July, 1929

The great thing about Lac a L'Eau Claire, indeed the reason the Meredith family had moved there, so far as Amanda Meredith – Mandy to family and friends – could tell was that there was no one around for miles. There were miles of sandy shore, rocky shore, and trees. Oh there were countless trees, and Mandy had a moniker for all of them. The red pine had three needle clusters just as 'red' had three letters. White pines grouped them in five, just as 'white' also had five letters. She knew lush green hemlocks because hem had stem, a little nub that you could dig your nail into to break the long, flat needle off. The magnificent blue spruces had spikey spiny needles, so they became Spikey Spiny Spruces. She knew Jack pines and Scotch pines from the way the needles twisted, the noble cedars by their distinctive web of needles. She told all of this to Miri as they walked, named the trees and the flowers, now and then pausing to judge the flatness of a stone. They might skim it on the water or tuck it securely in a pocket for a treasure.

There were deciduous trees too, and Mandy learned to tell them too, even from their bones when they washed up on the shore as bleached scraps of driftwood. No one, therefore, was more surprised than Mandy Meredith the day Miri stuck out a finger and said, pointing into the middle distance, 'Look Mandy! A house!'

Mandy squinted. She got up on her toes and craned her neck, shocked to her core at the revelation there was someone else on this scrap of nowhere. Well, someone besides Chessy and his squirrel clan, or Chirrup the chickadee, or even the beaver family she sometimes caught ambling along the ridges of the landscape, scrap wood dragging behind them.

'We have to investigate!' said Miri.

Mandy did not think this was strictly necessary. She liked their solitude out on the shore, the calmness of the lake. She spent long hours, legs swinging off the dock abutting their home trying to call the loons. She had not quite got the hang of it yet, but she was working on it. And as far as she was concerned, the gorgeous, dappled loons, along with Miri, Chessy, etc were ample company.

Miri tugged impatiently at her arm. 'We've got to,' she said.

It occurred to Mandy the house might belong to an ogre, or a witch. In fact, it was almost certain. Miri was going to drag them into the home of a witch who would bake them into gingerbread, just like in Hansel and Gretel and she had no idea she was even doing it.

'Don't you think,' said Mandy, dragging her sandal-shod foot in the white sand, 'we'd better find out who it is, first? They might not like us.'

They might not want company, Mandy thought. Like me. Or Dad. This too seemed likely. At seven and a half years old (which was practically eight, if you asked Mandy) it seemed entirely possible to Amanda Meredith that everyone had a father who trekked across the country painting landscapes in oil. Sometimes Mandy went with him. She was starting to wish she had gone with him today.

'Come on,' said Miri, nonplussed, and looping Mandy's arm through hers, propelled them forcibly up the rocky incline that led up from the beach and then along a series of increasingly narrow bends in the road. Mandy dawdled as best she could, smelling the intoxicating scent of the cedars, straining her eyes for summer pinks to talk to. She would never pick them, but Mandy did love the pinks. They were almost, if she had to choose, her favourite of the flowers. She never said so though; she mustn't hurt the tender feelings of the other flowers. They were such delicate, fragile things. She waved at a cluster of scilla and was tickled by prickly grass. Miri tugged at her arm a wordless command. Come on she was saying. They were in-between a family of twisted white pines and a little grey rabbit when a tweedy person came bustling past.

'If you're going to call on Old Jack Curlew,' she said crisply, 'don't. He won't see you.'

Mandy opened her mouth to express her effusive thanks at such intercession, but Miri only tossed her nut-brown head and said, 'He'll see us.'

Mandy doubted this. She looked forlornly after the woman, and the grey rabbit too, now scampering through the trees.

'Miri…' she reluctantly said, 'Miri, I don't want to.'

'It will be fun,' said Miri, and marched stubbornly up to the house. Well, towards the gate. It was greened and overgrown with moss, and still damp from recent rain. It must be hard, Mandy thought for the wood to dry out when it was sheltered by all these trees. Miri pushed hard against the gate and it swung grudgingly open, creaking and squealing worse than a stuck pig. Mandy would know; she had once heard a stuck pig squeal and the noise was unforgettable. It also brought a blustering, grumbling man stamping out an equally creaky door, this one appended to the house Miri had spotted earlier.

'I told that woman,' he said in aggrieved tone, 'I don't want no company. Not hers, not yours. G'way.'

Mandy tugged anxiously at her sister's arm, but to no effect. Miri tossed her head again and said, 'Well,' in her best impression of her mother's famous, prideful tone, 'I think that quite rude, seeing as we've come such a long way.'

'Oughter thought o' that before ye got here, hadn't ye?' he said. He had added an R to Thought so that it almost rhymed with Heart.

'Come on, Miri,' said Mandy and gave her sister another tug for good measure.

'Listen t'yer sister,' he said. 'She's got sense.' He added an R to Got too, Mandy noted, but dimly, because she was now exerting atypical force on Miri and actively pulling her back through the creaking gate.

'Come on,' she said, even as Miri sniffed her indignation.

'An' don't comeback' said the man. Mandy made him Old Jack Curlew. She didn't think much of him.

'Well,' she said from the safety of the twisted white pines, 'that's that. I toldyou it was a terrible idea.'

'Nonsense,' said Miri. 'We planned it badly, that's all. We'll bring food next time we come. No one can say no to food.'

Mandy wondered what she could possibly do to prevent against there ever being a next time.

She invented rock-skimming competitions, and she worked on her loon call, but it was hard-going and anyway, Miri was uninterested. So Mandy started improvising stories about a purple skunk named Ellie and a dog named Skippy. She sat cross-legged on the wet, water-warped wood of the dock and invented ludicrous adventures for them. Miri loved it. Miri also discovered that it was possible to play this game of imagination stories while walking. In vain Mandy protested that the baby pine martens would be sad to miss out on the adventures of Skippy and Ellie, or that Chirrup the Chickadee relied upon the stories for her daily entertainment. Miri would have none of it.

Mandy knew it was over the day Miri marched into their burrow by the dock, a little den of fallen branches and bracken Mandy had built herself, with a wicker basket on her arm. A red-checked square winked at her from under the lid, and it smelled of fresh apple turnovers, sweet, tart and flaky. Mandy thought this was an absolute waste of good pastry. Before she could say so, Miri said, 'We're going back.'

'Back?' said Mandy, deciding ignorance was the best policy.

'To Old Jack Curlew's, of course,' said Miri and rolled her eyes. She said it in a tone that suggested this was so obvious it should have gone without saying. In fairness to Miri, it could have done. Mandy hunkered down into her woodsy shelter anyway. It was reassuringly resinous and green, full of crunchy leaves and moist, warm earth. It was not going to shout at her, which Old Jack Curlew almost certainly would.

'You go on,' she said. 'I've got an appointment with Zip.'

Zip, being, in this instance, the wise old hedgehog who occasionally sought the shelter of Mandy's well-crafted burrow.

'Mandy,' said her sister expressively. There was no resisting that tone from Miri. Mandy got up and made an elaborate show of apologising to the absent Zip.

'If I die tragically and premeraturarilly,' she said with exaggerated clarity, 'I hope you will see I have a most romantical and worthy funeral. It will probably be necessary, you know.'

Miri snorted. 'He won't kill us, Mandy,' she said.

'And if I am murderised,' said Mandy over her shoulder, 'tell Mums I don't want them to sing Abide With Me at the funeral. It goes on for ages and is dreary.'

She was getting further and further away from Zip and company. 'But I do want,' she stressed, and she had to shout now to make sure he heard, 'Jerusalem the Golden. It's most romantical and endy-worldy.'

'You're being ridiculous,' said Miri.

'I see nothing ridiculous,' said Mandy with dignity, 'about preparing for the worst case scenario. One of us must.'

'You were telling the hedgehog,' said Miri. 'Who wasn't even there.'

Here Mandy sniffed in her turn and got a lungful of apple turnover and woods. It wasn't disagreeable. 'Zip,' she said loftily, 'has excellent hearing. And anyway, he takes very good notes.'

And off they went again, along the ridge, through the trees, past the white pine family, until they had reached the stiff, creaky gate. This time there was a horse grazing in the front yard, and Mandy thought it would be pushing their luck to force the latch since the stupid, squealing of the gate would probably give the horse a fit. Miri was unfazed. Mandy blamed Aunt Poppy and her horses. She then immediately felt guilty, since if the horse trampled them to death on arrival on its territory, no one would feel more guilty than Aunt Poppy for having immunised Miri against spooked horses.

Miri, obviously, had no such concern, because she pushed the gate open anyway. The horse was unperturbed. It raised its glossy black head to look at them, shook itself, and resumed grazing.

Out came Old Jack Curlew again, sputtering and muttering worse than ever.

'I told ye ter stay away,' he said, cross.

'Well, I call that very nice,' said Miri just as fiercely and proudly as before. 'Especially since we only came to give you this.' She held up the basket.

'I don' want no charity,' he snapped.

Mandy, for no better reason than to get a clear foot of space between herself and the red-faced Jack Curlew, promptly retreated to the shelter of the horse's near flank. It whickered a bit at her proximity, but didn't otherwise react.

'In that case,' said Miri, 'I'll just put the basket here. And you don't have to touch it. But we'll come back in a week and take it back.'

Mandy hissed. Mums would want the basket before then. The horse nosed at her, curious. Mandy, in spite of herself, stuck out a hand and stroked the wet, glossy nose. It had a velvety feel to it, and she thought, I bet you have a lovely, romantic name. You could be a Midnight, or Beauty, or maybe Oberon. Miri was still fussing with the basket.

'There,' she said, dusting her hands off. 'It's just there on the stoop. If you want it you can have it. And if not, we'll come back for it.'

'Hmph,' said Old Jack Curlew, nonplussed. But then he said, 'Mind, seeing as how Other Jack there has taken to yer sister an' all, I'll permit it. But jus' the once, mind.'

Other Jack! Mandy barely suppressed her snort. She gave the velveteen nose an apologetic pat. I'll think of another name for you, she thought, extricating herself from the horse. A better, more romantic one. It will be our secret.

Still, she was relieved to get away. Zip would be waiting for her. And, though she'd never have admitted it to Aunt Poppy, she much preferred the heady smell of the white pine family to horse.

The week passed entirely too quickly. One minute Mandy was plashing and splashing in the water in credible impression of a beaver, or, on wet days communing with Zip about what to call the horse, because they were agreed that Other Jack wouldn't do at all. They bickered dreadfully about it, because Zip felt very strongly that Other Jack would be shocked from too drastic a name change, while Mandy felt the more drastic (and romantical) the better. Just as she had persuaded sensible Zip around to Arion after that noble, talking, Grecian horse as a viable name Miri announced, feet tapping that they had to go back up to Old Jack Curlew's.

Mandy got reluctantly to her feet and demanded of an uncommunicative God what was wrong with him that he should have failed to put Mandy in charge of this Twinship. Because clearly he should have.

Again they went along the ridge, past the white pine family. There were pinks out that week, and Mandy would have stopped and worshipped them except that she couldn't bring herself to let Miri go alone to Old Jack Curlew. Who, as it turned out, was leaning against the open gate. Well, that was ominous.

As they came up to the gate he raised a hand in greeting. The basket, Mandy saw, was sitting primly on a fencepost, the gingham folded on top and held in place by a rock. It was a good, solid rock. Exactly the kind of rock she would have chosen for the purpose.

'They was good turnover,' said Old Jack Curlew. 'You make them?'

'Our Mums,' said Miri. She leaned in imitation of him against the other side of the gate, or tried to. She wasn't quite tall enough and she had to wrap her arms around one of the cross-beams. He grinned at the sight of her.

'Thought so.' He said. Thart so.'Thought ye was as ordn'ry as everyone else.'

Miri sniffed, and then positively inflated with indignation. There was no other way to describe it. She sort of swelled up and stood there bristling, like a cat with its back arched. 'We are not,' she said.

'Prove it,' said Old Jack Curlew, carelessly. Miri inhaled deeply. Mandy hardly saw how that was possible, given she was so swollen with air. But Miri did it, and for a moment Mandy thought she'd launch into a Skippy and Ellie story, even though that patently would not work. Miri though, had dived head first into the heady waters of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Quite when she had learned it Mandy had no idea. But now she was declaiming with spirit and éclat,

Awake! For morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the Stone that puts the stars to flight…

It was very beautiful. And Miri recited it most romantically. None of this changed the fact that Old Jack Curlew was utterly unimpressed.

'Well,' he said grudgingly when Miri had stopped at what she deemed a sufficient interval, 'I guess as ye can say some awful nice words.'

Miri's eyes widened with indignation, and Mandy could see her temper bubbling to the surface. She didn't blame Miri, either. She'd be furious, if he'd said it to her. She wasn't sure she was not not furious he'd talked like that to Miri. Even if anyone could see he wasn't the kind to care about poetry. She needed to get a comforting arm around Miri. But more urgently she needed – and this was absurd – to impress Old Jack Curlew. Sisterly honour demanded it.

There was a woodpile on the far side of the house. Mandy could see the massed logs peeking from round the corner of it, smooth ringed bellies exposed to the sun. She swept past Old Jack Curlew, not looking at him, and made directly for it. It smelled of crisp shavings and drying wood. But some of it was already dry, so she rootled around among the logs until she found one that would suit. Not too big, not to small. Neither too green nor too dead. Not so slippery as to be brittle or to stodgy to work with. Then she sat down crossed legs – feet under knees under hips under torso – there on the suggestion of a porch and, taking a little silver knife from her pocket, commenced to carve it. The knife was perhaps the size of Mandy's forefinger, equal parts blade and hilt, but it fit like a glove in her little fingers, and it flashed white in the sun as it swished and switched across the wood. Bark curled like ribbons under it, and little slivers of shavings skittered to the ground and onto the net of Mandy's brown gingham with the yellow flowers. She let her tongue peak from between her teeth in concentration. And all the while, Old Jack Curlew watched, rapt.

The log, which was more like an outsized bit of kindling, more of a branch, waxed slender. Thinner and thinner, and smoother and lighter, until it was all but disappeared between her fingers. She frowned, fished in her pocket, and came up with a skein of embroidery floss, which wasn't perfect, but would do in a pinch. She had bought it with last month's pocket money savings and had been saving it to emboss a handkerchief for Mums. Mums was always needing hankies because of all the ink on her hands. But Mums had a twin too, and she would understand the sacrifice for sisterly honour, Mandy knew.

She set her stick down on the porch and began to unwind the floss as far as it would go, splitting it gingerly with her fingers until it was exactly the right thickness. It was hard, because the floss was slippy, but Mandy did it. She was mostly grateful that it was a good, unassuming white. When she had it the way she wanted it, she knotted it around the stick, fussing over the knot, because the middle one needed give.

Almost done. But her rod wouldn't balance like that; it needed a counterweight. That was trickier, and she rootled along the ground in search of something serviceable. She found a rock in that pleasant intermediary between pebble and stone, small, smooth, and just wide enough to tie easily to the rod she was fashioning. That wasn't perfect either, but when defending sisterly honour, one worked with what one had. Mandy secured her stone. Then she marched over to Old Jack Curlew and stuck it perforce in his outsized hand.

'I should really do more to it,' she said, crossing her arms over her chest. 'It needs a hook, obviously, except I don't have one handy. And a proper reel would be good to. But I guess it will catch you a fish in a pinch.'

Old Jack Curliew narrowed his eyes, turning the little rod this way and that. 'I guess,' he said finally, 'as ye shouldn' be 'polergisin' over a job done nice.'

Miri's eyes widened like saucers. Mandy could hardly breathe for shock.

'Thought,' he said now, 'leastwise as one o' ye was sharp. Wouldn't've bet my silver on the silent, witchy, one though.'

Mandy snorted, but she wasn't offended, not really. People had been saying that sort of thing about her Aunt Mara in Kingsport for ages, and everyone adored her. She tossed her head loftily and said, 'All the best people are witchy,' which probably wasn't quite fair to poor Miri, but on the other hand, it split Old Jack Curlew's face clear in two, his grin was that big, so she reckoned it was the right thing to have said.

Definitely the right thing, because he waved them into the house with his own kind of grandeur, where there was tea and cakes waiting. The tea was so strong you could smell it a clear foot off, and it stained the mugs practically orange. You could see the little lines it left around the mug as the quantity diminished. It made Mandy's teeth zing from the strength of it. And as for the biscuits…well, it was just as well there was tea to soak them in or they'd have done for her poor, zinged teeth and that was a fact.

But the really strange thing about it was that Mandy felt, as she sipped that bitter, acidic tea and gingerly nursed those rock-hard biscuits, well the strange thing was she was starting to like Old Jack Curlew. Even if he had been so unoriginal as to name his lovely horse Other Jack.Mandy was going to be sure to tell Gran that one in her next letter. She would understand the full horror of the crime.

But Mandy also planned to tell her that they'd found a kindred spirit. In confirmation of this, Old Jack Curlew – call him Jack, he told Miri around a mouthful of biscuit! – said now, 'Ye bin tryin' to sing the loons in, ha'n't ye?'

Miri shook her head, but Mandy nodded vigorously. She'd been desperate to learn since watching Uncle Peter do it back on Crow Lake. He'd promised to teach her, but then they had moved, and of course she'd never yet been able to work it out. Old Jack Curlew – Jack – nodded.

'Thought so,' he said. Then, eyes gleaming with what Mums would have called devilry, 'Fancy a lesson?'

'Please!' said Mandy. She almost choked on her tea in her eagerness to say it.

They saw lots of him after that, now that there was no reason to dread him, or his house. He was still surly to the tweedy woman, but she was his housekeeper, and since she patently could not bake biscuits worth eating, Mandy didn't suppose that was so terribly bad. And he was unfailingly charming to her. He sat with her by the water and rippled his fingers back and forth, but slowly, so she could get the exact sequence of how to call the loons. Sing them in, he'd called it, which now Mandy thought of it, was infinitely more romantic a phrase. But she still couldn't do it, so he cupped his great red hands over hers and puppeteered her fingers until she got it right, and could do so credible a loon call that they came flocking to her.

He surprised them with the myth of the loon and the man whose necklace it wore, a story that thrilled Mandy and Miri to their collective souls. So Mandy told him what her aunts had taught her about whistling the Aurora into dancing. He liked that quite a lot, and even let them teach him how to make biscuits that were gentler on the teeth, though he warned savagely he wouldn't stand anything too fancy or too delicate. So Miri rustled up Susan Baker's ginger-molasses recipe, and Old Jack Curlew nodded approvingly over the gingery, tarry smell of them. The oven was a temperamental thing that Mandy had to bully into cooperation, and he applauded lustily when she finally galvanized it into starting. The oven spat flames at her in return, but she tossed her fiery head right back at it.

'Tha's righ',' he said, losing his dentals in his enthusiasm, 'fight fire with fire, Miss Witch.'

Everyone else called her Dryad, but at Jack Curlew's house that felt all wrong. Even Miri felt it, clearly, because she didn't correct him either.

They began dividing their time between the docks, the burrow and Jack Curlew's house. He took them for rides on Other Jack (Mandy found in the end she couldn't bring herself to rename him, that it seemed wrong), and showed them how to groom the horse. Only they knew that from Aunt Poppy, so he taught them to ride instead.

Other times they walked in the woods, eyes peeled to catch the change in seasons. Mandy pointed out her trees and flowers and animals as they passed, right down to their names. How Chirrup was really an honourific given to all chickadees, but how Chessy was particular to this red chipmunk. She rattled off the names of his tribesmen too, and explained about her flower spirits, and sage Zip. It should have felt silly – she half expected Jack Curlew to guffaw 'til he was ill – but having dubbed her Miss Witch, Jack Curlew took such woodsy communions in solemn stride. Of course she knew all this, it said so on the witchy tin.

Sometimes they got away in the evenings, and those were the best times of all, with the sun sinking into Lac a L'Eau Claire and the fireflies dancing. Midges too, but they lit wonderful, roaring fires to drive them away and Jack Curlew told wonderful, thrilling, hair-raising stories that made the Misses Meredith leap and squeal as high and zealously as their crackling fire. He surprised them still further by quite liking Miri's poetry, provided it wasn't too grandiose.

Once, they even found a bit of elfwort and threw it on the flames. He'd never seen that done before and was too delighted even to tease them when they said he had to wish on it.

When it came Mandy's turn she confessed to herself that she wished an impossible thing. I wish, she thought as she breathed the smoke and the peppermint-rich smell of the fire, we could stay here forever. But of course that couldn't be so. Some evening Dad would look up from a letter and say 'Mark says thus-and-such-a-place is lovely in autumn.' And Mums, hearing him, would pause in her correspondence, smile her lovely, quiet smile and say 'Then we had better make plans to be there by autumn.'

Or perhaps they would be out, maybe in a local diner, though that was rare, and the couple at the next table over would happen to reminisce over how lovely was that-place-we-saw-last-summer.

'What do you think, Angel?' Dad would say. And Mums, with her lovely, quiet smile again, 'Well, you know me, Jerry. I can write anywhere. Shall we risk it?'

Or still again a letter would come and Mark or Lewis or any one of these vague, inky people Dad kept up with would say, 'Wish you were here – the colours are divine.'

'Well,' Mums would say, 'we mustn't miss out on divinity. What do you think?'

And Dad would lean back in his chair and flash dark eyes at her. 'I think, Angel,' he would say, 'we must see to it you aren't cheated of your share of divinity. When shall we go?'

It was sweet, of course. They seemed almost one person in those moments, utterly complete in each other, even a little oblivious to Mandy and Miri. Which was fine because often, Mandy knew, she and Miri were oblivious to them.

Still, she wished on the fire for permeance first, because there was a potency to wishes that might just will this thing into being. She wished second that they stay long on the shores of Lac a L'Eau Claire, because that might be the next best thing. Someday they would go, but please God, or angels, or the goblins of the fire, let it be a long away, distant day. She wished for a wealth of memories so that when they did go, she could carry them with her. Enough to feed Miri and Mums' creative efforts for years, and to keep them warm on long-away winter nights. And maybe some left over to hug close and secret, because that would be quite nice too. It might even, when the time came, take some of the sting out of the parting.

But now they were together, Mandy, Miri and Jack Curlew, the fire roaring. It was good. Mandy lay down on her back and stared at the mackerel sky and its crescent moon, the most graceful of arrows. On the other side of the fire, Jack Curlew slapped his knee and launched haphazardly into song.

Land of the silver birch,
Home of the beaver…

It was more belt than song, almost comical. But it was warm as a hug, too, bone-crushing and close. Of course they joined in, floating the high notes as best they could;

Where still the mighty moose wanders at will…

They drummed and sang their way through the chorus, getting faster and faster all the time. Then they sang it again in canon, him starting. Afterwards they swapped, the girls leading the round, getting giddier by the repetition. They segued wildly into Keeper of the Eddystone Light, belting the chorus for all they were worth. Finally they stopped, breathless and laughing. Mandy fluted her fingers and sang the loons to her, the laughing ,whooping cry arcing across the sky to rival the bow of the moon, confident that she was secure in one of her wishes, at least.