May

by Kathryn Lasky

  “You don’t need it anymore, May? You’re sure?”

  “Well, I might need it again sometime. But no, really, you take it for now.”

  He tucked it into a satchel and then climbed onto the float. “This island is beautiful. Not a tree on it, but a lovely place.”

  “There was a tree once—once upon a time.”

  “You make it sound like a fairy tale.”

  “Sometimes I think it was. The tree came and went long before my time.” She inhaled sharply. “It’s a hard place to live and grow.” He looked at her and seemed about to say something, and then—she saw it clearly in his eyes—he decided not to.

  “Where do you come from?” May asked.

  “Rhode Island, but I spent a lot of time in Washington, DC, growing up.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “How can you be from Rhode Island but grow up in another place? It’s different here, I guess.”

  “Oh, it was my father’s job. He was a congressman back then.”

  “You mean in the United States Congress?” May’s eyes opened wide.

  “Yes.”

  “You said ‘back then.’ What does he do now?”

  “Well, now he’s a senator, actually.”

  May was almost speechless. The very air seemed to beg the question. What in the world are you doing here on Egg Rock? The words pounded in her head.

  They walked around to the east-facing beach, just beneath the cliff she always dove from. The wind had died, and the water stretched out before them like a metallic sheet. It was an unusually warm day for this time of year.

  “You ever go swimming here?” Hugh asked.

  It was as if she had been punched squarely in the guts. “Never!” she answered quickly, and there must have been a sharpness in her voice, for Hugh turned to look at her, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

  “The currents, I suppose?” he replied. “But not even wading?”

  “Not even wading,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

  He laughed and bent over and began to unlace his shoes. “I’m going wading. Come on, join me.”

  “No, I’d rather not.” She shut her eyes tight. She saw her feet—the glistening scales melting out from beneath her skin. Her toes gradually fusing together … I am a freak! And she felt the first tiny fissure cracking in her heart when she looked down at his tousled head as he peeled off his socks. His feet were slender and white. He rolled up the cuffs of his pants. His calves were strong.

  When he looked at her over his shoulder his gray eyes twinkled. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to go wading?”

  No! No! I’m not sure at all. I’m not sure of anything! she wanted to scream. But instead she merely nodded and replied in a low voice, “I’m sure.”

  15

  LUCKY

  MAY WAS WALKING BACK FROM SCHOOL. She had not seen Hugh since the day he had come to pick up the book. But since then he had occupied her thoughts completely.

  May had replayed their walk on the beach in her mind a hundred times. There were moments when she thought that he had looked at her as if he was interested in her. When she had said that Egg Rock was a hard place in which to live and grow, it seemed that he had wanted to ask her more but had stopped himself. Was this the detached curiosity of a scientist or something else? It was neither, she thought. He is the son of a senator. I’m not his kind. Not anyone’s kind!

  The image of him removing his shoes and socks was burnished in her mind. She was sure he thought her behavior odd, but that was nothing compared to what he would have thought of her feet if her toes began to web and her skin broke out in its shimmering rash of scales. Before that day she had considered her scales beautiful, but now they felt like a sickness or an allergy. Until Hugh had shown up at Egg Rock, her life since her transformation had arranged itself into two neatly organized existences. At night she crossed a border into one world. By dawn she was back—the slightly awkward tourist in the other world. She thought that she might learn how to balance the two. But since that day on the beach, she realized that it was not likely. The freedom she had reveled in had darkened.

  She was always on the lookout for Hugh. He did not seem to be around the village, and when she had asked at the library two days ago, Miss Lowe had said that he had to go back to Boston for a “family reason.” The two words sent a shudder through May. Of course, he has family. Why had she never thought of that before? Something wilted in her as the unspeakable thought flooded through her. Hugh Fitzsimmons had a proper Rhode Island family. She was only a downeast island girl with no family, and only part human. Which part, she wondered. Where does my humanity begin and where does it end?

  When May went to school, which she did much more regularly these days, she was caught between the hope and despair of seeing him. So far she had not, and although she always felt slightly deflated, she knew it was for the best.

  School seemed rather dull to her since she had returned. Two older girls had dropped out to marry. She was now the oldest student in the small clapboard building on East Street, the only sophomore. Miss Gilbert, the teacher, had her hands full with some rowdy eleven-year-old boys, and May seemed to spend most of her time helping eighth graders learn about common denominators. Her swim to the Josiah B. Harwood made it clear that she needed to learn about something called vector diagrams, which showed the motion of an object if it was influenced by forces in more than one direction. Forces like wind and current and objects like the broken hull of the Josiah B. Harwood and the spars of the Resolute. If she could learn this kind of math, she might be able to calculate where the main part of the wreck of the Resolute lay in this vast ocean. But poor Miss Gilbert just didn’t have the time. And good lord, May was sick of teaching kids about common denominators. Percentiles, too! Leon Beal could not for the life of him understand that percentiles were just another way of expressing fractions. And his nose was perpetually snotty, dripping all over his math papers.

  May was walking through town toward the wharf because Cletus Weed, the mail boat captain, had said he could drop her off and spare her father the trip.

  “A penny for your thoughts, MayPlum.”

  It sounded like one word to her, the way Rudd said her name. Since she had started going to school more regularly, he often caught up with her before she hopped on the mail boat to go back to Egg Rock. He was more deferential, that was for sure. But on the other hand the glint in his eyes had hardened and was no longer simply a flirtatious gleam but one of suspicion. May felt she had to move carefully, and it was perhaps best to keep things light. “Oh, I wouldn’t know where to begin with such penny thoughts.” With Leon Beal’s snot, perhaps?

  “At the beginning, maybe.”

  But there was no beginning, really, or at least not one beginning. Since her dive to the Josiah B. Harwood, her head had been filled with all sorts of thoughts concerning drift and currents and winds as she tried to calculate where the Resolute might be. She was now more certain than ever that the ship had been her birthplace.

  After her initial forays into the study of vector diagrams with a book she had found in the library, it was as if she had opened a mathematical can of worms. She had to learn some trigonometry, too, as it would help her pinpoint the location of the wreck. Dr. Holmes had come into the library just that afternoon and sat with her for forty-five minutes to try to teach her some of the very basic formulas, which focused on measuring the surfaces of spheres. This in theory should help her figure out where the wreckage of the Resolute might have drifted.

  Should she start speaking in formulas to Rudd? The angle of addition—sine A over sine a = sine B over sine b = sine C over sine c? She had looked at countless charts and maps. She had now reached the conclusion that the wreck of the Resolute was either on the edge of Georges Bank or Nantucket Shoals, or possibly the Gulf Stream.

  Miss Lowe had even helped her look for old newspapers and had written to the Augusta library. She turned to Ru
dd. He was easy to fool.

  “Oh, I guess I was just dreaming,” she said, and smiled.

  “Dreaming of what?” he asked.

  Again she noticed that glint of suspicion. He had no right to ask her what she was dreaming. She resented it, just like when he had asked her about the locket. But she had vowed to keep the conversation light. She must look as if she were just another high school girl thinking about the next dance, a new dress, a new hairstyle. But it wasn’t that easy with Rudd. He might not be smart in the way Hugh was — book smart—but he was sly. She often thought that Rudd might perceive some change in her long before Hugh ever could. For Rudd knew the sea and he knew fish. The thought was alarming. She had heard him on the wharf, bragging about how he could sense where the cod runs would be or the alewife schooling, and May often felt as if he were looking at her. Rudd Sawyer was gaining a reputation as one of the best offshore fishermen on Mount Desert. He had a knack for setting weirs where the biggest schools of young cod and striped bass swam. Then offshore they said he just seemed to have an uncanny sense for where the sword and big cod went for their prey—hake, squid, bluefish. He was making a lot of money and was said to have the largest share of the catch other than Gus Bridges, captain of the Sea Hound.

  She had to act polite. Striking the right tone was going to be hard. She didn’t want to sound flirtatious but not outright rude. “Now, Rudd Sawyer, a girl never tells her dreams lest they won’t come true.” She forced a smile. “But actually I was just thinking about some mathematics problems that Doctor Holmes was helping me with when I was at the library.” She looked down at the papers she was carrying in a folder.

  “Mathematics—now, why does a girl need to know mathematics?”

  “Why does a boy need to know it?” she answered tartly. Watch it, May, she warned herself.

  “How’s your fishing?” she asked before he had the chance to respond.

  This was not a question she especially wanted to ask, but she needed to appear strong, fearless. He wanted to brag to her? Let him brag. She’d play her part, even if it meant she had to seem flirtatious. She had a sense that Rudd was one of those people who grew more aggressive the harder he was pushed.

  “Good! Good!” he replied. “You know what?”

  “What?” She tipped her head and smiled. Her green eyes twinkled.

  “I tell you what, MayPlum, I earned more than any other fisherman in Bar Harbor save Captain Gus. How about that? Going to start building me a house — right out on the point toward Otter Creek.”

  “Oh, that’s a beautiful place. I’m surprised the rich summer folk haven’t bought up that piece.”

  “They ain’t going to. I already put down five hundred dollars on it.”

  “Five hundred dollars!” May blinked and shook her head in disbelief. “Why, I never.” It was an unimaginable sum to May.

  He stepped up and chucked her under the chin. She recoiled at his touch.

  “You see, May, I’m getting me a nest egg. I’m not going to drink it away like half these fellows. I have plans.”

  “Plans.” May repeated the word softly.

  “Come down to the fish wharf and see the boat and our catch. We just brought it in.”

  She didn’t want to, but it was on her way, and she sensed it was best to humor him.

  She saw the Sea Hound at the end of the wharf, bobbing in the water by the dock. Two men were putting cod into barrels underneath a line on which the glistening silver-blue bodies of swordfish hung. The fish twirled softly in the spring breeze. She felt a pang deep inside her as she looked at the Sea Hound. This was the way it was, she knew. Men fished here. It was their livelihood. She ate fish five out of seven days of the week. But there was something unsettling seeing these magnificent swordfish dangling by their tails, their eyes clouded in death, their scales that in the water ranged from silver to gray to blue with hints of bronze and even purple now dull and lusterless. Only the night before, she had swum through a school of swordfish, perhaps one hundred or more. She was larger. They made way for her, parting slightly, never even grazing her with their swords. She had traveled with them for the better part of an hour, their silvery blue radiance folding around her as she swam.

  “How—how do you get them?”

  “Harpoon. Come on board. Meet Lucky.”

  “Who’s Lucky?” she asked as he helped her onto the deck of the Sea Hound.

  Rudd reached up to where a number of harpoons were hanging on a frame at the stern along with gutting knives and the curved sawtoothed blades for scraping scales. “This is Lucky,” he said, taking down a harpoon. The shaft was almost ten feet long and terminated in a lethal-looking dart with a barb. “You see?” Rudd’s finger traced the point. “It’s so sharp, it can go through bone. But the barb sets it. So the fish can’t get away.”

  “Showing off, are you?” A man with a bushy irongray beard had walked up to where they stood.

  “Hello, Captain. This here’s May Plum, Gar Plum’s daughter. From the lighthouse.”

  “Hello, Miss Plum. So Rudd here is showing off. Well, I guess he has cause. Nine out of those fifteen swordfish hanging up there got cozy with his harpoon. Feel like going back to lobstering, Rudd?” The captain winked at May.

  “Don’t be a fool! That ain’t fishing, Captain Gus. That’s like babysitting or watching grass grow. This is hunting. Here, May, want to hold the harpoon?”

  “No, no thanks. I better be going.”

  Before he could say anything more May jumped up onto the pier.

  “Well, she’s a quick little thing, Rudd! Don’t know how you’ll catch her.” Rudd just laughed and jumped up after her.

  “Oh, I’m quick, too. So I’ll see you at the apple blossom dance, MayPlum?”

  Over his shoulders she could see the swordfish twisting on their hooks. Dead, she thought. Had she ever seen anything that looked more dead?

  “When’s that?” she asked.

  “When the apple blossoms come out. End of second week of June.”

  “Uh … I don’t know … maybe.” It was hard for May to imagine a dance when she saw the lovely dead fish dangling from a line.

  “Oh, my!” Captain Gus turned from the rope he had been splicing and grinned at her. “She playing you, Rudd?”

  Rudd dipped his chin into his collar and seemed to chuckle at some private joke, then shook his head. “No, no one plays me, Gus.” He gave May what appeared to be a playful shove on the shoulder, but it was just enough to set her slightly off balance. The folder with the papers slipped, catching in a sudden gust of wind and lazily drifting toward the water.

  “Oh, no!” May cried. “My proofs!”

  Then quicker than when she had jumped up onto the pier, she leaped down to the deck of the Sea Hound again, grabbed Lucky, and raced to the stern platform.

  “What the hell are you doing, girl?” Rudd yelled.

  “Hey!” Captain Gus laughed. “I’d say that girl has a way with a harpoon. Look at her fetching those papers up now!” May was dipping the harpoon into the water and had managed to get the ones closest to the hull of the boat.

  Rudd laughed, too, then in a flat voice said, “Guess she’ll have to go swimming for the rest.” May felt the blood drain from her face and swayed. She grabbed for the line of the riding sail on the stern to steady herself. Does he know? She slid her eyes toward him. She had expected to see him laughing at her, thinking this was some great joke. But he wasn’t laughing at all. He was watching her carefully. His eyes reminded her of sharks’ eyes—blank, almost dead, but seeing everything.

  16

  WAITING

  SHE SAW IT GLINTING AND SHARP, a spike through the deep gray of the offshore night water. The sky was gray as well, slung low and heavy. It seemed to press down on the sea until the two oceans, the visible and the invisible, were fused. It had been raining when she slipped out. There was no moon, no light to reflect, yet this glinting spike stabbed the murky netherworld. Just ahead a trickle of blood t
hreaded through the grayness. A beautiful dying swordfish! The spike had found its mark! Suddenly there were scores of blades, spikes, and harpoons. She swam wildly through a daggered forest. But one harpoon grazed her tail. It seemed to have a life of its own and it kept following her. The dart, polished to a blazing silver, enveloped her in a blinding light. “So sharp… can go through bone.” Lucky! It’s Lucky!

  I am going to die.

  “No, no, MayPlum, just getting cozy—that’s all.”

  May sat straight up in bed. She was sweating—sweating pure salt. “A dream, just a dream,” she whispered. She looked out the window. It was still raining as it had been when she went out swimming six hours before. She had come back just an hour ago. But this dream was so real. She shivered and wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders. She never felt cold from swimming. It was the dream that made her cold, not the sea.

  Since her transformation, May seemed to need much less sleep. She could only surmise that this was the mer part of her. She had never seen a sea creature sleeping. When she did sleep, her dreams were intensely vivid. It was not just the colors of the sea that had seeped into the deepest parts of her being but its rhythms as well. This dream, however, had a different kind of intensity. There was a forcefulness, a terrible violence. It was as if the harpoon had an intelligence, a mind of its own.

  “You’re a fool, May Plum,” she said hoarsely. It was a dream, nothing more! She held herself tighter, but it was as if she were trying to embrace more than just herself. The twin voids, the spaces that pressed against her—had they been with her in her dream? She recalled the strange reflection in the porthole of the Josiah B. Harwood.

  She was waiting. Waiting for the others, waiting for her two mer sisters, and when she found them they would go together. With them at her side, she could swim through a sea bristling with harpoons and sliced by the long daggers of her nightmare.

  17

  AVALONIA