He laughs with the sound of a thousand waves crashing into the sands of a thousand beaches. Still, I neither tremble nor back down. “Release her,” I say. “Or your blood shall mingle with these waters.”
With a slap of his tail, the merman bids the sea horse to charge. He raises his trident and in that instant, I swipe at him with my sword.
I miss.
The points of his trident press into my chest. “Silly girl,” he bellows. “Would you exchange your life for her freedom?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “Yes.”
“So be it,” he says. He draws his weapon back and then thrusts it toward my heart.
I awaken with a start and a cry.
Could I ever be as brave as the dream version of myself? I do not believe so.
The kitchen is quiet, save for the crackle of the fire, the arrhythmic clicking of my knitting needles, and the occasional swish of pages being turned by Auntie. Maren dozes in the rocker, and Osbert huddles beside her soaking feet.
Perhaps the foot-deep layer of snow on and about our cottage conceals the sound of Simon Shumsky’s carriage. Perhaps Osbert has fallen into some sort of wyvern hibernation. Regardless, Osbert does not provide his usual warning of unwanted company.
The knock on the door sends him flying to the cellar.
“Oh, my stars,” Auntie says as she gets to her feet. “He’s here. To take our Maren to the dance!”
“We must get rid of him before he sees her!” I say.
The door is thrown open. “Good evening, ladies,” Simon says, stepping into the kitchen. He wears a new coat and hat, and an eager smile. “Is Maren ready?”
Somehow (miracle of miracles!), he does not notice Maren fast asleep under her mound of dampened shawls.
To distract him, I say, “Let me make you a cup of tea. You must be half-frozen.” I take his arm and direct him to a seat at the table.
“Dear heavens,” Auntie says. “I hate to disappoint you, Simon, especially since you came all this way in the cold.”
“But she is better now, isn’t she?” His brow furrows with what I read as worry mixed with frustration.
“No, Simon. She is still unwell. I have done all that I can, but she is not fit to go out in the cold. She is in no way strong enough for dancing,” Auntie says gently but firmly.
I set the tea in front of him. “We should have sent word. We are very sorry. There will be other dances,” I say. Other dances for him, but not for Maren.
Auntie pulls a chair close to him. “Simon, may I speak plainly?”
He nods and drinks down his tea as though it is medicine.
“Maren has a condition of which she cannot be cured. I know that you love her, but I must tell you that she can never marry any man,” Auntie says in her most soothing voice.
Fat tears stand at the edges of Simon’s eyes. “Never?”
“What is worse, Simon, is that I must ask you not to visit again. She will become rather disfigured, and I know it would distress her to have you see her in such a state.”
One great sob escapes Simon before he regains his composure. “Forgive me,” he says.
“There is nothing to forgive,” I say. “Why should you ask forgiveness for being devoted to Maren? For loving her?”
“I am sorry,” he says. He stands and walks toward the door like a sleepwalker. He does not say good-bye and forgets to close the door behind him.
Osbert creeps up from the cellar. Auntie shuts the door and sighs. “The poor man. His heart is broken.”
“Was that true love, Auntie?” I pick up Simon’s empty cup.
“Indeed,” she says.
I wish . . .
I do not know what I wish.
CHAPTER NINE
A peculiar change in the weather melts all the snow on New Year’s Day and brings another pair of visitors to our cottage.
With a basket containing three eggs (and we are lucky the winter-hating chickens produced that many), I walk the gravel path between the henhouse and the cottage. Presently, I hear the wheels of an approaching wagon, but, alas, the music of odd chimes and banging pots does not accompany it. It is the wagon belonging to Peterman and Sons, the village’s general store.
Mr. Peterman, a spry gentleman on the far side of sixty, jumps down from the seat as nimbly as a cat. His plump son Henry Donald heaves himself to the frozen ground with a thud.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I say. “What brings you up the mountain?”
“Oh, it is good to see you, Miss Clara,” Mr. Peterman says, grinning, doffing his hat. “Nothing like a pretty girl to warm a man’s chilled heart and soul.”
“Hullo, Miss Clara,” Henry Donald says. His chapped cheeks redden further as he stares at his boots, the image of a schoolboy caught with a love letter. The poor fellow is forty years old and as shy as a fawn.
“There you are!” Auntie calls from the doorway. “Have you brought my special order?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Peterman replies. “It arrived at the store a week ago, but with the weather being such as it was, we couldn’t get up here till now.”
Auntie and I watch as the two men place planks from the wagon bed to the ground to form a ramp. At Henry Donald’s count of three, they lift a large wooden crate and carry it off the wagon.
“Where do you want it, Mrs. Amsell?” Mr. Peterman asks as he walks backward toward the cottage.
“Well, for now you can put it in the girls’ room,” Auntie says. She opens the door wide and steps aside. “Straight through there,” she says. “The room on the left just after the grandfather clock.”
With groans and scrapings of doorways, the Petermans reach their destination. I follow them, wondering what the box might hold—and where my sister is hiding.
Mr. Peterman takes a hammer from his belt and uses its claw end to pry off the top of the crate, and then to pry apart the sides. The wood falls away to reveal a six-foot-long metal tub, dark silver inside and painted pine-green on the outside.
“That’s a beauty,” Mr. Peterman says, patting the edge. “If my wife were to catch sight of it, she’d take a notion to get one for herself.”
“It is quite pretty,” Auntie says. “And it should do our Maren a world of good. She has troubles with her legs and feet, you see, and nothing makes her feel better than a good soak. Now come into the kitchen and have a nice hot cup of tea and some raisin cake before you go.”
After Auntie ushers Mr. Peterman and Henry Donald into the kitchen, I climb into the tub. Imagine! A bathtub! We have never had such a luxury, but have never wanted it, either. Our warm weather bathing has always consisted of joyful splashing in the creek, and in wintertime we squeeze ourselves into the washtub once a week. I imagine steaming water swirling about me, the scent of Auntie’s good lavender soap . . . and then I remember what Auntie said about Maren and her “troubles.” And I realize that this tub is not for baths. It will be Maren’s home, like a fishbowl for a half-fish girl.
Leaving the tub behind, and not liking it half so much as I had at first, I tiptoe across the hall to Auntie’s tiny bedroom. “There you are,” I say to Maren. She is lying on Auntie’s bed, wrapped in wet towels. Her eyes are half-closed. From the end of the towels protrudes a single silver-green fin. My stomach lurches. Without asking permission, I peel back the towels to look at what should be two feet and two legs.
“Oh, Maren,” I sigh. “My poor sister.” Tears fall from my eyes and splatter upon her fused-together legs, a single limb embellished with rows of small, glassy scales, like the ones that first appeared on her sides last summer.
“Don’t cry, Clara,” she whispers. Her voice is the swish of sea foam on sand.
“Your poor legs.” I stroke what used to be her pale calf.
“They hurt less now that they are one.”
I shake my head. I have no words. Carefully, I climb onto the bed and nestle beside her, my head on her damp shoulder. And silently I weep for her loss. For my loss of her.
“If only I was already a stork, if only I had wings to carry me, I would fly until I found a cure for you. I would fly until my last feather dropped to the earth.”
“I know, sister. Hush, now. Can’t you hear the sea birds’ wings above us? Can you not hear the sailors singing as they unfurl their great sails? Can you not hear the low bellows of the whales speaking to their children in the deepest deep?”
No, I think. I hear nothing but the sound of my heart breaking into a million tiny pieces, each smaller than a single grain of sand.
Winter is long. Long, cold, dark, and tiresome. Not like our former winters, when we played checkers and knucklebones, made up two-person plays for Auntie’s amusement, sang songs beside the fire, and attempted to learn French and lacemaking (both the lacemaking and the French studies proved abysmal failures). Not like the evenings when we planned aloud our futures, futures that more often than not involved marrying handsome foreigners and living in fine houses built side by side, our tribes of happy children frolicking in our shared gardens. Not like the evenings when Auntie would tell us fairy stories and stories of her youth—which sometimes seemed to overlap and entwine. Those were cozy, lovely, snug times in our cottage home.
These winter months, Maren reclines in the bathtub, day and night. She spends hours smoothing her lovely hair with the tortoiseshell comb O’Neill gave her for her sixteenth birthday. Day by day, her hair changes, growing longer and more coppery, speckled with glittery flecks. It cascades in waves over her shoulders and floats on the surface of the water like tendrils of an exotic vine. Auntie wraps Maren from underarms to waist in lengths of bright cotton “for modesty’s sake,” for the mermaid girl is now fully fish from the waist down and has no use for dresses or skirts.
“Is there nothing more you can do?” I ask Auntie for the thousandth time as we carry empty buckets back to the kitchen. “Is there no possible way to make her human again?” The foolish questions spill from my mouth although I know full well what Auntie will say: Maren never was, and never will be, truly human. Nevertheless, I ask—because my heart and mind refuse to quit quarreling. Because love and truth are in a tangle that I wish to unravel.
“No, my girl.” Auntie shakes her head sadly. “And I fear that she will soon sicken. Mermaids belong in the ocean, not the bath. If only Scarff were here to help us. Surely he could find a way to take her to her kind. But, alas, it is February, and he never comes before mid-March.”
I bite my lower lip. If she had but an inkling of Scarff’s condition, she might truly despair. “We must try to keep her well until he comes, then.”
“Yes. I only hope that we are not causing her undue pain by giving her tisanes and potions to slow the change. Sometimes it is unwise to tamper with the inevitable.”
“I do not think she has much pain anymore. Whenever I catch her crying, she says it is only because she is homesick for the sea.”
We set the buckets down and sit at the kitchen table.
“If I could leave this place . . .” Auntie says, her eyes awash with regret. “But I cannot.”
“Perhaps I should try to take her,” I say, well aware that Auntie has not set foot off the mountain since long before my birth. Indeed, the thought makes my stomach clench with fear, but I speak on. “The worst of winter is likely past, and the roads are clear enough for the wagon. Zedekiah is small, but he could manage to pull Maren and me. I could dress like a boy to be safe. And when O’Neill arrives, you could send him to join us.” My voice sounds foreign to me, my words like someone else’s.
Auntie wraps her wrinkled fingers about my wrist. “You do not have to prove your love for Maren to me, my dear. Nor to her. Let us wait a little longer for Scarff and O’Neill. If they do not appear by March, I will consider your offer.” She smiles faintly, whether to reassure herself or me, I cannot tell.
I attempt a smile of my own—for Auntie’s sake alone. “I know you have done everything you could for Maren, Auntie. I only want to be able to say the same for myself.”
She neither agrees nor disagrees, just pats my shoulder. “I will make tea,” she says. “And we will cling to what hope we have.”
The days are a blur of repetition. I read to Maren. I sing to her. She smiles wistfully when I recount our childhood adventures, especially ones involving the mischief O’Neill always got us into. While she naps, I clasp her damp hand and daydream of happier times.
I admit that I daydream of O’Neill more than any other subject. Perhaps more than I should. But thoughts of him shore up my heart with moments of much-needed joy. I think perhaps I love him more each day. Is that how true love works? I will not ask Auntie.
Every few hours, I scoop buckets of cooled water from the tub and refill it with water from the kettles Auntie heats continually on the woodstove. I add handfuls of coarse salt. When people come up from the village in need of remedies, Auntie closes the bedroom door firmly, with a discreet turning of key in lock, saying that Maren is “not her usual self.” Auntie always tells the truth.
One afternoon, while Auntie is filling bottles of cough elixir in the kitchen, Maren naps, and I am drowsing over Robinson Crusoe, a tapping at our bedroom window startles me. Just the wind, I think. I begin to reread page thirty-seven for what must be the thirty-seventh time. And then it happens again. Turning my head, I see a dark shape outside the frost-starred pane.
After setting the book on the mattress, I tiptoe to the window. The tapping is pecking, I realize as I discern the outline of a bird. As soon as I open the window, the bird swoops into the room, accompanied by a bone-chilling blast of wind. With all my strength, I push the pane back into place and turn the latch.
Awakened by the commotion, Maren watches the raven perch on the edge of the tub and bow its head in salute. She applauds and laughs in tiny gasps. I have not seen her so delighted since her last autumn’s swim in the Wishing Pool.
“Kraa,” calls the raven, shaking one leg in my direction. Tied to the leg with a red string is a piece of brown paper.
“What have you here?” I say to the bird as I work to undo the complicated knot. “Sorry, Mr. Raven. I’m doing my best.” Finally, the string gives way and the paper slips to the floor.
“A message?” Maren asks in her soft, ocean-breeze voice.
“We shall see.” I retrieve the paper and it unfolds itself in the palm of my hand like an enchanted flower. I recognize the handwriting immediately and my heart rejoices. “It is from O’Neill!”
Maren claps her hands, sending water drops flying onto the raven and me. “Read it,” she mouths. “Out loud.”
“Of course,” I reply. “The message says . . . oh, my! Such small print!” I bring the paper closer to my face and angle it to catch the firelight. “There,” I say, and begin.
Dear Clara, Maren, and Verity,
I present to you the good raven Pilsner. He is a gift from our gypsy friends, a bird of extraordinary talent. He brings to you our fondest greetings and our news. And our news is this: Scarff is much improved, and Job and January in fine fettle. We leave here very soon, and hope to be with you by first of March. We beseech you, dear ladies, to keep well until we meet again. And ever after, of course.
Yours faithfully,
O’Neill, and Scarff also
Postscript: Pilsner has a great fondness for cheese, the sharper the better.
With a contented smile and a wriggle of her mermaid tail, Maren sinks a bit lower into the water. Pilsner hops along the edge of the tub until he reaches the point closest to the fireplace. He ruffles his feathers and closes his eyes, his task well done.
O’Neill is coming, my heart sings. In two short weeks, he will be here with us. In spite of Auntie’s predictions of Maren’s fate, I dare to hope that he might rescue us from our loss of her yet, that he might bring a charm or a potion or something that will make her fully human again
. That he will be the hero who can change this tale of woe into a happily-ever-after story.
Perhaps I am a fool.
No, I know I am a fool. Why else would I keep wishing for a way for Maren to become a girl again when Auntie’s wise words echo in my head a hundred times each day: “There is no cure for being who you truly are.”
Why else would I wish something for my sister that she does not wish for herself?
Maren flicks her tail and droplets of water fly into my face. Her eyes twinkle with mischief. “You look far too glum for having read such good news,” she whispers. She flings another fin-full of water my direction and drenches my dress.
I grab the pitcher from the washstand and empty it over Maren’s head.
She pushes wet strands of hair away from her eyes and laughs, a sound like little waves lapping at pebbles. “That was nice,” she says. “Lovely.”
She extends a hand and I take it. For a moment we are nothing but the sisters we have been for seventeen years.
Without warning, she yanks hard, pulling me into the tub with her. We laugh ourselves breathless, and then lie still. She holds me in her arms and I do not struggle. The water is warm and my sister’s embrace is a rare and sweet thing.
“I wish you were a mermaid,” Maren whispers.
I close my eyes and try to think of how to answer her, but words fail me.
CHAPTER TEN
Pilsner follows Auntie about like a winged, two-legged puppy. He is utterly devoted to her, as she was to him after a mere hour of acquaintance. She feeds him bits of our best cheese, morsels of apples and pears, and wee griddle cakes studded with sunflower seeds and raisins—all arranged prettily on a blue-flowered saucer. At night, he perches on her bedpost like a black-plumed guardian angel.
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