Fog Magic (5 page)

“And it's on your blankets, too, Mother,” Retha discovered. “See, here on the corner of each one. But blankets will wear out and our egg cups and spoons will last forever and forever.”

The afternoon was well along before the dishes were washed and put away. Mr. Morrill started down to the shore but came back again. He fumbled on the clock shelf until Mrs. Morrill asked him if he had lost something.

“No,” he answered slowly, “but I think we'll have a pleasant evening. The wind's changing and the fog's beginning to lift.” Then he went out again.

Greta hung the dish towel she had been using neatly on the bar over the stove. “Maybe I had better start home,” she said.

“Perhaps you had, Greta,” said Mrs. Morrill quietly. She shook her head at Retha's protest. “We must never coax Greta to stay,” she went on firmly, “but we hope she will come soon again.”

Retha went up the road with her as far as the Sentinel Rocks. They said good-by and Greta went on alone over the mountain toward home.

RASPBERRIES were ripe. Wild and sweet, they grew bountifully in all the burned patches on the mountain but none were so large as those in a certain clearing just off the Old Road near the deserted village. The children of Little Valley had planned an all-day berrying trip over the mountain but when the day came it was one blanketed in fog. They gathered on the unroofed side stoop at Greta's to talk it over.

“Oh, it'll burn off by noon,” Hazen said. One or two of the other boys who had brought their lard pails and sandwiches agreed with him. But the girls were doubtful. Where the Old Road led through the spruce woods it would be dismal and wet, with moisture dripping from every bough. It wouldn't be half the fun to go on such a day, they thought.

“The berries will keep another day,” said Frieda. “They won't even ripen much on a day like this.” Greta had little to say, but when they finally decided not to go and scattered in disappointment to their homes she wasn't sorry. She watched them out of sight and then hurried indoors to pull on her old sweater and beret. It was just the right sort of day to go over the mountain alone.

At Blue Cove she met Retha coming out of her house, carrying a pail. “I'll get you a pail, too,” Retha said. “But maybe you'd rather just come along. I'll love having you-and you needn't work,” she added.

“Of course I want to pick,” Greta told her.

They went back for another pail and Mrs. Morrill hastily buttered some extra slices of bread.

In the clearing some women and older girls were already at work. They picked quietly, with little conversation. It was serious work—this gathering of the few fruits that would mean so much in the winter when fish and potatoes, and bread and tea were often their monotonous diet for long weeks. Retha and Greta were subdued by the industry around them. They edged their way over to one side where they felt free to talk while they worked. By noon the big pails were two-thirds full. The earlier comers had left and the clearing was deserted.

“Can't we eat now?” said Greta. “I can't bear the smell of your mother's bread for another minute.”

Retha laughed. “I'm starved, too. Let's leave our pails here and go into the woods. I know a flat rock where we can eat. It's not very far.”

They pushed into the spruces and followed a little path along the edge of a gulch until they came to Retha's flat rock. It was dry and warm. They spread their napkins out and piled the slices of oat bread on them. When the last crumb was gone, they stretched out and lay quietly for a few minutes. The fog had been sucked upward by the draft leaving the spot where they lay clear. All around them were trees shrouded with gray wisps of fog. The sounds that came to them were muffled. Overhead, close but out of sight, there was the creaking sound of a gull in flight; near by, soft twitter ings, the rustlings of small creatures, and the constant drip of moisture from the trees.

Retha gave a contented little sigh. “I love it here,” she said. “I think this is my favorite rock. I know that really we aren't ten minutes from home. But I like to pretend we are all alone in the wilderness.”

Greta was too comfortable to reply. She had turned over on her stomach. With her chin resting on her crossed arms she could look along the ground beneath the low branches toward other light spots where other flat rocks made oases in the woods. Suddenly she was aware that they were not alone in the wilderness.
She was looking straight into the face of another girl! She,

too, was stretched out on a rock. She was older than they, her long hair was in braids and her face was white and frightened. Without taking her eyes from the other girl, Greta pulled Retha toward her. “Look—there,” she whispered.

It took Retha a moment to find the still figure staring at them. Then she sprang to her feet calling, “Ann, Ann!
Wait!”
She plunged into the woods toward the strange girl. Greta followed as fast as she could, but Retha seemed desperate in her haste. When she caught up with her, Retha was kneeling on the flat rock and sobbing.

“See, she's been lying right here. The moss is all crushed. She can't be far. We've got to find her. Come on.”

“Why have we?” Greta wanted to know, but Retha didn't answer.

She plunged into the woods again, calling over and over, “Ann!
Wait,
I tell you. I'm Retha Morrill. You don't
need
to run.
Wait
for me.”

It seemed hours to Greta that she crashed through the woods trying to keep up with Retha. They scrambled through places she would have thought impenetrable. Their clothes caught on dead limbs, she slipped down into gulches and climbed out again. It was frightening to have quiet Retha so excited, and the thought of being left behind on a strange part of the mountain was terrifying, too. They went on and on through the dim woods. Twice they caught a glimpse of the tall, thin girl they were pursuing. She would stand and rest and then vanish like a deer. At last, when she was too exhausted to go farther, Retha threw herself down and sobbed helplessly. Greta put a protecting arm around her. There was nothing she could do but wait. As soon as Retha was quieter, she said to her, “We've got to get home, Retha. Whoever she is, we'll never catch up with her. And it's late. And I don't know the way back.”

Retha sat up and looked around. “I do,” she said miserably. “We'd best follow the gulch to the shore and climb back along the rocks.”

They were weary when they finally dragged themselves up the road from the beach and into the Morrill's cheerful kitchen. Mrs. Morrill looked at them in surprise. “Why, girls—” she began. But Retha interrupted.

“Mother, we've seen Ann. She
hasn't
run away to friends somewhere, like people think. She's still out there in the woods. And she looks terrible—and—and hungry.”

“Are you sure? And did you tell her the money's been found? That she has no cause to run away? Did you see her, too, Greta?”

Greta nodded. “But we couldn't tell her anything. We couldn't get close enough,” she added.

Mr. Morrill came in.

“The girls think they've seen Ann in the woods,” Mrs. Morrill told him. There was pity and anxiety in her voice. “Could she have kept herself alive all this time do you think?”

“She might,” Eldred Morrill admitted. “On strawberries and now the raspberries. But I don't see how!”

“But she
has.
We
saw
her,” Retha insisted.

“I'll get the men and we'll go out again and search,” Mr. Morrill promised. “Tell me exactly where you were when you saw her first and which way she went.” They told him as well as they could.

“Does Greta know what this is all about?” he asked. Greta shook her head.

“Ann lived down below here on the Neck,” Mrs. Morrill told her. As she talked, she began putting up a bite of lunch for Mr. Morrill to take along. “She worked for a hard sort of man. She hadn't any kin folks of her own and she was a frightened young one—always. The man she worked for had been saving for a year to buy a yoke of oxen. He kept this money in a tin box hidden in his house—it wasn't much more than a shack, anyhow. One day—early in the spring it was—the box was gone. He accused Ann of taking it. The girl ran out of the house, so they say, just as she was—no coat, even, to keep her warm. Two days later he found his money —the box had slipped down behind the studding where he'd hid it. Well, they searched for Ann for two weeks. The men, even up here, went out in parties day after day. But they never found her. And we've kind of stopped worrying. Most folks thought she'd gone up the valley and found work somewhere. Some do say they'd seen her in the woods, but the rest of us didn't take much stock in it.” She stopped suddenly. “Why, Greta! What's the matter, child? You're white as a sheet! I know it's not a pleasant story, but no real harm can come to the girl—even if she does run wild for a spell.”

“But
I've
heard people talk of Ann,” Greta's lips were trembling. “They'd say ‘Be careful you don't meet Ann in the woods' and things like that. And my father said they meant the ghost of a girl who had been unjustly accused and who still haunts the woods.”

Mr. Morrill smiled. “We'll see that this Ann doesn't haunt the woods,” he said. But Greta was terribly in earnest.

“But Mr. Morrill,” she insisted, “Father says that years later they found Ann's skeleton up near the bottomless lake!”

Mr. and Mrs. Morrill looked at each other. There was dismay on both their faces. Mr. Morrill reached for his coat and lantern hurriedly.

“Don't worry,” he said. “We'll find this Ann all right. But she's a
stupid
young one all the same. If
we
all know she's innocent,
she
must know it,” he added with exasperation. “And there's no sense in running away.”

Mrs. Morrill put a comforting arm around Greta. “It's late, Greta. I'm sorry we can't keep you because I know you're tired. But you'd best go. Are you sure you're not afraid to go over the mountain alone? Someone could go with you.” She hesitated for a moment and then added, “At least as far as the Sentinel Rocks.”

Greta shook her head and said good-by. But she hurried more than usual that night, and where the Old Road led through the spruces she stopped for a minute to call softly into the dark shadows, “Ann! Ann, come back. They
know
you are innocent.” There was no answer and she ran toward the lights of Little Valley with thankfulness for her safe, welcoming home.

6
.

AS THE village of Blue Cove grew more and more real to Greta, she learned to fit it into her own life. It was easier even than having faith. The Bible taught that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But Blue Cove with its winding street of houses above the cliff, its busy beach and wharves below, was something Greta believed she saw with her own eyes. Perhaps, if only she could keep it secret enough, she could go on seeing it always. She would have liked to talk to Retha about it and about themselves. She even tried once, but Retha stopped her.

“I know, Greta,” she said softly, “I tried to ask Mother about us once, too.”

“What did she say?” Greta asked her.

Retha thought for a minute. Then she said slowly, “She didn't really answer. Maybe she was thinking about something else because all she said was ‘that women who stay ashore have to learn the same lesson that men learn who go to sea.' ”

“What
lesson? Did you ask her that?”

“Yes. And she said ‘they have to learn to be content and at peace shut in by their horizon.' ”

Greta was turning the words over in her mind one day as she hurried along the Old Road. Her mother had decided it was too foggy for a wash day and she was unexpectedly free to go off by herself. She waved to Old Man Himion absent-mindedly as she passed the fork and started up the mountain. “To learn to be content and at peace shut in by their horizon,” she repeated. Suddenly it was all clear to her.

“When I'm inside, it's the fog that is my horizon,” she thought. “And all I need to do is to be content.” It was answer enough for a happy little girl on her way to adventure.

Her happiness was subdued somewhat when she found the Morrills bustling around to get ready for church. You could never tell, Greta had learned long before, on what day of the week you would arrive at Blue Cove. The seasons could be depended on. If the blueberries were ripening in Little Valley, they would be ripening in Blue Cove. But like as not a Tuesday in one place would be a Thursday in the other.

Greta felt a little shy about going to church, but the moment she was settled in the pew between Retha and her mother, all feeling of strangeness passed. The words of the Gospel and the familiar hymns could smooth away years or centuries.

Today Greta was not the only stranger in church. In a front pew, with the woman who had given her a ride over the mountain, sat a tall, stately woman. Beside the rich silk of her companion she seemed to be plainly dressed, but there was something about the proud way in which she held her head that made Greta long to see her face.

“It's Mrs. Stanton from down off the Islands,” Retha whispered. “That is Mrs. Trask she is with, and they're both coming to our house to dinner.”

When the service was finally over and the congregation rustled out into the aisle, Greta watched for the stranger to turn. The face that she saw was not old, but it was worn and tired. It was a face you remembered.