*
The next morning Mother drove me to Hermosa. Moira came along to keep me company for a few days while I adjusted to having the house to myself. I’d thought I’d already adjusted while Mother was in the hospital, but when she came into the house and started packing up her belongings, a new aloneness filled me. I was glad Moira, at least, would be there for a while.
*
I walked with Moira to the Red Car trolley stop, both sad and happy she was going home. Sad because she was fine company; happy because the days had given me time to think and to adjust to my new life by the shore. I waved as the Red Car pulled away.
The day was lovely. The deep blue sky was dotted with wisps of white clouds scudding east, blown by the ocean’s winds. The sun was as bright as a lemon, the air neither cool nor hot, but a perfect warm—too nice a day to go back inside right away. I strolled the beach south, walking at the water line, picking up an interesting mussel or wedge clam shell or sand dollar now and then.
The tide was coming in. Water lapped around my ankles and calves as waves tumbled onto the shore. An unexpectedly large wave nearly knocked me off my feet. When the water receded, my heart seemed to stop and then pounded like a jackhammer. Lying at my feet was a large, white shell—Murex ramosus. More waves washed around my legs as I stared at the shell, half afraid to touch it. I glanced west and saw another large swell on its way in. A wave that could maybe wash the shell back out to sea. I bent and snatched it up, then ran above the tide line to dry sand.
It was nearly Christmas and, despite the nice weather and school being on break, few people were on the beach. Still, I hunched over to hide what I was doing and brought the shell near my mouth.
“Jimmy,” I said softly into the pink heart. “Are you there? It’s me, Cassie.”
Nine
Hermosa Beach, California
December 1923
I put the shell to my ear, but heard nothing other than the normal reverberation of surrounding sounds, which people claim is the echo of the sea.
“Jimmy? If you’re there, say something, anything, or just make a noise. Anything to let me know I’ve found you.” All I heard was the false-repeat of ocean waves.
Was this a trick by the sea goblin? Throw an empty shell at my feet and make me hope my brother was inside? My teeth clamped together and my jaw tensed. This gremhahn was a cruel beast.
A seagull flew overhead, screeching its raucous cry, then diving to snatch a bit of crust from a sandwich left on the shore. I reached into my pocket and threw the largest clamshell I’d found at the bird, and was pleased to see it fly off squawking, without its crust.
I took the Murex ramosus and went home.
*
That night I slept little. I lay awake, fingering the stars in my hair—there were five now—and trying in vain to stop my mind from churning. Why deposit that shell at my feet? What did the sea goblin want—only to cruelly tease and frustrate me, or was there another, more sinister reason behind it?
In the morning I ate, dressed, and called for a taxi. Mother had said finding Jimmy would come in the natural course of my everyday life, but the sea goblin didn’t seem to agree. Whatever his ultimate intent, he wanted my attention. The shell had done the job admirably.
I didn’t use Mother’s trick of going all the way to the top of the hill and walking back down. I went straight to the finder woman’s house, walked up the drive and boldly knocked on her door.
Diana was clearly surprised to see me. Before she could speak, I burst out with the reason I had come.
“Please,” I said. “Will you teach me magic?”
Diana smiled sadly. “Oh, Cassie. No one can teach you magic.”
I stared at her, my mouth hanging a little open. This wasn’t the reply I’d expected, though honestly I didn’t really have expectations—only hopes.
“Then sell me something better than the compass and the ring,” I said. “Something that will make the sea goblin come to me, and a way to make him give back my brother.” I paused a moment, thinking of the diamond and emerald brooch in my handbag, left to me by my grandmother on Father’s side. “I can pay.”
Diana sighed. “Cassie, come in and we’ll talk.”
I followed her in. Besides the brooch, I’d brought a ruby ring and a necklace with a waterfall of moonstones. I’d gladly part with them all to get my brother back.
“You don’t seem to realize how this all works,” Diana said as we walked toward the front parlor. “Yes, I could sell or give you an amulet to help you do what you want, but they wouldn’t work for you.”
“The compass worked for my mother. And the ring.”
“Because once your mother discovered who she was, she also discovered how to make use of the objects I provided. Your mother is a finder as well. The compass and the ring are simply ways to focus and amplify her natural magic. Without inborn magic, the things are worthless.”
Frustration bubbled in me. “That’s exactly what I’m asking for—to learn the magic that will let me defeat the gremhahn.”
Diana nodded toward the plush yellow sofa with lion-claw feet, and I sat down, my back as straight as a soldier, my hands clutched together in my lap.
She took a seat in a wooden chair opposite me. “I understand what you want, but you don’t understand what magic truly is.”
“It’s a way of making things happen, of controlling events.”
Diana sighed. “I suppose on some crude and rudimentary level that’s correct.”
I bit my lip. If Diana wouldn’t teach me, how would I ever free my brother and restore my family? What was left of it, now that Father was gone.
Her face softened. “Cassie, dear, you don’t even understand what magic isn’t, much less what it truly is, but I can tell you that magic definitely isn’t something you can demand or even ask to learn.”
My heart fell. “So you won’t teach me?”
“I can’t teach you anything, but perhaps I can show you what is true.”
She got up, turned, and walked toward her kitchen, motioning with her head for me to follow. The whole house seemed to take on an air of expectation. My heart hammered a little as I followed her down the hallway, with its parquetry floor and turquoise walls, into a large, tidy kitchen painted Dutch yellow. A large oak table and six chairs were parked against the left wall. A large butler’s pantry opened off to the right. Herbs growing in pots filled the windowsills. I’d glimpsed the stove, sink, and icebox as I’d come in, but they were behind me now as I followed Diana deeper into the room.
The finder woman nodded toward the table for me to sit. She turned and went into the butler’s pantry, reached up, and took a beaten-copper bowl down from a high shelf. The foot-wide bowl was shallow, almost a plate but for the gentle curve out and up. She also brought a bottle of murky water, set the bowl on the oak table, and poured the water into the bowl. It smelled briny.
“Ocean water?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Come,” she said, “look at the water and tell me what you see.”
I bent over the bowl. The water was cloudy with silt, though the heavier specks of sand were settling toward the bottom.
“Am I supposed to see something besides sandy sea water?” I looked up at her. My nerves were shooting warning signals all through my body.
“You tell me,” Diana said, holding my gaze in her own.
I tore my gaze away and looked down into the bowl again, expecting to see the sea goblin in his lair, or Jimmy.
Nothing.
I glanced at Diana and turned my hands palms up. She motioned for me to try again.
The sand had settled to the bottom, giving the bowl the look of one of those beaches where the water is so clear you can see all the way down to the ocean floor.
And, like the water off those shores, there must have been some sort of tide in the bowl, because ever so slowly the sands were rearranging themselves into a pattern or picture. I watched, fascinated. I forgot Diana was standing nea
r me and that I was in her house. A light breeze blew past my cheek. Maybe the breeze was blowing the sand bits? But that wasn’t possible, since the water above them was still as a glacier.
Then not still. Slowly, almost too slowly to notice, the water started moving, swirling in lazy figure eights. As I watched, the swirls sped up. Small wavelets formed, with foam that peaked like whipped egg whites.
The water sloshed in the bowl, rising higher and higher on the sides until I worried the water and foam would rise over the rim and spill onto the floor. The egg-white foam stopped dancing atop the waves and began pulling together in a line across the center, seemingly not affected by the water still sloshing from side to side. The foam flattened and spread out, making a wing shape, with streaks of foam forming the feathers.
A seagull flew out of the bowl, almost hitting my face. I drew in a hard breath, threw up my hands and backed away. The bird flew around the room, screaming its raucous call. Diana was gone. She must have left me alone. But her abandonment wasn’t nearly as frightening as the gull screaming and flying in circles around the room.
Then a new movement in the bowl caught my attention. Something else was emerging in the foaming water—a brown-furred seal, first poking its head, and then the top half of its body above the waves. A full-sized seal—impossible that it could come from the bowl, but it was. A seal with human arms, not flippers. And in its human hands, a bow and notched arrow.
The seal took quick aim at the seagull and fired. The arrow pierced the bird’s breast, blood spreading across its breast feathers. The bird and arrow burst into a shower of sparks that fell over Diana and me, without burning us but sizzling as they fell into the water.
I turned and stared at Diana, who’d either returned or had never left the room, my body stiff and my eyes wide.
“What did you see?” she asked. There was no surprise in her voice at any of what had just happened.
I blinked quickly a few times, trying desperately to make sense of what I’d seen. But maybe there was no sense to be made of it. I’d come to the finder woman to learn magic—and magic was what had happened here. Nothing real. Only magic.
My pounding heart settled and I told her what I’d visioned.
She nodded, taking it in. “What do you make of it? Who or what is the seagull to you?”
I knew the answer but could hardly make myself say it. My words came out in a scared whisper. “The sea goblin.”
Diana nodded again. “And the seal with human arms?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, really.” Then a memory came back. “When Mother and I were searching for the gremhahn, we saw seals off the beach, barking at the sea goblin who stood on the shore disguised as a fisherman. Later, a man who gave us a ride told us the seals were our friends. Mother told me the story of the selkies—seals in the sea, humans on land. I think it got all mixed together in my head and came out in the illusion.”
“That could be,” Diana said. “Now, the arrow—what do you make of that?”
I thought about it. Nothing else in the vision had been only what it seemed, so it was likely the arrow represented something, the way the seagull meant the gremhahn. An arrow is a weapon but also a tool. It could bring down an enemy or provide sustenance. I ran through the alphabets in my head, thinking maybe the arrow was a symbol for a word that sounded similar—arrow, barrow, carrow. I got to zarrow and hadn’t found anything likely.
I guessed Diana could tell I was coming up empty. “Look within,” she said.
I tried. Arrow could be Cupid’s arrow. Love would kill the gremhahn? Was that why the sea goblin had cursed me to never marry? Some future husband would bring the gremhahn down if I wed?
I told Diana my thoughts, but she smiled and shook her head.
“You are the arrow, Cassie. You and you alone, though it seems you do have helpers.”
“I will destroy the sea goblin?” I asked, remembering that Mother had said finding Jimmy was up to me. The two things could go together.
“Yes,” she said. “It will come to pass.”
“Will I get Jimmy back?”
“I don’t know. There was nothing about your brother in the vision.”
I licked my lips. “Can we do it again? I need to know about Jimmy.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. Your fate is your fate. It won’t change unless you change the circumstance of your life. Even if you tried to change things, chances are you would still meet your same fate. Details may shift here and there, but you are the arrow and nothing can change that.”
I sank down onto a bentwood chair with a round green cushion, and looked again at the copper bowl. The water was still now, the sand and silt settled once again on the bottom.
“Then I ask you again, please teach me magic.”
Diana took another chair at the table. “No one can teach magic. It is or isn’t in you. If it isn’t, nothing will put it there. If it is—and clearly it is in you or you wouldn’t have seen the vision—you can only look within for your particular branch of magic and do what you can to strengthen it.”
“Is that what you did, what Mother did—strengthen a natural ability to find things?”
“Yes, that’s my gift and hers. Your gift is different. You are vengeance and salvation.”
I swallowed hard and rose to my feet, overwhelmed by all that I’d seen and heard. I needed time alone to think it through.
Diana saw me to the door. I walked home in a mental fog, knowing my way by habit. Vengeance and salvation. I had no idea what to make of that.
*
I thought about what the finder woman had said through most of a second sleepless night. It was Christmas Day. I put on a long-sleeved, grass-green day dress and low-heeled shoes, grabbed a green cloche hat, warm brown lambskin gloves and a black umbrella, just in case. I picked up the box that held the present I’d knitted for Mother, a new scarf and hat, and caught the Red Car.
The day was cool with the promise of rain in the dark clouds. Along with the Hermosa house, Father had left a sizable bequest to me. I could likely go many, many years not worrying about bills, and I thought I might use some of the cash to buy an automobile, so I wouldn’t have to make the long slow ride to Mother’s on the trolley.
Today, though, I was glad for the slow speed of the Red Car and, as we approached Los Angeles, for the thickening traffic that slowed the ride further. My mind whirled in so many directions, I wasn’t sure I could have concentrated enough to drive. The best gift Mother could give me for Christmas was her levelheaded words to help me make sense of what had happened at the finder woman’s house and all that Diana had said.
I got off at the closest stop and walked the rest of the way to the house where I’d grown up.
Mother was continuing to make the house hers, I saw. The stand of queen palm trees Father had planted and which had taken over the front of the house, blocking much of the sunlight from the yard, was gone. Where the palms had stood, behind the sentry line of Spanish firs, the yard was mostly brown dirt with a few strangled blades of grass. I could imagine how it might look in half a year, the lawn shining in the sun, as green as an emerald.
I stood at the front door a moment, wondering if I should knock. The beach house was mine and this house was hers, but did either of them belong to us both anymore? Did I expect Mother to knock if she came to Hermosa to see me, or to just walk in as always?
Don’t be silly, I told myself and turned the knob, half surprised it wasn’t locked, and opened the door. The house smelled of turkey and warm butter, sugar, and ginger—Mother had been baking. I called out just as I used to when I’d come home from school: “Prepare the victory feast. Your valiant daughter has returned!”
The pocket doors to the parlor drew back. Mother said, “And Merry Christmas to you, too.” She threw her arms around me and we hugged for a long, lovely time.
As was tradition, I made the cranberry relish while the turkey Mother had cooked rested enough to be carved. We did our best to be
joyous, but I’m sure Father and Jimmy were on her mind every bit as much as they were on mine.
Over mince pie I said, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Mother raised her eyebrows but waited for me to go on.
“I went to see Diana, the finder woman, yesterday,” I said.
Mother nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“How do you know?” Had my mother added mind-reading abilities to her list of accomplishments?
“She told me about your visit with her, about what you saw in the copper bowl.”
As if on cue, a knock came at the door. Mother gave me a sly smile. “I imagine that’s her now.” She glanced at a tray of cookies set out on the sideboard. “Bring the cookies and tea tray to the parlor, if you would, please.”
When had Mother and Diana become such close friends that they not only spoke on the telephone but the finder woman had been invited to our house—on Christmas? Were they drawn together because they both had finder magic, the way strangers can become friends when they discover they went to the same school, even though years apart, or that they play the same instrument, or root for the same sports team?
Carrying the tea tray with the pot, three cups, and the cookies on it, I followed Mother back into the parlor. She had made more changes here, too. Small ones. Moving a chair from the corner more to the center. Changing the cloth on the end table from the heavy brocade father had favored to a light, floral print. But mostly it looked and felt the same, like coming home.
Diana sat primly on the green velvet-covered horsehair couch, wearing a pleated brown skirt, white blouse, and brown argyle-patterned sweater, since the day was cool but Mother hadn’t turned on the radiator. Mother was wearing trousers—not the ones she’d bought for our quest—and it made me smile. Father hadn’t been gone long and I missed him, but it cheered me to see Mother coming into her own. From what little I’d seen, it didn’t seem that Belinda woman had had any effect on the house at all.
The Girl with Stars in her Hair Page 9