“San Pedro,” Mother said, the slight rise in her voice at the end giving away the fact that we had no actual firm destination—not like the Lighthouse Inn in San Pedro, or my cousin’s house near the port. Or maybe the rise didn’t mean that at all. Maybe it meant it really didn’t matter where we went. Tomorrow we’d get up, Mother would consult her compass, and we’d be off whatever way it pointed.
“I can take you to downtown Sixth Street,” the man said.
“That would be perfect,” Mother said.
The man reached over and opened the passenger door.
“Get out, children,” he said.
Mother shook her head. “We’ll be fine in the back. Thank you.”
It hit me when we settled in among the boxes of freshly picked strawberries, their sweet scent filling our noses: exhaustion. Funny how that is—a person can go and go and even feel tired but still push on, but at the moment one stops, fatigue comes crashing down. I could see a fresh tiredness had washed over Mother, too, but she sat up straight, her legs stretched out in front of her, her hands in her lap, as if riding in the back of a truck full of strawberries being driven by a total stranger was the most common thing in the world.
When we’d reached our nebulous destination and got out, Mother walked to his window and thanked him again.
“You best be careful on these beaches around here,” he said. “Not everyone you meet by the sea will be someone you want to know.” He paused. “Pay attention to the seals.”
He drove away and I turned to Mother. “What do you suppose he meant by that?”
“I think,” she said, “that he knows very well who—or what—the man surf-fishing was.”
“And the seals?” I asked. “They didn’t like the man on the beach.”
“No,” Mother said. “They didn’t like him one bit.”
Four
San Pedro, California
August 1923
We slept late—no surprise after our long walk of yesterday—and had a breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee in a little café on Beacon Street. We’d washed out our dirty trousers the night before—the bathtub water had turned brown-yellow with dirt, dust, and sand. This morning, with each of us in a fresh white blouse and summer gloves, we looked as neat and presentable as any mother-daughter duo out for a meal—if a tad eccentric in our clothing tastes.
While we waited for our change, Mother took out the compass and consulted it for the first time that day.
“He’s gone south,” she said, peering into the instrument, “but seems to have stopped now.”
“Waiting for us?” I asked. “Like yesterday.”
Mother glanced away—a thing she did when she was considering something. “Perhaps. Our hunt for him may be a game, in his view.”
“But if he’s always a step or more ahead . . .”
“Yes,” she said. “Leading us on a merry chase.”
A waiter brought our change and Mother distractedly stowed it in the steel-mesh coin purse Father had put in her stocking last Christmas. Father had excellent taste and the purse was beautiful, with glass-bead peacock feathers embroidered into the mesh. I wondered how Mother felt about it now, what she thought each time she brought it out.
I drew in a deep breath. “Can you see where the goblin has stopped?”
“No. Just that it’s not close and he’s still moving toward Mexico.”
Mexico! That was more than one hundred miles away. Were we going to walk all the way to another country?
But then I thought, no, Mother just means in that direction. Even if we did have to go all that way, the gremhahn seemed to enjoy taunting us, and I doubted he would move faster than we could walk.
I picked up my bags and stood. “Then we’d best get started.”
Mother grabbed her bags and stood as well. She looked at me a moment, then said, “Thank you, Cassie.”
I shrugged to show her that she needn’t thank me. I had a whole list of my own reasons for joining Mother on this quest—seeing her happy again, having my brother back, maybe having a whole family, including Father, again. I’d walk barefoot from here to New York if it would make those things happen.
Mother brightened. “At least we can take a road today, until we get closer to him. Less wear and tear on us.”
Small favors, I thought, and followed her as we headed toward the road that curved along the shoreline.
We’d trudged for maybe an hour or so, hardly talking. Now and then a car passed by, but no one stopped. The quiet and the thoughts chasing around in my mind were driving me crazy. If I hadn’t fallen on the beach, would I have caught the gremhahn, or would he have poofed away in a cloud of smoke and laughter when I’d gotten close?
“Mama,” I said, “will you teach me the spell?”
She startled out of whatever thoughts had consumed her. “Spell?”
“The binding spell. Will you teach it to me?”
Mother stopped and glanced away. I held my breath a little, waiting.
“That’s a good idea.” She cradled her carpetbag against her chest, opened it, and drew out a slip of paper. “Diana said I should memorize this, but somehow, each time I try, the words won’t stay in my head. Maybe you’ll do better.”
I looked at the paper she handed me. There were two lines of writing—the upper in a language I didn’t recognize, though I’d studied Latin and Greek. Written right below was what I assumed was a phonetic spelling of each undecipherable word.
Do you have to pronounce everything perfectly?” I asked.
Mother nodded. “And in order.”
“How do you say this first word, with a dj sound?”
“D’juan tee.” Mother said. “Diana made me say it over and over until I got it right.”
“D’jaun tee,” I repeated. “D’juan tee, D’juan tee.” I licked my lips. “And the next one?”
Mother looked down at the paper I’d angled so we could both see it, then back up quickly. She spun quickly to face west. She’d heard it, the same as I had—like wings flapping, but there were no birds in sight.
“The second word.” Mother stopped again. A dark gray fog rolled in so quickly we hadn’t seen it coming, as if a thick, wet cloud had simply dropped from the sky on top of us. Within moments the paper in Mother’s hand grew moist and limp.
“Put it away. Quickly,” I said as I pushed the paper into her hand, afraid the fog would make the ink run and we’d lose the words. Even as I spoke, Mother was opening her carpetbag and tucking the paper safely inside. The fog was growing thicker. I shivered in the wet cold. Mother and I were close enough to reach out and touch, yet I could barely see her.
The sound of flapping wings started up again, louder than before, coming from the northeast this time.
A large white-and-gray seagull dove through the fog, swooping past Mother’s face. She made a guttural sound and batted the bird away with her hands. I batted at it, too, and it flew off.
“Cassie!” Mother called.
“Right here,” I said. Trying to peer through the fog. “Are you all right?”
The fog rolled on, lifting enough that I could see her. Her eyes were wide and she clutched her carpetbag close to her body.
“Yes,” she said, just as another gull—or maybe the same one—dove at her. A second seabird dove at me. And then another. And another. Birds came from all directions, beaks, claws, and wings slapping against us. Mother and I both ducked down and covered our faces with crossed arms.
The birds kept coming, cawing loudly, beaks open, their wings and clawed feet striking my shoulders, head, arms. I couldn’t count how many. Dozens maybe. A whirlwind of feathered beasts swirling around us, screaming their gull calls, beating their wings and bodies against us.
And then, suddenly, the sound of a car horn blasting a long alarm. I didn’t look up, but heard wheels rattling the gravel on the side of the road, then a door slamming shut and feet on the road and a man yelling, “Shoo. Shoo, and be gone. Go back where you ca
me from, you wretches.”
The gulls still swirled around us, but fewer now, and then none at all. They were gone. The fog had gone with them.
“You ladies all right?” a man’s voice said. His voice had the slightest southern drawl.
I peeked up and saw the side of a shiny black Buick and two legs in blue jeans and brown cowboy boots.
Mother and I straightened up at the same moment. My eyes widened.
“Yes, now we are,” Mother said, dusting herself off and picking up her carpetbag, which she’d dropped when the birds attacked the last time. “Thank you.”
The man smiled—a flash of white teeth in the darkest brown face I’d ever seen. The tall gentleman held a straw cowboy hat in his hands that I thought he had probably used to shoo away the birds.
“Well, that’s good,” he said, returning the hat to his head and holding out a hand to Mother. “John Hayden.”
Mother shook his hand. “Audrey Goodlight. And this is my daughter, Cassie.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” he said, as if we’d just been introduced over tea and cookies at church. “Can I offer you a ride somewhere?”
Mother peered at him much the same way she peered into the compass and said, “We’d be very grateful for the favor of a ride to Long Beach.”
A thrill of nerves went through me as a thought reignited my fear. If the goblin could look like Dr. Gremhahn and look as different as the fisherman, couldn’t he look like a man driving a new Buick? Wouldn’t that be a good trick—to scare us with fog and birds and then pretend to be our savior? I reached out for Mother’s arm, but she was already climbing into the sedan’s back seat at the same moment John Hayden was sliding behind the wheel. She scooted across, making room for me to sit. I glanced at the driver, who was watching us over his shoulder with the merest hint of interest, and then at Mother. I climbed in.
I thought the man would strike up a conversation, but he stared ahead and drove without another word. I wanted Mother to check her compass, to make sure we weren’t flying down the road with the sea goblin himself, but she seemed content to lean her head back and close her eyes. When, after a long silence, John Hayden suddenly said, “Where in Long Beach would you like to be let off?” I nearly jumped out of my skin. Mother opened her eyes, sat forward, and said, “The beach past the amusement park would be perfect. Thank you.”
It was only then I realized Mother held the compass in her hand, had been holding it a long while, maybe all along, since I hadn’t seen her reach into her bag to get it. So I guessed I’d worried for nothing all this time that we were riding with the sea goblin.
And realized that I no longer doubted the existence of the gremhahn or the rightness of our quest.
John Hayden maneuvered the car down a narrow road that ended at the ocean. Mother and I got out. She walked over to his window, which was down, and was about to say something when he put up his hand to stop her.
“Diana Hasbro and I are old friends. She asked me to keep an eye out for you and offer assistance if I could. I’ve been driving back and forth on this road for two days looking for y’all. I’ll be glad to head home now.”
“Oh,” Mother said, evidently as surprised by this news as I was. But it comforted me, this idea that the finder woman was looking out for us, still offering her help. It made me feel sorry that I’d thought badly of her, hadn’t believed in her. And it made me think that maybe—if all these things I hadn’t believed in were actually true—the finder woman was right all along, and Jimmy could be saved.
“And it was my pleasure, Ma’am,” he said, flashing a big smile that made me ashamed I’d thought him to be the goblin.
“One last thing,” he said. “Listen to what the seals say. They’re on your side.”
He pulled the Buick away from us and was gone.
“Oh,” Mother said again.
I’m sure there was more to her thoughts, but they must have overwhelmed her because she went silent. She only went to the sand, took off her shoes, and walked.
“Why do you think he said the seals are on our side?” I asked as we walked along. The day was cooler than it had been all week, and the sand felt good beneath my feet. The ride had refreshed me, and my bags didn’t feel nearly as heavy.
“Maybe because the ocean is their home, and perhaps the sea goblin takes baby seals as well,” she said.
“You’re guessing.”
“Well, yes. Of course I’m guessing.” She smiled. “Maybe it wasn’t true seals at all he was talking about. Maybe he meant we have selkies here in California. Folk who are seals in the sea but who can take off their skins and be human on land. The Irish and the Scots are full of tales about them.”
“It would be a very long swim from Scotland to California,” I said, playing along as I tried to visualize a seal as a human. “They would be funny-looking people, don’t you think? Short arms and big round bodies.”
“They say,” Mother said, “that selkies are very handsome in their human form. It’s said a human woman can’t resist a selkie man. Selkie women are supposed to be docile and make good wives.”
“Humph,” I said. “Sounds like men made up the stories to suit their liking.”
Father certainly hadn’t liked it when Mother had made her own decision to go to the finder woman. Though that was odd, come to think of it. He’d always encouraged her fancies before and was proud that she had gone to college—not many women did—and had a degree of her own. It was part of the change after his illness. It seemed he didn’t like her having her own mind and thoughts anymore. He certainly didn’t want her acting on them. Which made me worry again about what he would think if he came to the house and found it empty.
“Did you send Papa a message to tell him we’d be away?” I asked.
Mother didn’t seem surprised by the change of subject. Perhaps her thoughts had strayed to Father as well.
“I wrote him a letter,” she said. “I told him we were going to visit your Aunt Betina for a few weeks and I would contact him again when we returned.”
Good, I thought. One less thing to worry about.
We’d walked a long way while we talked. The beach was narrow here, barely any beach at all between the boardwalk and the sea. Shrieks and screams rolled down from a nearby amusement park with a big wooden roller coaster that rose up behind the beachfront buildings. The aromas from food stands made my stomach rumble. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and now it was leaning toward evening.
“Maybe we could get something to eat soon?” I said. “And I hate to say it, but I need a toilet.”
Mother consulted the compass again and sighed. “He’s gone west, into the water.” She scanned the beach, emptying now that the sun was setting and the wind coming up. “Where do you suppose we are?”
“Seal Beach,” I said. “I saw a sign with the name on it.”
“Seal Beach,” she said, emphasizing the first word, as though it held some portent, given what we’d been talking about. “I don’t see any seals here, certainly don’t hear any like we heard at the cove, but I do see that big ol’ roller coaster.”
“The park is called Joy Zone,” I said. “I saw a sign for that, too.”
She smiled. “Seal Beach and Joy Zone. Those are good omens, don’t you think? Let’s find a place to eat and then a place to sleep. Should be plenty of both around here.” She chucked me under the chin. “And a toilet.”
*
When Mother checked the compass the next morning, the goblin was still at sea and so far away the compass face was black as pitch. The next day was the same, and the day after that. On the morning of our fourth day in Seal Beach, Mother and I walked down to the water. It was too early for Joy Zone to be open, but from behind the wall we heard the workers calling to one another and the sounds of test runs on the still-empty rides. I smelled fresh popcorn being made. In front of us, the ocean rolled small, gentle waves onto the sand and then sucked the water back out again.
“What if he’
s still far away?” I asked.
“We’ll wait here,” she said firmly. “This is his last known landfall. He’ll return to this place.”
But of course that was just Mother trying to impose her will on the sea goblin. He could make landfall on Catalina Island, or Alaska, or Japan for all we knew. Maybe he liked to spend the summer months in Tahiti.
She took out the compass but hesitated to open it. I guessed she doubted her own brave words.
“He’s come back,” I whispered, to give her hope, even though I doubted it myself. “Take a look.”
She flipped open the cover and peered at the instrument. “You’re right. He is back. But gone north now, near to where we started, to judge by the hue of the compass face.”
“Oh,” I said, and put my arm around her. This whole week had been for nothing. A worm of worry slithered through me, a fear that this quixotic quest would go on forever, us running up and down the coast until one of us dropped.
“Sometimes, Cassie,” Mother said into my shoulder as though she’d heard my thoughts, “I think this hunt is madness. That the truth is your brother is in a cold grave somewhere and we will all go to our own graves never knowing what happened to him. I think, at these times, that there’s no such thing as a gremhahn. That the so-called finder woman has played me for a fool and gained much of my jewelry and all of my sanity in the game. I fight the feeling away. I have to believe, you see. I have to believe.”
“He did cure Papa,” I said, suddenly seeing the absolute truth of it. I straightened away from her, to look into her eyes. “It wasn’t coincidence that Papa’s fever broke and he was suddenly as healthy as he’d ever been the very morning after Dr. Gremhahn came. And there’s his name. I went to the library, the big one in Los Angeles—rode the trolley there—and looked it up. There is a folk tale about the gremhahn, a seagoing troll or goblin that can change its shape to look pleasing to humans. It steals children.”
I left off there. I wouldn’t tell her the rest of it—that the gremhahn makes a meal of the stolen child. I didn’t tell her that I had believed it was all coincidence. I’d believed that whoever played the doctor at our door and the finder-woman were in it together—along with John Hayden and his fine big car—and I cursed myself because I was the one who said we should go see her. Sometimes I thought we should tell the police that the “doctor” had kidnapped Jimmy and that the “finder woman” surely knew where he was being kept, and all the police needed to do was force her to tell the truth.
The Girl with Stars in her Hair Page 4