Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ sure that I would sleep for the rest of the summer, but in mid speculation about the stranger or the specter who was probably at this very moment prowling the attic above my room or the mysterious way things of mine had disappeared, I did sleep only to wake into an eerie dreamlike reality somehow quite different from that which I’d bade goodnight on crawling into my sleeping bag.

      It was no sound or touch or even trick of vision that leant the disorientation to me and the room about me, but an unaccountable and rather subtle oddness in the very quality of being. I know this sounds nonsensical and would have to be called a function of intuition rather than true observation, but I felt that the little island of floor I lay upon had somehow come lose from the earth to which it had recently been attached and a slight movement must send me skidding off, ceiling or not, into the black night sky. As I took in my sensory surroundings, I noted the absence of any sound, none of the noises houses always make during and cooling night, no suggestion of life or traffic from without. My skin began to tingle. My body felt even lighter than usual. I’d never been a very big kid; and the lighthouse beacon had stopped its rhythmic, almost hypnotic sweep.

      I had just time to notice this fact when the light returned but not the same light. This was somehow harsher and flickered considerably more than the sweeping beacon we’d been enjoying, how long, an hour ago? Two? This light also moved much more slowly, sliding off beyond the gaze of the windowpane but crawling rather than sprinting. It was gone for at least a minute, I thought, then returned, crawling along the wall, spanning the room, then disappearing, again at its seeming snail’s pace. There was something ponderous and alarming about the slowness of the beacon, but it was also hugely magnetic and seemed to be drawing me out toward the window, out of the house. A great part of me longed to run outside, past dolphin and bookcase, past work table and laundry room, out across the porch to the beckoning light. In view of what we would find next day, it was probably very fortunate for me that I did not.

      “Do you see it?”

      I nearly shrieked in alarm at the whisper that cut through my intense concentration, but I recollected myself just in time and said, “Yes.”

      “It’s like this sometimes,” Monique said.

      “I guess so,” I said, not knowing what else to answer.

      “It’ll be okay,” she assured me. ”It only keeps it up for a little while.” She slid out of bed, slightly hobbled by her nightgown, to switch on the brilliant bulb of her searchlight and deliberately began to match the sluggish progress of the altered Orb.

      Salt Mills

      We didn’t talk next morning nor all day about the strangeness of the wakeful period we’d shared between sleeps. Our elders were still in bed. We unpinned our nighties and put on the clothes from yesterday. We were pouring milk into bowls of granola in the kitchen, earnestly planning our day’s activities when Aunt Claire, frowsy from sleep, strode past us and out onto the porch to pick up the slim local newspaper, then started a pot of water heating on the stove. ”I never got to show you the lay of the land yesterday,” she remarked to me, scanning the headlines then tossing the paper onto the table.

      “I can show her,” Monique assured. ”I must know your place as well as you.”

      “That’s what worries me,” Claire said with a thin smile. ”Finish your breakfast and we can all have a walk around. I’ll show you the real mysteries of Sea Cliff Manor.” Monique shot me a sidewise glance as if to say, “Who’s she kidding?” but said nothing.

      We heard a shower running, and soon Monique’s mother appeared in a loose yellow robe, a towel wrapped around her head. ”I’m afraid I’m late for my client,” she said. “Are you already for the morning, Monique?” Monique nodded, her mouth full of cereal. ”Great. I should be home by noon, two o’clock latest.” She disappeared into a bedroom and reappeared without the towel and wearing sandals but with her appearance otherwise little changed.

      “Dinner at my place tonight?” Claire asked.

      “Sounds fine to me,” Laina said. ”Saves shopping today.” She kissed my aunt on the mouth, Monique on one full cheek, patted my shoulder, and darted out the door, down the steps, and toward the little car parked by the road.

      “Could have offered us a ride,” Claire remarked, pouring granola and spooning up a dry mouthful.

      The road from Monique’s house climbed steeply to the cliff top property where Aunt Clair and I lived. We puffed along the long incline, then turned off into the rather unkempt frontage of my aunt’s property along the road. Strongly now, I heard the whup-whup-whup-whup that I’d remarked several times previously. Coming around the south end of the house, I saw the row of windmills spinning in the seaside breeze and the mysterious machinery that companioned them.

      “So that’s the noise I kept hearing,” I said.

      “And will continue hearing,” my aunt informed. ”Nothing like this on the Pacific Coast or anywhere else probably.”

      “Really?”

      “Really. Let me show you.” Careful not to walk too near the spinning wooden blades now blurred by their rapid motion, we moved in from behind to inspect belts, not unlike car fan belts, which led from reels on the backs of the windmills to corresponding reels on tube-shaped devices that, in turn, were mated to square, flat tanks covered by loosely fitting lids and vented around their sides. The pans were arranged somewhat like three, shallow stair steps, the bottom of one at about the level of its next neighbor’s top.

      “Do you make electricity?” I asked intrigued but confused. I recalled an article in our Weekly Reader at school about farmers during the Great Depression making their own electricity with wind power.

      “No,” she laughed. ”Power’s too cheap to make it worthwhile generating electricity just for household use, but I needed heat, a lot of it.” Taking my hand, she placed it near one of the side vents on the middle pan. I felt hot dampness wafting from it. Claire lifted the lid then showing just water inside so far as I could see. Metal tubes zigzagged back and forth through the tank near the bottom, from which minute bubbles were rising.

      “Why?” I began.

      “Dip your finger in,” she said. ”Taste.” It was salty, real salty. Rapidly she moved from pan to pan touching each in turn. The third and final one was crusted on the bottom with white salt crystals. ”Not done yet,” she declared, “but soon.”

      “So you make salt?” I said not real intelligently.

      “And other things,” she said. ”Lots of demand these days for genuine sea salt with all of its health-giving benefits. Doesn’t hurt that it’s made by a genuine proclaimed witch. This first pan,” she stepped over to the highest one, “is where the sea water first comes in just after it’s filtered. It gives off the most water vapor. We condense that to make our pure Pacific Windblown Water which we sell down at the Co-op. There are the herb gardens as well. All taken together it keeps me off the street.” Monique, who’d obviously heard the lecture before and those that would follow, had slipped away. I saw her examining something near the house.

      Claire led me then to where a greenhouse stood at the end of a double row of raised beds. She rattled off more names than I could comprehend, but I recall comfrey, mullein, several kinds of thyme, sage, savory, rosemary, yes, and parsley, ginger, fennel, on and on. We returned then to the south side of the house, and here were a number of fruit and nut trees, cherry, walnut, hazelnuts, apple, pear, and—what I was informed was—a grape arbor covered СКАЧАТЬ