The Mermaid's Sister

by Carrie Anne Noble

  “Please, Clara. If you love me at all—if you love Maren, let her be the one to live.”

  How can I choose between the two people I love most?

  But if I choose healing for Maren, she would still be a mermaid, for there is no dagger in the universe that can make her a girl again. This is the truth I know and believe, although O’Neill continues to reject it again and again.

  In choosing Maren, I would likely lose them both, for Maren would regain her size—and without O’Neill, how could I carry her and keep her concealed until we reach the sea?

  There is no choice to be made. O’Neill must live or the mermaid will surely perish.

  My hand trembles as I press the blade into his wound. What if Mrs. Smith was mistaken? What if I kill my dearest friend?

  He coughs and wheezes. His eyes roll back and he shudders.

  I cut him, tracing the bullet hole with the razor-sharp tip of the dagger.

  O’Neill whimpers, and then he is quiet and absolutely still.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I am certain O’Neill is dead.

  I have hastened his death, and Maren’s death will follow swiftly.

  “I am sorry,” I say. I lift his hand to my lips and kiss his cold skin. There is so much I want to say, but I do not think he will ever hear another earthly thing.

  I lay his hand upon his chest, inches from the ugly, seeping hole I helped create.

  The wound hisses and glows. The skin stretches to cover the wound, and all traces of blood evaporate in a pink puff of air.

  A crooked smile spreads across O’Neill’s face just as the moonlight breaks through the clouds of smoke.

  If every joy of my life could be combined into one great joy, it would still be nothing but a shadow compared to this: my dearest O’Neill, living and breathing—and attempting to wipe away my flooding tears with his beautiful, filthy fingertips.

  The dawn is dim and misty, holding all the promise of another stifling day. The horses whinny as I untie them from their posts. I am glad that O’Neill tethered them away from the camp last evening. I am glad they are not now cinders like the Phippses’ many treasures.

  From the six horses, O’Neill chooses Plato and Cleopatra for our journey and sells the other four to a local farmer for much less than they are worth. We then return half the money to him in exchange for saddles, blankets, a sack of salt, and his promise to bury Soraya and Dr. Phipps, “victims of an unfortunate accident.”

  With all of his former vim and vigor, O’Neill vaults onto the back of the piebald horse. I hand him a large bucket covered with a piece of burlap, and he receives it as the priceless gift it is. He ties a length of strong rope about his waist and the bucket and makes a good, tight knot.

  “I will not lose Maren now,” he says. “Not after all we have been through.”

  I force a smile and use the fence to climb into the saddle of the chestnut mare.

  “Ready?” O’Neill asks. His face is so bright and eager that I wonder if the healing blade contained some kind of mood-lifting magic.

  “Yes,” I say. It is half-true. I am ready to deliver Maren to her home, but I am not ready to part with her. I will never be ready to be parted from my sister.

  O’Neill commands his horse to walk, and my horse follows.

  We take the road to the east.

  My sister is a mermaid. She is small enough to sleep within a two-quart jar of salt water.

  Yesterday, when the sun was noon-high, I bought the jar from an old woman we met along the eastward-leading road, filling it with fresh, clear water from her well and salt from her pantry. O’Neill guessed the woman’s favorite song and sang it through three times, making her laugh and cry simultaneously. For this, she gave us a loaf of warm bread and a thick slab of cheese. As we left, she asked O’Neill to marry her. He declined, of course. “Alas,” he said sweetly, “My heart is not mine to give.”

  Today, the horses carry us as if we are no trouble at all, as if they are merely going where they please. O’Neill rides Plato with the grace of a prince, and I manage not to fall off Cleopatra’s muscular back.

  O’Neill keeps Maren’s jar tied to his body as we travel. He talks to her often, although she rarely responds. He sings to her until his voice is hoarse. Let him cherish her while he may. She is almost home now.

  The soil becomes sandier with each passing mile; the trees here are not like Llanfair Mountain trees. They are silly-looking pines: skinny, knobby trunks—and branches with sparse tufts of needles. And when we stop to rest the horses, O’Neill points to the cloudless sky. I recognize the white and gray bird above us; it was Maren’s favorite in Auntie’s bird book, the ring-billed gull.

  O’Neill loosens the knotted rope and lifts Maren’s jar. “Look, Maren,” he says with the radiant joy of a little boy, “A sea bird!”

  Her eyelids flutter and she nods. She is so small now, just a handful. A miniature doll with tiny scales and smooth, pale, blue-gray skin.

  “We will be there soon,” he says. “You will finally have what you have been longing for, dearest.”

  She is asleep again before he finishes speaking.

  My heart aches for his loss, and for mine.

  We sit in the rough, dry grass beside the road. I scan the sky for sea birds while O’Neill holds Maren’s jar between his knees and stares at her wistfully.

  “I will ask the Sea King to release her,” he says. “I will demand that he restore her to her human family.”

  How many times have I told him that Maren is a mermaid? That she was never meant for the land? How can I say it again? I tear a piece of grass from the ground and use it to poke at an ant.

  “You will keep your sister,” he says with conviction. “Even if I must trade my life for hers.”

  I stand and wipe the sandy soil from my dress. “Wishing gets you nothing,” I say. The words are bitter on my tongue, but I do not know what else to say to him.

  “I am not wishing, Clara. I am telling you the truth.”

  “Your truth is not the truth,” I say. I want to lie down on the sandy ground and go to sleep for a hundred years, to wake up after the world has righted itself somehow.

  “Do you regret using the healing blade on me instead of her?” he asks. “Is that why you are angry with me? Or are you still holding a grudge against me for kissing you? Will you never forgive me?”

  “I am tired, O’Neill. I am tired and we are wasting time here.” I walk to Cleopatra and rub her black nose. “Help me up, will you?”

  He cups his hand, I step into it, and he boosts me onto the horse’s back. He looks up at me and says, “I am sorry, you know. Sorry for offending you so greatly.”

  “I know that,” I say. I close my eyes and wait for him to mount Plato. The coming end of Maren’s journey fills me with dread. My heart is a tangled knot of love and hate and hope and despair. If I were a stork, life would be much simpler.

  When I return to Llanfair Mountain, perhaps I will ask Auntie how to hasten my change.

  As we ride, I remember the only time I have visited the ocean—the summer Maren, O’Neill, and I were seven years old. Scarff brought us in the caravan, and he parked it behind a dune when we arrived. When the clanging and ringing of the pots and chimes all but ceased, the sound of the roaring waves filled my ears. We joined hands, three almost-siblings, and with feet slipping in the sand, ran over the dune to see the water.

  We stopped, all of us as one, as soon as we could see the ocean spread out before us, vast and blue-green and powerful. The curling waves caught sunlight in their bellies before bending over it and crashing onto the beach. The sea birds called and dove above us. I remember happiness, as pure and sweet as any in my life, filling every part of me. O’Neill shouted for joy. And then Maren tore her hand free of mine and returned to the caravan in tears.

  Three days we camped there. Maren, who practically lived in the pond and creek at home, refused to set foot in the ocean. All day, she sat on the dunes and wept q
uietly while O’Neill and I splashed and swam and collected shells.

  Did she cry because she already knew that one day the ocean would take her away from us? Or did her sorrow stem from a soul-deep longing for the ocean to be her home even then?

  The road before us becomes sand, and the scent of seawater taints the warm breeze. Cleopatra follows Plato, her mane ruffling in the wind. Gulls screech above us as we top a small, grassy hill, and then . . . we arrive.

  It is as I remember, beautiful and untamable and wider than my vision. I grip the reins and hold back tears.

  O’Neill brings Plato alongside me. After a few minutes of silence, I say, “What do we do? Should there not be a ceremony or trumpet blasts or an earthquake or something? A rainbow?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I never considered this part.”

  I look at him from the corner of my eye. The bloodstains on his torn shirt have faded after days in the sun. His hair is dirty from travel and more thatch-like than usual. Now that we are here, everything about him says sadness.

  On the horizon, a pod of dolphins swim together. Closer and closer they come, splashing and leaping in arcs above the water. “Dolphins,” I say, pointing them out to O’Neill.

  He shades his eyes with one hand and squints. “No,” he says, “those are mermaids and mermen coming to meet Maren.”

  “My sister,” I whisper.

  We dismount and walk down the beach, Maren’s jar still bound with rope to O’Neill’s waist, as the merfolk continue to approach. Soon, we hear them singing, high and sweet and unearthly. I remember ruined sailors and glance at O’Neill. “Be careful,” I warn. “They might take you in spite of your tattoo. Can it protect you from so many of them?”

  But perhaps that is what he wishes for in his heart of hearts. For then he and Maren would never be parted.

  A bare-chested merman, his bronze hair adorned with a wreath of sea stars, lifts a conch shell to his lips and blows. The singing ceases, the waves calm, and a towering, majestic figure moves through the crowd of merfolk. They bow as they make way for their king.

  He grips a golden trident in his right hand. His hair and beard are rolling waves of silver, and his crown is a monument of gold and pearls, coral and sparkling sea glass. “Come into the water,” he commands in a voice like the roaring tides. “Bring my daughter to me, for I have waited long to welcome her home.”

  O’Neill unties the rope and drops it onto the beach. He holds the jar to his side with one arm and offers me his other hand. Together, we wade through the fizzling foam and into the cool water. When the water sloshes at my waist, we stop.

  “She is here, your majesty,” O’Neill says as he raises the jar.

  The mermaids gasp and cry when they see her, so small and listless in her jar. It may be too late.

  “Silence!” the Sea King commands. The ocean stands still. “Bring me the jar, Varun,” he says to the muscular, golden-haired prince beside him. The prince glides through the water with grace and speed and reaches out pearlescent hands to receive the precious jar.

  “Wait!” O’Neill shouts. “Must you take her, your majesty? She has a family who love her, and a good life on land. Please do not take her from us.”

  “The jar,” Varun says. “Give it to me.”

  “She is my daughter,” the king says. His voice is a tidal wave consuming a rocky island. “She is a princess of the merfolk. She has never belonged to the human world. Her time there is done.”

  Varun pulls the jar from O’Neill’s grasp and swims swiftly to the king.

  O’Neill’s hand trembles in mine. From fear or anger, I am not sure. I cannot bear to look at his face now.

  The king opens the jar and pours its contents—including Maren—into his mighty palm. Then he lowers Maren into the ocean.

  She disappears beneath the surface. I hold my breath, imagining her bobbing up like a dead fish. I grip O’Neill’s hand desperately.

  Slowly, a head of bright copper hair emerges, followed by Maren’s twinkling face and alabaster shoulders. She is full-sized again, and she is perfect. Her hair cascades over her round breasts and floats about her delicate waist like metallic seaweed. She laughs with the sound of waves caressing a sandy shoreline, and the merfolk rejoice.

  “Daughter,” the Sea King says, his august voice heavy with emotion. She embraces him without hesitation. “How we have longed for your return!”

  A dozen mermaids rush to surround her, crowning her with coral, slipping necklaces of shells about her neck, adorning her fingers with rings, brushing her hair with jeweled combs.

  “Wait!” O’Neill shouts above the joyful din. “Take me instead!”

  “No, O’Neill.” Maren turns to address us, and the crowd becomes silent. “You must go home and live your life. This is my true home. It always has been.”

  “Your friends may visit our kingdom once a year, in your month of June, during our Festival of the Great Whales,” the king says to Maren. He gazes upon her with fatherly love.

  “She is my sister, and he is my brother,” Maren says. “They have risked their lives to bring me home to you.”

  “They shall be rewarded,” the king says. He waves his trident and a pair of sea turtles swim to us bearing a chest so large it covers both their shelled backs. “When you visit our palace, you shall receive even greater gifts for all you have done for my daughter.”

  “May I say good-bye to them, Father? Alone?” Maren asks.

  He nods, then raises his trident again. The merfolk move toward the horizon, diving and surfacing with glad shouts and merriment. The ocean resumes its ebbing and flowing.

  When she comes to embrace me, her skin is warm and emanates the fragrance of sea grasses and strange flowers, salt and seashells. There is weight to her, and strength. She is whole again—healthy and happy.

  “I will miss you,” I say into her ear. “Every day, I will miss you.”

  “And I will miss you. Never was there a better sister, or a braver one.”

  She releases me and takes O’Neill into her arms. “If only you had been born in a seashell,” she says, “we could have made a home together beneath the waves.”

  O’Neill shakes his head. “You will find a merman to marry. You will be happy. I know it,” he says with great effort. He does not wipe away the tears flowing from his eyes. They fall into the ocean to join the saltwater of the ages.

  She kisses his cheek, and then mine.

  And then she dives into the swelling waves and swims away.

  We watch her go. We do not move until the rising tide forces us back to the shore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  O’Neill and I spread our blankets on the sand, on opposite sides of the driftwood campfire. Neither of us has spoken since Maren swam away. I lie awake and watch the stars turn above me. The ocean rolls and roars, splashes and murmurs. I cannot hear the voices of the merfolk anymore. I almost wonder if I imagined them. But if they were not real, then what has become of my sister?

  Inside my heart an ocean of tears swells and crashes, yet I do not cry. I feel as if part of me is now made of sorrow, some new and tender organ that will pain me until the day I die. I know Maren is safe and well, and made beautiful in all ways. My grief is not for her but for myself—because I miss her . . . because she is missing from me.

  No matter how many times I remind myself that I will see her again, the pain remains.

  In the morning, I walk along the shore and dig up clams with a stick. I carry them in my skirt, forgoing my manners and exposing my knees to the gulls. They skitter after me, hoping I will share my breakfast with them.

  I drop the clams into the pail of water I left to heat in the coals and O’Neill sits up and rubs his eyes.

  Still, we do not speak.

  Not as we eat, nor as we fold the turtles’ treasures into the blankets, nor as we mount the horses, nor when we stop at midday to rest on a riverbank.

  Unable to bear my filthy state any longer, I leave
O’Neill while he is napping. I walk until I find a bend in the river where I can remove my dress in privacy. I scrub it against a smooth rock and then lay it on the beach to dry. In my chemise, I wade into the water until it reaches my neck. I wash my hair and body with my hands, and finally, I weep.

  An hour later, I return to the place where I left O’Neill to find him pacing and running his hands through his dirty hair. “You would feel better after a bath,” I say. “I found a good place just over there.”

  “Clara!” he shouts. “You frightened me. I thought you’d left.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But why would I leave you?”

  “Because I failed you. I did not save Maren. I let your sister be taken by the merfolk.”

  “It is what she wanted. I have told you a hundred times, but you have not listened.” I sit down on a boulder and lay my hands in my lap. “Now Maren is well, and she is home. And we will go to our home and live with Auntie and Scarff. Next year, we may visit Maren and hear her stories of sea horses and starfish and underwater courts.” I speak to convince him and myself that these things are both true and good.

  “Yes,” he says. Only he does not sound convinced, not one bit. He sits at my feet and wraps his arms about his knees. Suddenly, he looks all of twelve years old.

  “You must not blame yourself for things beyond your control, O’Neill. It is one of your most irritating faults.” Through my pain, I smile at him, and he smiles back. It is like the sun coming out after a hundred days of rain.

  “I was not aware that I had more than one fault,” he says.

  “Well, your stench is one.” I wave my hand in front of my nose. “Please, for the love of mercy, go and wash yourself!”

  “Just because your sister is a princess does not make you the queen,” he says. He tosses a small rock at my bare foot.

  And then he obeys.

  The world will continue, as it has for thousands upon thousands of years. We will live without our dear Maren. We will finish growing up and we will work and play and love. The sun and moon will take turns shining, clouds will sail across the skies, and rain will wash the earth. I will touch snow and smell flowers. Perhaps someday I will have a child, and I will tell her of her mermaid auntie. Or perhaps I will become a stork and fly wherever the winds take me.