“Auntie Verity,” Maren volunteers.
“Intelligent as well as beautiful, so you are.” His laugh is a low rumble.
“Enough of your blather,” Auntie says from behind her beau. “Come now, Ezra, and have tea with me while the children look at the wares.”
He bows to us. “Your most humble servant.” Arm in arm, Scarff and Auntie walk toward the cottage, their footsteps perfectly aligned.
“Come,” O’Neill says.
All of our troubles and disputes vanish as we enter the caravan.
“Be lit,” O’Neill commands as he turns the brass knob on the lantern suspended in the center of the room. An intense golden light floods every corner. I squint until the light fades to a more comfortable glow.
The caravan is magnificent. From hooks and pegs hang glass beads and strings of pearls, pendants of gold and enamelwork, chains of silver, and belts of leather as soft as a kitten’s belly. Spoons carved from wood, plain and sturdy. Fishing lures and lutes, lamps and baskets. Dazzling ornaments and common kitchen knives. Shelves of bottled spices and stoppered glass vials (filled by Auntie and me last spring) holding curatives. At the far end, the curtained bed stands in tapestried glory, its fat feather mattress covered with a crazy quilt of velvet and silks.
As always, O’Neill mocks our wide-eyed amazement. To him, it is simply home and work. To us, it is beautiful and wild and exciting.
“Here,” he says, pulling a richly lacquered chest out from beneath the sumptuous bed. He turns a key and the lid springs open. “We met a prince of the Ottoman Empire last month. He had been visiting a cousin in Philadelphia. He fell in love with the cousin’s kitchen girl. He said she had eyes like stars and skin as fair as goat’s milk. He sold us everything he’d brought from his faraway palaces so that he could buy her a little house beside the sea. His soul, he said, belonged to his bride, and he needed no other treasure but her.”
“Oh! How romantic!” Maren declares.
“Wait until she loses her looks and her cheer after bearing him a dozen rowdy sons. How romantic that will be, sister,” I say.
Maren and I sit on the Persian-carpeted floor and await O’Neill’s presentation. For he is a natural showman, and relishes any opportunity to perform.
He peers into the trunk with a devilish grin, humming what must be a Turkish melody, slowly rifling through the contents. Suddenly, with a flourish, he presents us with a pair of pointy-toed, yellow silk slippers. “Behold! The shoes of Prince Asil, great prince of Anatolia, skilled in music, hunting, and the wooing of ladies both dark and fair! Note the rubies on the toes.”
“Lovely,” Maren says, taking one of the shoes from him. She removes a leather slipper and slips her foot into the prince’s shoe. “What do you think?”
“They match your eyes, my lady,” O’Neill says roguishly.
Maren smacks his arm. “You’ll have yellow eyes if you do not mind yourself. Yellow, purple, black, and blue!”
One by one, O’Neill presents the prince’s treasures. He sets them on the floor around us. We marvel at the copper coffee set, the bejeweled dagger, the brass candleholders, the embroidered robes, the jewelry box with the tiny silver turtle inside.
“Anatolia. I will never see such a place,” Maren says. There is no regret in her words.
“I will take you to Anatolia,” O’Neill says, “when we are twenty and no one can tell us what to do or where to go. I will take you both. We will see London and Paris. We will camp in deserts and on mountaintops, and float upon the Dead Sea waters. We will ride elephants and camels and eat strange dishes and drink strange wines. I will douse you in the perfumes of the Orient, and cover you with silken saris, and pierce your noses with diamonds, and pierce your ears with pearls.”
Maren and I exchange a look.
“Keeping secrets, are you?” O’Neill asks. “From your best friend in the world? Your almost-brother?”
Biting her lip, Maren removes one royal shoe and stretches her foot toward O’Neill. “See for yourself.” She fans her odd toes, showing webbing that belongs on the foot of a frog, not the foot of a young lady.
He grabs her foot. “It is nothing,” he says. “I have seen worse things cured. I once saw a pig-headed man transformed into an ordinary banker. And on a Tuesday, no less.”
“It is far too warm in here,” Maren says. She removes her other shoe and pelts O’Neill in the chest with it. “Last one to the Wishing Pool is a slimy newt!”
In the moment before we chase after Maren, O’Neill grabs my hand. “I will see that she is cured,” he vows. “Trust me, Clara.”
And then we are running through the forest, and once again I am wishing. Wishing that I could trust in O’Neill’s promise. Wishing that he could be the hero of the story of Maren’s life, as he was once the hero of our games of make-believe.
CHAPTER THREE
The bonfire blazes. The visiting village children dance around it, their small feet kicking and stepping to the music of Auntie’s violin. Their parents sit on blankets nearby, or stand beside the long trestle tables, sampling peculiar pastries and miniature star-shaped cakes. An hour ago, Scarff and O’Neill set the tables themselves with brocaded cloths, silver candlesticks, and box after box of sweets and savories pulled from the depths of the caravan.
I slip a mysterious pastry into my mouth, wondering about its origin. Wondering if it will be stale and I will have to swallow it for good manners’ sake. I wondered for nothing. It is delicious. Despite the warmth of the summer evening, each bite cools the palate like snow while pleasing the tongue with curious flavors: lemon and sage, honey and black pepper.
My heart is light and heavy at the same time. Light because of the music and the ninety-nine sparkling lanterns hanging from posts and tree branches, and the laughter of my sister as old Mr. Fig whirls her about. Heavy because tomorrow morning Scarff and O’Neill will hitch Job and January to the wagon and leave our mountain. Heavy because for all of O’Neill’s paging through books, he has found no remedy for Maren . . . and I know he will not, for I have spent many long nights searching those same tomes while Auntie and Maren slept.
O’Neill pulls me to my feet. “Worry-bird,” he teases, “do you not trust me to do as I have sworn?”
In his arms, my heart races. His spicy Christmas scent, the sparkle of his blue eyes—things that have always given me familial comfort—are suddenly unsettling and unfamiliar. Is it the magic of the setting, I wonder, or something else? All I know is that I cannot move and do not want to.
But then he tugs me toward the dancers. “Nothing like a jig to chase one’s cares away,” he says with a wink.
I stumble along behind him. “Spoken like a true Irishman.”
“Or a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, or a Swede.” He laughs. “Whatever I may be.”
And then we are dancing. To me, the dance is as magical as one of O’Neill’s hat tricks, for it makes joy appear out of thin air.
When the moon is over the apple orchard, a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder send the villagers scurrying home.
“Wasn’t that convenient?” I say to O’Neill as he plops to the ground between Maren and me. The firelight reveals his impish grin.
“Am I to blame that your mountain folk do not care for my fireworks? I try so hard to entertain, but alas! Not everyone appreciates my art.”
Maren lays her head on his shoulder, her unbraided hair spilling down his shirtfront like a many-tiered waterfall. “You, O’Neill, are a mischief,” she says fondly.
The look he gives her is full of tenderness. An arrow of jealousy pierces my chest.
“What have we here?” booms Scarff as he and Auntie approach arm in arm. “A rare set of conjoined triplets?” His laughter echoes through the cooling night air, rebounds off the bumpy surface of the moon.
Scarff unfolds two wooden chairs he’d been carrying under his arm. He and Auntie settle into them, their shoulders touching, their wrinkled fingers entwined.
; “Tell us the story,” Maren says. “Of how we were almost triplets. Please?”
“Again?” moans O’Neill. “Must we hear it every time Scarff and I come to visit?”
“Hush, now,” Auntie says. “I know for a fact that we have not heard the tale for three years now. And it is one of my favorites.”
From the pocket of his pinstriped suit coat, Scarff retrieves his wooden pipe. The bowl is carved with the fierce face of a bear. It used to frighten me when I was small. From another pocket, he withdraws a black leather pouch of tobacco. In his habitual manner, Scarff dips the pipe into the pouch, uses two fingers to tamp the tobacco down, and then lights it with a flint. He takes his time, most likely to make Maren squirm.
She squirms. “It will be daylight before you manage to tell the story,” she whines.
Scarff laughs. “Very well. I will begin.” He blows three smoke rings and clears his throat.
Groaning, Maren throws herself back onto the grass.
“Well, Miss Impatient,” Scarff scolds, “if you are going to take a nap, I will not waste my breath with storytelling.”
Auntie pinches him hard enough to elicit an “Ouch!”
“Long, long ago,” he begins, “when you girls were babes in arms, I drove the wagon up to the gates of a beautiful church. It was early November, and I was chilled clear to my bones. A cold snap had come up, you see, so although I was in the south, the weather was terribly disagreeable. The church stood tall against the gray skies like a castle of old. Billows of smoke floated up from the rectory’s chimney, so I thought to myself that perhaps I could find warm refuge there. I had traded goods with priests before for shelter and a hot meal. So I tied my horses to the iron fence. Their names were Frederick and February. A fine pair of horses they were. Frederick was a bay and stood—”
“For goodness’ sake!” Maren says with a huff. “Skip the horse part!”
Scarff chortles and blows more smoke rings, clearly relishing the hassle he is giving Maren. “So, where was I? Oh, yes, the churchyard. I walked in and headed for the rectory, skirting the gravestones out of respect. That’s when I heard the most dreadful wailing. At first I thought I’d disturbed one of the residents of the graveyard, so unearthly was the sound. Despite my goose bumps, I followed the wailing around the side of the church and through a gate into what must have been a most magnificent garden in the spring or summer. Past the leafless rosebushes and blackberry patches, underneath the bare branches of one of the largest apple trees I have ever seen, there knelt a black-robed man. His back was to me, and he was hunched over, and the terrible sound was coming from him.” Scarff leans back and shuts his eyes. “I can see it plain as day, that scene. I still dream of it almost every night.”
Auntie smiles and pats his arm.
“I wondered if I should disturb the man. His grief was so raw, his cries so full of anguish. But I could not leave any creature alone to suffer so, neither man nor beast. ‘Pardon me, Father,’ I said. ‘Can I help you somehow?’ He turned toward me then, his face swollen with weeping, and held out his arms.”
Maren grabs one of my hands and one of O’Neill’s. Her face glows with excitement.
“There, in a willow basket, wrapped in a tangle of rags, lay a baby no bigger than the scrawniest of barn cats. Fast asleep, oblivious to the priest’s carrying-on. ‘Thanks be to God!’ the priest shouted. ‘Thanks to Our Lady and all the saints and angels on high!’ Well, I took a step back. Thought he must be a lunatic—or too fond of the Communion wine or some such thing. ‘You must take the child! It is the will of the Lord!’ he said. I stepped back again. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I am afraid I do not comprehend your meaning.’ The tears rolled down his face like rain down window glass. He said, ‘My brother Seamus is buried beneath this apple tree. He died forty years ago today. That is why I came here this evening. And what did I find but this helpless babe, and him with the same heart-shaped birthmark on his chin as our Seamus had?’ ”
Scarff pauses so that all may turn to look at O’Neill’s chin. O’Neill rolls his eyes, but he is smiling, too.
“‘Take him,’ the priest begged. ‘I am too old for infants, and I would not send a half-dead dog to our county orphanage.’ I could not speak, so aghast I was. Then the child opened his eyes and looked right through me. As if compelled by forces unseen, I opened my arms wide. The priest did not wait one second before shoving the basket into my grasp. Then he kissed my cheeks. ‘Glory be to God,’ he said, shaking like a leaf. ‘Bless you, my son. Bless you through all the ages, forever and ever!’ He smiled from ear to ear. He had but three teeth to his name, I swear. I watched him limp off to the church, and there I was, left holding a baby, of all things. I glanced at the marker in the roots of the apple tree. ‘Seamus O’Neill,’ it said. ‘Rest in Peace.’ I looked at the child and he looked at me. I said, ‘Lad, you surely don’t look like a Seamus to me. So O’Neill it shall be.’ And he reached a little hand up and yanked my beard. Unfortunately, I fell in love with the creature then and there.”
“Dear little baby O’Neill,” Maren teases. “Sweet little beard tugger.” O’Neill nudges her with his shoulder and she collapses in a fit of giggling.
Tapping his pipe upside down against the ground, Scarff continues. “Much as I loved the child, I did not think the life of a roving peddler suitable for him. So when spring came, I traveled to Pennsylvania with a mission. I planned to give him to Verity as a brother for the two girls she’d adopted. He’d have a good home, good food, lots of love, and woods to roam. But O’Neill had other plans. Turns out he was the only baby ever to dislike Verity Amsell in the history of mankind!”
“Go on!” Auntie says, laughing. “He liked me fine. But the boy knew his place, and his place was with you. He cried so loudly every time you left the room that I knew I’d be deaf in a day if you left him with me.”
“So it was. O’Neill chose me and a traveler’s life. And, truly, I would not have had it any other way,” Scarff says with a wistful grin and a fat tear in the corner of his eye.
“He did not want two sisters. That is why he howled so,” I offer.
“True enough,” O’Neill says. “Who could stand having to live in the same house with girls like you?”
I wish you’d stay forever, I think.
I wish that I would not wish so often.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the morning, Scarff and O’Neill are gone.
It is how they always leave, quietly, without good-byes. Without tears or promises to return on a certain day or in a certain month.
They will come back before they go south for the winter, I am sure.
Before breakfast, when I rise alone to feed the chickens, I find a folded scrap of paper in my boot beside the door. “Remember my promise and fret not,” it says. It is signed with a fancy O so full of swirls it reminds me of a tornado. I press the paper to my heart as if it were a love letter.
Is it wrong to feel so happy about a simple note when my sister is on the brink of becoming half fish?
The hens scurry back and forth and cluck with excitement when they see me. I scatter corn for them and watch them peck and scratch. They are happy because their puny brains do not allow for what-ifs or guilt or wishing. But I do not wish to be a chicken any more than I wish to become a stork, because then I would not have a glorious bit of paper signed with a swirling O inside my pocket.
When I return to the cottage, Gretel Goodling is waiting for me on the doorstep, her cheeks rosy from her early-morning hike up the mountain. She shifts her weight from foot to foot with all the impatience one would expect from a thirteen-year-old girl sent on an errand.
“Is your brother ill again?” I ask.
“Yes. Another fever and cough,” she says. “Mama wants me to ask Miss Verity to come down to him. He’s that bad.”
I lead Gretel inside and call for Auntie. While Auntie gathers her medicines, Gretel and I share a pot of tea.
“Have you heard about the traveling show
?” Gretel asks. “Mama says they’ll be selling unreliable medicines but that we can go for the music and such. It’s tonight, in the Pinkneys’ fallow field.”
Maren enters the kitchen yawning and fastening the top button of her blouse with lace-gloved fingers. “Did you say something about a show?”
Gretel repeats the news, her enthusiasm increasing by the minute.
“We must go, too, Clara,” Maren says, now wide awake and matching Gretel’s excitement. “We never get shows here. Well, hardly ever. And don’t say that O’Neill’s antics count, because they do not.”
“I am not interested in seeing silver-tongued salesmen and hearing bawdy songs sung by nearly undressed ladies,” I say. “We can entertain ourselves at home in a more appropriate manner.”
“Well, I’m going,” Maren says. “Unchaperoned, if you will not come with me.” She knows the word unchaperoned makes me cringe. “Auntie, please tell Clara that she must go see the traveling show with me tonight. I might never get another chance, after all.”
“You should go with Maren, Clara.” Auntie covers her basket of herbs and bottles with a clean towel. “Widen your horizons, dear. Dance with the village boys and enjoy your youth.”
“There—it’s settled,” Maren says proudly. “And perhaps O’Neill would like to come. Where is he? Out seeing to his horses?”
“They’ve gone,” I say. “In their usual way.”
“Scarff doesn’t care for a fuss,” Auntie says. “So we won’t pout over it, will we, my girls?”
Maren pouts.
“At least you have the show to look forward to, sister,” I say, even though I am not looking forward to it one bit. I pour a cup of tea and set it before her. “And they will be back before you know it.”
“True enough,” Auntie says. She picks up her basket. “Come along now, Gretel, and we’ll see what’s to be done about your brother.”
O’Neill’s note crinkles inside my pocket as I cross the kitchen to refill the teapot, a secret treasure hidden among the folds of my everyday garment. If I must go to the show, I will carry it with me.
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