Then another thought struck her.
"Poor relation? You aren't a princess? I thought all mermaids who came up to the surface were daughters of the Sea King."
"Ah, so that's what you are," Ma said, gliding in to join them. "I suspected, but my eyes aren't as good as they used to be, and this old charm has had a lot of use over the years." She rubbed the necklace of sea glass that circled her ample neck three times. "Here you go, dearie. This might help," she added, as she handed the girl a steaming cup that smelled like salt and seaweed and a very old crab.
She settled down with them. Merrigan paused to fight down the flash of irritation, because wasn't this her mermaid, her discovery? What right did Ma have, sticking her nose into what was turning out to be an interesting story? Then as Merrigan listened to Bib filling Ma in on what they had seen and learned so far, and the struggle to figure out how to pronounce the girl's name, she reasoned that of course, Ma had every right. She was the queen of the Bookish Mermaid, just as much as Merrigan had been queen of Carlion. How would Merrigan feel if someone brought a stranger into her palace and tried to keep information from her? After that, she could smile with the others as they decided that Elli was the easiest name to use for the girl. By this time, Elli had drunk half of the brew Ma had thrown together for her, and Merrigan could have sworn that most of the dry, frizzy look to her hair had smoothed out. Unfortunately, no instant hair growth. Her skin took on a faintly silvery cast, almost a glow, and she looked ... well, "damper" would be the best word Merrigan could come up with.
"Every Sea King has a dozen daughters, at least, for every son they produce," Elli said, when they returned to the explanation of how she had come to be so far from her home territory under the waves. "Despite the losses we incur every generation, from foolish maidens who go up to the surface and fall in love with some handsome land-walker who pretends to be a prince, there are at least nine or ten daughters who take a mate and produce another daughter or two or three. My great-great-great-great-grandmother was a daughter of the Sea King." She sighed and her tears had an even stronger green tint as they plopped down into the last mouthful of the brew in her cup. "You'd think with all the land-walker blood in me, between her and my mother, I would have had the sense to stay away from the surface."
"Excuse me—land-walker?" Merrigan interrupted.
"With all those women in the water, it's not that easy finding a merman willing to settle down and take responsibility for his mate's mother and sisters and nieces, besides all the daughters they're likely to produce," Bib said. "The usual tactic is for a mermaid to come up on dry land for fifteen, twenty years, pretend to be a Human woman, take a husband—generally an old, retired sailor—and have several children. When he dies of happy old age, she takes her children and returns to the sea. The really lucky ones have a son or two with their Human husbands, which gains them quite a lot of prestige under the waves."
Chapter Eight
"That sounds ... well, that sounds rather sensible." Merrigan wondered if that was where she had made her mistake. There had been a few older kings looking for second wives who had been interested in her. The dangers of becoming a stepmother and automatically being blamed for anything that went wrong in the lives of her stepchildren had been the main reason for refusing to let the emissaries present their courting gifts.
"Not sensible enough. Not where I was concerned," Elli said. "My bad luck was to run into a real prince. I should have taken that old sailor with a fleet of small boats, who took rich people out on overnight trips up and down the coast. He didn't care about treasure, and I did like the paintings he made."
"Since when is it bad luck to marry a real prince?" Merrigan said with a chuckle.
"Run into a prince," Ma corrected her gently. "That's the problem, isn't it? He cut off your hair with a magic knife, to ensure you couldn't regain your tail and swim away from him."
"Ughsalla the Sea Witch gave it to him. She's had a grudge against my family line since my great-great-great-grandmother went to another sea witch to trade her singing voice to win a prince and live happily ever after. Ughsalla has always wanted to be in the Storm Surge Chorus, but her voice is only suited to creating typhoons." A few more green teardrops slid down Elli's cheeks and plopped into her cup.
"We need to get that knife back," Ma said. "Can you think of any other way to make her hair grow back and regain her tail, Bib?"
"No, I'm sorry." Bib riffled his pages, flipping up and then down again in a shrug. "I've been ransacking all the books I have ever visited that even mention mermaids. They disagree on so many details, some so ludicrous I could laugh until my pages tear out. However, they do agree that any change made to a mermaid through magic must be repaired by that same magic. Especially a magical tool."
"How do we get that knife?" Merrigan said. "What kingdom is that wretched prince from?"
The prince, it turned out, was now the king of Quibblshtahn, a small kingdom north of Swyfflbyrne. When Elli ran away from him, he didn't suffer a broken heart, but proved he was a vindictive, spoiled brat. In his search for a royal bride, he crossed the Great Ocean to Armorica. He left the magic knife, encrusted with jewels, with his bride's father in the tiny kingdom of Seafoam. Since Elli couldn't swim or buy passage on a ship to take her there, she couldn't retrieve the knife.
Merrigan could barely hold back a squeak of delight at that bit of news. She actually knew where Seafoam was in Armorica.
"You know the king of Seafoam, don't you?" Bib said, during a lull in the conversation when Ma got up to fix another cup of restorative tonic for Elli.
"I know of him," Merrigan said.
She trembled a little when Ma stopped, two steps away from her chair, and fixed her with that look she knew all too well from her nursery days. The look her own mother and Nanny Starling both gave her when she had secrets and they were on the verge of finding out. She had learned early that a wise child told those secrets, because no matter how naughty she might have been, the longer she took confessing, the worse her punishment.
"I never met the previous king," she hurried to add, feeling as if the words were being squeezed out of her. "I did see his silly daughters when they came to court. None of them were good-hearted enough to make their silliness bearable." At least, that was Merrigan's impression of the princesses of Seafoam on their one visit. She had been perhaps five years old at the time. They had been ridiculously obvious in their attempts to make one of her older brothers fall in love with them.
"You met princesses." Ma sat down, not quite frowning, but concentrating on Merrigan so her gaze had weight.
"I told you, I sewed in royal courts." She trembled, unwilling to admit to Ma, especially, that she was under a curse. Somehow, she didn't want Ma to get the wrong impression of her.
"That's the answer," the woman said after several more moments. She smiled, nodded twice, and picked up the cup to go get Elli's tonic.
"Answer?" Elli watched Ma cross to the kitchen side of the long room, then turned back to Merrigan.
Before she rejoined them, Ma sent one of the dishwashing crew down to the harbor to the Fleetwind, her third oldest son's ship. She sent one of the table-service girls upstairs to a storage room with a long list of items to bring down with her. Then she picked a number of bottles and jars and bags off the high shelves in the narrow room where cooking ingredients were kept, tossed them into a massive bowl big enough to wash a five-year-old boy, and came back to the cluster of couches and chairs where Elli and Merrigan waited in silence. She spread the ingredients out on a low round table and dragged it over to within easy reach of Elli's chair.
"I'd wager your spoilsport prince—sorry, king—has your description spread around the various ports, to keep you from getting on a ship and going after the knife." Ma picked up one bottle or jar or bag after another and took a pinch or scoop of each ingredient and dropped it into the big bowl. "I'll wager he's enough of a snot that he made sure you knew what he did with the knife, just to torme
nt you. My guess is that he's counting on the longevity of mermaids, so that when he's a wrinkled old codger, you'll still be beautiful. When he's a widower, he can force you to marry him to get the knife."
"He could be banking on a few of the sillier legends of the sea people," Bib offered. "Such as, if a mermaid takes you down deep enough and you eat a certain kind of seaweed that only grows where no light can reach, you'll become mer and eternally young."
"Extremely silly, since that seaweed can only turn him into a mermaid, emphasis on maid," Ma said with a nasty grin.
"What are you doing?" Merrigan asked, when Ma had dumped in a particularly strong-smelling vinegar. It made the mixture bubble and release even stronger aromas reminiscent of a nursery on a hot summer day.
"A disguise that will get our new friend across the ocean to steal that knife. I dare any magic spell to stand up against my great-granny Phoebe's hair tonic."
Merrigan dared any vermin within two miles to stand up against the smell. Fortunately, the stench died out quickly enough that only a few customers looked in from the dining room to ask if there was a problem.
Quincy, captain of the Fleetwind, showed up just as Ma was throwing a thick sheet around Elli's shoulders to protect her clothes and the surrounding chairs and books. He waited, rubbing his nose and pretending the stink didn't bother him. Ma used a pastry brush to glop the thick, slightly bubbling, brown concoction on the mermaid's hair and then work it through to her scalp. While Elli waited, her throat convulsing every time she took too deep of a breath, Ma explained her plan.
If she hadn't already had her breath taken away by the hair tonic, Merrigan might just have lost it altogether.
Mistress Mara, seamstress to royalty, would cross the ocean to Seafoam and kingdoms beyond, to seek her former home and cash in on several promises her former patrons had made to her. Naturally, a woman of her skill and age and delicate constitution couldn't travel such a great distance without a serving maid-apprentice. When they reached Windward, the capital and main port of Seafoam, the two would establish themselves in a reputable inn and then become part of the neighborhood, and trusted. Then they could find a way into the palace and retrieve that knife.
This was where Quincy came in. He crossed the ocean to Armorica regularly, and knew all the ports, large and small, fishing towns and major ports of commerce and quiet little villages so small they didn't have docks.
"Oh, yes, I know about Avylyn and Carlion and the other major kingdoms," he said, when his mother asked. His face lit up, as if he had been given an amazing gift. "Would you like to know about Jardien or Heiffelbein or—"
"No need. Just knowing there's someone on this side of the world who knows about my homeland, it's very encouraging." Merrigan blinked rapidly, fighting totally inexplicable tears.
"More important," Ma said, patting Merrigan's shoulder, "do you know a reputable inn in Windward where we can settle these two in safety?"
Merrigan hadn't thought it possible, but Quincy's face lit up even more. Yes, he knew of an inn where the food was outstanding and the rooms were clean and the innkeeper's family made sure their customers were safe and they kept out riffraff. He was friends with the innkeeper's sons and daughter, and would entrust Mistress Mara and Mistress Elli to their care, personally.
Ah ha. A daughter, she thought to Bib. No wonder Quincy can't wait to go back. He's fallen in love. I wonder, does his mother know?
Ma never misses anything, her companion responded.
Merrigan shuddered. She hoped there were at least a few things that had escaped Ma's sharp eye and even sharper instincts.
So it was that two days later, Mistress Mara bade farewell to the friends she had made at the Bookish Mermaid. She boarded the Fleetwind with her new apprentice, several crates of material, and all the essentials to set up a dressmaker's shop in the port town of Windward, in the tiny kingdom of Seafoam.
ELLI DIDN'T CARE MUCH for sewing, and her attempts at singing hurt Merrigan's ears. She did find books fascinating, and confessed that she much preferred that method of storing information to the way it was done under the sea—trusted to the memories of the great whales and to the spiny, blind creatures that lived at depths that would crush ordinary mortals. While their memories were perfect down to the inflection used when the information was relayed to them, whales were stodgy creatures devoted to protocol and manners, and the spiny creatures of the dark, cold depths had even spinier feelings. Sometimes retrieving the information stored in their minds was harder than reading books retrieved from sunken ships. Elli had wondered what was in the books, but the ink always faded away before she could teach herself to read.
Merrigan found some ironic amusement in discovering that she could be a fairly decent teacher if her pupil was clever and hungry to learn. She and Elli spent their time either holed up in their cabin or in the prow of the ship out of the way of the sailors. Merrigan designed fantastical gowns to catch the attention of the court ladies of Seafoam, while Elli learned her letters by reading aloud to her. Quincy had delightful taste in books, and four-fifths of the volumes lining one wall of his cabin were all fables and romantic tales of daring and adventures, rather than manuals devoted to the seafaring life. Four books were full of poetry. That made sense, since he seemed besotted to the point of turning mute, when it came to the subject of the innkeeper's daughter.
Merrigan blamed self-preservation and cleverness when she quizzed Quincy about his sweetheart until she had a good idea of the girl's height and build. She designed and sewed a dress for her that was just a little grander than an innkeeper's daughter would wear, but not so grand she would feel uncomfortable. She doubted she acted out of gratitude for Ma and Tiny's help, so she helped Quincy's courtship. There was no real profit in being nice to the lower classes just for the sake of being nice to them.
Still, there was a vague disquiet deep inside, when she presented the dress to Rosa, the innkeeper's daughter, and she and her mother insisted that Merrigan and Elli had to have the grandest room in their inn. That was what she intended, wasn't it?
Rosa brought all her friends to see Merrigan and the material she had brought with her, and exclaim over the dresses she had designed. Of course, the other clothes were far too grand for them to ever dream of wearing, but many of them worked for rich merchants or were servants in some of the grand houses of Windward. They promised to speak with their mistresses about the fashionable seamstress who had come from far over the sea. Merrigan left hints that royal employers had sent her on her journey. By the end of the day, word spread through Windward that a royal seamstress had arrived, and she would be happy to share what she had learned before she returned to her employers.
"Now we'll see how fast the fish are biting and how hungry they are," she remarked to Elli that evening, as they headed downstairs to the dining room. The mermaid girl laughed at her figurative language. She had been trying to rid some of the sea-based metaphors out of her vocabulary during the voyage, while Merrigan had been picking them up from the sailors.
She returned to their room after dinner, leaving Elli sitting by the fire, listening with delight to a long, involved tale from Miles, Rosa's oldest brother. She stopped in the doorway, the question she had for Bib frozen on her lips.
A massive dog with eyes as big as rum bottles sat beside her bed, head bowed over Bib, who was spread out open on the quilt.
Merrigan blinked, rubbed her eyes, then looked again. She finally thought to close the door, and moved farther into the room. The dog was an enormous, muscular breed that looked like it could take a bite out of a building, or even drag it into the street. She could only walk to the foot of her bed because the dog took up most of the sitting area next to the fireplace. Merrigan was too stunned to feel afraid.
"Good evening, Princess," the dog said in a growly sort of slobbery voice that threatened to drip drool. He bowed his head to her, nearly knocking Bib onto the floor.
"Good evening, dog." She decided it might be prudent t
o curtsey. "Are you all right, Bib?"
Merrigan braced herself to find out that Bib's original master had regained his magic and had sent this huge dog to take him back home. She considered flinging herself onto the bed, under the massive jaws of the dog, risking a bite or even being inundated with that threat of drool, to grab hold of her friend and keep him from being taken away.
"Quite all right, Mi'Lady. Rolf and his two brothers are old friends. They are bound to a tinderbox that once belonged to my master. A witch stole it during the chaos. I'm delighted to meet up with him again. All three have had some exciting adventures."
"Then we sat in a cave for seventy years or so," the dog, Rolf, added in a tone that was part growl, part whine.
"True. The witch made a very serious miscalculation and she lost control over the tinderbox. She had to find someone willing to go down into the hole in the ground to get it, who wasn't interested in the tinderbox for his own sake. Most people took one look at her and either ran in fear or were stupidly greedy and thought they could cheat an old woman. Why does everyone think the elderly are witless or helpless?" Bib chuckled. "Appearances are deceiving, aren't they, Mi'Lady?"
Rolf laughed too, a panting sort of sound that necessitated his tongue hanging out. It was an enormous tongue that Merrigan thought she could use as a hand towel.
"So whoever helped the witch get the tinderbox out of the hole in the ground managed to take it away from her?" she guessed.
The Kindness Curse Page 14