Fog Magic (10 page)

“Christine, tell me something,” she began. “Do you remember how you felt on your twelfth birthday? Was it any different from other birthdays?”

Christine set her full pail down carefully on the platform and replaced the board with the rock on it over the top of the well before she answered.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “I can remember. My twelfth birthday seemed terribly important to me.”

“Why?” Greta asked eagerly. “And
was
it different from the others when it came? Going into your 'teens, I mean?”

“It was the nicest birthday I ever had,” Christine told her, “and yours will be, too. You'll see. Maybe it's just because you feel that you've accomplished something, like beating around the Cape in a stiff gale. Or like turning the heel of a sock,” she finished. They both laughed as Christine's thoughts crashed so prosaically to earth. “Anyhow,” she defended herself, “I
have
turned the heel of a sock so I
know
about that, even if I haven't rounded the Cape.”

Greta felt better about the approaching day. She had even begun to look forward to it a little when her father brought home the word that the Committee had decided to hold the annual church picnic at Blue Cove on that day.

“But that's my birthday,” she protested.

Both Walter and Gertrude laughed at her. “You didn't expect the world would stop running to celebrate, did you?” Father teased. “However important it is to us three,” he added seriously enough to soothe her feelings. “Of course, I could ask the Trustees to reconsider the date if you like,” he went on. “But it would be too bad. The tide's just right so that all the fishing boats will be in early. The following week wouldn't be nearly so good for them. But it's for you to say. It's your birthday.”

“Father, don't be
silly.
You know you couldn't change the picnic. Of course it doesn't really matter, only it's a shame to have two good times come at once. That's all I meant. You know it is.”

Father only grinned at her, but her mother said, “I'd planned to have you ask Hazen and Frieda, and Marguerite and Gladys and Lyman, and whoever else you want, for tea on your birthday. You can have them just as well a day or two later and that will spread the good times along.”

“Oh, thank you, Mother. I'll love having a party sometime in the next week. Saturday can be my private birthday—my secret one—and the day of the party will be my public one.”

The church picnics were not held in the clearing at Blue Cove, but over on a high point to the left of the beach. It was the favorite spot of the minister of the Little Valley church. His parishioners chose it out of their fondness for him. To reach it you turned off the Old Road below the village clearing, crossed a burned patch, and followed a little footpath up across a wind-swept headland fragrant with bayberry. It led you out at last to a great open rolling space high above the sea. The ground covering of cranberries and a half dozen interwoven mosses was as springy as a mattress. It reminded the Reverend Mr. Clute of the downs of southern England, looking out across the Channel. But he liked to bring his people here for another reason. He knew that it offered everything the spirit needed for nourishment. On a clear day—with the sea a deep blue, with a crisp wind fanning the excitement of living, with gulls whirling in vast circles and mewing faintly from their great height—on such moments in this place the idea of freedom became so real that you could almost grasp it in your two hands.

Greta decided as the afternoon sped on that it was a perfect way to spend one's twelfth birthday. There was only one thing lacking. If she could somehow have had both her own people and her friends of the Blue Cove village, her happiness would be complete. But there seemed no chance of it. The day remained as clear as crystal. The games, the supper, the singing of familiar songs followed one after another.

They were still singing when a change came in the air. Mothers reached for sweaters to slip on the smaller children and the men began to gather up the picnic baskets that must be carried back to the old Post Road. The little procession was soon on its way up across the headland, anxious, now that it had started, to reach the road before dusk fell. Walter Addington was the last to leave and Greta waited for him. They followed the little path silently, listening to the laughter, the snatches of song, the fretful cries of tired children ahead. Where the path dipped down away from the sea, Greta and her father stopped to look back. They watched the sun slip quietly out of sight, leaving a pattern of opal tints.

“Look yonder—off toward Big Gulch, Greta. Do you see?” her father asked.

Around the point came the first billow of incoming fog. Almost at the same moment Tollerton's hoarse blasts began down in the Passage.

“It's going to be a foggy night after all, isn't it?” Greta tried to keep out of her voice the little tingle of excitement she felt, but her father must have caught it.

“Happy?” he asked in a very casual tone of voice. “Will it do—for a twelfth birthday?”

“It's been a perfect day, Father, every bit of it,” Greta told him, and she gave his arm a happy squeeze as they followed the others.

By the time they reached the Old Road and the baskets and small children were loaded into the ox carts that stood waiting for them, little tendrils of fog were noticeable on the beach. They stole around the big rocks; they blew in soft wisps up the roadway; as sure as the tide, the fog was coming to enfold them, but it was a wayward thing that must play with them first.

The climbing was steep for the first part of the walk back and only a few of the lustier people had breath for song. The others plodded along steadily to the rhythmic sound of the distant foghorn. It was quiet enough to hear the murmur of the stream by the roadside and the sleepy chirping of the birds. As they passed the entrance to the clearing Greta looked in. It was empty. Not yet had the fog reached it to touch it with life. Greta had a sudden impulse. Like throwing out an anchor she dropped her sweater by the side of the road and went on.

Everyone stopped for breath at the top of the mountain and looked back along the road they had come. Gone by now was the horizon, the sea and the shore. Fifty feet behind hung a thick gray curtain through which nothing showed but the dim outlines of spruce trees and the Sentinel Rocks. The ox carts began to creak again and the people got under way. They were singing again on the down hill stretch toward their warm, comfortable homes in Little Valley.

“Father, I must go back for a minute. I—left my sweater,” Greta said. Her father gave her a long look.

“Must you?” he asked. Greta didn't answer. Would he offer to go back with her? Would he tell her to leave her sweater? That she could come back in the daytime for it? After a long pause, he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Run back and get it, Greta. But remember it's late. Don't stay long tonight. I'll wait for you below at the Ezra Knoll.”

Greta watched him out of sight. She stood perfectly still where she was until the fog reached her. Then she turned and ran back over the road she had come. She had never been over here quite so late before, but the lateness only made it more exciting. At the entrance into the clearing, she stopped. It was there! The fog that could blot out and take away scenes and landmarks could also give them back. It had given her back the village of Blue Cove!

A light in every house, blurred and uncertain, but warm and friendly, marked the curve of the familiar little street. Homely sounds, a dog barking, the distant closing of a door came to her muffled in the fog. But there was no sound of the foghorn; that had ceased. She ran along the gravel path to Mrs. Morrill's door, and stepped into the kitchen. Mrs. Morrill turned in surprise.

“Why, Greta! How late, child, for you to be here! But I'm glad to see you—always,” she added.

“We've been having our church picnic over south of the beach,” Greta explained. “And then the fog came in —and the others have gone on. But I—I had to come back. And oh, Mrs. Morrill, it's my twelfth birthday today!”

“Your twelfth birthday, my dear!” Mrs. Morrill looked aghast for a moment, but she added quickly, “Well, I might have known it would come sooner or later. Has it been a happy day?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” Greta told her, “and especially now that I could come here for a minute, even if I can't stay. I wanted to see you today—terribly.”

Mrs. Morrill gave her the slow, steady smile that was as reassuring, as trustworthy as the ray of light from a lighthouse.

“Retha will be sorry she missed you. She's gone up the shore a way with her father. They'll be home soon but you mustn't wait. And, Greta, child, I am glad, too, to have you come in on your twelfth birthday. I have a present for you. But I want especially to wish you
‘safe passage.'
”

“‘
Safe passage?'
But—but that's what you say when —when people go off on a voyage!”

“You
are
starting on a voyage, Greta! The happiest voyage in the world—the voyage into your 'teens. But I mustn't let you stay tonight. Wait here, child, while I get the present I have for you.”

Greta stood in the middle of the kitchen drinking in its warmth, its friendliness. Her eyes rested on one familiar thing after another; the corner cupboard with the two egg cups side by side in the center of the lower shelf like a baby's first teeth; Grandfather Tidd's glowing dinner plate behind them; the stand before the window with its pots of heliotrope and rose geraniums, and the red and gold lacquered box that held Laura Morrill's sewing; the conch shell for a doorstop; the ship model on the shelf; the black screen with the strange gold birds that stood before the couch. These were things she
knew
as you could only know the things you had dusted and handled; she would never forget them because the feel of them would always linger in her hands.

When Mrs. Morrill came back, she put into Greta's hands a little gray Persian kitten. “Princess would like you, to have one of her kittens to take home,” she said.

The tiny soft thing snuggled sleepily into Greta's arms. It was as gray and as gentle as a breath of fog, but it brought only dismay to Greta. She remembered the piece of strawberry pie that Mrs. Morrill had given her on the day of her very first visit. What would happen?

“Must I—must I take it?” she asked. There were tears in her eyes and it was hard to keep her voice steady.

“You'll always be glad you did, Greta, and you'll love her. Now, my dear—” She opened the door. Greta forgot she was twelve and almost grown up. She threw herself, kitten and all, into Mrs. Morrill's arms and clung to her like a much smaller girl than she was. Then she stumbled out into the fog.

“Safe passage,” Mrs. Morrill said quietly, “safe passage for all the years ahead!” She gave Greta a last smile and sent her, comforted and confident, on her way. Greta stopped only long enough to pick up her sweater and wrap it around the kitten. She turned up the Old Road toward home without once looking back.

Beyond Old Man Himion's, Walter Addington stood waiting. Greta held up the kitten for him to see. “Can I keep it? I—I mean,
will
it keep?” She almost whispered the words.

Father reached into his pocket and when he pulled out his hand he kept it closed for a minute. The kitten reached out an impudent little paw and slapped at his closed fist. Father looked at the kitten and laughed. “All right,” he said and opened his hand wide. On his palm lay an odd little knife. The kitten reached for it, but Father drew his hand back. “I suppose you think you've a right to it,” he said, “but you're wrong. I've had that knife since my twelfth birthday and I aim to keep it as long as I live. No wisp of a kitten is going to bat it down a crack in the rocks and lose it for me.”

Greta caught her breath. “Did you get it at Blue Cove, Father?” she asked.

Her father nodded. “On my twelfth birthday.”

Greta thought he wasn't going to say anything more but after a while he began again.

“I think you'll keep your kitten,” he said at last very slowly. “On your twelfth birthday, Greta, you grow up, and you put away childish things. Sometimes you'll wish you hadn't because you put behind you so many things—happy and unhappy. But the next twelve years can be happier still, my girl, and the twelve after that. And try to remember this—none of the things you think you've lost on the way are
really lost.
Every one of them is folded around you—close.”

“Then tomorrow there'll
only
be cellar holes—and always, from now on?” she asked slowly. Her father seemed to understand.

“Cellar holes, yes. But cellar holes and spruce thickets, and rocks piled high. Old Fundy beating on the shore, clouds blowing overhead, and the gulls mewing. The grandest spot of land on the continent—and your homeland. And back here on this side of the mountain there'll be a gray wisp of fur waiting to purr for you. This kitten should bring you a line of kittens that'll last as long as my knife,” he ended.

Whether the magic lay in Father's words or in his understanding Greta did not know. But she felt her heart grow light. “I'll call her Wisp,” she said happily, “because she's like the tiny wisps of fog that are left behind in shaded corners of the rocks, sometimes, when the sun burns off the rest. And, Father, your knife and my kitten—it's fun, isn't it, to have them and to
know?”

“To know?” her father smiled. “Yes, it's fun, Greta, and all that lies ahead can be fun, too—the growing and the living.”

“I'm glad I'm twelve and growing up,” Greta thought, “no matter
what
I have to give up. But I'm going back over the mountain. All my life I'm going back to Blue Cove. I'll take Wisp and
her
kittens, and
their
kittens forever and forever. And I'll let them play in the cellar holes and nap on the stone doorsteps of Blue Cove.”