The Mermaid's Sister(6)

Maren grabs one of my hands and one of O’Neill’s. Her face glows with excitement.

“There, in a willow basket, wrapped in a tangle of rags, lay a baby no bigger than the scrawniest of barn cats. Fast asleep, oblivious to the priest’s carrying-on. ‘Thanks be to God!’ the priest shouted. ‘Thanks to Our Lady and all the saints and angels on high!’ Well, I took a step back. Thought he must be a lunatic—or too fond of the Communion wine or some such thing. ‘You must take the child! It is the will of the Lord!’ he said. I stepped back again. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘I am afraid I do not comprehend your meaning.’ The tears rolled down his face like rain down window glass. He said, ‘My brother Seamus is buried beneath this apple tree. He died forty years ago today. That is why I came here this evening. And what did I find but this helpless babe, and him with the same heart-shaped birthmark on his chin as our Seamus had?’?”

Scarff pauses so that all may turn to look at O’Neill’s chin. O’Neill rolls his eyes, but he is smiling, too.

“‘Take him,’ the priest begged. ‘I am too old for infants, and I would not send a half-dead dog to our county orphanage.’ I could not speak, so aghast I was. Then the child opened his eyes and looked right through me. As if compelled by forces unseen, I opened my arms wide. The priest did not wait one second before shoving the basket into my grasp. Then he kissed my cheeks. ‘Glory be to God,’ he said, shaking like a leaf. ‘Bless you, my son. Bless you through all the ages, forever and ever!’ He smiled from ear to ear. He had but three teeth to his name, I swear. I watched him limp off to the church, and there I was, left holding a baby, of all things. I glanced at the marker in the roots of the apple tree. ‘Seamus O’Neill,’ it said. ‘Rest in Peace.’ I looked at the child and he looked at me. I said, ‘Lad, you surely don’t look like a Seamus to me. So O’Neill it shall be.’ And he reached a little hand up and yanked my beard. Unfortunately, I fell in love with the creature then and there.”

“Dear little baby O’Neill,” Maren teases. “Sweet little beard tugger.” O’Neill nudges her with his shoulder and she collapses in a fit of giggling.

Tapping his pipe upside down against the ground, Scarff continues. “Much as I loved the child, I did not think the life of a roving peddler suitable for him. So when spring came, I traveled to Pennsylvania with a mission. I planned to give him to Verity as a brother for the two girls she’d adopted. He’d have a good home, good food, lots of love, and woods to roam. But O’Neill had other plans. Turns out he was the only baby ever to dislike Verity Amsell in the history of mankind!”

“Go on!” Auntie says, laughing. “He liked me fine. But the boy knew his place, and his place was with you. He cried so loudly every time you left the room that I knew I’d be deaf in a day if you left him with me.”

“So it was. O’Neill chose me and a traveler’s life. And, truly, I would not have had it any other way,” Scarff says with a wistful grin and a fat tear in the corner of his eye.

“He did not want two sisters. That is why he howled so,” I offer.

“True enough,” O’Neill says. “Who could stand having to live in the same house with girls like you?”

I wish you’d stay forever, I think.

I wish that I would not wish so often.





CHAPTER FOUR





In the morning, Scarff and O’Neill are gone.

It is how they always leave, quietly, without good-byes. Without tears or promises to return on a certain day or in a certain month.

They will come back before they go south for the winter, I am sure.

Before breakfast, when I rise alone to feed the chickens, I find a folded scrap of paper in my boot beside the door. “Remember my promise and fret not,” it says. It is signed with a fancy O so full of swirls it reminds me of a tornado. I press the paper to my heart as if it were a love letter.

Is it wrong to feel so happy about a simple note when my sister is on the brink of becoming half fish?

The hens scurry back and forth and cluck with excitement when they see me. I scatter corn for them and watch them peck and scratch. They are happy because their puny brains do not allow for what-ifs or guilt or wishing. But I do not wish to be a chicken any more than I wish to become a stork, because then I would not have a glorious bit of paper signed with a swirling O inside my pocket.

When I return to the cottage, Gretel Goodling is waiting for me on the doorstep, her cheeks rosy from her early-morning hike up the mountain. She shifts her weight from foot to foot with all the impatience one would expect from a thirteen-year-old girl sent on an errand.

“Is your brother ill again?” I ask.

“Yes. Another fever and cough,” she says. “Mama wants me to ask Miss Verity to come down to him. He’s that bad.”

I lead Gretel inside and call for Auntie. While Auntie gathers her medicines, Gretel and I share a pot of tea.

“Have you heard about the traveling show?” Gretel asks. “Mama says they’ll be selling unreliable medicines but that we can go for the music and such. It’s tonight, in the Pinkneys’ fallow field.”

Maren enters the kitchen yawning and fastening the top button of her blouse with lace-gloved fingers. “Did you say something about a show?”