by Terri Farley
That guy—who knew my name even though I didn’t know his—had looked older. Maybe nineteen or twenty.
I slipped on the sandals I’d worn this morning, twirled the skirt, and smiled at my mirrored self. Except—I couldn’t see her. Sunlight streamed in from the seaside window, creating a dazzle on the mirror which made me squint.
I blinked and turned away, still grinning. Who could blame me for feeling glad there’d be no one waiting up for me tonight and for feeling a little bit wild?
Serving tea turned out to be easier than yesterday, and I actually looked at the guests. There were only five of them today.
As I peered up from my tray of sugar, milk, and lemon slices, I decided the woman whose hair was sprayed into a brass-blond helmet must be the one Thelma was saying snide things about yesterday. Mister and Mrs. Heller, that was it,but I wished I could remember what she’d said about them besides the fact that the husband—the balding guy had to be him—seemed nice enough.
I liked the other guests better, though I’m sure Nana didn’t want me prioritizing them. Still, the three English teachers guessed that I was about to be a senior, asked if I liked English, and warmed me with approving smiles when I said literature was my favorite subject.
They sat together on Nana’s couch, though it was a tight fit. They were all a little overweight, but not in a bad way. They looked comfortable and happy. The fluffy blonde and the one with short black hair bracketed the one with faded reddish hair and glasses.
They were joking and helping themselves to chocolate éclairs when I realized they could be Mandi and Jill with me in the middle, about forty years from now. Except I couldn’t see Mandi going on a road trip which ended at a Shakespeare festival.
“Mrs. Cook’s promised to tell us a myth,” said the teacher with the black hair. “I hear she knows dozens.”
“She does,” I said proudly. “She’s my grandmother.”
“What a fortunate girl,” said the bespectacled one.
I agreed and refilled her teacup.
Nana sat in a wing chair in the parlor, playing hostess. Her purple, paisley skirt draped to the floor, covering her walking cast. With her many-ringed fingers and wispy hair, she looked like an elfin queen.
I worked as I listened, refilling teacups and passing trays, always wondering if that boy was nearby.
When Nana settled back in her chair, the parlor grew quiet. Her eyes rested on the Inn’s green lawns, which rolled down to the beach, sending back echoes of the waves. She told the tale as if she’d heard it many times and memorized it.
“Long ago on these shores, there lived a fisherman’s daughter named Larina. Though she was a sunny, healthy girl, everyone knew she was destined to be a spinster.
“Not that she wasn’t kind. She took hot tea to fishermen as they mended nets, huddled against harsh winds. She was friendly, too, tolerating the bellows’ hot breath to keep the blacksmith company as he mended her mother’s cooking pots. And Larina was patient, for she could be found chatting as best she could with the shopkeeper whose never-ending stammer made villagers eager to escape his company.
“But Larina saw most men as brothers and they, in turn, considered her a sister. Still, she counted herself content—until she learned the way of true happiness.
“One night a dream compelled her to walk down to the darkling shore …”
Nana’s voice trailed off, and it was weird. Though I was probably the only one in the room who had reason to shiver at this, something in her voice made two of the teachers rub their arms as if chafing away gooseflesh.
“Making her way to the ocean’s edge wasn’t easy for Larina. Only a crescent moon showed, thin and bright as a slash in the black sky, glowing with the luminous promise of what waited on the other side.
“Against the rearing waves a gentleman appeared. Tall and slim he was, and wet. Although he spoke an unknown language, he gave her to understand he’d been bathing for his own amusement!
“Larina was shocked.” Nana peered at us in mock-disapproval, and everyone laughed.
“No man in Siena Bay plunged into the wayward sea unless his vessel overturned. Then he would struggle back aboard or into shore as soon as he could.
“But this gentleman was different.” Nana paused. Someone sighed, but it wasn’t me. “Though they spoke different languages, each heart greeted the other silently. ‘Hello sweet friend,’ they seemed to say. ’Why have you waited so long to appear?’”
At this, Mrs. Heller shifted, tossed back the last of her tea, and snapped her fingers in my direction.
The fluffy blond English teacher tsked her tongue disapprovingly, while I poured more tea.
Nana ignored us all.
“More full of wonder than she was fear, Larina slipped out to meet her dark gentleman each night. When she imagined her father having him arrested for his intentions, she feared jail would kill him just as surely as stoning. And yet she couldn’t stay away. Just as the waves return to the shore, Larina returned to him, and one night she learned what it was that made him so different.
“She came upon him naked and silvered with moon glow, resting beside a sea lion’s skin, and knew him for a selkie, those cousins of fairy folk that transform from sea lion to human as they please.
“‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She demanded an answer, but he was confused by her outrage. In the way of animals, he knew they were different and knew it did not matter. He also knew, as creatures do, that their time together would last but a season.”
Mrs. Heller started to rise, as if the story had ended, but her husband touched her arm. Giving him a frown, she sat back, crossed one leg over the other, and jiggled her foot as Nana went on.
“Out of faith, Larina forgave her dark gentleman, but she did not understand.
“You may ask if they were lovers or merely companions. Was there a handfast ceremony at the ocean’s edge?” Nana shrugged. “The legend doesn’t say, but one night Larina came to their secret cove despite a terrible storm. Winds tore her hair. Rain ruined her gown. Waves towered red-black above her. Larina waited all alone, trying to forget that selkie’s blood, shed by a human hand, causes an awful storm, and only another human hand can heal the wound and end the storm. She waited, and still he did not come.
“Larina changed in that storm. Always the mildest of girls, she screamed a vow into the tempest. She would help, she would heal him if she could! But the merciless stars just winked at her, and by dawn—” Nana broke off. “Well, as a matter of fact, many said she’d gone mad.
“From that night on, Larina lived alone, called an old maid by some, a sea witch by others, until”—Nana smiled and held up one finger like a candle—“one night seven years later, when the moon peered through a slit in the black sky, Larina went again to the shore, and drowned.”
The teachers sat back suddenly, like they’d suffered whiplash from Nana’s abrupt ending. Except, of course, she wasn’t done.
“At least,” Nana went on in a wheedling tone, “that’s what folks said. Suicide, they decided, because the villagers who went to her cottage found the floors swept, the pantry bare, and the hearth cold. The only thing they could not explain was the wreath of seaweed, braided in lovers’ knots, decorated with shells, lying on Larina’s narrow spinster’s cot.”
Nana dipped her head to the soft applause that followed.
“Oh, well done,” said the teacher with glasses, patting the hand of the fluffy blonde, who looked as if she might cry.
“Beautiful,” said the teacher with the black hair.
“What do you do around here for nightlife?” asked Mrs. Heller.
The flutter of appreciation stopped.
Into the silence, the brassy blonde added, “You know, clubs, dancing, that sort of thing.”
Everyone in the parlor was speechless. Talk about breaking a spell.
Nana wore a vague smile, as if she were still coming out of a trance, and I tried not to be mad, but really, who would stay at the Sea
Horse Inn, two hours in each direction from major cities, if she were looking for nightlife?
Her husband was clearly embarrassed.
“I want to walk on the beach and read,” he said, rubbing a hand over his balding head. “She wants to boogie.”
Mrs. Heller jiggled her china teacup, then set it down with a rattle. Feeling protective of Nana’s china, I made a grab for it.
“I’ll keep that, hon,” she told me, and the smile, which pleated her mahogany skin, told a cautionary tale.
“Of course,” I said, making a mental note to use the sunscreen Mom had made me pack.
By now, Nana had been congratulated by the teachers, who then hustled from the room, leaving an air of disapproval behind.
“For real nightlife, you’ll have to stay for our Midsummer celebration next weekend,” Nana said. “At Mirage Beach and Siena Bay we’ve all grown up celebrating the summer solstice.”
“Sounds kind of pagan and rowdy,” Mr. Heller said.
As he winked at his wife and offered me his empty plate, I realized it was six o’clock. Teatime had long since ended.
“Down in the village, there’ll be a parade, games, and sales in all the shops, of course,” Nana said.
“And up here?” he asked, sitting forward a little.
“We’re more traditional at the Point,” Nana explained. “We have a bonfire the night before and tell more stories.”
The wife rolled her eyes in boredom as I collected dishes to take to the kitchen. I didn’t blame Nana for keeping the best part of Midsummer’s Eve secret.
Of course I hadn’t been to one since I was a little kid, but Midsummer’s Eve was sort of rowdy.
You were required to stay up all night, to build huge, sky-scorching bonfires, and dance yourself silly. After rough competitions, a Summer King and Queen were crowned with flower garlands. As a girl Nana had been Summer Queen three years in a row, and her garland crowns, faded to pale pink and lavender despite some kind of chemical preservative, hung over the fireplace as decorations.
“The solstice,” the husband mused, as his wife shifted with impatience. “What is that exactly?”
“The first day of summer and the longest day of the year,” Nana said. “After the solstice, every day grows shorter, lengthening the nights as the earth turns toward winter.”
That always struck me as unfair. At the very beginning, you shouldn’t start worrying about the end.
Laden with dishes, I whisked back into the kitchen. Thelma had already cleaned up everything, so I surrendered the plates without protest before returning to the parlor once more.
“We can’t stay that long!” The brassy wife was still bickering with her husband as I came back.
“Maybe next year.” Nana’s voice smoothed over the shrillness as Mrs. Heller stalked from the parlor. “In the meantime, if you walk into Siena Bay and visit Village Books, you’ll find a nice collection on local legends, and they’re open until nine.”
Mr. Heller looked after his wife.
“Would you believe she was a 4-H kid raising rabbits when I met her? For the first three years of our marriage, all she wanted was a farm.” He gave Nana a wistful smile. “Do you suppose she changed, or I just didn’t know the real her?”
“That’s hard to say,” Nana began and then something made me interrupt.
“My mom always says she thought she was marrying a lawyer, but he ‘grew up’ to be an author. She tells me I better be sure I fall in love with the man, not the lifestyle.”
“Well, bravo for your sensible mother,” Nana said, and the smile that claimed her face showed me how much she loved us all.
Mr. Heller gave us a salute as he left.
Nana stood and smoothed her purple skirt.
“I didn’t fib about Mirage Point’s festival, exactly,” Nana told me as she closed the pocket doors to the parlor. “Our celebration is for local folks, special because it’s—” As Nana searched for the right word, I still heard the waves breaking outside. “—traditional. Not because T-shirts are marked 20 percent off.”
We both laughed, and I felt a closeness with Nana that I hadn’t felt with anyone for a long time. I couldn’t think how to say it, so I just started back toward the kitchen. Nana touched my arm. “Leave those dishes for Thelma. I have a different chore for you. It’ll only take me a minute to grab my notebook from upstairs.”
Holding a handful of skirt in one hand, gripping the banister with the other, Nana started upstairs. It would take her more than a minute to return, I thought, looking after her. Before finding what she was looking for, Nana would tweak the duvet straight on a bed in an empty guest room, check the potpourri in a shell on a hall table, and chat with anyone she met.
The Inn stood quiet around me.
I had time.
I slid the parlor doors open, slipped inside, and closed them behind me. I crossed the polished wooden floor, the hand-loomed carpet, and stepped through the casement windows. A white cabbage moth trembled in the twilight as I passed through Nana’s garden.
I crossed the lawn diagonally. Instead of strolling down to the beach, I turned left, drawn to the path which would take me across the bluff to Mirage Point.
I wasn’t hypnotized by the sun shimmering in a hot red disk above the ocean. Even though it reminded me of Nana’s scrying mirror, I wasn’t feeling dreamy. I knew exactly where I was going and how long I had to get back.
I was going to the Point.
I walked all the way out this time. I held my skirts aside as I’d just seen Nana do, and stepped over the guard fence. The cliff dropped away to the sea, and breakers pounded at its base.
The setting sun turned the waves wine red, except for one spot where the water lay quiet and petals of foam rocked around it. There, it was deep.
I knew I could make that dive.
And then I felt someone watching. My biology teacher said it’s a feeling left over from primitive times. Sometimes it’s like a vibration across your forehead. Other times it’s like a ribbon trailing across the nape of your neck. He said it helped us survive.
This time it felt like hands on my shoulders. I could have sworn someone stood behind me, so close that breath moved my hair and tickled my ear.
“Gwen!” Nana called from the seawall around her garden. Her voice sounded a little concerned, but of course it would, since I’d stepped over the fence.
I really hadn’t meant for her to see me and couldn’t imagine how she had made it upstairs and down so quickly, until I blinked at the horizon. The setting sun was gone.
“Get a grip,” I told myself, then shook my head and hurried back.
Nana didn’t scold me or demand an explanation. She just motioned me back into the parlor and walked toward the front of the house.
“This is a job you’re truly suited for,” she said, handing me something that looked like a cross between a notebook and a photo album. “It’s my garden journal. A seaside garden isn’t the easiest sort to keep. In summer it’s either baked by the sun or shrouded with salty fog. In winter it’s ripped by gales and lashed with sea spray.”
When Nana paused, I realized I’d never given her garden much thought. It was just a place you passed through on your way to the beach. And yet, while I was sanding the widow’s walk, I’d noticed the Korean students paying it one last visit before they loaded their gear to go.
“Guests often wander the paths,” Nana said, “and they want to know what they’re looking at. I’ve always meant to type up some interpretive signs—a short history and romance of the seaside garden, if you will. Still, I’ve never gotten around to it. So when your mother told me yours was the hand that calligraphed her holiday cards this year, I began thinking you were the one for the job.”
Nana opened the notebook to give me a glimpse of faded lined paper that was written on in what appeared to be Nana’s handwriting. There was also a brand new pack of cards made of really nice paper, like wedding invitations, only they looked sort of like th
ey had a frame, with a place to write inside.
“This is the kind of job I could really get into,” I told her. I’d totally shaken off that dreamy feeling. I couldn’t believe I was getting excited about gardening, but the plants had great names. Saltspray rose, white swan, bridesmaid daisies. “Did you draw these, Nana?”
Sketched in pink, green, and apricot pastels, they’d smeared from being slammed in the notebook. Nana dismissed them with a wave of her hand.
“They’re nothing. The notes are what matter. No rush about it,” Nana said. “Just start with the ones that are in bloom now or will be by the time you leave. I’ve marked every one with a date.”
Nana flipped the notebook closed and presented it to me like a gift.
Behind us a gust of wind sighed through the house, lifting curtains, bringing the smell of fog that was hanging off the coast, waiting for nightfall.
Nana started to turn, then didn’t, as if she wanted to forget the sight of me standing on the other side of the guard fence. If she wasn’t going to bring it up, neither was I, but I knew I was to blame for her worried expression.
She was trying to treat me like an adult, and I was blowing it.
“I should walk back to the cottage and get started on this,” I said.
“Gwendolyn Anne, you’ll do no such thing,” Nana said. I realized we were standing next to the ornate coat tree near the front door, and Nana was draping her shoulders with a crocheted shawl. “I’m famished, and you look absolutely lovely in that little dress. There’s a little farmers’ market in town on Thursday nights. I’m going to treat us both to some street food and show you off.”
Fear came raging back like the wave that had knocked me off my feet that night years ago. Echoes of old gossip screeched in my memory. In Siena Bay there’d be people who remembered.
“Nana, I really don’t feel like it.” I tried to look pitiful and overworked.
“Rubbish,” Nana said. She tossed me a square of silver-and-black silk, another shawl, I guessed. I caught it. “Bring that, and we won’t even have to stop at the cottage.”