I wish (for the first time in my life) that Osbert was a much bigger wyvern, one that could breathe fire on the terrible medicine show and then take to the sky while carrying Maren, O’Neill, and me on his back. Such a wyvern could carry us all the way to the ocean, and then home again to Llanfair Mountain.
But like magic, wyverns are rare in the world. Indeed, Osbert could be the last of his kind.
And what good is rescue or escape if it only ends in our dying for want of Dr. Phipps’s tea?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next morning, Dr. Phipps goes to town for a shave and haircut. Soraya retires for her midmorning nap, and Jasper slinks off dressed in fine clothes and reeking of eau de cologne—most likely to seduce some silly farm girl or faithless wife.
I finish scrubbing the pans and dishes from breakfast and then take a seat beside the dying fire. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine what Auntie might be doing now. Is she weeding her gardens or mixing up remedies for fevers? Is she delivering Hattie Benfer’s yearly baby? Or is she resting on the bench by the front door, enjoying the sunshine and a cup of tea with her long-missed husband?
A poke in the ribs makes me gasp.
“O’Neill, you should not sneak up on a lady like that,” I say. I smack his arm hard.
“Ladies should not be so violent,” he says. “I finished mending the harnesses. Where is everyone?”
“The men have gone to town. Soraya is asleep. Osbert is watching from the white pine above the gallery tent.”
He grabs my arm. “Come,” he says. “We may not have another chance soon.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Do you need to ask?” Despite his limp, he pulls me along briskly, not stopping until we are inside the Gallery of Wonders.
The place is dark and smells of old wood, musty books, and lamp oil. O’Neill finds a lantern and matches on the table just inside the door.
“She should be near the back. I heard Jasper say something about a special mermaid viewing area,” O’Neill says.
I follow him past tables of taxidermied animals and birds, strange things floating in jars, wooden masks and spears, artifacts enclosed in glass boxes. Finally, he pushes aside a thick gold curtain to reveal a raised platform and a glass apothecary jar containing a mermaid.
I tap on the glass. “Maren,” I say. “Wake up, dear. We have come to pay you a visit.”
She turns toward us with a swish. When she sees O’Neill, she bats her eyelashes and wriggles her hips so that her scales shimmer in the lantern light. She combs her fingers through her coppery hair so it floats loose about her head. She flicks her tail, flaunting her mermaidness as if O’Neill is a sailor she wishes to bring to ruin.
He turns away, his expression pained. His tattoo protects him from being utterly destroyed by her, but I know it does not save him from heartache or spare him from the normal desires of a young man.
“Maren, it is not nice to tease O’Neill like that. It’s crude, and unfair to him,” I scold.
She sticks out her tongue at me and then swims a few swift laps.
“It must be the liquid Soraya put her in,” I say. “She is quite out of hand.”
O’Neill keeps his back to Maren. “We should go,” he says.
“Her locket is gone,” I say. “The one you gave her for Christmas. She treasured it so.”
“Stolen by Soraya, no doubt,” O’Neill says. “Say your good-byes, Clara, before we are missed.”
I press my hand against the glass. “Good-bye, sister,” I say. “Keep well, and do try to remember your manners.”
Maren stops swimming and places her hand in line with mine. From each of her sea-colored eyes falls a single pearl tear. And then she motions with her hands, asking, When will I go to the ocean?
She is not happy, after all.
“I do not know,” I say. “We are trying to figure that out.”
She motions again, telling of her love for O’Neill.
“We know that you love us, dear,” I say. I will not repeat her exact sentiment to him—he has had enough torture for one day. “We love you, too. But we must go now.”
O’Neill and I do not speak again until we are outside. “Thank you,” I say. “I know how difficult that was for you.”
“Yes. Well—”
“You are a good brother,” I say. “The very best.”
At the sound of approaching footsteps, he turns his head. “Phipps is coming,” he says. “We must not be seen together.”
I watch his back as he takes pained steps toward his tent, his shoulders slumped in a very un-O’Neill kind of way.
While O’Neill and Jasper spend the afternoon rehearsing magic tricks and juggling, I wash clothes in a nearby creek and gather greens for an early dinner—all the while thinking about the poisoned tea. (Does it make me think such thoughts, or are they a product of my own fears and frustrations?) From time to time, Dr. Phipps’s voice rings through the air: “Throw them higher, boy! And smile! What good is a morose juggler, I ask you?”
Perhaps if you had not poisoned us, I would like to say to him, then we might work more joyfully for you. Perhaps if you would help us deliver Maren to the sea, we would perform feats that would astound even you.
Soraya beckons me to the large wagon and commands that I remove my clothes down to the thin chemise she gave me after the fire. Horrified at the affront to my modesty, I blush from head to toe. Soraya titters like a small bird and holds forth a garment of heavy silk the color of celery, patterned with pink flowers and brown branches. “This is a kimono,” she says. “In it, you will be a Japanese princess.”
My arms slip into the rectangular sleeves like Maren gliding through water. Just beneath my breasts, Soraya ties long, ribbon-like strips around the kimono, stuffing the fabric one way, tugging another. As though she has dressed a hundred Japanese girls this week, she deftly wraps a wide band of pale blue around my ribs and whips its ends into a perfect bow.
“There,” she says, looking pleased with her work. “Now close your eyes.”
She rubs something cool and slick onto my face, and paints my lips and eyelids with a damp brush. Finally, she tells me to open my eyes. She dips a tiny brush into a little pot of black paste and outlines my eyelids. Then she uses her nimble fingers to gather my hair into a knot at the back of my head.
My curiosity gets the better of me, and I break the vow I made to myself not to speak to Soraya unless absolutely necessary. I ask, “Why are you doing this?”
“You must earn your keep. And performing is pleasure as well as work. Here is your chance to create art, to be art. You should thank me.” She reaches into a box and pulls out a stiff-looking wig the color of Pilsner’s feathers. She arranges it over my hair. It is heavy and smells of cedar and candle wax.
“Beautiful,” she says, looking me over from top to toe. “Tonight, you will be part of our Gallery of Wonders. Our patrons will worship your loveliness. You will stand between the stuffed tiger cub and the African masks. I will ask Jasper to place a crate there for you, to make you a little stage of your very own.”
“Am I to stand there like a statue?”
“This is your role: You play Hatsumi, a princess who has escaped her evil stepmother’s house. You meet no one’s eyes. You do not speak. You stare at the floor and count the sorrows of your life.” Soraya smiles and tucks a stray hair under the wig. “The patrons will weep for you, poor lost flower of the Orient.”
Counting my sorrows should not be a problem, I think.
But I will do this for Maren. To be near her for a few hours. To keep peace with our captors while O’Neill and I plot our escape.
Soraya smoothes the silken fabric of her sky-blue sari. “Someday, if you prove to Dr. Phipps that you can sing or dance or play an instrument, you might share the stage with Jasper and Neelo. For now, you are Hatsumi.” She sets a pair of odd wooden sandals on the floor and takes my hands, helping me step into them. “You need your special tea. And then yo
u must take your place in the gallery before our patrons begin to arrive. For them to see you outside would be unlucky, like a man seeing his bride before the wedding.” She points to the door. “Hurry now, Hatsumi, to your tea. You are longing for it, are you not? Wanting it as a bee wants nectar or a leech craves blood.”
When she smiles with all her teeth showing, she reminds me of a winter graveyard with two neat rows of snowy headstones.
As I wait inside the Gallery of Wonders tent, I can hear Dr. Phipps starting the show. He welcomes the townsfolk to the second night of performances, thanks them for their hospitality, praises their wisdom in purchasing his wares the previous night.
Violin music floats through the air. I imagine it is Jasper who is playing. Whoever the musician may be, the song is beautiful and haunting.
As Soraya foretold, an overturned crate awaits me between the stuffed tiger and the African masks. It is too early for me to take my place upon it. Instead, I wander down the aisles and examine the “wonders.” A clamshell big enough for a cat to sleep in, a two-headed lamb floating in a jar, a costumed rat in a cage decorated like a king’s quarters (he nibbles at his little throne, his lips stained red from the felted cushion), a set of a dozen mismatched eyeballs staring out of glass vials, a table of medieval torture devices, a dressmaker’s form clothed in rough robes (once worn by Saint Peter, according to the sign), a bed studded with wicked-looking nails. A hundred small lanterns hang about the room, casting light and leaving shadows in all the right places.
And at the very back of the tent hangs a golden curtain, and beside the curtain hangs the sign inviting patrons to pay five cents to view “an unforgettable living spectacle, a creature of myth and magic.”
My sister, the mermaid.
I step around the curtain. Inside her jar, Maren floats serenely, fast asleep. She looks no smaller than the last time I saw her, and in no worse health. But the inch-deep layer of pearls on the bottom of the jar testifies to her sadness. My salt water tears fall without a sound, and without increasing the wealth of the world.
I wipe my tears away with my fingertips, careful not to smear the thick greasepaint. I tap on the glass to awaken my sister.
With a flick of her tail and a wriggle of her belly, she comes to meet me. She looks curious and unsure until she recognizes me in my strange costume. Then she smiles and presses both hands to the glass as I do the same.
“I love you.” I say, confident she can read the familiar words on my lips. And then I add, “I am so very sorry.”
Maren shakes her head as if to dismiss my apology. She sinks to the bottom of the jar and curls her tail about her body. If, a year ago, she had been told that today she would be a mermaid living in a jar, enthroned on perfect pearls, she might have delighted in the romance of the notion—if she had not known that the pearls would be her own tears.
She motions with her hands, requesting a story.
I can hear strangers’ laughter in the distance. Perhaps O’Neill is juggling spoons or frying pans; perhaps he is pulling flowers from his vest or scarves from his ears. Soon, the show will end, and after that, the strangers will pay five cents to gawk at the weird museum’s exhibits, including a girl masquerading as a Japanese princess and a live mermaid imprisoned in glass.
“All right, I will tell you a short story.” I lean close, hoping she can hear me. “Do you remember the year O’Neill stayed with us through the winter? He wanted to see snow. We were ten years old, yet he had never seen a single snowflake. Remember how he cried in his sleep for Scarff? Every morning his pillow had to be hung by the fire to dry. But in the daytime, what fun we had!”
Maren nods. Maybe she can hear through all that water and glass.
“On Christmas day, the snow came. Standing outside was like being inside one of those water globes Mr. Peterman sells, the ones you shake to make a blizzard swirl around tiny villages. That snow fell in flurries and then clumps until it piled up as high as the cottage windowsills. Auntie had to threaten us to make us go inside again, even though we could no longer feel our toes or our cherry-red cheeks. And Osbert’s tail was frozen straight out like a blue icicle.”
I pause, picturing Maren and O’Neill throwing snowballs at Osbert, hearing in my memory the unbridled, pure-joy laughter of my sister and my best friend.
Maren taps on the jar impatiently.
“Oh,” I say. “Yes. The snowy Christmas. When Auntie forced us inside, we unwrapped ourselves from our layers of woolens and hung them to dry by the fireplace. And you were the first to notice the heavenly scent of Auntie’s hot grape pudding. Steaming in our soup bowls, as purple as an Easter crocus, with dollops of whipped cream melting into froth. I can still taste it if I close my eyes. Can you?”
Maren shakes her head sadly. I do not think she remembers the taste of any food. She has not eaten in months.
“We ran our spoons around the edges of the pudding to scoop up the part that had cooled from scalding to merely hot. O’Neill giggled when he took his first bite. He said it tasted like purple heaven. He said that even without the grape pudding, it had been the best day of his life—although the day Scarff had found him under the apple tree must have been quite monumental as well. He used that word, ‘monumental,’ an odd word for a ten-year-old boy.”
Maren is smiling again. She combs her fingers through her floating hair.
“Yet despite the joy of that day, O’Neill wept all night for Scarff. I think he wanted both worlds. But wouldn’t we all have liked that—to have lived with Auntie and Scarff, together as a family? But we know now that it was the curse that kept us apart.”
In my mind’s eye, I can see him, the boy O’Neill. Almost always grinning, almost always up to some sort of gentle mischief (for which he would receive instant forgiveness from all—except the grudge-holding cat). My memories show me the unruly crop of blond hair that sprouted from his head like stalks of grain sown in crooked rows, the gap between his front teeth, and the way he’d usually forget to button half the buttons on his shirt. A bit of a wild thing he was, a creature raised by an absentminded traveling merchant. The hours Auntie spent trying to teach him manners! The hours he wriggled and played dumb just to tease her!
But we loved that boy, and he loved us.
He loves us still. And he loves Maren most of all.
“Maren, what if this had not happened,” I say slowly, “and you had not become a mermaid? What if O’Neill—”
“Clara!” Jasper calls from the doorway. “Are you bothering the mermaid again? You should be on your box, preparing to bask in the adoration of our guests.”
I slip out from behind the curtain. “She is my sister. I do not bother her.”
Dressed in a ridiculous pirate costume, Jasper strides toward me, hands on hips. “Stare if you must. I know that I am handsome,” he says. “Practically irresistible, truth be told.”
I ignore his comments and step onto my box, careful not to snag the sumptuous fabric of the kimono. “There. I am in place. No harm done.”
“I must say that you look almost as irresistible as I do,” Jasper says. He fingers my sash. “It suits you, you know. You should always wear silk, day and night.”
“Jasper!” Soraya scolds from just outside. “Take your place to collect the money, son. The customers are coming.”
He struts away as if he truly believes himself a dashing seafarer.
“Stand up straight, Clara child,” Soraya commands from the doorway. “You are a princess, not a farm girl. Keep your eyes to the floor, and do not speak, no matter what anyone says to you.”
The patrons begin to file in, brushing past Soraya. They ooh and ahh as they peruse the oddities laid out before them on tables and shelves.
As instructed, I gaze steadily at my hem.
I think about the snowy Christmas, and the three snow angels we pressed into the whiteness beside the red barn. As we raised and lowered our arms to create wings, the tips of our mittens brushed together and we were one instea
d of three. Not orphans or foundlings, not friends or siblings, but one entity. Cold and wet and happy beyond description.
A tug on my sleeve shocks me out of my daydream.
“Pretty little thing, ain’t you?” a gravelly voice says, too close to my painted face. “I heard what your kind is good for, and I’ll pay you more than five cents for it, sweetheart.” His breath reeks of sour tobacco and moldy cheese. His hand moves in a circle on my shoulder, then begins to slip lower.
I bring my knee up swiftly. Amid his agonized yowling, I resume my statue-like pose, eyes downcast, smile faint and demure. He ought not to have insulted this princess.
Dr. Phipps appears out of nowhere and, grabbing the lout by his coat collar, drags him toward the door.
“Dear me, folks,” Phipps declares dramatically, “this poor gentleman seems to be having an attack of the bilious fever! But do not panic, for I have the cure for that very ailment. Yes, sir. Right this way. I will have you fit as a fiddle in the blink of Zeus’s great eye!”
Then and there, I resolve to learn to juggle live rats if that is what it takes to be removed from the role of Princess Hatsumi.
“Line up here, if you please,” I hear Soraya say. She is at the back of the tent now. “Single file. You will each be granted a one-minute visitation with the beautiful divinity awaiting you behind this curtain. You will never forget her, even if you live for a thousand years. Come, come! For just five cents, you may behold the splendor of our live mermaid!”
A hush falls over the room but lifts quickly. Many voices speak at once.
“Did she say mermaid?”
“It’s a trick. All paste and horsehide.”
“My uncle saw a mermaid when he served in the British Navy.”
“Can I have the money, Mama? I want to see it. Please?”
“If it’s alive, I’ll eat my hat, Mabel!”
I tilt my head slightly so I can watch that end of the tent from the corner of my eye. The first person in line is a teenaged boy. He drops his pennies into Soraya’s coin box and steps behind the curtain.
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