Acadian Star

by Helene Boudreau

  The closed dark space played on Meg’s senses. Just when she thought she could make out her surroundings, her eyes tricked her with a blink. Her backside grew numb on the hard stone steps. She had no idea how long she’d been there already but her mom should have been by to look for her by now.

  A scurrying noise scratched along the invisible floor at Meg’s feet. She recoiled against the cool stone wall of the stairwell and clutched the oyster shell between her fingers. The thought of being trapped there any longer shot adrenaline through her veins. She couldn’t wait a minute longer. She had to find a way out.

  Her legs tingled as she straightened to stand.

  Thwack!

  A blow rang through Meg’s skull as her head met with something solid. Red, white, and blue pinpoints of light danced in the darkness before her. She reached out to steady herself, nearly dropping the shell, desperate to stop the spinning sensation that overcame her.

  The pricks of coloured light overwhelmed Meg’s vision. She tried to blink the lights away as she slipped the shell back in her pocket. One by one they dissolved into the darkness, taking the dizziness along with them. But in that same moment, the air thinned and soured. Strange muffled sounds worked through Meg’s senses.

  Voices? Had someone come to rescue her at last?

  “Assis-toi,” a woman’s voice said in the darkness. Meg froze. She must have cracked her head harder than she thought.

  “Listen to her. Sit and be quiet. Otherwise we will never get out of here.” Meg wilted at the second voice. She grabbed out into the blackness as her knees buckled. An arm braced her fall and helped her to sit on the hard floor.

  “Who are you?” Meg demanded into the darkness. “How long have you been in the cellar? Did she trick you too?” Meg’s voice cracked with confusion as she tried to comprehend what was happening.

  “Marguerite,” said an invisible voice.

  “Don’t call me that!” Meg yelled. How could they tell who she was? The darkness was complete.

  “You’ve given yourself quite a blow. We’re not in a cellar, we’re on a ship. Don’t you remember?” a kind voice asked.

  A ship?

  A whirr of sensations washed over Meg. The sour odour sharpened against the back of her throat. She stifled a cough to keep from gagging. The hum of a myriad of noises rang in her ears, impossible to discern.

  The blackness surrounding Meg lightened to a murky dimness. A sea of faces revealed themselves to her one by one in shadows. Meg’s intestines cramped violently at the sight. The mass of people sat alongside her, thighs and shoulders touching in the airless space. The ceiling loomed overhead, a mere four feet or so from the floor.

  What was this place? How did she get here?

  “Let me out of here!” Meg struggled to stand. A firm grip on her arm kept her planted on the floor.

  “Shhh!” The woman beside her warned. “No good comes from such foolishness. Our turn above deck is next; the fresh air will clear your head. Be patient, just a few moments more.”

  Meg’s ears filled with the mounting sounds of whispers, the cries of babies in mothers’ arms, and the whimpering of children. Her stomach pitched and heaved as if sent adrift on the open ocean. Was that her stomach, or was it true? Were they really on a ship?

  Three thuds sounded overhead. A door creaked open above.

  Finally! Someone was coming to get her, Meg thought. The concert must be over, her mom must have figured out where she was. She needed to get to a hospital. Surely, she had a concussion. That would explain the hallucinations.

  “Next group!” A gruff voice called out from above.

  Meg was herded to a ladder and urged upwards by the people behind her. A ladder? Where were the stone stairs? Did the ladder lead right into Tante Perle’s shack? Meg didn’t care, if it meant getting out of this nightmare. She climbed up each rung, thankful to put the ordeal of Tante Perle’s cellar behind her.

  Meg’s relief evaporated as she stepped over a hatch and found herself standing on the deck of a ship. The pitch of the ocean made her stomach lurch. How could this be?

  Terror gripped Meg anew when three men holding old-fashioned rifles waved her group to the stern of the boat. Her chest seized at the sight of their scarlet uniforms and she laboured to draw each breath. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. Soon someone would wake her from this crazy dream.

  Meg huddled with her group to keep warm against the chill of the evening air and twisted her head around, struggling to make sense of what she saw. Towering masts rose skyward, their cloth sails wrapped around the horizontal beams. There was no wind; just the nauseating pitch and heave of the ship as it bobbed between the waves in the twilight.

  Her eyes darted around the ship, searching for an escape. She broke from the group for a moment and scanned the water. A rowboat packed with passengers edged toward them off in the distance.

  “You there!” A soldier’s voice thundered in Meg’s ear. Her heart jumped. “Back with your group!” He pointed his rifle menacingly.

  Meg stood, horrified. Hallucination or not, she did as she was told and joined the group clustered together for warmth. She welcomed the heat they offered as she moved within their ranks. Some of the women held children by the hand. They were dressed in what Meg first took to be Évangeline costumes, but then she noticed their tattered, dirty condition. The clothes looked amazingly authentic…

  “What are they going to do with us?” Meg whispered to a woman who was about her mother’s age.

  The woman stroked Meg’s hair.

  “They will take us to a new place. Our land is not our own anymore,” she said.

  “They’re going to steal our life’s work!” another woman said.

  “Don’t scare her, Antoinette, she’s already lost so much.” The woman’s tone softened. “Marguerite, maybe your family will be on the next boat.” She pointed to the approaching rowboat.

  With each stroke of the oars, the rowboat drew another length closer to their ship. My family? Meg wondered. My family is just fine back in Picasse Bay. And she would be fine too, just as soon as she could figure out a way out of there.

  One of the soldiers peered over the railing. “That load better not think they’re boarding here. We already have twice as many people as we were commissioned for. Captain says we’ll be hauling anchor soon.” An odd English accent punctuated his words.

  “Just as soon as the fires are well on their way,” said the other.

  Fires? What fires? Meg wondered. As if on cue, a smoky odour wafted over her shoulder. She turned in the direction of the smell. Angry blazes lit the length of the shoreline a few hundred metres off in the distance.

  “They’ve set our village on fire!” one of the ladies cried. The little girl at her side screamed.

  Meg steadied herself against the railing. What was this place? This time?

  A whistle rang in Meg’s ears.

  “Sound familiar?” An older woman stooped over the railing of the ship, her head covered by a shawl against the chill of evening air.

  “I’ve heard that noise before.” Meg stood, transfixed by the sound. Water splashed below. Dolphins!

  “With the dolphins come the ships.” The old woman brought her shawl away from her face. The moonlight shone on her craggy wrinkles.

  “Tante Perle!” Meg screamed.

  Chapter 9

  “SETTLE DOWN!” one of the soldiers boomed.

  “Now do I have your attention?” Tante Perle whispered.

  “You had my attention when you locked me in the cellar!” Meg’s voice rose despite her best efforts. The angry glare from the soldier prompted her to check her tone. “What were you thinking?” Meg whispered.

  “You left me no choice,” Tante Perle answered.

  Meg braced herself against the railing. Her whole body shook with anger. She struggled to even her voice to a whisper.

  “Where the heck are we? This place is unreal! They have a bunch of people trapped below dec
k. Plus, they’ve set fire to the village and these guys threatened to shoot me!”

  “I’ve taken you back to your history, Marguerite. To the time when our family was broken to pieces.”

  “What history?” Meg demanded.

  “What do you think?” Tante Perle waited for Meg to come to her own realization.

  Meg’s mind was a jumble of thoughts. She thought back to her history class. Then she remembered what Tante Perle had said about the latch on the front door of her shack keeping out the English. The clothing. The English soldiers. The ships. The people trapped below deck. The burning villages. The facts fell into place one by one. Meg shook her head in disbelief.

  “The Acadian Deportation? You transported me through time to leave me to rot on this death trap?” Meg uttered the words through clenched teeth.

  “You see that girl in the boat?” Tante Perle asked, ignoring Meg’s question.

  Just then, the rowboat approached the side of their ship. One of the soldiers waved the craft off.

  “We’re full! You’ll need to try one of the other ships.” The soldier gestured widely to turn the boat away.

  A young girl in the rowboat tilted her head up towards the ship. Her blonde hair fell in a sheet around her fine features. Meg could see the tears on her face glistening in the moonlight.

  “Nève!” Meg cried. Then she turned to Tante Perle. “But Nève is back in Picasse Bay, about to move to Fort McMurray.”

  “Not your Nève,” Tante Perle hissed in Meg’s ear, “but this girl is also about to be separated from her family. You can change all that, and maybe even save a few other friendships in the meantime.”

  “What are you talking about?” Meg shook her head in disbelief.

  “Where is the shell I gave you?” Tante Perle asked.

  Meg took the shell out of her pocket and thrust it towards her. Tante Perle took it carefully into her hands.

  “Friendship is like an oyster shell. It takes two parts to make it whole. But once that bond is broken, a small fissure can turn into a permanent crack.” Tante Perle paused and held Meg’s gaze. “Then, the magic is lost.”

  “Are you for real?” Meg shook her head.

  “Oh, this is real, I assure you.” She handed the shell back to Meg. “I needed to bring you here so you would understand what would happen if you fail. You must go back even further in time for your real work to begin.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, especially not with you.” Meg stuffed the shell back in her pocket, barely able to contain her rage. “I can’t believe you tricked me into feeling sorry for you. All this time, you were planning this, weren’t you?”

  “I had to do it. Everything depends on you, Marguerite.”

  “Stop saying that. And whatever you did to get me here—undo it.”

  “Two more minutes on deck!” A soldier called.

  “We don’t have much time. This will explain everything.” Tante Perle tucked a rumpled piece of paper in Meg’s apron pocket.

  “What’s this?” Meg asked.

  Tante Perle clutched her hand as Meg reached for her pocket.

  “Read it later, when you’re alone.”

  “No, you tell me now! How do I get back to Picasse Bay?” Meg whispered.

  “Not until you do what I brought you here for. You can make a difference here. You’re our last hope.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to do, wrestle these guys to the ground? They have guns! I’m just a kid!” Meg whispered.

  “You can’t change history, Marguerite, but you can keep a friend from being snatched away from you.”

  With that, Tante Perle brought her shawl back over her face, and with lightning speed, heaved herself over the ship’s railing.

  “No!!!” Meg grabbed at her as she fell. Tante Perle’s frail form slipped through her hands. There was a sickening splash, then she was gone. All that remained was her knitted shawl, dangling over the water from Meg’s finger.

  The people in the rowboat gasped in horror.

  “She’ll drown!”

  “Help her!”

  A few people on deck prepared to jump in after Tante Perle. The soldier fixed his rifle upon them and stopped them in their tracks.

  The girl who looked like Nève brought her hand to her mouth in dismay.

  “Do something! Save her from drowning!” Meg yelled to the soldier steering the rowboat below.

  Recognition flashed in the girl’s face. She craned her neck back and forth as if searching for the source of Meg’s voice.

  “Marguerite?”

  At the sound of the name, Meg’s whole body seemed to prickle as if shrouded by a layer of electrical shocks. Her ears thumped with pulsing blood. For the first time in her life, the name seemed to awaken something deep within her.

  “Is that you? Marguerite!”

  Meg wanted to yell—no! She was Meg, not Marguerite.

  Wasn’t she?

  But there was no time for that, Tante Perle was in trouble.

  “Help her!” Meg yelled.

  “That is just about enough of this foolishness.” A soldier grabbed Meg by the arm and hauled her away from the railing.

  “Let them save her!” Meg cried.

  “Do not be daft,” the soldier sneered. “Nothing can be done. She will never survive in these waters.”

  “Then help the people on the rowboat, at least! My friend is on it. Let them board! Please!”

  “Turn that boat around, I said!” the soldier called down over the railing. “We are not taking on any more passengers!”

  With that, the other soldiers sprang into action and herded the Acadians towards the hatch. “Time is up! Down below, everyone.”

  Meg stood, wooden. She willed her legs to go, but they stayed planted. What would happen to Tante Perle? Had she drowned? Was she dead? And what about the girl in the rowboat?

  “Go!” The soldier jabbed the butt of his rifle into Meg’s back. She stumbled forward into the group. They steadied her and kept her from falling. Numb with grief and confusion, she moved as one with them back to the hatch.

  In moments, Meg found herself grasping at the ladder’s splintered rungs as she headed down, down into the dark, dank belly of the ship.

  Chapter 10

  MEG CLUTCHED TANTE PERLE’S SHAWL to her chest. She sat wedged between her fellow Acadian captives in the darkness of the lower deck.

  Her link to getting back to Picasse Bay had just jumped into the ocean. The rowboat holding the only other familiar face Meg knew had been turned away to find passage on another ship.

  Was this her new reality? This warped dream? There was no way this could be real. Somehow she had to get back to her time, to her home in Picasse Bay. But how?

  A putrid mixture of odours attacked the back of her throat. Her ears ached with the muted din and strangled whispers of the strangers around her. Meg had never felt so alone among so many.

  She pulled Tante Perle’s shawl over her head to block out the stench and the whimpers that hung in the air. The rough knitted wool provided a moment of haven. All she wanted to do was escape.

  The oyster shell in Meg’s apron pocket jabbed at her hip. She pulled it out and held it in her hand. Would Tante Perle somehow make it back to Picasse Bay alive? Would Meg? Would she ever see her mother and father again? Or Nève, for that matter?

  Meg didn’t care what it took. She had to figure out a way out of there.

  The air in the hold of the ship was thick and close. Meg tried hard to breathe to clear her mind. She closed her eyes to will her thoughts and felt the smooth, inner surface of the oyster shell as she searched for an answer. What was she supposed to do now? How much more time did she have to spend in this nightmare?

  A familiar wooziness made her head sway. Red, white, and blue pinpoints of light danced behind her eyelids. Just like when she had hit her head in the cellar. What was happening? Was she…?

  The dizziness kept her from completing her train of thought.

 
“Mar-gue-rite!” a voice called out.

  Meg froze. She dropped the shell into her lap and braced her hands against the floor, expecting to feel the rough wooden floorboards of the ship. Instead, her palms touched straw.

  Her hands flew up in shock.

  What was happening?

  She yanked the shawl from her head and tossed it to the side. A curl sprang from her hairline as the fabric pulled tendrils from her braid. She blew it back from her face and looked around, letting her eyes adjust to the light.

  Light. Sunlight. From a window. But it had been nighttime just moments before!

  Meg slipped the shell back into her pocket and scrambled to her feet, careful not to bump her head on the low ceiling. To her surprise, she drew herself to full height. Her feet stood planted firmly on the straw-covered floor below. The pitch and heave of the ocean was gone. The dozens of people she had shared the space with just moments before had vanished.

  The odour and noises from below deck were replaced with equally unpleasant ones. Manure? Wet animals? Had they boarded livestock while she was on the upper deck?

  “Honestly, Marguerite, you’re not very good at this game. I can hear you from down here! Surely you must have known we would search for you in the barn,” the voice sang out from below.

  A barn? Was she up in some type of loft? What had happened to the ship?

  A flicker of grey zipped by her with a squeak. A mouse!

  Meg jumped back in surprise. The floor disappeared from under her feet and she plummeted downward through the loft’s opening. Meg tightened her body, ready for the impact. Instead, a mound of prickly hay enveloped her as she landed.

  She drew the straw away from her eyes and saw the familiar girl from the rowboat standing in the doorway, holding a little boy’s hand. The little boy wriggled out of the girl’s grip and ran after a scruffy cat pouncing across the barn.

  “What’s the matter? First day on your new feet?” The girl’s eyes twinkled as she smiled. She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear.

  “Nève?” Meg asked. The resemblance was uncanny.