Maire's Story

PART ONE

C H A P T E R  O N E

The airplane was high overhead, but it produced enough of a droning sound to make Maire Fallon look up. She searched for the craft, but it was impossible to see through a tangle of branches inside the lilac grove behind the old Magic Maple house. So she carefully made her way along a path leading out of the snow-laden thicket and into a space near the timeworn, sunken dairy beside the house.

The view was only slightly better there, since a pair of ancient birches towered above the dairy. At that point, most children with an interest in aircraft would have kept going, around the side of the house to the front yard. There, an unobstructed vista could be had of the blue sky that soared over the Quebec hamlet of Guilfoyle.

But Maire Fallon wasn't your average eight-year-old. And one tiny bit of proof could be seen when she was free of the lilacs. All progress then stopped, until every bit of snow that had the misfortune of falling from a branch onto her jacket was methodically removed. That done, she bent down and did the same thing to her boots. Of course, keeping footwear snow-free during a typical winter day at Magic Maple farm was like keeping weeds out of a garden: it simply wasn't possible. Even Maire grudgingly admitted that as she finally resumed walking to the front yard.

The plane was already well off to the north when she arrived, so the thing to do was gain a better perspective by climbing a snow bank surrounding the house's open court-style driveway. And that's just what Maire did, standing on top and gazing off at the jet trail piercing the azure above the pearly-white north field. A few moments later the trail led above the hulking, forested mass of Conway's Mountain, then disappeared.

Maire sighed and, for the briefest of seconds, wished the familiar monolith wasn't there. Who knows where the jet was headed...somewhere exotic and mysterious, like the strange places her geography class had learned about? She was already devouring books about such lands; Robinson Crusoe and Arabian Nights were her favourites so far.

Then the moment was gone and Maire felt a warm gladness for the mountain's presence. Hadn't Timothy Adam told her how special it and the rest of Guilfoyle were? Since her parents moved back from Montreal almost three years before, the hamlet had become a part of her like no other place they'd lived. There were so many things about it to love, like the cold, rushing (and, currently, ice-covered) waters of the Jacques Cartier River, or the glorious view from Maher Road when it reached a high point along the side of Neville Mountain.

Then there were all the people and events. Maire had already taken part in one of Guilfoyle's famous St. Patrick's Day concerts and, in just a week, would be participating in another. Timothy had been in one many years ago and had a bit of an adventure. It was something of a childhood catastrophe, but the way Timothy told the story it sounded exciting and Maire was almost sorry her first trip through the spotlight was uneventful.

Another fun happening, which ranked second only to the concert on Guilfoyle's social calendar, was the summer Field Day. Maire and Nessa Fitzpatrick teamed up to place a very respectable second, just behind Marie Kilanin and Myona Connolly, in the girls' three-legged dash. "But the way Marie talks about it, you'd think she'd just won a million dollars instead of a dumb race," scoffed Nessa, who would certainly never admit to being a less-than-gracious bridesmaid.

Maire shrugged at the memory. Nessa was a good friend, but she didn't like to lose.

Only a dissipating jet-trail was left of the plane's flight over Guilfoyle, so Maire carefully stepped down from the snow bank and walked over to the henhouse. It was the first of four farm buildings owned by Timothy's grandparents, who also happened to be Maire's godparents. But they didn't own the old Magic Maple house; their son Ted and his wife Theresa took it over years before, when the new Magic Maple house (as Guilfoyle folks soon came to call it) was completed close to Kiley Way.