The Bone Flute Read online

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  Bone Flute

  Patricia Bow

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2004 Patricia Bow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Bow, Patricia, 1946-

  The bone flute / Patricia Bow.

  ISBN 1-55143-301-X

  I. Title.

  PS8553.O8987B65 2004 jC813’.54 C2004-903707-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004108678

  First Printed in the United States: 2004

  Summary: Camrose must find a way to claim an ancient bone flute and return it to its rightful owner.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Design and typesetting by Lynn O’Rourke

  Cover and interior illustrations by Vladyana Krykorka

  In Canada:

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  BOX 5626 STN.B

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  CUSTER, WA USA

  98240-0468

  08 07 06 05 04 • 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in Canada

  To Eric, James and Erin—my best of reasons.

  Table of Contents

  1 Home before dark

  2 The limping dog

  3 Word from the dead

  4 Terence Castle

  5 Moonlit shadows

  6 Music and silence

  7 Miranda

  8 The lost house

  9 The truth about Terence

  10 Hunted

  11 The tale of young Diarmid

  12 Invisible chocolate

  13 The busker

  14 The forbidden door

  15 Plain sight

  16 Inside the ghost house

  17 Flute music

  18 Rhianna’s story

  19 A choice of evils

  20 The spell battle

  21 The Wyrde

  22 The river of time

  1

  Home before dark

  Where Camrose stood, on a ledge halfway up a limestone cliff above the Ottawa River, the rocks had already been in shadow for hours. But the light had just lifted from the shoulders of the hills across the river in Quebec and from the white spire of the church on the far shore.

  It was sunset, 8:45 p.m., on Friday, July 26, Camrose’s twelfth birthday. Th e date and time were important, but she didn’t know that then.

  “Don’t take all day,” Mark said behind her.

  “I’m going! Don’t rush me.” She leaned out a little. Twenty feet below she could see the tops of two heads, one blond, one black: Krystal and Nadia, combing out each other’s long hair. Jump wrong from here and she’d land on the rocks beside them.

  “You can’t miss,” Mark said.

  “You go first.”

  “All right.” He stepped to the edge, swung out his arms and tipped off. No fuss and nothing fancy. She watched him fade to a ghost in the dark water, then rise again, grow solid and break the surface with a splash. He climbed out onto the rocky ridge thirty feet from shore, the limit of where the swimming was safe.

  “Don’t wait too long,” said a low voice behind her.

  “I said I … ”

  It took two seconds to sink in: Mark wasn’t behind her. He was down on the ridge. Camrose pivoted on one foot, but no one was there. On a ledge six feet deep by twelve feet wide there was nowhere to hide. She faced front again.

  “So, now I’m talking to myself.”

  “No.” The voice was dark and husky. “It’s begun. Night’s coming. Be ready.”

  She turned again, slowly. Nobody. Nobody at all.

  Stepping to the edge, she took a deep breath and dove. The water smacked her hands and then she was spearing deep. The cold bit into her skin. She kicked and rose, broke into air and sprayed water from her hair.

  Climbing onto the ridge beside Mark, she pulled at his arm.

  “Did anybody jump off the ledge after me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Had to be. There was someone standing behind me. Talking to me.”

  He turned carefully on his rock, which was just big enough for his feet, and peered back under his hand at the dark cliff against the bright sky. “Can’t see anybody.”

  There were only two ways off that ledge. One was to jump.

  The other was to pick your way down the steep path, watching out for loose stones. That took time.

  There was nobody on the beach but Nadia and Krystal.

  “Must’ve been somebody up on the street. Maybe in the Old Mill Mall,” Mark said. “Wind does funny things with sound.”

  Camrose relaxed. “That must be it.” Trust Mark to find a sensible answer. “But who would say creepy things like ‘Night’s coming. Be ready.’?”

  “Lots of strange people around, even in Lynx Landing.”

  Back on shore, Camrose needed less than twenty seconds to rub her hair into its usual tangle of dark red angles and elbows. Mark took about as long to dry off.

  They had to wait another ten minutes while Nadia and Krystal (who hadn’t seen anybody either) braided beads into a narrow lock above each other’s left ear. Nadia’s beads were gold; Krystal’s were blue.

  Up to a year ago, Nadia had been one of Camrose’s two best friends. Nadia Patel, Mark Shoemaker and Camrose Ferguson, they were always together. Then Krystal Spears moved to Lynx Landing.

  Lately, Nadia and Krystal had been trying to look and act as much like each other as possible. Mark said it was funny, seeing they weren’t a bit alike, Nadia so dark and rounded, Krystal so thin and pale.

  They climbed the cliff path and crossed Mill Street and Market Square. Krystal and Nadia were out in front, nudg–ing each other and giggling. “We’re playing Spot the Alien,” Krystal said over her shoulder. She pointed at Camrose. “Hey! There’s one!”

  Camrose laughed and pointed back, but it didn’t feel like fun. It felt more like being shoved into a corner.

  By the time they were walking along McKirdy Street beside the park, she’d made up her mind to tell them about Gilda’s parcel. She ignored the nagging voice in the back of her head that told her she was making a mistake.

  “This has been a pretty good birthday,” she said, off-hand. “Of course, it’s not over yet.”

  Nadia turned back and grabbed her arm. “And?”

  “There’s another present waiting for me at home. A package from Gilda.”

  “Gilda!” Nadia tossed her hair. “Your great-grandmother?”

  “Who else?” Camrose lowered her voice. “And she addressed it to me by name.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mark said. “Gilda’s dead.”

  “That’s right.” Camrose flicked her towel at a shop window.

  Nadia shook her arm. “But didn’t you say she died before you were born?”

  “A year exactly before I was born. The box came in the mail the day after she died.” There, that made an impression.

  “That’s unreal!” Krystal shuddered. “How could she know your name? She couldn’t even know you’d ever be alive!”

  “Simple,” Mark said. “She made a wish. And Cam’s parents named her for what was written o
n the package. Right?”

  “Of course!” Nadia laughed. “That explains it. It’s not like she could see the future, or anything like that.”

  Camrose shook her head. “Dad said no. He said they’d already decided on that name, if another daughter was to come along. But they never told Gilda. So how do you explain that?”

  “You don’t,” Krystal said. “Sounds fake to me.”

  “It’s the truth!” Camrose felt her face heating up.

  “Then maybe those other stories about Gilda are true too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, she was pretty strange,” Nadia cut in. “My mother said, if people’d had any sense back then, Gilda Ferguson would’ve been in the loony bin.”

  “That’s a lie! Gilda was the best mayor this town ever had.”

  “The weirdest mayor.” Krystal laughed. “Maybe it runs in the family! I mean, who’s the one who hears spooky whispers when nobody’s there?”

  She grabbed Nadia’s hand and they ran giggling across McKirdy Street to the corner of Grace, where they both lived.

  Camrose stood fuming on the sidewalk. “To think I wasted my birthday money paying their way into the movie this after–noon!”

  “You shouldn’t have mentioned that package. Krystal can smell boasting a mile away.”

  “I wasn’t boasting!”

  “No?” He was all seriousness, except for the smile in his brown eyes. “By the way, what was in it?”

  She took a few deep breaths to cool her hot cheeks. “The package? I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet. I was keeping it back to the end of the day. As a treat.”

  “Cam, you are kind of strange. Admit it.”

  She burst out laughing. “Come on, let’s go. I’m supposed to be home before dark.”

  “Bit late for that now.”

  “We’d better cut through the park.”

  It was a perfect evening for dawdling. Soft, grass-scented, with a sky the color of peach ice cream. Too bad she’d already broken the home-before-dark rule a few times too many. She trotted onto the mowed lawn of the park and past the baseball diamond.

  The game was over. Nobody left but a couple of boys throw–ing the ball back and forth in the fading afterglow, and a ragged woman leaning against the chain-link backstop. She turned her head and stared as Mark and Camrose walked by.

  A strange, sharp face it was. Her eyes shone small and bright through a curtain of hair. Camrose nudged Mark. “Don’t like the looks of her.”

  The trees in the west end of the park cut black scallops out of the bright sky. Camrose looked back. The ragged woman slouched along behind them, a dozen paces back, hands in pockets.

  “Hurry up!” She set off bounding over the tussocky ground.

  Mark came thumping behind her. The skyline bounced as she ran.

  When the first gleam flickered through the trees, she thought: Sunset. Then: No, that’s done. Then: Windows. Big windows full of yellow light. But there’s no house there.

  Then she was among the trees, following the cedar-chip path that was almost invisible in the dark under the layered leaves. Through the trunks ahead shone rectangles of light: window-shaped, red-gold and flickering.

  Camrose burst through the wall of trees into the hollow and stumbled to a halt. She flung up an arm to shield her eyes.

  A house stood there. A tall house made of stone. The lintels over the windows were carved with leaf shapes, and ivy grew up the walls between them. The wide front door was black and polished, with a brass plate fastened across the bottom and an S-shaped brass handle.

  And from step to chimneys it was a mass of flames, flames that should have roared but made no noise. A window on the second floor burst outward in a silent spray of glass. Flames licked up, soundless, and curled around the edge of the roof.

  “Cam! Wake up! What’s the matter?”

  Mark was bobbing in front of her. She grabbed at him to yank him back from the flames.

  “Watch out!” She tried to pull him around, but he was too heavy to shove. “Look out! The fire!”

  “Fire? What are you talking about?”

  “The house! It’s burning!”

  “Oh, I get it. This is one of your games, right?” He took a step back toward the house and stood there, grinning out at her through a sheet of flame.

  An outline of treetops formed behind him through the walls of the house. The fire in the windows turned pale yellow, then green, then blue, a watery shadow printed on the trees. And then the house, with its brass, its ivy and its fiery windows, melted into the night.

  2

  The limping dog

  When Camrose could see straight again she found herself sitting in the grass with Mark kneeling beside her.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I … I saw something.”

  “You were babbling about some house.”

  “There was a house on fire.” She rubbed her eyes. “Right there.” She pointed, though there wasn’t anything to see on the dark grass now except her light blue towel.

  “Is it there now?”

  “No.” She lurched to her feet and scooped up her towel.

  “So, this wasn’t a game?”

  “No!”

  “I suppose there could have been a house here once.” Mark led the way across the hollow into the woods again. The street-lights on Grant Street sent broken gleams through the trees. “I’ve never heard of one, though.”

  They walked in silence, Camrose frowning, Mark concen-trating on the uneven path under his feet, until the trees were behind them and Grant Street rose up the hill ahead. Camrose stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “All right. If I didn’t see a house burning back there, what did I see? Because I’m telling you, I saw something.”

  Mark sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “A reflection.”

  “A reflection! On what?”

  “Okay, um … I know. Fog.”

  “Fog?”

  “Sure.” He waved his hand in a loop. “There’s often a bit of fog at night. Maybe the light hit it just right, and you imag–ined the rest.”

  “There was no fog.”

  “And you never imagine things.”

  Camrose closed her mouth tight. She was on the verge of losing her temper, and it didn’t help that Mark didn’t even seem to notice. She stayed on the verge until they turned up Stone Road. By that time the burning house had faded in her mind. It no longer seemed real. She wondered if maybe he was right.

  “See you tomorrow.” With a wave of his towel, Mark headed along the sidewalk past the lilac hedge, then cut across the lawn to Number Sixteen. Shrieks rang out as he opened the front door to his house—his little brothers, Ben and Sweeney, fighting again—then the door shut, and silence fell.

  Camrose stood by the closed gate of Number Fourteen, trying to decide what to say to avoid getting yelled at. If only her father were home instead of Bronwyn.

  The night was so quiet you could hear the hum of traffic on King Street, two blocks east of the park. You could hear …

  Footsteps. On the sidewalk, slow and quiet. Somebody out for a stroll. Hard shoes: the clip–clip of stiff leather on concrete. And alongside, an irregular pattering: clickety–pause–click. Dog toenails. Sounded like it was on three legs.

  The footsteps stopped. Camrose looked around, up the street and down, but there was nothing to see.

  So? That was nothing special. Just somebody and his dog standing in the dappled darkness under a tree, where you couldn’t see them, that was all. No law against it.

  But what were they doing? Just standing there? Watching her?

  She backed away and pushed at the wooden gate. It stuck, as usual. She slammed it open with her hip, then wedged it shut behind her, turned and ran up the walk toward the front door. Laughter bubbled behind her, so soft it could almost have been the sound of her own quick breathing.

  The front door swung open. Bronwyn stood in the doorway.
The hall light made a halo of her rust-colored hair, darker than Camrose’s but just as thorny. “Where’ve you been? I was just about to come looking for you.”

  “It was still light when I started home.” Camrose squeezed past her into the hall and looked back. The street was empty.

  “Well, make sure you’re home before dark after this. There are too many strange characters out there.” She scowled out at the night, then shut the door and locked it. “And remember, I’m in charge.”

  Camrose trailed up the stairs. This was going to be the longest weekend on record. How was she going to figure out what happened to her in the hollow with her father a thousand kilometers away? Why did community college media arts teachers have to have conferences in Halifax anyway?

  She couldn’t even consider telling Bronwyn, who seemed to think it was her duty to cut a younger sister down to size as often and as short as possible. Camrose couldn’t wait till she left for university in the fall.

  Once in her room she closed the door. It clicked open again, as it always did. She closed it again and jiggled the handle until the latch caught. There was a keyhole but there’d never been a key, so far as she could remember. The whole house was like that. Dad said he liked old houses, but he never got around to fixing anything.

  It took less than two minutes to change from her damp bath–ing suit into her favorite pajamas, an old T-shirt and briefs. She picked up the parcel from her desk.

  “I hope you understand what it cost me not to peek, all these years,” her father said that morning at breakfast, just before he’d left for Ottawa International Airport.

  The outer brown paper wrapping was torn open at one end. Inside was a package also wrapped in brown paper, but still sealed. On the outer wrapping, in a black, upright, heavily pressed hand was written: “To Miss Camrose Jane Ferguson, c/o Mr. and Mrs. Ian Ferguson, 14 Stone Road, Lynx Landing, Ontario.”

  Camrose held the package by the corners as if it might bite. She inspected the postmark again. July 26, 1991. A year exactly between Gilda’s death and Camrose’s birth. That stretch of time was a black chasm, a void that nothing living could cross. Yet here in her hands was something that had crossed. Word from the dead.