Gwendy is equally pleased with her own gifts, particularly a gorgeous leather-bound journal her mother found in a small shop in Bangor. She’s sitting on the living-room sofa, relishing the texture of the thick paper against her fingertips, when her father reaches out with a large red envelope in his hand.
“One more little present, Gwennie.”
“What’s this?” she asks, taking the envelope.
“A surprise,” Mrs. Peterson says, coming over and sitting on the arm of her husband’s recliner.
Gwendy opens the envelope and slides out a card. A glittery Christmas tree decorates the front of it. A little girl with pigtails stands at the foot of the tree, looking up with wonder in her eyes. Gwendy opens the card—and a small white feather spills out and flutters to the carpet at her feet.
“Is that—?” she starts to ask, eyes wide, and then she reads what her father has written inside the card…
…and she can no longer find the words to finish.
She looks up at her parents. They’re both sitting there with goofy grins on their faces. Happy tears are forming in her mother’s eyes.
Gwendy bends down and picks up the feather, stares at it with disbelief. “I just can’t…” She turns the feather over in her hand. “How did you… where did you find it?”
“I found it in the garage,” her father says proudly. “I was looking for a 3/8 inch screw in one of those cabinets you liked to play with so much when you were little, the ones with all the little drawers?”
Gwendy mutely nods her head.
“Slid out the last drawer in the last row, and there it was. I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“You must have hidden it there,” her mother says. “What? Almost thirty years ago.”
“I don’t remember,” Gwendy says. She looks up at her parents and this time she’s the one wearing the big goofy grin. “I can’t believe you found my magic feather…”
47
WHEN GWENDY IS TEN years old, her family spends a week in upstate New York visiting with one of Mr. Peterson’s first cousins. It’s July and the cousin (Gwendy can no longer remember his name nor the names of his wife or three children; as best as she can recall, they never saw them again except at the occasional wedding or funeral) has a summer home on a lake, so there’s plenty to do. Canoeing, swimming, fishing, jumping off tire swings, even water skiing. There’s also a small town nearby with a mini golf course and water slide for the tourists.
Gwendy looks forward to the trip all summer long. She starts saving her money as soon as the school year ends, stashing away the quarters she makes from helping her father clean the garage and dusting the house from top to bottom for her mother. By the time she packs her own suitcase and climbs into the back seat for the seven-hour drive, she’s managed to save almost fifteen dollars in loose change. Her plan is to hold onto most of the money until the final two days of the trip, and then splurge on herself. Candy, comics, ice cream, maybe even a pocket transistor radio with an earphone if she has enough left over.
But it doesn’t work out that way.
Within minutes of their arrival, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson disappear into the cabin for a “grand tour” and Gwendy finds herself standing by the car surrounded by a group of local kids, including the cousin’s three children, who are all spending the summer at the lake. The boys are shirtless and tan and look wild with their messy hair and sugar-spiked eyes. The girls are long-legged and aloof and mostly older.
Nervous and not knowing what else to say, Gwendy eventually unzips her suitcase and shows the kids her plastic marble bag filled with quarters. Most of them are indifferent, and a few even laugh at her. But one of the older boys doesn’t laugh; he seems interested, and maybe even impressed. He waits until the other kids all run off, whooping and hollering into the back yard, and then he approaches Gwendy.
“Hey, kid,” he says, looking around. “I got something you might be interested in.”
“What?” Gwendy asks, even more nervous now that she’s alone with a boy—a cute, older boy.
He reaches into the back pocket of his cut-off jean shorts and when his hand swims back into view, it’s holding something small and fluffy and white.
“A feather?” Gwendy asks, confused.
A look of disgust comes onto the older boy’s face. “Not just any old feather. It’s a magic feather.”
Gwendy feels her heart flutter. “Magic?”
“That’s right. It once belonged to an Indian chief who used to live around here. He was also a medicine man, a very powerful one.”
Gwendy swallows. “What does it do?”
“It does… magic stuff,” he says. “You know, like bringing you good luck and making you smarter. Stuff like that.”
“Can I hold it?” Gwendy asks almost breathlessly.
“Sure, but I’m getting kinda tired of taking care of it. I’ve had it for a few years now. You interested in taking it off my hands?”
“You want to give it to me?”
“Not give,” he says. “Sell.”
Gwendy doesn’t miss a beat. “How much?”
The boy lifts a dirty finger to his lips, thinking. “I guess ten dollars is a fair enough price.”
Gwendy’s shoulders sag a little. “I don’t know… that’s a lot of money.”
“Not for a magic feather it ain’t.” He starts to put the feather back in his pocket. “No biggie, I’ll just sell it to someone else.”
“Wait,” Gwendy blurts. “I didn’t say no.”
He looks down his nose at her. “You didn’t say yes either.”
Gwendy glances at the plastic bag filled with quarters and then looks at the feather again.
“Tell you what,” the boy says. “You’re new around here, so I’ll cut you a deal. How’s nine dollars sound?”
Gwendy feels as if she’s just won the grand prize at the spinning wheel booth at the Castle Rock Fourth of July carnival. “Deal,” she says at once, and starts counting out nine dollars in quarters.
48
DRIVING HOME LATER THAT Christmas night, Gwendy thinks about her father’s words from earlier: “We all poked fun at you about that feather, Gwen, but you didn’t care. You believed. That’s what mattered then, and that’s what matters now: you’ve always been a believer. That beautiful heart of yours has led you down some unexpected roads, but your faith—in yourself, in others, in the world around you—has always guided you. That’s what that magic feather of yours stands for.”
49
UNFORTUNATELY, EVEN AFTER THE surprise appearance of her long-lost magic feather, Gwendy’s good mood doesn’t last, and by nine o’clock, she’s slumped in front of the television, missing her husband terribly. A hollow ache has crept into her heart, and no amount of meditation or happy-sappy positive thinking can ease it. She stares at her cellphone, willing it to ring, but it remains silent on the sofa beside her.