The Book of Dreams (49 page)

D
ana sat in the front seat of the bus to get the best view. In the midday light, the highway had a silver-gray sheen. On both sides of the road the land stretched outward like wings. The countryside seemed to be three-quarters sky over a thin line of brown earth. When she first came to Canada she had asked her father, “Is the sky bigger here?” “Definitely,” was his answer. Signposts marked her passage through southern Ontario.
Wildfield.
Green and gray barns dotted the gentle slope of wide meadows. Farther north, dark forests came to meet the highway.
Caledon Highlands.
Here and there, tall flagpoles waved the red-and-white maple leaf flag of Canada.
Blue Church Road.
There was a little wooden church with a steeple painted blue.
Pink Lake.
There was a lake, but it wasn’t pink.

Dana liked traveling by herself. Just before Gabe had put her on the bus, he had looked a little troubled.

“This is the second time you’ve left since we told you about the baby. Are you sure you’re not upset?”

“Da, I already told you. It’s not like that. I really like the idea of a sister or brother. I just want to visit Gran. You know how much I love going to Creemore.”

“She does spoil you rotten.”

Dana grinned. “Thanks for letting me go on my own.”

“A few months back, I wouldn’t have,” he admitted, “but you’re really growing up, kiddo.”

“I’m nearly fourteen,” she pointed out.

“No, I mean … in a different way. You’ve changed … what I’m trying to say … you’re a young woman now.” He looked embarrassed.

Dana rolled her eyes.
Fathers.

With Ontario farmlands flying past her window, she allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming about Jean. The week had passed quickly at school. When she introduced Georgia and Jean, they both liked each other instantly. The three of them had become a little gang, meeting between classes and sitting together at lunch. They couldn’t help drawing attention to themselves as they talked and laughed so loudly. With Georgia there, Dana and Jean couldn’t talk about the quest, but Dana didn’t mind. She was glad to put it aside for a while. There came a moment in the cafeteria— the three of them were fooling around, Georgia had grabbed Jean’s lunch and tossed it to Dana, while Jean swore in French—when Dana realized she was bursting with happiness. To have a boyfriend and a best friend was, for her, a dream come true.

As for the quest, she and Jean had made their plans by telephone. He would arrive in Creemore the following day and they would begin the search for the Book of Dreams together. She hoped he might be able to stay at her grandmother’s house, but if all else failed he could go home at night by turning wolf.

Remembering the quest brought a flutter of panic. Time was running out. And even as she drew near to what she sought, the mystery deepened. Why was the Book of Dreams in Creemore? She had known from the beginning that she was connected to it, but she had always assumed that the bond with the book was through her fairy blood. After all, its secret would restore the portals of Faerie. But it seemed her human side was also involved. Why else would the book be near her family home? That couldn’t be a coincidence.

There was another matter to consider. Crowley. He already knew about her connection to Creemore. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to find her there. That thought sent her heart racing. Remembering the Old Ones, she managed to calm down. They had shown her she had power and that she wasn’t alone. She had to trust that she could handle whatever happened. There was no going back. Her mission had to be fulfilled.

By the time the bus stopped in Creemore, Dana had stopped thinking in circles about the quest and had returned, instead, to daydreaming about Jean.

“Look at you, smiling away!” Gran Gowan said as Dana stepped from the bus. “We’re going to have great fun together!”

• • •

At her grandmother’s house, Dana discovered that her day was booked. A heap of pumpkins spilled over the kitchen table, surrounded by bags of flour, pie plates, rolling pins, and spices.

“I got the pumpkins from the Hamilton Brothers since the Farmers’ Market is shut. Some of these will be jack-o’-lanterns,” Gran Gowan said, sorting out the biggest pumpkins. “If they don’t get smashed by hooligans, I’ll make soup, scones, and muffins out of them after Halloween. It’s a wicked waste to throw out a pumpkin without using it for something.”

Dana was happy to bake. Her grandmother had often promised to show her how to make pumpkin pie. Though Gabe was a good cook, pastry-making was in a league beyond him.

“Of all the cooking skills, this is the one you have to be taught,” Gran insisted. “The battle is won from the start with technique and confidence.”

Dana knew she was learning from the best.

“Pastry dough can tell if you’re afraid of it,” Gran continued, “and if you are, it’ll play up! You’re a Gowan. Stand strong. Show it you’re the boss, but not with an iron hand. That never works, not in pastry nor politics. The true sign of mastery is a light hand. Now, we start with good flour, none of that self-raising nonsense. There’s something just plain wrong with flour that raises itself.”

She sifted the flour from a height above the table and added a pinch of salt. Then the real work began.

“Everything must be cool, including yourself,” said Gran. “Open the window if the room gets hot or steamy. Margarine and butter will have to do for the fat, as I’m guessing you and Radhi won’t take lard. Pinch it in with your fingers. Softly. Softly. And speedily. The less you handle it, the better.”

Lost in a mist of flour, Gran sprinkled and stirred and made up the dough. Move for move, Dana matched her actions till each was wrapping her own bundle in foil.

“Let it rest for half an hour in the fridge while we prepare the pumpkins.”

This piece of work was messy but fun. They cut off the tops of the pumpkins and scooped out the orange gloop clotted with seeds. Being an easier job, it didn’t demand concentration and freed Gran Gowan to vent her mind.

“Of course I’m over the moon about it,” she said.

“Radhi will make a wonderful mother and it’s about time they started on a family, those two. I just don’t appreciate being the last to know.”

“He planned to tell you at Thanksgiving, Gran, but then we didn’t come. He wanted to tell you in person.”

“Hmph.”

The pumpkins were chopped into chunks and the leathery rind hacked away. Rough and malleable like turnip, the pale flesh was cut into cubes and boiled till soft. Then they mashed it into a mix with Gran’s ingredients.

“Sweetened condensed milk, that’s the trick,” said Gran, “along with brown sugar, eggs, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. This is a melt-in-your-mouth recipe, a Gowan specialty.”

It was time to roll out the pastry.

Gran Gowan held her rolling pin like a sword. Beside her, the knight’s page, Dana wielded the dredger.

“Use it liberally,” Gran ordered, “on anything that looks like it’s sticking. Not on the dough, mind you. Never on the dough! Shake it on the pin or the pastry board. Here, you do one. Roll gently, gently—yes! you’ve got the knack!—now roll it right onto the pin. Good, now unroll it on top of the tin and press it in.”

They worked for hours. Pie after pie went into the oven till the kitchen was filled with the sweet musky scent of baked pumpkin.

“There has to be enough to go around,” Gran explained. “We’ll freeze a batch for Halloween, then give the rest away. There’s your family, the girls, Mrs. Mumford up the road who’s too blind to bake anymore, Mr. Nalty who just loves my pumpkin pie …”

At last they were sitting down, exhausted but pleased, with cups of tea and scones in front of them.

“So, I hear there’s a boyfriend?”

When Dana didn’t respond right away, Gran fixed her with a stare.

Dana knew what the look meant. She would have to surrender some information about Jean. After all, she owed her grandmother. The Triumph Herald was once again in the driveway, shining like new since its restoration, paid for by Gabriel of course. Since the night it was damaged, not a word had been uttered about the incident. “Grandchildren are forgiven far more quickly than children,” was Aunt Yvonne’s assessment. But there was a price for everything, even forgiveness.

Dana mumbled. “He’s a … a friend … from school … a boy … friend.”

Gran raised her eyebrow, noting the faint flush. “Hmph. And your boy ‘friend’ is French, I believe?”

“
Oui.
I mean, yes.”

“Roman Catholic, I suppose?”

“Gran!”

“Well, they all are, aren’t they? I’m just saying what I’m saying. No need to get all het up about it. I married one myself, didn’t I? It’s in your blood, that’s all. The Faolan streak.”

It was an ideal opportunity to mention Jean’s arrival the next day, but Dana couldn’t do it. She was so used to keeping everything about him a secret, she could hardly bear to mention his name out loud. It didn’t help that her grandmother was not the most sensitive of confidantes.

“Tell me about Granda Faolan,” Dana said instead, creating a diversion.

“That Irish charmer.” Gran sighed. She took a sip of her tea, smiled to herself. “I was in trouble the moment I clapped eyes on him.”

Dana grinned. As well as changing the subject, it was a story she loved to hear.

“I was thirty-two years old at the time. Though I was a beauty in my day, if I do say so myself, it looked to be that I would stay a spinster. For one thing, there wasn’t a man in the town that had caught my eye except young John Giffen, and he died in a car crash along with any hopes I had of marrying him. The family home was mine, even though it meant looking after Mother, who was in her seventies and cantankerous as a bag of cats. Father had died five years before, being a lot older than her. My two brothers were gone, one to ranch in Alberta, the other out east in Halifax with the Navy. I had a close circle of friends, did a lot of charity work, and was active in the Daughters of the Eastern Star. Didn’t have to work, as Father had invested wisely. You could say my life was proceeding in a pleasant and orderly fashion.

“Then he showed up. Like a tumbleweed blowing down the main street. A real spanner in the works, that handsome Irishman with a tongue like honey. He was a poet and a painter, pretty successful with portraits, and he could do a fine sign. ‘Looking for a quiet place in the country,’ he said, didn’t like ‘the urban milieu.’ Had a real way with words, that man. He rented rooms in the boardinghouse where the bookshop is now. He said the first day he walked up the street and looked around the town, he fell in love with it right away and told himself, ‘I belong here. This is my home. I’m going to settle here.’ Not long after that thought occurred to him—about five or ten minutes, he always maintained—he spotted me across the street, coming out my front door, and he said to himself, ‘And there’s the girl I’m going to marry.’”

Dana sighed. It was so romantic.

“He courted me shamelessly from that very day, starting right there on the sidewalk in front of this house, asking me questions, calling me ‘darlin’.’ What was my name? Did I have a beau? He just clean swept me off my feet with all his Irish blarney.

“I knew he was a Roman Catholic, you can always tell by the look of them, though he didn’t practice his religion. He was a Freethinker, as we’d say. There’s been Irish Catholics in Creemore right from the start, but not a whole lot. We’ve always been a Protestant town. True-blue Orange. Didn’t the Hall go up before the church? Still, none of that mattered to me one whit. Lost the head altogether.

“The town was scandalized and I was coming close to disgracing the family entirely. The only way to end the scandal was to marry him. So I did. Once he promised we’d marry in my church and I wouldn’t be raising any Romans. Mind you, I was to regret that decision years later. Your aunts could’ve done with a good, strict convent school. They turn girls out like ladies, if the Dowlings and the Delaneys are anything to go by.” She shook her head ruefully. “Might’ve put some manners on my two.

“Though the marriage was the talk of the town, the dust settled in time. He had married a daughter of one of the oldest and most respected families, they didn’t have much choice but to accept him. And he won over the last of the die-hards himself. He was devoted to the village, did a lot of good work, even helped me organize the Trillium picnics. A hardworking man.” Gran sighed sadly. “He had a big heart, like Creemore itself, but not a strong one. When he died too young, too soon, the whole town turned out for his funeral.”

Dana heard the sorrow which time had made easier yet could never remove. She reached out to touch her grandmother’s hand. Across the years and the generations, they smiled at each other.

“He used to write me love poems,” she said softly.

“So, the artists are on the Faolan side,” Dana observed. “That’s where Gabe and the aunts got it from?”

“I wouldn’t say that entirely. Didn’t your Great-great-grandfather Gowan write the Book of Dreams?”

Dana was so utterly dumbfounded, she couldn’t speak at first. Then at last she managed. “What … what did you say about … the … Book of Dreams?”

“Your great-great-granddaddy wrote it. Thomas Gowan. Fancied himself a bit of an author, he did. A bit of a ne’er-do-well, more like, in his early days that is. Must’ve broken his mother’s heart. He didn’t settle down till after she died. He traveled all over the country in his youth, collecting stories, having adventures. Then he did settle, of course, and became one of the pillars of the early Creemore community.”

Dana could hardly breathe. “Was his book published?”

“Not at first. He was writing it most of his life, from the time he was young. He emigrated from Ireland with the rest of his family when he was eighteen years old. They were cleared at Grosse Île, where so many died, and journeyed on to Ontario. That’s how we came to be one of the first families in Creemore. Anyways, the book was his diary; his journal I guess you should call it, seeing as he was a man.

“He decided to publish it when he was seventy-three. Age meant nothing to my granddaddy. Didn’t he build this house in 1901, four years later? He paid to have the book printed up at the offices of the
Mad River Star
. Limited edition, but it sold pretty well. They even did a second printing as there was a lot of people liked it. But it didn’t go far outside the community. Truth is, he wasn’t much of a writer. Just had a lot of good stories to tell.”