This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Carrie Anne Noble
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
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ISBN-13: 9781477820889
ISBN-10: 1477820884
Cover design by M.S. Corley
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912866
For my sister Kate—safe in the arms of her true Father but missed every day.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Llanfair Mountain, Pennsylvania
1870
Wishing gets you nothing.
These words are old wounds carved into the trunk of an ancient tree. Above the vandal’s warning, the tree stretches evergreen limbs across the glassy-surfaced Wishing Pool. Below, its dark roots twist and trail into the water.
Do trees make wishes? I do not think so.
But I am wishing.
I wish that my sister would come out of the water. I can see her resting on the perfect, round pebbles at the bottom of the pool, the ones tossed in by visitors over hundreds of years, the ones said to be required by the pool sprite as payment. One perfect pebble for each wish. Such pebbles are rare in the world—as rare as magic itself.
Bubbles rise from Maren’s mouth, each one slowly drifting to the surface before popping. Her eyes are closed, her body is as still as a corpse. Little gray fishes nibble at the fabric of her floating petticoat. As she dreams, her webbed toes twitch and a smile spreads across her face.
She never looks so happy on the land.
“Come out,” I say, knowing she will not—even if she does hear me. She never obeys me.
Behind me, twigs crack and leaves rustle. I turn to see our wyvern lifting one foot and then the other, fussing at the moss and sticks between his birdlike toes. His blue scales, pale as a summer sky on his belly and dark as midnight on his back, catch the dim light like curved slices of stained glass. He nods his dragonny head and snorts. Auntie has sent him to bring us home for supper, no doubt.
“Good luck, Osbert darling,” I say. “She’s only been in for an hour.”
Osbert spreads his wings wide and dives nosefirst into the pool with barely a splash. When he reappears, he brings Maren with him, his sharp teeth clutching the back of her camisole, like an enormous mother dog carrying a naughty puppy by the nape of its neck. When he releases her, she crumples onto the muddy shore. Osbert tickles her neck with his barbed tail and snorts encouragement over her motionless body.
Finally, she awakens with a gasp, sits up, and swats at the watchful wyvern. “Go home, you beast!”
Osbert’s ears flatten and he skulks away, whining.
“He thinks he saved your life,” I say. “You could be kinder to him.”
She does not speak again until we are halfway home, at the place where the forest and meadow meet. She plucks a cornflower from its stalk and says quietly, “Someday I will stay in the water. Someday I won’t come out.”
My heart sinks, down, down. I can think of no reply.
She tosses the flower away and says, “Will you visit me, Clara, when I live in the sea with my mermaid sisters? Will you come in a boat and bring me cherries from Auntie’s tree? Will you come and sing our songs? Will you bring O’Neill?”
“What about Osbert?”
“You may leave the silly wyvern at home. But you must promise to come.” She reaches for my hand. Her webbed fingers are still dripping with Wishing Pool water.
They are more webbed than they were last summer.
I stare at them, my sister’s strange fingers. Until our sixteenth birthday, she had hands like mine. Same size, same shape, same chipped nails stained with tree sap or mud, ink or dyes. Twin hands, although we are not of the same blood. But now, her hands are changing.
She is changing.
I am losing her. I wish I would not.
But wishing gets you nothing.
With a long match, Auntie lights the three fat, yellow candles in the center of the oaken kitchen table. The scent of beeswax mingles with the scents of vegetable stew and fresh bread. She waves the match in the air like a magic wand and its flame transforms into a puff of white smoke. The smoke curls and stretches into a halo around Auntie’s gray hair.
“Come and sit here, Maren,” Auntie says.
Arms crossed, Maren plods to the chair. She tosses her head and her honey-colored curls bounce about her slim shoulders. She casts a scowl my way to let me know that she knows I told on her.
Auntie takes Maren’s pale hands in her plump, wrinkled ones, turns them this way and that, then holds them close to the candles. And she sighs.
“Now I know why you’ve taken to wearing gloves of late,” Auntie says.
Maren’s cheeks redden and she stares at the tablecloth.
“I should have expected the change to come quickly once you turned sixteen. I hope you will forgive an old woman for not being a better mother. For not better preparing you for what’s to come. Now, is there anything else you should show me, Maren?” Auntie asks, releasing her hands. She lifts Maren’s chin so that she must meet her gaze. “The truth, my dear.”
A few seconds pass before Maren pulls her bodice away from the waistband of her skirt. She clutches the fabric so that her side is exposed.
“My, my,” Auntie mutters.
Beneath a layer of alabaster skin I see rows of pale-green scales, starting just at the dainty curve of Maren’s waist. Delicate scales, small and silver-edged.
I am on my feet before I know it. I reach out and touch my sister’s side, feeling the ridges. They are real, not a trick of the light as I’d hoped. I have kept my worries about Maren to myself for too long.
“Auntie?” I whisper. “Can you cure her? Should I fetch the remedy book?” Auntie is famous among the folk of the mountain for the medicines she concocts from our herb gardens and the bounty of the forest.
“No, child.” Auntie’s voice is gentle but firm. “You know I cannot. There is no cure for being who you truly are.”
“But, Auntie . . .” I cannot find words to form the hundred questions swirling in my head, my heart.
“We’ve been pretending,” Auntie says. “Pretending that your sister’s transformation w
as something yet to come, instead of something that has always been happening, bit by bit. But you can’t erase a thing by not acknowledging it.”
Auntie places one hand on Maren’s shoulder and the other on mine. “Your lives are wonders, my girls. They will be wonders from start to finish. Do you not remember the story of how you came to me?”
“The seashell and the stork. You tell us every birthday,” Maren volunteers. Her smile is sweet and strange at the same time. Beautiful and eerie.
“And can I lie?” Auntie asks.
“Never,” Maren and I say in unison, knowing Auntie’s part-faerie blood keeps her from speaking falsely.
Auntie smoothes her flowered apron before perching her ample bottom on her favorite wooden stool. “Shall I tell you again?”
“Oh, yes!” Maren says, her eyes sparkling with delight.
I nod. Perhaps, if I pay close attention to the story, the weight of my dread over Maren’s condition will lessen—at least for a little while.
Placing her folded hands in her lap, Auntie begins.
“It was October, of course. Both of you came to me in October. The winds were fierce one night, rattling the windows and howling down the chimney like unhappy ghosts. Rain pelted the roof like rocks thrown by a family of giants. Osbert was in a state, moaning and pacing in front of the parlor fireplace. He kept tripping over my knitting basket and getting tangled in my good wool yarn. I was just about to banish him to the cellar when a knocking started at the kitchen door. I left Osbert in his tangle—a good place for him, as it kept him restrained so he couldn’t scare the visitor. But when I opened the door, not a soul was there. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ I called. ‘You’re welcome to come in for a cup of tea! Nasty night this is!’ But no one answered. I was just about to shut the door when it caught my eye: a great conch shell just lying there on the path like the tide had gone out without it. Never mind that no tide ever touches Llanfair Mountain. That seashell was as big as my good soup pot. I’d never seen the like! Being partial to seashells, I brought it inside and set it on this very table to admire it. It was wet with rain, so I used the hem of my apron to polish it dry. And when I tipped it, a tiny bundle rolled out onto the table—a little blanket woven of seaweed with the smallest face I’d ever seen peeking out. Here was a babe just as pink and white as the inside of the conch. She wore a little scallop shell on her head as a bonnet. That child was you, Maren.”
“I came from the sea, and to the sea I must return,” Maren says, as nonchalantly as one might say, “Two plus two equals four.”
“Indeed,” Auntie says. “Did I ever tell you otherwise?”
“Never,” Maren says, looking quite pleased. “Now, tell us about Clara.” Maren pours tea into her mug and adds two teaspoons of salt, as is her habit. No one craves salt like our Maren.
“Well, it wasn’t but three days later. I’d just put Maren in her cradle for a nap. I went to the window to check the weather because I’d hung my best quilt out to air and the red-sky morning had promised rain. That’s when I saw him. I stood stock-still, and I watched him come closer and closer. The clouds slid a thick veil over the sun, and in the dimness his eyes shone like two bits of polished coal. He was carrying a cloth-covered bundle like it was the most precious thing in the world. I ran out to meet him, and he placed the gift in my arms.”
“Beware of storks bearing gifts,” Maren says, poking me. I slap her arm in reply.
Auntie chuckles. “Let me finish, girls! As I was saying, I took that bundle in my arms, and folded back the edge of the cloth to find another wee babe. Fast asleep you were, your black lashes lying against your cheeks like miniature raven’s wings. ‘A sister for Maren,’ I said. When I looked up to thank him, he was gone.”
“Who? Who was the one who brought me?” I am desperate for a comforting answer. “Was it my true father?” She has never said so before, but perhaps today she might tell me more.
“No, not your father, dear. A stork brought you, Clara mine. You know this. The most beautiful stork I’d ever seen.”
Raised with just enough magic to unquestioningly assume that someday I would become a stork, I had never before found the story particularly disturbing. But on this day, with the evidence of Maren’s transformation before my eyes and beneath my fingertips, I give way to panic. Trembling, I ask what I have not until now. “Auntie, are you saying that one day I’ll sprout wings like Maren is sprouting scales?”
“I said nothing of the kind, Clara my dear.” Auntie lovingly caresses the top of my head. “You worry too much. Worrying gets you nothing.”
“Like wishing,” I say. I slump in my chair and close my eyes.
“What I wish right now is that someone would see to the hens,” Auntie says. The discussion is clearly over. “Go on, Clara—and you may fetch some firewood, Maren.”
“Yes, Auntie,” we say together, like twins. We catch one another’s eyes. In Maren’s, I can see the green-blue of the ocean. A tide of sorrow rushes over my heart.
The ocean is so very far away.
How will I live without my sister? She is the strong one, the outgoing one, the shiny-as-a-new-coin one. The one the village boys smile at, the one who charms extra pennies from the shrewdest of housewives when we sell our vegetables in the square.
What am I without her?
Just a girl left by a stork.
CHAPTER TWO
Osbert races back and forth in front of the cottage, shrieking and galloping like a crazed, two-legged miniature pony. His unruly pointed tail knocks the heads off the black-eyed Susans and tears up the grass by its roots.
“Osbert, hush,” I say. “Go inside, you beast!” I do not know what has provoked him to act so wildly. It could be anything from a trespassing chipmunk to an approaching villager. And if it is the latter, he would do well to hide himself. Few people believe dragons still exist—especially not the practical folk of Llanfair Mountain. It is better for us all if his presence remains a secret.
When I hear the clanging, I know why Osbert is in such a state. Scarff and O’Neill are coming, and Osbert loves no one better, not even Auntie, who raised him from an egg.
Pots and pans bump and bang together as they swing from hooks under the eaves of the brightly painted house-wagon, above the sign that reads “Scarff and Brady, Merchants.” Funny wind chimes made of old spoons and knives, chimes crafted from bits of pottery and sea glass, and chimes created from pieces of copper pipe and tin soldiers add their notes to the music of the caravan’s approach. This symphony lifts my heart like no other, for it means the arrival of beloved friends.
Auntie steps out of the cottage, a wide smile on her round face. The unmistakable smile of a woman in love. For as old as they might be now, my dear Auntie Verity and Ezra Scarff have been sweethearts (according to Auntie) since her hair was chestnut-brown and his beard was the color of dandelions.
From his seat behind his faithful horses, Job and January, Scarff waves with both hands. Before the caravan stops, a young man leaps out its back door, turns a somersault in the air, and lands squarely on two green-shoed feet.
“O’Neill!” Maren shouts, in a most unladylike fashion, from across the garden. To reinforce her lack of manners, she runs to him and embraces him with such vigor that they both stumble and fall into the dusty road.
I blush in embarrassment for my sister. She would not consider being embarrassed for herself.
And then I pick up my skirts and hurry to meet O’Neill. “You’ve grown taller,” I say as he regains his footing and brushes the dirt from his tan trousers and brightly embroidered vest.
“Scarff tells me that he absolutely will not buy me another pair of trousers till next spring, even if they’re at my knees come New Year’s Day,” the blond young man says, laughing. He embraces me before I can object. Not that I would have, truly. He smells of spices and strong soap, like Christmas morning come early. “There now,” he says. “Now I am made welcome.”
Osbert leaps the garden gate and tackles
O’Neill, licking his face with a forked and silvery tongue.
“Ha!” Maren says. “Now you are made welcome, indeed!” She puts a hand over her mouth and giggles. The webbing between her fingers extends almost to her knuckles, a pale, translucent green.
“Osbert! Get off me, you behemoth!” O’Neill does not laugh with Maren. His eyes are fixed on her affected hand.
Noticing, Maren slips her hands into the pockets of her skirt. “What are you staring at, peddler boy?” Her teasing is accompanied by the batting of eyelashes, a blatant attempt to distract O’Neill from what he has seen.
With a scowl, O’Neill pushes Osbert aside—and it is no small feat to move an agitated hundred-pound wyvern. He stands up, filthy and frowning. “Show me your hands, Maren.”
“No.” Her lower lip protrudes in an unusually charming pout.
He grabs at her arm and tries to pull her hand from its hiding place. She lets out a shriek.
“What is all this?” a voice booms, silencing everything, right down to the last bird in the hedges. Scarff approaches like a slow-moving thundercloud, his typically jolly expression absent from his bushy-bearded face. “O’Neill! Have I brought you up to accost young ladies and thereby cause them to rent the air with tones befitting a tribe of banshees?”
“Not at all, sir.” O’Neill steps away from Maren and stands as straight and solemn as a soldier.
Scarff taps O’Neill’s elbow with his ebony walking stick. “What have you to say to the lady?”
“I beg your pardon, Maren,” O’Neill says crisply.
“Now, boy, since you are remembering your manners, perhaps you could show the ladies our recent acquisitions. The Turkish collection would certainly spark their interest.” Finally, a smile blooms between Scarff’s fluffy mustache and beard. “How we have missed you, dearest girls!” He lays a hand on one of my cheeks and one of Maren’s and sighs like a king over his treasure hoard. “In all my days, in all this wide world, never have I seen such lovely girls. Except for one.”
The Mermaid's Sister Page 1