Vincent
In her own time and in the time in which she is thrown back, Abigail has a nemesis who is a young boy. The 20th century version is named Vincent and the imagery used to describe him is telling in that both he and the version in the past are a bit more sophisticated and complicated than either at first seem:
Vincent was a bundle of bones with a puzzling smell, as though he’d wet himself six weeks earlier and not bothered to bathe. He was as sharp as a knife and had his parents sized up to the last millimeter. Abigail did not see that his face was wretched as well as cunning, and she was sincerely flattered that he hated her more than he hated everyone else.
Sydney Harbor in the Age of Sailing
Australia could only have come into being as the result of the shipping industry. As an island far off the beaten path, she has been a country dependent upon trade. The sight of the centerpiece of this industry is made vivid through imagery:
It was late in the afternoon. The ships’ masts, bare as trees after a brushfire, stood up in the Harbour, very straight, like a thousand spillikins, criss-crossed and twigged with spars and lesser gear. The westering sun sized upon bright specks of metal on these masts and made them burn like stars.
The Prophecy
Abigail’s arrival through the time is viewed by those in the past as fulfillment of a prophecy about the coming of an expected stranger. The prophecy has to do with the family Gift and the family gift has to do with the old country: Scotland and all the various Scottish myths and legends. At this point, the imagery almost becomes as dense and excruciatingly overfamiliar as a fantasy novel, but don’t worry; it passes quickly enough:
“Orkney is a queer old place, where dwarfies and painted men, Picts you might call them, lived long ago, and built great forts and rings of stone where a shepherd might wander and ne’er be seen again. And there are trolls, and spells to be said against them, and the children of the sea who dance on the sands of St. John’s Eve…and it was Granny’s seventh grandmother, Osla, who was elf-taken while she was watching the sheep and came back from Elfland with a wean about to be born.”
Beatie Bow
Beatie Bow is also a time traveler, but not exactly in the same way as Abigail. Beatie is there watching the modern kids play the scary game bearing her name, but hidden and furtive in her voyeuristic enjoyment. Hidden from most, but not Abigail who finally confronts the strange figure who always seems to be lurking in the shadows:
She was about eleven, Abigail thought, but stunted, with a monkey face and wide-apart eyes that added to the monkey look. She wore a long, washed-out print dress, a pinafore of brown cotton, and over both of them a shawl cross over her chest and tied behind. Her feet were bare, and Abigail was surprised to see that the skin was peeling from them in big flakes.
