by Tanya Huff
"We don't do Christmas," Big Tam pointed out. "We're older than that, ain't we."
"Aren't we. And I'm not asking you to do Christmas. I'm asking you to help children. Think of it as service to the community."
"We're all about service to the bleedin' community, Missus Owl."
"Workin' our arses off in the background, never getting no recognition."
"Aye, and we're right tired of it."
She could understand that.
"Still," Callum added a moment later, "it ain't the kiddies' fault."
* * * *
Three in the backseat, two with her in the front, and she could fit all five into her car for a trip to the big toy store in the city.
"Big Tam, take your hand off my thigh."
"Sorry, Missus Owl. Ewan's shoving like."
"Bugger I am!"
"Brownies, what did we discuss about seatbelts?"
"No one gets punched," five voices responded. "No one gets bit. Seatbelts stay on, and no one gets hit."
"But…"
"No, Ewan."
"Not fair, Missus Owl! He sodding started it."
They had three hundred and twenty-seven dollars to spend by the time they reached the store.
She ran into the minister's wife as she emerged from a painfully pink aisle, her arms piled high with boxed baby dolls.
"Are you here on your own?" the minister's wife asked, as she helpfully adjusted the pile.
"No, I'm here with my Brownies."
"I'd love to meet them." Smile tight and official, the minister's wife peered around the store. "Where are they?"
From three aisles away she heard, "Sod off, you cheap bastard. We're buying the web-slinging set what comes with Doc Octopus."
"Oh, they're around."
* * * *
Little Tam was the hit of the talent show in January. The other four stomped and shouted and whistled, applauding long and loudly when he finished his song. Unfortunately, it was in Gaelic and she didn't understand a word of it.
"It's about a shepherd," Big Tam explained, glaring around the circle as though daring the others to contradict him. "A shepherd what really, really loves his sheep."
* * * *
In February, on the Tuesday evening closest to the full moon, they made snow men – one large and five small – out behind the church hall. She provided carrots for noses, but each of the Brownies had been told to bring enough small stones to create eyes and mouth.
"What's so funny, mate?" Callum muttered, finishing his snowman's smile. "I'm freezing my bloody bollocks off out here."
"This is a part of your Winter Outside badge," she reminded him, uncertain if bollocks was cursing or slang.
"Is there an icicle up the arse badge? Because I've got that one nailed."
The minister's wife appeared as she was unlocking her car.
"I've missed them again, have I?"
"Only just." She smiled and checked to make sure that she'd obliterated the distinctive prints made by hobnailed boots.
"I could see you from my upstairs window." The minister's wife gestured toward the old stone house that went with the church. "I couldn't see your Brownies, though."
"I expect the angle was wrong. And that pine tree's in the way."
"I've never seen them." The light over the parking lot made her eyes look a little wild. "I see you park here every Tuesday evening, but never them."
"They come in through the other entrance." She didn't know what entrance they came through; they arrived every week a few minutes after she did. The other entrance was therefore no lie. "You've come out without your boots and hat. You do know you lose forty-five percent of your body heat through an uncovered head, don't you? You should get back inside before you get a chill."
* * * *
Her first year as a leader, she'd brought in pictures of John Glenn, her Great Aunt Rose, who'd raised eight children on her own after her husband had been killed in the First World War, and Wonder Woman. She'd talked about what it meant to be a hero and then had the girls come up with heroes of their own. Over the years, she'd added many of their heroes to her portfolio. This year, it took her nearly an hour to carefully tape them all to the painted concrete walls.
She hadn't been snuck up on in thirty-seven years, and so she turned, smiling, when she heard the faint sound of footsteps behind her. The tall, dark-haired woman with the minister's wife came as a bit of shock, but she didn't let it show. It helped that, over the last little while, she'd become used to seeing the minister's wife pop up at odd moments. "Good evening. May I help you?"
The dark-haired woman held out her hand. "Hello, my name is Janet O'Neill." Under her coat, a blue and white striped shirt, a dark blue sweater, a prominent pin… "I'm from the provincial office."
Of course she was.
"I was in the area visiting Samantha Jackson…"
The name threw her for a moment, and then she remembered. Samantha Jackson was the minister's wife, who was looking less nervous than usual now she had backup.
"…and I thought I'd drop in and visit your troop."
"My troop."
"Your Brownies."
Oh, dear.
"I see you're studying heroes tonight. Why don't you run us through the pictures while we wait for the girls to arrive?"
It took forty-five minutes. It would have taken longer, but after forty-five minutes, Janet raised her hand and said, "They're not coming are they?"
"Well, of course they…"
"Aren't!" the minister's wife finished dramatically. "I've never seen these Brownies of yours. No one has. I've asked around, and no one in town has enrolled their daughter in the program."
"You've spoken to everyone in town?" She was honestly curious. Who knew the minister's wife had that much free time.
"Not everyone. A lot of people, though. It's a small town!"
Janet pulled five familiar registration forms from her briefcase. "I just want to ask you a few questions about these forms. You filled them in yourself, didn't you?"
"Yes, but only because they couldn't."
"There is no they!" The minister's wife jabbed a shaking finger at her. "No one came to register that night, but you've been a Brownie leader since the beginning of time and you couldn't bear not having a troop. So you made them up, didn't you? They're total figments of your imagination!"
"They are not!"
"Then where are they?"
"They won't come when you're here!"
"Why not?"
"Why should they? You don't believe in them."
Janet cleared her throat.
She stepped back, took a deep breath, and apologized for shouting.
"I need to meet these girls," Janet said firmly. "I need to know that our organization hasn't been…"
"Used by a crazy lady!" the minister's wife finished.
"I swear to you," she spoke directly to Janet, "my Brownies may be a little rough around the edges, but they're trying, and isn't that what we're about? They're doing their best, and they understand about duty…"
"Duty hasn't been a part of the promise for years," Janet reminded her gently.
"Well, maybe it should be. The point is, they want to be more than they are and they came to me for help, and I helped them because that's what we're about too. Helping."
"I need to meet these girls," Janet repeated. "Or I'm afraid that…"
"Oi, Missus. Sorry we're late."
Hobnailed boots coming down the stairs. In front as usual, Big Tam held out a gnarled hand to Janet O'Neill. "Tammy McGregor," he said. "Pleased to meetcha, Missus. This here's my younger sister, Tina." Little Tam grunted, still apparently annoyed he'd had to change his name. "Our Da gives us all a ride into town, but he had a cow in calf and we couldn't go until the bugger popped."
"Oh, I didn't realize you were all from farms."
She blinked. If that was the provincial leader's only concern, she was adding a new picture to her wall of heroes.
; "Well, Eula here ain't…"
Ewan waved.
"…but Da picks her up on the edge of town. We'd all been part of 4-H, but we had to keep Karen away from the sheep, if you know what I mean; wink-wink, nudge-nudge."
"Oi, none of that you lying bastard!"
She cleared her throat. Callum stopped his charge, sighed, and tossed a coin in the curse cup, muttering, "Knuckle sandwich later, boyo."
Conner sidled up to Janet, and tugged on her sleeve. "I learned to read here."
"Well, good for you."
"I got a badge for it."
"Congratulations." Her pleasure seemed genuine.
"But there's no one there!"
Everyone turned to stare at the minister's wife, who had collapsed into a chair and was visibly shaking.
"She takes a header, dibs on mouth-to-mouth!"
"I'm for CPR, me!"
"You just wants ta grab her boobies."
"Brownies!"
The rush toward the minister's wife stopped cold.
"With me, please. Let Guider O'Neill handle this."
They muttered, but they fell in behind her as Janet eased the minister's wife up out of the chair.
"Come on, Mrs. Jackson. I'll just take you home now, and maybe we'll make a few phone calls, all right?" Half way up the stairs, the smaller woman supported against her shoulder, she turned and smiled. "It was lovely to meet you all. And I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."
"Nice lady, that," Ewan announced as the outside door closed.
"It's called a glamour," Big Tam explained, before she could ask. "The dark one, for all she was here to check you out, truly wanted to see Brownies, so that's what she saw and heard – wee girls. The other, well, she'd convinced herself that there were no such thing as Brownies, hadn't she? So that's all she saw."
"It's not quite a lie," Callum added.
They watched anxiously for her reaction.
"You're not responsible for people's expectations, but," she added as they began to preen, "it is important that people not have low expectations of you, and I don't think you can get lower than Mrs. Jackson's."
Little Tam nodded. "No expectations at all, I'd say that's lower than an ant's arse."
"I think it would be a good troop project to raise those expectations."
* * * *
By summer, the minister's wife had gotten used to a spotless house, clean clothes, cooked meals, and landscaping the envy of the neighbourhood. She started a Pilates course, had an affair with the UPS driver, and seemed a lot happier.
The Brownies picked up two more badges.
* * * *
They couldn't go to camp…
"Glamour a great group of little girls? No offence, Missus, but are you daft?"
…so they learned about the wonders of nature by hiking together in the woods outside of town.
She learned there were unicorns in the woods.
"Why is it they won't come to you, Missus Owl?"
"That's none of your business, Big Tam."
* * * *
They gathered to watch the Perseid meteor shower for their Key to Stem badge.
"Make a wish, Missus Owl."
"It's not a falling star, Ewan. It's a piece of rock burning up in the atmosphere."
"Make a wish anyway."
So she did.
* * * *
They got their Key to the Living World badge by joining the fall Trash Bash and cleaning up a full five kilometres of road.
"It doesn't count as trash if it's parked in someone's garage, Conner."
"But it's a Lada, Missus Owl."
"Put it back."
* * * *
Callum got his Pet Pals badge by directing the dump rats in a performance of West Side Story. It was the best amateur theatre she'd seen in years.
* * * *
That Halloween, she dressed as a Gypsy. Big Tam was a Leprechaun, Little Tam a Fianna, Conner a Jack-in-Irons, Ewan a Phouka, and Callum came as Britney Spears, circa Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.
* * * *
At Christmas, they delivered gift baskets to the seniors at Markam Manner. The Brownies picked out the contents themselves. Since the seniors seemed to appreciate being treated as adults instead of grey-haired children, she decided to consider the baskets a success. The staff of the nursing home were less accepting, but they were the ones dealing with the aftereffects.
* * * *
By spring, all five vests were covered in badges – all the key badges and all but two of the interest badges. There were no Sparks for them to help – not necessarily a bad thing – and as they'd tried and failed to hack CSIS on her laptop, she'd refused to give them their Information Technology badge on principle.
Most leaders kept their troops intact until the end of summer, so the girls could have one more visit to camp, but since that was still out of the question, she decided they should fly up in the spring.
She liked the symbolism better; new growth, new life, and the same ceremony her old Brown Owl had used when she'd flown up.
The Brownies appeared, as they always did, a few moments after she'd set the toadstool in place. They recited the Law and the Promise and, with a minimal amount of insults and no profanity at all, sat down.
She had a whole speech prepared, dealing with what it meant to be a Brownie and what it meant to leave that behind and move on, but looking around the circle, from face to face, all that seemed somehow presumptuous. They knew more about what it meant to be a Brownie than she ever would.
So all she said was, "It's time."
They looked a lot like her girls then, a little scared, very excited – quite a bit hairier.
She'd built a three-step platform; shallow steps, so that the top was no more than a foot off the ground. Two posts – broom handles, really – wrapped in sparkly ribbon and attached to the platform, with more ribbon strung between them, made a low door. Hanging from the ribbon were five sets of construction paper butterfly wings.
"Big Tam."
He started, stood, and walked to the first step, tugging his vest into place. She smiled reassuringly, and he nodded.
"Do your best to be honest and kind." A light touch on his shoulder.
One step.
"Be true to yourself."
Two steps.
"Help to take care of the world around you."
He was on the platform now.
"Take your wings and fly."
She'd written their names on the construction paper in lavender glitter ink. A little girly maybe, but old habits were hard to break.
Big Tam reached for his wings, took a deep breath, and, without looking back, jumped through the door.
The way he disappeared into a soft white light that smelled of fresh-mown hay came as no great surprise. The brass band playing She'll be Coming Round the Mountain, well, that was a little unsettling, but she coped.
Little Tam. Callum. Conner. Ewan. Who paused on the platform and said, "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Alone in the basement of the church hall, she reached up to take the ribbon down and shrieked as Big Tam's head appeared between the broom handles, the first time in thirty-seven years she'd been taken by surprise.
"Oi, Missus. You comin'?"
"I'm not…"
Over the sound of a euphonium solo, she heard: "Oi! Get yer flamin' mitts of me wings!"
"I'll wing you, ya skeezy pervert!"
"You'd best bring the ice pack," Big Tam sighed as he disappeared.
She scooped it out of the cooler, picked up the curse cup, and climbed to the top of the platform. As she ducked under the ribbon, she wondered if her old wings still worked…
When Julie Czerneda asked for submissions for her anthology Mythsprings, she wanted them based on the Canadian myths and stories, poems and songs that inspired us.
For most of my life, I have lived near the Great Lakes – not on, waterfront property is insanely expensive, but near enough to walk to the shore.
My father used to run a diving school. Every summer through my teens, a friend and I would go to her family's cottage in the Thousand Islands and canoe out to watch the lake freighters pass. I was at university in Thunder Bay the year Gordon Lightfoot came out with the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the local DJ played it every morning at 7:30, right after my alarm went off. Which is to say, the lakes and I have history.
The ships and their stories within this story are true.
Diana and Sam, and the mythos they operate in, are from my three volume Keeper Chronicles – Summon the Keeper, The Second Summoning, and Long Hot Summoning. You should be able to follow the story even if you haven't read them, but, if you haven't, they're now available as a trade omnibus.
UNDER SUMMONS
Eyes squinted against the early morning sun, Diana Hansen walked down the lane toward the Waupoos Marina listening to the string of complaints coming from the cat in her backpack.
"The boat is leaving at seven thirty," she said when he finally paused for breath. "If we'd gotten up any later, we'd have missed it."
The head and front paws of a marmalade tabby emerged through the open zipper and peered over Diana's shoulder toward the marina. "I thought need provided for Keepers during a Summoning?"
"Need has provided, Sam. There's a boat leaving for Main Duck Island this morning."
He snorted. "Why can't need provide a boat at a reasonable hour?"
"It doesn't work that way. Besides, cats do that hunt at dusk and dawn thing – you should be happy to be up."
"First of all, I'm not hunting. And second," he added ducking down into the backpack as a car passed them, "I'd rather have sausages for breakfast than a damp mouse."
"Who wouldn't."
Another car passed, bouncing from pot hole to pot hole.
"You'd better stay down," Diana told him, hooking her thumbs under the padded shoulder straps. "It's starting to get busy."
"Oh yeah," the cat muttered as a pickup truck followed the two cars. "It's a real rush hour. I'll be napping, if you need me."
The Ministry of Natural Resources trawler was tied up at the nearer of the big piers out behind the marina. Pausing at the south-west corner of the big grey building, Diana scoped out the crowd. Most of the twenty-four other travellers were older couples, sensibly dressed in long pants, wearing both hiking boots and hats. Half a dozen women were obviously together, and, just as obviously, part of a club – unless they'd all accidentally worn the same lime-green t-shirt. There was a sprinkling of younger adults, and three teenagers. Two girls, probably sisters, and a boy. They were the only people wearing shorts. The boy caught her gaze and smirked. He was a good-looking kid – and he knew it.
