May

by Kathryn Lasky

  It was the Elizabeth M. Prouty from Boston. A sure sign of summer. The rich people sent up their house staffs early to get their “cottages” ready. Their cottages were ten times larger than any house lived in by the year-round folk of Bar Harbor. But for some reason there was a time-honored insistence by these people to call them “cottages.” Despite elaborate gardens, gleaming yachts, upstairs maids, downstairs maids, and butlers, they considered coming to Mount Desert Island, Maine, an experiment in “rustic living.”

  Suddenly May felt a deep thrilling vibration course through her body. One space beside her seemed to fill with a radiant cool mist. A throbbing light only she could see emanated from the deck of the Elizabeth M. Prouty to engulf her. She opened her eyes wide and stared ahead. There was a flash of sunlit amber that sparkled in the dawn light.

  “It’s her!” May said. No one else was on deck except a willowy girl who appeared to float weightlessly as she leaned over the railing. Long tendrils of her hair had blown loose in the breeze and streamed across her face, slightly obscuring her features. Was this the face she had seen through the porthole of the Josiah B. Harwood? Had her kin come to Bar Harbor? May was so frightened, however, that this time she did not raise her hand as she had in front of the porthole. The reflection had waved back, but if this girl did would it mean that she was a mere illusion, another watery specter? And what if she didn’t wave back? What would that mean? May felt a tightening in her stomach and a ghost of a flutter in her feet just where her flukes formed when she was in the sea. Would it mean that she was the only one? That she would swim forever alone in this vast ocean?

  Maybe this girl on the Elizabeth M. Prouty was just a haughty rich visitor who called her mansion a “cottage.” May tried her best to prepare herself for disappointment. Then a truly dreadful thought came to her. Maybe she is rich and beautiful, more beautiful than I am and completely human. And Hugh would meet her at one of the fancy parties and fall in love with her and there would be no division between them because she was a land person and not mer.

  May walked back up to the lighthouse. When she entered she found Zeeba in the kitchen. She was up earlier than usual, clattering about. Indeed she was almost bustling, or as close to bustling as Hepzibah ever could get.

  “Well, I can see you’re all better!” This veered closer to being an accusation than a mere comment. “Oh, and by the way. You shouldn’t leave your school books out.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” May asked.

  “That oil done got knocked over and spilled on them.”

  “What oil?”

  “The oil the doctor gave you. It got knocked over.” She jerked her head toward the table where May often did her homework.

  “Zeeba!” May shrieked. “This isn’t a Schoolbook. It’s a library book!”

  “Library, school—what’s the difference?” She looked up at May, a wild glimmer in her eyes. May was aghast. It was Maury’s The Physical Geography of the Sea. She had planned to give it back to Hugh at the dance. What would he think of her now? The book’s lovely green cover had an ugly dark oily stain spread across it. She had remembered Hugh’s hand when he had given her the book with the bookmark. And now the bookmark was gone! A bookmark didn’t just move on its own.

  May picked up the book and pressed it to her chest as if it were an injured infant. Then she turned and walked right up to Zeeba. “You’re crazy!”

  “Don’t you go calling me crazy, girl!” she hissed.

  “'That oil done got knocked over!'” May mocked her words. “You knocked it over. That book was not on the table. It was on the shelf by my bed. The oil was by the bath. When you decide to pull a nasty trick like that, cover your tracks better.”

  Zeeba’s eyes began to roll back in her head. It was as if she were a snake coiling up ready to strike. But May wasn’t afraid. She knew she had won this round, and as if to confirm it, Gar had witnessed what had just transpired.

  “Zeeba, go to bed. Just take your damn tonics, your tablets, your powders, and go to bed.”

  It was as if the woman folded in on herself and shrank before their very eyes. She scuttled out of the room, clutching her jar of powders.

  20

  “WHO NAMES THE STARS?”

  “THERE YOU ARE!” Hugh Fitzsimmons greeted her as she entered the Odd Fellows Hall. May was wearing the same jacket and blue skirt as she had to the earlier dance, but she had her hair fixed differently. It was fetched up on top of her head with a comb that she had fashioned from a scallop shell she had found far out and very deep. It was flatter than most scallop shells, and the ribbed edges of its fan were deeply indented. She had used a file of her father’s to cut them a bit deeper, which made it a perfect comb. Although she had looked forward more than anything to seeing Hugh at this dance, her emotions were in a tangle.

  Her “experiment,” as she now thought of her attempt to resist going to sea, had failed, and none of her fears had subsided in the least. The summer folks were beginning to stream in, and although she had not seen the girl from the Elizabeth M. Prouty in town, she had seen other pretty summer visitors and all of them fully human!

  And on top of everything there was the oil-stained Maury book. How would she explain that? The damage wasn’t as bad as she had thought. Gar had shown her a very clever trick that had lessened the stain somewhat. He took several spoonfuls of flour and pressed it onto the cover. The flour absorbed the oil and this had diminished the stain appreciably, but there were traces of it still there, just as there might be traces of her secret life swirling about her being. Her own “stain,” the rash, had subsided completely, but were there other telltale signs that might betray her? Then she had another thought that was truly alarming. What if he was only drawn to her because of this oddity? He was a scientist, after all.

  What if she became an object of scientific investigation? A specimen! The last thing May wanted to be was Hugh Fitzsimmons’s experiment. She barely had time to organize her thoughts after his greeting when she felt a sharp tap on her shoulder. “You weren’t late this time and already dancing with someone, eh?”

  It was Rudd. Her heart sank. How could this be happening? Well, at least she had a response. “I’m not dancing with anyone. I just got here, as you said.”

  “Well, talking with someone.” He slid his eyes toward Hugh.

  “Talking isn’t dancing,” May protested softly. But Hugh stepped forward and thrust out his hand in a friendly manner.

  “Hello. Hugh Fitzsimmons.”

  “From away, I take it,” Rudd said.

  How rude!

  “Mr. Fitzsimmons is from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is an astronomer and has come here to make some astronomical observations.”

  “Come all this way for the stars?” Rudd asked, and snorted.

  “You can observe them from Boston and Cambridge. But you know what they call this region of Maine—the place where the earth meets the sky—for it is where the daylight first strikes our country. Mount Abenaki, just over there.” Hugh cocked his head in the direction of one of Maine’s tallest peaks.

  “I know where it is,” Rudd said bluntly. The message was clear. I don’t need someone from away to tell me what’s in my own backyard.

  “Of course there is a lot of fog, but when it’s clear, there is no place like it. Miss Plum and I met in the library.”

  “Oh, she likes all that book learnin’. She particularly likes meeting men in the library who can —”

  “Rudd! What are you saying?” May broke in.

  “Didn’t you tell me that Doctor Holmes done taught you some higher mathematics there?”

  “Yes, he was there. He came in after me that day and tried to explain some equations.” What did she have to explain to Rudd or to Hugh for that matter? She felt a fury rising in her. Her green eyes were bright as emeralds. And one might have seen tears. However, they did not look like liquid, but flecks of diamonds.

  Rudd seemed slightly unnerved. He thrust his hand int
o his pocket and drew out a quarter. “What do you say we flip for the first dance; fair enough?”

  May felt her hand curl into a fist. But there was something she noticed in Rudd’s eyes that disturbed her. It was as if there were a dead spot, a vacant space behind those dark eyes — a hollowness into which all feeling or connection to feelings would wither.

  Then Hugh spoke in a voice she would have never guessed him to possess. It was so different, with none of the buoyancy, the good-humored casualness that seemed to characterize his speech. “I don’t believe young women are objects for betting.”

  “Huh.” It was a dismissive, rude sound. “I guess you can say I’m just a gambling man.” May looked at Rudd’s face. It seemed wrong, strange, as if the person behind it had just left and simply didn’t live there anymore.

  “You gamble with things, sir, not human beings,” Hugh replied.

  May felt something seize up in her. She turned and rushed from the hall. The tears that had threatened for the last three minutes spilled, liquid and salty. They stung like no seawater she had swum in as they coursed down her face.

  She was out the door before either one could stop her but she was not sure where to go. Miss Lowe, she knew, had gone to her sister’s in Brunswick. Everyone else was at the dance. She was stuck. She could swim home, but that was hardly a solution. She had told her father that someone would sail her back—she was careful not to specify whom, for indeed she had been hoping that Hugh would be there and knew for certain Rudd would. And now she didn’t want either of them to take her. Those last words of Hugh’s rang in her ears. “You gamble with things, not human beings.” But if I am not human, am I a thing… just a thing?

  She felt a hot shame wash through her.

  “May! May!” She had been crying so hard she had not heard the footsteps behind her. “May, wait up!” It was Hugh. She couldn’t let him see her like this. “May, honestly!” he cried, and it was perhaps the note of exasperation in his voice that slowed her. She looked around. His hair was disheveled and he was panting.

  “Good lord, you’re in better condition than I am.” His face cracked into that wonderful smile. She felt something melt inside her. He put both his hands gently on her shoulders. Then his face turned serious. “That was very ugly back there, but none of this is your fault.”

  She looked down, afraid to meet his gaze. As he began to speak she caught the glimmer of something. Caught in the weave of her very plain shawl were perhaps half a dozen flattened little crystals that sparkled in the thick darkness of the night. My teardrops! They had stung fiercely when she had shed them, but they were no longer liquid. They were like the flattened ovals she had collected from the sea chest. And there were a few on the ground as well. She wiped her face. Panic welled up in her. He could not see this! He simply could not. How would she explain it? “May, let me take you home. It’s a beautiful night for a sail. The boat sails so well.”

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hand, not her shawl. “Yes, some say Phineas is a better boat-builder than his father.” They began to walk toward the wharf.

  “Phineas loves wood. You can tell it. I spent several hours over there before I left, watching him plane pieces for that big yacht they are building.”

  “Yes, it’s for the Merrillee—for some rich people from New York.” Her voice was taut, but she was trying hard to appear normal. She still had not looked up. They had fallen into step beside each other. Once again she had the sensation as she walked that she was slightly outside of her own body, moving along beside herself. But Hugh did not pick up on her anxiety. He was talking in an easy way. The ugliness from the hall began to recede.

  “Phineas has even made me this wonderful contraption so I can set my telescope in it and keep it steady. I was hoping to try it out tonight. It is very calm; the sea is fairly flat.”

  “There’s a cove on the back side of Egg Rock that never gets stirred up. It’s protected, you know.”

  “Would you show it to me, May?”

  May hesitated a moment and stared at her shoes. Then she raised her face and looked into the loveliness of his gray eyes. “If you like.”

  “I would like that very much.” He took her hand in his.

  A half hour later they glided into the protected cove and dropped anchor. “Let me just set things up. You’ll see how clever this is. That Phineas is really something.”

  For the next several minutes Hugh was absorbed in securing the mount and brackets for the telescope. This gave May the opportunity to check carefully to see if any of the crystallized teardrops were in evidence. She found one or two and quickly flicked them into the water. She noticed that they glimmered and cast minuscule little halos around them. Then they seemed to dissolve completely.

  “All right,” Hugh said as he pressed his eyes to the scope. “Let’s see what’s up there tonight.” May leaned her head back against the gunwales of the boat and looked straight up. The sash of the Milky Way unspooled like a broad pale ribbon through the night. Nonetheless she was aware of Hugh. He moved lightly in the boat. When she shifted her gaze away from the sky she noticed that his gestures were smooth and economical. There was an ineffable grace to his every move and the boat hardly rocked as he adjusted the telescope. It was odd because although Rudd was bigger, bulkier, she was infinitely more aware of Hugh’s physical presence. It did not intrude, but she felt wrapped in his grace in the same way she felt wrapped in the water when she first dove in.

  “I see Aldebaran, so the Pleiades must be already up, but I can’t quite see them yet. Of course, August is the best time to view them this far north.”

  “Why? I saw them the other night.”

  “You did?”

  “Just rising.” She suddenly realized she had said too much. “You know, from the watch room of the lighthouse.”

  “Even with the flashes from the light you could see them?”

  She had to think fast. “Well, I thought I saw them; perhaps I was mistaken.”

  “One easy way to find them is to first search out Aldebaran because it follows the Pleiades.” He paused while he adjusted the lens. “Yes, I’ve got Aldebaran, but there is a bit of cloud cover higher up, so I think we’ll not get a good view, but come take a look. I’ll show you Aldebaran. Have you ever seen it before?”

  “I probably have but didn’t know it.” May smiled.

  “All right, I know you have looked through a telescope, being a light keeper’s daughter. So you just twist that ring until it focuses properly for you. Now you can see Taurus—the bull that looks nothing like a bull to my mind.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “A stick figure leaning back on its knees and waving its arms around.”

  May laughed softly. “You’re right! Who names the stars?”

  “Everyone, or at least every culture seems to take a crack at it. Aldebaran means follower in Arabic, which is logical, seeing as it does follow the Pleiades, but some have called it the Driver and I can’t remember, but the Babylonians, I think, called it Fat Camel”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

  “Fat chance.”

  Hugh laughed at this. She wished she could have turned to see his face, but her eye was pressed against the eyepiece of the telescope. Then from the corner of her eye, or was it the lens, she caught a flitting silver shadow of something familiar—not a stick figure. It looked like the tail—her tail when she swam, glittering and sweeping through the night sky.

  “I just saw something for a split second but it’s gone now.”

  “A shooting star?” Hugh asked.

  “No. I mean it’s not gone. I think I just nudged the telescope accidentally and now I can’t see it.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  May stepped away and felt his hand steady her. They changed places. She readjusted the scallop comb in her hair. “That’s so pretty. What is it?” Hugh asked as she dug the comb just beneath the thick knot o
f hair.

  “Scallop shell, I think.” Once again she felt she had said too much and tried to shift the conversation back to astronomy. “What’s that constellation to the right of Aldebaran?”

  “Did you know,” Hugh said, and softly touched the scallop comb, “that the scallop shell was worn by pilgrims in Europe when they made their journeys to the shrine of Saint James in Spain?”

  What doesn’t Hugh know? May thought. His knowledge seemed infinite. While she was thinking this she felt him edge closer to her. She could feel his warm breath brush her cheek. She was no longer looking at Aldebaran but down at the floorboards of the boat, afraid to look up at the sky or even to slide her gaze to the side. Her heart raced. It seemed to her that it was an all too human heart that was beating in her chest.

  The palms of his hands gently stroked her cheeks, then cradled her head as he kissed her lips. The stars spun in the night. The world seemed to change in that instant. Nothing was where it should be or had been. The horizon might have swept up to the moon, and the moon might have changed color. With the first touch of their lips, the boundaries between their worlds dissolved. For May it was as if the stars rearranged themselves and the constellations scrambled into new geometries that defied their names.

  “The gifts of the night” was what Hugh called the stars, and they were nothing compared to the wealth of feelings that was growing between May and Hugh for each other.