Beyond the White Fence

Edith M. Humphrey

Part I Katie and the Princess-Nun

The Fawns

It began with the fawns. Beyond the white gate, far down in the valley, there they stood, still as statues. “Look!” exclaimed Katie, and pointed. Following Katie’s finger, her grandmother spotted them too.

“Oh, yes! There they are again.” Katie’s grandmother walked towards the white gate. “Maddie saw them when we were celebrating Canada Day, but everyone else was in the house at the time.”

Katie felt a bit jealous. Her cousin Madeleine was almost eleven, nearly a whole year older than she was, and lived near their grandparents in Pittsburgh, while her family had to travel all the way from Kansas to visit. Though Katie was glad to be American, she hated missing fireworks and treats like “beavertails” on July 1 with her grandparents, who’d been born in Canada. She also missed the fun of feeding the koi in the fishpond and swimming in her grandmother’s pool every week during the summer.

Katie moved slowly down the backyard walk towards the white gate.

Her grandmother followed. “Oh, my, Katherine, they’re so young they still have spots on them!”

“I wonder where their mother is. They shouldn’t be alone,” whispered Katie, tenderhearted as usual.

“Just a sec,” said her grandmother, moving back towards the house. “Maybe I can get their picture on my phone. Be right back.”

As her grandmother headed for the house, Katie gazed at the fawns beyond the fence and down the hill. A strange feeling of longing crept over her, hard! Who would think that two little animals could have such a pull? Like the smell of apple pie when you return home, or the sound of the waves when you’re driving to the ocean but can’t quite see it yet, those fawns drew her.

Katie knew she wasn’t allowed down the valley by herself. Gramgon (her little cousin James’s nickname for their grandmother, used by them all) had made that very clear each and every summer when she visited. Yet Katie’s feet, almost by themselves, walked towards the white gate that led to the treacherous path. She stopped and considered, taking a deep breath. Then she opened it.

Hoping she wouldn’t frighten away the fawns, she carefully stepped through. And, because she always liked things in good order, she closed the gate quietly behind her, without even thinking. Slowly, she put her foot on one of the big stones that were set in the slope of the wood-chip path, as a foothold for anyone who ventured down. . . . Then the next one. . . . Then she stepped across the weird third one that looked like the cement stem for a large birdbath, sunk sideways into the hill.

As she slowly descended, Katie couldn’t take her eyes off the fawns. They barely moved, except to continue eating something growing in the grass. How awesome! Her longing was almost unbearable, and made her chest feel tight. She didn’t want to just watch them, or take their picture like Gramgon. She didn’t even want to pet them, like she would a dog. No, Katie yearned to be with the fawns, to be friends with them, to be a part of their world. She took a deep breath and continued down the steep hill.

As she rounded a curve in the trail, her foot twisted, and she slipped. She landed hard on the ground, scraping her calf on a rock and brushing her bare leg against a patch of itchy-weed. “Ow!” she exclaimed, and then remembered the fawns. Had she startled them? No, they were still there. Her thigh was beginning to burn in a tingly way, and her calf hurt. Serves me right for coming down here without long pants.

As she started down the lower part of the path, things started to look strange. When she had shared her Cheerios with the fish at 6:30 that August morning, the sky was already brilliant blue and the sunlight bright enough to see clear down to the bottom of the backyard pond. Now there was a strange fog, and it was cooler. The mist made her cheek damp. And where had all this ivy come from? The fawns were still there, but they appeared hazy through the mist. And so did their mother, who was now standing by them . . . and several wild turkeys . . . and, wait . . . a peacock?

Katie felt her heart pound as the peacock slowly spread its plumage. In the mist it looked like one of those impressionist paintings that she would stare at for hours in her mom’s art history book. But then he closed up his feathers and walked in a stately fashion to a well-manicured high hedge in the middle of the clearing. Where had that hedge come from? Katie didn’t remember there being a hedge in the valley. As she looked more closely, she saw that this wall of shrubbery went about twenty feet, then turned at a right angle. The peacock followed the hedge, then disappeared through an opening.

My goodness, what has Gramgon been up to? She looked at the long, clipped wall of green, and the stately trees farther in the distance. No, she decided, this is definitely not Gramgon’s gardening style.

She glanced up the path to the white gate to see if her grandmother had returned. The gate was there, firmly closed. But behind it was a scene that gave her butterflies. Where she expected to see her grandparents’ house—a red-brick home that was rather old, over a hundred years old—in its place stood a different kind of building. What Katie saw now was positively ancient! It looked like a castle, slate grey, and somehow farther away than the house should be. The castle was partially hidden in hills and mist, but it was definitely not the house she’d left twenty minutes ago. She slowly turned in a circle to take it all in, careful not to fall on the uneven hillside, and glimpsed some purple bushes she had never seen in Gramgon’s backyard before. To her nostrils came a strong scent of sage. She found it hard to breathe, and her heart beat so hard she could hear it in her ears. Where am I? Where is Gramgon’s house? WHY ON EARTH did I close the gate?

The Meeting

As she tried to peer through the mist at the top of the hill, Katie wasn’t sure if she felt more like crying or being sick.

But even stronger than her panic was that continuing sensation of longing, of being drawn down the valley to the fawns. And now there was more beckoning her—the mother deer, the turkeys, the peacock, and the strange hedges. The aroma of the rich, damp soil beneath her feet was intoxicating, and mingled with the sweeter smell of wild roses and purple sage that dotted the hillside. She stopped and took a deep breath, delighting in the scent. Instead of dashing back up the hill to the gate (which might have been the sensible thing to do), she surprised even herself. Trying to put out of her mind the disappearance of Gramgon’s house (maybe even Gramgon herself!), she continued down the makeshift path to the clearing. The minute her foot hit the ground at the bottom, where the hill leveled out, she knew that she would have to “rise to the occasion,” as her papa put it. Things were no longer a little strange. All her good sense shrieked at her, “Stop! Go back!” But that voice of warning had no effect on her feet. For she had come out of the mist as she came into the valley, and she now realized there were other animals. A small brown bear lumbered around the outside of the hedges, a fox sniffed at the corner of the meadow, and three odd, stork-like birds were drinking at a brook.

How did a brook get into Gramgon’s valley?

She felt more awake than she had the whole summer. Without thinking twice, she walked towards the hedge, brown bear and all. She was no longer afraid. She had forgotten entirely about herself, and even the animals did not frighten her. They seemed mild—even tame.

As she approached, she realized that she was the one on display. Two small leopards came curiously towards her. When she stopped, they stopped. When she continued, they continued. At about ten feet away, she decided this was close enough. They seemed to agree, sat down on their haunches, and watched her. A bunny bounced up and settled by her right foot, gazing up expectantly and twitching its pink nose. I wonder, would it let me pet it? She put her hand forward . . .

A musical peal of laughter broke behind her back. Katie heard a voice exclaim something that sounded like “Hwat!” Was it German? As the voice rushed on, it sounded less foreign to her, and more like old-fashioned English. It was almost as though somebody were tuning in her ears, like they used to with old radios, to find the station: “That hare is begging a bit of cabbage from thee. Thou wilt not befriend these beasts by coming empty-handed!”

Unnerved by the “thees” and “thous,” Katie turned cautiously towards the voice. She found herself face-to-face with an attractive young woman whose rosy cheeks were set off by a sky-blue head-covering. Katie thought of Maria in The Sound of Music, though the lady was not dressed in clothing that resembled any kind of nun’s habit. Her shining golden dress, made of very fine material, was simple and elegant—and striking alongside her blue cloak. She carried a small, golden leather-bound book.

“Oh, Miss . . . er . . . Mrs. . . . Lady. . .” Katie was immediately shy. “I h-h-hope I am not scaring them?” If she had been born in an earlier age, she would have dropped a low curtsy. Instead, she continued, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cabbage and I left my Cheerios up there . . .” Her voice trailed off as she gestured helplessly up the hill towards where she and her grandmother had been feeding the fish.

The lady trilled another laugh at Katie’s confusion. “Child, I am plain Sister Edith, though I am, I suppose, a lady. My father was King Edgar. But here at the Abbey, I am merely another sister dedicated to God.”

King Edgar? A lady-nun with animals? Katie was confused, but intrigued.

“Yes,” said Sister Edith, “one of my vices is that I love animals too much. But they are gifts, some of them from lands far away, and they have been my best companions ever since I came to Wilton Abbey with my mother.”

“You’re a princess? But I didn’t know nuns could dress like that.”

“Yes, I suppose my raiment would be better at court. But pride may exist under the garb of wretchedness, and a mind may be as pure under these royal robes as under tattered rags. God looks at the heart!”

Katie’s mind was working furiously. The old-fashioned English, the formal clothing, and the lady’s story about the king all told her that somehow she had wandered many centuries into the past. What have I got myself into?

“Anyway,” Sister Edith continued, “the good Lord surely understands my love for beauty. After all, He made the beasts for Adam and Eve, and He clothes the lily of the field. . . .”

Katie understood perfectly. She couldn’t talk about beauty like that, but she agreed and smiled shyly. Despite the strangeness, she felt more at home here than she had felt anywhere.

As Katie smiled, Princess (or Sister) Edith interrupted her own stream of words with an embarrassed smile. “Goodness, my dear, there is just something in thine eyes that makes me want to confide in thee. Quite extraordinary! But enough about me. I beg thee, what are ‘Cheerios’? And where didst thou find those outlandish clothes?”

The Maze

Katie furrowed her brow and wondered which question she should answer first. The one about the Cheerios, or the one about her clothes? Of course, the nun had never seen a tie-dye T-shirt or cutoff jeans before. But how would Katie explain when she didn’t know where she was or how she’d come?

She decided to go with the first question. “Um . . . Cheerios are for breakfast. . . .” she paused. She remembered her dad telling her that rolled oats had been used for thousands of years. She took a stab at it: “Like porridge, but cold . . .”

“Cold porridge?” The nun wrinkled her nose and tucked a wayward piece of hair back behind her head covering. “That sounds distasteful! And on a spring morning like this? No wonder thou art so delicate.”

Katie was surprised to be called “delicate.” She was not tall for her age, but was strong enough. Perhaps it was her very blond hair, her pale skin, and the chattering of her teeth that gave the lady this impression.

“Well,” Katie ventured, “it’s warmer where I come from . . . up that hill . . . beyond the white fence . . . Um, and where I come from, this is what we wear in the summer.”

“I know thou’rt young, child. But ’tis not seemly to show knees and elbows even at thine age. Certainly not within the . . . .