May

by Kathryn Lasky

  The currents no longer seemed so elusive to her. She felt them in her blood, in her bone. They were connections to her deepest and most visceral memories—a physical tie to her past. She closed her eyes and thought about the map in the library, focusing on the area around Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank. She felt the rush of a current pass over her and suddenly everything snapped into place. It could never be Georges Bank—not with the way the current turned. It was Nantucket Shoals, of course. Had to be! It was as if she had always known this, swam this in her mind. She could even feel those currents pulsing through her now. She knew the currents in a way that Maury did not despite all his experiments of setting out drift buoys and his reading of thousands of pages of ships’ logs. She knew that nothing Hugh could bring back from his trip to Boston and Newport would add to her ability to determine the location of the main part of the wreckage of the HMS Resolute. His information might give her a history of the ship and its captain, but she knew that she could find her way to the wreck. She just did not want to go alone. She had been waiting for Hannah. They should go together.

  But how was she to find her? The eye of the storm was approaching. She could tell. It was somewhere between Simon’s Ledge and Egg Rock. She was curious. She had heard of the calm at the eye of the storm. She dove deep and swam a short distance underwater. She could detect from the currents flowing over the flukes of her tail that she was closing in on the eye. She swam toward the surface and broke through into a pool of water as still as a pond on a windless summer day. There was such peace, an unimaginable peace. A sense of fulfillment, of—of—Her mind searched for the word. Of connection. It was in that moment she saw her.

  “Hannah!” she cried out, and lifted her tail in the thin sliver of moonlight revealed by the eye of the storm. “Hannah! I am here. May! I am May—your sister!”

  30

  MY SISTER, MYSELF

  AS THEY SWAM TOWARD EACH OTHER, the green light of their eyes seemed to meld together. It was as if they were drawing nearer and nearer to the very source of their lives, and their sisterhood. They did not rush but moved through the water with a deliberate slowness as if to savor every second, each basking in the overwhelming realization that at last there was someone like her; rejoicing in the knowledge that they were no longer alone in the world. There were four words that streamed through both their minds like a song—I am not alone! — as they met up in the very center of the storm’s eye and embraced each other for long minutes. Then May, cupping her mouth to Hannah’s ear, said over the roar of the wind, “Follow me!” And the two girls together swam out of the eye of the hurricane.

  Diving deeply to avoid the tumult of the storm-torn world above, May and Hannah swam side by side toward Simon’s Ledge. At last one of the voids that had haunted May, that empty shape beside her, was truly filled. She felt an inexpressible happiness, a sense of near completion. Thoughts flowed between them without the need for actual words. Never had she felt so deeply understood. Often May and Hannah would glance at each other and smile joyfully in their bond. Their breathing synchronized, and they only had to surface two times for air. On their third rise they had arrived at Simon’s Ledge.

  “For me it began here, near these ledges,” May said as the girls swam around the roots of Simon’s Ledge. She suddenly started to laugh. “Do you realize we are talking underwater?”

  Hannah blinked. “We are, aren’t we!” The two girls reveled in this sudden realization. And May was aware that although she no longer experienced that almost crushing loneliness, there was still that tender place somewhere within her, that bruise she felt if she pressed on it, if she thought about Hugh. Did Hannah have such a bruise?

  “I think I’ve sort of talked this way before but it was only with seals and dolphins and it wasn’t exactly words.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. All the time we were swimming out here I felt as if we were in some sort of wordless conversation, but now the words are clear.”

  May dove down a bit deeper and came up right under Hannah and looked her in the face. “Do you realize, Hannah, that until now I felt I was completely alone in the world, a freak—a freak of nature, a terrible mistake of some sort—but now—now —”

  “We aren’t freaks. We’re sisters!”

  Sisters! Such a simple word and yet it seemed almost magical in its power—its power to banish the desolation that had lurked at the very center of their existences.

  They were swimming side by side, and occasionally the flukes of their tails would brush up against each other.

  “But what do you mean when you say it began here?” Hannah asked, turning to May.

  May almost realized as soon as she said it that this was not quite accurate. It had begun long before Simon’s Ledge. When they had climbed up on the ledge, she slipped the chain with the locket over her head. “I have to show you something.” She unlocked the little hinge and opened the locket, cupping it in her hand to protect it from the wind. “See that?” she whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a bit of my hair—my baby hair.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “I found it. Found it in a blanket in the sea chest—the sea chest from the HMS Resolute.” She briefly told the story of the ship.

  “So this—I am almost positive—is where Gar found me, floating in that sea chest from the Resolute, right here near Simon’s Ledge.”

  “Who’s Gar?” Hannah asked.

  “My father … well, my foster father.”

  “And did he tell you what you were? That you were mer?”

  “Oh, no!” May then proceeded to give her a short history of how she was found—the wreck of the Resolute, and how she was determined to swim there. And now that she had found Hannah they could go together. She told her, too, about her life with Gar and Zeeba on Egg Rock.

  “Oh, dear. It sounds—grim.”

  “Gar’s nice. I love him. It would break his heart if he knew that I have come back to the sea. It’s a problem, a painful problem.”

  “If you leave him he’ll be left with that wife — Zeeba!”

  “Yes,” May replied quietly. She wasn’t ready to tell Hannah quite yet about Hugh. Her connection with Hugh went much deeper than the one with Gar. She had done things on that mountain that she was not sure she could ever tell anybody — not even her own sister. “But it’s your turn now. Tell me, where did you come from? Were you found?”

  “Well, somebody found me. I’m not sure who. I was put in an orphanage, The Boston Home for Little Wanderers, and then when I turned fifteen they sent me off to work. I got this job in the Hawleys’ house.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have time.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Hannah then began to tell her story—the terrible problems with Lila, who was thankfully now tucked away in some sort of hospital for the mentally ill; her own deep connection with little Ettie. When she had finished, she sighed. “And I guess that’s it.” Although she knew it wasn’t. For she, like May, had purposely left out the part of her story about the painter Stannish Whitman Wheeler, not just her love for him and his for her, but the deep suspicion she had that he, too, was mer, or had been.

  “There’s more,” May said softly.

  Hannah looked at her in alarm. “I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “No, no. I believe you. There is more that I know about our story.”

  “What?”

  “The ship that wrecked, our mother was on that ship.”

  “Our mother?”

  “Yes, and our sister.”

  “Our sister?”

  “Yes. There is a third mer baby that was lost that night.” May briefly told about the carvings of three tiny mermaids on the chest.

  “And this sister is still alive?”

  May nodded solemnly. “I am sure, and she will come here.”

  It was not long until the dawn. May had to get back to the lighthous
e, and Hannah knew she must return to Gladrock. There was no time for May to tell Hannah how together they could find the wreck. But they planned to meet the next night at the cave beneath the cliffs, where Hannah went to change her clothes before returning to Gladrock. May knew these cliffs, and she assured Hannah that she would find the cave easily. They hugged each other and swam away in different directions. And oddly enough one of the spaces beside May swam away as well. Yet she still felt almost complete for the first time in months, or perhaps ever.

  High above the gyre of Corry, on the promontory of Hag’s Head, Avalonia sat wrapped in her white plaid. She had visited the gyre and sat atop the head of the Hag almost every week throughout the summer, and every time her thoughts came a bit more clearly. She would sit a bit longer on Hag’s Head, above the roiling waters of the gyre, and listen to those deepest ocean murmurs, open her mind to her sea roots and those ancient instincts that were known among mer folk as the Laws of Salt.

  For grown mermen or -women the Laws of Salt were like scripture running through their veins. One just had to quiet one’s self enough to listen well. Over the summer weeks she had done just this, and now she began to know that two of Laurentia’s children lived, after all these years. Two lived and had found each other, somewhere far from here, far from the Hag’s Head, across the sea.

  31

  THE COLDEST WORD

  BY THE TIME MAY RETURNED to the lighthouse the worst of the hurricane had passed. A soft constant drizzle now fell. The air was still thick with clouds, and the sky hung heavy and gray. In such conditions, particularly after a big storm, the practice was to let the light burn longer into the morning. It was safe, however, to remove the chicken coops from the kitchen as well as those she had stashed in the storage shed. She then went to the larger shed, where they had put Bells Two for the storm.

  “You can get out now, de-ah!” she said to the cow. Bells blinked back at her. “You survived the hurricane all right?” The cow flicked her tail as if shooing a fly away. “Don’t think there are any flies left to bother you. They all blew away.” May led her out and tethered her to the post, then fetched a stool and sat down with a pail to milk her.

  For some reason May had a powerful appetite. She planned to make a big breakfast for them all. She only wished Hannah could sit down with them at the table. Wouldn’t that give Zeeba a start! But she knew Gar would like Hannah.

  The sun began to show weakly over the horizon. The sharp hiss of the milk spraying into the bucket and the crushing sound of the waves rolling in on the beach made a lovely music. I can’t believe it. I have a sister! I have a sister! As soon as she got a chance she would get out the charts that Gar kept of the New England coast. When she met Hannah this evening she wanted to have it all planned out. The distance to Georges Bank was perhaps two hundred miles as the crow flew, but as the mer girl swam, the distance was slightly longer. But she knew that when she swam full power, she could exceed the speed of any steamer that plied the coastal waters. The days were shortening now, which meant the nights were growing longer. She felt that she and Hannah could make it down and back within the course of a single night. They had to go together, and soon. They could not wait for their third mer sister. The urgency was unbearable. They needed to find the wreck now!

  “My, my, you’re awfully cheery this morning,” Hepzibah commented as she came into the kitchen. May stood in front of the big cast-iron stove, frying up onions in salt pork. She poured a pitcher of eggs she’d beaten up with the fresh milk.

  “Yes, I’m feeling good. Bells survived the hurricane fine.”

  “And so did you, I see,” Zeeba added. “Cows and girls,” she muttered. May ignored the remark.

  Gar came in from outside. “You already got the chickens sorted out. Thank you, de-ah. I would have helped you with that.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t any problem, Pa. I was up early.”

  “Well, I don’t think we suffered any damage here. Don’t know how they fared in Bar Harbor. I’m sure some of those yachts must have torn loose from their moorings if they didn’t take them over to the hole. And that hole can’t fit in all the new yachts they been building these days.”

  The hole was the hurricane hole near Otter Creek that was the safest place to take a boat during nasty weather. “When the chop goes down we could sail the skiff over and check up on things in the village. Lend a hand if anybody needs help,” Gar added.

  May looked at her father. He was such a kind man. How could he stand being married to Zeeba? She often caught herself wondering what Gar’s life would have been like with another woman—not just Polly but anyone. There was one thing for sure. Ever since the time of the nor’easter those long months ago, Gar had not touched a drop of liquor. He seemed to have come into his own in a way that continued to surprise May. It was as if he were gathering a new strength deep inside himself, a new authority. But she knew that although he was better at standing up to Zeeba, he would never leave her.

  Later that morning May and her father took the skiff to Bar Harbor. The town pier was half underwater from the storm surge, and lobster traps that had been stacked at the fish pier bobbled about freely now in the harbor, along with bait barrels.

  “Raise up the centerboard, May, and we’ll run her right up on the beach, since it looks like the only working pier is the fish one, and we better not take up any room.”

  The small crescent of beach was piled high with debris flung up from the hurricane: lobster pots, barrels, and dead fish, small ones—mackerel, stripers, smelts, herring—their eyes glazed and becoming filmy, their gills still open as if caught in a last gasp. She imagined them just hours before, flopping about, stunned at their sudden forced expulsion from the sea.

  May turned to her father. “You want me to jump out with the painter and tie us up?” She saw a pulse start to work in Gar’s jaw.

  “Oh, no! No! I’ll do it. I’m still limber enough.” He gave a nervous laugh.

  He’s still worried, May thought, worried that she would instantly become something else lest the tiniest drop of water touch her foot, or God forbid, her jump was short and she fell in. Did he think she would be like one of those fish that hours before had been gasping on land? Did he know that she had crossed over and come back? Of course not. But how often would she come back—for Gar, for Hugh?

  “Hi! Gar, May. Can I give you a hand with that painter?” May’s stomach clutched. It was Rudd.

  “Oh, Rudd, kind of you. May, get up there and toss him the painter.”

  May walked up to the bow grimly. She was sick of this man. Sick of his lurking about the edges of her life, sick of that festering brutality she detected in him. But most of all she was sick of her own fears of him. He preyed on weakness. She coiled the painter and flung it toward Rudd. He had to back away a bit, for she had aimed for his face.

  “Gotcha on the end of a line again, darlin’,” he said in a low voice that only May could hear. He tethered the rope to a granite block on the beach. May jumped quickly onto a pile of seaweed.

  “She’s nimble, that one,” Gar said as he swung a leg over the bow.

  “Oh, quite the mountaineer, I think!” May’s blood froze. No, he couldn’t have! Was it possible that he had followed her and Hugh that day? Would he have seen them that night? “Yep, she moves fast, that one!”

  May’s face turned as red as her hair. “I’m going to the library to see if Miss Lowe’s all right.”

  “Library’s fine, May. You can still go there and read your books with the doctor or that Harvard fellow.”

  May tipped her head. “Why do you say these things?”

  “What things, May? What things are you talking about?”

  “I read in the library. I take out books, and what I read and who I talk to while I am there is my business.”

  “That so?” He said it so smugly. Then a smile crawled across his face. And very casually he said, “Post office needs some help. I even got a letter here for you.”

  “For m
e?” May bit her lip slightly. Why did he keep smiling at her? It was unnerving.

  “Yep, all the way from Boston.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  “Well, when Carrie Welles saw that I was heading over toward your skiff she just handed it to me. She said everything’s at sixes and sevens. Only a few letters didn’t get drenched. So here’s yours.” He reached into his pocket and handed it to her.

  May willed herself not to look at the envelope. She took it and immediately put it in her pocket and walked away stiffly in the direction of the library. “See you in a bit, May,” her father called. She did not reply.

  The library was fine, and once she had said hello and made polite chitchat with Miss Lowe she went to the window seat in the back corner, where she had first read the book of Matthew Fontaine Maury. She sat down and tore open the envelope.

  Her heart sank as she saw the tiny piece of newsprint with a small headline: BRITISH SHIP OF THE LINE SINKS: ALL FEARED LOST.

  Dear May,

  My research did not yield much. This small clipping was all I could find. My return to Bar Harbor has been delayed because of some research that Professor Healy has asked me to do.

  But he is returning, May thought. He is coming back. But with the next sentence her heart sank once more.

  Perhaps this information might help you find what you are looking for.

  Cordially,

  Hugh Fitzsimmons

  Cordially! The word was like a slap across her face. It resounded like a clap of thunder in her head. Cordially—it was the coldest word in the English language.

  32

  FASTER THAN AN EAGLE?

  THEY WERE PERCHED ON A SLANTED ROCK in the cave at Otter Creek. It was the perfect hideaway and May found it completely charming. Lovely mosses and lichen filigreed its walls. The water lapped in, but there were dry places as well to store clothes and even tins of food that Hannah had brought from the Gladrock kitchen. They were eating molasses cookies.