FAR, FAR ACROSS THE ATLANTIC an island rises green from the sea. It is Barra Head, the southernmost of the islands known as the Outer Hebrides. It is girded by rough gray rocks from a time before time when two huge continents were one. Gradually an ocean formed and though it was only water, like the sharp edge of an anvil, the Atlantic chiseled the continents apart. They drifted their separate ways, at first just by inches but then by miles. The only evidence of their former union were the rocks embedded with similar fossils from their shared time as one continent. But sometimes these rocks were broken in two and were never to be matched to make a whole, like a jigsaw puzzle left half done. Small islands trailed in the wakes of both continents. Barra Head was one of these islands, washed by the calmer waters of a strait called the Little Minch, which separated the Outer Hebrides from the large Isle of Skye, just off the Scottish coast.
Round the tip of the island was a cave, the home of a mer woman. She was regarded as a hermit by the few inhabitants of the island—half a dozen crofting families who raised barley, potatoes, oats, and turnips and kept flocks of sheep. The folk of the island did not know that Avalonia, or Ava as she was known, was mer. To them she appeared not young, nor really old, but extremely beautiful, her deep auburn hair run through with threads of silver. Despite her beauty, men did not bother her. They seemed to sense a peculiar strength in her that perhaps they found threatening, but mostly they thought of her as different.
No one knew that she led a divided life, a secret life as a creature who swam far out into the sea, whose legs dissolved into a great and powerful tail every time she dove into the water. Her closest companions were seals. They sometimes swam to her cave, and when she went abroad they sought her company as a swimming companion, for she was gentle with their pups, and very playful. So it did not surprise her to look up and find a seal mother and young pup swimming toward her cave.
The seals clambered up on the small beach. They loved to come right into her cave. They would peer about in wonder at the wreaths she had made from seashells and the foggy blue-and-green sea glass that she collected. On one ledge there were a half dozen combs that she had made from deep-sea scallop shells. She used them to hold her hair back while she swam or when she piled it into a great bun atop her head when she dressed to go to the village.
The seals’ very favorite objects of all in the cave were a tin whistle and a clàrsach, a small Scottish harp. They loved to hear Ava play. It was not at all like when she spoke a book. It was very different. But this seal and her pup had not come to hear her sing, or to look at the odd curiosities of her land life, or even to eat the smelts that she had so thoughtfully put out for them on the edge of a rock. They had come to tell her a story.
18
THE CEMETERY
TWO DAYS AFTER HER TERRIBLE NIGHTMARE, May returned to Bar Harbor to pick up some medicine for Zeeba. She had just turned the corner from the doctor’s office when she heard someone call from across the street. “May!”
It was Hugh waving and smiling at her. He had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. There was no avoiding him nor did she want to. But she was still embarrassed about her reaction when he had asked if she wanted to wade. She must have seemed like a complete idiot. She was afraid to look him in the eye as he crossed the street. He put out his hand to shake hers. Would her skin feel odd to him?
“I’ve spent almost the whole day in the library. I thought I’d stretch my legs a bit. Would you care to join me on a walk?”
May felt her heart speed up. Was he just trying to be polite? She fiddled with the bag of medicine as she wracked her brain for something to say.
“You seem somewhat preoccupied,” he said.
She jerked her head up quickly. “Oh, no … I’m not preoccupied at all. Yes, I’ll walk with you.”
“Is there a place we can sit and talk? It’s such a nice day.”
“The cemetery,” she said quickly.
“The cemetery?” He gave her a curious look.
Had she said the wrong thing? She would try to gather her wits for what sailors called a mid-course correction. “The cemetery is really lovely on a day like this. You feel as if you can see all the way to Ireland.”
He tipped his head to one side and looked at her, as if he wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. Then he smiled. “Why don’t you show me?”
As they walked through the stubby stone pillars marking the entrance to the cemetery, their hands brushed against each other. May instantly pulled away and cursed herself. How had she been so careless to let her arms swing about so freely? She should have worn gloves like the fancy summer women and girls who never wanted the sun to touch their white skin. She glanced over at Hugh, scanning his face for any signs of confusion or revulsion. But he hadn’t seemed to notice anything strange.
They walked up to the top of the hill. The gravestones, thin and dark, bent into the wind like fragile old folks. The grass whispered softly as if in a private conversation with the bones that lay beneath their roots—a conspiracy between the living and the dead. May stopped briefly in front of a headstone and looked at it. Funny, she had never noticed it before.
“Polly Bunker,” Hugh said. “Someone you knew?” Then he chuckled. “How stupid of me. She died in 1873, long before you were born.”
“She was a friend of my father’s,” May said, and then added, “I wish I had known her.” A shiver traveled up her spine, and she shrugged her shoulders as if to rid herself of such thoughts.
May and Hugh found a bench and sat down facing the sea. They could see the combers rolling in and breaking on ledges a quarter mile out.
“I see what you mean. It feels like a straight shot to Ireland, doesn’t it?”
Hugh draped an arm over the back of the bench. It grazed her shoulders, but she did not flinch. He began to hum a tune.
“What’s that you’re humming?”
Hugh started to sing in a soft but deep voice as he looked straight out to the horizon, where long purple clouds gathered like schooling whales.
“By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae,
On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”
May was moved by his voice. The rhythms resonated deep within her, like the lilting cadences of the sea that wrapped around her as she swam.
“That’s beautiful. It’s an Irish song?” May asked.
“Actually no. It’s a Scottish one. I’m not sure if I know any Irish ballads. My family is Scots—but you’re close.”
May looked at him. Sitting on the bench, humming a ballad, he didn’t look like a Harvard man at all. As she watched him stare out at the sea, she began to wonder whether his world was really all that different from hers. Or, she thought, am I just grasping at straws?
“I like it—Scottish or Irish.” She paused. “You have a nice singing voice, too,” she said, blushing slightly.
“Did you think an astronomer wouldn’t be able to carry a tune?” He smiled. “I also scramble eggs very well.” He scratched his chin and looked up at the sky. “And I can do a few card tricks. Let’s see what else. I can dance! But I doubt much dancing goes on up here.”
“Wrong,” May blurted. “There’s the apple blossom dance.” She hesitated but then said, “You could come if you like.”
His gray eyes widened as if he were surprised by the invitation. “Perhaps, yes. It depends, of course, on how my work is going.”
“Yes, of course,” May repeated.
Then he turned to her quickly. “Tell me, May, do you know as much about quadrilles as you do about currents?”
May was mortified. It seemed like a jest—perhaps a flirtatious jest—but there could be more to this question. She was immediately defensive. “I am sure you know from all your studies much more about currents than I do from merely reading a single book. So yes, I do know more about quadrilles.” She tried to inject a f
lirtatious note, but it seemed impossible. She was not a very good actress.
Hugh smiled. “Well, when is it?”
“End of the third week in June.” There was a thread of hope in her voice.
“But apple blossom time is over by then.”
“Not up here on the coast. We’re late bloomers.”
He laughed hard at this. “Then I’ll certainly try to come. It would be a shame not to see you ‘late bloomers’ in your finery.” He reached into his canvas bag and produced the Maury book. “Here,” he said, handing it to May. “I thought you might like it back.” His hand brushed against hers and she shivered. “I marked an interesting passage in chapter four.”
But almost as soon as they had parted ways, May began to worry. Would Hugh really come to the dance? It seemed like almost too much to hope for. By the time she got home with Zeeba’s medicine, she was convinced that the last hour had been a dream. She kept trying to picture his smile but it seemed to melt away like ice in sunshine. She tried to recall the timbre of his voice as he sang, but that, too, was as elusive as the last wisps of fog on a brightening morning. And by the time she walked through the door it was as if it had never happened.
“Where the devil have you been? I been waiting here all afternoon for my medicine!”
It never was, it never will be, May thought to herself.
SUMMER 1899
19
THE SHAPE BESIDE ME
MAY HAD A LITTLE MORE THAN A WEEK before the dance. She had almost ceaselessly reviewed all the reasons why Hugh would not come, beginning with normal girls would never suggest a walk in a cemetery and ending with her overreaction to his suggestion of wading. Why had she not simply said that she was just getting over a cold and didn’t want to wade? That, of course, would be hindsight. But foresight wasn’t much better. She imagined him coming to the dance and falling for a lively, flirtatious girl like Lottie Beal. Lottie was irresistible. Dimpled, blond curls, and by no means dumb! But she did not spend hours on end in the library reading science books, either. And she was human—wholly, totally human.
It was hard for May to believe that for the brief time she and Hugh had sat together on the cemetery bench, she had felt so at peace. But she had swum more and farther in these last two weeks since he had gone. Had the sea laid a deeper claim on her? One that could not be missed? Should she resist the sea between now and the dance? Might Hugh, like Rudd, look at her suspiciously? She thought of that horrible moment when Rudd had watched her as she picked up the math papers and said in that flat voice, “Guess she’ll have to go swimming for the rest.” She could never imagine Hugh speaking as Rudd had, but would Hugh sense something odd about her and begin to withdraw?
She could tolerate Rudd’s suspicions, but not Hugh’s. Would he think she was a freak if he knew of her secret life? Had her skin felt abnormal when their hands had brushed against each other? She knew she had recoiled at that moment, but had he?
The questions haunted her, and soon she found herself caught in a maze of conflicting emotions that were laced through with a mortifying guilt.
Maybe, she thought, she really should try not going into the sea between now and the dance. It would be hard, but at least she should try.
So for two nights she resisted going to “the visible ocean.” And every single hour of every single day and night she was caught in an endless cycle of yearning and self-recrimination, of denial and longing. On the third night of not swimming, she noticed that she had begun to itch fiercely. But every time she considered giving in, she imagined herself at the dance—dancing with Hugh. She saw no other dancers on the floor—just herself and Hugh, swirling about. She would wear her hair down with a green ribbon that matched her eyes woven through it.
Before she knew it she had a fever.
When she walked into the kitchen her father looked up at her in alarm.
“May, de-ah. Good gracious, you look like you’re burning up.”
“I don’t feel very well, Pa.” She began to sway. He ran to her and caught her just before she sank to the floor.
“You’re hot as a brick in a kiln and look at your skin—it’s got some awful red rash.”
At that moment Zeeba appeared. “What’s happening here? What’s wrong with May?”
“She’s sick, Zeeba. She’s got a high fever. And look — her hands are all red.”
“Well, get her away from me. I can’t afford to catch anything. That’s just how my grandmother died. She was down with her weak heart and some influenza broke loose in town and, well, her heart couldn’t fight the fever. Hopeless. Completely hopeless.”
“I’m taking her right into the doctor is what I’m doing.”
Although the weather was warm May was shivering so hard her teeth were chattering. Her father wrapped her in two blankets and half carried, half dragged her down to the skiff. By the time they reached Bar Harbor, May was delirious. The one thing she was vaguely aware of were those twin spaces on either side of her. The two voids were pressing hotly against her.
When she regained consciousness, she was in Dr. Holmes’s office. The doctor, her father, and Dr. Holmes’s wife were peering over her.
“May! May? Can you hear us?”
“Yes, yes … What happened to me?”
“Well, May.” A wan smile crossed the doctor’s face like a fleeting shadow. “Thank heavens your fever has broken.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Three hours, just about,” Mrs. Holmes said.
“You seem much better,” Dr. Holmes said. “Your fever is down, but your rash still looks fairly severe. I think you need to bathe with mineral oil. I’ll give you a good supply. You need to put a cupful in with your bathwater. Then put on a lotion that I’ll give you at least three times a day. I’m not sure what caused this. It’s not contagious.”
“Zeeba will be relieved about that,” Gar muttered.
“Well, May can certainly stay here tonight with my wife and me. We could keep an eye on her.”
May knew exactly what caused this illness and the last thing she needed was mineral oils or lotions or Dr. Holmes and his wife keeping an eye on her. She had to get back to the sea as quickly as possible. Her experiment had failed, had almost killed her. How stupid! May thought. Stupid of me. I went against my own nature. That’s what is sick!
“That’s kind of you, Doctor Holmes, but I think I’d feel better if I were at home in my own bed.”
“That’s perfectly understandable, dear,” Mrs. Holmes said. “But you just follow Doctor Holmes’s advice with the baths and the lotion.”
“You brought her back?” Zeeba shrieked as Gar and May walked through the door.
“She’s better, and she’s not contagious.”
“Just like that she’s better!” Zeeba snapped her fingers in the air. “Well, I’ll be! That girl’s strong as a horse. I told you. One minute burning up with a fever, next fit as a fiddle. May, better start supper. I’ll cut the potatoes. You fry up the bacon.”
“Stop right there, Zeeba,” Gar said, in a low, firm voice.
“What are you telling me to stop for?”
“She ain’t going to be cooking no supper. She’s going to take a bath with this here oil that doctor gave her and then she’s going to put on some lotion he gave her.”
“He gave her medicine? Prescription medicine?” There was a trace of disbelief in her voice, as if Zeeba could not understand that someone aside from herself was worthy of a prescription.
“He did indeed.”
“Must have cost.” She turned and walked toward the stove, grumbling.
May took the bath as Dr. Holmes had told her to. And, as she knew, it had no effect on the rash whatsoever. She just had to wait until her parents had gone to sleep, then she would slip out of the house and down to the water. It was a perfect night for swimming. Moonless, hardly a breeze. No one would see her.
Finally May heard her father climb the steps of the tower to wind the clockworks
for the last time and check the kerosene. She would give him twenty minutes after he came down and then go.
As soon as she dove into the surf she felt the last of the fever leave her body. The terrible itching stopped. She was back, back in her own skin! And as she swam straight out to sea those two voids on either side of her that had pressed like hot irons began to assume a somewhat familiar shape. She was not sure why she felt they were familiar, but she sensed a companionable intimacy about them, and they seemed to acquire a new vitality and immediacy.
The farther she swam, the more May was aware that something was coming closer. Not to swim, to resist the sea, was unthinkable—indeed, shameful. Once May had marveled that there were so many shades of gray, but now she was perplexed by the myriad shades of shame. She was caught between her own mortification of her not-quite-human life and the even deeper shame in denying it.
She felt that she had literally swum back into her own skin; she could not swim far enough. She was amazed by her own speed. There was an eagle flying overhead when she finally turned to swim back to Egg Rock. Gar had told her once that eagles were among the fastest long-distance fliers of any birds. May was pressed to get home quickly as the day was about to break. She passed the eagle easily and was ahead of him by several lengths the rest of the way back to Egg Rock.
The next morning, fully recovered, May went down to the beach and stood on the very edge of the sloping rock, peering straight out to sea—southeast, the route she had taken the night before. She had not realized how powerfully she could swim until that night. And to think she had started off sick and feverish! She felt a certain sense of pride. Had she let that tide take her, it would have swept her to the southern tip of Nova Scotia—Cape Sable Island. This was the outer limit of the Bay of Maine. Beyond it was the open ocean. She wondered how far and how long she could have swum. Could she have gone across the Atlantic?
She closed her eyes tight for a moment and imagined the large chart that hung in the lighthouse. Cape Sable resembled the large clawed foot of a bird, three talons hanging off into the Bay of Maine. If one swam a bit north and due east one would reach Ireland, then a bit farther north one would come to Scotland. There was a sprinkling of islands off the western coast of Scotland. It seemed like a cozier place than Ireland, with all those islands and the countless inlets and coves. It seemed like Maine, actually. Islands were more inviting. And, of course, on an island one was never far from the sea whereas on a continent … She did not finish the thought but opened her eyes as she heard the chuffing of a steamer coming through the Egg Rock passage.
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