May: Daughters of the Sea #2 (12 page)

She had to act polite. Striking the right tone was going to be hard. She didn’t want to sound flirtatious but not outright rude. “Now, Rudd Sawyer, a girl never tells her dreams lest they won’t come true.” She forced a smile. “But actually I was just thinking about some mathematics problems that Doctor Holmes was helping me with when I was at the library.” She looked down at the papers she was carrying in a folder.

“Mathematics—now, why does a girl need to know mathematics?”

“Why does a boy need to know it?” she answered tartly.
Watch it, May,
she warned herself.

“How’s your fishing?” she asked before he had the chance to respond.

This was not a question she especially wanted to ask, but she needed to appear strong, fearless. He wanted to brag to her? Let him brag. She’d play her part, even if it meant she had to seem flirtatious. She had a sense that Rudd was one of those people who grew more aggressive the harder he was pushed.

“Good! Good!” he replied. “You know what?”

“What?” She tipped her head and smiled. Her green eyes twinkled.

“I tell you what, MayPlum, I earned more than any other fisherman in Bar Harbor save Captain Gus. How about that? Going to start building me a house — right out on the point toward Otter Creek.”

“Oh, that’s a beautiful place. I’m surprised the rich summer folk haven’t bought up that piece.”

“They ain’t going to. I already put down five hundred dollars on it.”

“Five hundred dollars!” May blinked and shook her head in disbelief. “Why, I never.” It was an unimaginable sum to May.

He stepped up and chucked her under the chin. She recoiled at his touch.

“You see, May, I’m getting me a nest egg. I’m not going to drink it away like half these fellows. I have plans.”

“Plans.” May repeated the word softly.

“Come down to the fish wharf and see the boat and our catch. We just brought it in.”

She didn’t want to, but it was on her way, and she sensed it was best to humor him.

She saw the
Sea Hound
at the end of the wharf, bobbing in the water by the dock. Two men were putting cod into barrels underneath a line on which the glistening silver-blue bodies of swordfish hung. The fish twirled softly in the spring breeze. She felt a pang deep inside her as she looked at the
Sea Hound.
This was the way it was, she knew. Men fished here. It was their livelihood. She ate fish five out of seven days of the week. But there was something unsettling seeing these magnificent swordfish dangling by their tails, their eyes clouded in death, their scales that in the water ranged from silver to gray to blue with hints of bronze and even purple now dull and lusterless. Only the night before, she had swum through a school of swordfish, perhaps one hundred or more. She was larger. They made way for her, parting slightly, never even grazing her with their swords. She had traveled with them for the better part of an hour, their silvery blue radiance folding around her as she swam.

“How—how do you get them?”

“Harpoon. Come on board. Meet Lucky.”

“Who’s Lucky?” she asked as he helped her onto the deck of the
Sea Hound.

Rudd reached up to where a number of harpoons were hanging on a frame at the stern along with gutting knives and the curved sawtoothed blades for scraping scales. “This is Lucky,” he said, taking down a harpoon. The shaft was almost ten feet long and terminated in a lethal-looking dart with a barb. “You see?” Rudd’s finger traced the point. “It’s so sharp, it can go through bone. But the barb sets it. So the fish can’t get away.”

“Showing off, are you?” A man with a bushy irongray beard had walked up to where they stood.

“Hello, Captain. This here’s May Plum, Gar Plum’s daughter. From the lighthouse.”

“Hello, Miss Plum. So Rudd here is showing off. Well, I guess he has cause. Nine out of those fifteen swordfish hanging up there got cozy with his harpoon. Feel like going back to lobstering, Rudd?” The captain winked at May.

“Don’t be a fool! That ain’t fishing, Captain Gus. That’s like babysitting or watching grass grow. This is hunting. Here, May, want to hold the harpoon?”

“No, no thanks. I better be going.”

Before he could say anything more May jumped up onto the pier.

“Well, she’s a quick little thing, Rudd! Don’t know how you’ll catch her.” Rudd just laughed and jumped up after her.

“Oh, I’m quick, too. So I’ll see you at the apple blossom dance, MayPlum?”

Over his shoulders she could see the swordfish twisting on their hooks.
Dead,
she thought. Had she ever seen anything that looked more dead?

“When’s that?” she asked.

“When the apple blossoms come out. End of second week of June.”

“Uh … I don’t know … maybe.” It was hard for May to imagine a dance when she saw the lovely dead fish dangling from a line.

“Oh, my!” Captain Gus turned from the rope he
had been splicing and grinned at her. “She playing you, Rudd?”

Rudd dipped his chin into his collar and seemed to chuckle at some private joke, then shook his head. “No, no one plays me, Gus.” He gave May what appeared to be a playful shove on the shoulder, but it was just enough to set her slightly off balance. The folder with the papers slipped, catching in a sudden gust of wind and lazily drifting toward the water.

“Oh, no!” May cried. “My proofs!”

Then quicker than when she had jumped up onto the pier, she leaped down to the deck of the
Sea Hound
again, grabbed Lucky, and raced to the stern platform.

“What the hell are you doing, girl?” Rudd yelled.

“Hey!” Captain Gus laughed. “I’d say that girl has a way with a harpoon. Look at her fetching those papers up now!” May was dipping the harpoon into the water and had managed to get the ones closest to the hull of the boat.

Rudd laughed, too, then in a flat voice said, “Guess she’ll have to go swimming for the rest.” May felt
the blood drain from her face and swayed. She grabbed for the line of the riding sail on the stern to steady herself.
Does he know?
She slid her eyes toward him. She had expected to see him laughing at her, thinking this was some great joke. But he wasn’t laughing at all. He was watching her carefully. His eyes reminded her of sharks’ eyes—blank, almost dead, but seeing everything.

S
HE SAW IT GLINTING AND SHARP,
a spike through the deep gray of the offshore night water. The sky was gray as well, slung low and heavy. It seemed to press down on the sea until the two oceans, the visible and the invisible, were fused. It had been raining when she slipped out. There was no moon, no light to reflect, yet this glinting spike stabbed the murky netherworld. Just ahead a trickle of blood threaded through the grayness. A beautiful dying swordfish! The spike had found its mark! Suddenly there were scores of blades, spikes, and harpoons. She swam wildly through a daggered forest. But one harpoon grazed her tail. It seemed to have a life of its own and it kept following her. The dart, polished to a
blazing silver, enveloped her in a blinding light.
“So sharp… can go through bone.” Lucky! It’s Lucky!

I am going to die.

“No, no, MayPlum, just getting cozy—that’s all.”

May sat straight up in bed. She was sweating—sweating pure salt. “A dream, just a dream,” she whispered. She looked out the window. It was still raining as it had been when she went out swimming six hours before. She had come back just an hour ago. But this dream was so real. She shivered and wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders. She never felt cold from swimming. It was the dream that made her cold, not the sea.

Since her transformation, May seemed to need much less sleep. She could only surmise that this was the mer part of her. She had never seen a sea creature sleeping. When she did sleep, her dreams were intensely vivid. It was not just the colors of the sea that had seeped into the deepest parts of her being but its rhythms as well. This dream, however,
had a different kind of intensity. There was a forcefulness, a terrible violence. It was as if the harpoon had an intelligence, a mind of its own.

“You’re a fool, May Plum,” she said hoarsely. It was a dream, nothing more! She held herself tighter, but it was as if she were trying to embrace more than just herself. The twin voids, the spaces that pressed against her—had they been with her in her dream? She recalled the strange reflection in the porthole of the
Josiah B. Harwood.

She was waiting. Waiting for the others, waiting for her two mer sisters, and when she found them they would go together. With them at her side, she could swim through a sea bristling with harpoons and sliced by the long daggers of her nightmare.

F
AR, FAR ACROSS THE
A
TLANTIC
an island rises green from the sea. It is Barra Head, the southernmost of the islands known as the Outer Hebrides. It is girded by rough gray rocks from a time before time when two huge continents were one. Gradually an ocean formed and though it was only water, like the sharp edge of an anvil, the Atlantic chiseled the continents apart. They drifted their separate ways, at first just by inches but then by miles. The only evidence of their former union were the rocks embedded with similar fossils from their shared time as one continent. But sometimes these rocks were broken in two and were never to be matched to make a whole, like a jigsaw puzzle left half done. Small islands
trailed in the wakes of both continents. Barra Head was one of these islands, washed by the calmer waters of a strait called the Little Minch, which separated the Outer Hebrides from the large Isle of Skye, just off the Scottish coast.

Round the tip of the island was a cave, the home of a mer woman. She was regarded as a hermit by the few inhabitants of the island—half a dozen crofting families who raised barley, potatoes, oats, and turnips and kept flocks of sheep. The folk of the island did not know that Avalonia, or Ava as she was known, was mer. To them she appeared not young, nor really old, but extremely beautiful, her deep auburn hair run through with threads of silver. Despite her beauty, men did not bother her. They seemed to sense a peculiar strength in her that perhaps they found threatening, but mostly they thought of her as different.

No one knew that she led a divided life, a secret life as a creature who swam far out into the sea, whose legs dissolved into a great and powerful tail every time she dove into the water. Her
closest companions were seals. They sometimes swam to her cave, and when she went abroad they sought her company as a swimming companion, for she was gentle with their pups, and very playful. So it did not surprise her to look up and find a seal mother and young pup swimming toward her cave.

The seals clambered up on the small beach. They loved to come right into her cave. They would peer about in wonder at the wreaths she had made from seashells and the foggy blue-and-green sea glass that she collected. On one ledge there were a half dozen combs that she had made from deep-sea scallop shells. She used them to hold her hair back while she swam or when she piled it into a great bun atop her head when she dressed to go to the village.

The seals’ very favorite objects of all in the cave were a tin whistle and a
clàrsach,
a small Scottish harp. They loved to hear Ava play. It was not at all like when she spoke a book. It was very different. But this seal and her pup had not come
to hear her sing, or to look at the odd curiosities of her land life, or even to eat the smelts that she had so thoughtfully put out for them on the edge of a rock. They had come to tell her a story.

T
WO DAYS AFTER HER TERRIBLE NIGHTMARE,
May returned to Bar Harbor to pick up some medicine for Zeeba. She had just turned the corner from the doctor’s office when she heard someone call from across the street. “May!”

It was Hugh waving and smiling at her. He had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. There was no avoiding him nor did she want to. But she was still embarrassed about her reaction when he had asked if she wanted to wade. She must have seemed like a complete idiot. She was afraid to look him in the eye as he crossed the street. He put out his hand to shake hers. Would her skin feel odd to him?

“I’ve spent almost the whole day in the library. I
thought I’d stretch my legs a bit. Would you care to join me on a walk?”

May felt her heart speed up. Was he just trying to be polite? She fiddled with the bag of medicine as she wracked her brain for something to say.

“You seem somewhat preoccupied,” he said.

She jerked her head up quickly. “Oh, no … I’m not preoccupied at all. Yes, I’ll walk with you.”

“Is there a place we can sit and talk? It’s such a nice day.”

“The cemetery,” she said quickly.

“The cemetery?” He gave her a curious look.

Had she said the wrong thing? She would try to gather her wits for what sailors called a mid-course correction. “The cemetery is really lovely on a day like this. You feel as if you can see all the way to Ireland.”

He tipped his head to one side and looked at her, as if he wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. Then he smiled. “Why don’t you show me?”

As they walked through the stubby stone pillars marking the entrance to the cemetery, their hands
brushed against each other. May instantly pulled away and cursed herself. How had she been so careless to let her arms swing about so freely? She should have worn gloves like the fancy summer women and girls who never wanted the sun to touch their white skin. She glanced over at Hugh, scanning his face for any signs of confusion or revulsion. But he hadn’t seemed to notice anything strange.

They walked up to the top of the hill. The gravestones, thin and dark, bent into the wind like fragile old folks. The grass whispered softly as if in a private conversation with the bones that lay beneath their roots—a conspiracy between the living and the dead. May stopped briefly in front of a headstone and looked at it. Funny, she had never noticed it before.