by CJ Brightley
And the letter is from America. The bottle somehow traveled all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to here! Ocean currents should have sent it to England and Europe, if it ever made it out of the Gulf. And yet, here it is.
The writer seems young, maybe twelve or thirteen. The letter’s in pencil and the handwriting is neat but not mature. She’s looking out across the sea for a friend. I hope she does write again. If she does, you will be the one to receive the letter. Could you slip it in with your letter to me, so I can keep corresponding with her? You will be our go-between.
If you do see Piyu, ask him how the tobacco is doing. Are the plants healthy? Oh—and the orange seedlings. Have the orange seedlings taken?
Also, you have not sent me any news about Ramiratam and the others for two letters now. Is it that you have no news, or there’s no progress, or has there been news, but it’s bad? You must tell me everything you know, even bad things.
I am so sorry to be such a fountain of ceaseless demands. I wish there were some way I could ease your burdens and make your days happier.
Your loving daughter,
Kayamanira
July 4 (Kaya’s memoir)
It’s no good; I can’t pretend any longer that I can continue my research here. I need something else to fill up the days and keep me from staring too hard and long at the Ruby Lake. So: a memoir. I will write down my thoughts on how I came to be here, what it all means. I don’t expect that anyone will ever see what I write, but perhaps I can gain some certainty by writing things down, some strength.
Then, if Em should write again, if she asks questions, maybe I will be better prepared to answer her. A village of floating houses, roped together—I’ve never heard of such a way of life in America. Could it be that Em’s people are as much outsiders in her country as mine are in mine? In which case, part of me can’t help thinking that somehow the Lady of the Ruby Lake really does have a hand in Em’s message coming to me. A superstitious, wishful part of me! When did that part get so strong? It must be the sulfur fumes.
July 10 (Em’s diary)
I got a letter! I got a letter today—it was in with a doctor bill and ads, a letter for me! And it came from a different country. The stamp has a picture of flowers and mountains. Dad was talking with Ma about the bill and Tammy was looking at the picture of the hummingbirds in the ad for hummingbird feeders, and I was just turning the letter over and over in my hands, not quite believing it was real.
“What’s that you have?” Dad asked. “Something else from Kids Speak?” He asked that because last fall my teacher made us all write essays on Best Family Traditions and sent them in to an essay contest. After that, everyone in class kept getting letters asking if we wanted to buy a book with all the essays in it. The book was called Kids Speak. I think I got three letters from them, but that book was way too expensive. Really the only good thing about writing that essay was getting the idea to have this diary: What it’s like being Emlee Baptiste, living in Mermaid’s Hands. One day I’ll make a book of it that anyone can afford to buy.
“No, it’s a letter from far away,” I said, but Dad wasn’t paying attention anymore, because Ma was talking to him about the bill again.
I knew next Ma and Dad would go back out to Mermaid’s Hands to see Mr. Tiptoe to find out if there was any extra money from the sale of the last catch. If there was, then probably he’d give them some, and then they’d take it to the doctor’s office.
I wanted to go read my letter by myself, but I also didn’t want Tammy to have to tag along with Ma and Dad for all that. She can’t help it if she’s always coughing, and it’s not her fault Ma wants her to see a dry-land doctor that costs a bunch of money instead of just using sea remedies. So I told her she could come along with me.
“We’re going to Foul Point,” I told Ma and Dad.
“Just be home before it gets dark,” Ma said.
Foul Point is called Fowl Point on maps, but we call it Foul Point because it stinks sometimes. Pretty often, really. It stinks because of all the birds that flock there, but that’s why me and Tammy like it, too, for the birds, and for the no-people. No dry-land people go there, because it’s hard to reach if you don’t want to get wet, and no fishermen go there because of the cordgrass and the rocks, and not so many fish, and not even other kids from Mermaid’s Hands go there much, because Mrs. Ovey said in the olden days it’s where we seachildren would take all the chamber pot stuff from our houses to dump. Ewww, go wading through long-ago this-and-that? No thanks! That’s what they’re thinking.
But long ago is long ago. Now it’s just bird doo that makes Foul Point foul. Mainly terns. Terns like to nest there.
We didn’t see many terns there today. Instead we saw lots of red-thread dancers, so delicate! Red-thread dancers is our name for them, because their legs are as thin as red threads, and their walking looks like dancing, but I got a bird book out of the library once, and their book name is black-necked stilt. They do look like they’re walking on stilts. And today there were also brown willet birds there. Tammy went looking for abandoned nests in the grass, and I sat on a rock and examined my letter.
There was my name on the envelope, written in thin letters and wobbly. Maybe a grandmother or a grandfather wrote it. I used my finger like a knife to get into the envelope, and then I took out the paper inside. It was in different handwriting. Pretty writing, darker and stronger than what was on the envelope. I read the letter.
“Who is it from?” Tammy asked. I hadn’t even heard her come up. I was thinking about volcanoes. I was imagining a platform hanging from chains over a lava lake, and a house on the platform, and someone in the house, writing me a letter.
“A prisoner. It’s from a prisoner in …” I had to look at the envelope again. The country name came at the bottom of the return address: W—. That was the word on the stamp, too, in small letters under the picture.
“A prisoner in W—,” I said, “Want to go to the library? I want to find out where W— is.”
“Can I see the letter? I’ll show you what I found.” I let her look at the letter, and she gave me two long straight feathers, one small fluffy one with speckles, and a bottle cap.
“I like the bottle cap ‘cause it’s purple,” said Tammy, leaning in to share my looking at it. She reached for it again. It was purple with a mark sort of like a butterfly on it, in white.
“It’s a good one. You don’t have many purple ones, do you?”
She shook her head.
“Those two come from the red-thread dancers, I think,” she said, pointing to the long straight feathers. They were white with black tips.
“Matching, too,” I said, holding them both up. “One for each hand. You can make wing magic.”
Tammy nodded. “I can’t read the writing,” she said, handing the letter back to me. “Will you read it?”
I read it to her. Tammy frowned.
“That’s a bad place to live. I wonder why they put her there.”
“I wonder too. I feel sorry for her,” I said. It made me think of Jiminy, since he’s a prisoner too. Dad don’t want us to feel sorry for him, but I do.
“She has a crow, though,” Tammy remarked. “Crows are witchy birds. You think maybe she’s a witch? Maybe they put her over the volcano because she’s a witch.”
“You think? I don’t think having a crow makes you a witch. Sabelle Morning had a crow, and she wasn’t a witch.”
“But she was a pirate.”
“But she was a good-guy pirate. A Mermaid’s Hands pirate.”
Tammy shrugged. “Ma says there ain’t no good-guy pirates.”
Yeah, that sounds like Ma all right, not believing there’s such a thing as good pirates. And Tammy spends too much time with Ma on account of always being sick, and so she don’t understand about good pirates versus bad ones.
“I’m just saying that having a crow don’t make you a witch,” I said. “And crows are smart, too. Were you around when Uncle Near told the story about
Sabelle’s crow?”
Tammy shook her head.
“It could talk, just like a parrot. Government revenue agents—those were who chased pirates and smugglers, back in olden times—captured the crow and tried to get it to tell them where Sabelle was, but instead the crow took them up and down the coast and made their ship run aground in shallow water.”
Tammy grinned.
“Uncle Near says that the grandchildren of that crow could tell us where Sabelle’s treasure is, if we knew which crows those were.”
“Okay, so they’re smart,” said Tammy. “But they ain’t as pretty as hummingbirds, or red-thread dancers.”
Tammy loves pretty things. I think crows are kind of pretty, with their shiny feathers, but it’s hard to compare them with hummingbirds and red-thread dancers.
“So you coming along to the library with me?” I asked. She nodded.
At the library I found out that the country the letter came from, W—, is an island right mixed in with the islands that are the country of Indonesia, which is not the same place as India. India is a big diamond shape that sticks down from Asia into the ocean, but Indonesia is a long splash of islands further to the east. At first I couldn’t find W—, but the librarian showed me how one island on the map was colored blue when all the islands of Indonesia were colored orange.
Then she showed me how I could find photos of W— on the computer. There were photos of towns and villages all around the edges of the island, and there were photos of the capital city, a jumble of grand-looking buildings and patched-together ones and streets crowded with people and cars and even long-horned cattle, and then photos of mountains in the middle of the island, dark green with trees. Then she typed in a different search, and it showed people. Some were fishing, in small boats no bigger than ours, not big ones like the dry-land people use, and some were bending and planting stuff in fields, and some were selling things on the street in the city. One photo was of some girls all dressed up in fancy costumes, doing a dance.
“Ooh,” said Tammy. “I’d like a dress like that. Do you think the lady who wrote to you wears things like that?”
“Probably not unless she’s a dancer,” I said. I wanted to see if I could find pictures of Kaya’s volcano, but when I typed “Lotus on the Ruby Lake,” the computer just gave me pictures of flowers and lakes and other things. So then I tried typing “W—" and “volcano,” and this time a bunch of pictures came up, pictures of bright redness, with veins and streaks of gold across it, sitting in a dark black dish—that was the crater. None of the pictures had a hanging platform in them, though. I guess they only built Kaya’s prison recently.
I switched the computer back to the library’s home page. It made me feel kind of funny in the stomach to think about a house above all that lava.
“Library closes in ten minutes,” the librarian said.
“Let’s go,” I said to Tammy.
July 11 (Em’s diary)
Today while the tide was out and we were helping to make some cordgrass sun capes at the Oveys’ house, I told Small Bill about the letter.
“Do you have it with you?”
I pulled it out of my back pocket. It was kind of damp, but the words hadn’t blurred.
“Wow,” he said, after he read it. “Wow. A volcano.” He frowned a little. Maybe he was trying to imagine the scene. I had an idea of it. I had an idea that Kaya’s house was like one of ours, only where we have the sea around us, she has air, and under that, lava.
“It made me think of Jiminy,” I said. “But I guess Jiminy’s lucky compared to her. Least he’s not sitting over a volcano.”
I never thought of being in Clear Springs Prison as being lucky before.
“Yeah, it’s gotta be easier to break out of Clear Springs,” said Small Bill. He plied some more cordgrass into his length of twine.
I’m glad I can talk to Small Bill about Jiminy. Dad won’t ever talk about him at home. When we heard that Jiminy confessed, Dad said, “I guess he ain’t a seachild after all.” And that was the end of it. We didn’t get to go to the sentencing or anything.
Dry-land folks think Mermaid’s Hands folks are all lazy and criminals, but we’re not like that at all! Not since Sabelle Morning’s time, and she only stole to help those in need. Like I try to tell Tammy, she was a good-guy pirate. Jiminy, though, wasn’t stealing for nobody but himself. He gave everybody in Sandy Neck a reason to say See? We knew they were like that.
But I still think Dad should of stuck up for Jiminy. Not turned on him like that.
Small Bill’s dad ain’t so cold as our dad is. “Everybody makes mistakes,” Mr. Ovey told Dad once. “You gotta release your anger and keep your son.” But Dad don’t hear him. Mrs. Ovey told us we should say his name to the waves when the tide’s going out, so the Seafather knows we want him back. Ma won’t do that, because she don’t believe in the Seafather, but me and Tammy do it, and Gran does it.
I wrote some letters to Jiminy, but he don’t like writing much. He’s only written back once. He said he wanted cigarettes, but inmates can only get care packages three times a year, and you’re not allowed to send things like cigarettes.
“I’m gonna write Kaya back,” I told Small Bill. “She needs a friend. I’m gonna make her my pen pal.”
I hope Kaya writes back.
Tammy and I wove the last of the loose grass into the wide zigzags of twine that Small Bill had made. Sun cape, done! I held it up.
“How’s it look?”
Small Bill nodded, good, it looks good, and Mrs. Ovey came over, and she said it was good too. That one’ll be for Mr. Winterhull, who’d be burned as red as a dry-land farmer if he didn’t cover up, out there fishing, but anyone who goes out fishing all day should wear one, even people like Dad, who are as black as nighttime. A sun cape keeps you good and cool.
“How are you doing, Tammy? Still struggling with the air above the waves?” Mrs. Ovey asked. She likes to say that Tammy has a little too much seablood in her, and that’s why she coughs and wheezes: she’s not used to air. Tammy loves this because it makes her feel like a true mermaid.
I get a little jealous, though, because who can swim from our house to the Oveys’ when the tide’s in and not even come up for air? Me. And who can guess right (most of the time) about when a storm’s coming from where the redfish gather? Me! I can do it as good as Small Bill’s granddad, and he’s the oldest in Mermaid’s Hands. So don’t that make me pretty full of seablood?
Things I need to remember: It’s no fun for Tammy to be stuck at home wheezing and coughing while we’re out exploring. When I remember that, my jealousy dries right up.
I cringed inside when Tammy told Mrs. Ovey about Ma and the doctor and the dry-land cough medicine, but at least she also said that she liked the tea that Mrs. Ovey gave her.
“Of course you did, my mermaid miss,” Mrs. Ovey said, after raising her eyebrows and pursing her lips like she’s never heard such nonsense, when Tammy was telling her the other part.
Why does Ma have to be such a red-winged blackbird? But also, why does Mrs. Ovey need to be so surprised? Ma and Dad’ve been together for nineteen years. Mrs. Ovey knows what Ma’s like.
We made one more sun cape from scratch and repaired a couple others, and then Mrs. Ovey said she didn’t need no more help and we could run along, so we went back to our house, and I wrote a letter to Kaya and Small Bill made a map for a game we made up before, called Jellyfish Invasion, and Tammy drew a picture of what a red-thread dancer would look like if it turned into a person.
3
Seagulls and Crows
July 11 (Em to Kaya)
Dear Kaya,
Wow! I never thought my bottle would go all the way to another country! I never got a letter before with a stamp from another country. It’s pretty.
I’m sorry that you’re a prisoner. Did you commit a crime? My big brother Jiminy did. He snuck into a floating casino and was stealing from the people there, but they caught him.
> I would visit him if I could, but his prison is not even in the same state, and Dad would never let us go, because he thinks Jiminy threw away his family when he started stealing things. Ma says we should keep him in our prayers, and Gran says the Seafather will find a way to free him, because no seachild should be stuck so far away on dry land, even if he’s a thief.
Ma shakes her head when anyone talks about the Seafather. She doesn’t believe in him, but that’s because she came from dry land herself. “I loved your Daddy so much, I gave up a proper house to come live out here on the mud,” she tells us, but Dad smiles and says, “No, Josie, that ain’t how it is. I rescued you. From a hard stiff land life, and brought you here to be rocked by the sea each day. Now that’s love.”
I went to the library and asked the librarian to show me where your country is on the map. It’s very far away. It’s got the ocean all around it, though. Maybe the Seafather can send seagulls to you. One time when I got to talk to Jiminy on Mr. Tiptoe’s phone, he said he saw seagulls twice in the prison yard, even being hundreds of miles away from the sea.
I will keep writing to you.
Your friend,
Em
P.S. Here is a wing feather from a laughing gull. If you keep it, then any seagulls who visit will know you’re a friend.
July 20 (Kaya’s mother to Kaya)
My dear girl,
Look what came for you—a letter from your new friend in America. I am doing as you suggested and sending it along with my note to you. Do you see your friend has drawn a stamp, next to the actual stamp, on the envelope? Pretty, isn’t it, the curling vine and the red flowers.