Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  Fleurette thought it sounded like fun. She had read about Midsummer customs and wanted, if nothing else, to dance through the Saint John’s fire. Ruben would have accepted the invitation anyway since the gold miners were among his best customers. Helen, however, refused to go.

  “It will be too cold for my old bones. Let the children dance. Gwyn, we’ll have a pleasant evening to ourselves. Daphne can come too, if she likes.”

  Daphne, however, shook her head and laughed. “Nahhh, Helen. I have to go and keep an eye on my girls,” she explained. “So that they don’t give themselves to the boys for free, and, who knows, bring a little Swede home in their bellies! It’s supposed to be a fertility ritual, jumping through the fire and all, isn’t that right? You have to watch out for those.”

  While Elaine was looking forward to the festival, Kura had mixed feelings. Once again, there would be awfully coarse men and a band that would play every second note off-key; she would freeze and everybody would talk about stupid things. But William would be there, and there would be dancing. There might even be proper dancing, not that hopping around that passed for dancing at the church picnic. Kura had learned to dance—waltzes and the like—from Miss Witherspoon. It would be wonderful to sway with William to real music, to rest in his arms and let herself be carried by the rhythm… Kura felt a gentle regret that she did not have a ball gown. But the O’Keefes would have laughed at her anyway, as everyone would be wearing their warmest clothes that night.

  The girls at the festival grounds wrapped themselves tight, shivering in coats and shawls. One or two of the Swedish women wore traditional clothing. The scenery had a surreal quality to it, for it had long since grown dark and the moon hung high above the snowy mountains. The girls danced around the midsummer pole, their brightly decorated red hats lit up by the fire. The men did their best to see that no one got too cold. Liquor and beer, as well as mulled wine for the women, flowed freely, creating inner heat. Already rather tipsy, Daphne’s little group was flirting with the gold miners. And once the two Swedish women had explained the dance around the midsummer pole to them, the girls got themselves tangled up in the brightly colored ribbons.

  Though Elaine surveyed the scene with interest, Kura seemed to be disgusted. Both of them had started off with wine, but as they began to get cold, they grew to appreciate the warm drink, which quickly caused them to forget their reserve. Elaine suddenly decided to join the dancers, and ended up twirling around the midsummer pole and laughing, hand in hand with a towheaded, blue-eyed girl named Inger. Then Inger came up to her and Kura and held a couple of withered plants out to them.

  “Here, you don’t have any flowers yet!” Inger spoke with a funny accent. “But that’s part of Midsummer. A girl has to gather seven different kinds of flowers and lay them under her pillow on Saint John’s eve. Then she’ll dream of the man she’s going to marry.”

  Elaine took the rather sad bouquet Inger was offering and thanked her. Kura, however, hardly looked at hers. She was once again morose and bored. William was chatting with Ruben and a few gold miners on the other side of the fire, and Elaine had long since stopped trying to talk to her.

  “We gathered them by first light this morning, according to custom,” Inger explained, although the selection had necessarily been limited. “They’re all cooking herbs and houseplants. So if you only dream of cooks and layabouts, you mustn’t take it too seriously.”

  Elaine laughed and asked the girl about Sweden. Inger answered enthusiastically. She had emigrated with a boy she had been madly in love with. But they had hardly reached Dunedin when he found someone else.

  “It’s owful, no?” Inger asked in her funny accent, but it sounded like she was still hurt. “He brings someone else along, and then… though of course I was the one who made the money for the trip.”

  Apparently in the horizontal trade since Inger let it be known that she would have done just about anything for this man.

  Elaine looked over at William. Would she do anything for him too? Would he do anything for her?

  The festival had taken awhile to get going, but by the time the fire began to die out, it had been fun for everyone—except Kura. She’d had other dances in mind, she explained in a dignified tone when a drunken young gold miner worked up the courage to ask her to dance. In the end, she let William talk her into a jump through the fire. Elaine looked on sullenly. Was that not a custom for those who were in love?

  Ruben and Fleurette finally announced that it was time to go, before the festival was completely over. This was when Daphne had to keep an eye on her girls—though she ignored Inger and Søren’s kissing. Perhaps Inger will dream of him tonight, Elaine thought, carefully gathering up her bouquet. Søren seemed to be a nice man, and the towheaded girl deserved better than the life of a prostitute.

  Ruben and Fleurette wanted to head straight back to Nugget Manor. They did not want to spend the night in town, as their Maori servants were also at a festival and they had left George alone—a situation about which he had complained bitterly. He, too, would have liked to romp through the fire, but there was school the next day. Fleurette wanted to find out if the boy was in his bed as he should be.

  Elaine insisted, however, on returning to town with William and Kura. She had left her horse in Helen’s stable, riding with the two of them in a carriage, so she had a legitimate reason.

  “But you can rent a horse from here,” Ruben said, not comprehending. “Why did you leave Banshee in town anyway? You could just have easily ridden behind the carriage.”

  Fleurette laid her hand on his arm, trying to appease him. How could men be so dense? She understood that Elaine did not want to leave her admirer alone with Kura for even a second.

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” she whispered to her husband, at which point Ruben stopped insisting. “But don’t take too long, Lainie. Ride quickly and don’t stop for anything!”

  William looked indignant. He did not think it ladylike for Elaine to ride such a long way alone at night. Was he expected to accompany her? Elaine merely laughed when he halfheartedly offered to do so. She had come into the hotel for a last cup of tea to warm herself up after the carriage ride, and Helen and Gwyneira were still sitting by the fire.

  “William, I ride circles around you. You already complain that I gallop down that ‘dangerous path’ by day. At night you would only hold me up.”

  She was no doubt correct, but had not expressed herself particularly well, Helen thought. After all, no man liked to be told he was a skittish rider. William looked correspondingly sour, but Elaine did not appear to notice. She blithely told her grandmothers about the midsummer pole and the flowers she had to lay under her pillow.

  She is a child, William mused, and in his heart, he realized that sounded like an excuse for her having just rebuffed him… and for his being in love with Kura.

  When Elaine left shortly thereafter, he accompanied her outside. That went without saying; he was a gentleman, after all. His good-bye kiss was barely a peck, though Elaine seemed not to notice. So close to her grandmother’s watchful eye, she did not dare make any affectionate gestures either, as Helen would know all too well what was going on if Callie started barking. The little dog still did not like it when William embraced her.

  With something close to a sense of relief, William followed Elaine with his eyes as Banshee began to trot away. She would let the horse go at a warm-up pace until she had passed Main Street, and then ride briskly home, followed by that crazy little dog. She would probably even enjoy herself. William shook his head. So much of Elaine’s behavior would always be incomprehensible to him. In complete contrast to Kura.

  Kura-maro-tini crept out of the house. The light in Helen’s salon had just gone out. She had been sent to her room, but she was staying on the ground floor. From her window, she had watched as William said good-bye to Elaine.

  William was happy that he had not seriously kissed Elaine. It would not have felt right to him if Kura, who wa
s now leaning as if by chance against the wall to the right of the front door, had caught him in the arms of someone else. No one could see Kura from a window. She had thrown on her fur coat but had not closed it, and he could see the dress she was wearing underneath. The top three buttons had already been undone. Kura wore her hair down, and as it flowed over the pale fox fur, the moon made it glow silver.

  “I needed some fresh air because it’s so hot inside,” she said, playing with the fourth button on her dress.

  William stepped closer to her. “You look beautiful,” he said, awestruck, and then wanted to hit himself for that. Why could he not think of a wittier compliment? Normally he did not find it the least bit difficult to come up with the right words.

  Kura smiled. “Thank you,” she said quietly, drawing the word out into a tune that promised heaven.

  William could not think of a reply. Slowly, almost timidly, he touched her hair. It was smooth as silk.

  Kura trembled. Though she seemed to be shivering, had she not just said that she was hot?

  “Strange to think that it’s summer elsewhere,” her voice crooned. “Do you celebrate these festivals in Ireland as well?”

  “On the first of May rather than the end of June,” William replied, suddenly sounding hoarse. “People used to call it Beltane. A spring festival.”

  “A fertility festival,” Kura said alluringly. She started to sing. “When the summer comes and the trees bloom lovely…”

  As Kura sang, Queenstown’s icy Main Street seemed to sink away, and William found himself in Ireland again, kissing Bridget, the daughter of his father’s tenant, feeling her warmth and desire.

  And then he took Kura in his arms. It just happened. He had not really wanted to. She was so young, and there was Elaine, in spite of everything, and his job here in Queenstown, but more importantly just then, there was Kura. Her scent, her soft body. Kura was the beginning and the end. He could have lost himself in her kiss. Kura was the earth and the moonlight. She was the silver gleaming lake and the eternal sea. At first, William kissed her slowly and tentatively, but she pulled him closer and returned his tender advances wildly and—evidently—knowledgeably. This was nothing wary or timid like Elaine. Kura was not delicate and fragile, not coy like the girl in the Salley Gardens, but as open and alluring as the blossoms that people heaped on the altar of the goddess at Beltane. As William tugged her dress down a bit to caress the smooth, soft skin of her shoulder, Kura rubbed against him, mussing his hair and placing little kisses, then little bites, on his throat. Both had long since forgotten the need to stay hidden within the cover of the house. It was as though they were dancing with one another on the hotel’s terrace.

  Elaine had just left Main Street behind and directed Banshee toward the river when she remembered something. The flowers! She had left the flowers that Inger had worked so hard to gather next to Helen’s fireplace. Would it still work if she put them under her pillow the following night? Probably not, as it would no longer be Saint John’s eve. And Inger might ask her about it. Elaine hoped so anyway. Inger might have been a woman of easy virtue, but she was almost like a friend, and Elaine desperately wanted to whisper and giggle with her about their dreams. If she wanted to know what her future husband would look like, she would have to ride back. If she galloped, she would lose no more than five minutes.

  Banshee turned back unwillingly. Elaine had wanted to get home as quickly as possible and had ridden at a correspondingly energetic gallop. And now back to Main Street? That did not suit the mare one bit, but she was an obedient horse and let herself be turned around.

  “Come on, Banshee, when I go in, I’ll grab you a cookie,” Elaine whispered to her.

  William and Kura really should have heard the hoofbeats, but the two of them were making their own music that night, and could hear nothing but the other’s breath and heartbeat as they felt the pulse of the earth.

  Elaine might not even have noticed the couple if they had remained in the house’s shadows. She had expected the hotel to be locked and meant to enter through the stables. But Kura and William were standing in the moonlight, captured by a beam of light as though on a stage. Banshee shied back when she saw the two of them, and stamped her hooves into the ground. Elaine’s breath caught. She could not comprehend it. It had to be her imagination. If she closed and then reopened her eyes, surely she would not see William and Kura together.

  She tried to catch her breath and blink, but when she looked again, they were still kissing. Oblivious, they formed a single silhouette in the moonlight that lit up the street. Suddenly a light went on in the house, and the front door opened.

  “Kura! For heaven’s sake, what are you doing out there?” It was her grandmother Helen! So it was not her imagination. Her grandmother had seen it too.

  Not even Helen could say what had compelled her to go downstairs one last time before going to bed—perhaps it was the flowers that Elaine had forgotten. She had spoken of them with such high expectation, and she knew she would almost certainly come back when she noticed that she had forgotten them. And there were these shadows in front of the house, or maybe one shadow.

  And hoofbeats.

  Helen saw how Kura and William were fondling each other—and looked for the length of a heartbeat into Elaine’s horrified, wide-open eyes before Banshee reared up on her hind legs and galloped down Main Street as if the devil were on her heels.

  “You’ll come inside this instant, Kura! And you, Mr. Martyn, please seek new lodging immediately. You will not spend another night under the same roof as this child. Go to your room, Kura. We’ll speak in the morning!” Helen’s lips formed a thin line, and a deep wrinkle furrowed her brow. William suddenly understood why the gold miners had such immense respect for her.

  “But…” the word stuck in his throat as Helen looked at him.

  “No ‘buts,’ Mr. Martyn. I do not want to see you here anymore.”

  7

  Believe me, Fleur, I didn’t fire him!”

  Ruben O’Keefe was growing tired of his wife’s inquisitions. He hated that his wife was taking her anger out on him, when he was entirely innocent of the family catastrophe involving Elaine, William, and Kura.

  “He quit. Wants to go to the Canterbury Plains, he said. His future requires him to be around sheep.”

  “I can believe that,” Fleurette spat out furiously. “He probably has his eye on ten thousand sheep in particular! I never trusted that boy. We should have told him straightaway to get lost.”

  Fleurette could tell that she was getting on Ruben’s nerves, but she needed a lightning rod. She had heard Elaine come home the night before, but she hadn’t said anything. The next morning, the girl didn’t come down to breakfast, and Fleur discovered that Banshee had been only sloppily tended to in her stall. Elaine had fed her and thrown a blanket over her, but she hadn’t washed or even brushed the mare. The dried-on sweat in her coat spoke of a hard ride, and it was not like Elaine to neglect her horse. When she finally went upstairs to see what was wrong, she found her daughter crying inconsolably in bed, her puppy pressed against her. Fleurette could get nothing out of her. Helen first reported what had happened that afternoon.

  That alone was difficult enough to believe. Helen drove out to Nugget Manor alone in a borrowed dogcart pulled by Leonard’s horse. She avoided driving or even riding whenever she could. She’d had a mule in the Canterbury Plains, but after Nepumuk died, she had never acquired a new animal to ride. And she had not asked for Gwyneira’s assistance that day.

  “Your mother’s packing,” she explained through pursed lips when Fleurette alluded to this. “She’s very sorry about all of this, and she understands that it’s better if Elaine is spared having to see Kura for a while. Otherwise, she was rather reticent about punishment. There is no longer any question of boarding school in England, or in Wellington, for that matter. Even though that would be the only solution when it comes to that spoiled brat. She has to learn that she cannot have everythi
ng she wants.”

  “You mean she seduced William?” Fleurette asked. She was not disposed to grant the young man extenuating circumstances.

  Helen shrugged. “She certainly did not discourage him. He didn’t drag her out of the house. She must have followed him and Elaine outside. Besides, there wasn’t much seducing to be done. Or as Daphne put it, men fall to that girl’s feet like ripe plums.”

  Fleurette almost had to laugh. She was not used to that kind of expression coming from Helen.

  “And now he’s going to follow her to the Canterbury Plains. What does my mother say to that?” she asked.

  Helen shrugged again. “I don’t think she knows about that yet. But I have a rather hateful suspicion. I am afraid your mother may see William as the answer to her prayers.”

  “Elaine will get over it.”

  Fleurette heard those words again and again over the next few weeks. William’s departure was the talk of the town, of course. Although Elaine had been the only witness to his shared caresses with Kura, several customers and employees had heard rumors. And people, especially the women, were able to put two and two together, at least when the Canterbury Plains were mentioned and with Gwyneira and Kura Warden leaving on practically the same day. Elaine hardly dared go into town, though Fleurette reminded her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Most people were rather sympathetic. The older citizens of Queenstown had not envied Elaine her suitor, and there were not many respectable girls her own age around who would savor gossip about her bad luck. Nevertheless, Elaine cried unceasingly. She hid herself away in her room and sobbed as if she would never stop.

  “What goes around comes around,” Daphne said when Helen told her what had happened over tea.

  Elaine no longer greeted new guests at the reception desk, and she had stopped helping out in the store. If she was not crying, she wandered the woods with her horse and her dog. Unavoidably, she went past places she had been with William—picnic sites, spots where they had kissed, and so on—with the result that she inevitably broke down in tears again.