May: Daughters of the Sea #2 (21 page)

As they swam from the current it felt as if the whole world had slowed.

May might have thought that it was the charts and Maury’s book combined with her own instinct for currents that had guided her this far. And in part that was true. But now another guidance system that had nothing to do with reckoning was set into motion. It was the Laws of Salt. Independent of any compass, it pulled one toward the long-lost shadows of kin.

They were very near. May felt it, and soon Hannah felt it as well. They barely needed to speak as they slipped through the water. Angling their flukes slightly this way or that they honed in on the sea grounds of the wreck. Soon a shape rose from the grassy seafloor. The HMS
Resolute.
Its hull loomed like a ghostly vision. Although logically they knew it could no longer sail, it seemed driven by a spectral wind. A large halibut, with its strangely skewed face in which the eyes seemed to slide off to one side,
swam out of a gaping hole in the bow. The dark portholes emerged like the sockets in a dead man’s skull, and yet there was a strange beauty to the ship.

Both May and Hannah put on a tremendous burst of speed.

But they suddenly stopped short in the water, and twining their tails around each other they locked arms. For the first time they shivered. But it was not with cold. A face drifted above them—a face just like theirs.

“It’s—it’s …” Hannah could not complete the thought.

“Our mother,” May said, swimming up toward the figurehead that extended from the bow. Although most of the paint had long worn away the features were unmistakable. They both touched their chins at the same time and felt the slight dimple in the middle. The cheekbones were rounded and high like theirs and the mouth had the same generous lower lip and delicately bowed upper one. Her neck curved down to her shoulders, and the artist who had carved the figurehead had modestly let tendrils of her hair
cover her breasts. But her midriff was bare and just beneath her navel, where her pelvis began, were finely carved scales. May had seen figureheads on the ships that plied the coastal waters all her life. They were most often of women, sometimes of men—usually kings or military heroes and sometimes gods. But this face was instantly recognizable to May and Hannah, for it was so similar to their own faces.

The girls entwined themselves around her, caressing her hair, brushing the hardwood curves of her face, her neck, her lovely shoulders. Did they imagine that she heard their voices, felt their tears, their kisses, their longing? That her wooden eyes gazed down on them and saw them? There was a strange mingling of joy and profound sorrow. They had found what they had lost. The figurehead was the connection they had longed for, but the broken hull of the ship hovered over them like the shadow of an ultimate disconnection and all that could never be recovered.

Despite years of being polished by the ocean there were still vague traces of paint on the figurehead’s
face. The deep green of her eyes, the brilliant red hair, the flush on her cheeks, and the ripe rosiness of her lips. Their hearts were broken, and yet they felt a mending taking place within the deepest part of their beings. They belonged to her. They had been born of this woman. They were her daughters. And for now that was all they needed to know.

They swam through the interior of the hull. In the aft cabin, which was mostly destroyed, they found an overturned navigation desk. This must be the captain’s quarters. “Look, a comb like yours!” Hannah said, picking up a scallop shell that was in a half-open drawer of the desk. “It must have been hers.”

“Take it, Hannah, you should have it.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet of you.”

“I already have one. Don’t be silly.” But in truth she did want something of her mother’s. She wondered if she could find anything, just any little thing.

She swam over what must have been a bed. There were little cubbyholes above the head of the bed where things could be stored. She reached into the first one and found a chambered nautilus. The creature
inside did not take kindly to being disturbed. The next cubbyhole was blocked by a starfish. But in the third one she saw what appeared to be a flattish rock propped up. It was wedged in tightly and it took her a good deal of time to dislodge it.

“What is it, May?” Hannah said, swimming over.

“I’m not sure.” May replied.

“It looks broken.”

“Yes, it does. But look at that feathery design on it. Like a lily.”

“Do you think it belonged to our mother? It’s so pretty. Maybe it was a keepsake of hers.”

May looked up for a moment as the shafts of silver light from a full August moon illuminated the beautiful design on the ancient rock. “Yes, a keepsake. I’m sure!” May said, and smiled at Hannah. “It’s our mother’s.”

M
AY KNEW THAT
H
UGH
must have returned by this time, but so far she had not heard a word from him. She tortured herself with visions of him dancing at the fancy parties of the summer people. Again the word
cordially
ran through her brain. How could he have said that to her, after their night on Mount Abenaki? The more she thought about it, the more tarnished the memories became. She was caught between terrible anger and deep regret.

She loved Hannah, but love for a sister was different from the love she had or thought she had with Hugh. How could he have been so hurtful? Hugh’s coldness cut deeper than anything Rudd had ever done.

The question May kept asking herself was that although she had found part of her family would she ever have one of her own—have children, a husband? She had found the sea, but was increasingly certain she had lost everything else.

Later that afternoon, May was up in the lantern room trimming the wick of the lamp, when she began to hear the slap of the wind around the eaves of the roof and saw the railing on the circular deck outside the lantern room shake. She looked out. She found the clear sky alarming. There was not a cloud in it. She went to the window, and the water was being whipped to a froth. Then May let out a small yelp.

“What in the name?” Hugh! Hugh’s boat was heading toward Egg Rock.

No! Dread welled up within her. Suddenly there was a demonic whistling sound, and the windows of the lantern room began to shiver. She watched transfixed as the small sailboat heeled so its spars were parallel to the sea.
He has too much sail up!

There was a haunting familiarity that flooded through her. Six months before she had stood clinging to the piling on their dock and had watched a man
drown. She had never swum before, never entered the water at all, and yet she had known she could. She watched horrified as the boat went over.

“White squall!” Gar shouted up the stairs. And indeed the entire world had turned white, as white and as impenetrable as a thick fog. The surface of the sea was foaming, and the wild wind scraped off the curling crests of waves and flung the spume into the air.

May raced down the stairs. “Where you going, May?” But she did not bother to answer. “May, don’t be a fool. That wind will scrape you right off the island!”

“What’s that fool girl doing?” Hepzibah said as Gar came back in the house. “She flew out of here like a bat out of hell.”

“Shut your mouth, you old witch!” Gar seethed.

Zeeba sank back in her rocker, her eyes wide with disbelief.

But May was racing down the path. Her father stood in the doorway. Within seconds her figure disappeared into the thick white.

M
AY MOVED THROUGH THE WATER
as she had never moved before. It was odd that not that far from the surface it was calm, a different world. She sliced across the seafloor to where she thought the sailboat had tipped. She soon saw its spars upside down in the water. It must have capsized completely, but where was Hugh? Then she saw him a few yards from the boat. He was trying to swim back to it to hang on. She surfaced to get some air and caught sight of a surfboat! They had launched one from the rescue service and it was closing in on Hugh. But then to her horror as it drew closer she saw only one oarsman, and that oarsman had shipped his paddle and was standing up on the bow of the boat with Lucky! Rudd!

He raised the harpoon and was about to launch it directly at Hugh’s chest as he swam—swam toward the surfboat. Swam toward his own executioner. The next few seconds were a blur for May. She only remembered jetting high out of the water, plunging back in just beneath where Hugh swam, and the next thing she knew she had him. The harpoon cut through the water, barely missing them both. She surfaced briefly. Hugh’s eyes were closed. But he was still breathing.

The swirling whiteness of the squall had cleared. The wind abated, but there was Rudd, still in the boat, with yet a new harpoon in his hand. He was scanning the surface, looking slightly bewildered. May had her arms over Hugh’s chest. She was gripping him from behind and his head obscured hers. It only took Rudd an instant to spot him. He set down the harpoon and began rowing again toward them. The wind was behind him and he was making good time. There was only one choice left for May. She had to take Hugh under. She took an immense breath of air, then pressing her mouth against his, she dove deep. She felt the air stream out of her at a
slow, steady pace, then inhaled some back from his mouth into hers. She had to be his lungs as long as they traveled together beneath the surface, out of sight of Rudd.
Breathe, breathe, Hugh. Breathe.

She swam as fast as she could, as long as she could. She swam toward The Bones. When she surfaced a fog had swept in, a blessed fog. Rudd could not find them. It was as thick and as dense as the whiteness of the squall.
Please, God,
she prayed.
Let the fog last. Let it last!

She dragged Hugh up onto the ledge, which at this tide was almost entirely out of the water. His eyes were still closed. He appeared unconscious, but he was breathing. There was a bruise forming on his right cheek, but she had still never seen a lovelier face. She traced the spot where those deep wonderful creases appeared every time he laughed. How she loved his face when he laughed. He had begun to stir; she saw his eyes moving behind the pale blue veins in his lids. Suddenly she was looking into the soft gray light of his gaze.

“May?”

“Yes, you’ll be fine, Hugh. But he tried to kill you. He’ll try again.”

“But, May, you saved me.”

“Why were you such a fool to go out in this weather?”

“Love, I told you—it knows no season.”

She looked away from him and began to cry. Through the fog, the scales of her tail sparkled.

“May, why are you crying?”

“You know what I am now.”

He sat up slowly. He was looking at her tail. She could feel his eyes on it even though she would not turn her head to look at his face.

“And what are you?”

“You can see.” She stirred the flukes of her tail in the lapping water. “I am less than human.”

He gazed at the tail as it stirred the water. She looked at his eyes as they swept from the flukes to the hem of where her dress lay wet across what would have been her knees on dry land. He turned his head and smiled at her so sweetly she thought her heart might break.

“And if you are less than human, what does that make Rudd? We should all be so human as you, May.”

A sob convulsed her. Hugh took her in his arms.

“Look at me, May. Look at me.”

“I can’t. I can’t. I am ashamed.”

“No! No, never! What are you ashamed of? These lovely scales that make the fog so bright? The brightness of your mind? I love you for all these things, May. You are the stars. You are a galaxy unbound and come to earth. You are what makes the invisible world visible. I love you. You are the world to me!”

May pressed her head against Hugh’s chest. The thud of his human heart seemed to blend with the sound of the waves splashing against the rocks. She sighed. For the moment, nothing existed but the two of them. There was no Rudd. No Zeeba. They were two stars burning in a secluded patch of night sky.