Believing

By Ishbel Moore

As she stands looking into the forest that covers her newly acquired land, Rosalind McKay senses that all is not right within those trees. Her first tentative steps into the forest leave her shaken and frightened of the sensations she experienced and the voices she heard. Despite deciding she would never again venture into the foreboding trees, she finds herself in a clearing where she is presented with the possibility of learning what happened to animals and people who had lived there for over the past one thousand plus years. This is accomplished through Murdo Nicholson, the ‘essence’ of a doctor who practiced in the area more than a century before. The tales are not happy ones, as a curse had been thrown on the land by the first human to die in its then-boggy landscape—Mud Woman.

Roz is a 49-year-old unemployed school teacher with Scottish roots and a fiancé called Jasper, a hard-working salesman. When her Aunt Cathy died, Roz inherited a small fortune, and she and Jasper purchased 160 acres of land, built a house and prepared to live the country life. But Jasper travelled often and for long stretches of time Roz was left to tend horses she didn’t want and doesn’t know anything about caring for, and adjust to the adventures and perils of living more or less alone.

As her relationship with Jasper disintegrates due to his undiagnosed mental illness, she manages to secure a job in a nearby town, establish a friendship with the farming family next door, and be at odds with her best friend, the highly capable Olena.

While Roz is discovering and relating what she is shown by the various ‘essences’ that dwell within the forest, she is also discovering her own strengths and developing her abilities as an oral story teller. Roz becomes enchanted, especially with Murdo, and is furious when she learns that Jasper has a notion to subdivide the property without consulting her.

But is she simply imagining these ‘essences’, or perhaps losing her mind? Or, spurred by the volatility of the nature around her, has she tapped into a part of her creative brain that had otherwise been dormant? She begins to wonder what is inspiring all this. Is it the lower leg bone of a horse discovered buried in the remnants of an old garden? Could that large white rock actually be a sleeping wolf? Perhaps the large butterflies really are butterflies and not the spirits of two dead little girls?

Where do stories come from anyway? Are they triggered by items, places, people and events? Can tales come through unbidden? How can a person tell the difference between receiving messages from outside themselves and their own fertile imagination? These are questions Roz must deliberate, and—maybe—find the answers to, as she brings an end to Mud Woman’s curse and becomes her own woman within the forest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ishbel Moore
• Release date: Mar 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005936310

Ishbel Moore

Ishbel Moore was born in Glasgow, Scotland and immigrated to Canada with her parents and siblings in 1967. A prolific writer, Ishbel has published more than a dozen novels through varying publishers and in several languages. The genres span time travel to medical issues to medieval fantasy romance. Her list of credits include multiple magazine articles and short stories. Ishbel has traveled across Canada hosting writing workshops and bringing writers together in rural communities. She has been the National President for the Canadian Authors Association in the past, as well as holding positions in other provincial and national writing associations. She is also a YW-YMCA Woman of Distinction and a three-time breast cancer survivor. Music is another passion. She is a trained singer, and plays the piano. Among her achievements in this area, she cites being the conductor for the Back Pew Boys Male Choir and the Octavia Ladies Choir among her greatest. A retired medical transcriptionist, she is married, with three grown children, a daughter-in-law and two grandsons. She lives on an acreage north of Winnipeg, Canada, with her beloved horses, dog, cats, chickens and sundry wildlife.For a list of Ishbel's published books, please notice this can be found below in the 'Interview', and on the end pages of her books.

Book preview

BELIEVING

ISHBEL MOORE

published by:

Rocky Point Books

Box 424 Gimli MB CA R0C 1B0

[e-mail]

Copyright 2021 Ishbel Moore

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of Ishbel Moore and may not be redistributed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locales and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual settings, events or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art, formatting, layout and design

by Richard Koreen

image sources:

cover - mud woman: pixabay.com. - ghost 5027499

Author’s note:

Believing sprang from a ‘message’ I received some years ago when staring out my kitchen window.

"The answer is in the trees."

This book was dragged from me by the very land I live on. The trees, flora and fauna, the weather, all comprise what I have experienced and continue to exist alongside. This is not an autobiography, but I do have horses, and my house and land have been smudged by a beloved Elder.

Thank you:

To all the people in my life and community (you know who you are) who provided information, insight and encouragement.

Special thank you to my husband, Michael, who has the skills that allow us to live where we do.

Acknowledgments:

Many hours were spent in research through libraries, Internet, archives and books of local non-fictional accounts of early pioneer life in the Canadian prairies and the northern plains of the USA. These provided the seeds for several of the tales interwoven throughout this book.

While some descriptors regarding characters and culture are considered offensive today, their use in this book is solely to convey more realistically, the thoughts and dialogue of the given eras. Every attempt was made to portray all cultures with sensitivity and gratitude for the roles they played in history. I apologize if any offence is taken.

Believing

Prologue

Mud Woman

The treeless swamp swelters and shimmers under the intense heat of a high summer evening. Mosquitoes swarm between the stems of reeds and tall prairie grasses where the marsh water provides an excellent breeding ground for the larvae.

The adult females wait.

A thin-skinned human has wandered into their territory. Much fresh blood has been taken but some insects have lost their lives to the desperately swatting palms. Now those that have missed the rare easy opportunity to feed before, hover, impatient and furious, regardless of the possible danger.

The human lies below the water, protected, soothed, with her graying hair spread around her.

Four large biting flies circle, menace in every wing beat, their scissor-like mouths at the ready.

The shallow water ripples as the human emerges slowly. She scrapes mud from the marsh bed and smears her hair, head, neck and shoulders, and all other parts of her skin she can reach.

The mosquitoes scream with pleasure at the white patches of eyelids and the pale, inviting triangle between her shoulder blades.

The woman of mud leaves the water to stand still in the sun, to bake. Any movement will crack the protective layer. She tries not to breathe, for to do so means inhaling the nearly invisible enemy into her nose and mouth.

The biting flies aim at the obvious target on her back. She jerks at the sharp pain of their slice, and drops of her precious blood now ooze free. Excited mosquitoes land to share the spoils.

The woman thinks about running. But where to, even if she could? The camps are tens of walking days away. Ahead is the swamp, then far beyond seethes the enormous inland sea left by the ice wall that, she had been told, has not yet completely melted and maybe never would.

Her mind races back in time. The others believed her to be weak, useless, too old, lame, but had not said as much. She felt their mood and had chosen to fall farther and farther behind on the trek from south to north after the deer and buffalo. She no longer knew how many days had passed since she’d watched her people disappear, almost immediately, into swaying grass as high as their tallest hunter.

The hoard of insects multiplies. The pain and need to scratch becomes intolerable.

The woman knows her life is ending. The small pouch around her waist is full of seeds but holds no food. She has no clean water to drink. No more will she enjoy the changing of the seasons, hear the laughter of children, savor a loving kiss, smell and taste roasting meat, or count the stars in the sky.

Another horse fly digs into her flesh, and a howl of agony rises from deep within her. Hungry, tired, alone and in pain, Mud Woman decides that her only possible chance at a peaceful death is in a watery grave, where hopefully the flies and mosquitoes cannot take her in endless tiny pieces. The prospect of curling up on the ground, and being torn apart by wolf, coyote, or bear when she was only half dead is not to be considered.

The marsh soil has dried hard. Her back and eyelids and ears are already beginning to swell.

Tears trickle from the corners of Mud Woman’s eyes, drip onto her sagging, dirt-caked breasts, and evaporate.

She turns and walks between the reeds until she comes to the deeper water of the lake, and sinks up to her shoulders. There, she pauses with her feet in the cool soft mud, and reaches for her medicine pouch, which she places on a knoll of grass and stone as out of place in this shimmering liquid expanse as she herself.

The mosquitoes’ frenzy is deafening. The biting flies spin around her head continuously.

With her gaze locked on the cobalt blue of the evening, Mud Woman lowers her aching, stinging body into the murky depths.

You shall be forgotten, she’d heard herself say many times to old women on their death mats. Forgotten until someone tells your story, and it becomes legend. But who will tell her story? She’d not taken a mate and had borne no children. The one reason the people tolerated her at the campfire was for her knowledge of plants. She’d grown into a bitter and sharp-tongued nag that her people had left without a backwards glance. Although powerful with medicine, she had done nothing of unusual importance or value. What was there to weave into legend?

In her last moments of conscious thought, she casts an angry curse beyond her final resting place. In her mind, she hears her voice again. None shall find peace here. Only when a stranger learns of me shall my spirit rest forever, and the land shall become free. Only then!

The marsh whispers new dreams against her eardrums until she allows her breath to escape as a bubble to the surface. The land gratefully accepts the gifts of her pouch and the elements of her body.

Welcomed is the essence that had been her life, including the sadness and anger.

~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~

As hundreds of summers come and go, the marsh can no longer hold its own against the searing sun. Its boundaries shrivel. The earth soaks up what the wind cannot carry of the vast inland fresh water sea, and agrees to leave rivers and smaller lakes. Mud Woman’s flesh decomposes. Her bones are chewed by a pack of wolves one desperate winter. Nothing remains of her but her spirit, which the marsh cannot shake.

Wind blows across the vast prairies, carrying granules of soil and sand, and losing it to the greedy grasses and reeds. The contents of Mud Woman’s pouch reach life. Seneca root, wild rice, the fruits of the buffalo berry and chokecherry bushes and more mingle with the earth in which she had died, and take hold on the knoll that spreads ever wider.

In the blink of time’s eye, the marsh becomes a lesser bog, which often dries into parched gray earth. The mosquitoes dread these years. Their population dwindles and revives in cycles for generations.

Humans avoid the area, preferring the exciting confluence of three mighty rivers to the south, higher ground to the west, or the fertile river basin to the northeast. Once in a while, a man or two travels past. Exhausted, and often freezing from the north wind or sweating from the tireless sun, the men find no shelter of any kind. Mud Woman’s berries are not numerous enough to be worth picking, the wildlife is difficult to trap, and so the men do not stop in this eerie place.

As the humans walk away, they are compelled to glance behind at the hump of land.

Their skin crawls…as though with a thousand incessant insects.

Chapter One

I don’t like these trees.

The acres and acres of dark twisted trunks and spindly branches loomed over me, sinister against the gray sky.

I’d saved many trees from disease, bores, and uneducated chainsaw operators. I’d succumbed to old wives tales on occasion, and planted copper pennies at the roots of ailing willows, or whistled a tune to keep any evil away while I cut off a sucker root. All this happened safely within city limits where trees were normal, non-threatening, not like these rural rogues.

I definitely don’t like these trees. Is it the trees or is it the whole parcel of land?

I continued to stare, transfixed by something I didn’t understand. The wrinkles in one nearby bark could be like a human face. Another reminded me of a cat. One tree was viciously bent as badly as a cartoon Quasi Modo.

That’s it, Rosalind. You’re a forty-nine year-old out of work school teacher and you are losing your marbles!

The wind picked up, sudden and very strong as a storm approached, but I was drawn forward by my insatiable curiosity, and by the desire to touch the misshapen trunk.

Deep down where my prehistoric survival guides abide, a small hand twisted my gut in warning. Regardless, I refused to give in to such silly cowardice, and placed my palm on the nearest silver trunk. It was not as cold as expected. At that same instant, the wind howled and the tree swayed as if recoiling from my touch.

I jerked my hand away and retreated to the edge of the forest.

I had lived on this parcel of prairie land with Jasper, my partner of two years, off and on through the long winter months. There were plenty of times while camping in our shell of a newly built house that I was happy to have the trees, for they sheltered us from the freezing winds and driving blizzards. I’d waited for the deep snows to disappear, so I could walk into the forest, because I like walking and I do like trees.

Just not these trees!

But now the wettest Spring in years was upon us. Rain had fallen four out of seven days every week in April, and May was shaping up much the same. Surrounded by earth gouged by backhoes and tractors, our yard resembled a great sea of mud through which a valiant strip of gravel connected us to the outside world.

Back in February, there had been talk of Jasper becoming head salesman for his company. This came to pass and so he was on the road more now. He was in Minneapolis this week, and off to Toronto and Chicago following that. He’d been gone for two days. I wasn’t sure when he’d return.

During the winter, we’d not gone outside much for recreation. We’d drive from our city apartment, stay at the house overnight or for a weekend to add light fixtures and complete projects. Not being particularly handy, I would hang shower curtains, wash cupboards, and dream of painting walls. Jasper also had spent hours barreling through the drifts with his walk-behind snow blower, a chore I was thankful not to have to do. Now and then, I’d walked to where the mile roads intersected and back, but only on the warmest of the cold afternoons, and even then I was bundled to within an inch of my life. A few times a truck would pass and the driver would give a slight wave. But usually, my exercise involved jogging to our detached garage, or running from the garage to the house.

I’d no desire to venture farther, not even when the horses arrived one rainy day in April after we’d moved in permanently. Jasper told me they had been grateful to find the shelter he’d built, and that I should Come see!

We’d argued about how much those horses had cost to buy, the expense of building a paddock and shelter, the hay, the self-watering trough, and did we really need high maintenance animals at this point in our lives. I wanted to sink some money into landscaping, but no, we had to get horses! Angrily, he’d followed through anyway because he’d always wanted horses and ‘now was the time’. Jasper had brought the neighbor into the battle by having Mr. Lansburg check on them whenever he was away.

Down at the corral, where Jasper kept the two horses, the ground was worse than the driveway. He called it Shit Sea or would say that he was experiencing a Manure Monsoon. His clothes and boots smelled of wet animal and of the ‘sea’. He tracked in muck on his size 11 work boots, and dropped his dirty gloves on top of the heat register leaving smudges on the nice new floor.

I thought of these things as I studied the trees that lined the driveway. Oak, aspen, willow, and others I did not recognize. Were any of their saplings worthy of being transplanted, of becoming the focal point of what would be the front yard?

I reached down to inspect some pussy willows. The wind yanked the slim branch away before I could touch it. I shoved my cold hands deep into my pockets, spun on my heel and headed for the house, seconds before the heavens opened.

The wet yellow sponge hit the water in the bucket with an angry splot, sending bubbles into the air. Whatever possessed me to have cream-colored kitchen flooring installed, now gave way to despair. Jasper’s aged mother had suggested I choose a neutral color with a small pattern that would help hide the dirt sure to be carried in. I believed myself to be up to the challenge, but had not realized country dirt was made up not only of soil, but tiny stones, horse manure, hay, dead insects, sticks and filthy water. Since we’d moved in, I’d spent every spare moment in the futile attempt to keep the floor clean.

The morning’s rain had run its watery course, and the sun was attempting to slice through the laden sky.

Enough was enough! I needed a break. Winter had been long, cold, and isolated. I wanted to experience nature again, to breathe the clean air, see the new shoots of grass and hear the bird songs. I was determined to put behind me the strange sensations of trees and pussy willows pulling away from me.

I flounced to the back door, stuck my feet into a pair of black rubber boots, threw on a jacket, and shouldered my way through the screen door.

Rivulets of rainwater and hundreds of potholes ruled the unfinished gravel drive. I tried to see it as circular, with a Mountain Ash in the center garden, a bright selection of perennials ready to burst into bloom, the drive lined with lilac bushes. Currently, none of that existed. The scene depressed me so much I couldn’t even feel the hope one might have upon considering the yard a blank canvas.

A sudden and severe longing for the ancient glens of my grandfather’s Scotland penetrated my thoughts and heart. My mind flooded with memories of his ruddy face glowing with happiness and pride as he showed me the places of his youth when I went with him on holiday. Bluebells had carpeted the sun-dappled earth within the towering forest, and castle ruins loomed in the background. History and folklore pervaded the majestic gnarled trees. What they could tell us if they talked!

But on this property, in a wet cold springtime, the trees were stunted and bitter in their struggle to survive. What tales of any interest could they possibly have to tell?

A few boards provided places to step over the deepest ruts, but rain had fallen for most of our time here and the wood was slippery. Everything was soaked. The trees dripped. Drain spouts trickled. Fence wires resembled diamond necklaces, and for a while I did stop to examine the tiny water droplets sparkling in the welcome sunlight, before I continued to the end of the driveway. The road stretched for miles east and west. Directly north lay one of the vast unfenced fields belonging to farmer John Lansburg.

Sometimes the winter landscape had exploded in the dizzying brilliance of a sunny but biting blue and white day. At other times, the heavy gray clouds dropped a thick blanket of snow, or the fierce north wind scythed across the flat expanse to rip the very lungs from your body. The forest stretched behind me. Our house lay within that.

Breezy Braes was the name I’d proposed, and which Jasper did not like, for the 160 acres we co-owned. Half of it was trees. The rest was wind-whipped prairie, with two small bumps which were really only the dirt some long dead owner had backhoed to make a slough.

Jasper would have had the whole 160 acres explored, if he’d been home more. But as he was fond of reminding me, he was the only breadwinner, so he couldn’t afford to disregard his boss’s orders. I’d been left behind to dream of what our property would look like in the future, and to tactfully forget to mention that it was due to the money left me by my recently departed Aunt Cathy that we could attain the Breezy Brae dream. And it was his dream! I wanted a penthouse condo.

Ah well, what’s mine was his and vice versa, soon to be ‘til death us to part’ and all that, next May, a year in the future, despite people telling us we shouldn’t for a variety of reasons including age, questionable compatibility, large debt.

For a few moments my brain turned its attention to whether our yard would be aesthetically pleasant enough by that time to hold the wedding in. Until the sound of distant laughter caught my attention. I scanned the roads expecting to see people. Nothing. Perhaps it had only been birds or squirrels. The ‘giggling’ came again. I followed the sound to where, on the other side of the muddy ditch, the trees seemed to part to allow a narrow path to wind off into the bush.

I used my most polite teacher’s voice. Hello, is someone there? I couldn’t see or hear anything. In fact, the world seemed to go suddenly very quiet.

I thought about returning to the house, but I was tired of being friendless in rural Manitoba. If nothing else, I meet someone, or I could consider this an adventure, a conversation starter.

I slithered down the slope of the ditch, through the mud, and scrambled up the other side. Indeed there was a trail of sorts through the leafless oak, poplar and willows, but it didn’t look as though it had been walked on recently. The grass hadn’t been flattened by winter’s snow or continuous rainfall. I stumbled over fallen branches hidden in the grass, and snagged my jacket on some vicious looking thorns. More than once, when I bumped a tree it would shower me with raindrops. There was no sign of animal or bird life.

I had no idea how far I’d walked, but I knew I was quite deep in, when I came to a broken wagon wheel propped against a very thick weathered fence post. Rusty barbed wire wrapped around them both before snaking off into the forest. Jasper could not know about this trail. For all his faults, he was thorough about making everything safe for humans and animals, and old barbed wire would have met his criteria of dangerous. It would have been removed before we’d even started clearing and building, carted to the dump in his beat-up green truck as had the old tires, rotting wooden planks, warped chicken wire, fragments of old brown bottles, rusted out farm machinery, smashed headlights and ancient license plates we’d found.

As I thought of his increased energy level, I had to admit that in the two years of our relationship I’d never seen Jasper so volatile. Happily exploring one day, grumpily complaining the next. I, on the other hand, used to be brighter, talkative, funny. Now the mirror always reflected my defeated, overwhelmed and exhausted appearance. I’d given up the monthly ritual of roots dyeing. Consequently, my appearance reminded me of my grade school photos with the frizzy hair. But these days gray showed through the fading auburn hair dye. My stubby lashes were unable to enhance the tired blue eyes. The inherited pale complexion sported deepening crows’ feet and mouth lines emboldened by lack of makeup. I also spent my days in sweatshirts and old jeans. My dowdiness became a great source of puzzlement to me and I blamed Breezy Braes.

I hadn’t been prepared for the adjustments. The loneliness sideswiped me as I liked being alone usually. Being unemployed meant that I spent all my days and nights here on Breezy Braes, by myself, when Jasper was at work in the city or away on business.

A sense of foreboding crept slowly through my bones. I shouldn’t have come to live in this place. And I shouldn’t have entered the forest! Not alone.

Who’d miss me if I didn’t return? Nobody was expected to come visit me, and no-one was expecting me to visit them. My cell phone was on the kitchen counter, and I was quite possibly lost.

To avoid the rising panic in my chest, I figured that if I walked through the clearing, and picked my way through the less thick trees to my right, I would end up in another of Mr. Lansburg’s fields. I could then make my way home without any trouble.

The shadow of a bird passed over the ground. Its screech sent a chill along my spine as I lifted my leg to step over the barbed wire.

Stop! Had I actually heard the words or was it my insight or self-preservation notifying me of a misstep? Perhaps to prevent me from being caught in the wire. As I gingerly lowered my boot, I became aware that the scene was changing around me. My blood thumped in my ears. My throat closed with anxiety. But then I gasped as sunlight cut through the trees and lit the clearing. Even the post and wagon wheel looked different, less old, more important. The slimy dark trunks appeared coated with black onyx, the waves of dry grass turned into a golden sea. This felt like a sacred place, one that I was unworthy to enter. Could certain locations in nature make a person ‘think’ things were not how they seemed? Could wind through trees sound like a voice?

Of course they could. Artists and musicians understood this. Psychics certainly did. I was not going crazy, just growing more sensitive to my surroundings.

By now the branches were fairly rustling in the rising breeze. It sounded as though some were hissing at me. The smaller trees swayed with a ssshhhhh and then grew quiet.

At first a sense of wonder swept over me before ice cold fear threaded up my spine. Was I being watched by non-human eyes? It was time to leave, and right now. I backed away from the clearing and thought I was retracing my steps, but nothing looked familiar, not in any direction.

Without knowing how, I began marching away from the post and wagon wheel, and I knew I was not going the way I had come, nor to Mr. Lansburg’s field. I tried to stop several times, and couldn’t. I tried to speed up, and couldn’t.

I wanted to run, and fast, but my feet held the rhythmic march over the uneven ground, through swampy puddles. Tears threatened to cloud my eyes. I blinked them away. The wind breathed on my face, like a lover’s furtive kiss.

My forced march stopped at a small trickling line of water, not big enough to be called a stream or rivulet. I squinted at the water, shining like the liquid mercury in an old thermometer. As I stared at it, the brightness faded a little, and I saw almond shaped, piercing and dark, looking back at me.

Fascinating. Frightening. The silver water shimmered and the eyes were no longer there, only layers of long-ago fallen oak leaves beneath the surface.

This is absurd. Now I am seeing things in muddy water.

The sun vanished from the forest floor as clouds gathered once more in the sky. The treetops rustled as a skein of geese passed overhead. Stately poplars formed a giant arch, reminding me of an old deserted cathedral.

I couldn’t wait to get to the house. Maybe I’d get in my car and head for my friend’s place in the city for the night.

I don’t like these trees!

The corral rails appeared through the branches.

The horses had heard me coming and were snorting and wary. When I burst through the trees, they trotted off around the paddock, wary, heads high, nostrils flaring, tails and manes flying.

I squeezed between the wooden rails, longing to sink to the cool damp earth to catch my breath but changed my mind because of the piles of horse droppings.

When I felt calmer, I peered back towards the forest, back to where I’d exited. No eyes floated between the branches. The trees were no longer whispering. Had I imagined it?

A snort startled me. The horses had come over to figure out who I was and what I was doing. Their curiosity and the questioning expression in their soft eyes made me smile. This was the first time I’d been close to them and discovered I was not quite as afraid as I thought I would be. Jasper had made arrangements with Mr. Lansburg to throw hay out for them and to check the water trough, because as he put it to those who asked why, Rosalind is not ready for that responsibility.

I remembered being told the horses were Polish Arabs, distinguishable by their slightly dished or indented faces, that they had one rib less than other breeds, and that we owned a 20 year-old mare, for me, and a 6-year-old gelding. I bent down to look to find out which was which. The mare that seemed braver.

I knew from listening to Jasper talk about her enough times that she was referred to as a flea-bitten gray. I’d seen photos in which she was white with tiny black flecks. Her long mane hung in shining waves, as did her tail. At the moment, unlike the photo, she was the opposite—black with white flecks, as in caked in wet dirt. Her mane was a series of knotted clumps. The younger horse moved slowly closer. Cleaner than the mare, he was a light caramel color with a shorter blonde mane and tail and white star between his eyes.

We blinked at each other until I decided it was time to move. They followed me to the gate, which I remembered to close behind me. They watched me until I reached the house yard. I did not know their names. They had not mattered before. But now they felt like new friends who had taken me in when times were rough. No questions asked, no reward expected.

Clouds scudded across the darkening sky. The chilling wind sliced up the driveway, forcing the trees and bushes to warp one after the other. The rushing air pulled at my hair and jacket. Rain began pummeling the ground. I hurried into the house. I did not stop to hang up my wet jacket on the white wooden hooks, or to put my boots onto the wire rack where the mud would fall onto the mat below, but ran across my creamy floor to grab the cell phone.

I had to talk to Jasper. It didn’t matter how far away he was. I needed to hear his voice, to ask him questions about wind sounds, about any history he might know about this land.

But he did not pick up at the other end, and I didn’t leave a message. What would I say? ‘Hi there, it’s just me, hearing voices in the trees, got chased by a pair of eyes.’

I decided to wait. He would call later, or I’d call him, and by then I’d have sifted through my day’s events and wouldn’t bore him with what he would surely consider more of my dramatic silliness.

Muddy footprints tainted my lovely new flooring. For the next hour, I washed every floor in the house, hoping it would help my over-active imagination to settle down. When that failed, I went upstairs to the room allocated as the office and unpacked my boxes of books, followed by scrubbing the toilet, answering emails and cooking macaroni and cheese. No matter what I did however, the eyes in the water haunted me.

Jasper called at 10 o’clock. How’s everything going?

Well, it’s still raining, I answered, sounding sullen.

It’ll stop tomorrow, he said. I checked the forecast. Temperatures are supposed to be higher than normal. You’ll be glad to get outside.

I thought of a million things to say to that last phrase, not all of them joyful, most of them suspect of insanity. He talked through my silence. Why not take some photos with the digital camera and email them to your friend, Ol’ In One—

I cut him off. That’s not her name, for heaven’s sake. It’s Olena. Just because she’s a good golfer, doesn’t mean you should make fun of her name.

Anyway, maybe she can help with landscaping ideas.

I’d like to do the planning of our yard by myself.

He didn’t have much time for Olena whose creations included chimes fashioned from cutlery, and windmills carved from plastic bottles. She could also out-golf him without effort.

He switched topics. How are the horses? Have you seen Mr. Lansburg?

I have not seen him, but I did find myself in the horse field today.

Jasper’s surprise was expected. You did? What made you go there?

I was out walking.

Really? In the rain?

It had stopped for a while. Anyway, the horses looked okay to me. The white one is very dirty though.

He found delight in this somehow. I can just imagine that with all this rain and muck, rolling will be a major part of the day. How close did you get? Close enough to touch them?

No touching. But I was inside the fence. Even as I said the words, in a way so proud of myself, they sounded stupid. I probably sound like a scared little kid.

Yes you do, he said.

I sighed. Anyway, what are their names?

The chestnut gelding is Intrepid.

He seemed more like a Timid to me, I added.

He’s a bit shy, but he’ll come around.

What’s the white one called?

After a short pause he said, Angels Go-Lightly. Listen, I’m sorry Roz, but I have to go. Some of the guys are going out for drinks in the hotel bar. No doubt you’ll tell me the long version of the story when I get home. You know how you love to dramatize things.

Anxious to keep him talking, I clutched the phone tighter. Jasper?

Yes, what is it? His impatience was thinly veiled.

Should I tell him? What could he do from so far away? Nothing, I’m just depressed because of all this rain. But like you said, it’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow. That’ll help.

He made smooching sounds and hung up.

I held the receiver long after the line went dead. Outside the rain had stopped, but the wind whined around the roof and whistled through the mosquito netting of the old-fashioned porch.

My brain flipped back quite a few years to when my parents would go out on Saturday nights. I would watch rented Chiller Thrillers with my big brother Cole, and then we’d have to stay up with all the lights on until Mom and Dad came home because we’d be too frightened to sleep. That’s how I felt as I gazed into the night. But my parents were in Vancouver and then were off to Maui for a month. Cole lived in Toronto. That left Olena.

It was too late to call Olena who always went to bed by 9:30. Talking to her definitely would have helped. She made me laugh at things. I’d try her in the morning if I was still