Winter Shadows Read Online Free Page A

dare that oaf call her Grandmother in Cree! And what was so funny?
    “I will,” Grandmother replied, “for I have many to share. “
    He grinned at her and, with a quick nod toward me, walked out
.
    “What will you share with him?” I asked
.
    Grandmother’s dusky crumpled face peered out from under her gathered bonnet. “Can I have no secrets? You will be late, nôsisim. Go to your teaching. It will help you be content away from this unhappy house.”
    I’d accepted the teaching position at Miss Cameron’s School for Girls a few days after returning home. Following the incident with the brooch and other unhappy events, I knew I could not stay in the house with Ivy every day. I now have a plan for the small wage I earn. I hope to save enough so that one day nôhkom and I can go to the settlement at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers and find a small house or a few rooms to live in. I’ve heard that teachers are needed more and more in the growing center. We must get away from here!
    Although she is up here all hours of the day, Grandmother knows what is happening below stairs. She also knows my shadows are back. But I say nothing. I keep my plans to myself. Aggathas Alexander is too old and frail to take her granddaughter’s worries into her weary heart
.
    “As long as I have you, nôhkom, I’m happy.” I kissed her soft cheek. “I wish I could stay and care for you all day. “
    “Do not worry about me. I can stand up to that skinny
mac- âya
below stairs.”
    “She
is
wicked. And with you feeling so much stronger, she’d better watch out!” We laughed, but we both knew she was no match for Ivy. I threw my pinafore on the bed, straightening everything quickly. “I’ll try and come home midday.”
    “No! No! I will use the chamber pot. I need only fire, food, and my memories. I will see you tonight.” She lowered her voice. “Little Dilly comes up and talks to me, and I can send her to fetch things. She is homesick and finds comfort with me. I get to talk in my own tongue, and I find comfort with her.”
    That made me feel a bit better. I’d have to keep that little secret from Ivy, though, or the poor child, Dilly, would suffer for it
.
    Before leaving for the Upper Canada school five months earlier, I had shown Papa and our daytime help, Mrs. MacRay, how to care for nôhkom. Papa was busy then as the main builder of stone houses for the entire Red River area and one of the leaders of our community. Why he suddenly up and married Ivy, the Widow Comper, a month after I left, is a mystery to me. Ivy brought to their union her late husband’s poor farm, a sour disposition, and a close-fisted, yet grasping hand. One of her first acts as mistress of the house was to release kind Mrs. MacRay from her duties
.
    Farmer Comper had been known as a grim, short-tempered man living with his Indian wife and two small sons in virtual isolation on his small farm. Five years after his country marriage took place, his young wife suddenly died. He had never been involved in our community and
,
clearly, no parish woman would marry him, so one day he up and left, returning two months later with a thin dark Scottish widow by the name of Ivy Kilgour. Not long after Farmer Comper’s death from a heart seizure, my father became Ivy’s third husband
.
    Soon after he and Ivy wed, Papa fell off a scaffold in the church, whilst hanging a wrought-iron chandelier. The doctor from the Lower Fort told him that his spine was damaged – perhaps permanently – and although Papa has hopes for a return to full health, his new and leaner financial situation forced my return home
.
    I was shocked to find nôhkom so weak, with running bedsores on her narrow back and thin shanks. I pressed her to tell me about Ivy’s treatment of her, but she refused to say anything
.
    I immediately called in our local healer, Mrs. McBride. Ivy had objected at first, but I told her that Papa would soon know about nôhkom’s condition. She’d