Our storyteller, her brother, the son of the cottage owner, and his cousin were inseparable summer companions. They dedicated the bright December afternoon to sledding on a hill they had only heard about, somewhere above the highest cottage. As they set out, the only girl tore off ahead of them, calling back a promise to beat them all to the top of the destined hill.
She crossed a creek on a makeshift bridge, a thin wood panel. She cut through a stretch of woods, a cornfield, and a clearing. Then she stood before it. She waited at the bottom for a quick, admiring rest. Then up she ran.
She remembers getting to the top and simply staring. This hill was like a plateau, its summit high enough to be scary. She could see into the valley below. She could see to all the four quarters. The sun, the clouds, the other hills. It was intoxicating. All she had to do for a whole new look at the world was run to another side of the hilltop and gaze! The slopes fell below. Which would they be sledding first? When the boys arrived, she wanted to show them the best. From one side to the other she ran.
She got a jolt. The snow fell through under her. She felt icy water coursing over her ankles and sloshing between her toes. She must have stepped into a puddle hidden by the snow. She hurried to get over it.
Then she heard something she’d never heard before, a loud cracking sound muffled by snow. She foundered, knee deep. She kept going.
Next she was in up to her waist. The best course seemed to be to go forward. She’d learned to swim the summer before and wasn’t afraid to test her new skill. She went under, snow spilling down around her.
She came up, but the billows came in on her as she tried to swim. It was as much a barrier as the ice at her chest. The ground under her was rising, though. Soon her upper body rested against a bank, but she stalled trying to climb out. Rubber boots slid on sloping, underwater rocks. The snow on the bank choked andchilled her as she tried to grip it. And that full-body snowsuit, logged with stinging water, doubled her weight. She struggled until she was exhausted. Ice daggers went into her legs.
She called out, but, ringed with snowbanks, her cries went nowhere. The boys could have been ten feet away and not seen or heard her. Were they still coming? The sky above her was desperately bright.
Her trunk under water, her head on her arm, she collapsed and sobbed. Soon her legs didn’t hurt. But she couldn’t lift her head! Her cheek had frozen to her sleeve. Where were the boys? They’d played other jokes before. She was so tired she could sleep forever. Then something happened.
She heard a sound she described as “rushing horses,” increasing in volume as if coming toward her. Then she heard light, stray human voices like children on a playground fading in strangely. None of this made sense at the top of a snowy hill. She turned her head as much as she could and rolled her eyes.
She saw small children running toward her, moving over and across the hilltop in huge, half-flying strides. A boy jumped over her in a bound as big as he was small, landed in the water behind her, and started trying to push her up. He smiled as if her danger were play.
Another child took her by the hood, and other boys and girls tugged at her arms. Not even wearing winter clothes, they were as cheery as the first bold boy. They seemed at the start no stronger than they looked, but something pulled so hard and well that the mortal girl went airborne, soaring over the top of the bank and landing several feet from the water’s edge, as safely and softly as if the others had leaped or flown along with her. She was suddenly, completely alone again in the sunlight, astonished enough to forget the cold.
Her companions soon arrived. They loaded her soaked and shivering on a sled and took her back to the cottage. After a long process of thawing her out, their host commenced an interview session that went over the simple facts again and again. At the end he shook his head.
There were three ponds on the broad top of that hill. They’d been drained a bit so the spring thaw wouldn’t cause them to flood the field below, but they were death traps. Climbing out should have been impossible for a snowsuited seven-year-old. “The boys and girls got me out,” was all the girl could say.
When she was sent to bed, her Irish-born father took over. He turned to the boys and asked carefully about these other children.
“There was no one else up there,” his son said. “She was already out of the water.”
THE SECOND NATION
Storyteller Leo Cooper grew up on the Allegany Reservation near Salamanca and Allegany State Park. In his boyhood, his little sister used to talk about playmates no one else could see. On a day that seemed like a dream to Cooper, he was close to seeing them himself. His sister stood before him and announced that she was going off with her friends to play in the woods. She was halfway down the walk, arms out exactly as if hand in hand with small, invisible presences. Their mother looked from the house, rushed out, and took her youngest child inside.
The Little People Zone
A house that had been a funeral home once stood on Paine Street in East Aurora. A family that lived next
