The Crossing

by Kathryn Lasky

  Every time they embraced, it was as if they were making up for lost time, the nearly two months they had been apart. Hugh’s lips brushed against hers, sending a jolt of electricity through May’s entire body. She trembled, and Hugh pulled her tighter.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” May smiled and brought her hand to his cheek. “I love it when you don’t shave.”

  “You don’t mind me being scratchy?”

  “Never.” She laughed and pulled away a bit.

  “Did you bring your swimming togs?”

  “You mean my land togs, don’t you?” She stepped away and held up the small book satchel in which she always brought a dry petticoat. She smiled and began to unhook her cloak. She dressed very lightly even on the coldest evenings, for she simply did not feel the cold as others did. She then pulled off her dress and was standing in her petticoats and high-button shoes. Sitting down on one of the bridge’s footings, she began to take off the shoes. “I really think someone should invent better everyday shoes for women. Think how much time is wasted fiddling with these buttons. It’s the first year of the new century. Women’s feet shouldn’t be all cramped up, even if they aren’t mer.”

  “Indeed. I’ll put my mind right to it. ‘New Shoes for the New Century.’ What do you think of that slogan?”

  “I’ve got an even better one — ‘New Shoes for the New Century for the New Woman.’ ”

  “Excellent. I can’t beat that.” Hugh chuckled.

  “Don’t even try. You need to keep your mind on the stars,” she said, pulling off the second shoe.

  Hugh gazed at her. He had never seen anyone more beautiful. To him, May was like a moon, and he loved her in all her phases, but there was nothing quite as magical as watching her transformation as she slipped into the water. At first, she’d been rather shy to do this in front of him. But then she became more at ease and would let him sit beside her on the concrete footings of the bridge while she dangled her legs in the water. Normally she would plunge right in, and then within a few strokes her legs would fuse and the glimmerings of her tail would sparkle just beneath the surface. This way took longer, but it gave him so much pleasure to watch as her legs fused and the scales in hues of violet and gold began to scintillate in the water. Then, within seconds, she would be gone, streaking off like a flame beneath the river’s surface.

  She might swim twenty yards or more and then perhaps break through the surface. Her head, now sleek, would turn to him and she would give a cheerful wave. Usually she swam east toward the sea and the harbor, but occasionally she followed the course of the river west. Her speed was phenomenal. She always returned well before dawn, for at dawn the traffic across the bridge started. The drays and the carters, with their produce or meat fresh from the slaughterhouses in Brighton, would begin, and the world of commerce would be brought to the university town. For indeed the students and professors could not live on intellect alone.

  “Turn your back now.” May giggled as her legs reappeared and she stood up.

  “Where did you swim to tonight?”

  “Out to the harbor. I had hoped to meet Hannah again. But no sign of her.” She sighed.

  “Wheeler, I guess.” Hugh frowned.

  “I guess.” May shook her head.

  “Why does he have to be so selfish?” Hugh said. “If anyone should understand, it should be him. He was mer. But to deny someone her true nature is vile. To ask someone to betray herself is a betrayal of love.”

  “There is no explaining it. He thinks only of his own happiness.”

  “But there can be no real happiness if you deny happiness to the one you supposedly love. Happiness is shared, not hoarded.”

  “You are no hoarder, Hugh Fitzsimmons,” May said as she rubbed her hair with a towel she had brought. “You can turn around now.” She was pulling on her dry clothes.

  “When you love somebody, you love her for who she is. For all she is” — he paused — “in all her phases.”

  He was staring at her with the same look of wonder that crossed his face whenever he caught sight of a distant star on a cloudless night. May’s bashfulness faded, and forgetting her wet hair and crumpled clothes, she stepped toward him. “I love you,” she whispered, then before he could reply, she brought her lips to his and lost herself in his kiss.

  IN ALL HER PHASES. The words echoed in May’s head as she entered Gore Library the next morning. Her life was almost perfect here in Cambridge. It would be perfect if only Lucy could be spared and Hannah … Oh, Hannah! How come she, May, had been so lucky compared to her two sisters? It was an unanswerable question.

  The library’s gas fixtures cast coronas of amber light on the bowed heads of students in their carrels as they labored over a difficult translation or perhaps an arcane philosophical argument. From high up in the vaulted ceiling, slivers of light fell through the stained glass clerestory windows. It struck May that each time she entered Gore it was not entirely different from the way that light fell into the sea when she swam either on clear days or moonlit nights. The light poured down in columns, creating an intaglio of gleaming brilliance and shadow until the water became a multifaceted liquid jewel. Of course here it was not water but air. The librarian on duty, with whom she was familiar from her previous visits, directed her now toward the special collections of rare books, which were on the third floor.

  “There’s an elevator. However, I am afraid that is reserved exclusively for Professor Winship due to his … uh … affliction. But just go through that door,” she said, pointing toward a heavy, elaborately carved oak door. “And then head up to the third floor. He’ll be there either in a back carrel or swooping about somewhere.”

  Swooping about? Just what kind of affliction does the professor have? May wondered. Well, at least she was somewhat prepared. She knew now who the Buddha was. She had found several books on Eastern religions at the Gilberts’ house and had discovered that the Buddha was an ancient sage who had founded one of the great religions of the world. And that the word Buddha actually meant awakened one, or enlightened one. And to think she had gone a lifetime without ever knowing this. She was feeling enlightened herself. Alice Gilbert was only too happy to expound on the Buddha and Eastern faiths when she found May reading the book. “A wonderful religion!” she had exclaimed. “I am at best an agnostic, but were I spiritually inclined I think I would become a Buddhist.”

  Although May was not quite sure what an agonistic was, she sensed it was not Christian or any other identifiable religion that she had heard about. She gathered that agnostic meant that Alice Gilbert was disinclined toward organized faiths. She later looked up the meaning in one of the numerous dictionaries that seemed almost to outnumber the dust bunnies in the Gilbert house and found that the definition fitted Alice Gilbert to a T. “A person who believes that nothing is known of the existence or nature of God, or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief.” Perfect! May thought as she now pushed on the leather door. She heard the creak and then the whine of what sounded like a mechanical device high above her. A small aerial figure whizzed through the stained glass radiance of light and alighted on a table top. A dwarf! He bounced in a harness contraption while clutching a book.

  “Need help?” He had a cruelly misshapen back, but his voice was cheerful.

  “Uh, yes … if you don’t mind.”

  “You’re from Radcliffe, I assume.”

  “Oh, no. But I do have a temporary library card. I am just assisting someone in his research.”

  “Well, I am here to give assistance to such assistants,” he said with a smile. “What specifically are you looking for?”

  “An engraving by N.B. Lawrence.”

  “Oh, ho-ho! N.B. Lawrence, the fallen-from-grace, scandalized physiologist thrown out of the verdant gardens of academe, and I so wanted to consult him about my renal function.” I know renal, thought May almost jubilantly, for indeed in the article the w
ord had been mentioned and it was another that she had looked up. It had to do with kidneys. “You can imagine that with a body as twisted and misshapen as mine simple organs … well, how to put it? They have a tough row to hoe. But no, they had to throw him out of Yale before I could make it down to New Haven for a consultation.” He paused. “But now specifically you want to see some of his engravings, right? He was as talented an engraver as he was a physiologist until he apparently — pardon the pun — went off the deep end with this mer business.”

  “Yes. I found reference to one of these engravings in an article I was reading.”

  “I think I know which ones you mean.” He tapped his head and rolled his eyes up until his eyeballs showed almost entirely white. “Let me think. I believe that would be on level three, call number 56.11 thereabouts. Yes indeed. Meet you at the top. You can take the spiral stairs in the corner.” He then began to work some wires on his harness. Once more there was the whine of some mechanism high above, and he began to ascend slowly, twirling through the shuffling disks of colored light that poured in from a large rose window on the north wall of this aerie of rare books.

  Eleazar met her at a wall lined with thin drawers that appeared to be no more than three or four inches deep. He pulled one out. “I myself believe nothing can compare to horizontal storage of engravings. It all depends, of course, on the quality of paper. I just automatically assume that quality has been on a downward spiral since the Renaissance despite technological advances. Ah, now if you could assist me by removing those top two portfolios. Yes, that’s it. And now here we are. This is the sleeve we are looking for!” He took out a folder that was tied with a black ribbon.

  “Let’s open it on the table over there.” He air-danced to a round table just under the rose window. “Do you want to do the honors?” he said, nodding at the ribbon.

  “Oh … oh, sure …”

  He noticed how her hands were trembling. He cocked his head and studied her while she began to untie the ribbon. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave you here. I do have some things to attend to below.”

  “Fine,” she whispered, and did not look up. She heard the whir of some gears as Eleazar slid down to the next level.

  May shut her eyes for several seconds before lifting the cover of the portfolio.

  She put her hand to her mouth. A face so like her own loomed out from the yellowed paper. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Mother,” she whispered. It was, she knew, an incredible likeness. Much closer than the carved face of her mother on the figurehead of the HMS Resolute, which had been worn by the sea. This engraving was a portrait and showed her shoulders, broad like May’s own. She was wearing a camisole and her hair appeared wet as if she had just climbed out of the water. But there was no trace of her tail or anything for that matter below her waist. No one would know that the beautiful woman was mer — except for May, Hannah, and Lucy. The reality of that face was undeniable. The woman was their mother. There was the dimple in the chin. The high, rounded cheeks; the generous lower lip; and the almost dainty upper one. The eyes gazed out at her. Her lips, which were slightly parted, seemed as if they might speak. May leaned in closer. It was as if she could feel the salt breezes, feel the dampness of her mother’s camisole.

  At that moment she heard footsteps approaching. A hand dropped on her shoulder. May spun around to see a familiar face smiling at her.

  “Hugh! What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same of you. What are you looking at?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “All right,” he replied, and clamped his eyes shut.

  May got up. Taking him by the shoulders, she seated him in the chair she had just occupied.

  “Don’t open you eyes until I tell you.”

  “Whatever is it? A surprise?”

  “Possibly. Now uncover your eyes.”

  “Not a surprise,” Hugh said in barely a whisper as he bent over the engraving. “It’s you.”

  “It’s my mother.”

  “Your mother! Of course.” He lifted his fingertips to May’s face and traced her jawline, resting his index finger on the dimple of her chin. “But where is she sitting?”

  “The aft cabin, the captain’s quarters of the HMS Resolute.” The figure was resting her elbow on a surface — the navigation table. May slid the engraving aside. Both she and Hugh inhaled sharply as they caught sight of the next one. There was her mother, perched on a rock with the sea swirling around her and steep cliffs in the background. Her tail was dipping into the water. May’s heart seized as she caught sight of another tail in the water. A head was breaking through the surf. Another mer swimming toward the rock! She slid the engraving aside. It was a double portrait — two female mers on the rock who looked nearly identical, and yet the second one did not look quite so much like May or her sisters. My mother had a sister!

  “Your aunt,” Hugh said softly.

  “I have an aunt. Lucy and Hannah and I have an aunt. We are not alone.”

  Hugh took her hand and squeezed it. “May, you will never be alone as long as I live. Never.” He folded her into his arms. She felt her hair tangle in his fingers and her neatly pinned bun fell into a cascade around her shoulders. Hugh let out a long sigh, but then another sound braided with his breath. It was the whine of Eleazar’s contraption. A shadow spilled across the dappled light shed from the stained glass. They jumped apart, but not before Hugh shot May a sly smile, and she could almost see the words to be continued flickering in his playful expression.

  In another book-lined room, in a small library, in a seaside cottage in the village of Jamestown, on the coast of Rhode Island, Nat Lawrence settled down in his wing chair to begin reading the backlog of newspapers. He had very little time for newspapers, really. He preferred reading scientific papers, monographs, and articles. He was anonymously contributing to a new medical textbook on the processes of saline and carbon dioxide exchanges in the respiratory systems of dogfish. He snapped the two-week-old edition of the New York Times. A face loomed out at him. His hands began to tremble. He knew that face — the dimple in the chin, the mouth — all the same. They had lived? But how could it be? And this girl, this … what was her name? Lucy Snow. Accused of murder. Sentenced to die!

  “Oh my God!” He set the paper aside. He felt his heart race. Something had to be done. If there was one cell, one scrap of his dear brother, Walter, and his wife, Laurentia, still alive … He gasped. He must go to this child. He must for the sake of his brother. For the sake of Laurentia. He was an old man now, but he would have no peace until he saved this child. A shadow passed through him. He had been cast out of academia, but if indeed he was able to find this girl, this Lucy Snow as she was called, he must never allow his name to be connected with hers. She would become a lab animal. When he had begun his research he never dreamed that the three mer infants could have survived. He would have never started such an endeavor. He thought they were dead. All dead. Could the other two have lived as well?

  ETTIE FINGERED the note in the deep pocket of her dress. She could not believe this was happening. “Back early! It can’t be!” she had said, distressed, when Mr. Marston had told her that her parents and Lila had taken an earlier train and would be arriving within the hour rather than later that afternoon.

  “What do you mean it can’t be?” her older sister Clarice asked.

  “It just can’t,” she said, touching the note that had come the previous evening from May with its astonishing news: Can you come to Cambridge? Meet us at the coffeehouse by the library at two o’clock. I have discovered engravings — portraits of our mother.

  May.

  By us, Ettie knew that May meant herself, Hannah, and Hugh. She felt her fury mounting. Everyone was free to come and go as he or she pleased except for Ettie, and all because she was a twelve-year-old girl born rich. Rich girls her age, or rather girls of her “station,” could not just “gallivant around,” as her mother had told her so often. Station. She hated
that word, but how ironic it was. For indeed she felt as if she were permanently consigned to the station, and the trains that passed through would never stop for her.

  Such girls had to either stay where they were or be accompanied. But had she been born poor and a nobody, in short, stationless, there would be boundless opportunities. No one cared about poor children. They could come and go when and where they wanted. She heard them all the time — playing in the Common or the Public Gardens or chasing their hoops down Charles Street. She might as well be in prison like Lucy. She was about to have a fit, or as her mother would say, “an outburst.”

  “But I don’t want to be here.”

  “You don’t want to see your sister Lila?” Miss Ardmore had just entered the room. “It’s been so long!”

  “Not long enough!” Ettie stomped her foot.

  Miss Horton, the housekeeper, took a cautious step into the parlor. Ettie whirled about. She spotted Daze, Florrie, and Susie peeking around the corner. The staff was assembling. Well, she would have her outburst.

  “Face it — none of you want Lila back. We hate it when she is around. We all tiptoe about in mortal fear of her rages, her tantrums,” Ettie said. Of course she realized she was now having one of her own, but she was an amateur, a piker in the tantrum department compared to Lila, who was just plain barking mad and a liar, a cheat, a she-demon if there ever was one.

  “Ettie’s right,” said the newest arrival, Roseanne, who now sailed into the room like a full-rigged ship. She was a large woman with a ruddy, nearly hectic complexion. She was Mrs. Hawley’s lady’s maid. She tended to her wardrobe and all matters personal to a lady. Roseanne wore no apron, which signaled a female servant of the highest rank. There were only three such servants apronless in the Hawley household — Mrs. Horton, Miss Ardmore, and Roseanne Elwood. “What Miss Ettie said hit the mark. You know we all dread her return. Lila left a lunatic and she’ll soon get back to her old ways. Yes, they can drug her to a point. But it never lasts.”