The Peculiars by Maureen Doyle McQuerry Read Free Book Online Page A

quickened Lena’s steps.
    Once Knoster had hopes of becoming the major port city in the West. Trade boats arrived from across the sea. Whalers set forth on the spumy waves, and a fishing fleet flourished. Miss Brett’s father once owned a large fishing boat with a crew of twenty. But it had proved difficult to transport the necessary supplies for a town into Knoster. Train tunnels had not yet been excavated through the basalt cliffs, forcing the price of goods higher. And then there had always been the rumors.
    As the coastal town mushroomed, news of its superior harbor drew investors despite the high cost of supplies. But then animals began to disappear: a merchant’s horse, the dairy farmer’s best milk cow, neighbors’ dogs. Then a handful of the new citizens of Knoster gave credence to rumors about the wild lands to the north. Old stories of Peculiars resurfaced, and with the rumors fear blew in like a persistent wind. People saw Peculiars in every misfortune. The final blow came when the Whittlestone Mining Company withdrew its plans for a base of operations in Knoster. The new and still fragile economy collapsed. Houses were sold cheap, farms abandoned. Only the hardiest people remained, along with a few eccentrics who found that the isolation of Knoster suited them.
    Now only a small fleet of fishing boats and whalers remained, and every year their numbers grew smaller. The weather and tides were too capricious to allow them to compete with those from more southerly ports.
    The town had a faded glamour. The opera house, still the largest building in town and the only one made out of brick,had once offered performances by the likes of Ida Fincher, the Western Star. It was now reduced to a glorified grange, advertising town hall meetings and displaying a tattered poster for a salon steam carousel known as the Pleasure Dome. On the poster, men, women, and children rode on painted wooden ponies or pigs while others glided in gold-leaf gondolas circling a carousel organ. Lena stared at the poster for a long time. She had always dreamed of riding a carousel pony.
    Like the poster, everything in Knoster had grown tattered with time. Nothing could stand up against the relentless salt wind. That wind was stirring now. Lena watched the fog swirl in tendrils across the sky. The dampness made her hair curl, and beads of moisture clung like tears to her lashes. Her anticipation quickened with her pace. She had never been to a beach before. As she wound her way down the hill, the train station appeared suddenly on her left, and she heard more distinctly the slap of water and the roar of waves. Dark pilings pierced the fog, and she set them as guideposts to the harbor. Suddenly, the sidewalk ended and stone crunched beneath her feet.
    As a child, Lena had pored over pictures of tropical beaches in faraway lands, beaches where sand lay smooth and warm as a blanket. Those were not the beaches of Knob Knoster. She sifted crushed rock, bits of shell, and glass through her fingers. Everything around her was muted in shades of gray—water, sky, and land. She breathed in the distinctive smell of fish and tar. Waves licked the stony shore of the harbor and crashedagainst the riprap of a jetty. And Lena found that she was listening, as if the wild call of the ocean was familiar. It filled her with strange longings for adventure, longings Nana Crane would say no civilized girl should ever have. Her heart beat faster. Lena tried not to listen, afraid the ocean might call her name.
    She was not sure how long she stood in the harbor listening, and not listening. It was long enough that the sun began to fight its way through the remnants of fog. And with the sun, the wind whipped in, salty and sharp. And the landscape emerged. Lena was surprised to see she wasn’t alone on the harbor beach. A wizened man with a pipe in his mouth stood looking out to sea not more than a few yards away. Not wanting to disturb him, Lena averted her eyes and