Monstrous Beauty (5 page)

“A hallucination.”

Hester shoved his shoulder, laughing. “Why is it a hallucination for me and a scientific sighting for your dad?”

“Well,
you
were drowning…” He started walking again, and she joined him.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” she said, thrilling at the revelation, “but I was sure I breathed water that day, like a fish.”

“And I’ve never told anyone this,” Peter said, putting his arm over her shoulder and tipping his head toward her ear. “I peed my trunks when you didn’t come up for air.”

Chapter 6

1872

E
ZRA MET
S
YRENKA EVERY EVENING
at dusk, always in a different location, always far from shore. She never had any difficulty finding him. In the late afternoon he would row a boat out until his muscles were hot and sore, and then he would drift, working on his journal until she appeared. His arms became strong, his shoulders broad, and his skin slightly weathered from the wind, sun, and salt air. His clear blue eyes became intense with passion and purpose. Syrenka answered all of Ezra’s questions and matched them with her own, eager to know about human life. At the end of their time together she would unerringly guide him back to the harbor and then disappear again.

On one of these evenings Ezra examined the sharp, bony-spined dorsal fin on her neck and upper back, the smaller, razor-sharp fins that followed the line of her thumb on the undersides of her wrists, and the webbing between her fingers. But he examined from a distance. He knew she had only one rule for their meetings: she would not allow Ezra to touch her. Even in cases where it would help his research, she was strict.

“I should dearly like to know the texture of your skin,” he finally ventured.

“You shan’t,” she said, smiling—readily showing her sharp teeth. She cocked her head to the side to look at him with one eye. It was a mannerism he adored.

“You do such a disservice to science,” he grumbled cheerfully.

“In keeping you safe, I serve science. And myself.”

“I don’t understand why touching you would be unsafe. Are you electrified, like some rays?”

“I am not. But I have eaten such a thing.”

He was quiet for several minutes, sketching in the dim light. She closed her eyes as he worked, and he saw something familiar pass across her face. She sighed, for the first time in his presence. He wondered if she had learned it from him.

“It’s bittersweet, isn’t it,” he murmured.

“What does that mean?”

“Being together, but not being together.”

“The word should be sweet-bitter, then, as you describe it,” she said. He looked up from his page and smiled. She had the quickest mind he’d ever encountered.

They were quiet again.

“What are you protecting me from?” Ezra asked.

Syrenka said nothing. He put the journal aside. The light had become too dim to continue working.

“Please tell me.”

“I am protecting you from me,” she finally answered.

“You’ve been nothing but kind and gentle.”

“As long as I am an immortal, tied to the sea, and you are a mortal who belongs on land, I am a risk to you.”

“The only danger I see is that I may forgo food and sleep, so distracted am I by the distance between us.”

“I want you to live to be a very old man. I want to be near you for as much of that time as you’ll allow me.”

“The rest of my life, then,” he said.

She was stubbornly quiet.

“I am scientific enough in nature that I believe all difficult problems have a solution and yield to effort,” Ezra said.

He thought she might not reply again, until she said softly, “There is a way for us to be together.”

“Tell me.”

“There are two parts: one would be simple for me, the other requires a price that no person should pay. I cannot even speak it. Please do not press me.”

“For now,” he agreed.

“In time, you may tire of me and find a woman, and I will welcome your happiness—”

He shook his head. “There is only you.”

She looked at him with her enormous eyes.

“Can you, I wonder, ” he said quietly, “can you tell me the simple part?”

He heard the swish of her tail, which he knew meant she was thinking.

“If I carry a man’s child, I will become mortal. I will acquire a soul.”

Ezra’s mind leaped through the implications. “You would choose mortality to be with me?”

“I cannot be truly human without it. If you had lived even half as long as I have you would understand, the exchange is fair.”

He remembered his father at the end, how death had been a mercy. Perhaps an eternity of loneliness would be equally unbearable.

Syrenka looked out toward the ocean and Ezra barely heard her whisper, “I am exhausted by wanting you.”

“Syrenka.” He leaned over the edge of the boat to see her profile in the darkness. Her mouth was set, and her eyes revealed ancient pain.

“Dear, kind, brilliant Syrenka, I—”

“No,” she interrupted, turning to him. Her face was closer to his than it had ever been. “Do not say it.”

“You already know how I feel, then. Why should I not say it?”

“Because it will only increase our agony. There is so much you still do not know.”

He felt her breath—moist and cool. The space between them was almost nothing, and yet he was safe—as safe as on dry land. How could one kiss hurt?

“Mr. Doyle!” Ezra heard a man’s voice. He startled.

“No! Mr. Doyle! Stay away from her!”

He looked behind him. It was a fisherman in a boat, with a lamp—he was almost upon them. They had been so caught up in their conversation they hadn’t noticed his approach.

Syrenka slipped under the water.

“Who’s there?” Ezra shouted.

“It’s Olaf Ontstaan. Listen to me,” he yelled. “She’s a demon!”

“Leave me in peace, Olaf!”

Where had Syrenka gone?

“She’s murdered dozens of sailors and fishermen—for hundreds of years—since before this land was colonized. One pitiful lad I knew myself, in my youth. Driven mad with love … Washed ashore a week later, he was. Bloated and stinking. She seduced you so she can kill you, Mr. Doyle!”

Suddenly, Syrenka’s face was above water.

“Caught!” she said, before disappearing underwater again.

What did she say? Was she admitting guilt? Ezra’s heart pounded.

She came up again. “My tail!” He could just see her eyes, wide and blazing with anger, and then she was gone. This time her arms clawed the water as she sank, and he saw that she was being pulled under.

She surfaced explosively and grabbed the side of Ezra’s boat. Her tail was caught in the fisherman’s gill net.

Ezra looked back at Olaf, and by the light of the lantern could see him pulling on the net, hand over hand. He was drawing Syrenka—and Ezra’s boat—toward him. Syrenka thrashed to free her tail; water sprayed in every direction.

Ezra instinctively put his hands on Syrenka’s hands. Her skin was slick, firm, and pliable, and cooler than his own.

He shouted in Olaf’s direction. “You bastard! Stop!”

Her fingers were being pulled off the edge of the boat. He caught her forearms, but they slid through his hands until the fins on her wrists cut into his palms. He held on. He felt warm blood, and the sting of the salt water. He was being pulled so hard, the boat was tipping.

“Let go, Ezra,” Syrenka said.

“No!”

“You’re hurt!” she said, enraged.

And then she went under. Ezra—still holding her tightly—fell in after her.

The ocean was black and cold. Ezra’s clothing and shoes instantly became leaden. Water rushed around his face as bubbles escaped his nose. And then he was no longer holding Syrenka’s arms, she was holding him. He felt himself being dragged in the direction of Olaf’s boat, but deeper. Syrenka held him around his waist, and the side of his body was pressed against hers. She was more powerful than he could have imagined. He was more fragile than he’d thought.

His empty lungs felt as if they had collapsed, as if a painful weight were crushing his chest. His diaphragm began to spasm, urging him to breathe against his better judgment. He swallowed, again and again, to stop his body from taking a breath. All at once, she turned him to her and her cool lips pressed against his. His mouth opened involuntarily, responsively. He was blacking out; he knew he would die kissing her.

And then a miracle happened: the pain in his chest disappeared. His muscles relaxed. He was conscious. It was as if he had taken an enormous, sustaining gulp of air. Her kiss seemed to allow him to live underwater. He was revived now, and a real kiss—so long denied—lingered between them.

He felt her body jerk, and he realized that Olaf’s net still ensnared her. Syrenka gripped him around the waist again. She used her free hand to try to wrest her tail loose. She wrenched back and forth. She worked to untangle the netting with her hand, and then tried slashing it with her wrist fin. All the while she held tight to Ezra.

The kiss began to wear off. It was not permanent, as he had imagined. She had somehow oxygenated him temporarily. He thought he might be able to distract the fisherman, to reason with him, to save her, if she would only let him surface for air.

He pushed on the arm that was around his waist, but it held like a vise. He tried to pry her fingers loose. He became alarmed. He squirmed like a child. He shook her shoulder, but she took no notice of him. How could she forget about him? He began to panic. His air had run out. He looked up and saw the lantern on the fisherman’s boat, the light quivering through the waves—he was dying, within sight of the surface!

He flailed and thrashed, and in utter desperation he screamed at her, expelling the last bit of air that was left in his lungs. This time he did lose consciousness, and Olaf Ontstaan’s accusation flashed through his mind as his world went black: “She seduced you so she can kill you.”

Chapter 7

T
HE DAY AFTER
P
ETER’S GRADUATION
, Hester was at work at Plimoth Plantation, her first full day of the summer season. She tossed a handful of cabbage into the pork pottage and stirred it with a wooden spoon. Rich broth vapors wafted out of the iron pot and escaped up the chimney. She leaned to breathe them in, the condensation beading on her nose.

“A mite more salt,” she said, dabbing at her face with her sleeve. “But not so much as to be prodigal.” She pulled her heavy woolen skirt away from the cinders of the open hearth and added a dash of salt from the salt box. The midday dinner was ready—and this time she could tell from the smell that it was downright edible. It would make their meal seem infinitely more authentic to tourists this year if her pretend-husband actually ate the stuff.

She looked over her shoulder. Her cottage was empty: there was no need to speak in character anymore. Most of the visitors, drawn by drumbeats, had gathered at the fort to watch the militia test their weapons. She was free to let her brain run loose as Hester for a moment, to stop thinking as a Pilgrim.

She straightened the blankets on her supposed marriage bed and sat with a sigh. The mattress was stuffed with lumpy cotton, the blanket was scratchy against her palms. Her training had taught her to say that the makeshift wool curtain around the bed was there to hold in body heat at night, but she had also assumed that in 1627 it provided the only pitiful privacy a young couple might find in a one-room home: send the children out to play; draw the curtain; hurry up.

In spite of the darkness of the hut, the heat was suffocating. The tiny, high windows let in little light and less breeze. Three layers of period clothing—all linen and wool and leather—were stifling on a warm day. She mopped her forehead with a handkerchief from her belt and tucked a few long hairs back into her linen coif. Any other interpreter might be tempted to remove her bodice jacket, but it didn’t occur to Hester. She knew in her core that Elizabeth Tilley Howland would never unfasten even the top button.

She got up. There was always work to do in the cottage. She found a rag and began dusting. The packed-dirt floor made it nearly impossible to keep the room clean. She dusted the family’s shelf—lifting bowls, trenchers, and spoons to clean under them—and then picked up the single book on it: a replica of the Geneva Bible of 1560, believably moldy, with crinkled pages. She flipped it open and a silverfish darted down the gutter. She dropped the book, her heart pounding. She felt light-headed, and suddenly queasy. She sat in the chair and covered her face, a memory washing over her.

*   *   *

She was dawdling on the way home from school, looking for her friend Linnie in the graveyard behind the church. She found her patiently building a fort near the old oak. Linnie always seemed to be waiting for her.

The air was too sweet, the sky too crisp to run and play. They lolled lazily in the young grass behind the church, listening to birds, watching just-born flies sun themselves on heated tombstones. Hester was seven, Linnie was eight and a half, and proud of being older. Hester lay on her back and tracked clouds, popping and expanding like heated corn kernels as they drifted slowly across the sky. Her eyelids closed, and she began drifting herself until she heard Linnie’s voice.

“I dare you to go inside the church, Hester.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head to see Linnie, propped on one elbow, facing her and fiercely focused, the way she sometimes was.

“That’s not a dare,” Hester mumbled. “I go there every Sunday.”

“You never go without your family, when it’s empty.”

Hester yawned and looked at the back door of the stone building. It was slightly ajar, which she hadn’t noticed when she’d arrived that afternoon. It was dark inside.

She sat up, groggy. “You want to play in there?”

Linnie shook her head. “I’m not allowed.”

Hester lay back down. She sighed deeply. “No one is allowed, I bet.”

“That’s … that’s exactly why I’m daring you,” Linnie said.