The slamming door and the sudden draft of air startled Evelyne. The day had left her edgy. There was no street light to indicate she was outside the rink. There appeared to be a dim light at the end of what seemed to be a long corridor. She walked towards it.

Evelyne stumbled over an unseen step knocking her off her feet. Instead of falling, she began spinning slowly. She tried to regain her feet, her arms and feet reaching for the floor to stop the rotations. In the end, she resigned herself to the quiet floating. Images flashed before her. Hockey pictures of the Waldheim Warriors circled above her. Out of nowhere, Dave Schultz's rookie card, Waldheim's lone NHL star, started to swirl around her joined by his Stanley Cup championship team photo of the 1974-75 Philadelphia Flyers. Old snapshots of volunteers building Waldheim's first arena cycled through her sight. Creased photographs of children playing hockey on an outdoor rink, and young hockey players with crests indicating they played with the John Deere Jumpers team hovered around her. A vintage Bombardier snowmobile floated beside her, filled with hockey players catching a ride to the neighboring town to play a game. Next, the Waldheim railroad station drifted by, with horses and wagons waiting to unload the railcars.

The vision included an old sternwheeler paddling down a river with smokestacks puffing. For Evelyne, the previous images seemed to come from her home town, but this last scene baffled her. As she was watching the sternwheeler, without warning, it blew up in Evelyne's face. The explosive force sent her, her stick and hockey bag crashing through a doorway into streaming light. Dazed, Evelyne thought she was in a bad dream, waiting for the arrival of an evil interrogator, whose hidden identity would reside in the silhouette of the glaring light.

Her head and back aching from the impact with the door, Evelyne sat there, not knowing what to do. Uncertain of her whereabouts, uncertain if this was a dream or reality, fear rose inside her. Slowly her eyes adjusted to the brightness. She was sitting in a bright white room, with windows on every side and she was facing into a low winter sun silhouetting the window sills. "I need to work on my exit!" she muttered as she tried to lower her heart rate. She preferred departures where she was in control. "Running away only crossed my mind," she yelled into the empty white room. "If I was going to do it, it was going to be on my terms."

Evelyne did not wish to explore this arena exit any further. She had her fill with dancing photos and exploding sternwheelers. The corridor seemed more like the human cannon she had seen at the circus. The thought of snuggling in her bed at home now was top of mind, no more shortcuts.

Gradually her eyes adapted to the dazzling light. She slowly picked herself up. The room was encased in frost, emphasizing the whiteness of the scene. On the way home, she had hoped to see the frost on the elegant American elm trees illuminated by streetlights, not random frost in a cold room.

Evelyne hated dreams like this. Visions where she was not in control, made her fearful. She couldn't remember going to bed. Making her way to one of the windows, she realized she wasn't in Waldheim anymore. Through one set of windows, she saw a frozen river with steep banks and mountains in the distance. It reminded her of the family skiing vacation to British Columbia. In front of the room was a large ship's wooden steering wheel, its handles frozen in the clutches of winter. Through the back windows, she could see the red paddles of a sternwheeler. Opposite the riverside windows, she could see a large town. Evelyne slowly realized she was in the wheelhouse of a sternwheeler sitting on the riverbank in the middle of winter. How could she get from an old rink in the prairies to a boat in Who Knows Where? Through the front windows, she could see a group of boys playing hockey on the river ice.

Fear crept up inside her. Only her goalie training kept her from panicking. She had determined running away wasn't an option. If she had chosen to run away, she would have maintained some control over her destination. She was used to being isolated, but it was always in a familiar environment. There was nothing here she recognized. She longed to go back home. Mother might be waiting up for her, but likely both parents were asleep in bed. She hadn't brought her cellphone along to call for help. There was never any need as the Waldheim rink was only two blocks from home.

Evelyne surveyed the room. There was only one door. There was no broken glass, so she didn't come through a window. The only possible entrance to this strange world was through the lone door. Hoping to return to the Waldheim arena through the corridor of floating photos, she grabbed the knob and swung it open. A stairway extended to the lower levels of the boat. Not believing what was before her, she slammed the door shut. Surely the exit which brought her here was the exit for her return home. She reopened it, expecting the darkness of the corridor. Opening the door brought only the unwanted sunshine's reflection from the snow which thinly coated the boat, hills, river and town. She was trapped in a new world with no apparent option to return home.

Stunned and fearful, Evelyne knew her only course of action was to descend the staircase. The coldness of the wheelhouse was uninviting. On the top deck, an icy winter breeze stung her face. It took a few minutes to find the stairs to the lower passenger level and another minute to get down to the cargo floor. She walked through the front cargo doorway onto the bow of the sternwheeler and looked back. Behind her was a massive boat with a smokestack rising above the three levels. The word "Columbian" was written in dark black letters on the front of the wheelhouse. None of this was familiar.

As she jumped down to the ground from the bow of the boat, she noticed her clothes had transformed. It appeared she had dressed as an actor for some old-time movie. Had she changed and was now cast into the body of someone else? Would she recognize herself if she stood in front of a mirror? Would it be her or some well-dressed beast? Resting on her shoulders and extending to her ankles was a long brown wool coat. Her neck was protected from the wind by a high collar. She dropped her goal stick and her hockey bag. Raising her hands, she realized she was wearing brown woolen gloves. Evelyne's thoughts turned to Christmases past at her Grandmother's, where her package under the tree invariably contained Grandma's home-made knitted mittens. For some reason, she had to be reminded by her mother to say, "Thank you." A muttered "Thank you, Grandma" was the result. Checking her head, she pulled down a round hat that had decorative feathers protruding from everywhere. "Who would wear this chicken fight on their head?" she growled. Everything was a dull shade of brown, her least favorite color. Gone were her blue ski jacket, matching ski gloves, and her Winnipeg Jets toque. Boy, was she going to get it when she got home!

It would be tough to explain the loss of these expensive clothes to upset parents. "Well, Mom, on the way home from the rink, I stopped by the used clothing store and made a trade. They threw in this hat for free. What do you think?" The explanation wouldn't fly, but perhaps she would have time to come up with a better excuse. There was no quick and easy way out of her predicament. She decided not to inform her Mom of the hat. It was so hideous; she tossed it into the snowbank. Where was a toque when you needed one?

Hearing the children nearby, and hoping to get some information, she picked up her goalie stick and her hockey bag — additional changes. The goalie stick was more like a regular hockey stick than a goalie stick. Its blade was a bit wider than a forward's stick, but not much. The bottom of the handle was a bit broader on one side, but not both. It was heavy, made of solid wood. Her bag was no longer the state-of-the-art hockey bag with wheels, but a white flour bag. She didn't dare look inside. The changes must have happened in the corridor on the way to the sternwheeler. Perhaps the hockey players nearby could help her with some useful information.

Evelyne could see the group of boys playing hockey beyond the pier. Making friends wasn't her strong suit. Yet in a new world, she could not be without allies. Along the riverbank, a strip of river ice had been scraped clean for the game. Two metal posts driven into the ice marked the goals at each end of the rink.

"Hey guys, I'm lost," Evelyne called out to the boys. "What is the name of this town?"

The boys gathered to see the newcomer, standing at the edge of their rink. "How can you be lost?" one boy snorted. He had a wisp of black hair sticking out from under his blue toque. "You are at the edge of town beside the river. You can't be lost. The streets all go in straight lines. If you made this statement after wandering up to Bonanza Creek, I'd understand. But here you are at the edge of town. Nobody comes here in the middle of winter and pretends not to know where they are. At least not now. The gold rush is over."

Another boy chimed in, "It's like planning to go to San Francisco, and when you get there, asking what the name of the town is."

"What's the matter, did you get hit in the head?" mocked another.

"I did take a puck to the head," Evelyne said, trying to sound as flippant as they were.

"Oh, do you play hockey?" The boys leaned in.

"Yeah."

"My sister Rose plays hockey with the Dawsons," said the boy with the blue toque. "What position do you play? I play rover."

"What's a rover?" Evelyne asked. "To me, being a rover sounds like you are a defenseman who is always out of position. Does your name happen to be Hank?" When the conversation turned to hockey, her fear somehow subsided, and confidence returned.

The boy looked at Evelyne with surprise written all over his face, "How did you know my name? My real name is Henry, but my friends call me Hank."

"Well," Evelyne replied, "I knew a Hank in my hometown who was always out of position."

"But I don't play out of position," Hank protested. "I play rover, which means I go where I'm needed. I help the defense or the forwards."

"Sounds like the Hank I knew," Evelyne continued.

"Never mind," Hank muttered. "Most girls don't understand the finer points of hockey, no matter how hard you tried to explain it. Do you play hockey?" he asked Evelyne again.

"Yeah, I play goal," Evelyne replied.

The attention now swung to Evelyne's stick lying in the snowbank beside her feet. "Is this your stick?" a boy with dark flaming eyes asked.

"I don't know. I've had it for a while. What's your name?"

"Michael," exclaimed the boy with the dark eyes. "Look at this stick!" he said, picking it up and showing it to his friends. "It looks like a genuine Mi'kmaq Native hand-carved goalie stick to me. One piece of yellow birch, Wow! I think the only one around here with a stick like this is Albert Forrest."

"And Joe Boyle got it for Albert straight from Nova Scotia from the carver himself, not the Eaton's catalog," marveled a boy in a red shirt named William.

"I prefer to get my sticks from China," stated Evelyne unimpressed. "They are much lighter. I'll never get another one like this again. 'It's as heavy as guilt,' as my father would say."

"So, you think you can play goal. Put on your skates and prove it," Hank challenged. "You don't look strong enough to handle a good goalie stick like this. You are already complaining it is TOO HEAVY. It's the lightest goalie stick you can get. You look a wee bit too girlish ever to have played goal. We have a softie here, boys."

"You're on." Evelyne was not going to let a bunch of boys get the better of her. She never had and never would.