed. She took a sip of her tea, smiled to herself. “I was in trouble the moment I clapped eyes on him.”

  Dana grinned. As well as changing the subject, it was a story she loved to hear.

  “I was thirty-two years old at the time. Though I was a beauty in my day, if I do say so myself, it looked to be that I would stay a spinster. For one thing, there wasn’t a man in the town that had caught my eye except young John Giffen, and he died in a car crash along with any hopes I had of marrying him. The family home was mine, even though it meant looking after Mother, who was in her seventies and cantankerous as a bag of cats. Father had died five years before, being a lot older than her. My two brothers were gone, one to ranch in Alberta, the other out east in Halifax with the Navy. I had a close circle of friends, did a lot of charity work, and was active in the Daughters of the Eastern Star. Didn’t have to work, as Father had invested wisely. You could say my life was proceeding in a pleasant and orderly fashion.

  “Then he showed up. Like a tumbleweed blowing down the main street. A real spanner in the works, that handsome Irishman with a tongue like honey. He was a poet and a painter, pretty successful with portraits, and he could do a fine sign. ‘Looking for a quiet place in the country,’ he said, didn’t like ‘the urban milieu.’ Had a real way with words, that man. He rented rooms in the boardinghouse where the bookshop is now. He said the first day he walked up the street and looked around the town, he fell in love with it right away and told himself, ‘I belong here. This is my home. I’m going to settle here.’ Not long after that thought occurred to him—about five or ten minutes, he always maintained—he spotted me across the street, coming out my front door, and he said to himself, ‘And there’s the girl I’m going to marry.’”

  Dana sighed. It was so romantic.

  “He courted me shamelessly from that very day, starting right there on the sidewalk in front of this house, asking me questions, calling me ‘darlin’.’ What was my name? Did I have a beau? He just clean swept me off my feet with all his Irish blarney.

  “I knew he was a Roman Catholic, you can always tell by the look of them, though he didn’t practice his religion. He was a Freethinker, as we’d say. There’s been Irish Catholics in Creemore right from the start, but not a whole lot. We’ve always been a Protestant town. True-blue Orange. Di
dn’t the Hall go up before the church? Still, none of that mattered to me one whit. Lost the head altogether.

  “The town was scandalized and I was coming close to disgracing the family entirely. The only way to end the scandal was to marry him. So I did. Once he promised we’d marry in my church and I wouldn’t be raising any Romans. Mind you, I was to regret that decision years later. Your aunts could’ve done with a good, strict convent school. They turn girls out like ladies, if the Dowlings and the Delaneys are anything to go by.” She shook her head ruefully. “Might’ve put some manners on my two.

  “Though the marriage was the talk of the town, the dust settled in time. He had married a daughter of one of the oldest and most respected families, they didn’t have much choice but to accept him. And he won over the last of the die-hards himself. He was devoted to the village, did a lot of good work, even helped me organize the Trillium picnics. A hardworking man.” Gran sighed sadly. “He had a big heart, like Creemore itself, but not a strong one. When he died too young, too soon, the whole town turned out for his funeral.”

  Dana heard the sorrow which time had made easier yet could never remove. She reached out to touch her grandmother’s hand. Across the years and the generations, they smiled at each other.

  “He used to write me love poems,” she said softly.

  “So, the artists are on the Faolan side,” Dana observed. “That’s where Gabe and the aunts got it from?”

  “I wouldn’t say that entirely. Didn’t your Great-great-grandfather Gowan write the Book of Dreams?”

  Dana was so utterly dumbfounded, she couldn’t speak at first. Then at last she managed. “What … what did you say about … the … Book of Dreams?”

  “Your great-great-granddaddy wrote it. Thomas Gowan. Fancied himself a bit of an author, he did. A bit of a ne’er-do-well, more like, in his early days that is. Must’ve broken his mother’s heart. He didn’t settle down till after she died. He traveled all over the country in his youth, collecting stories, having adventures. Then he did settle, of course, and became one of the pillars of the early Creemore community.”

  Dana could hardly breathe. “Was his book published?”

  “Not at first. He was writing it most of his life, from the time he was young. He emigrated from Ireland with the rest of his family when he was eighteen years old. They were cleared at Grosse Île, where so many died, and journeyed on to Ontario. That’s how we came to be one of the first families in Creemore. Anyways, the book was his diary; his journal I guess you should call it, seeing as he was a man.

  “He decided to publish it when he was seventy-three. Age meant nothing to my granddaddy. Didn’t he build this house in 1901, four years later? He paid to have the book printed up at the offices of the Mad River Star. Limited edition, but it sold pretty well. They even did a second printing as there was a lot of people liked it. But it didn’t go far outside the community. Truth is, he wasn’t much of a writer. Just had a lot of good stories to tell.”

  Taking a deep breath, Dana asked the crucial question: “Do you have a copy?”

  The suspense was dreadful. Hope hovered in the air like a hummingbird.

  “Don’t know about any copies.” Gran Gowan shook her head. “They all got ruined or lost here and there.”

  The hummingbird darted away. Of course not. That would be too easy.

  “But we’ve got the original handwritten version right here in the house. His journal, that is. It was passed down along with the jewelry, china, and linen. Precious heir-looms and family history go together. I thought maybe we should give it to the museum in Toronto, it being part of our pioneer history, but your great-grandfather, my father, was very strict about that. He said his father told him in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t to go outside the family. He wrote it for the ones to come. It’s somewhere up there in the attic, wrapped in tissue paper and safely stored away in a trunk.”

  Dana had to use all her willpower not to race out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the little door on the top landing that led to the attic. How she managed to stay in her seat and finish her tea, she would never know. Her mind was reeling. Could it really be the book she was looking for? The title could hardly be a coincidence! But how could it be a human thing? How could a book written by her mortal ancestor contain a fairy secret? She had to find out. She had to know the truth.

  Gran Gowan saw the look on Dana’s face and cut her off before she could open her mouth.

  “Don’t even think about it. Not at this hour. You can hunt it out in the morning. Trying to find anything in that attic is like looking for a needle in a haystack, believe me. And it’s already well past your bedtime.”

  Her grandmother was right. The hour was late. They had spent the entire day baking pies and then cleaning up after them. Though Dana could hardly bear the thought, she would have to be patient. And wait till Jean heard about this!

  Dana kissed her grandmother good night and headed upstairs to her bedroom. There was a moment when she stood on the landing and considered sneaking up to the attic. She decided against it. She couldn’t risk getting caught, not after the Triumph Herald fiasco. She would just have to wait until morning.

  Despite her excitement about finding the book, Dana fell asleep easily in the big bed with the lilac quilt. Outside, the streets of Creemore were dim and quiet.

  That night, she had a dream.

  She stood amongst a crowd on a large ship, waiting to disembark. Everyone was dressed in old-fashioned clothes. She wore a long skirt of homespun fabric and a bonnet on her head. The passengers were being lowered into small boats and rowed ashore. Dana recognized the island she had seen from the flying canoe. Grosse Île! Didn’t Gran Gowan say her ancestor had survived that ordeal? Immediately she looked around for her great-great-grandfather, Thomas Gowan. Would she be able to recognize him? Of course she did! He looked just like Gabriel when her dad was eighteen, with dark wavy hair and laughing eyes. Her grandmother always said that Gabe was a true Gowan.

  Thomas looked tidy, if not prosperous in his worn and faded clothes. He stood with his family, waiting to be cleared by the medical officers. She could see by his face that the voyage had taken its toll on him. Yet despite the signs of hardship and suffering, there was something irrepressible about him. The jaunty smile and the good-natured demeanor overcame the sickly pallor and the dark shadows under his eyes. He was obviously overjoyed to find himself alive and well in the New World.

  She elbowed her way through the crowd to meet him. That’s when she saw it under his arm: a book shining with light. The Book of Dreams? She was about to call out to him when something else caught her eye. She stopped and stared around her. All the immigrants on the ship were carrying books and all the books shone with the light of their dreams!

  Dana woke with a start. A sense of urgency overwhelmed her. Something she had lost! Something important she had forgotten! A silvery light drifted through the lacy curtains. The moon was luminous, almost full. She slipped out of bed and padded barefoot through the hallway, up the narrow stairs to the little door. Once inside of the attic, she cupped her hands to make her own light.

  The task before her was almost impossible. The attic ran the width and length of the house. Every inch of it was covered with trunks and boxes. There was even baggage hanging from the rafters of the roof. But she was too excited to be daunted. Beginning with the nearest chest, she began her search.

  An hour later, Dana was still making her way through antique dresses, hats, and moth-eaten furs, albums and costume jewelry, samplers and old paintings. It was time to come up with a plan. Ignore anything but paper. At last she found a brass-bound trunk full of books and papers. There were ladies’ diaries with jeweled clasps and flowers pressed between the pages, perfume-scented letters, and all kinds of books, dog-eared and yellowed with age. In the midst of that pile, like a golden egg in a nest of tissue paper, lay her great-great-grandfather’s journal.

  The precious book was worn and well-traveled, wit
h numerous stains and torn pages. At the same time it was bound in leather, meant to last. Slowly, reverently, she opened the book. On the first faded leaf, she was thrilled to see a big, friendly scrawl.

  The Book of Dreams by Thomas William Gowan.

  On this the 21st day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1841, I, Thomas William Gowan, find myself on board the good ship Horsely Hill asail on the ocean of the great Atlantic. It is a big ship, three-masted, with a crew of eighteen hands, over three hundred steerage passengers and several families with cabins of their own amongst whom mine is included. We have come with lock, stock and barrel, my parents, my two brothers and sister, our maid-servant and myself, the firstborn at eighteen years of age.

  It has been two weeks since we departed from the port of New Ross bound for Montreal in the land of Quebec. I stood on deck as we left the harbor and bade farewell to my native country that I shall see no more. Others stood with me weeping copiously as they cast last lingering looks at the beloved green shores of the Emerald Isle. I did not weep. I was too filled with the glorious joy of adventure. Here was I off to the New World to a new life and new freedom, to try my fortune in a land of promise where dreams might prove true.

  I have yet to tell Father or Mother that I do not intend to settle on a farm in the backwoods of Canada. I am no hewer of wood or tiller of soil. Such is not the destiny I envisage for myself. There is a vast land to be explored from coast to coast. How could I be content to bide in one small part of it when the whole cries out to enrich my knowledge and experience?

  The voyage out has been long and arduous. This ocean crossing will not be speedily made. There is much sea sickness amongst our fellow cabin passengers as we plough the heavy swell of the great Atlantic. Many stay indoors, lying abed, moaning and sickly. The steerage passengers fare much worse. Some were already weak and ill from the trials and hardships of their life before they boarded. Fever and typhus rage amongst them. The majority are in bare feet and rags. Many are destitute and have only the most meager of provisions. If the journey takes longer than predicted, I fear they will suffer gravely from hunger and malnourishment. The very young and the very old are the most ill-affected. Only this morning we buried a small babe at sea still swaddled in her blanket. She was dropped most gently overboard while the Captain said prayers. The poor bereft mother had to be restrained from following her child into the Deep. It was a dreadful and piteous scene.