Chapter 16

Parson Farm
Grindstone Island
St. Laurence River

January 2011

The next morning they woke to the roosters crowing, well before dawn.

Foreman led him back to the dining hall, to a breakfast of some kind of oatmeal and stewed apples. "Is there any coffee?" Spencer asked.

Foreman looked at him. "How much did you...wait, what am I saying? You're a cop." He knocked on the door and asked them to make up a jug of morning water with honey, please and thank you. "Barley, chicory, ginger and mint. It's about the most stimulating thing we've got around here."

"Great." All this and he was decaffeinating too.

After breakfast he was taken out to the courtyard and given a crash course in snowshoeing. He only fell four times before he had the hang of it, more or less. Necessity was the mother of fast learning. "You okay?" Foreman asked as he got up the fourth time.

"Yeah. I have a bad knee. With this weather it might be a problem." Spencer tried to rub the bone deep ache out of it."

"At your age?"

"I got shot a couple of years ago. I got between a victim and an Unsub. A suspect."

"Deliberately?"

"Yeah."

Foreman chuckled. "Bad ass. Okay, the schoolhouse is a mile that way, head straight for the sun."

"A mile?" He was already exhausted, they had to be kidding.

"It was originally going to be us and another farm sharing the building, but they pulled out of it." Foreman replied. He handed Spencer a basket to go with his empty knapsack. "There's your lunch, your jug and your lantern. The well out there is good, no need to worry about that. You might as well head out, the kids will be along after they finish morning chores." He grinned. "Have a good one."

"Thanks." The other men turned back to their work, leaving Spencer nothing to do but head out. He was reassured that if he did fall and get stuck odds were the children would find him before he froze to death. Maybe.

He clambered on as the sun slowly started to glow above the horizon. He had to admit one thing, it was beautiful here. All around him was nothing but white, rolling hills of white, trees white with snow and frost, a creek through the woods frozen so white it looked blue. And it all seemed to gently glow in the oncoming dawn, a soft, delicate halo over the world. And it was completely silent, a silence broken only by the faint sounds of nature. It took his breath away.

Finally Spencer crested the hill and saw the schoolhouse in the distance. It was red, of course, warm and cheerful against all that white. Some of the windows glowed with an amber light, and smoke was curling from one of the chimneys.

That was the moment that it hit him. He had been captured by an Unsub. He was at the mercy of he didn't know how many psychopaths, all of whom considered him a slave. He was in mortal danger and he had no way of calling for help. He had no way of reaching the team, no backup, no authority, no way of defending himself at all. And yet here he was in this utterly peaceful place, and just ahead was warmth and familiar sanctuary that was calling to him to come home. The dissonance between fear and peace drew a broken sound from his throat.

Then he started walking that way. No need to freeze out here.

He climbed the steps to the side that was lit up, left his snowshoes in the foyer with the pair already there, and pushed in to the most amazing space he had ever seen. The walls were made of a light, soft wood which glowed golden in the light of the candle lamps that seemed to be everywhere. Up in the front was a very traditional blackboard. In the middle were tables and chairs set out, and a round rug by the crackling stove with chairs and pillows around. In between the windows were storage cubbies which held a rainbow of soft colors of crafting supplies and school supplies and lots of books. It was so warm and so homey and so safe he just wanted to sink on the rug and stay there until the team found him.

And then someone ran into him from behind.

As he recovered the someone pushed past him. He watched a small figure that seemed nothing more than a bundle of soft colored rags go over to the stove, climb up two steps to reach the top, and set some kind of pot there. Then it climbed down, turned and studied him. Twelve, he thought, maybe as young as ten. "Um, is your, um, teacher here?"

The figure mumbled something at him.

"Um, I'm sorry?"

It started to mumble something again, then shook itself and started unwrapping. Layers of what turned out to be shawls and scarves and cloaks came off until a face finally started peeking through. "I'm the teacher." It said.

She said.

As he watched the figure of a girl started to emerge. He caught sight of red cheeks and pale ivory skin before she turned, gathered it all up, and headed back to the foyer. "How old are you?" He asked without thinking.

"Twenty." The girl called back from where he saw her shadowy form putting things on hooks. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"I know you haven't been to university..."

"Actually I have."

"Oh." She came back and looked him over then. "In that case I'm your apprentice." He might have considered that, except that when he actually saw her his world stopped. It wasn't the ivory pale skin or the warm pink of her cheeks, or the figure that was a grown woman's at half-scale, or that she was the first woman other than Seaver he had seen here. It was her face.

He knew her face.

She was so much older, on the other side of puberty, but he knew her face.

"I'm 2711." She said with that achingly familiar smile. "Call me Teacher. I know I'm not really old enough but I've been at it for three years and I'd rather not confuse the children. We should go get your fire started." With that she headed to the other end of the room and through a door there.

He looked after her, breathed her name into the still of the room, and went after her.