List in hand, I leave O’Neill to his work and seek out Mr. Peterman at the general store.
While Mr. Peterman gathers the items we need, I wander about the store, hoping that browsing might help me remember anything I forgot to put on the list.
“Hello, Miss Clara,” Simon’s voice says from behind me.
I turn to him. “Good morning, Simon,” I say. “You are looking well.”
“I was married last Saturday,” he says. “Do you remember Tabitha Gorse?”
“Yes,” I say. “She moved to Iowa a few years ago, didn’t she?”
“She moved back here in February,” he says. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other nervously. He clears his throat twice, then asks, “How is your sister?”
“Very changed, I am afraid.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Truly sorry.” Is that a tear in his eye or a trick of the light? He turns away from me and takes a few slow steps.
“She liked your Christmas gift,” I say. “The pretty stone you sent. She keeps it in her locket, so it is always with her.” I do not know if it was proper or kind for me to say so, but he looks back at me for a moment and almost smiles.
“Good-bye,” he says. He leaves the store quickly, without purchasing a thing. I think he loves Maren still. I feel sorry for his wife.
“Your order is ready,” Mr. Peterman announces. “I’ll carry it out for you. All that salt makes for a heavy load. It’s an odd time of year to be pickling and preserving, isn’t it?”
I hold the door for him. “You know Auntie and her strange concoctions,” I say.
I am glad we will leave Llanfair Mountain soon. Hiding a mermaid is proving more difficult than hiding a hundred-pound pet wyvern.
We reveal our plans to Scarff and Auntie during our habitual evening gathering in front of the fireplace.
“You must let me come,” Scarff says. “I insist upon it.”
“No, dear,” Auntie says. “The children are right. You are not well enough for such a journey. Besides, I have not been left alone in over seventeen years. It is your spousal duty to stay with me.” She pats his arm. “This is their journey to take. They are young and strong, and clever, as well. They are fit for travel and adventure, unlike us. Although it pains me to think I will not see Maren enter her new home.”
Scarff grumbles under his breath, but argues no more.
“We will leave in two days,” O’Neill says. “I will make sure the caravan is in good repair. Clara has been gathering supplies, and Maren is quite ready to go.”
In fact, Maren’s face is radiant with expectation. She wriggles her tail and slides down into the water, submerging herself completely. Smiling, she blows a string of tiny bubbles and watches them pop above her.
From head to tail fin, I doubt she measures more than four feet now.
“We bought a washtub to carry Maren,” I say. “It should be quite comfortable.”
“You must avoid the trains at all cost,” Scarff says. “I do not trust the iron beasts.”
“We would not risk taking a train,” O’Neill says. “Can you imagine us not being noticed transporting a mermaid in a tub of water?”
Scarff grunts and folds his arms across his chest.
Auntie shakes her head sadly. “How I hate to lose my seashell girl,” she says. “But if anyone in the world is happy, it is Maren as a mermaid.”
Tears stick in Scarff’s beard like drops of dew on tangled grass. Auntie grips his shoulder and says, “Come to bed, dearest. It’s time to put our cares to rest for the day.”
Auntie and Scarff lean over the tub and Maren comes out from beneath the water, offering her sparkling cheek for good night kisses. As the couple disappears into their bedroom, Maren beckons to O’Neill. She gestures that she wants to hold his hand, and that she wants him to sing for her.
He pulls a chair in close to the tub and does as the mermaid demands.
Discomfited by the intimacy between them, I collect teacups and saucers and take them to the basin of sudsy water Auntie left heating on the side of the stove. Even with my back to them, I feel like an intruder.
O’Neill sings softly:
On the wings of the wind, o’er the dark rolling deep,
Angels are coming to watch o’er thy sleep.
Angels are coming to watch over thee
So list to the wind coming over the sea.
Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow.
Lean your head over and hear the wind blow.
Oh, winds of the night, may your fury be crossed;
May no one who’s dear to our island be lost.
Blow the winds gently, calm be the foam,
Shine the light brightly and guide them back home
Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow.
Lean your head over and hear the wind blow.
My hands forget their task. Never has his voice sounded so beautiful. Every note carries unconstrained love up from the depths of his soul.
Something catches my eye and I turn. There, at the window, is the unmistakable face of Simon Shumsky. He stares at Maren and O’Neill, not noticing me at all. He sees what I now see: the clasped hands of lovers, O’Neill’s blond head resting against the top of Maren’s coppery hair. And the swishing of Maren’s mermaid tail above the water’s surface.
“O’Neill,” I cry, knowing it is too late.
A second later, Simon is gone.
If wishing could get me anything, I would wish that I had remembered to close the curtains after I’d hung them, freshly laundered, that morning. I would wish that Osbert—lying by the cellar door, dead to the world due to the strong medicine Auntie has prescribed for his spring cold—had alerted us to the unwelcome guest.
And as much as I like Simon Shumsky, I would wish him to the moon.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sun is rising, an orange ball of flame peeking over the next mountain. We have not slept a wink, O’Neill and I. Instead, we spent the night frantically packing and arranging, gathering maps and clothes and food. For we must leave the mountain immediately, before Simon has a chance to spread the news of Maren’s change.
Once we are gone from the mountain, Scarff will make it known in the village that O’Neill, Maren, and I have gone to visit far-off relations. Scarff is able to speak falsely for our protection even if Auntie cannot.
And Simon will likely be labeled “touched in the head” if he goes about telling tales of seeing a mermaid in Verity Amsell’s kitchen.
Auntie weeps into her handkerchief as Scarff lifts Maren from the bath and lowers her into the washtub. Osbert moans and smacks his tail against the floor like a toddler throwing a fit. Pilsner watches from the mantel, the only calm soul among us.
Scarff and O’Neill pick up the washtub by its handles and carry it to the caravan, sloshing a good third of the water out as they go. Maren grips the sides of the tub to steady herself. She looks like a picture from one of our childhood books, one captioned “An Indian princess travels to her wedding by howdah atop an elephant.” Indeed, her face is as bright with bliss as any bride’s. She is glad to be going home.
“Promise you’ll come back,” Auntie says as she embraces me beside the wagon.
“Of course,” I say. I swallow hard, willing myself not to cry. I will keep my sadness to myself and not add to the weight of Auntie’s sorrow. “Take care of Scarff.”
And before our lazy rooster crows, O’Neill is shaking the reins and steering Job and January away from the only home my sister and I have ever known.
I sit inside the caravan beside Maren. Only her head extends above the oilcloth covering the washtub. Scarff tied the cloth down tight before we left—to keep the water and the mermaid from sloshing out. I worry that the rough roads will batter and bruise her. Perhaps we should have brought the bathtub; it would have given her more of a watery cushion. It is too late now.
The little window is open so that O’Neill may speak to us from the driver’s s
eat. The clopping of the horses’ hooves is barely audible above the sound of the pots, pans, and chimes. I wonder if O’Neill ever tires of those sounds. To me, they have always signaled the approach of joy itself, heralding the arrival of loved ones. What might they mean to me when this journey is finished and I have given Maren over to the tides?
She sleeps, my mermaid sister. Sleeps with a smile on her coral-pink lips, swaying with the motion of the wagon, as if she has not a care in the world. Not one regret, not a single sorrow, not an ounce of pain.
A snort comes from beneath a mound of blankets in the corner. A very familiar snort.
“Osbert!” I scold him as I whisk away his coverings. “You naughty wyvern! You should not have come along!”
Puppylike, he widens his eyes, flattens his ears, and whimpers.
“What is going on back there?” calls O’Neill from the driver’s seat. “Is something wrong?”
“That depends on how you feel about stowaway wyverns,” I say. And then I notice another creature lurking in another corner. “And stowaway ravens, as well.”
“Kraa,” Pilsner declares, ruffling his feathers haughtily.
“If you find a small black horse back there, do let me know,” O’Neill says, his voice light with laughter.
“As far as I can tell, Zedekiah had the good sense to remain at home.” I pat Osbert’s scaly head. “What am I to do with you? You must behave yourself, Osbert, and stay hidden. Imagine the trouble you could cause us! All we need is for someone to see you and get a notion to find out what else might be hiding in the caravan!”
Osbert promises to behave with a submissive bow of the head. And then he skulks to Maren’s washtub and curls his body about its base. Like the fearsome dragons of old, he is protecting his greatest treasure. I have no doubt that he would give his very life for her. Perhaps it is wise to have him with us.
I sit down again, resting my back against the sumptuous quilts overflowing from the built-in bed. I do not mean to fall asleep, but the rocking of the wagon lulls me into unconsciousness before I have a chance to consider fighting it.
The caravan is still. Mottled sunlight plays upon my closed eyelids. I listen to the soothing sounds of tinkling glass-and-metal wind chimes, and O’Neill’s deep-sleep breathing. For a moment, I am content. All is well here with us: happy mermaid, wyvern sheepdog, sleeping almost-brother, indomitable raven, and girl-brought-by-a-stork.
The prickly surface of Osbert’s tongue intrudes upon my peaceful moment, dampening my cheek with slobber. I simultaneously open my eyes and shove him aside. “Get off, you beast,” I whisper, trying not to disturb O’Neill and Maren. “You need to go out, do you?”
Wagging his tail, Osbert follows me as I tiptoe through the wagon.
I open the door to a gorgeous scene: Ancient hemlock trees encircle the wagon and tower above me. All the light here is stained green by the passage of sunlight through thick, high branches. Osbert pushes past me and rushes off into the forest as I step down onto a springy brown carpet of little needles.
Job and January stand nearby, unhitched and untethered, with buckets of water and oats at their disposal. They are used to the wandering life and have spent many a night in strange forests and fields. They nod their noble heads in greeting, and I reply in kind.
From here, I cannot see the road. Strangely, although I am surrounded by dancing bits of sunlight, I cannot see beyond a depth of five or six trees. I shiver, no longer so taken with the place. There is magic in this wood, and I am not certain which kind.
“Good morning,” O’Neill calls from the doorway. “Lovely place, is it not?” He yawns and stretches before leaping to the ground.
“Are you certain it is safe?” I whisper. “Something about this place makes me uneasy.”
“Scarff and I have a pact with the faerie folk of this forest. You are more than safe here.”
I am not sure if he is teasing me or telling the truth. Instead of risking hurting his feelings, I do not reply.
He takes a brush from a cubbyhole beneath the wagon and begins to groom the horses. “Shall we cook breakfast, or would you prefer a cold meal and a quick return to the road?”
“We should keep moving,” I say without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll check on Maren and then slice some bread and cheese.”
Osbert bursts out of the blackness, a piece of fabric flapping from his well-toothed jaws. He stops at O’Neill’s feet and drops it.
Lifting the wet fabric between two fingers, O’Neill says, “Osbert, what have you been up to?”
The wyvern wags his tail and points with his snout in the direction from which he came.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I believe it is a sample of Simon Shumsky’s trouser leg. According to a pair of doves I spoke to last night, he’s been following us ever since we left Llanfair Mountain. He must be close now.” O’Neill pats Osbert’s head. “Good fellow,” he says.
“Following us? Why?” Wild thoughts somersault through my mind, visions of Simon taking Maren or killing O’Neill in a jealous rage. But he was always such a kind young man. Perhaps he only wants to find out if what he thought he saw through the window was real.
“Simon has seen a mermaid, and some men cannot stay sane once they do so. Why do you think sailors wreck their vessels chasing after them?”
“He loved her,” I say. “He asked her to marry him, and he believed that someday she would consent.”
O’Neill’s face is grim. “That makes it all the more likely that his mind has turned. He is mermaid-stricken, poor fellow.”
“Why are you not afflicted, when you have seen her and touched her and lived with her all these weeks?”
He unbuttons his left cuff and rolls up his sleeve. On his wrist, drawn in ink the color of blood, I see a series of small symbols. “Madame Vadoma gave me this before we left the gypsies’ camp,” he says. “A tattoo that gives protection against mermaid enchantment.”
“Poor Simon,” I say, for even as I fear what he might do, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. “Did you know he was recently married?”
“Poor Mrs. Shumsky,” O’Neill says. “She is as good as widowed, I am afraid. Simon is beyond all help, even the magic kind. It is a tragedy. But we must not stop here any longer.”
Together, O’Neill and I make quick work of hitching the horses to the caravan. Minutes later, we are moving again. Every hoofbeat brings us closer to the ocean. Closer to Maren’s home—and farther away from Simon, if we are lucky.
Our next campsite is an abandoned farm.
After thoroughly inspecting the place to ensure that it is indeed abandoned, I throw open the faded red barn doors and O’Neill drives the caravan inside. The back doors of the barn lead to a fenced pasture where tender spring grasses carpet the earth. Job and January are promptly loosed from their harnesses. Whinnying their delight, they frolic in the sunshine like colts before lowering their heads to nibble the green feast laid out before them.
Osbert, too, dances about on his taloned feet. He stretches his wings to their full breadth and sprints into the pasture. As he gains speed, he beats his wings slowly until the wind catches them and lifts him from the ground. He swoops and circles above O’Neill and me, and then dives down to tease me by running the tips of his claws through the top of my hair. He squawks with wyvern joy. After a while, he soars toward the wooded hills in the west and I can see him no more. I hope he has spotted a rabbit or pheasant to chase, and not a mermaid-stricken young husband.
O’Neill brings Maren’s tub out of the caravan. She is awake, and she watches him adoringly as he inspects the wagon for any need of repair.
“I’m going to the spring house we passed on the way in,” I say, unhooking the buckets from beneath the wagon. “Our mermaid is due for fresh water.” And I am due for time away from young love, I think.
Maren waves and blows me a kiss before resuming her adoration of O’Neill. I hear him singing as I exit the barn, a Scottish ballad Sca
rff used to sing after dinner. Those dinners seem a hundred years ago.
“Kraa, kraa!” Pilsner announces that he will accompany me. He flies just ahead of me, as if I might forget the route. I suspect that O’Neill has charged him with protecting me from Simon. I suppose the raven could cause a good deal of harm with claws and beak if he were so inclined.
“Do you miss your home, Pilsner?” I ask. “Do you have a wife somewhere? A nest full of featherless babies?”
Without acknowledging my remarks, he flaps his wings and veers to the east. He perches on the crooked lightning rod, which sticks up from the roof of the farmhouse like the antenna of a wounded insect. From there, he watches me steadily until I return to the camp with buckets sloshing.
After supper (two large trout provided by Osbert, a salad of dressed dandelion greens and fiddlehead ferns provided by O’Neill, and an unfortunate pan of singed biscuits made by me), O’Neill stands and pats his trim belly.
“Ladies, wyvern, and raven,” he says with a grand gesture of his arms, “I shall now entertain you as you have never before been entertained.”
Maren clasps her hands on her chest. Her sigh sounds like the tiniest of waves caressing the smoothest sand.
“Do excuse me for a few moments while I prepare to dazzle and astound you!” He scampers into the barn, where the caravan is parked.
I add another log to the campfire before sitting on the rickety chair I borrowed from the abandoned house. At suppertime, O’Neill refused the chair I brought him, saying he prefers to have the good earth beneath him. The stains on his trousers attest to this belief.
Maren taps the empty chair with her slim, webbed fingers to get my attention.
“What is it, dear?” I ask.
She makes signs with her hands, touching her heart, forming waves with slow grace, pantomiming the motion of the wagon and the journey of the sun across the sky. I know what she is saying. She says it every day: “Take me to the ocean. How long? How long?” And the question always makes me feel as though I have fallen from a tall tree and hit the ground hard, losing all my breath.
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