Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (25 page)

“Okay.” Sophie sat, thinking about seven hundred. It was too large for her to grasp. She imagined seven hundred dollars—too much money, couldn't grasp it. Seven hundred people. What was that, everyone in Chelsea? Seven hundred years. Sophie was thirteen. Seven hundred years was outer space, it was science fiction.

“I am, how you say, blowing your mind? Yes. Sophie. We are not regular people, Kishka and I. We are
Odmieńce
. Magic creatures. First creatures on whole planet. Before humans, Odmieńce.”

“So, you're not human,” Sophie said flatly. She didn't know why this was harder to swallow than grumpy mermaids or pigeons who spoke, but it was. Maybe because of what it implied.

“No, not human, Sophie.”

“Am I… I'm human, right?” Sophie wracked her brain for proof that she was human. She breathed air. But she breathed water too, didn't she, that night? But that was a dream, a vision! But who brings back a lungful of water from a dream? She slept and ate, she cried tears, she got her period, and she was a human, a thirteen-year-old human girl. Who could read minds and talk to pigeons and stuff.

“You are part human,” Hennie said. “And you are part
Odmieńce
. Kishka is all Odmieńce, your grandfather all human. Andrea half Odmieńce, half human. Your father, human. You, some and some. A little less every time.”

“Wait!” Sophie felt insulted. “My mother is less human than me? Does she have power, too?”

“It skip generation,” Hennie explained. “Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Kishka very angry. Wanted Andrea to have much power, Andrea have none. Kishka very cruel to your mother. Your mother, she run away. She come back with baby in her belly. That is you. She come back with a man, too. Your father.”

“You knew my father?” Sophie felt awkward. She had come to rest in a certain feeling, the feeling of not having a father. It was hard to miss something she had never had, so she had decided it was no big whoop. Fathers were something that other people had. She had Andrea. She'd had Kishka. Now, she had Hennie. Hennie, and an entire mythology. She felt scared at the thought of having a father. It made her feel vulnerable, and embarrassed. Would she meet him? Would she be expected to cry, to have feelings? Would it be a sentimental reunion, like a cheesy television movie? Sophie loathed situations where she was expected to have a feeling. She feared she would have the wrong one, or have none at all, and then what?

“I know your father,” Hennie said. Sophie noted the present tense. “But we talk of that later. So much to tell, Sophie. Are you okay?”

Sophie nodded. The mug in her hand had gone cool. “Your drink,” Hennie said, “is whatever you like. What you like it to be?”

Sophie looked down at the cup, confused. The liquid was dark in the dark earth color of its vessel.
Watermelon juice
? she thought, remembering the heat outside. But she realized it was a hot chocolate,
hot chocolate with a twig of cinnamon
and
a striped peppermint stick inside it. Teeny puffs of marshmallow bobbed on top. It was the perfect winter drink. She took a chocolatey gulp. “Wow.”

“Is nice to have fun with the magic, too,” Hennie said, nodding. “Can't always be,
Read minds, remove zagavory, cast zagavory, become mora, yadda yadda yadda
.”

Sophie closed her eyes and thought,
Watermelon juice
. She could smell the fresh, summery smell of the melon before her eyes were opened.

“Sophie, your grandmother very bad.” Hennie's eyes were intense, the play gone from them as quickly as it had come.

“I know.” Sophie nodded. “Everyone has told me. The pigeons, Angel, they all think she's the worst person in the whole world.”

Hennie nodded. “She pretty bad. Always drawn to the bad magic, ever since tiny baby so long ago. Spending so long in the bad magic, it takes hold of you. Soon, no way to come back. Darkness claim you.”

“What about you?”

“I pure good.” Hennie smiled, and the
pure good
was in the smile, and it made Sophie smile, too. “Always good girl. Drive Kishka crazy. But good take hold too, good can claim you. Kishka and me, we sisters, but not sisters. Is different from human way. All Odmieńce related, descended from the first creatures, all Odmieńce are sister and brother. Because Kishka most bad and I most good, we were placed with humans together, side by side. The
Boginki
bring us.
Boginki
, how you say…” Hennie thought about it. “Fairies, maybe? Water fairies, from rivers? They steal human babies, they replace with Odmieńce. Me and Kishka, we placed with family in village outside Warsaw, so many years ago.”

“What happened,” asked Sophie, “to the stolen babies?”

Hennie looked sad. “The Boginki, they love human babies. They bring them into the river.”

“Into the river?”

“They drown them.” The story had been in Hennie for hundreds and hundreds of years but still, the thought of the human babies dying in the water, their fat and tiny fists flailing, their futile struggle, it brought her to tears. Hennie cried. She cried like the Boginki had cried so long ago in Poland, underneath the river, shaking the tiny babies, floating them in their hands, pulling their lifeless eyelids open, howling thunderous howls that pushed through the water like currents. “They do not know,” Hennie tried to explain. “Each time they believe the baby will live, be their little human friends. They are like children, the Boginki. They do things again and again and every time it is the same bad way. They are a little mad, from so long of this. A little crazy. But without the Boginki there would be no Odmieńce among the people. It is like strange system. We need Boginki.”

“Do they still exist?” Sophie asked, scared.

“Oh, yes. You meet Syrena, the mermaid?”

“Yes.” Sophie nodded.

“She have terrible Boginki problem in her river, she tell you. She is very concerned to return to Poland and have Boginki everywhere, and crying mothers on the riverbanks, police officers—this is her fear. Because now, less and less Odmieńce babies. Boginki just take the babies, no replacement babies. They are so bad.” Hennie shook her head, a sadness still on her face. “But so sweet, the Boginki. They only want love, the special kind of love you have with baby. Anyway.” Hennie pulled a fistful of straw from her pillow and tossed it into the dwindling fire. “I can make fire with mind,” she said. “I can make anything with mind, but then is like—what point is life? You do everything with mind all the time, is like having no life. Who cares? I get very, how you call it, depressed. So now, I do things. I put the straw in the fire, like a human would do. Then you feel straw, you hear crackle, smell good straw smell. It is nice, to work with the world in such a way. I want tea, I take the herbs, I measure them, I watch the water become hot on the fire, I smell the tea opening its smells. You know? Otherwise, I go,
Tea!
and I say my
zawolanie
, and poof, tea! But when life is too simple it feels wrong. Like talking. I can make you hear my English perfect. It would be a zagavory, a spell. Or, another zagavory—I just make you hear in mind what I think to you. I do this many years, hundreds, hundreds of years, never bothering to learn any language. Is why my English so bad. I not try. Now, I try. I save zagavory for emergency. Or for fun, like drink.” She gestured toward Sophie's magical mug. “You want cookie?”

Before Hennie could answer, a pile of cookies appeared on a hammered metal tray beside her. They smelled amazing. She touched one; it was warm from an oven, the chips gooey in the dough.

“They are perfect chocolate chip cookies,” Hennie said.

“Yes,” Sophie agreed, eating them. It made sense that Hennie, made of goodness, would bake a cookie that tasted like pure love. Sophie could feel that all her fear of the woman was gone. “Hennie, are you sure
you're
not my grandmother?” she asked hopefully. “If I'm good and you're good, how can Kishka be my grandmother? Did the Boginki mix me up maybe?”

“Child, you might as well be my granddaughter. You might as well be my daughter, you are so close to my heart.” Hennie's eyes looked like cookies in her face, warm and full of tenderness. “But is not how goes. Kishka have Andrea, Andrea have you. You part human, you raised with human love. You have many influences upon your heart. Kishka Odmieńce, she is only what she is meant to be, she is badness. It is how it is.” She looked hard at her niece. “All human, like you, have choices. Many choices. You could be bad, too, Sophia. But it is not your destiny, I think. Not what you wish for.”

“No!” Sophie exclaimed, horrified at the thought that she could have a bit of Kishka's badness waiting inside her, like a cell that could grow into a tumor. “I don't want to be bad!”

“Well, most humans don't. But then—” She shrugged. “So many sadnesses pile up. Partly this is the curse. You will undo much such badness. And yes, you do have bigger ability for bad inside you, as
Odmieńce.” Hennie smiled. “But you have bigger ability for good, also. Tremendously bigger. Human would say—
supernatural
. But that is only because human does not understand nature.”

Hennie clapped her big, soft hands together. “I apologize. No time to—what say, philosophize? So much to tell, and you must go, you must. I can play with time, slow down some, but too much and Kishka will notice, it will draw her too us. I will hurry, now. I apologize for that, for all you must hear so quickly. To hear so quickly and then poof, I will push you out my door, I apologize for this. What else you like, what sweets?”

Sophie was going to say
banana cream pie
when the perfect banana cream pie appeared aside the cookies.

“I am like Boginki!” Hennie laughed. “I wait so long to spoil you, my niece, now I stuff you with magic pastry!”

“It's okay,” Sophie said. “I didn't eat breakfast.”

Hennie wrinkled her face at that, and then blinked at the cookies. “Very nutritious, now,” she said. “Eat all you want.”

* * *

“FIRST OF ALL,”
Hennie said, “your grandfather not dead. Kishka turn grandfather to dog. She say he killed in dump, by hoodlums. He never die. Kishka turn him to dog, he live with me, in my house, down the street.”

Sophie's mouth hung open. She tightened her grip on her magical cocoa, because this was the sort of moment people let glasses slip
from their hands in movies. Sci-fi movies. Fantasy movies. Of course that house, that spooky, solitary witch's house, was Hennie's. And she had seen the dog, the German Shepherd on the porch, looking up and down the abandoned block, its tongue dangling from its mouth in the dust. That dog was her
grandfather
? “No,” she said.

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes, Sophie. Carl is dog. Is terrible magic. He not know he is Carl anymore, he think he is only dog. He behave like dog, he is dog.” Hennie heaved a big sigh and shook her head. “Kishka let him be picked up by, what you call—pound? They have him in cage, would adopt maybe, maybe he become police dog, maybe put to sleep, no one know. I adopt him.” Hennie sighed. “I more cat woman. Not much like dog. But what to do? Let Carl become drug dog in Chelsea? Too bad for such a man. He would not want.”

“What about your magic?” Sophie asked. She felt a desperate anxiety rise at the simple
notion
that a person can get cursed into a dog. “Can't you free him? Can't you do anything?”

“No,” Hennie said, simply. “Is brilliant zagavory. She use terrible magics, things I cannot touch. Some things, you cannot touch and remain good. Kishka, she touch anything she want. She use all kind of bad magic to make Carl dog.”

Sophie took stock of what she had learned thus far: she was only part human, another part was—what was the word—Odmieńce. Hennie the creepy old witch lady was her aunt. Her grandfather
was Hennie's dog. What were the Polish words Hennie was flinging around, a jumbled rubble of language, all these
z
s? “What are the words?” Sophie asked. “All the Polish words?” Words were practical, unemotional, simple. She could carry a word like a piece of sea glass on her chest, solid and helpful.

“Yes, new words for you.
Znakharka
. That is witch. You are znakharka.”

“Znakharka.”

“
Zagavory
. That is spell. Magic spell.”

“Got it.”

“
Zawolanie
. That is like, special noise only for you. A magical noise, you make it, is yours. You sound your zawolanie when you make your zagavory, and it will be full of your power. Is like you call out to all the universe and all who know you hear, and answer.”

“Can't you just say, like,
magic noise
and
magic spell
?” Sophie asked. “Do you have to use those big Polish words?”

Hennie looked hurt. “Suit self.” She shrugged. “Noble, ancient Polish words. Your tradition. You lose words, you lose power, lose magic. I work,” she said, “to speak in your language. You come for magic, you speak in mine. In my language that is also yours. Even if you don't feel it.”

Sophie felt embarrassed. “Okay,” she said. “Will you teach me my—”