The Hidden World

Chapter 2

Maeve gazed listlessly out the window, lost in thought.

There was nothing outside but clouds, a dense, impenetrable, cottony layer of grey far below her through which nothing at all could be seen. It was like being a little girl again, looking out an upside-down mirror-window at a topsy-turvy sky. But these clouds really were beneath her. All around her the other passengers sat and read or dozed while the drone of the jetliner's engines reverberated through the cabin. She craned her neck, trying to see out the window ahead of hers, glimpse a gap somewhere in the cloud layer. There was none.

Maeve slumped against the windowpane. She had not wanted to take this trip, especially not alone. "I just want you to see my side of the family," Dad had said, almost pleading. She could see his face now: the greying hair all along his temples, the lines around his anxious green eyes. "We see a lot of your mom's people in Toronto, but never the Newfoundland relatives."

There had been a time, once, when the two of them spoke openly and easily about anything; when she ran to him with broken toys to be mended, problems to be solved. Now they both seemed to be struggling for words like strangers.

"Sure, Dad," she had replied, trying to make her voice sound normal to reassure him. She couldn't bear the haggard look on his face. Mom too looked worried and miserable, when she was not putting on the dreadful forced cheerfulness that fooled no one. Maeve knew enough about acting to be able to tell when other people were doing it.

They really must be serious about this Newfoundland move if they had spent all that money on airfare for her. They must be sending her there to give her a feel for the place, she thought, see how she would adjust to living there. She did not want to move; but neither could she summon any really strong regrets at the thought of leaving Ontario. After all, it would be a fresh start. It isn't as though I'd be leaving any friends behind, she thought ruefully.

The pilot announced that they were now over St. John's, Newfoundland, and would soon be arriving at the airport, but still she could see nothing below her. The plane banked, began to descend. They were among the clouds, and the dull greyness enveloped the plane. She could sense the steep descent, yet still the greyness persisted, opaque and seemingly bottomless. Was it cloud or fog through which they now flew? It was impossible to tell.

At last the clouds began to wisp away and she could see. Maeve stared incredulously at the view below. Her impression was one of utter barrenness—an endless expanse of igneous rock, scored and gashed by long-gone glaciers. Some of the scars had become long, narrow lakes reflecting the grey of the sky. A few stretches of dark green coniferous forest mottled the landscape. She saw no houses, no neat and orderly farmers' fields. It might have been the surface of an alien planet.

Her father used to refer to Newfoundland affectionately as "the Rock." It had never occurred to her to take the term literally.

Soon the stony land was falling away in cliffs, rugged and sheer. The plane was wheeling out over a sea like grey leather, dully gleaming and minutely wrinkled with waves. There were flecks of white in it—ships, perhaps? The sea drew nearer, the rolling waves had more depth to them: the surface now looked like a sheet of corrugated grey metal. And the white things... no, surely it couldn't be.

She gaped in disbelief at the cold, pale shapes adrift on the steel-grey waves. Icebergs. Real icebergs—in July.

The plane banked again, approached the cliffs, and there, suddenly, was the harbour, opening out of ramparts of rock. On the northern headland, she glimpsed a hill topped by a grey stone building with a square tower. And beyond, penned within the sheltering hills, were wharves with ships alongside, and above them, a sprawling city, countless rows of roofs and steeples rising in tiers from the harbour. St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland.