The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden Page 5

  He turns back to the jelly beans, and no amount of pestering on my part can turn his attention back to me.

  As far as he’s concerned, I’m already long gone.

  FORTY-ONE

  It’s 11:59 p.m. My birthday will be over in one minute. There is still a gentle, soft glow in the sky, like the sun is really sad about leaving us behind until tomorrow.

  I’m wearing a white cotton blouse and white shorts and white sandals (and if you must know, a white bra and white undies). I’m not exactly sure how much white Mrs. Forest meant when she said wear white, so I pretty much plastered myself in white from top to bottom. Except for the golden feather my hands are fiddling with, I’m white from head to toe.

  It ought to be enough white for one person.

  My mom is fast asleep in her room. The twins are fast asleep with Cassie downstairs in the living room. It’s so hot tonight that Mom took pity on them and let them sleep downstairs on the living room floor, where it’s cooler, much cooler, than upstairs in their bedroom.

  I’m waiting with the window and screen wide open. I’m waiting for my night to begin. I have absolutely no idea what to expect, though. None of the adults is about to fill me in on anything, which hardly seems fair. I asked my mother earlier what was going on, but she just smiled and said Mrs. Forest asked her not to tell. I found Mr. McGillies and asked him, too, but there was no way to know if he actually heard me, or understood my intent. He just rattled on by with his cart, ignoring me.

  And the Micro-Edition for the Less-than-Willing Reader is once again Less-than-Weighty on the subject at hand:

  #8: What Ceremonies and Parties do I attend?

  As a Night Flyer with full privileges, you may now attend the First Flight Ceremonies of any other Night Flyers in your community. You may also attend the annual Midsummer Party. Ask your Mentor for further information regarding the latter.

  I’m wondering if I will ever get my Less-Than-Willing status changed. If the people who decide these things will ever see me as More-Than-Willing? Just how do I let them know that I read a lot this summer — two whole series — eleven books in all? And now I’m starting on a whole new series about those blood-sucker vampire teenagers, which is oddly thrilling because they fly, just like me without a broom or anything, and they’re the cool kids in school. Frighteningly, deathly cool.

  I’m fiddling with the hook on the window pouting about this injustice, when suddenly Mrs. Forest is there, dressed in a long white gown and a flowing white feathery scarf around her neck. Her hair is tied up in a white kerchief, so her dark skin is perfect and glowing and she looks like an angel.

  I’m all shy, and don’t know what to say. She laughs, offers her hand, and says, “Come on out, Night Flyer Gwendolyn Golden, your night is about to begin.” I hesitate, but only a little. I smile and take her hand, and Mrs. Forest and I sail away into the dark, beautiful night, like two white boats on a dark ocean of sky.

  We glide silently over the treetops, and soon we’re out of town. We fly over the tall cornfields, and I can’t help it, I get a little giddy and I want to zoom around. I drop Mrs. Forest’s hand, and she says “It’s all right, go girl,” and that’s all I need to hear. I zip around the corn, and through it, and over it and around it. It smells like growing things, and good earth, and sunshine and rain, and I’ve missed it. It’s been calling me, but I put it away until now.

  The Shade took it from me for a long time.

  We are still making our way somewhere, but playing in the cornfield is fun and Mrs. Forest isn’t in any hurry. She lets me play for a while under the whole white moon and the shining sky. But then she says we have to go, and I breeze along the tops of the corn, across the field, letting the silk tassels and topmost leaves brush my belly and fingertips as I fly past. There is a gentle shushing and living sound in the tall corn, in the dark earth, in the goodness below me.

  We fly a long while, an hour or more. She shows me how to fly on my back if I get too tired flying on my stomach, and it seems a lot like when I learned to float on my stomach, then on my back, in the town pool when I learned to swim. We cross more cornfields and farms with sleeping cows and horses.

  There are no people, no cars, no street lights, just a wide open world and the two of us white angels floating over treetops and fields and country roads.

  I am burning to ask more about the Shade, and it’s awfully hard not to feel a dread about it. But I know it wouldn’t be a good thing to talk about right now. I also know, somehow, that Shade or not, I am safe right where I am. Warm breezes are blowing us along, and soon I can see a glow ahead of us.

  We are approaching a town.

  Mrs. Forest and I glide along the outskirts of town for a while. I know this town. It is two towns away from mine, but it takes a while to drive to it, the roads not being very direct. Flying is faster, straight over the cornfields. Occasionally a farm dog picks up our scent and starts barking, but we keep moving and no one sees us.

  Mrs. Forest doesn’t take us into town, but sticks to the back roads and lone farmhouses, until we come to the woods. I didn’t know these woods existed, but there are the trees, huge and looming and green.

  These trees are old. I can tell because I’ve never seen anything so tall. I fly and look up and Mrs. Forest says, “They’re old growth, Gwen. They’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. As long as the old stories tell us there have been Night Flyers, there have been trees in this spot. We have always gathered here.” They are like the trees on the cover of the Night Flyer brochure, with the smiling girl about my age.

  We?

  I get a little twist of excitement all through me.

  We fly into the woods, me following Mrs. Forest. They are wide trees, much wider than I could put my arms around, wider than four people could put their arms around probably. And they stand tall as any building in a city (although I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never been to the city). They are thickly growing together, but Mrs. Forest seems to know her way, and we wander and twist and zig-zag deeper and deeper into the trees, where it’s almost impossible to get through them. Sometime after a few minutes of flying, I start to hear a gentle murmuring and see a faint light up ahead.

  We reach what must be the centre of the forest, and there is a clearing, which glows a little. When we break through the trees, I see several people all dressed in white, flying around in lazy circles, like they have been waiting for us.

  Some of them fly up to Mrs. Forest and hug her, and I know something important right away. We are among friends, and they are all Night Flyers, just like Mrs. Forest and me.

  FORTY-TWO

  I look around the great circle ringed by enormous, ancient tree trunks. Best I can describe, a soft light is coming from each of us and our golden feathers. Everyone has a feather, just like mine from the handbook.

  FORTY-THREE

  I wake up in my bed. The sun is blazing right into my eyes. I sit straight up and gasp, and look around. It’s just my dumb old bedroom, with my posters and my desk and my dog once again looking like she is going to burst if she doesn’t go out to pee.

  FORTY-FOUR

  At the very bottom of all those photos of my dad flying around and having fun are two more surprises waiting for my mother and me.

  The first surprise is a very tattered copy of a three-page brochure: Your Life as a Night Flyer Starts Today: Your 10 Most Pressing Questions Answered (Micro-Edition for the Less-than-Willing Reader).

  This is so funny that I just smile and smile, like an idiot.

  Something else I learned today: my dad wasn’t much of a reader, either.

  The second surprise is a golden feather. It’s just like my own feather, safe in the handbook under my bed. My mother gently picks it up from the bottom of Dad’s box.

  “You should have this,” she says, then puts it into my hand. She reaches around her head and undoes the clasp of her golden necklace, a gift to her from Dad.

  “You should have this, too,”
she adds, placing Dad’s feather on a little hook, then onto the necklace. I lift my hair and she does the golden necklace up around my neck.

  It feels good, this feather and chain. I smile and hug her and follow her into her room to watch her put Dad’s handbook away, back in her closet. We don’t say much after that, but things are different now.

  It’s an important day for us, the start of something new.

  Before I go out into the hot day my mom does one more thing: she takes my picture. I hold my feather and my dad’s feather, and she makes me sit (I actually hover a little) on the picnic table in the backyard.

  This photo is going into my handbook, for sure. It’s the start of a bunch of pictures I’m going to put in there, and I intend to fly, swoop, and float in every single one.

  After that, I go and sit in the park that Jez and I like. I sit in the heat and swing my feet in the dust. I wish I could talk to her, because the Spirit Flyer is right.

  I must choose.

  Jez is coming back from her family cottage in a few days. School starts in a few weeks. We’ll be in grade nine. The entire school hates me and thinks I’m a drug addict. Shelley Norman is going to bully me and will actively try to flatten me whenever she gets the chance.

  It’s also entirely possible that when school starts, Martin will tell everyone that I’m a monster freak who can fly around at night. But when I think about Martin, I feel a tiny bit better. He doesn’t hate me. I know that now. His mom might, but he doesn’t.

  My hand goes to my chest, and I fiddle with my dad’s golden feather. I swirl around on the swing a little.

  So things aren’t great on the school and town front.

  On the plus side, Jez will always be my friend no matter what. And my brother and sister and my mom love me. My dog has lots of good dog years left in her, too. Mrs. Forest will always be my Mentor, and Mr. McGillies, such as he is, seems able to Watch Faithfully.

  I lived through the Shade, and I have a Spirit Flyer who shows me the truth. And now I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my dad loved me, too.

  I will choose.

  I can stop flying for good. It might be easier that way. No Shade to worry about. Maybe I can convince people that I’m not a drug addict.

  Or I can be Gwendolyn Golden, Night Flyer, with my strange gift. And not let the lies bother me.

  I hold my dad’s feather on my mother’s chain, and look up into the late afternoon sky.

  I have one year to make my choice. It’s going to be interesting, and it won’t be that hard to decide.

  Copyright © Philippa Dowding, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Allister Thompson

  Design: Courtney Horner

  Printer: Webcom

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Dowding, Philippa, 1963-, author

  The strange gift of Gwendolyn Golden / by Philippa Dowding.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0735-1

  I. Title.

  PS8607.O9874S77 2014 jC813'.6 C2013-902957-5

  C2013-902958-3

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

  Visit us at: Dundurn.com

  Pinterest.com/dundurnpress

  @dundurnpress

  Facebook.com/dundurnpress

  Permission for use of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s poem, “Fragments from a Childhood,” was provided by the author’s family.