Hannah: Daughters of the Sea #1 (14 page)

H
ANNAH SWAM INTO
the dawn. She had no idea when she surfaced near Egg Rock Lighthouse that there were at least half a dozen boats and motor launches out scouring the coast, from the cove to Great Head and then on from Great Head south all the way to Otter Creek. The tide had turned and it was ebbing. It would be logical that Hannah or anyone who had fallen into the sea would be carried south. The tidal currents would be too strong to swim against—if one were a mere human. But Hannah knew with certainty as she circled Egg Rock that she was not.

I am not human. I am a mermaid
. And she laughed when she thought how mermaids supposedly were make-believe creatures from fairy tales.
But I am real!
she exclaimed to herself. Suddenly a thought struck her so hard she had to stop swimming. She broke through the surface, and rolling onto her back, she looked up into the lilac morning sky.
And if I am a mermaid, is the painter a merman? I must tell him what has happened. I must show him. Show him this!

She lifted her tail from the sea and began to examine it closely. It was beautiful. Delicate scales ranged in hue from gold to green to sapphire. The colors paled as they reached the flukes of her tail, which were silvery with a rose tinge. She could hardly remember what it felt like to have toes and feet, and when she tried to recall the feeling of wiggling her toes, the flukes of her tail stirred slightly. Yet she knew that this tail was powerful. It could drive her from the water into high arcing dives above the surface.

Was she to live here forever? She loved it. But where in the vastness of the sea would she live? The word
forever
tugged at the back of her mind, and a slightly ominous feeling shimmered through her. There was something that she could not exactly
recall. Like a persistent current it drew her back to land, a current she could not quite swim against. Then she remembered—the painter—that shadow of regret she had seen in his eyes. In that instant she knew that the painter who had come from the sea could not go back—ever.

Would she really give up all she had right now, all this happiness, this beauty that she had felt in the last few hours, all this music that had streamed through her? But she knew that she would have to return, if only one more time. She must see the painter again.

But could she? Could she become a creature of land again? And did it have to be for always? Could she somehow manage to live in both worlds? Would she be able to recover her legs just to walk? She must try to get back to land, to Gladrock, if only to say good-bye to the painter and to see if Ettie was all right. That scream she had heard began to scratch at her heart.

It did not take her long to swim back. The shore was very steep just south of the cove of Gladrock,
where cliffs poured like liquid granite into the sea. It was a dangerous place to swim or even boat. Caves slashed the cliffs where the water had furrowed in. Hannah thought that perhaps she could hide in the shadows of this cliff and see if she could return to her human form.

She swam into a cave as far back as she could to where she saw some dry rock, then clambered out of the water and heaved her tail high onto the rock ledge. Miraculously her nightgown was still intact. If she did resume her human form, she could hardly walk up to Gladrock naked. She peered again at the tail and tried very hard to remember her feet, her toes, her knees, and all the parts of her limbs that seemed to have melted into this gloriously beautiful and powerful tail. She grabbed a wad of seaweed and began patting the tail to dry it off. A slight stinging sensation began to tingle near her flukes. She rubbed her tail hard now with her hands. Was that a knee she felt? She pressed her fingers over the rounded lump. She rubbed it harder. The scales were growing duller. She felt a stirring at the very tip and then a pulling
apart in the two lobes of the fluked tail. “My feet!” she whispered. The transformation took less than two minutes. She bent her legs and felt slightly dismayed. The feeling was not of having regained something, but quite the opposite—having lost something she had just found.

She wiggled her toes, then slowly stood up, shook out each leg, and bent it several times.
And now, I suppose I must walk out of here
. Just before she tried to stand up, her hand automatically went to where the pouch had hung for so many months. There was no cool radiance, only the dim memory. She closed her eyes and whispered, “It was only a symbol. A sign. I know what I am now.” She hesitated. “Or what I can be.”

There was a ledge of rock along the side of the cave and it was dry. If she inched along it, she could reach a place she had spotted at the mouth of the cave where she could begin to climb up the cliff. It would give the easiest approach to dry land.

On land it all seemed so different. In the water of the bay she felt wrapped in a sensory splendor of heightened color and light and movement. She felt a part of all of it. But here there was no song wrapping around her, no stirrings within her. She felt a discontinuity between herself and this world, and recognized how completely separate and isolated all things were out of the water. She suddenly felt very vulnerable. It was all she could do to take a step forward. But she had arrived at the edge of Gladrock’s orchard. Hidden by the apple trees, she could see people standing in the driveway where a closed carriage had pulled up, which was unusual for the island. Most families drove about in buckboards or dainty hansoms with awnings that could be extended when it rained. This, however, was a city carriage. She could see two figures dressed in some sort of uniforms—nurses, it suddenly dawned on her. They were leading another figure down the steps of Gladrock to the carriage. It was Lila! And standing in the drive were Mr. and Mrs. Hawley and, yes, Ettie! She stood next to her sister Clarice!
Ettie is all right! I don’t belong here. As
long as Ettie is all right…but the painter? Where is the painter?
She closed her eyes and remembered his thrilling face.

Just at that moment Ettie turned her head slightly.

“Hannah!” Ettie’s voice split the air. “She’s back, Mummy! She’s back!” Ettie broke away and began running across the field just as the carriage pulled out of the drive.

“Hannah, Hannah!” Ettie cried as she reached her and flung her arms around Hannah’s waist, pressing her cheek against the wet nightgown. A welter of emotions roiled within Hannah. Love, longing, a feeling of terrible loss. For the first time since she was out of the water, she began to shiver with cold.

“Oh! Oh, Hannah! You’re all cold and shivery. Your lips are turning blue. You must be freezing.”

Oh, no
, thought Hannah,
not freezing, just human
. A sob swelled within her and she thought her heart might break.

N
OT FAR FROM THE COVE
there was a stand of three birch trees that grew so close together that at the base their trunks fused and offered the perfect V for wedging in a small foot, so it was not too much of a reach to the first branch. Ettie had climbed many times to the first branch but tonight she planned to climb higher. She was going to become a spy and the object of her spying was Hannah.

Since Hannah had returned, Ettie, although relieved and very happy, had sensed that she was distracted. Ettie had thought it would be much better with Lila away. But it was as if Hannah were in another world. Ettie herself had not slept well since Hannah’s return and one evening got up to go sit on
her favorite window seat to watch the shooting stars. Never had there been so many. She had a small telescope, a gift from her uncle with which she could scan the sky. But on the second night after Hannah had come back, Ettie had caught not a star in the sights of the scope but a figure running across the lawn toward the cove. She knew instantly that it was Hannah. For two more nights from her window Ettie had watched Hannah leave and streak across the lawn to the cove. It was always sometime between midnight and one in the morning. And tonight Ettie planned to be in that tree well before midnight.

Half an hour earlier, Ettie had crept down the back stairs. On the second step from the bottom a tiny glimmering had caught her attention. “What in the world?” she had whispered to herself. At first glance she had thought it might be a paillette from one of her mother’s ball gowns.
But Mama wouldn’t be going down the back steps in a ball gown
. She had almost laughed out loud at the thought, but had stifled the laugh for if she was found out, there would be masses of trouble.

Now settled fairly high in the tree where she had found a very convenient branch, Ettie examined the little flattened oval she held in the palm of her hand. It was nothing like the trimmings for a ball gown. It was more beautiful, with colors and a luminosity that seemed from another world.
It’s Hannah’s!

A cool wind had started to blow in from the sea. Ettie shivered. She should have thought to bring a sweater.
Please, no fog!
Ettie prayed. But the wind was coming from the southeast, the direction that brought thick banks into the bay.
Hurry up, Hannah!

Half of Ettie’s prayers were answered. Hannah came running across the lawn. But the fog had already begun to roll in. She could barely make out Hannah’s form now. Her white nightgown was almost indistinguishable from the fog, but her red hair streamed behind her like cooling embers blown from a fire. Two seconds later there was a splash and the embers were quenched. “No!” Ettie moaned.

Ettie was not one to wallow in regret. She had to see more, and began to climb down from the tree.
The fog works both ways
, she thought.
If I can’t see
her, she can’t see me
. And certainly no one from the house could see either of them. The lavender rock was almost awash, but Ettie, shivering, made her way toward it. She had hardly reached the rock when, through the fog, she saw a luminous glow streaking beneath the water’s surface. “It’s Hannah!” She gripped the iridescent oval in her hand tighter.
This is her secret
, Ettie thought.
And now it is mine. Friends never tell. Never ever!
Clutching the oval, she vowed to never reveal what she knew. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she whispered.

“W
ATCH THIS
, H
ANNAH
!
Just watch me,” Ettie cried out and ducked under the water, poking her stockinged legs straight up into the air. She came up again sputtering. “An underwater handstand! How about that?”

“Wonderful!” Hannah called back.

“I wish you’d come in with me,” Ettie said, but then realized what a foolish thing this was to say. But she did often dream that some night, Hannah might take her with her.

Hannah wished she could go into the water as well. But she knew what would happen. It had happened every night since she had returned. Of course now the transformation did not seem mysterious to
Hannah at all. She was accustomed to the feeling of her legs melding together into one powerful tail, her feet merging and then where her ten toes had been, a slight indentation that formed the flukes of the tail.

She had quickly realized that swimming in her nightclothes was ridiculous. She didn’t need clothes. She liked the feeling of the water against her bare skin. So she would carefully tuck her clothes away above the high-tide line and slip naked into the water. It was a wonderful, indescribable feeling. Her skin had felt dead before. But naked in the water, every part of her seemed so alive, so profoundly connected with the sea. She felt touched in a way she had never known and that stirred deep feelings within her.

But touch was not the only sense that seemed enhanced when she was in the water. Her hearing became incredibly acute. She could hear the thud of a propeller miles away, the stirring of lobsters in their traps, and she now realized that she could hear human voices, too, even if they were on land. That was why, that first evening, she had heard the cries of
Ettie even though she had been more than a mile from shore.

Slipping out of the household was not a problem, luckily, for both Daze and Susie had their beaux in the village and Florrie had gone back to Boston to prepare the house on Louisburg Square for the Hawleys’ return in a few weeks. Hannah went whatever the weather was. There had been a ferocious summer storm when the water of Frenchman Bay churned and turned frothy with whitecaps. Out beyond Egg Rock, the waves from the open sea built into towering mountains of water, and Hannah swam through them, often using her tail to power her into an upward dive into the air above them. If she lofted herself high enough, five or ten feet above the wave, she could flip herself around and dive back toward its crest, sliding down a giant slope of water. She seemed to comprehend the intention of each wave. She could anticipate the precise moment a wave began to curl and when it would collapse entirely in an explosion of spray. It was like being caught in a web of diamonds.

As she watched Ettie now performing water tricks, she thought about a trick she was determined to perfect if only another blow would come through. She had slid down the steep slopes of many offshore waves, but she realized that perhaps the real feat would be to skim across the slopes horizontally, just under the curl of the crest, and try to stay with the wave as long as possible.

Since her return she had found out very little about Lila except that she had been taken away. Hannah had presumed Lila was going to the place she had previously been for the rest treatment. Hannah did not want to question Ettie too much about it. From the other servants, she had learned that the cat had indeed been killed by a rock that Ettie had thrown. Other bits and pieces of the events of that evening leaked out. She wondered in particular about the painter. It had been discovered after the events on the shore that the painting had been defaced. The canvas had been slashed and the face of the girl in the shadows ripped off. When she heard about the destruction of the painting, she knew for
certain the painter would never again come to Gladrock, or number 18 in Boston. And not only that, one of the vases had been shattered into hundreds of fragments. And now as Hannah and Ettie walked back up to the house, Hannah could hear the child muttering something through her chattering teeth. “What is that, Ettie? What are you trying to say?”

The child stopped and looked up at Hannah with her clear gray eyes. “Sanatorium.”

“What’s that?”

“A big, big word.”

“What does it mean?”

“You don’t know?” Ettie asked. There was a slightly triumphant note in her voice, as if she were somehow pleased that she knew something that an older person didn’t.

“I think I might have heard the word.” Hannah thought it did sound familiar.

“It’s a place where people who have tuberculosis go.” Ettie paused. “That’s where they took Lila.”

“Oh,” Hannah said quietly.

They didn’t speak until they were back in Ettie’s bedroom, where she had changed her clothes and was now sitting in front of her mirror while Hannah combed out her wet hair to braid.

Ettie spoke to their reflections in the mirror. “Of course, Lila doesn’t have tuberculosis. But you see, it’s much easier to say that than that she’s crazy. You go to an asylum if you’re crazy. An insane asylum.” Ettie went on to explain the finer points of the differences between the two words. “I looked the words up in a dictionary. And it says in the Noah Webster dictionary that an asylum is an institution for the maintenance and care of the blind, the insane, and orphans. You’re an orphan, aren’t you, Hannah?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t in an asylum. I was in The Boston Home for Little Wanderers.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet sounding.” Ettie sighed. “Are you sure there were no blind or insane people there?”

“Yes, quite sure.” Hannah was tempted to say that she had never met any insane people until she came to work for the Hawleys. But she resisted. “Just
normal children who didn’t have any mothers or fathers.”

“Who do you think your mother and father were?” Hannah could feel the color drain from her face.

“I…I…”

“I mean, I think they loved you, Hannah. How could someone not love you? I love you, Hannah.” Hannah felt her eyes well with tears.

“Do you now, Ettie?” Ettie looked at her curiously as if to reflect back the hollowness of her words. Hannah felt a twinge of guilt as if she was hoping that Ettie would say no, that she didn’t love Hannah, and that then Hannah could break all the ties that bound her to land.

“Yes! But do you love me, Hannah?” Ettie leaned closer to the mirror. The half-finished braid almost slipped through Hannah’s hands. Ettie’s words did not sound hollow in the least. There was an urgency in her voice. “I mean to say, Hannah, I’m not just your job, am I?”

Hannah’s hands froze with the neatly separated bunches of hair twined through her fingers.

“Ettie, what are you saying?” They regarded each other’s reflections in the mirror carefully.

“You’re paid to scrub the grates, clean the vegetables, and all you do.” She paused. “Including braiding my hair…but…but you do like me, don’t you?”

“Of course, Ettie. I like you very much.” It sounded so mechanical.

“Of course,” Ettie replied softly.

Neither one was now looking at the other in the mirror. They had averted their eyes and for a few seconds Hannah felt as if she had stepped out of her own body and was looking at herself from a slight distance as she continued to braid Ettie’s hair.

“Will you promise to stay here forever and ever?”

Hannah looked down at Ettie’s face. It looked pinched and nervous. Did Ettie suspect her secret life?

Hannah sighed. “No one can promise forever and ever, Ettie.”

“Yes, they can…they can…Hannah.”

“I could promise, Ettie, and I could want to not ever break that promise, but sometimes things can
happen that are beyond your control and promises get broken.”

“Well, can you promise that if it is in your control, you won’t leave?” Ettie looked up at her with her clear gray eyes. Hannah felt a pinch in her heart.

“I can only promise that I’ll try,” Hannah said.

“You’ll try?”

“Yes, I’ll try.”

Ettie turned around now and, taking Hannah’s hand, gave it a ferocious squeeze.
Did my mother try?
Hannah wondered.
Please, God, let her have tried!

They would be returning to Boston in a very few days. It would be harder for Hannah to go into the sea there. It was farther away for one thing. She could not imagine trekking back and forth between Louisburg Square and the harbor, and what would she wear? Here it was easy to lead a divided life. She could go out in the pitch of a summer night wearing her combis and petticoats. She was hardly ever cold when she walked home. But what would it be like walking
through the streets and back alleys of Boston in winter in wet clothes?

It seemed as the last days of summer closed in that Ettie tried more and more to cling to Hannah. Had she seen something on that dreadful yet wonderful night when Hannah had dived into the sea?

Mr. and Mrs. Hawley themselves seemed for the remainder of the summer as shattered as their precious vase. When Hannah had returned that morning, she learned that the painter had left rather abruptly after discovering the ruined portrait.

Stannish Whitman Wheeler had told Hannah, in no uncertain terms, to leave that night, urged her to flee. Had he known somehow what would happen? She had always sensed that he saw things that others did not see, that he could see beneath the surface. He was after all a painter, but that was not the same thing as being able to read the future.