The Mermaid's Sister(5)
My heart is light and heavy at the same time. Light because of the music and the ninety-nine sparkling lanterns hanging from posts and tree branches, and the laughter of my sister as old Mr. Fig whirls her about. Heavy because tomorrow morning Scarff and O’Neill will hitch Job and January to the wagon and leave our mountain. Heavy because for all of O’Neill’s paging through books, he has found no remedy for Maren . . . and I know he will not, for I have spent many long nights searching those same tomes while Auntie and Maren slept.
O’Neill pulls me to my feet. “Worry-bird,” he teases, “do you not trust me to do as I have sworn?”
In his arms, my heart races. His spicy Christmas scent, the sparkle of his blue eyes—things that have always given me familial comfort—are suddenly unsettling and unfamiliar. Is it the magic of the setting, I wonder, or something else? All I know is that I cannot move and do not want to.
But then he tugs me toward the dancers. “Nothing like a jig to chase one’s cares away,” he says with a wink.
I stumble along behind him. “Spoken like a true Irishman.”
“Or a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, or a Swede.” He laughs. “Whatever I may be.”
And then we are dancing. To me, the dance is as magical as one of O’Neill’s hat tricks, for it makes joy appear out of thin air.
When the moon is over the apple orchard, a flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder send the villagers scurrying home.
“Wasn’t that convenient?” I say to O’Neill as he plops to the ground between Maren and me. The firelight reveals his impish grin.
“Am I to blame that your mountain folk do not care for my fireworks? I try so hard to entertain, but alas! Not everyone appreciates my art.”
Maren lays her head on his shoulder, her unbraided hair spilling down his shirtfront like a many-tiered waterfall. “You, O’Neill, are a mischief,” she says fondly.
The look he gives her is full of tenderness. An arrow of jealousy pierces my chest.
“What have we here?” booms Scarff as he and Auntie approach arm in arm. “A rare set of conjoined triplets?” His laughter echoes through the cooling night air, rebounds off the bumpy surface of the moon.
Scarff unfolds two wooden chairs he’d been carrying under his arm. He and Auntie settle into them, their shoulders touching, their wrinkled fingers entwined.
“Tell us the story,” Maren says. “Of how we were almost triplets. Please?”
“Again?” moans O’Neill. “Must we hear it every time Scarff and I come to visit?”
“Hush, now,” Auntie says. “I know for a fact that we have not heard the tale for three years now. And it is one of my favorites.”
From the pocket of his pinstriped suit coat, Scarff retrieves his wooden pipe. The bowl is carved with the fierce face of a bear. It used to frighten me when I was small. From another pocket, he withdraws a black leather pouch of tobacco. In his habitual manner, Scarff dips the pipe into the pouch, uses two fingers to tamp the tobacco down, and then lights it with a flint. He takes his time, most likely to make Maren squirm.
She squirms. “It will be daylight before you manage to tell the story,” she whines.
Scarff laughs. “Very well. I will begin.” He blows three smoke rings and clears his throat.
Groaning, Maren throws herself back onto the grass.
“Well, Miss Impatient,” Scarff scolds, “if you are going to take a nap, I will not waste my breath with storytelling.”
Auntie pinches him hard enough to elicit an “Ouch!”
“Long, long ago,” he begins, “when you girls were babes in arms, I drove the wagon up to the gates of a beautiful church. It was early November, and I was chilled clear to my bones. A cold snap had come up, you see, so although I was in the south, the weather was terribly disagreeable. The church stood tall against the gray skies like a castle of old. Billows of smoke floated up from the rectory’s chimney, so I thought to myself that perhaps I could find warm refuge there. I had traded goods with priests before for shelter and a hot meal. So I tied my horses to the iron fence. Their names were Frederick and February. A fine pair of horses they were. Frederick was a bay and stood—”
“For goodness’ sake!” Maren says with a huff. “Skip the horse part!”
Scarff chortles and blows more smoke rings, clearly relishing the hassle he is giving Maren. “So, where was I? Oh, yes, the churchyard. I walked in and headed for the rectory, skirting the gravestones out of respect. That’s when I heard the most dreadful wailing. At first I thought I’d disturbed one of the residents of the graveyard, so unearthly was the sound. Despite my goose bumps, I followed the wailing around the side of the church and through a gate into what must have been a most magnificent garden in the spring or summer. Past the leafless rosebushes and blackberry patches, underneath the bare branches of one of the largest apple trees I have ever seen, there knelt a black-robed man. His back was to me, and he was hunched over, and the terrible sound was coming from him.” Scarff leans back and shuts his eyes. “I can see it plain as day, that scene. I still dream of it almost every night.”
Auntie smiles and pats his arm.
“I wondered if I should disturb the man. His grief was so raw, his cries so full of anguish. But I could not leave any creature alone to suffer so, neither man nor beast. ‘Pardon me, Father,’ I said. ‘Can I help you somehow?’ He turned toward me then, his face swollen with weeping, and held out his arms.”