The Tale of Halcyon Crane (17 page)

“Hannah looked at this stooped, gnarled old woman, black shawl around her shoulders, bag of magical herbs in her hand, and suddenly had doubts. Should she be doing this? Wasn’t this against God and nature?

“ ‘Is this—witchcraft?’ Hannah wanted to know.

“The old woman smiled. ‘That depends. I know certain secrets about making cures from what I find here in the glen. If you want to call that witchcraft, so be it. I call it the knowledge to use what God has given us on this earth.’

“Hannah nodded, somewhat calmed by Martine’s words. Gingerly, she took the bag from the old woman’s hand. ‘Are you sure this will not harm my husband in any way?’

“ ‘The only thing these herbs will do for your husband is make it possible for him to father children—not just once but from now until his dying day,’ Martine said forcefully. ‘The tea will change him forever; he will be fertile like any other man. You will bear as many children as you desire. But it will
not otherwise harm or damage or change your husband. On that you have my promise.’

“ ‘I’ve wished for a child for so long,’ Hannah murmured, eyeing the contents of the bag.

“ ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Martine warned. ‘And listen well to me, Hannah Hill. I said this tea will not harm your husband, and it will not, but you must know this: He is not meant to father children. His line should end with him. By using these herbs, you are calling forth certain
powers
to deliver children to you, against what nature itself has intended. This cannot be undone.’

“ ‘Yes.’ Hannah nodded anxiously. ‘That’s why I’ve come.’

“ ‘But you must understand.’ Martine tried again. ‘Any child conceived this way, out of—as you call it—witchcraft, can be unpredictable. You might get a demon or an angel or something in between; there is no way of knowing.
Children conceived out of witchcraft are witches themselves
,
as are their children and their children’s children.
Whether they are good or evil depends on their spirit. I cannot control the type of spirit that might come through. Your children, their children, and their children—all will be similarly cursed or gifted.’ “

“More talk about witches, Iris?” I said. “This is sounding like the stuff of Grimm’s tales.”

“And yet it’s the story of your own family.” She looked me square in the face. “Best listen, child.”

I nodded, drawing my arms around me as though I had felt a sudden chill. “I’m sorry. Please go on.”

“Hannah listened to what Martine was telling her about cursed or gifted children, but there, in that tiny kitchen, she
reasoned that the same uncertainty would surround any child. No mother knew what kind of child she would have, sweet or rebellious, blond or brunette, strong or sickly. That was up to God, or so Hannah believed. Martine was really saying the same thing, wasn’t she? In her desperation, Hannah thought so. Hesitating only for a moment, she put the cloth bag in her pocket and got back on her horse.

“Over the next three days, Hannah brewed the herbs and leaves with her husband’s morning tea, and, just as Martine predicted, on the third day she did indeed conceive a child. Hannah knew it the moment it occurred, with a jolt that felt to her like an explosion deep within her body. And nine months later, Hannah and Simeon were the parents of triplet girls, Penelope, Persephone, and Patience.”

“I heard about them!” I told Iris. “Will Archer found their graves. They died so young. What happened to them?”

Iris smiled ruefully and shook her head. “This is where the story gets a little bit haunting,” she said slowly, sipping her tea. “You know what people said about Martine, how she always exacted her price for the cures she doled out? Well, in this case, it was true.

“Simeon and Hannah loved their daughters fiercely, but, truth be told, something about the girls just wasn’t right. From a very young age, they were devilish and mischievous, pinching one another in their cribs, pushing one another down the stairs, deliberately frightening their mother by pretending one or another of them was dead.”

A shudder crept up my spine.

“They were not like other children of the time, who were,
for the most part, obedient and quiet. You never knew what those triplets might do. They gave Hannah and Simeon quite a time of it.

“They loved playing hide-and-seek in the house and around the grounds, and poor Hannah was forever looking for them.” At this, Iris actually chuckled. It was a gurgling, choking sound I didn’t care to hear again.

“It wasn’t just the disobedience,” Iris continued, shaking her head. “It was also their strangeness. It seemed as though the girls were not separate people at all. They never went anywhere alone. They spoke in the same monotone voice, came when you called any one of them, and would stand in front of you with identical looks on their faces. I know it sounds like a fantastic tale, but it seemed as though the girls shared one soul. Of course that could not have been the case.”

“Of course,” I mumbled.

“One more thing you should know about them,” Iris went on, her eyes shining. “They were almost transparent. Their skin was papery thin, so thin you could see blue rivulets of blood rushing through their veins just beneath the surface. Their eyes were the palest of blue, so pale it was nearly not a color at all. And their hair was stark white. It was as though Hannah had given birth to a trio of ghosts.”

“Will said the girls died young.”

“There was a freak storm when they were eight years old. The townspeople were certain Martine had caused it, but that was, of course, hysteria on their part. Storms brew up out of lake and water wind here on the island when you least expect them. This one happened on an early November day, a beautiful day. The girls were playing outside, right there on
the cliff. Hannah was in this very kitchen making supper when the storm descended. Nobody knew it was coming. That’s how it was with storms and tornadoes and floods back in those days, with no modern weather forecasting.”

My mind sputtered, caught in a hazy fog of remembering. “Are you talking about the 1913 storm? I’ve heard about that somewhere.”

Iris nodded. “It was one of the worst disasters ever to happen here—or anywhere else on the Great Lakes, for that matter.” She gathered her thoughts and went on. “It was a relatively mild day, typical of early November, the type of day that lures sailors and fishermen onto the lakes with the promise of calm seas and balmy temperatures, only to turn ugly and murderous once the poor souls are too far from land to return.

“This was the time of year in which the leaves had long since fallen, their abandoned branches now spindly and gnarled, exposed and vulnerable—as, in a way, were the residents themselves—to the wind and snow that would surely come. But that particular day, no snow was on the ground, the sun was high and bright in the sky, and the winds were calm.”

“It sounds like the weather now,” I offered.

“Exactly like now. People relished those rare November days, riding their bicycles one last time before the snowfall, hanging wash on the line to capture the air’s fresh scent, opening their windows to coax that freshness inside the house before closing them for six months of winter.

“That’s why Hannah Hill had no objection when her young daughters begged to go outside after school instead of doing their chores. Let the children play out of doors while
they can, Hannah decided, glad to have them out of her hair for a few hours. Her husband was scheduled to return from a trip to the mainland that afternoon, and she wanted to make everything right in the house for his arrival.

“It was so balmy, the girls didn’t take their coats when they ran off to the cliff, some hundred yards away. Hannah, meanwhile, cleaned and fluff ed the living room and turned her attention to dinner. During the off -season, she and her husband gave the servants a liberal amount of free time to visit family on the mainland, and this was one of those days. Hannah was managing on her own—unlike many women of her station, she was a capable cook and housekeeper—and enjoyed the quiet pursuits of making just the right dinner for Simeon and creating a lovely atmosphere for him to find when he returned home. These were acts of love for Hannah.

“She was making a meat pie, a favorite dish of her husband’s, wanting him to find a kitchen smelling of care and attention when he got home. She had no idea, as she chopped the onions, potatoes, and carrots, that her life was about to take a horrifying turn. It always happens that way, doesn’t it? Destruction descends at a moment’s notice, without any warning, when one is caught up in the business of everyday living.”

I nodded, thinking of the day this life-altering journey began for me.

“She didn’t notice, being inside the warm kitchen with the stove blazing, that the temperature outside had dropped dramatically. Had she realized what was happening, she might have called her daughters in. The four of them might have huddled together by the fire, perfectly safe in the fortress
of a home her husband had built, until the storm passed.

“Certainly, if Hannah had had any inkling that a storm had been killing people on the lakes for four full days already—and was rapidly moving eastward, toward the island—she would have acted differently. But as it was, the Hill triplets were playing their favorite game, hide-and-seek, on the cliff while their mother made dinner.

“As two of them hid and called out clues to the searcher, the storm was marching through the Great Lakes, ravaging whatever it touched. Ten-foot snowdrifts engulfed entire towns; hurricane-force winds shattered windows and tore up cobblestones. People lucky enough to be in their houses were trapped there. Those caught unawares on their way home were never seen again.

“The snow and wind were only the half of it, however. This was early November, and none of the lakes had yet frozen, so enormous icy waves, taller than three-story buildings, slammed into shore, destroying docks and piers and seawalls.”

I pulled my legs under me. “I can’t imagine a storm that fierce.”

Iris shook her head. “It was nature’s fury unleashed, child, nothing less. Imagine being out on the water with those waves engulfing ships and freezing them solid. Dozens of freighters went down in a single day, not to mention all the small fishing boats and other vessels that were lost. Hundreds upon hundreds of people died, including three little girls who were playing outside when this murderous storm finally reached Grand Manitou Island.”

I had been holding my breath for this entire story. I was so cold I felt I, too, was being caught unawares in that dreadful weather.

“The death of the Hill triplets wasn’t as simple as just freezing to death, which in the end, of course, they did. Before the girls knew what was happening, the storm was upon them. The temperature dropped dramatically and the wind came. Had they gone inside right away, they would have survived. They would have grown up, married, had children, and finally died. But that didn’t happen.

“Persephone spotted it first: a steamer, out of control, being pounded like a toy boat against the rocks just off-shore. The horrifying realization hit the girls: Their father was returning home that afternoon, on board that steamer.

“Despite the cold, despite the wind, the three sisters scrambled down a path on the rocky cliff side to the shore; in their young, naïve minds, they believed they could do something to help their father. They were yelling
Papa! Papa!
but their words were swallowed up by the wind and carried away, and they could only watch in abject terror as wave after icy wave bombarded the steamer, encasing it—and all the men aboard—in a solid layer of ice.

“As bad as it was for their father on that steamer, the girls had worse trouble. They were standing on the shoreline, just steps from the water, when the snow bore down on them.

“An ordinary blizzard on the Great Lakes is an awesome and frightening thing, but this was wrath tenfold. Carried on the back of the punishing gale-force wind, the snow began streaming sideways so hard and fast that the girls could not keep their eyes open against its force. It was a complete
whiteout—even if they could have opened those pale blue eyes, they would not have seen anything beyond their own noses.

“They stumbled, cold, frightened, frantic, holding onto one another, toward the cliff, but they had no idea where to find the path up to the house. They couldn’t make out anything, held as they were in the grip of that blinding white monster. So they huddled together against the rocky cliff, hoping someone would come to their aid.

“But no one came. It didn’t take long before the massive waves that had blown the steamer into the rocks reached land—and the three girls. Wave after wave hit the poor sisters, and within minutes they were frozen solid in a block of ice, wrapped in one another’s arms.

“Meanwhile, up at the house, a frantic mother was looking for her daughters. Hannah had been working at the stove when she happened to glance out the kitchen window and, in horror, realized that a blizzard had descended upon them. She grabbed her shawl and ran outside into the storm, screaming her daughters’ names: ‘Persephone! Penelope! Patience!’

“More and more panicked as the minutes passed, she too was soon blinded and confused by the storm. Which way back to the house? Where were the girls? She couldn’t see more than an inch in front of her, the snow beating down so hard and fast that it sliced tiny wounds into her exposed face and arms. She had trouble remaining upright in the punishing wind, so she bent low, yet she kept on. She would not leave her girls out there, alone, in the storm. Tears froze on her face, creating a hideous, icy mask of grief.”