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  “Dad! Robin threw her sandwich out the window.”

  “Robin!”

  Robin pushed her head back into the seat and closed her eyes. She turned her music up so loud, it made her teeth buzz.

  They drove all day, then another, stopping at fast food restaurants and one night at a rundown motel. Hour after hour, all Robin could see were snowy fields and bush. At some point during the second night, the car stopped. Robin opened her eyes to the glare of streetlights. They were driving through one of the little towns near the cottage.

  In the summer, the town always looked festive, with lots of people wandering around eating ice cream cones. Now, as Robin looked at the dark store windows and empty streets, the town seemed desolate. Even hokey.

  “It looks so small,” Ari said.

  “It is small,” their father said, “compared to Winnipeg.”

  “There’s where we got worms last time,” Squirm said, pointing to a store that had a hand-written sign saying LIVE BAIT!

  “Great,” Ari said.

  Robin was glad to hear the upset in Ari’s voice. She wanted her sister to feel miserable. It would serve her right. Their father would have listened to Ari if she’d tried to convince him. Robin didn’t have a doubt that the three of them could have handled things on their own. It wasn’t rocket science to shop and cook. They didn’t need some eccentric grandmother to help.

  “There’s the Chinese restaurant,” their dad said.

  Suddenly the town was gone and they were on the highway again. No one spoke for the next half hour as they continued to the lake.

  Because of the snow-covered roads, it was more than an hour before they turned up a snowy lane. Branches scraped the sides of the car, and falling snow thudded on the roof. They went around a corner, and their father brought the car to a halt. The headlights flashed on a mountain of snow. It took Robin a few minutes to realize it wasn’t a mountain she was staring at but the old farmhouse, covered with snow. Someone appeared on the porch, a black profile against the lit window.

  Squirm yawned. “Who’s that?”

  “Griff.” His father’s voice was tired and irritated. “Grandma Griffith. You remember her.”

  Ari sighed. “It all looks so different.”

  “Of course it looks different. It’s winter. We’ve always been here in summer,” their father said.

  “She looks old,” Squirm said. “Do we have to live with her?”

  “I told you, we’ll be in the main house, the one you see, and Griff will be in the cabin by the water. You’ll remember it when you see it in daylight. Just grab your overnight stuff. We’ll take in the rest tomorrow. Bundle up. It’s cold.”

  “Thirty below,” Squirm said, reading the car’s dashboard. “Wow. It’s colder than Winnipeg!”

  Their father got out of the car, and Squirm yawned and followed. Robin stared after them, unmoving. Her brother looked so little beside their father’s towering height. Beside her on the seat, Relentless pulled herself to her feet and looked at Robin, waiting.

  Ari yanked up her hood. “It’s frigging freezing in here.” She pushed open her door, got out and slammed it hard. Head down, she walked quickly towards the house.

  Robin sat in the car feeling the cold creep under her clothes. Relentless whined, and Robin finally got out of the car. Darkness swallowed her. In the city, there were always lights; streetlights, car lights, even airplane lights. Here, it was blacker than black. She couldn’t even see Relentless.

  She walked towards the house, her feet making loud crunching sounds on the hard snow. The farmhouse was dim inside and smelled of damp.

  Griff, her long white hair tied in a thick braid, stepped forward and gave Robin a hug. Robin stiffened.

  Griff led the three of them up a narrow stairway. She guided Squirm into one small room and the girls into another. Ari threw her things down on the wider of the two beds.

  Too tired to argue, Robin collapsed on the bed without taking her clothes off. She heard Relentless clunk down on the wood floor beside her. In a few minutes, Griff came in and tucked the covers under her chin. Her hands looked huge.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Griff said quietly.

  “No, it’s not,” Robin said and turned to the wall.

  Chapter

  Three

  Squirm pushed against Robin’s shoulder. “Rawwwbinnn! Wake uuuuuuuup!”

  Robin’s eyes snapped open. She saw the old-fashioned wallpaper, realized where she was and groaned. Only moments before, in her dream, she’d been in her old house. It had seemed so real. She’d been with her mom and —

  Squirm bounced on the bed. “You should see the snow. There’s mountains of it! Let’s go out and make a snowman.”

  Robin turned in her bed, yearning to return to her dream, to her old life. “Make it with Ari,” she mumbled. Her mouth was dry, and it was hard to get her tongue to move.

  “She’s gone to town with Dad. We’re supposed to go to Griff’s cabin for breakfast.” He tugged at her bedcovers, and Relentless barked.

  Robin gripped the covers fiercely. “Leave me alone!”

  The violence in her voice startled her, obliterating both her dream and any hopes she had of going back to sleep. Everything was ruined now. She thrust the blankets aside and stumbled towards the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was wild, zigzagging in all directions. She tried to smooth it down, but there was no controlling it. There was no controlling anything.

  When she returned to the bedroom a few moments later, Squirm was standing by the window in a column of sunlight. He looked like a lost little boy waiting for someone to find him. Robin went and stood behind him, and he leaned back into her.

  “Sometimes I feel her,” he said.

  Robin tensed, tightening her body so the feelings could not rise. She squeezed her brother’s shoulder and moved to the window.

  A vast sea of snow was spread before her. Great gobs of it covered the trees, the fences, and barn.

  “We have a whole other week till we have to go back to school,” Squirm said.

  Robin stared out at the endless whiteness. And what were they going to do, make snowmen day after day?

  “Wow, look at the lake,” Squirm said. The top of it was all silvery. “I think that’s ice,” he said, peering forward. “It’s like a giant skating rink.”

  A prickly anxiety crept into Robin’s body. She stared at the lake. Frozen or not, the very thought of water made her feel all wobbly inside. She sighed. There were so many things she was afraid of now. She was becoming a complete wuss.

  “Do leeches freeze?”

  “How would I know!”

  “Remember that time you had one on your face? Did you ever freak! All you had to do was pick it off. You didn’t have to scream like that.”

  Yeah, right, she thought. That was another reason to stay away from the water. The blood-sucking leeches!

  Squirm jumped. “Hey, you know what? I bet we could skate on that ice! Want to? We could go for miles!”

  He turned, ready to bound off, but Robin grabbed him. There was no way she was going out on the lake.

  “Let’s go find Griff first,” she said, putting him off. “Get some breakfast.”

  As she expected, Squirm tore down the stairs. As usual, food was his favourite thing.

  At the bottom of the stairs, they pulled on their coats and boots and went outside. Relentless ran ahead along the path, her tail whipping happily from side to side.

  Robin looked over at the property across the field. Usually she couldn’t see it, but now that it was winter and all the leaves were down, she could see the farmhouse and several mounds of snow near the house that looked like snow-covered trucks and tractors. A dog barked loudly, straining on its rope. She remembered her father saying something about a new family moving in there, but she didn’t know anything about them.

  Squirm led them along a shovelled path towards their grandmother’s cabin. The snow was so high on e
ither side of her that the tips of Robin’s mittens brushed against it as she walked. She scooped up a handful and held it to her nostrils. The snow smelled fresh and clean, unlike snow in the city. She scrunched it into a ball and threw it at Squirm. He laughed and threw a snowball back. They pitched snowballs at each other until they were breathless.

  They had just gotten back on the path when it forked. One way led to Griff’s cabin, which was down near the water, and the other led to an old grey barn, which tilted to one side in the field. Squirm took the path to the barn. It was just like her brother to be heading in one direction and end up going in another.

  As they walked, a black snowmobile charged out from the neighbour’s property. The hair on Relentless’s neck stood up like dozens of toothpicks. She started barking furiously as the snowmobile roared towards them. Both riders were wearing helmets with big plastic faceguards, so Robin could barely see their faces, but the driver was a big man and the passenger was a girl with a long yellow ponytail. Was she his daughter?

  The snowmobile was heading right for them. Robin clutched Squirm, sure they were going to be hit. At the last moment, the machine swerved but continued to circle around them. Robin felt her shoulders tense as blue gas fumes billowed into the air. The snowmobile made smaller and smaller circles, and Robin felt as if a noose were being tightened around them. Squirm began to cough. Worried that he was going to have an asthma attack, Robin eased his face into the folds of her coat. She put her hands over her ears and started to count, something she sometimes did when she was afraid.

  She heard yelling and opened her eyes. Griff was trudging towards them, waving her arms as she moved, her long braid of white hair bouncing on her shoulders. When the snowmobiler saw her, he turned and roared off.

  “Idiot!” Griff said, gathering the kids in close.

  Robin pulled away from the embrace. She didn’t like people hugging her any more. Hugging softened her, and she needed to be hard, on the alert and have her guard up.

  Squirm watched the snowmobile charge off. “Who was that?”

  “Our crazy neighbour,” Griff said. “Rick Big Shot, I mean, Kingshot. I think that was his daughter on the back. Couldn’t tell. He’s had a lot of floozies hanging around since he got divorced.”

  Squirm coughed again, and Griff patted his back as she stared at the retreating snowmobile. “If he thinks he can bamboozle me into selling this place, he’s got another think coming.” Her words made white puffs in the cold air. “Come on, let’s get inside. This cold would freeze the devil himself.”

  The cabin was nestled at the base of some giant, snowy trees and looked much smaller than Robin remembered. On the verandah, snowshoes hung from nails, and in the middle of the door was a large white animal skull.

  “Wow,” Squirm said, touching it reverently. “Is that a deer head?”

  “Yup.” Griff pushed the driftwood door handle and led them inside. The smell of wood smoke and maple syrup rushed towards them.

  Griff helped them hang their coats, then using her shirttail as an oven mitt, pulled a plate of pancakes out of the warming oven. She put a pot lid over top, placed it on a rough-hewn wooden table, and got out the utensils.

  Robin looked around the room. The cabin wasn’t very big, only one room, and part of the space was taken up by a four-poster bed covered with a bright multi-coloured quilt. Around the bed were fishing rods, an axe, and bundles of dried things hanging from the rafters. Herbs? Probably, Robin thought. She could smell lavender.

  She let her eyes scan the walls, but they stopped suddenly on one item. A gun. She bit at the corner of her fingernail and brought her eyes back to her brother. She was hoping they would both roll their eyes at Griff’s weirdness. After all, who else had a grandmother who owned a gun? But Squirm, as during other visits, was enchanted, moving around the room, touching various bone fragments, rock, and feathers. Then he looked up.

  “Hey, you’ve got Owlie.”

  Griff smiled as she set out the plates. “Your dad brought him in last night. Now there’s a story….”

  And I bet you’re going to tell it, Robin thought. What was it about old people and stories? Back in Winnipeg, their eighty-year-old neighbour, Mr. Talbot, used to corner her into listening to his stupid reminiscences. Who cared?

  “Tell us,” Squirm said. Robin wanted to strangle him.

  Griff’s eyes danced. “It was a long time ago now. When your dad was in engineering school.”

  Robin turned sharply to Griff. “Dad was never in engineering school.” She looked at Squirm. Maybe Griff was getting that strange forgetting disease. Alz-something.

  “Oh, but he was. Just not for long. Not that there’s anything wrong with engineering school, it was just that your dad didn’t give a hoot about things! It was animals he cared about. But his dad, your granddad, rest his soul, wanted him to be an engineer, so that’s what he studied. Until Owlie dropped out of the sky one day and came to the rescue.”

  Squirm smiled as Griff loaded pancakes onto three plates. “Really? He just dropped out of the sky?”

  Griff poured hot chocolate into two cups and handed them around. “Yup! He’d been shot. We never found out who shot him, but still, he landed right on the ground in front of your dad, who, bless him, picked up the poor thing and nursed him back to life. Owlie must have had a few talks with your dad along the way, because the next thing I knew, your father had chucked engineering and signed up for vet school — which is what he should have done in the first place.”

  Squirm helped himself to some pancakes and sluiced maple syrup all over them.

  Griff chuckled. “You’re not having syrup with your pancakes, but pancakes with your syrup.” She put a pancake on Robin’s plate and continued. “Anyways, Owlie and your dad were such good friends that when Owlie died, I got him stuffed. I thought he’d be a good reminder.”

  Robin ate part of her pancake but left the rest. She wasn’t hungry.

  Griff nodded towards Owlie. “Maybe after lunch, we’ll take him down to the barn and see if he can spook some of the ten thousand mice out there.”

  “Yeah — I’ll bet Owlie is great at spooking mice.”

  Robin sat back and watched as Griff licked her thumb and index finger clean of syrup. How could any woman have hands so huge?

  Squirm helped himself to more pancakes and reached for the syrup. He tilted the jug towards his mouth, pretending he was going to drink the whole thing, then laughed at himself, and poured the syrup over his pancakes. “This is the best maple syrup I ever ate.”

  “It’s one of my better batches,” Griff said.

  His eyes widened. “You made this?”

  “The trees made it,” Griff said. “The trees right around this cabin. I just collected the sap and cooked it down.”

  “Can I make some?”

  “Sure! We’ll start as soon as the sap’s running. Won’t be long now. Spring’s just around the corner.”

  Robin looked out the window. Not according to what she could see.

  “Cool!”

  Griff tossed her head back and laughed at Squirm’s enthusiasm.

  Robin stared at Griff. There were two teeth missing from the back of her grandmother’s mouth. Gross. She turned away and began examining the cabin again. Dark eyes met hers. The eyes belonged to a woman in a large tea-brown photograph that hung on the far wall. The woman was dressed in a long, old-fashioned dress that had hundreds of buttons going all the way to her chin, and her hair was piled on the top of her head as they used to do in the old days. The woman seemed to be staring right at her.

  “I’m skinning a deer out back,” Griff said to Squirm. “You can help with that if you’ve got a mind to.” She glanced at Robin. “It’s not for everybody.”

  You got that right, Robin wanted to say. Would it be rude if she left?

  Squirm swallowed a huge mouthful. “You kill it?”

  Griff’s brow furrowed. “Let’s just say I was looking for food, and it offered to provide.�
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  “Can I see?” Squirm said, licking his plate.

  “Just let me have my tea,” Griff said, going to the fridge. A moment later, she held up a milk carton and shook it. “Darn, it’s empty.”

  “There’s lots at the farmhouse,” Squirm said. “I’ll go get some.” He ran to the door, grabbing his coat on the way. “Be right back.”

  Griff smiled at Robin. “I’m going to like having a grandson around.”

  Robin sipped her hot chocolate. Not knowing what to say, she stared at the photo of the woman.

  “That’s Emmeline,” Griff said, following Robin’s eyes. “Emmeline Pankhurst. The suffragette.”

  Robin looked at the fiery eyes in the photograph and tried to remember what a suffragette was.

  “They’re the ones who got the vote for women. Which, by the way, they had to fight tooth and nail to get. Emmeline here chained herself to the British parliament buildings. Got thrown in jail, went on a hunger strike — the whole shebang. She almost died. But she wouldn’t give up.” Griff moved her eyes from the photograph to Robin. “According to one of my great- aunts, we’re related to her in some distant sort of way.”

  Robin looked at Griff’s beaming face and suppressed a yawn. As soon as Squirm came back, she was going to make her excuses and go.

  Griff cleared the plates and started washing the dishes. Suddenly, she pulled her hands from the water. “Where is that boy?” She wiped her hands on a tea towel. “He wouldn’t have gone out on the ice, would he?” Her eyes grabbed Robin’s.

  If he’s seen an animal out there or something else interesting, that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do, Robin thought. Squirm was always getting caught up in the adventure of the moment.

  “Didn’t your dad tell him the ice wasn’t safe?”

  Robin’s mind scrambled. “I don’t know, I don’t think so. Squirm said this morning he wanted to go skating and —” Suddenly her stomach felt as if it were full of jumping frogs.

  Griff pulled on her boots. “You check the farmhouse. I’ll go down to the lake and see what I can see. Holler if you find him.”