Louise Nettleton Nightdancer

Nightdancer

chapter one

My Mum died eight months ago and my good memories of her have vanished. Maybe, now her flat is sold and I’ve moved up North with Grandpa, her paintings will bring my memories back.

‘The carousel,’ I say, when Grandpa asks me which painting I want on my new bedroom wall. ‘The one she did when she was 13.’

‘Pffft.’ Grandpa looks me straight in the eyes. ‘Sure you don’t want a more grown-up one? One of the award winners? Your Mum …’ His voice becomes watery. ‘Your Mum was a respected artist.’

‘The carousel did win a prize,’ I say. ‘Mum told me. Second place in the Kirkmerriment country fair, and that was the adult section.’

Grandpa chuckles and patters off to the box room. Picking up a pencil from all the stationery that is still scattered over my desk, I try to draw something, but can’t make the right shapes and, as always, end up scribbling on the notepad in frustration. Tense – that’s the word to describe my feelings about it, all tangled and cross. I huff. The memory part of my brain is like video storage where all the good stuff has been deleted. It’s only rubbish like that left.

I toss the notepad aside just in time to help Grandpa carry the canvas through the door. It’s bigger that I expect, and more rectangular.

‘Here … we … are.’ Grandpa guides it through the door, and we lay it on the bed.

The painting is covered in a dust sheet and several layers of bubblewrap. My heart flutters like it’s housing butterflies. Mum told me stories about the fairground in this painting when I was really young.

Grandpa pulls back the dust sheet and peels away the first sheet of bubble-wrap. Normally, I’d pop it, but today I toss it aside, layer upon layer, until …

‘That’s not it.’ I try to mask the disappointment. It’s not how Mum described it. ‘This must be the wrong one.’

‘It’s the only one with a carousel, pet. Painted when Emmy was 13.’

‘It’s wrong.’ I sniff. ‘Maybe she was 14, or 15 or …’

Grandpa shakes his head. His silver hair looks wispier than usual, and since Mum died the light that normally twinkles in his grey eyes has become more of a dull shine. ‘I remember like it was yesterday. Emmy painted it when she was 13. She’d loved sketching fairground rides for years, but this was the only time she painted one on canvas.’ He smiles. I want to run my fingers over the creases in his face, and smooth them like clay back into a happy expression.

I glare at the famed canvas. It’s obviously the wrong painting.

The colour is wrong for starters. Mum’s fairground was colourful and shiny in her stories, but this canvas is black. Thick layers of dark paint cast parts of the painting into shadow. What is left is all overcast by horrible greyish clouds.

The shadow begins in the centre of the painting. I’d say it’s in the background but it’s not only the background at all. It spreads from the middle of the painting over most of the background and into the murky grey sky. At first, I thought someone had chucked black paint all over the canvas, but it’s not as simple as that. The shadow is built up of coiling, twisty brushstrokes. Even though it’s not real, it’s as if the painting casts a shadow over the room and I certainly feel gloomier looking at it.

The carousel – which looks nothing like a carousel — is on the left-hand side. It’s the right shape but the vibes it gives me are all wrong. It isn’t red and gold and shiny like I expected. It is grey and gloomy and cold-looking. Not even the rise and fall of a carousel horse, a feeling that normally makes me the happiest person in the world, could cheer me up now.

My throat chokes up as I think of horses and I swallow. That’s the worst part of all about the painting.

There’s only one horse. That’s the reason I know for absolutely certain that this is a different painting. Mum didn’t only describe the horses when she told her stories, she told me their names. I can recite them – Meadowsweet and Gallant Knight, Seafoam and Lily-Lee, Nougat and Wild Child … there are 28 of them in total and I know exactly where they stand on the carousel.

The horse that is there isn’t ready to ride. It doesn’t look ready for anything. Its front legs are raised, hooves out, and its neck is twisted sideways. If it were a real horse, I’d say it was struggling.

Nothing is right about the horrible painting. I shiver. ‘It’s not the right one. It’s not right at all.’ Like lots of other autistic people, I struggle to keep my emotions from my voice. I’d rather accept that non-autistic people will always see my reactions as that bit more than their own.

Grandpa steps closer to me. ‘Not the most cheering of pictures, is it?

‘In Mum’s fairground stories, the sky was blue, and the carousel roof shone gold, and the horses … well, there was a horse with flowers in its mane, and one the pale turquoise of seafoam and …’ I try to hide the wobble but it’s pointless. ‘There’s another one. Another version. Mum told me stories about it.’

Grandpa shakes his head. ‘No. Your Mum painted this a long time ago, and your Uncle Luke … they had a little squabble and he painted his version over it. Perhaps,’ he says quietly, turning towards the window. ‘Perhaps Emmy told the stories the way she’d wanted the fairground to be.’

That’s not true. It can’t be true – can it? The bit about Uncle Luke sounds true. He always thinks he knows better than me, even if I’m talking about things that happened when he was miles away. One time, I told everybody how my teacher said I was a shining example in maths, and he cut in saying ‘Hmmmm, yes? Better than all the other children, hey?’ The adults in the room raised their eyebrows and nobody was happy or pleased.

Birds sing from the hedgerow outside. That’s one thing I like about my new home. The sky rings with birdsong. Back in London, the main birds I saw were chubby pigeons waddling around outside chip shops and supermarkets.

The birdsong here could almost come from Mum’s stories.

‘Why didn’t she tell me? She never said that Uncle Luke spoiled it.’

Grandpa rests a hand on my shoulder.

‘Sometimes grown-ups like to change things. Remember them differently.’

That makes no sense to me. Either something is or it isn’t. Why would Mum lie? It’s like a stab to the chest to realise that I’ll never be able to ask her. Since Mum died, I’ve lost so much. It’s not only Mum herself who’s gone. It’s all her stories and memories and jokes and gestures.

‘Tell you what,’ Grandpa says, ‘why don’t I take you to the gallery? We might have something you’d like more in stock.’ Grandpa owns a little gallery in a town called Cairnmouth. It’s been in the family since forever and Grandpa is really proud of it.

‘No thanks,’ I say. His face creases slightly but he smiles.

I’m not ready to lose the fairground, not the fairground that Mum told me about. I’ve got to pretend for now that I’ve given up on the idea of a second painting. That feels uncomfortable to me because I’m hopeless at pretending. Instead of agreeing that Grandpa must be right, I say something true.

‘It’s still special,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘It’s still our painting. Mine and Mum’s.’

Grandpa lifts the canvas, and together we hold it against the wall. Grandpa knocks two or three silver picture hooks into place, and then we hang the painting.

‘There now.’ He stands back.

We stare for a long time, but I find it difficult to say anything as I lose myself in the horrible, dark brush marks.

Grandpa tucks me in at bedtime.

‘Hot chocolate!’ He sets two mugs down on the bedside table and I reach for mine. Its creamy smell and frothy layers of milk are impossible to resist. ‘Do you know?’ Grandpa says. ‘That painting of yours, it’s reminded me of something. There’s a story around here … did Emmy ever tell you about storm fairs?

I frown. It’s difficult to do when the hot chocolate warms me to the core. ‘A storm fair? What’s a storm fair?’

‘Well, storm fairs are a local myth, a saying really about the weather. It’s a thing people grow up with here in Kirkmerriment and maybe two or three other villages nearby.’

I slurp my drink, clinging on to his every word.

‘There’s a saying that when a storm casts the village into darkness, into total darkness mind, enough to conceal the church tower, well then a storm fair comes.’

‘Huh?’ This is confusing. ‘What’s the church got to do with funfairs?’

Grandpa scratches his silvery hair and sips from his mug.

‘It almost certainly comes from the past. Way back when, the church was at the centre of everyone’s lives. Well maybe it comes from the idea that devils appear when people are blind to the church. Like a metaphor.’

‘But a funfair?’ I sit up so fast that the remaining drink hits the sides of the mug and spills over. ‘Carousels have nothing to do with devils and hell and stuff. What’s all that churchy stuff got to do with funfairs?’ It makes no sense. Funfairs aren’t religious places at all. Funfairs are places where you can be exactly who you are.

Grandpa chuckles. ‘Right. But stories move on over time, pet. People add bits, and take them away, and eventually they look nothing like they did at the beginning. As for the fair, it’s likely that people thought them immoral when they first pitched up on the village green. Immoral means …’

‘Wrong. Sinful. Yeah.’ I say it too loud – at least, Uncle Luke would say it is too loud. ‘So what does a storm fair look like?’ I slurp the last bits of my hot chocolate, snuggle under the duvet and gaze at him.

‘Well … nobody exactly knows. But I like your Uncle Luke’s interpretation. He was a child, of course, but he imagined the fair to be gothic, didn’t he? A creepy fair. A dark … shadowy fair.’

I wait. Grandpa is trying hard, but Mum was better at stories.

‘As a little boy, though, I thought of storm fairs as a place where the rides were powered by thunder and lightning. Where everything was a bit faster, a bit more daring. All of it took place in the dark.’

‘Hmm … I like your story best.’

Grandpa smiles.

‘So, if these fairs are out there when storms turn the village dark, am I allowed to visit them?’

‘Now that I can answer: no.’ Grandpa tucks the duvet around me. ‘Lightning storms are very dangerous, and out here in the countryside, there are fewer targets for the lightning to hit. People can get into trouble very quickly. I’ll teach you what to do in a storm over the next few weeks, but you mustn’t worry about that tonight. It’s very rare that people are hit by lightning.’ He smiles. ‘Sweet dreams, Ava.’

‘Night, Grandpa.’

After Grandpa turns out the light and closes the door on his way out, I switch on my table lamp and twist it around until the beam shines on the painting. The carousel horse’s snarl is fiercer in the dark and the lamplight brings out the shadowy figure prowling in the gloom.

Nightmarish images invade my thoughts, and when I finally sleep, my dreams are of shadows and lightning-struck fairs and snarling, angry horses.

Cynthia J. Notti

Cynthia J. Notti’s family has lived in Alaska since the early 1700’s so it’s no wonder she uses her family history as the back-drop for her books.

The Winter of Courage is based on her grandmother who lived in Nome, Alaska during the influenza pandemic as a child. Living in Alaska you have a unique opportunity to be up close and personal with wildlife. And like her character Molly, Cynthia has come face to face with a muskox. She has also been stalked by a grizzly bear, who thankfully wasn’t hungry and just wanted to say hi.

She loves the outdoors and is an avid fisherwoman, pilot and ice hockey player. Much of her writing takes place with a large bag of M&Ms at her cabin along Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska. There she is visited by the occasional bear, moose and porcupines.

cnotti@hotmail.com / @CynthiaNotti

About The Winter of Courage

The winter of 1918 was supposed to be the happiest time for Twelveyear-old Molly. The steamship SS Victoria was the last boat to arrive in Nome, Alaska before the Bering Sea froze over. It was bringing Molly’s sister home after a four-year absence. What the town of Nome, Alaska didn’t know was the steamship would also deliver one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. When the influenza pandemic swept through Alaska, Molly’s world is turned upside down. With her mother & sister ill, her father away and presumed lost at sea, Molly must find the courage to survive on her own.