He Said, Sidhe Said

"With me, please. Let Guider O'Neill handle this."

They muttered, but they fell in behind her as Janet eased the minister's wife up out of the chair.

"Come on, Mrs. Jackson. I'll just take you home now, and maybe we'll make a few phone calls, all right?" Half way up the stairs, the smaller woman supported against her shoulder, she turned and smiled. "It was lovely to meet you all. And I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

"Nice lady, that," Ewan announced as the outside door closed.

"It's called a glamour," Big Tam explained, before she could ask. "The dark one, for all she was here to check you out, truly wanted to see Brownies, so that's what she saw and heard – wee girls. The other, well, she'd convinced herself that there were no such thing as Brownies, hadn't she? So that's all she saw."

"It's not quite a lie," Callum added.

They watched anxiously for her reaction.

"You're not responsible for people's expectations, but," she added as they began to preen, "it is important that people not have low expectations of you, and I don't think you can get lower than Mrs. Jackson's."

Little Tam nodded. "No expectations at all, I'd say that's lower than an ant's arse."

"I think it would be a good troop project to raise those expectations."

* * * *

By summer, the minister's wife had gotten used to a spotless house, clean clothes, cooked meals, and landscaping the envy of the neighbourhood. She started a Pilates course, had an affair with the UPS driver, and seemed a lot happier.

The Brownies picked up two more badges.

* * * *

They couldn't go to camp…

"Glamour a great group of little girls? No offence, Missus, but are you daft?"

…so they learned about the wonders of nature by hiking together in the woods outside of town.

She learned there were unicorns in the woods.

"Why is it they won't come to you, Missus Owl?"

"That's none of your business, Big Tam."

* * * *

They gathered to watch the Perseid meteor shower for their Key to Stem badge.

"Make a wish, Missus Owl."

"It's not a falling star, Ewan. It's a piece of rock burning up in the atmosphere."

"Make a wish anyway."

So she did.

* * * *

They got their Key to the Living World badge by joining the fall Trash Bash and cleaning up a full five kilometres of road.

"It doesn't count as trash if it's parked in someone's garage, Conner."

"But it's a Lada, Missus Owl."

"Put it back."

* * * *

Callum got his Pet Pals badge by directing the dump rats in a performance of West Side Story. It was the best amateur theatre she'd seen in years.

* * * *

That Halloween, she dressed as a Gypsy. Big Tam was a Leprechaun, Little Tam a Fianna, Conner a Jack-in-Irons, Ewan a Phouka, and Callum came as Britney Spears, circa Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.

* * * *

At Christmas, they delivered gift baskets to the seniors at Markam Manner. The Brownies picked out the contents themselves. Since the seniors seemed to appreciate being treated as adults instead of grey-haired children, she decided to consider the baskets a success. The staff of the nursing home were less accepting, but they were the ones dealing with the aftereffects.

* * * *

By spring, all five vests were covered in badges – all the key badges and all but two of the interest badges. There were no Sparks for them to help – not necessarily a bad thing – and as they'd tried and failed to hack CSIS on her laptop, she'd refused to give them their Information Technology badge on principle.

Most leaders kept their troops intact until the end of summer, so the girls could have one more visit to camp, but since that was still out of the question, she decided they should fly up in the spring.

She liked the symbolism better; new growth, new life, and the same ceremony her old Brown Owl had used when she'd flown up.

The Brownies appeared, as they always did, a few moments after she'd set the toadstool in place. They recited the Law and the Promise and, with a minimal amount of insults and no profanity at all, sat down.

She had a whole speech prepared, dealing with what it meant to be a Brownie and what it meant to leave that behind and move on, but looking around the circle, from face to face, all that seemed somehow presumptuous. They knew more about what it meant to be a Brownie than she ever would.

So all she said was, "It's time."

They looked a lot like her girls then, a little scared, very excited – quite a bit hairier.

She'd built a three-step platform; shallow steps, so that the top was no more than a foot off the ground. Two posts – broom handles, really – wrapped in sparkly ribbon and attached to the platform, with more ribbon strung between them, made a low door. Hanging from the ribbon were five sets of construction paper butterfly wings.

"Big Tam."

He started, stood, and walked to the first step, tugging his vest into place. She smiled reassuringly, and he nodded.

"Do your best to be honest and kind." A light touch on his shoulder.

One step.

"Be true to yourself."

Two steps.

"Help to take care of the world around you."

He was on the platform now.

"Take your wings and fly."

She'd written their names on the construction paper in lavender glitter ink. A little girly maybe, but old habits were hard to break.

Big Tam reached for his wings, took a deep breath, and, without looking back, jumped through the door.

The way he disappeared into a soft white light that smelled of fresh-mown hay came as no great surprise. The brass band playing She'll be Coming Round the Mountain, well, that was a little unsettling, but she coped.

Little Tam. Callum. Conner. Ewan. Who paused on the platform and said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Alone in the basement of the church hall, she reached up to take the ribbon down and shrieked as Big Tam's head appeared between the broom handles, the first time in thirty-seven years she'd been taken by surprise.

"Oi, Missus. You comin'?"

"I'm not…"

Over the sound of a euphonium solo, she heard: "Oi! Get yer flamin' mitts of me wings!"

"I'll wing you, ya skeezy pervert!"

"You'd best bring the ice pack," Big Tam sighed as he disappeared.

She scooped it out of the cooler, picked up the curse cup, and climbed to the top of the platform. As she ducked under the ribbon, she wondered if her old wings still worked…

When Julie Czerneda asked for submissions for her anthology Mythsprings, she wanted them based on the Canadian myths and stories, poems and songs that inspired us.

For most of my life, I have lived near the Great Lakes – not on, waterfront property is insanely expensive, but near enough to walk to the shore. My father used to run a diving school. Every summer through my teens, a friend and I would go to her family's cottage in the Thousand Islands and canoe out to watch the lake freighters pass. I was at university in Thunder Bay the year Gordon Lightfoot came out with the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and the local DJ played it every morning at 7:30, right after my alarm went off. Which is to say, the lakes and I have history.

The ships and their stories within this story are true.

Diana and Sam, and the mythos they operate in, are from my three volume Keeper Chronicles – Summon the Keeper, The Second Summoning, and Long Hot Summoning. You should be able to follow the story even if you haven't read them, but, if you haven't, they're now available as a trade omnibus.

UNDER SUMMONS

Eyes squinted against the early morning sun, Diana Hansen walked down the lane toward the Waupoos Marina listening to the string of complaints coming from the cat in her backpack.

"The boat is leaving at seven thirty," she said when he finally paused for breath. "If we'd gotten up any later, we'd have missed it."

The head and front paws of a marmalade tabby emerged through the open zipper and peered over Diana's shoulder toward the marina. "I thought need provided for Keepers during a Summoning?"

"Need has provided, Sam. There's a boat leaving for Main Duck Island this morning."

He snorted. "Why can't need provide a boat at a reasonable hour?"

"It doesn't work that way. Besides, cats do that hunt at dusk and dawn thing – you should be happy to be up."

"First of all, I'm not hunting. And second," he added ducking down into the backpack as a car passed them, "I'd rather have sausages for breakfast than a damp mouse."

"Who wouldn't."

Another car passed, bouncing from pot hole to pot hole.

"You'd better stay down," Diana told him, hooking her thumbs under the padded shoulder straps. "It's starting to get busy."

"Oh yeah," the cat muttered as a pickup truck followed the two cars. "It's a real rush hour. I'll be napping, if you need me."

The Ministry of Natural Resources trawler was tied up at the nearer of the big piers out behind the marina. Pausing at the south-west corner of the big grey building, Diana scoped out the crowd. Most of the twenty-four other travellers were older couples, sensibly dressed in long pants, wearing both hiking boots and hats. Half a dozen women were obviously together, and, just as obviously, part of a club – unless they'd all accidentally worn the same lime-green t-shirt. There was a sprinkling of younger adults, and three teenagers. Two girls, probably sisters, and a boy. They were the only people wearing shorts. The boy caught her gaze and smirked. He was a good-looking kid – and he knew it.

"Okay, everyone, listen up!" A fortyish man wearing Ministry khaki, climbed up on a wooden crate and waved a clipboard. "Some of you already know me, but for the rest, I'm Gary Straum, and I'll be your guide this trip. The young man driving the boat is Jamie Wierster. He knows almost as much as I do about the island, so if I'm not available, he'll do his best to tell you anything you need to know."

A ruddy-cheeked, young giant leaned out of the tiny cabin and waved.

"I just want to remind you of a few things before we get started," Gary continued as the two girls giggled. "Main Duck Island is part of the St. Lawrence Islands National Parks system and is a nature sanctuary. You may not take samples of the plant life away with you – this means no picking, no digging, no collecting seeds. The wildlife is to be left strictly alone. If there's a disagreement of any kind between you and any creature living on that island, I will rule in favour of the creature. Anything you carry in must be carried out. If you can't live with that, I suggest you leave now." Gary smiled as an older man grabbed the back of the teenage boy's skater shirt and hauled him back by his side. "All right, then. When I read your name, come and pick up your life jacket..." He gestured at the open steel locker beside him. "...put it on, and board. The sooner we get going, the more time we'll have to spend on the island."

Diana's name was the last on the list. She hadn't put it there, and she felt a little sorry for the actual twenty-fifth person, who'd been bumped to make room for her, but there was a hole in the fabric of reality out on Main Duck Island and it was her job as a Keeper to close it.

Feeling awkward and faintly ridiculous in the life jacket, Diana sat down on a wooden bench and set her backpack carefully at her feet.

"I saw the cat. When we passed you in the lane."

She answered the teenage boy's smile with one of her own as he dropped onto the bench beside her. According to the boarding list, his name was Ryan. Ryan, like everyone else on the boat, was a Bystander, and given the relative numbers, Keepers were used to working around them. "Of course you did, Ryan. Please forget about it."

It really was a magic word.

He frowned. Looked around like he was wondering why he'd sat beside her, and after mumbling something inarticulate, moved across the boat to sit back down in his original seat. The girls, Mackenzie and Erin, sitting on the bench in front of him, giggled.

"I get the impression you're not the giggling type."

It was one of the older women, her husband busy taking pictures of Gary casting off and jumping aboard.

"Not really, no."

"Carol Diamond. That's my husband Richard. We're here as part of an Elder Hostel program." Her wave took in the rest of the hats-and-hiking-boots crowd. "All of us."

"Great."

"Are you travelling on your own, dear?"

"Yes, I am."

Carol smiled the even, white smile of the fully-dentured and nodded toward the teenagers. "Well, how nice you have some people of your own age to spend time with."

Diana blinked. Two months shy of twenty, she did not appreciate being lumped in with the children. Fortunately, between the motor and the wind it was difficult to carry on a casual conversation, and Carol didn't try, content to sit quietly while her husband took pictures of Waupoos Island, Prince Edward Point, waves, sky, gulls, the other people in the boat, and once, while he was fiddling with the focus, his lap.

The three pictures with Diana in them would be mysteriously over-exposed.

So would one of the shots he'd taken of the southern view across Lake Ontario, but Diana had nothing to do with that.

"Hey!" Ryan managed to make himself heard over the ambient noise. "What's that?"

Everyone squinted in the direction he was pointing. A series of small, dark dots rose above a sharp-edged horizon.

"That's our first sight of the island; we're about five miles out." Gary moved closer to the teenager. "Well done."

Ryan turned just far enough to scowl at him. "Not that. Closer to us."

About twenty metres from the boat, another series of small dark dots rose and fell with the slight chop. Then, suddenly, they were gone. The last dot rose up into a triangular point just before it disappeared.

"That looked like a tail!"

"Might be a loon," Gary offered.

"Fucking big loon!"

"Ryan!"

Ryan rolled his eyes at his father, but muttered an apology.

"It's probably just some floating junk." A half-turn included the rest of the group in the discussion. "You'd be amazed at the stuff we find out here." His list had almost everyone laughing.

Lake monster wasn't on it, Diana noted.

* * * *

As Main Duck Island coalesced into a low, solid line of trees with a light house rising off the westernmost point, Gary explained that it had been acquired by the park service in 1998, having been previously owned by John Foster Dulles, a prominent lawyer who'd been American Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration. The island was 209 hectares in size, and except for the ruins of some old fishing cabins that had been posted no trespassing, none of it was off limits.

"The lighthouse?" one of the lime-green t-shirt group asked.

"Is unmanned and closed to the public, but you can go right up to it and poke around."

Mention of the lighthouse started the shipwreck stories. There were a lot of them; the area around the island was known as the graveyard of Lake Ontario and contained the wrecks of two- and three-masted schooners, brigantines, barges, and steamers, dating back to a small French warship en route to Fort Niagara with supplies and a pay chest of gold for the troops that went down in late fall around 1750.

Diana had begun to get a bad feeling about the location of the hole she had to close.

As Jamie steered the trawler into School House Bay, Gary told the story of the John Randall. She'd anchored in the bay for shelter back in 1920, only to have the wind shift to the north and drive her ashore. Her stern hit a rock, her engine lifted, and she broke in two.

"The crew of four scrambled up onto the bow and remained there for ten hours, washed by heavy seas and lashed by a November northeaster. They finally made it ashore on a hatch cover and stayed with the lighthouse keeper nine days before they were picked up. You can still see the wooden ribs and planks of the ship in the bay."

"So no one died?" Ryan asked.

"Not that time." With the dock only metres away, Gary moved over to the port side of the boat and picked up the rear mooring line. "But a year and eight days later, the Captain of the Randall went down while in command of the City of New York. His wife and his ten-month-old daughter went to the bottom with him."

"So sad," Carol sighed as Gary leapt out onto the dock. "But at least they were together." She twisted on the bench to look back the way they'd come. "I bet those waves hide a hundred stories."

"I bet they hide a hundred and one," Diana muttered, hoisting her backpack. She was not going to enjoy explaining this to Sam.

* * * *

"In the water?"

"Essentially."

Sam's ears saddled. "How essentially?" The echoed word dripped with feline sarcasm.

"Under the water."

"Have a nice time."

Down on one knee beside him, Diana stroked along his back and out his tail. "There's a lake monster out there, too. Looked like a sea serpent. Probably came through the hole."

"And that's supposed to make me change my mind?" the cat snorted. He peered off the end of the dock into the weedy bay. "Frogs pee in that water, you know."

"That's not..." She probed at the Summons, trying to narrow it down a little. "...exactly the water we're going into."

He sat back and looked up at her, amber eyes narrowed. "What water are we going into, exactly? If we were going, that is?"

"Southwest." She straightened. "Toward the lighthouse."

"I'll wait here."

"Come on. The nature hike went through the woods. We'll take the beach and avoid an audience." About to lift the backpack, she paused. "You want to walk or ride?"

Tail tip twitching, he shoved past her, muttering, "What part of I'll wait here did you not understand?"

The beach consisted of two to three metres of smooth gravel, trimmed with a ridge of polished zebra mussel shells at the edge of the water. As Diana and Sam rounded a clump of sumac, they saw Ryan, a garter snake wrapped around one hand, moving quietly toward the two girls crouched at the ridge of shells.

"You think we should get involved?" Sam wondered.

Before Diana could answer, Ryan placed his foot wrong, the gravel rattled, and both girls turned. Although he no longer had surprise on his side, he waved the snake in their general direction.

"Look what I have!"

Braced for shrieking and running, Diana was surprised to see both girls advance toward Ryan.

"How dare you!" Mackenzie snapped, fists on her hips. "How would you like it if someone picked you up by the throat and flailed you at people?"

"The poor snake!" Erin added.

"I'm not hurting it," Ryan began, but Mackenzie ran right over his protest with her opinion of the kind of people who abused animals for fun, while Erin gently took the snake from him and released it.

"In answer to your question," Diana snickered as they started walking again, "I don't think we're needed."

A little further down the beach, two even larger snakes lay tangled together in the sun on a huge slab of flat rock. The female hissed as they went by. Sam hissed back.