The Songweavers
The Notherland Journeys
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McDonnell, Kathleen, 1947-
The songweavers / by Kathleen McDonnell.
(The Notherland journeys)
ISBN 978-1-897187-42-5
I. Title. II. Series: McDonnell, Kathleen, 1947- Notherland journeys.
PS8575.D669S65 2008 jC813’.54 C2008-900490-6
Copyright © 2008 by Kathleen McDonnell
Edited by Kathryn Cole
Cover © Kasia Charko
Design by Melissa Kaita
Printed and bound in Canada
Lyrics of Wade Hemsworth’s “The Wild Goose” in Chapter Two are taken from The Songs of Wade Hemsworth, 1990, with permission of the publisher, Penumbra Press.
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca
For my songweavers,
Martha and Ivy
CHAPTER 1: Heebie-jeebies
CHAPTER 2: Back to Square One
CHAPTER 3: One-Who-Knows-He-Is
CHAPTER 4: The Great Pool of Existence
CHAPTER 5: The Girl who was not Peggy
CHAPTER 6: Once Only Imagined
CHAPTER 7: Whose Dream is it Anyway?
CHAPTER 8: The Gallery
CHAPTER 9: Waiting
CHAPTER 10: Our Wondrous North
CHAPTER 11: The Sorrow of the Creator
CHAPTER 12: Contraries
CHAPTER 13: The Final Threads
CHAPTER 14: Nothing is Ever Lost
CHAPTER 15: The White Marauder
CHAPTER 16: Whale Song
CHAPTER 17: The Creator
Epilogue
THERE REALLY WAS no good reason for Mi* the Nordling to have the heebie-jeebies.
It was a term she had once heard Gavi the loon use. She wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, and couldn’t recall how he had used it. Gavi, whose nickname was Bird-Full-of-Words, was fascinated with human speech and tried out new phrases so often it was impossible to keep track of them all. But heebie-jeebies stuck in Mi’s mind, because she liked the sound of it. Right now it was the only phrase she could think of to describe the churning feeling of anxiety inside her.
Why should she be feeling this way? Everything seemed so right in Notherland**, the world that was her home. Every night Mi and the rest of the Nordlings traveled up the Great Skyway to the RoryBory, where each one was transformed into a column of dancing, pulsing light. There they passed the night in a sleeplike trance singing their musical notes and filling the vast Northern sky with a glorious hum. In the morning they slid down the Great Skyway and passed their days playing under the watchful eye of Molly the doll.
Molly wore a patch over one eye and had at one time fancied herself a pirate. Now she was captain of the Resolute, the ship she had inherited from Sir John Franklin, the great Arctic explorer, which was anchored at the edge of the Great Polar Sea. Molly used the ship for periodic voyages to the Hole at the Pole, to make sure that Notherland remained safe from the demonic force known as the Nobodaddy. But since the Nobodaddy had been vanquished two years earlier, Molly sometimes complained that there was precious little for her to do in her role as Protector of Notherland.
Not everything was perfect in Mi’s world, of course. She sometimes missed Gavi, who had left Notherland to cross over into the physical world and experience life as a flesh-and-blood loon. But he had come back the year before to join them on their journey through other worlds, and to spend time with Molly and the Nordlings. When he left Notherland the second time, he promised to return for another visit the following season.
“As much as I wish to continue my exploration of physical existence,” he told them, “I have missed you all, as well as the sharpness of mind I can only experience in an imaginary world such as this.”
Mi was comforted by the prospect of seeing her beloved Bird-Full-of-Words again, for the time he had promised to return was not far off.
She sometimes wondered about Pay-gee, the Creator, whose imagination had given birth to Notherland. When she was a child Pay-gee had spent a great deal of time in Notherland, but as she grew older she stopped coming, returning only when Notherland’s very existence had been threatened or, as had happened the previous year, when Mi herself had gone missing. The Creator always came to their aid in times of trouble or danger, so Mi was reassured by the thought that if there truly was anything wrong, Pay-gee would surely have arrived by now.
Yes, everything was just as it should be. So why was she feeling the heebie-jeebies?
Mi pondered whether to talk to Molly about it. She was over with a group of Nordlings, regaling them, as she often did, with stories of her former lives as a pirate, and as a doll in Pay-gee’s world.
“Once I spent a whole day under Peggy’s bed,” Molly was telling them.
“What’s a bed?” one of the littlest ones asked.
“It’s a big cushion that humans lie on to sleep at night,” Molly replied. “Peggy always sat me on top of the bed when she left in the morning. But one time she placed me too close to the edge and I fell off and rolled underneath the bed, where it was very dark and lonely.”
The Nordlings peppered her with questions.
“Weren’t you scared?”
“How long were you there?”
“Hours and hours!” Molly said dramatically. “Till finally she came home and found me.”
“Why didn’t you just crawl out?”
“Because in Peggy’s world I was just an ordinary doll, remember? I couldn’t do anything for myself. That’s why I live in Notherland now.”
The Nordlings always found it hard to believe that there was anything Molly couldn’t do.
The heebie-jeebies were starting to make Mi feel as if she would explode. She could see that Molly was about to launch into yet another story, and decided she could wait no longer. She walked over.
“Excuse me, Molly…”
Mi’s voice trailed off. As soon as the doll turned and fixed her one good eye on her, Mi could tell that Molly was in no mood to be interrupted.
“What?”
Mi screwed up her courage.
“May I talk to you alone?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, now.”
Molly signalled to the others to go off and play, then turned back to Mi. “Well, what is it?”
“I am sorry to disturb you. But I feel there is something I must tell you.”
“Yes?”
“Something is…”
“Something is what?” Molly pressed, exasperated.
“Something is… NOT RIGHT!”
Molly was a bit taken aback by the force of the tiny creature’s voice as it boomed out the last two words. “What do you mean, something’s not right? What’s not right?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Mi said carefully. “But something is not right in Notherland.”
Molly looked at the Nordling with a scowl. “How do you know?”
“Because I have the heebie-jeebies.”
“You have what?”
Mi said the word again, more emphatically this time, and explained its meaning as best she could, all the while expecting that Molly would just laugh and wave her away. But as she spoke, the doll’s expression changed from mild annoyance to concern, and when she finished, Molly was uncharacteristically quiet. Molly was taking her words seriously, which both relieved and unnerved Mi.
“Maybe we should call on Pay-gee, the Creator,” Mi blurted out after a few moments of silence.
She regretted her words as soon as they were out of her mouth, for she could see that they had the opposite effect on Molly than she’d hoped.
“Peggy? Of course not!” she said emphatically. “We can’t go running to the Creator for help with every little thing. I am the Protector of Notherland. If there’s really something wrong, I’ll take care of it.”
Mi sighed inwardly. She could see that Molly’s pride was wounded, which was not at all surprising. But she had to impress upon Molly that this situation was different, that the heebie-jeebies were like the feelings she’d had when Notherland was threatened before. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped.
Half of Molly’s face had disappeared.
Mi blinked hard. It must be the dark patch over Molly’s missing eye that had momentarily blurred one side of her face. But when Mi looked again, she saw that it had nothing to do with the patch. One whole side of the doll’s face was simply not there.
Mi cast her eyes around and saw that it was not only Molly’s face. Everything around it had vanished, too – the water, the rocks, the other Nordlings who had been playing there only a moment before. Everywhere she looked, she could see things only on one side of her field of vision. It was as though half the world had gone missing.
The heebie-jeebies were growing more frenzied.
She whirled back around to tell Molly what was happening. To Mi’s horror, in those few seconds even more of the doll had vanished. Now she could only see the upper quarter of Molly’s face, with her one good eye still visible. But Mi could tell from her expression that the doll had no idea whatsoever that anything was amiss.
Which to Mi was the most terrifying thing of all.
PEGGY LOOKED OUT the window of the bus as it sped down the highway. Every once in a while the bus passed a lake with a rocky shoreline or a gas station with a small general store annexed to it. The occasional sign marked a side road to a remote lodge or fishing camp. Other than that, all there was to look at were the endless rows of trees, mostly pine and spruce, with a smattering of birches and maples just starting to show hints of orange. In a few weeks, she knew, these woods would be a riot of color, with leaves of brilliant red and burnished gold. She was sorry she wouldn’t be here to see it.
She’d overheard some of the other planters talking about how boring and monotonous this road was, but for Peggy there was a beautiful desolation about it. For all the bitter disappointment she’d experienced here, she had loved her time up north, loved working outside all day, breathing in the pristine air, pushing her body to its limits.
She looked up and saw a flock of Canada geese flying overhead in a large V formation. She recalled the lyrics of a song one of the planters had sung at their last campfire.
Winter’s coming, the wild geese know
We’ve had a long fall and it’s time to go with the wild goose
High over the north shore, and I’m going home.
Like the geese, she was heading south. It was time for her to go home, too, and it was going to be a long bus ride – more than five hours.
As night came on, she turned on the small overhead reading light, and opened her magazine. But she couldn’t concentrate, and found herself reading the same couple of paragraphs over and over. Finally she gave up, closed the magazine, and lay back in her seat. When she closed her eyes she saw a flood of images from the last few years, running through her mind like scenes from a movie. And in all of them, there he was: Gary, Jackpine. Until the final image, of herself walking into the reserve office down the road from the treeplanters’ camp.
He should have been there. Why wasn’t he?
She’d had no idea what was in store for her that day, more than two years ago, when she set out for the secondhand store, determined to sell her flute. Sure, she was eager to get the money, but what she really wanted was to be rid of the flute and all the emotional baggage that came with it. But at the store she realized she’d left the mouthpiece at home. In her rush to retrieve it, she’d taken the wrong subway train and ended up in the park directly across the street from her childhood home. There, standing in that familiar spot surrounded by the ring of trees, she was suddenly, inexplicably transported to Notherland, the imaginary northern world she’d created when she was seven years old.
She found herself once again face to face with Molly, the doll who longed to be a pirate, and Gavi, the Philosopher-Loon. The terror in their eyes, the urgency in their voices made clear why they had brought her back to this world. The singing-spirits known as Nordlings had been abducted by the Nobodaddy. Notherland itself was in danger of being destroyed.
The three of them had set off toward the Hole at the Pole, carefully guarding Mi, the only remaining Nordling. It was on that journey that she’d first encountered him, the mysterious young man imprisoned in a tree. Peggy had freed him with the touch of her hand, and Mi decided he would be called Jackpine. He joined them as they made their way farther north, where they met Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane, and sailed Franklins ship the Terror through the Polar Sea. They made a treacherous descent into the Hole at the Pole, where Peggy fought the Nobodaddy, finally reducing him to his original form: Nobody.
With the Nordlings rescued and safety restored to Notherland, she’d returned to her ordinary life. But she couldn’t forget Jackpine, whose name in the everyday world, she learned, was Gary. She despaired of ever finding him again. Then, more than a year later, she had walked into the office on the reserve near the treeplanters’ camp, and there he was.
At first he’d tried to act like he didn’t remember her. But as they stood by the rock with the carved images, they were again swept away to Notherland, where they learned that Mi had gone missing. This time, Peggy discovered that she had become a Mental Traveler, with the ability to transport all of them to other worlds. They set off in search of Mi, arriving first in the world of Grania, the Pirate Queen, aboard whose ship Molly was able to realize her lifelong dream. They next found their way to the workshop of the great poet and artist, William Blake, whose ideas enriched Gavi’s mind, and under whose tutelage Jackpine found his true calling as an artist.
Their final journey was to the bleak world known as the FarNear, where Peggy and Molly vanquished the demon who had abducted Mi, the Evil Angel Peggy had first seen in Will Blake’s painting. They had been taking Mi home to Notherland when Peggy suddenly found herself back in the bush with her planting bags and shovel, back at square one, as though none of it had happened.
That was the way it always was with these strange journeys to Notherland. Each time she returned, it was as if almost no time at all had passed. So she hadn’t been worried. Because what was all this traveling back and forth between worlds for, if not to find her soulmate?
Gary. Jackpine.
This time she’d find him. She had been certain of it. Everything would play out exactly like it had before, the way it was supposed to. He’d be out in back of the cabin, chopping wood, when their truck turned off the highway. He’d walk into the office just as she and the other planters were asking to see the petroglyphs. This time, he’d know exactly who she was when she called him Jackpine. He’d look into her eyes and say her name, and they’d feel that closeness again.
But it hadn’t happened that way. That day nothing happened the way it was supposed to. He should’ve been there. But he wasn’t.
She couldn’t understand it. Where was he? Why wasn’t he waiting there for her? There was no ax out back of the cabin, no wood chips strewn around. Inside the office there was someone else – an older man, with a long ponytail, who cheerfully offered to take them to the petroglyphs. But Peggy abruptly changed her mind, to the surprise and annoyance of the other planters. She couldn’t bear the thought. It was as if seeing the rock carvings with anyone else would somehow cut off the possibility that she would ever find him again.
What a pathetic fool she’d been. She was finally beginning to understand. Of course he wasn’t there. How could he be? It had all felt so real – the journeys to Notherland, to the other worlds, all the dangerous adventures they’d shared together. But as the bus neared its destination and she spied the lights of the city in the distance, it all became clear to her.
There was no Gary, no Jackpine. He didn’t exist.
The time had come to put aside all those childish beliefs, to grow up and face reality. Because it wasn’t real, none of it. It was all in her head.
The bus was turning off the highway onto the exit ramp. The driver announced that any passengers who wanted to be let off before the bus arrived at the downtown terminal should let him know.
She made a decision.
She stood up and walked to the driver’s seat at front of the bus.
“Could you let me off at the next corner?”
In her scruffy planting clothes, carrying an overstuffed pack on her back, Peggy figured she probably looked like a homeless person. She thought back to the first time she’d stood here, looking in the window of Around Again, her flute case in her hand, debating whether to go in the door. But this time there was no hesitation. Her mind was made up.
She opened the door and walked into the shop. Once inside, she lowered one shoulder and eased her pack onto the floor. She opened the top flap and reached inside. It took a bit of rooting around, but after a moment she found the hardshell case, pulled it out, and snapped open the metal clasps. Inside, two silver tubes were nestled side by side in the dark blue velvet that lined the case, with the black mouthpiece tucked in one corner.
She walked over to the man standing behind the counter and set the case down in front of him.
“How much can I get for this flute?”
Peggy watched the salesman lift the two sections of the flute out of the case and screw them together. The first time she’d come here she’d been desperate for money. In her youthful foolishness she believed that it would be the solution to all her problems. But this time it wasn’t about money.
The Flute Player sings the world into existence.
That was what he’d once told her. It all came rushing back into her mind: his words, his voice, his face. Looking at the flute was a painful reminder of what she’d lost – what she’d never really had.
It was time to get back to square one, to do what she’d first set out to do more than two years ago. It was time to get rid of the flute, once and for all.
“Seven hundred,” said the salesman.
It was a hundred dollars less than he’d quoted her the first time around. But she said nothing. She didn’t care.
Just get it over with.
“Okay,” she said.
She watched him count out the cash in twenty-dollar bills. He handed her the money with one hand, and with the other, he flipped the flute case shut. The sound had an unsettling finality, like the closing of a casket.
She left the store. Out on the sidewalk, she took her wallet from the side pouch of the backpack and slid the bills into it. As she stuffed the wallet back into the pouch, she felt something sharp prick one of her fingers. She pulled her hand out and looked at it.
There was a tiny drop of blood on the tip of the middle finger of her left hand.
She thought of the engraving knife, the tool that Will Blake had given to Jackpine. She had borrowed it, intending to give back it to him when they found each other again. But it couldn’t be the engraving knife. She was done with all that. None of it had happened, not really. She must have left something sharp in the side pouch – a tack, an open safety pin.
Ripples of fear ran through her. She didn’t want to look inside. Quickly, she closed the zipper.
She glanced around. Everything on the street seemed strange and unfamiliar, even though she recognized the buildings and knew exactly where she was. It was an odd, unsettling feeling, almost like the opposite of déjà vu.
She lifted the pack onto one shoulder and slung it onto her back and set off down the street.
She had to get away from this place before she lost her bearings altogether.
THE GREAT GATHERING had begun.
From every direction the large, white-bellied birds approached the lake. Their black wings, flecked with white patches, moved in smooth, broad strokes then stretched outward, holding still as each bird made its final descent and glided onto the surface of the water. There were hundreds of them, these birds the Walk-Uprights called loons, though among themselves they were simply Ones-Who-Are.
Soon they would disperse and take flight again, making their way south to warmer lands. For now they moved in and out along the lake, chattering in small groups, calling and singing with a joy that seemed to continually announce I am here! I exist! They were at the gathering place and would soon begin their great migration. Everything was as it always had been, as it should be, and this was all they knew.
Except for one.
He looked just like the others and swam freely among them, his mate and their chick close by. His tremolos and yodels sounded indistinguishable from theirs. Outwardly, there was nothing about this one that would single him out as different in any way. But though the Ones-Who-Are welcomed him among them, they could tell that he was not like them.
He was One-Who-Knows-He-Is.
He had come from another world, where he had lived among the Walk-Uprights, who had treated him as though he were one of them and given him a name, a practice unknown among Ones-Who-Are. In that world Gavi, as he was known there, learned about philosophy and other things that Ones-Who-Are know nothing of. When he had first come to live among them he often tried, with absolutely no success, to engage them in discussions of these matters.
But in time One-Who-Knows-He-Is learned to play down his differentness, to blend in more easily with the others. Certainly it was easier now that he had taken a mate, though the courtship itself had been anything but easy. At first he had felt unworthy, inept, and untutored in the ways of the Ones-Who-Are, and believed he had no chance with his Chosen One. So for a long time he stood aloof, watching while another attempted to engage her in courtship displays. Then one day, to his astonishment, his Chosen One swam toward him, stopped a short distance away, and lowered her head so that the tip of her bill lightly touched the surface of the water. Then she raised her head and looked directly at him, as if waiting for a response.
At first he hardly knew what to make of it. Could it really be true? Was his Chosen One inviting him into a courtship display? He stared at her, paralyzed, unsure what to do. After a moment she stirred. He was sure she would swim away, but she raised her head and again lowered her beak, this time plunging it even deeper into the water.
Almost involuntarily, One-Who-Knows-He-Is lifted his own head and dipped his beak in response. As he raised his head he was seized by fear that he had misinterpreted her action, that he had done something foolish, and that the others would release a volley of mocking tremolos. But his Chosen One was now lifting her head even higher, this time displaying her throat patch to him. There was no mistaking it. She was announcing that he was her Chosen One.
In a flash it came to him that what had been hindering him until now was not his own, imagined inadequacies, but his thinking and brooding upon them. How many times had his friends in the Other Land gently teased him, telling him not to think so much.
Now he must throw caution to the winds. He must abandon thought. He must act. He must BE!