The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You have to go around that bottom slab,” the boy said. “It’s not slippery—you can do it. On the other side there’s a pathway winding up through the woods. Halfway up, the rock splits and you’ll find a place around in back where you can step into a sort of saddleback between the two rock towers. After that there are notches in the rock, so you can climb to the top, if you want to. If he’s up there, I wouldn’t.”

  I regarded the prospect doubtfully for a moment, then cupped my hands around my mouth, tilting my head back as I shouted Glen’s name. The echoes went clattering down the lake, shouting back at me, but no human voice answered.

  “He’s not up there,” I told Keith.

  “Maybe he is,” the boy said. “Lots of times he won’t answer when he’s hiding out up there. It’s just the way he is. You’ll have to go up and see.”

  The boy wanted only to escape me now and reach the house to meet his mother, so I started ahead toward the place where the path ended and wet rock climbed out of the lake, changing from brown to gray as it rose into towers of stone.

  “There’s just one thing—” Keith said.

  I turned back to him and met the hard brilliance of blue eyes. There seemed nothing young about him now. Had Glynis done the damage to this boy? Or was it his father who was responsible? After all, he had left Keith to grow up in the area.

  “There’s just one thing,” he repeated. “When you get to the rock, go around the base as fast as you can. Don’t take your time in that place at the bottom.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because there is a lot of loose rock up there on top. Big pieces. If somebody wanted, he could push one over, right down on top of you, knock you into the water, kill you, maybe. There’ll be no spruce trees to hide you there. So go around fast.”

  I met his look in puzzled astonishment. “If my husband is up there, he won’t push rocks down on top of me.”

  The boy came a step closer. “Even if there’s nobody up there, you go around fast. I’ve seen rocks come down from up there by themselves. So be smart and hurry.”

  “Like a rabbit?” I said. “That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You’re aiming at me as if I were a rabbit—to frighten me.”

  His grin was openly insolent. “Maybe. But if you really want to know, this isn’t a good place—this part of the lake. My grandmother Elizabeth died just around those rocks. I never knew her because she died when my mother was only five. But that’s where it happened.”

  He held my attention again. This was one thing I wanted to know. “How did it happen? From stones falling from above?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It happened in winter, when the lake was frozen. Except it wasn’t hard enough around there because springs feed the lake at that part. Elizabeth and Glynis were skating—and her mother went through the ice and drowned. Aunt Nomi told me. Glynis won’t talk about it. Everybody blamed her afterward, I guess.”

  His story was shocking, but he told it as though he relished tragedy—and that was even more shocking.

  “Why would anyone blame a child?” I asked.

  “People have to blame somebody, don’t they?”

  It was a curious question, and I did not want to hear any more. I turned away from him and went quickly toward the wide base of the rock towers where they slanted up from the water. My shoes had rubber soles and they took the steep slant of the rock easily. I leaned one hand against the rough surface and climbed around the base slowly and carefully, without hurrying. No rocks came slamming down upon me from above. When I was safely on the earth path beyond, I turned and looked back. Keith stood where I had left him, watching me. I waved my arm and he waved back, grinning. At least he gave me credit for not being a rabbit. Then he went his own way, up through the spruce and cedar toward the house, moving swiftly on his way to meet his mother.

  The ground was rough beneath my feet, overgrown with dry winter stubble. Twin towers of rock rose above me, flinging rugged shadows across my way. When I craned my neck, seeking the topmost rocky crags, I could see nothing—no hiding place, no face peering down at me. The rock rose irregularly, with narrow ledges here and there, where earth had collected, and grass and brush had seeded in. In one place halfway up, a tiny spruce tree clung precariously, growing in an earth-filled crevice.

  I would not humiliate myself by calling out again, in case Glen was really there and deliberately refusing to answer. Climbing steeply, I followed the pathway as it wound beneath maples, oaks, hickories, mounting halfway up the brown hillside before it circled the nearest rock tower to the place where the rising hill met the rock.

  Now I could see what Keith meant. The towers were all one piece at the base, but halfway up they split apart at a saddle of earth which joined them and was accessible only from behind. Where I stood on the hillside I was a little above this saddle and would have to climb down in order to stand between the twin towers. For several moments I hesitated, figuring out my approach, wishing that Glen, if he was up there, would come down for me.

  Because I was still, I heard someone coming along the hillside from the direction of the house, striding with certainty through dry brush. My attention quickened. Had Keith decided to see me up the rock, after all? Or was this Glen coming toward me now? Scrubby spruce hid that part of the hillside, and I waited for whoever it was to come into view.

  When she stepped from behind the last tree, I saw the girl who approached the great pile of rock and I stepped instinctively behind the trunk of an oak tree, my heart thumping in my throat. Whether I liked it or not, whether I was ready or not, the moment was upon me.

  Glynis Chandler had indeed come to High Towers, and it was she who strode along the hillside toward me.

  5

  I would have known her anywhere as Glen’s sister. Colton’s genius had caught her essential spirit in the portrait he had painted of the twins when they were seventeen, but now she was more beautiful—more poised and arrogant. There was something imperious, even audacious in the tilt of her head, the lifting of her chin. Here was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted—and moved toward her goal with assurance, whatever that goal might be.

  Her short hair capped her head sleekly, more red than chestnut, tinted perhaps to a brighter hue than Glen’s. Her eyes were as dark as his and seemed even larger because she had enhanced them with the make-up devices of current fashion. Her lips, tinted with deep rose, smiled eagerly, as if in anticipation of this meeting with her brother. Around her neck she had flung a long knitted scarf of bright yellow, and below it her camel’s hair coat was jaunty, softly belted in dark brown suede. Brown leather boots came almost to her knees and she walked in them easily, accustomed to this rough hillside that she had known all her life.

  She did not see me, and for this brief respite I was grateful. At least I had the advantage of watching unseen and preparing myself for an encounter I could not postpone, in fact, no longer wanted to postpone. At this unexpected sight of Glynis Chandler something curious was happening to me. Having heard too much about her—and not enough—having been alternately timid and eager to like and be liked, all this suddenly fell away and left me armed with new strength. I had seen her now. She was real and not some witch-girl, as my imagination had begun to suggest. She was flesh and blood, and I feared her in no way. If she would have me as a friend, then I would be her friend. If not, then I did not lack the courage to fight her—for Glen’s sake, if that became necessary. Something in me tingled with a new eagerness for this confrontation.

  Nevertheless, for a little while longer, I waited. For the moment her attention was upon the twin pinnacles of rock. Moving with the grace of a leopard, she sprang from the hillside below me into the earthen saddle between. There she stood with her arms outstretched to either tower of rock, as though she braced them apart, her head flung back so that her eyes could follow the line of rock upward against a gray, cloudy sky. Her head, bare of covering, shone against the gray. When a spate of wind swept the lake and
hillside, it caught the fringe of her yellow scarf, tossing it over one shoulder. She lifted her hand to the breeze, as though she savored its touch, and called out to her brother.

  “Glen? Glen—are you there? I’m home! Come down and welcome me!”

  There was a movement near the top of the pinnacle nearest the lake. From some sheltered space Glen rose. When he stood up I could see him plainly, but if he was aware of me on the hillside he did not glance in my direction. All his attention was for the girl who waited for him on the connecting earth of the saddle. He climbed down the rock backwards, as though down a ladder, moving with swift ease. In moments he was at her side and I watched the twins’ exuberant greeting as each flung both arms about the other in affectionate embrace. Then Glen held his sister off at arms’ length, studying her, smiling his welcome. If he had harbored any doubts about her return, they were gone now, and as I watched I knew that these two were one. They always had been and always would be. Only a little while ago I had thought I must stand beside my husband, prevent any interference in his work by his twin. But I was the outsider now. Where was my place in so obviously close a relationship?

  “Colton’s come home with me,” Glynis ran on. “I left him at the house for Nomi to fuss over, while I came looking for you. When she said you were out in the woods, I knew you’d be here.”

  “You always knew where I’d be,” Glen said.

  Her bright head bent toward him. “Yes—but something’s been wrong lately. That’s why I came home when Colton did. The thread has been broken between us. Did you think I wouldn’t feel it? What has happened, Glen?”

  It was time for me to join in this homecoming. I could not stand hiding behind my oak tree until one of them looked up and saw me. I moved down the hillside and a twig cracked beneath my feet, a stone went rolling away. The twins turned as if they were one. Glen was only a little taller. He stood with an arm about his sister’s shoulders, and her arm circled his waist. Together they watched me approach the saddleback, and again I felt sharply the sense of being an outsider. I was farther away from Glen than I would have been had Glynis been a rival, rather than a sister. In the moment during which I climbed down to where they were, I felt the full impact of what these two meant to each other. This was something I had not fully known or expected. Still, I did not hesitate. My courage was still high, and I smiled at them both as I went down to join them.

  Glynis was the one who challenged, and I was close enough to see quick hostility spring into her eyes.

  “Who is this?” she asked her brother.

  Glen looked dismayed. “You didn’t receive my cables, then? Neither you nor Colton?”

  She moved away from him. “What cables?”

  “Come up here, Dina,” Glen called to me. “I want you to meet my sister. Glynis, this is my wife—Dina.”

  I had never doubted that he would acknowledge me proudly. He was my love. But it was surprising to see his eyes as bright as his sister’s. It was clear that this time he had thrown down the gauntlet to her.

  Glynis hesitated only a moment before she stepped to the edge of the saddleback to hold out her hand to me. I gave her my own readily, and she pulled me over to the ledge so that I stood between the two on the ridge of weed-grown earth.

  “So you’ve done it at last, Glen,” she said softly, and I noted that her voice had a husky tone to it. “I never believed you really would. Hello, Dina Chandler.” But her eyes were cold as winter.

  Glen relaxed into greater ease with both of us. Battle was not indicated, after all, in spite of Glynis’s first look of hostility. We walked toward the house together, and Glen kept one arm about Glynis and one about me.

  Now and then he would press his hand lightly against my side, his touch loving, reassuring—promising me his support, his protection, if I needed it. I was still keyed up, with my battle forces in a sense unused, and I wondered if he did the same thing with her, promising partisanship to each, so each would be reassured and there would be no interference with his relationship to either. It was a strange triangle.

  Since Glynis had appeared, I had not given a thought to Keith, but as we rounded a turn in the path, bringing the house into view, we found the boy waiting for us. He must have missed Glynis when he cut back toward High Towers at the very time when she was coming along the hillside to Gray Rocks. Now he leaned easily against the brown trunk of a walnut tree, rifle in hand, its butt resting on the earth beside him. He had the alert look of a woods creature, untamed and ready for flight, watchful, yet expressionless, as we came into sight. His eyes never moved from Glynis’s face.

  She walked toward the boy, halting a few feet away from him. I did not know how long it had been since she had seen him, but she wasted no word on a greeting.

  “That’s how I’m going to paint you!” she cried. “I’ll do a portrait this time. Boy in the Woods, I’ll call it. You’ll pose for me, Keith?”

  He returned her look uncertainly, neither smiling nor moving, as though she was someone he could never gauge ahead of time. She laughed in the face of such caution, flung both her arms wide and ran toward him. Swiftly he laid the rifle on the ground and then waited for her, making no other gesture in response. She flung her arms about her son, and I saw that he was as tall as she—a thin stick of a boy whose head was on a level with her own. Over her shoulder his boy’s face reddened and almost timidly, he put one arm about her, let her kiss his cheek.

  Glen’s hand pressed my side in warning. “She’s showing us that she has someone too.”

  I glanced at him, startled. “I hope the boy means more to her than that,” I whispered.

  Glynis turned, pulling Keith with her as she faced us. “What do you think of this great son of mine? He’s grown several feet, I’m sure, in the months I’ve been away. He’ll make a marvelous woods picture, won’t he, Glen? We’ll start work at once—tomorrow, Keith! I’ll expect you by nine in the morning. Be sure to bring your gun. That’s part of the picture. And wear what you’re wearing now. No sprucing up, do you hear?”

  With his eyes, the boy told her he would do anything she wished, but he did not speak as he bent to retrieve his rifle. He would have escaped down the hillside then, if Glynis had not kept her hand on his arm, drawing him along with us as we rounded the drive to the doorway of the house. Only when we reached the steps did he pull firmly away.

  “I’ll be here in the morning,” he said. “I’m not going in,”—and made his escape, running with a release of energy that I had not seen in him before, releasing his very joy into motion.

  Glynis laughed as she watched him go leaping down the hillside. Then she turned to Glen and me. “Let’s go in and present the bride to Colton,” she said lightly. “He’ll be interested, I know.”

  The lift of her winged brows was mocking, but Glen smiled at me. “Yes, he will be. Come along, Dina. I want Colton to see you.”

  See you, he said—not meet you. But I did not want to be something to show off, a mere acquisition for display. I stiffened a little as I went with him up the steps, my battle forces not entirely dispelled.

  The twins’ father was with Nomi in the drawing room. A lively fire burned in the grate, even though several windows were open. Naomi was handing him a Scotch and soda as we came in. He took the glass and rose from the purple velvet sofa nearest the fire, staring at me openly with eyes that were almost the same shining silver as his hair. They were strange, searching eyes that saw everything about me as only a portrait painter would see it: the shape of my bones, my height, my coloring, the very texture of my skin, the planes of my face. He was a big man—larger than Glen—and he wore, rather dramatically, a suit of silky envoy gray, London-tailored, with a bright red vest and expensive red and gray tie. He regarded me with those silvery eyes, and said nothing—simply studying me until Glen gave me a slight push in his father’s direction.

  “I suppose Nomi has told you, Colton,” he said. “This is Dina—my wife.”

  I waited, pinned so long
and uncomfortably by that searching gaze that I had time to be aware of the others in the room and even looked about to see what each was doing, determined not to speak until Colton did.

  Nomi had quietly seated herself and was watching the flames with an absorbed interest, as though there were no one in the room but herself. Yet I knew by her stillness that she listened, even if she would not look.

  The twins stood together, and I saw how much alike they were—tall and slim and elegant. They had long faces with rounded chins, long slender feet, long bodies and hands. And those blazing dark eyes that could light with enthusiasm—or with passion, or anger.

  As I looked at her, Glynis took a little turn down the room, chuckling to herself, as if she knew some secret joke she would not share with us. Colton paid no attention to anyone but me. At last he raised his glass, bowed slightly, drank a silent toast, then put down the glass on a coffee table. Stubbornly, I would not speak in return.

  Glen slipped his arm through mine. “Stop X-raying her, Colton! I know she looks a mess, but she’s been running in the woods. Her hair’s loose and has leaves in it. Her face is smudged and she’s pulled some threads in her new sweater. But wait until you see her after she’s put together again!”

  “I am silent only with astonishment,” Colton Chandler said. “Where did you find anything so lovely? How did you persuade her to marry you?”

  “I suppose Glen means to paint her,” Glynis broke in, a hint of malice in her voice. “Or at least he’ll try.”

  Glen glanced at his sister, then looked away. “I mean to do her in alabaster. I’ve already started work. So neither of you can have her. Not until I’ve done her myself.”

  Glynis whistled softly, and Colton stared at his son.

  I had endured enough of this. I wanted to cry out to them that I was real—a girl with feelings of my own—not a mere subject for their art. I pulled away from Glen, walked directly across the room to Colton Chandler and held out my hand.