a deep content
Running its course near the Castle was a creek, its waters glistening in a perpetual twilight beneath the long drooping boughs of the weeping willows. Various members of the gaggle had taken to calling it “the river.” Nora’s bedtime stories had often featured rivers of late, some of them home to lovely water sprites; others wild and white, barring the way to far-off lands; one an ancient bard calling its lovely song over the stones in its path. The little ones were quite captured by these rivers, and naturally wanted one of their own.
Our river was not an exciting place in itself, but at times its lovely green shadows deepened, and it suddenly became something uncanny: too still and ancient to belong to this world. Or so the Pixie told me. She often sat by the water, cradling the tiny one in her arms, and watching an old dream take shape beneath the willows: a boat. None of the children could remember whose idea the boat had first been. It seemed to have come upon them all at once, and stayed with remarkable tenacity.
The boat was now in its third year. The first year, they had set out to build it with a vengeance. When several attempts had failed, they lost interest. The following spring, when the ice melted off the creek and the willows came out of their barren sleep, the passion returned. But that had been an unfortunate year, with enough rain in April to thoroughly drench the gaggle and their dreams, and send them off, sodden and muddy, to other pursuits. I had come that year, and with me renewed hope, but the Giant had whisked me into training in the woods.
In the spring that the Pixie returned to us, the boat-dream once more came to life. This time, it was Sarah who orchestrated its revival. She and Isabelle were wandering by the creek one day when they found the remains of an old attempt, and Isabelle poured out the tragic story. Sarah, who of all the girls drank in Nora’s stories with all of her soul and strength, at once decided that the boat would sail—that it must.
Sarah had a strong practical streak that aided, rather than thwarting, her determination. She came to me, Isabelle and three younger girls behind her, and announced their intent. “But they’ve tried to build it before and been a sad failure,” she told me. “I told them you would help us.”
She said so in a tone of absolute confidence, but when I looked at her I saw a tiny note of uncertainty in her brown eyes. “You can build and carry things better than we can,” she said.
I smiled and stood, stretching. “Of course I’ll help,” I said.
We met Nora on the way out. She was on her hands and knees in the garden by the side of the Castle. She looked up and wiped sweat away from her eyes, streaking her brow with dirt, and smiled as the girls called to her in great excitement. “Nora, Nora, we’re going to build a boat and sail down the river!” She looked up at me, and I smiled and said, “That we are.”
She looked back down and plunged a bulb into the dirt. “Be back in time for dinner,” she said, still smiling to herself in some enjoyment that I felt I was beginning to understand. There was a joy in involving myself in the concerns and desires of the little girls that I had never imagined—a rightness in loving them, and even in serving them. Nora had lived that way for years, and I knew now why she so loved it. I felt also a deep joy in knowing her, in being there to work alongside her though she did not care for me as I did for her. The life I had entered had become to me a deep content.
By the bank of the creek, I helped the girls gather old logs and lash them together. We launched the boat that same afternoon, and it promptly sank. The look on Sarah’s face told me that the venture was far from over. Truth be told, I felt it keenly myself when the logs disappeared beneath the water. The girls splashed into the creek with yelps and laughter to fetch it, but it was waterlogged and too heavy for them. They straggled back to shore with their dresses soaked, looking up at me.
“We’ll build another,” I said.
Sarah stepped forward, ringing water from her petticoats. “Hawk,” she said, “you watched the shipwrights where we used to live. Can’t we build a boat like they did?”
As a boy I had gone down to the villages by the sea and watched more than one old salt transform pieces of lumber into a seaworthy vessel. I could, I thought, build a rowboat—perhaps even something with a small sail on it. How difficult could it be?
Into the work I plunged, always with Sarah helping wherever she could, and the other girls variously standing half-underfoot and taking orders from my little sister and me. Isabelle proved to have a good eye for what should be done next. She sometimes reminded me of what I had seen in the villages by suggesting this thing or that. What I had expected to be the work of an hour became the labour of weeks. We found a tree and chopped it down, transformed the wood into useable lumber, and learned by trial and error what tools we needed. Whenever we had a free moment, various of us would gather beneath the willows and work. Even Nora would sometimes leave her responsibilities and watch us, always with the little ones holding her hands or leaning over her shoulders.
On the third day of every other week, Nora left the Castle altogether. She who had once lived every minute there now ventured out often—had been doing so for months. She went out to visit the most unlikely person imaginable: Genevieve Brawnlyn. The first time she announced her intention to go, I had tried my best to dissuade her. But Nora was determined, and the Angel approved. I had not returned to Brawnlyn House since the day I cut ties with the widow and her daughter. In my memory Genevieve seemed to be something inhuman—a malevolent creature of storm and ice. But the Pixie, before going away from us, had told Nora a little of Genevieve, and Nora’s heart had pitied her. Sometimes I thought Nora saw her as one of her rescued girls, only she hadn’t quite made it into the Castle’s fold, and so rescue had to go out to her.
Knowing what I did of Genevieve, I expected that Nora would be repulsed. Surely the proudly beautiful young woman would not be pitied. But Nora went with the grace of a visiting noblewoman. She was, after all, mistress of a Castle. And Genevieve, as far as I could tell, received her as such. What they did or talked about I did not know; I knew that Nora often came back troubled, and a little grieved. And though she and I had become friends—with both the Pixie and Illyrica away from the Castle, Nora had grown to need me a little—we never spoke of her visits.