The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Why the doe for me, Keith?”

  He glanced at me briefly and then away. “Because you look like that sometimes,” he said shortly and moved away from me.

  Often that day I looked at the small, delicately carved creature and wondered about his words. I supposed they were surprisingly true and that much of the time I must seem too alert to alarm and impending danger. Perhaps he meant I was young too, and unformed, still seeking to know who and what I was.

  Through all this time of gift-giving, one strange thing made itself felt again and again. Glynis was trying to make friends with me today, and Glen seemed to want her to do so. In small ways she made overtures. She no longer baited me, but threw the talk my way considerately when she could. I trusted none of this, and I saw Nomi watching her too, with equal mistrust. Perhaps Glynis was trying to please Glen? But that seemed hardly likely, since he was anything but pleased with me himself.

  At any rate I was on guard, and when she suggested later in the morning that we go skating, I promptly refused—which seemed to upset Glen, so that he began to lecture me.

  “It’s time you were decent to Glynis,” he told me sharply. “You can see she’s knocking herself out this morning to please you, and you’ve been nasty at every turn. Why not let her take you skating? I’m going to go on preparing the wood for my carving, and Keith wants to see how I go about it. So run along with Glynis and see if you can be decent for a change.”

  What he said was all true. I had been nasty. I had been mistrustful. But all, I felt, with good reason after the things she had done to me. Yet when Glen put it this way I did not want to displease him further by refusing. I asked Nomi to come along, but she said skating was not for an arthritic knee. She was going for a walk instead. Colton was busy on some project of his own, and I decided to give in. Perhaps if some better relationship could be achieved between Glynis and me, this was the time to attempt it.

  I dressed warmly in my navy blue jacket and slacks. I put Nomi’s scarf of brown and pink over my head like a hood and looped it around my neck, with the long ends hanging down my back. Later I was to wonder what would have happened if I had not worn that scarf. Would everything have been totally different in its outcome? Could the mere wearing of a scarf change all our lives? I can’t really believe that—and yet—

  Glynis, of course, wore her new leopard-skin jacket, and it suited her magnificently. We climbed down to the shore path and walked along, swinging our skates, with Glynis chatting to me as cheerfully as though nothing unpleasant had ever happened between us. I felt less friendly. I wanted to fling in her face the charge that she had put Keith up to setting that fire in Pandora’s office, but I managed to keep silent, to pretend that I was taken in by her cheery good humor. Yet I never really believed that the Christmas spirit had effected such a change in Glynis Chandler. The little girl reversion was over, and this performance was something new.

  She was talking about roads as we walked along, and I made little sense of what she was saying in her soft, slightly husky voice.

  “Sometimes the way gets so narrow there’s not even room for a lay-by, as they say in England. There’s no turnout space at all. You simply keep going until you reach your destination. There’s no way ever to turn back.”

  If there was some subtlety here, I did not want to think about what it meant.

  “If we’re going to skate,” I said at last, “why don’t we try it here? There isn’t much choice in the ice, is there?”

  “Oh, but there is,” she told me. “The best place is around Gray Rocks. There’s an area there that’s the last to freeze and as a result it doesn’t hold the snow. After a good freeze we always go there to skate. Come along and I’ll show you.”

  Was this the place where her mother had died? I wondered. But I need not go out on the ice unless I was sure of it—and wherever we skated, I would let Glynis go first. That was my thought. That was what I planned.

  After we’d passed the base of the tall rocks, the shoreline cut in, forming a small, half-surrounded bay, and there the ice looked smooth and clean.

  “It’s a lovely place,” Glynis said, and sat down on the bank to put on her skates. I joined her and got out of my shoes, laced up my skates.

  She was out on the ice ahead of me, skating skillfully, executing fancy steps with complete grace and control. She did not seem doubtful about the cleared space, yet it seemed to me that she kept to the edges and avoided its center. Whatever she did, I would follow, and I would skate nowhere else because I did not trust her at all.

  When I was ready, she came back for me, took my hands and skated with me until I gained some assurance. The ice seemed firm enough, though there were the usual surface cracks to be avoided, and my suspicion lessened a little. The one real obstacle was a massive tree stump that protruded somewhat to the right of center.

  In a few moments we were warm, our cheeks stinging from the wind that always blew down the lake. Glynis began to show me a few simple figures, and I discovered that when she was in this pleasant, obliging mood she could be the best of company. I did not trust too much—but I began to relax a little.

  When she skated opposite me and held out her hands, I took them in mine and she showed me the step I had seen in figure skating where one partner swings the other across in front of him, so that one skater vaults past the other in turn. She held my hands firmly, and swung me past, and then I swung her past me. We repeated the movement and the third time she suddenly let go of my hands, so that I went sailing toward the center of the cleared space. The moment I found myself flying free I slid my skates sideways, to brake, and in the same instant I felt treacherous movement beneath my feet.

  Glynis was skating about me reassuringly. “It’s all right. The ice is a little rubbery, but it will hold. Come along—do what I do.”

  She was laughing at me now, since I couldn’t possibly do what she was doing. She made a spiral turn across the ice and went into a spin, came out of it and started to skate away—when something happened. The toe of her skate must have struck a crevice in the ice, catching her unaware. She went sprawling and her leopard jacket behaved like a sled, so that she hurtled across the ice past me to its very center. As I watched, the ice gave way and dark water spilled over the surface, engulfing Glynis, sucking her down by the very weight of her jacket.

  Under my feet the ice was rubbery, but still solid. I managed to get as far as the thick tree stump that protruded from the ice. I held onto it with one hand and reached my other one out to Glynis where she floundered helplessly in the water, a look of utter shock and terror upon her face. But I could not reach her. The ice she grasped broke away at her touch and the space of dark water grew larger around her with every moment of struggle.

  I shouted for help, but there was no one to hear. My fingers fumbled as I unwound Nomi’s long scarf from about my neck. I wrapped an end of it around my wrist, held onto the stump and cast the scarf toward Glynis across churning water. She reached for it, caught it, lost it—then managed to snarl her fingers in the fringe.

  “Hold on!” I shouted. “Hold on and I’ll pull you in.”

  I braced myself against the stump, dug in the heels of my skates, and tried with all my strength to pull her out of the water and across the ice. But she came only a little way and then stuck.

  “It’s no use!” she cried weakly. “My clothes are caught on something under the water. I can’t get free.”

  I could not waste my breath on talk. I tried once more to haul her over the ice. She did not move and I could see that I lacked the strength to pull her free of whatever held her.

  Quickly I wound my end of the scarf around a deep split in the stump and knotted it firmly so that it would not pull loose.

  “You’ll have to hold on,” I told her. “I’ll get help as fast as I can. Just don’t let go of this scarf.”

  “I can’t hold on for long!” Her teeth were chattering, and mine began to chatter too, in sympathy and fear. “It’s no use a
nyway. I’m going to drown. This is where my mother died. This is where—”

  “Stop that!” I shouted to her, already climbing the bank, struggling out of my skates and into my shoes. “You’ve got to hold on until I can call Trent McIntyre. That’s quicker than going back to the house.”

  Free of my skates, I ran along the shore path. I scrambled over the base of Gray Rocks and was within sight of the stone house across the lake. But though I shouted Trent’s name, and Pandora’s again and again, no one answered me. No one stirred anywhere either on this side or across the ice. Either the McIntyres were down at the inn, and out of calling distance, or they had gone off on some Christmas morning errand. There was nothing to do except get to High Towers as fast as I could.

  But before I could run on, I heard Glynis’s voice behind _ me once more, calling for help. Then, to my great relief a second voice shouted back to her. If help had come from another direction, then I need not go on. I might be of more use back there. I ran back to Gray Rocks and crossed the base to where I could look out toward the little bay. There was no one there but Glynis, and she lay deeper in the water.

  I was going to be too late. Now I knew that no matter how fast I ran toward the house, how I punished my lungs in their gasping for air, I would be too late. I tried to cut through the woods, running uphill at a diagonal, but the going was rough. I fell more than once, always getting up to stumble on.

  When the house loomed ahead of me, I had to stop briefly to catch my breath before I could shout. I could hear no sound anywhere except the wind in the pine trees. No feeble voice wailing for help—nothing. I banged my way through the front door, shouting as I ran up the stairs. My cries brought Colton to his bedroom door, and Glen down from the attic. Keith was no longer with him.

  Gasping, I blurted out what had happened, and Colton and Glen flew into action. They snatched up coats as they ran out the front door, and I stumbled after them. I could not stay in the house and wait. I had to know. I had to be there.

  The two of them took a short cut that went at a diagonal through the woods and I followed as best I could. We climbed behind Gray Rocks, and cut steeply downhill toward the lake. Glen and Colton were well ahead of me. They had made a chain between them by the time I reached the bay—a chain from the stump that anchored Colton to the black water where Glynis lay. Glen had more strength than I. He managed to pull her free from whatever had snagged her, and together they got her across the ice to land.

  I stood by for a few moments while the two of them worked over her. Then Colton looked up at me, his face pale, his expression self-contained.

  “Run back to the house, Dina. Find Nomi and have her call our doctor. Have her get a warm bed ready.”

  Once more I ran. But all the way there I knew that it was too late. Glynis had drowned in the very place where she had once seen her mother go through the ice. The very place in which she had tried to drown me.

  Both thoughts were a heavy part of my awareness all the way back to the house. Glynis had tried to drown me—and had drowned herself instead.

  Fortunately Nomi had returned from her walk toward the other end of the lake. She was on the phone before I stopped talking. I listened to her, heard her words, did what she told me. And all the while I thought of how Glynis had looked with the stamp of terror on her face. And I could not bear it. I could not bear what this would do to Glen.

  “I think she’s dead,” I told Nomi.

  She was still Elizabeth’s sister, even with her enemy defeated. “Good,” she said harshly. “Now you’ll be free. Glen will be free.”

  I flew after her about the house, trying to help with the bed in Glynis’s room. “Oh, no! I don’t want to be free that way! I don’t—”

  “What did she try to do to you?” Nomi demanded.

  I couldn’t tell her that. With Glynis dead, I couldn’t tell anyone. I moved away from her, went to stand beside a window where I could watch for them to bring her home.

  The black marble head looked at me accusingly from anguished eyes. I had not saved her. I had not been strong enough, or brave enough. Or willing enough? Was that the thing that frightened me?

  Nomi watched me. “Stop it!” she cried. “None of what happened was your fault. It was hers—hers all the way, whatever she tried to do.”

  I did not ask her how she knew. I did not even think about asking. Glen was coming toward the front door carrying his twin in his arms. His face looked like death itself. I ran downstairs to help in any way I could, but Glen went past me as if I were a stranger, and carried Glynis up to her bed.

  Colton shook his head at me wearily. “Let him go. There’s nothing you can do for him now. Come get me a drink, Dina, there’s a good girl.”

  I poured his Scotch and made it strong, carried it to him where he sat before the cold hearth in the drawing room. All around us were strewn the gay remnants of Christmas—red and silver, stars and bells. Brightly colored lights still winked from the tree, and I could not bear the look of them. When I had turned them out, I sat down opposite Colton—sat down heavily because my legs were trembling.

  “She must have let go of my scarf,” I said. “She must not have had the strength to hang on.”

  Colton lowered his glass. “What scarf? What are you talking about?”

  I told him how I had thrown Nomi’s strong, woven scarf to Glynis and tried to pull her in. How I had knotted it firmly to the stump and gone for help, leaving her clinging to it.

  All the way through my account Colton shook his head. “There was no scarf there,” he said when I finished. “There was no scarf there at all.”

  12

  By New Year’s Eve it was all over. And it was just the beginning.

  The painful ritual of custom and ceremony had been observed. Glynis lay beside her mother in a small country cemetery a few miles from High Towers. By New Year’s Eve the emotional shock had worn off to some extent so that we had begun to accept the fact that we would not hear her step on the stairs, would not hear her laugh again, need not fear her temper. Yet horror had only just begun.

  By New Year’s Eve snow was falling once more—large, soft flakes that were piling up outside, with no wind to blow them into drifts. We sat together—the four of us who had been five. We sat together, though not cozily, in the drawing room, and waited. Waited and watched each other—because of Nomi’s gift to me, because of the woven scarf that had not saved Glynis from drowning. The fear that was to follow us had already commenced. It lay upon us all. Only Jezebel was free of fear. Eerily, she knew that the one she feared was gone forever and she moved freely about the house—willing now to enter every room but Glynis’s.

  Perhaps I ought not to have been so insistent about the scarf, and about the shouting I thought I had heard. When Colton told me no scarf had been found, I should have let the matter go. But with Glen looking at me with blame in his eyes, I had to make him understand—make them all understand—that I had tried to save her. No matter what she had tried to do to me, I would not willingly have let her drown. Nomi believed me, supported me. With Colton I was not sure. But in Glen I faced repugnance and a dislike that grew stronger as the days went by.

  Once I went back to the place where Glynis and I had skated. I inched my way across ice to the stump of what had once been a great tree. Wedged tightly in the cracks of the wood were several pink strands of fringe from my scarf. I came home and told them all that the fringe was there, but my pleas persuaded no one to come with me and see for themselves. If what I said was true, they did not want to know, and when I went to check again a day or so later, the few strands were gone. I could only believe that someone had come secretly to remove them. Someone with a guilty conscience who wanted me to be blamed?

  Colton canceled his January plans to leave. For the first time in his life he seemed a shattered man. I had known that Glynis was his brilliant, favored darling, but I had not expected anything outside his art to shake him to such an extent. He looked immeasurably older
and his lion’s mane of a head seemed more white than silver.

  Nevertheless, there had been only one explosion of feeling on his part since the tragedy. It came two days after the funeral, when Nomi had gone determinedly into Glynis’s room, meaning to put away her things, remove all reminders of her from our midst. She had summoned me to help and I had gone reluctantly to Glynis’s room. Nomi’s determination to wipe every trace of Glen’s twin from the house seemed too extreme, and I was not sure why she felt so strongly.

  Colton found us at our work and stopped us with a sudden fury that surprised me.

  “Let everything be!” he told Nomi. “Where else is Glen to go when everything becomes too much for him to bear? Let him have his sister’s things as solace for a while longer.”

  Nomi was never one to be intimidated and she had some strong purpose of her own in clearing this room. She stood up to Colton sturdily enough.

  “It’s not solace—it’s the self-indulgence of exaggerated grief. The sooner every trace of Glynis is gone from this house, the better for us all. It’s unwise to let this room stay as it was. Glen is clinging to illusion and it’s unhealthy.”

  This was the first time I had realized that when Glen disappeared, as he often had in the last few days, he went to his sister’s room. He would be gone for an hour or more, and when he returned his face was blank of emotion, as though something had washed all ability to feel out of him. Intense pain might do that—the pain he would suffer among his sister’s possessions, letting it mount to a peak until he could feel no more. Nomi was right and I wanted to support her, but I dared not interfere when Colton gave the orders.

  “Leave the room as it is,” he said flatly, and turned away.

  I had not known that Glen was upstairs in his own small room until he heard our voices and came to the door. A glance told him what Nomi was up to and he strode in and took the box she was packing from her hands. He did not look at Colton, or at me.