There, I tell myself. I have examined the evidence and found good reason to declare that I will not become a stork.
Then again, as Auntie has said, what I choose to believe does not change what is true.
I sigh with exasperation and roll onto what used to be Maren’s side of the bed.
Through the window, the moon shines serenely. Its position in the sky tells me that dawn is many hours away. And so I count the stars, one by one, until somehow, I drift off to sleep again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A red sunrise stains the bedroom’s lace curtains pink. I dress quickly, anxious to check on Maren. She is my first thought each day, even before I open my eyes. I do not think that I will ever grow accustomed to her sleeping in another room. Or another realm, for that matter.
So I go to her. And there, curled up beside the bathtub in a plaid blanket, is O’Neill. His hair sticks up like a field of windblown hay and he is snoring almost as loudly as Osbert, but to me he is beautiful.
I pinch my arm hard, punishing myself for my continued foolishness, for feeling so unsisterly toward my almost-brother. For being stupid enough to think he could ever choose me over Maren. My brown hair and eyes and regular features are perfectly unremarkable. She was always the pretty and charming one, and now in her mermaid state, she is glorious beyond words. What man could resist? Indeed, aren’t mermaids supposed to be irresistible, capable of luring sailors to their deaths?
On my way to the stove, I bump into a chair. Its legs squeal as they scrape against the floor.
“Good morning,” O’Neill says, his voice thick with sleep. “You are up with the chickens.”
“Too cold in the barn?” Bitterness coats my words.
“Zedekiah was hogging the blankets. Are you angry with me? Was it terribly improper for me to sleep in the house?”
“Of course it was,” I blurt. “And lying beside my sister! Just because she is a mermaid does not mean she should be treated like a harlot.” I keep my face toward the window.
“I’m truly sorry,” he says. “I did not think of that.”
I let my emotions simmer for a moment. And then I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, too,” I say gently. “I should not have spoken to you like that.”
“Friends?” he says. He is standing behind me now. The spicy Christmas scent of him still makes me woozy, no matter how I fight it.
“Of course,” I say, pasting a smile on my face and turning around. “You are my almost-brother, after all.”
Water whooshes and splashes against the inside of the tub as Maren stirs, attracting all our attention to the mermaid-girl.
O’Neill runs a hand through his hair, his habit when perplexed or troubled. He motions for me to follow him across the room, where Maren may not hear our whispers. “She is smaller than she was yesterday. I’m sure of it,” he says.
I nod. “Every day, by fractions.”
“What will become of her?”
“I think she must be taken to the ocean, or she will shrink away to nothing. She will disappear.”
“We must take her, then.” His eyes meet mine. “You and I must take her to the ocean. Scarff is not well enough, no matter what he might say. He needs to stay here with Auntie and her potions and recover his strength.”
I know then, without a doubt, that he is as brave as the heroic O’Neill of my daydreams, braver than I could ever hope to be myself. “I will go with you,” I say. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, I think. And then I look at the mermaid across the room. “I would do anything to save my sister.”
“As would I,” he says. He takes both my hands and squeezes them tightly. “We will make the journey together, and once there we will find a way to save her, Clara. Surely the merfolk can tell us how to release her from whatever enchantment has stolen her humanity.”
The mermaid slaps her tail against the water. She points and gestures demandingly.
“Have patience, sister dear. I was just getting to that,” I reply. “Fetch the buckets, O’Neill. Her highness requires fresh, warm water.”
He bows low, with a flourish of his hand. “Queen Maren, your subjects shall obey.”
She peers into O’Neill’s face worshipfully as he scoops the old water from the tub to make room for the new. He meets her gaze and endows her with one of his mischievous, crooked grins before dousing her with the bucket’s contents. She giggles (sea foam rolling over sand) and grabs his wrist and pulls. Only narrowly does he escape tumbling into the tub.
Maren’s full-on laughter is a bubbling, subaquatic spring. Everything about her glistens: her skin, her copper-gold hair, the lustrous scales of her perfect tail. Even her eyes gleam. She is happy.
My sister, Maren, is happy as a mermaid. And she is happier still with O’Neill at her side. She has not shed a single pearl tear since his return to the mountain.
The knowledge stabs me like a knife. She is happy, and I must let her go. I realize that I must stop trying to make her into the girl she was, now that she is the mermaid she was born to be. As Auntie has said, we must be who we truly are.
The knife plunges deeper as I realize how completely Maren loves O’Neill. Nothing but love could make a person—or a mermaid—glow in such a way. It is the most beautiful and terrible thing I have ever beheld. Beautiful, as all true love is. Terrible, because the thing I feel for O’Neill is paltry, dull, and silly in comparison.
From this moment on, I swear to banish my unsisterly feelings for O’Neill. It is a hollow promise I make to myself, one that I fear I shall break a thousand times before learning how to keep it.
I will do my best to let go of both of them: the mermaid and her true love. They will be who they must be. Who am I to interfere with that?
I pity him, truly I do. His time with her is short. For what place could there be in the ocean for a human peddler boy—other than as food for a shark. Heaven forbid such a thing!
O’Neill nudges me. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I lie. He must arrive at his moment of truth and surrender on his own. I have known him since we were infants, and I know he would not accept such a painful truth from me. His bright, unquenchable hopefulness is one of the things that makes him who he is. One of the things that makes me—made me—love him. Only brutal experience and unchangeable, visible facts could ever make him give up on making Maren human again.
When Maren reaches her ocean home and leaves him on the shore, what will become of him?
A spring snowstorm shuts us all inside the cozy cottage. The fire blazes as the wind howls and O’Neill sings a naughty sea chantey that makes even our mermaid blush.
“Kraa,” says Pilsner, shaking his head in what I take to be approval of the unsavory lyrics. The impish bird perches at the foot of Maren’s tub and preens his blue-black plumage.
“Enough of the wholesome entertainment,” Scarff says, setting his pennywhistle aside and scratching Osbert behind the ears. “I owe you children the rest of the tale I began a few days ago.”
We pull our chairs closer to Maren, forming a semicircle around the tub. Maren snatches O’Neill’s hand and bats her shimmering eyelashes. The mermaid version of my sister is even more flirtatious than the human girl was. Then again, no village lad could hope to compare to our O’Neill.
“Where were we? Boston, was it? Just off the ship, trying to get our land legs back. Yes, that was where we left off. So, Verity and I set out upon the road, living much as we had back in the Old Country. A penny here, a fresh loaf there . . . but the cold in America proved much more biting than any we had known before. As luck would have it, we met up with a little old man by the name of Willie Brady. A traveling tinker he was, bereft because his partner had recently succumbed to consumption. At the end of his rope, he said he was, about to dig a hole and bury himself if only he could figure out how. But didn’t our Verity talk sense into Willie Brady? And in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, we were on the road together, selling pots and pans and spoons and the like,
as well as Verity’s cough elixirs and headache powders. A grand time it was! At night we’d light a nice fire in the caravan’s little potbelly stove and we’d bed down as warm as fleas on a spaniel.”
“Willie Brady was like a father to us. A kinder man you’ll never meet,” Auntie adds.
“Come spring, we rolled into Pennsylvania. Or, rather, we bumped and bounced. The roads were terrible then, and only got worse with the thaw. The mud would swallow your shoes whole and never give them back. One day, that evil mud took hold of Brady’s favorite horse’s leg and snapped it like kindling. How he wept over that horse! The loss of her broke his heart, and he dwindled down to a bone and a hank of hair after that. On Midsummer’s Eve, he breathed his last. We buried him at twilight, at the edge of a field flashing with fireflies.”
Maren sighs and slips a bit further into the water, taking O’Neill’s hand with her. His sleeve wicks water up to his elbow, but he does not complain.
Scarff coughs into his handkerchief. “Yes, I miss the old fellow to this day. Lucky, he was. I am certain of that, for after he died, bad luck took hold of us without delay. Less than twenty miles from here it happened. And Verity has never been able to set foot off this mountain since.” He is overcome by a fit of coughing.
Auntie passes him a green bottle. “Time for your medicine, dear,” she says. “I will finish this story, if you please.”
Scarff nods in assent and gulps down the dark liquid.
“We came into Yardley Corner, a tiny town at the base of Llanfair Mountain. Not a trace of it remains today. The forest has reclaimed every inch of soil and stone. Well, in this town there lived a half-faerie woman, two hundred years old or more. She recognized me on sight as one of her kind, and she hated me for it. No matter that we were only passing through, only selling cough elixir and sewing needles and such. I discerned, by the atmosphere about her, that she possessed proficiency in the Dark Arts—potent black magic that Albruna had forbidden me to learn. This witch woman took it into her mind that I was her greatest enemy, trespassing on her territory. She was the healer on this mountain, she said, but if I wanted her place, I could have it. I wanted to settle there as much as I wanted to grow a third arm, and I told her so. She called me a liar and before I knew what was happening, she threw a powerful hex powder over me and Scarff, saying, ‘To this mountain you are bound, Verity Half-Fey, never to leave it till Death claims you. And from this mountain you are banned, Ezra Scarff, but for thirteen days a year, until the dark horse and raven return, and the three rubies of the gypsy king fall into your wife’s hand, and your last golden hair turns as silver as the moon.’ She thought she was being quite generous giving us thirteen days a year together, the hag.”
“Zedekiah and Pilsner,” I say. “The dark horse and raven. And you have the rubies, Auntie?”
She reaches into her pocket and brings forth a velvet box. “They’re here. The gypsy king himself gave them to Scarff. Said he’d been told to do so in a dream.”
“And Scarff’s winter fever turned his last golden hair silver,” O’Neill says. “How many years has it been since the hex bound you?”
Auntie caresses Scarff’s bearded cheek. “We lost count long ago. What does it matter? We are together now.”
“And I may come and go as I please,” Scarff says. “Not that I plan to leave my bride anytime soon. Indeed, I do believe I will choose to go only as far as bed.” He coughs again.
“Indeed,” Auntie says. “Come along now. You’ll find my bed a hundred times more comfortable than that lumpy old mattress you keep in the caravan.”
“Nonsense, woman,” Scarff grumbles. “That mattress was good enough for Willie Brady, and it’s good enough for me.” He laughs and coughs at the same time as Auntie wraps an arm about his shoulders and steers him toward her bedroom.
“Don’t stay up too late, dears,” Auntie calls back to us.
Of course, Maren is already asleep. Lately, she sleeps most of the day away, and all of the night. I miss her.
Quietly, with practiced ease, O’Neill and I refresh the tub’s water. And as I put another log on the fire, he unrolls his blankets along the far wall of the kitchen, as far away from Maren as he could get without going outdoors. Osbert scampers to his side and turns about three times before settling down with his barbed tail over O’Neill’s legs and his snout upon O’Neill’s chest.
“Good night,” O’Neill and I whisper.
I crawl into the bed Maren and I used to share. The chilly sheets make me shiver. It occurs to me that I am the only one sleeping alone, for Pilsner perches beside Maren, Auntie and Scarff are snuggled up in the next room, and O’Neill and Osbert are cuddling in the kitchen.
I wonder if I should ask Zedekiah to keep me company, but remember that O’Neill called the horse a blanket hog. And on such a frigid night, I’d rather keep my blankets.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It is two days after Easter. O’Neill grips the reins as the colorful caravan jostles down the hole-pocked road toward Llanfair Village. Every bump knocks my shoulder against his and causes my pencil to jump. “This list will be completely unreadable,” I say.
“Did you put down salt? We will need a lot of it to keep our mermaid happy on our travels.” O’Neill grips the reins more tightly as the caravan rolls over a series of potholes. “Easy, Job! Easy, January!” He shouts to be heard above the din of wind chimes and pots and pans colliding as they swing from their hooks beneath the eaves.
“Salt, yes. Do you think ten pounds is enough? Perhaps I should buy twenty. Or thirty.”
“And I promised Osbert a sack of licorice lozenges,” O’Neill says guiltily.
“Good heavens, O’Neill! That wyvern needs licorice like he needs another tail! It makes him giddy, you know. You’ll be forced to play fetch-the-stick with him for a full day and night after he gulps it down.”
“Spoken like a true wyvern’s mother.” His lopsided smile appears. I must remind myself that he is nothing more than my almost-brother, no matter how handsome he might be.
“This from the young man who snuggles up with the wyvern each night. Will you two be getting married this June, by any chance?”
He jabs his elbow into my arm. “If you were a boy, I’d fight you for such an insult.”
“To defend your beloved wyvern’s honor?”
“You have wounded me!” He clutches his chest. The horses mistake his tugging of the reins for a command, and they slow down. “Trot, my beauties,” he calls to them. “Now back to the list. It’s a long journey we’re in for—we must not forget anything. Let’s think on it.”
After a few minutes, I lose focus on the list and begin to worry. When I can contain my anxieties no longer, I ask, “How long will it take to reach the ocean?”
“Two or three weeks, depending on the roads and the weather.”
“I hope Maren will last that long. She is so small now that she can almost swim in the bathtub,” I say. I pick a pine needle from my skirt and toss it to the wind.
“Job and January will do their best to carry us there speedily. They have sworn a solemn oath to me.” The horses whinny as if in agreement. O’Neill winks at me like a storybook scoundrel.
“Can you not be serious for five minutes, O’Neill?” Suddenly, I am weary to the soul.
“You think I am teasing? You don’t believe that animals communicate with me?” he asks, sullen.
“Of course I do. I know they do. That is not the issue. What drives me mad is that you carry on playing and winking when the situation calls for solemnity.”
He fumbles with his cuff. I know that even despite my tirade he is itching to do some parlor trick to lighten my mood. “I swear, O’Neill, if you pull a flower from your sleeve, I will jump off this wagon,” I say.
“Sorry,” he replies sadly.
I have hurt him, and I deeply regret it. “No, I am sorry.” I touch his arm and he winces.
“Perhaps I should take Maren to the ocean alone, then, if you can
not tolerate me. If you believe I am nothing but tricks and amusements without substance.”
“O’Neill, please forgive me,” I beg. “You know that you are my dearest friend. And I do love your tricks and illusions. It is just that I am so tired and confused. The world is not at all what I thought it was. There is more magic in it, and more mystery, and more pain.”
He lets the reins slacken in his hands and turns his face to me. A smile lurks at the edges of his mouth. “I forgive you, Clara dear. And I hope that you will soon see that the world is also more beautiful than you had known, and more full of kindness and love. Perhaps, on our journey, you will find this out for yourself. You will come with Maren and me, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “If you left me behind, I would send my dangerous wyvern after you. He would eat you for supper and bring me back your boots as a souvenir.” My humor has returned, much to my surprise.
“Ah,” he says, shaking the reins to hurry the horses now that we’ve reached level ground, “I am afraid you actually mean that.”
“Never cross a wyvern,” I say. “And never, ever cross one of Verity’s daughters.”
“Wise advice,” he says with that crooked O’Neill grin, the one that brings the sunshine out from behind a clouded heart. The one, I must remind myself, that belongs to my sister’s true love. But as the proverb goes, even a cat may look at a king.
As O’Neill hitches the horses to the post in front of Norton’s Feed Store, Mrs. Locke and Mrs. Grieg take notice of the caravan and scurry across the street, waving and yoo-hooing. As Scarff and O’Neill are wont to brag, such middle-aged housewives find their exotic wares irresistible.
With the charisma of a stage actor and the skill of an experienced vendor, O’Neill throws open the doors and cabinets of the colorful wagon and begins to expound upon the incomparability of his merchandise. He is a whirlwind of charm and flurrying silk scarves, trays of silver rings and boxes of Chinese fans.
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