Bewitching (29 page)

Robert nodded. “I understand. Your mother thought reading might ease your mind.”

“My mother did not see what I saw. When the ship sank, her only thought was of herself.” The boy’s dark eyes grew angry.

“Perhaps, instead of reading stories, you should tell me your own, if it is not to painful.”

“It is too painful, but that is why I long to tell it, over and over. But you indulge me, Robert. You have already heard it.”

“I indulge you because you deserve to be indulged.”

The boy needed no further prompting and began his tale.

“I went to bed early that last night. Mother had wanted me to meet a girl, some heiress with bad teeth, no doubt, who had been seasick since we’d left Southampton and hadn’t left her cabin.”

“Hestia Rivers. And you do not know she has bad teeth.”

“All Mother’s heiresses have bad teeth. Besides, I am too young to marry. I am only nineteen.”

“Almost twenty.”

“I am nineteen until I am twenty. In any case, I feigned an illness of my own. Hypochondria has its benefits. I pretended to sleep when Mother came in, but I was wide-awake. I was still wide-awake when the cabin steward pounded upon our door. I answered it.

“Mother began to abuse him for disturbing us for a safety drill, but I could see in his eyes that it was no drill. While Mother cawed about her beauty sleep and the security of her jewels, I grabbed both life belts and led her to the deck.”

“Quick thinking, that,” Robert said.

“It was freezing cold, giving her something more to moan about. I wish I lived in her world, where the greatest problem is that it is cold or the toast is singed or what will people think of us if we fail to take our usual box at the Met. While mother performed a monologue about the temperature of her nose, I was assaulted by the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man I have ever seen. Take every pickpocket, wife beater, and murderer in Mr. Dickens’ tomes, and it would be nothing to the callous immorality of the
Titanic
’s passengers that night—pushing, shoving, screaming, lying, and the worst of it is, the ones who were behaving are likely at the bottom of the ocean. At one point, gunshots were heard. There were not enough lifeboats. We know that now. The officers said, ‘Women and children first.’ Mother, secure in her position as a first-class woman (for we know that it was, in reality, first class first, everyone else be damned), screeched when she heard that and tried to persuade the officer that I was thirteen. ‘He’s merely big for his age.’ I nudged her, knowing no one would believe her. I told her that it was not gentlemanly to lie, and do you know what she said?”

Robert nodded.

“She said that the gentlemen would die, and the ruffians would live. The officer was about to let me on a boat, likely just to shut her up. But I could not stand it. I joined the shoving, unruly mob, but I was shoving to get away from her. The officer seated her on a boat. I could hear her screaming all the way down to the ocean.”

“That was noble of you,” Robert said.

“Yes, it … wasn’t. It was a fit of pique. Mother always places me in a temper, and this time, I almost died to spite her. I assumed I would get into a later boat, but soon, there were none left. The ship was sinking. We were all doomed, and all the while, the orchestra was playing, as if to give us one more reason to praise the service of the White Star Line.”

Robert chuckled. “They won’t be doing that.”

“No, they won’t. But, the grand thing is, they’re all too dead to protest. Before I knew it, the boat was wrenched from under me. Hundreds screamed in unison, and then, the shock of icy water against my skin. You know, Robert, how I only wish to swim when the temperature reaches its warmest. And yet, the water, that icy grave to untold hundreds, was not the worst thing about it. Even the screaming wasn’t the worst, though the fact that those screams went unheeded by all but two of the lifeboats—including my own mother’s—will disgust me until I die. The worst was when I realized that the screaming had nearly stopped. I knew what that meant. It meant that I was the only one left alive in that water, and soon, I would not be there either. It comforted me, in a way, the idea of sinking beneath that deep, peaceful ocean. I began to gaze at the stars. One never sees stars in New York. The light is too bright. But when the screaming stopped and I had resigned myself to meeting my maker, I decided that the stars were the most beautiful I had ever seen.”

“It sounds lovely. Ghoulish, but lovely.”

“It was. But then, I saw something even more beautiful. It was a girl. I did not know where she came from. I still don’t know, but she was swimming toward me, not dead, not cold or screaming. At first, I thought she was an angel, but when I said, ‘Can you help me?’ she grabbed me around the wrist and pulled me across the water to safety.

“I can barely remember what happened next. I was slipping in and out of consciousness. The only thing I remember for certain was that the girl sat beside me in the lifeboat, and that she sang to me. She had the most beautiful voice I had ever heard, like the sirens in mythology.”

“You were delirious,” Robert said.

“It was real. I drifted off to sleep with that lovely song in my ears, and had I not awakened, it would have been enough. I would have known complete happiness.”

I smiled. I had done my job. I had comforted him
.

“And then,” he said, “a horn sounded, and I was awake. But the girl, I could see her no more. She was gone. Where I should have felt euphoria, I felt only despair, for it was clear to me that the girl—that girl—was the only one who mattered, no heiress, socialite, or minor royalty, no headstrong beauty would do. The girl was gone, and she was the only one I could ever love.”

I sighed. He loved me
.

“But then, I felt a hand upon mine, and I heard a voice saying, ‘There, there now. It’s all right.’”

A voice? What voice?

“She was back in all her glory, the golden-haired angel. She held my hand and stroked my hair and comforted me until we were hoisted onto the
Carpathia
’s deck. Then, she disappeared again.”

But I had done none of that. Could the boy have been having visions of me?

“Are you certain she was really there?” Robert echoed my thoughts. “It seems so strange that she would disappear.”

“Not strange when you know the whole of it. The moment we reached
Carpathia
’s deck, Mother spotted me. She threw herself at me with all her power, screaming, ‘My baby! My poor baby!’ The poor girl likely fled at the idea of replacing the terror of a shipwreck with the terror of Mother. I searched all over, but it was too crowded. I did not even know her name.”

Slowly, I understood
.
The blond girl who had slept on the lifeboat. She had hair like mine and was near my age. She was pretty, and she had been there after I had fled. She had comforted him
.

I should have been grateful to her for caring for him, so he would not have to be alone. Instead, I felt the tight hand of jealousy closing upon my throat. At his next words, the hand grew claws
.

“I love her, Robert. She saved my life. She comforted me, and as long as I live, I will love her and look for her evermore.”

The mirror slipped from my grasp. Bessie caught it.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“He loves me. He said so, and I love him more than words can express. But I will never see him again.” The truth of those words hit me like a wave. I would go home and be scolded by my father. Then, I would live the rest of my life in loneliness and despair. I let Bessie take the mirror from me. What good was seeing him now?

But Bessie said, “Why will you never see him again?”

Now, even in my despair, I knew that was just stupid. Had she not been listening? Had she no eyes? “I’m a mermaid, and he’s a human. We’re different species.”

Bessie nodded. “That is true, but I am different myself. I’m a witch, so perhaps I can help you.”

“Help?”

“Make you human. Give you legs.”

“You would help me?” I remembered Father’s harsh words against all humans and especially witches. “Why?”

Bessie shrugged. “To be nice, I suppose, to make up for past evils perhaps.”

Past evils. I remembered Father’s words: “A mermaid takes nothing without giving something in return.”

“I could not take that from you, not without…”

“Giving something in return?”

“Yes.”

Bessie looked at me through narrowed eyes. “But what do you have to give?”

I thought about it. What did I have? Shells? Sand? My hair? The answer was nothing. I had nothing anyone would want. But when I opened my mouth to say it, I instead blurted, “My voice.”

“Your voice?”

“Oh … no … no, I didn’t mean to say that. Besides, how could you take that?”

“It can be done, if you are willing. Your voice is beautiful, and really, you have nothing else to give.”

“But how can I make him fall in love with me if I cannot speak?”

“You heard him. He loves you already. He will surely recognize you, and with legs, you can stay with him forever.”

Forever! But no! No. It was insane. My voice was the only thing about me that mattered. And yet, what was there for me without him, to return to my family and never see him again? I had nothing, nothing.

Just then, there was a commotion, first one voice shouting, “Look! A mermaid!” Then a second, and a third. In an instant, we were surrounded by dozens of feet, dozens of faces, staring at me, separating me from Bessie, hands pulling me from the ocean, voices shrieking of discoveries. I could barely make out Bessie’s face. I strained my neck toward her and screamed, “I’ll do it!”

A stabbing pain electrified my body. Those who were holding me recoiled, and for an instant, I saw myself above them. Then, everything went black.

Next, I was standing (standing!) on human legs in a place with no water anywhere. I stared down. I wore a dress, a blue one, and in my hand, I held an object, the paper, waterlogged, with a picture of the once-great ship,
Titanic
.

“What have I done?” I tried to say the words aloud, but no sound came out. I had done it. I had lost my voice. I was here, on a street in New York, knowing no one.

What had I done?

K
ENDRA SPEAKS (JUST FOR A MOMENT)

Okay, so in retrospect, taking the girl’s voice from her was stupid and not cool. I know that now. It was an impulse, and we all know by now that I have some issues with impulse control. Her voice was pretty. I always wanted to be able to sing better (and now I can—really, I could win any one of those TV talent shows, but I feel bad about it, in light of where I got the voice), and it’s not like she had anything else to give, just the voice or a soggy transfer from the
Titanic
(which would probably be worth millions now, come to think of it—I should have been diving for the china and silver, instead of leaving it for that Ballard guy). Yes, I should have figured it would be hard for her to get Brewster to fall in love with her with no voice. But you know what they say: Hindsight is 20/20. I never claimed to be perfect, you know. I do my best. Anyway, here’s what happened.

The Mermaid’s Story Continues to Its End

The sky was dark from the towering castles blocking the sun. Was one of them his? I tried to remember. As I did, an object the size and speed of a shark raced by me. I jumped out of its wake, but it had no wake, for it was no shark. Rather, it was an enormous flying object made by man. Just when I had recovered, another whizzed by. I screamed, but no sound came out. I screamed harder, keeling forward and tried to take a step. But each step on my new legs was like knives, stabbing. Then there were people running toward me, people crowding around as I had never been crowded at home in the wide ocean. The air left my lungs like a fish washed ashore, and I was falling down through the crowds of people and onto the hard earth below.

I felt someone picking me up, and then I was someplace else. Most of the people were gone, but one, a man, held me in his arms. Could it be the boy? Had he found me? No. It was a different man, a man who had lost most of his hair. A lady was with him. The man lowered me onto something that was softer than the most pliant sand.

“She cannot stay here,” another man’s voice said. “The mistress will not countenance strangers brought in.”

“We understand,” said the lady. “But she collapsed in the street. Surely your mistress will not object to her resting a moment. Perhaps she has some paper on her that will help us find her family.”

I felt tugging, and then the man seized upon the picture in my hand. “Look at this.”

“
Titanic
? Could she have been—”

“Seems like it,” said the first man.

“Is this some sort of scam?” asked the second man. “Have you hucksters heard of my mistress and her son being
Titanic
survivors and decided to pull something?”

Titanic
survivors? It was him. I grabbed the sleeve of the man who had carried me and pulled hard.