The Mermaid's Sister(38)

“Wash those dishes quickly, Clara,” Soraya calls over his shoulder. “You must not miss the show!”

O’Neill and I run to the bushes, coughing and gagging, trying to purge ourselves of the foul liquid, but it refuses to leave us.

Jasper emerges from the shadows like a ghost. “It’s no use,” he says. He curses and tosses a stone into the fire. “I have asked him not to use that stuff anymore, but he never listens. Why can we not be a regular traveling show with willing performers? Why must he poison each friend I make?” He kicks the dirt with his fine leather shoe and curses again.

“Help us,” O’Neill begs. “Get us the antidote and we can all escape together. You could get a job in the best circus in Europe if you wanted to. I have friends who could help you.”

Jasper sighs. “Alas, I am as bound to them as you are,” he says. “And there is no antidote. If you do not drink daily, you die.” Jasper lifts his trouser leg to his knee. His calf is tattooed with blue scrawls. “These are the names of those who have gone before you. Those who have dared to try to escape my father and his tea. Those whose bodies I have been forced to bury or burn or send down rivers.”

I cover my mouth. Even in moonlight, I can count twenty names.

“Here,” he says, pointing at the largest name. It is near his knee, its letters formed from flowering vines. “Zara was my wife. Papa found her performing in Canada and paid a handsome sum for her. Her own father sold her to him. She could charm the birds from the trees with her violin. She could make fireflies swarm like gnats around her body as she played and danced. Zara was the most beautiful and clever girl I’d ever met. We fell in love, but not before Papa poisoned her with his terrible tea. I didn’t know what it was then, and neither did she, for he had just invented it. She drank it happily each night after dinner, and we would whisper of our plans till dawn. One afternoon while Papa and Mama were bartering with a farrier, Zara and I snuck off and found a judge to marry us. We did not tell my parents, fearing Papa’s disapproval but also relishing the grand romance of a secret marriage. Eventually, we were discovered. She died soon after, and whether it was due to our son’s stillbirth or Papa’s wicked works, I do not know for certain.”

“You are as evil as he is. You did nothing to stop us from drinking the poison,” O’Neill says.

The venom in O’Neill’s voice chills me. I open my mouth to speak but find I cannot. I am too disturbed for words. I am thinking of my sister, our bondage, and how badly things have turned so quickly. That what seemed like rescue led to entrapment.

“Ah,” Jasper says, “what you do not know is that Papa gave me the tea on the same night he gave it to Zara. He has held my life hostage since. I do not dare oppose him. And even if I were to threaten his life, he would not tell me his secrets.”

“Did you try? When you found that he had poisoned your wife, did you even try to force him to tell you?” O’Neill asks. “Or were you too cowardly to stand up to him?”

“I did try,” Jasper says. “The night I lit the funeral pyre for Zara and our son. I held a knife to his throat. My hand shook so badly that I nicked him. He hides the scar beneath his cravat. He only laughed at my threats. He dared me to kill him. Said I’d join him in death within two days without his secret potion. So you see, there is nothing you can do but obey him, as I do.”

“You have no hope of escape,” I whisper. “We have no hope of escape.”

His mouth curves in an unconvincing smile. “Well, it is not such a bad life. We travel, we sow moments of rapture, and we reap applause and money. We are adored like gods by the bored housewives and frustrated farmers we entertain.” He recites these words as if reading lines from a play. “It is not such a bad life at all.”

O’Neill sneers. “Except you cannot leave it for another life of your choosing.”

Jasper shrugs. His face is like a mask, emotionless. Has he been enslaved so long that it seems normal to him, unremarkable? “I wish for nothing but the life I have with the show,” he says.

“Wishing gets you nothing,” I say.

“That is the truth,” Jasper says. “Why despair over things we cannot change? And I predict that we shall have some grand adventures together on the road.”

“But what of Maren?” O’Neill asks. “She will perish if she is not taken to the ocean soon.”

“She may well outlive us all,” Jasper says. “And she looks quite happy in that jar of hers. I half envy her simple, easy life.” He wanders back to the fire and pokes it with a long stick. Sparks fly heavenward and he watches them rise and then flicker out. “Well, what is done is done, and what shall be is yet to be, and I must change into my costume. Clean up here and then go backstage. You can watch the show from there.” He saunters off.

I cannot decide whether I pity Jasper or hate him.

Could he have saved O’Neill and me from bondage, or would it have cost him his life? And what would I have done in his place? His story is not my own. I do not know its complexities and what lurks in its corners, and so I cannot say. Perhaps if he had spoken out against his father tonight, Soraya would be laying the three of us out upon a funeral pyre now, right here beneath the rising crescent moon.

O’Neill limps back to a chair by the fire. He sits, head in hands, his suffering obvious. But how can I help him? I have neither balms nor elixirs to heal his body; nor do I have any words of cheer to displace his despair.