With a gasp, I awaken. The storm has passed, and the early birds are twittering gaily just outside the wagon. I lift one arm to examine it. No feathers have sprouted. Not this morning. That dream will not come true today.
I push my blankets aside and dress in my work clothes. While buttoning my shoe, I glance toward Soraya’s cot. She is gone. On the couch, the doctor snores lightly.
Heart pounding, I hurry to the cupboard where Soraya stores her prized spices. My hand trembles as I examine jars and packets; Soraya has forbidden me to touch these precious seasonings, and she could appear at any moment.
Finally, I spy a thumb-sized vial of crimson dust. It is unmarked, so I uncork it and hold it to my nose. Its earthy scent and unusual color give me reason enough to believe that I have found the scarlet truffle powder I need for my potion.
Dr. Phipps stirs, and I look his way. He stares at me blankly, like a sleepwalker. Although I do not think he truly sees me, I smile at him and close the cupboard as if I am only doing my regular chores.
My smile is genuine, for I hold in my hand the key to our escape.
I need only the chance to boil the ingredients over the fire, and then the draught will be ready.
I wonder how Soraya and Jasper will like my special tea.
Before I go to make breakfast, I duck into the gallery tent to check on Maren. Her color is more gray than pearly, and her cheeks have hollows that were not there yesterday. Her eyes are closed.
I think she may be dead.
My heart sinks and beats wildly at the same time. But then she flicks the end of her dull-scaled tail, giving evidence that she is still alive.
The apprehension I feel for my sister is more disturbing than any nightmare.
Maren is alive, but she is dying, and we cannot afford to wait any longer to take her home.
“Without the sleeping draught, it is too risky,” O’Neill says when I tell him we must leave immediately. I follow him into the wagon and watch as he kneels and rifles through a box of supplies labeled “horse treatments.” He chooses a well-used-looking tin of something and then stands, facing me. “Once you finish preparing it properly, we will go without delay.”
“When will I get the chance to cook it? It could be days. A week. Maren is dying, O’Neill. How many times have you promised to rescue her? And now, when she is at her most desperate, you will not try? Well, I will save her myself.” My panic is leaking out in bitter accusations, but I can no longer control myself. I cannot stop the racing of my pulse or the feeling that I am about to suffocate, nor can I stem the flow of words I will likely be sorry for later.
He takes me by the shoulders. His fingers pinch my collarbones uncomfortably.
“Let go, O’Neill,” I demand. “You are a coward and a liar. Let me go!”
“Not until you promise to wait. Just a little longer, please, Clara. You would risk three lives and lose them all if you acted now. Jasper suspects we are plotting and he is keeping a close eye on me—and the horses. We would not get half a mile on foot before he’d track us down and kill us. Except for Maren, of course. He would take her back and let her finish dying inside that jar, getting all the glory he could from her, for as long as she lasted.”
“We could ask Osbert to attack him.”
“Jasper is wearing a pistol. Osbert is not bulletproof.”
“Speak to the horses, then. Or your bird friends. Surely they could help.”
“They are simple creatures, Clara. They can fetch and carry, but they’re not able to understand complex plans. And they don’t deserve to be put in danger any more than Osbert does. Besides, their laws do not permit them to commit murder at any humans’ behest.”
“Then she will die. And I will die with her, or forever regret not trying to save her.”
“You will not die. You’ll wait, and we will save her together.”
Tears blur my vision. “We will not save her. The truth is, it is too late. All our plans are foolish and futile. We have failed her. I have failed her by wishing when I ought to have been doing.”
Before I can stop myself, I am weeping on O’Neill’s shoulder, clutching his shirt with both hands. He pats my back gently. “Clara, Clara,” he soothes. “Please do not give up. Remember what Auntie always says? We must let hope carry us when our hearts’ legs fail us. Or something like that.”
Through my tears, I laugh at his clumsy misquotation.
He wipes my face with his fingertips. “You see how we take turns despairing and then encouraging one another? Neither of us could have come this far alone.”
He has that look in his eyes, the boy-stupefied-by-mermaid look. But he is looking at me.
“O’Neill!” Jasper shouts from the far side of the camp. “Are you bringing the liniment for the horse or not? I haven’t got all day!”
“Coming,” O’Neill says. He kisses my forehead in a most brotherly, most comforting way. “Hope, Clara. And be patient for just a little longer.”
He leaves me with a hundred questions whirling in my mind.
I wish I could answer even a handful of them, and that the answers would be good and pleasing and peaceful. I wish that wishing would bring the best ending to us all, with the least amount of suffering.
Soraya calls me to the wagon and I hasten to serve her. Very soon, I will no longer be her servant. I will give O’Neill one or two more days, and then I must act—with or without him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I wish that we would travel east, toward the ocean. Instead, Jasper insists upon a northward route. His fondest dream, he says, is to perform for the Eskimos. If he is joking, I cannot tell.
But before we go to Canada, Jasper says we must make a detour to call upon the apothecary who bottles Dr. Phipps’s formulas. Record sales have depleted the show’s supplies. Jasper gives the credit for this to “our good-luck mermaid.”
Another steaming day oppresses those of us who must ride inside the wagon. I am most seriously considering stripping to my chemise—and then huddling behind boxes so as not to provoke Jasper’s lust.
Soraya naps and Dr. Phipps mumbles. I am not sure whether he is awake or asleep. Perhaps he cannot tell, either. Few of his ramblings are comprehensible, but from what I have managed to glean, he is dreaming again of the visitation of a gigantic winged monster. Sometimes he wails and cries as if the thing were eating him alive.
In her jar, Maren floats like a dead leaf, just below the water’s surface. I keep my back to the jar. The sight of her rends my heart, and I cannot bear to look upon her often. If I am to lose her, I would rather remember her as she was: vibrant and sparkling, her shining hair suspended about her like a halo and her face aglow with delight, swishing her silvery-green tail. Or as my two-legged sister, riding her pony bareback and frightening the hens out of the yard with her wild yelping.
“Soraya,” I whisper when she stirs. “Could you help my sister? She is not at all well. Perhaps if you made more of that liquid you first put her in?”
“I cannot help her,” she says, yawning. “Sometimes they live long, and sometimes they do not. Mermaids are unpredictable. If she dies, we will find another. Eventually.”
“Another? I have no other sister. I will never have another sister.”
“Well, that is no fault of mine,” she says, closing her eyes again.
If I were a fighter, I would beat her bloody with my fists. If I were a stork, I would stab her with my bill.
The day of travel seems endless. I poke my needle into my latest mending project and sew crooked seams that must be ripped out and restitched. And the wagon sways and squeaks, and the doctor snores, and Soraya sighs and flutters her fan back and forth, back and forth.
Through the window, I see a steeple and then a series of slate-shingled roofs. Finally, we stop, thanks be to all that is holy.
Jasper meets me as I climb down from the wagon. Or, rather, as I practically throw myself out of the wagon.
“This is Edgemere,” Jasper says. “Y
ou may visit the shops on the main street. I’ll be over there.” He points across the street to a building marked “Apothecary, B. D. Hobart.” He tosses a purse my way. I catch it and it jingles. “Buy a new dress, will you? And throw that outfit into the trash. It is not fit to be seen.” He smiles as if he is doing me a great favor, as if he does not owe me a hundred dresses for all the work I have done for him and his parents.
I summon a polite smile. “Thank you,” I say. I will use the manners Auntie taught me, no matter how rudely Jasper speaks to me.
“Just be back here in two hours. Don’t make me come looking for you.” His tone is jovial, but as he walks past me, he squeezes my arm hard enough to bruise it. I do not mistake his meaning.
O’Neill speaks to the horses in front of the small wagon, praising their diligence and promising them treats. We exchange a solemn glance. I believe he is silently reminding me to be patient, and not to stir up trouble with our captors.
Clutching the purse, I make my way along the street. Beebe’s General Store, The Fern Hotel and Tea Room, and the offices of The Edgemere Gazette occupy one side, and on the opposite side are The Red Hedgehog Tavern, a bakery, and a dressmaker’s shop. The tea room tempts me greatly, but Jasper was right about my attire; my bodice is stained and worn thin in spots, and no two buttons are exactly alike. Not at all fit to be seen.
Inside the dressmaker’s shop, Mrs. Smith, the elderly proprietress fusses over me. She carries no ready-made garments, but offers me something she has just finished fashioning for herself—a practical and modest green dress embellished with black lace. With nimble fingers that belie her age, she quickly tailors it to fit me.
I insist on paying her all the money Jasper gave me—a very generous sum, indeed.
“Wait, dear,” Mrs. Smith calls as I step into the street. “You have left your things behind.”
“My employer said to throw them away,” I say. “Would you mind?”
“Not the item in the pocket, surely,” she says, raising an eyebrow.
The dagger! How could I have forgotten it? “Oh, my,” I say. “Forgive my absentmindedness.”
She beckons me back to the private changing room. “I have not seen such a thing in many years,” she says. She closes the door and takes the scabbard out from beneath the pile of my discarded garments. “May I examine it?”
“Yes,” I say, puzzled by her look of amazement.
She holds the blade in a beam of sunlight and turns it slowly. “How did you come upon such a treasure?”
“A friend gave it to me. Even so, I would not call so plain a thing a treasure.”
She gasps. “You do not know?”
I shake my head.
“It is a healing blade. What it cuts, it mends. It is older than the mountains, made by the pixies in the Old Country.” She sheathes it and places it in my hands as if it was a holy relic. “Take great care of it, my dear. I have a feeling in my old bones that you will have need of it soon. But be wise, for it may only be used once.” She pats my cheek as Auntie used to. “You must be a very special girl to have been given such a thing.”
I hold the dagger in front of me, unsure what to do with it.
Mrs. Smith points to my hip. “Your dress has deep pockets. I never make one without them.”
The scabbard easily slides into a pocket. The skirt falls just so, hiding its presence. “You are a great seamstress,” I say. “And very kind.”
She beams with pride. “Hurry along now, dear. It is getting late.”
The church bell tolls five as I reach the wagons.
“Miraculous,” Jasper says from the large wagon’s doorway. “You should have a new dress every day.”
“Who’s flirting now?” O’Neill says from behind me.
“Shall we duel at dawn?” Jasper asks. “Swords or pistols?”
“Definitely swords,” O’Neill says. “But Clara will most likely win.”
“Touché!” Jasper says with a chuckle as he hops to the ground. “The road beckons, my children.”
As O’Neill passes me, he whispers, “You look very pretty, Clara.”
My face heats. I blush more deeply as I berate myself for blushing too much. Just what I need, I think, to feel even hotter when I am about to climb back into an oven of a wagon.
The next evening, in an odd little town that Jasper says is entirely populated by shoemakers, the show goes on. I swear it will be my last—and Maren’s. Whether I find time to cook the sleeping draught or not, tomorrow morning, or perhaps afternoon, we will leave the Phipps family behind. I vow this to myself, over and over. I will tell O’Neill of my plans tonight if I find a way to speak to him alone. He will object, but I will not be swayed this time. I must take this last chance to save my sister’s life.
After the show, an almost impossibly tall cobbler sidles up to me. (I know he is a cobbler because he forgot to remove his tool belt before leaving his shop.) With the air of a frightened rabbit, he looks down into my face, and then at my boots. He is polite enough to resist staring at my scanty costume.
“Pardon me, miss,” he says. “If I might measure your lovely foot, I would reward you with a pair of fine shoes before the sun rises.”
“That is very kind,” I reply. “But I have no money to pay you.”
“I would do it for the joy of it,” he says quietly. “And for a single strand of your beautiful hair.”
“Clara!” O’Neill shouts. “You are needed in the wagon. Urgently!”
“I am sorry,” I say to the timid cobbler. New shoes—shoes made for my feet rather than Soraya’s—would have been most useful on my upcoming journey. “Sorry.”
Gripped with fear, I climb the steps into the wagon. Is Maren worse? Is she dead?
“What is it?” I ask.
“You were in grave danger,” O’Neill says. “That shoemaker’s wares cost a terrible price.”
I laugh. “You are mistaken. He said he’d make them for the joy of doing so.”
“And a strand of your hair. And with that exchange, you would be bound to him and his kind forever.”
“Is that some kind of ancient shoemaker marriage ritual?” I think O’Neill is making a fool of me again.
“He is of elven blood. And so are most of the citizens of this mountain. Jasper knows it, and he brought us here anyway. He endangers us all.”
Soraya speaks from the dark corner where she holds vigil over the doctor. “Jasper came here because I asked him to. These elven folk grow the seven-needle root I need to cure Dr. Phipps.”
“And has Jasper procured it?” O’Neill asks. “Or shall we spend the night here and risk our mortal souls?”
“Neelo, child! How dramatic you are!” She laughs. “So suited for the stage!” She leans back and languidly flutters her fan. “Yes, Jasper has the root. Go strike the show and hitch the horses, and we can flee this place that turns you into a scared little boy.” She giggles behind her fan. I suspect that she has been drinking wine from the cabinet behind her.
“I will change out of my costume and help you,” I say to O’Neill. Through the open window, I glimpse Osbert in the treetops, and I wonder if he would have swooped down to save me from the shoemaker if O’Neill had not intervened. Who can know the mind of a wyvern?
“I must speak to you,” I whisper to O’Neill as I brush past him.
But Jasper joins us and keeps close as a shadow until the last item is packed. And then he commands O’Neill to take the driver’s seat of the smaller wagon. It seems that Jasper is as anxious to leave the elven folk as O’Neill is. So we set out in the dark, traveling slowly by the light of the moon.
Come morning, I will tell O’Neill of my plan to rescue Maren.
The moon is now on her slow slide down the sky. Morning will come very, very soon, and someday I will tell the tale of this new day: the day of our escape.
I wish I could say for certain that my tale will be a good one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The river rush
es by, tumbling over rocks and around the skeleton of a fallen tree. The sun hides behind a veil of clouds. Near where I sit on the stony beach, Soraya boils her latest pot of miracle cure. This one stinks worse than any of its predecessors. Stewed seven-needle root smells like an angry skunk bathed in sulfur.
The water moves fast. Would it carry my sister to the sea if I asked it to? She weighs very little and would be so willing to ride its currents. She would cause it no trouble at all.
I hug my knees to my chest. Grief has its fingers about my throat and I can barely breathe. Should I place Maren’s body in the river? At least then she would be free. And perhaps she would make it to the ocean. Perhaps she would live.
If she remains ensconced in that jar, she will, undoubtedly, die before the week is out.
Can I make it to the ocean in time? Is it possible?
For a moment, O’Neill’s spicy Christmas scent eclipses the stench of Soraya’s medicine. He crouches next to me. “Something is going to happen tonight,” he whispers. “I think we will take our leave.” His gaze is fixed on a heron standing on twig-like legs in the shallow water near the opposite shore. I study his face, admiring the shape of his nose, the color of his eyes, the certainty of his jaw, the little heart-shaped birthmark on his chin.
“How do you know?” I watch the heron dip its bill into the dark water.
“It is a feeling I have. An intuition the gypsies taught me to respect.”
“What should we do?”
“Nothing, for the moment. Things will unfold, I think, without our interference.”
“I was planning to go today, to take Maren, no matter what,” I say. “But I trust you. I will do as you say, as long as it is today.” In the trees above the heron, I glimpse the wing of my pet wyvern. “Osbert,” I whisper.
“I see him,” O’Neill says. He picks up a small round stone and rolls it in his hand, and then he makes it disappear. “Clara,” he says softly, somehow making the two syllables of my name as beautiful as any sonnet.
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