Wordlessly, she followed him into a room that smelled of wool.
“Uniforms, regalia, weaponry, and various forms of international currency are kept in here. Our agents learn how to handle every item in this room, as will you. Usually it’s busier in here, but most have retired for the evening.”
Dot caught a glimpse of steel in a glass cabinet. Moving closer, she noticed it was filled with knives of different lengths and widths. One blade had a wraparound handle made of steel knuckles. The sight of it scared her silly. While she was leaning in and scanning the various weapons, a man entered, armed with a measuring tape.
“Ah. There you are,” Gerald said to him. “Excellent timing.” He indicated an open book on the counter. “You’ll need to sign here, Petty Officer Wren. It’s for your uniform.”
Dot signed then held out her arms while the man used the tape measure on her, but she wobbled suddenly, beyond weary. The train had taken two days, the car ride over an hour, and every minute of it had been driven by adrenaline. Now, her mind spun with new and fascinating information. It was exhausting.
The man finished measuring, disappeared into the shelves and hangers, then returned with a bundle of clothing for her.
“I imagine you’re worn out,” Gerald said. “You will have quite a day tomorrow, when you’ll meet your five classmates, so we’ll head off to the barracks now. Those are the two large buildings located directly behind this one. You will eat, sleep, and share the buildings with everyone else living here at Camp X; however, everyone has a private room with a bed and dresser.”
Dot had never had her own room in her life. She could hardly imagine it.
They stepped into the chilly night, and Dot’s eye was caught by a tall, wooden structure to their right, about ninety feet high. At the top of it was a shaky-looking platform.
“Sir, what’s the tower over—”
The boom of a distant explosion cut her off, and Dot ducked, clutching her uniform against her like a shield. After a couple of frantic heartbeats, she rose cautiously and spotted a cloud of grey smoke rising from a nearby field. Gerald didn’t seem to have noticed either the explosion or her shock. He was still walking.
“Sir?”
He glanced back. “Ah. Mortar practice. You will hear quite a bit of that. You cannot easily see it at night, but there is a large physical training area out that way. Our agents also participate in underwater explosives training, which is quite interesting.”
She pointed to the tower they had just passed. “And what’s that, sir?”
“That’s the jump tower. It’s where agents learn how to parachute.”
She froze midstep and looked up, up, up to the platform, her lifelong fear of heights rolling in her stomach. At its peak, the platform was bare of any railings or gates, and she imagined the wind coming off Lake Ontario could get fierce. Even worse, this was apracticetower. “Learning to parachute” meant they planned to eventually jump from much higher.
Blinking up at the tower, Dot remembered another time she’d stood in this position. She and Dash had been eight, and they were playing in the yard on a beautiful summer day. As usual, Dash was fifteen feet over Dot’shead, nested in her favourite tree, entertaining herself by dropping rocks into a bucket. Dot had gotten caught up in the rhythms and patterns she heard. Watching and counting, she realized that it didn’t matter what size the rocks were, they all landed at the same time. Dash and Gus had teased her about finding puzzles in everything, but it had been interesting to her. Eventually, their father came outside, and Dot had run to him to ask about it.
“That’s to do with gravity,” he explained to the three children, “the planetary pull of the earth on all things. Gravity is the reason you fall down instead of up if you trip, and it’s the reason your sister shouldn’t climb so high in that tree.”
Dot was intrigued. “What about birds, Daddy? How do they fly if gravity is always pulling them down?”
“Good question. Birds stay aloft because of something called ‘lift.’ It has to do with the passage of air over the wings versus the air beneath the wings.”
“What about airplanes?” Dash wanted to know. “They don’t flap their wings.”
“No, they certainly do not.”
“And they’re very heavy.”
“Yes, they are, but their propellers help them move very quickly. Planes are something altogether different. They use something called ‘thrust.’ It works along with the specific angle of the wings to keep them in the air. Think of how your hand feels if you hold it outside of the car window while we’re driving. It feels easier or harder to go through the wind depending on what angle you’re holding it at.”
Now, as Dot peered at the ghostly profile of the parachuting platform, with its rickety, windy staircase and its open platform on top, she couldn’t help but think of gravity—and of her sister.
Looks like fun,Dash would have said.Watch me fly.
Dot’s throat constricted in her sister’s absence. How she missed that voice. That spirit. Dash would climb that awful thing without a second thought, and Dot would watch her, filled with both dread and wonder. Dash had been the one who always wanted to fly, not Dot.
twenty-eightDASH— March 1943 —Fort William, Ontario
The morning sun streamed through the window far too early, and Dash dug deeper into her blankets. She’d overdone it at the dance last night, and everything hurt.
Mrs. Simmons rapped on her door. “Miss Wilson,” she chirped. “There’s a message for you.”
