by Van Reid
From his perch atop the hill he looked down to the stream and was startled to see two women seated on a large gray rock by the water. They were dressed in near white, and their hair was long and loose past their shoulders. He had not seen them before, and though he had heard the laughter from over the hill, he was certain that it had been theirs. He could not place their ages as he drew near. Their graceful demeanor and knowing half smiles seemed to make them mature; their reckless locks and mischievous eyes marked them almost as children. Robin’s heart raced on his approach; he thought a moment of dire import had arrived and didn’t dare speak first.
He did not have to. “Where’s the boat for that paddle,” said the darkhaired woman, “and where’s the water that will fit them both?”
Robin was crestfallen. “It’s not a paddle, it’s an oar,” he said.
Both women laughed, a sound not very different from the water running at their slippered feet. “Are you lost?” asked the yellow-haired woman.
He set the boom end of the oar on the ground. “Don’t you think it precarious to be laughing at strangers?”
This only made them laugh again.
“Is there more than one of you?” asked the one. She did not bother to look for those other souls implied by his use of the plural.
“I don’t think there has to be,” said the second woman. “There’s enough of him for two or three of us and a little more to boot.”
Robin Oig had suspicions about these two. Aside from the color of their hair, he had thought them very much alike, but now he saw that the one had a round face and the other a narrow one. He had thought them very striking, too, when he first laid eyes on them; they were basking in the sun by the stream, dressed in almost white with almost white slippers on their small feet and their long hair falling loose past their shoulders. Now he thought them very nearly plain, and they would have been altogether so, he was convinced, but for their smiles and the brightness of their eyes.
“I thought you were sisters,” he said.
“We’re friends,” said the first.
“Where do you live?” he asked. It was not a meddlesome question (or not meant to be) but simply a declaration of natural curiosity. He looked around and saw no farm or house nearby.
“Nearby,” said the first woman.
Robin felt his scalp prickle as he remembered the ancient cellar hole above them; it had been there that he had first heard their laughter. This was more mystery than he was inclined to pursue. “Well, you should be cautious about laughing at strange men,” he said.
“You’re not so strange,” said the second woman.
He could make no sense of her inflection. He laid the oar on his shoulder again. He was disinclined to drink from this stream. These two women, if they weren’t pixies, were pixilated, to be sure. (He could not have imagined that someone had recently suggested the same about him.)
“Hello!” came a voice, small with distance but round from between cupped hands.
A man stood atop the hill. The women waved and laughed, then, without a good-bye, leaped across the stream like does and ran up the small slope. They shouted to the man at the top of the hill, but Robin could not make out their words. The day seemed hot, though the sailor stood in the shade of the willows near the stream. The women and then the man waved to Robin when they gathered together on the hill. Robin waved back as they disappeared down the further slope. Strangely (or, at least, it seemed strange to him) he was sorry to see them go.
Robin drew the back of his hand across his forehead. He wondered if he might drink from the noisy water after all. He kicked at a stone and watched it plip into the current. A dark depression in the wet soil upon the bank drew his attention, and he leaned over to inspect the mark of a horse’s hoof that had filled with water. Mr. Moss was on horseback, and here, he was sure, was a sign that the man had stopped at this very stream. He remembered his reason for being out in these fields and forgot the two women and the figure of the man at the top of the hill, and letting out something like an annoyed grunt, walked off without refreshing himself.
38. Tim’s Burden
Timothy Spark was miserable and didn’t quite know it. He understood that he had taken little Mailon Ring for granted when they scurried the waterfront in search of adventure or scaled the roofs of Brackett and Dan-forth Streets to view the incoming ships. He had been disconcerted to learn that Mailon was Melanie, that the boy was a girl, and that he had been sharing adventures with an Indian maiden and not a brave, but he had accommodated this sudden change with philosophy and moved forward.
Now both Mailon and Melanie were gone, and their combined absence did very little to solve the muddle between them in his mind. It rather made it seem a dream.
Earlier in the day he had hurried after Mr. Moss with grand designs to hitch a ride on the back of the departing carriage, but his father had caught him by the breeches, sent Timothy back to the kitchen, and enjoined him to “take some steam off.”
Tim sat at the family trencher and hardly moved for half an hour. His mother thought he looked lost and friendless, sitting with his head half down and his face expressionless. “You miss your shadow,” she said to him while sliding a piece of dried-apple pie and a chunk of rat cheese under his chin.
Tim did not respond, either to his mother’s voice or to the pie, and when he did acknowledge the food before him by eating it, it was without any outward sign of relish.
“Where are your other friends?” asked Mabel in the midst of cutting potatoes into a stewpot.
Tim was not without further companionship, and he and Melanie (under the guise of Mailon) had joined the local kids, chasing many an imaginary enemy along the waterfront and many a real fly ball by the Western Promenade in the last year or so since the scrawny waif had first shown up at the kitchen door of the Faithful Mermaid. Tim had friends of longer standing than Melanie, just not better ones. It was not enough to characterize the little girl as his shadow or to imagine that Tim (as the older child) missed someone he could order about. Timothy was not a boss at heart; but he was a leader, and Melanie was a loyal and generous follower. She would do what he wanted most to do because that was what made him happy, and Timothy would often ponder on what she would most like to do before suggesting it.
Tim was not a big boy for his age, and he had developed a scrappy, if well-meaning and good-humored, manner that was not unlike that of his father. He was, besides, from sympathetic stock, and if he could not completely understand what it meant to Melanie Ring to walk in disguise for most of her young life, he could yet understand that she couldn’t understand it herself. She was not much more than a minute (in the way of physical presence), and since the revelation of her identity, Tim had taken on the role of guardian when they were in the streets together. The black and purple bruise surrounding one of his eyes attested to his mixed success in this field, but also to his determination.
“Do you think Mr. Moss caught up with them?” he asked his mother some while after the pie was cleaned from his plate and he had been staring into the middle distances.
“I think he would have come back if he hadn’t.”
The next question was more difficult to ask, and for several reasons. “Do you think she’ll ever come back?” he said, trying to look as if it didn’t matter to him.
Mabel Spark had been clattering pans in the dry sink, and she stopped suddenly, not to hear what her son was saying but to realize what he had said. “I don’t know, dear,” she sighed. She had almost said, “I wished we’d never let them go.” Even as Mailon, the dirty waif at the kitchen door, Melanie had become part of their family; now that Mabel had bathed and dressed the little girl and fed her at her own kitchen table, her heart was burdened by those wide, unpleading eyes. “There’s no telling whether Burne will find their relatives in Brownville. He hadn’t heard from them for years, and they might be anywhere.” Then she almost said, “They might be back tomorrow,” but didn’t want to raise his hopes.
; “Maybe they’ll be back tomorrow,” said Timothy.
She wouldn’t have credited how keenly he had felt the little girl’s leaving. Timothy had once announced to Melanie (back in the days when she was Mailon) and to the rest of the world that he didn’t have much use for girls, and at seven years of age there was small reason to doubt him.
“Maybe,” said Mabel. “But you have to remember who she is ... and that she is, well ... a she and that if she does come back, she will have to commence dressing and acting like a girl.” Mabel expected some reaction—anger or even disgust—to register on Timothy’s face, but he only frowned, as if he didn’t really believe her.
“Simon Daily’s little sister plays baseball with us sometimes when we need to even up the teams,” he said.
“I wouldn’t do everything the Dailys do,” was her reply.
She went back to the pans in the sink and didn’t see the slow process of change that speculation wrought upon his face. There is nothing like a plan for chasing sadness, and Timothy looked like someone who had found his breath. Mabel didn’t hear him as he left the table, but she called after him when his footsteps clunked on the back steps. She went to the door and looked up the stairwell, but he had already flown from the top landing.
A few minutes later he came down the front way. The family had strict orders to use the back stairs, and Thaddeus would have spoken to him if Tim hadn’t managed to sneak down to the tavern room and out into the street without his father’s notice. Tim ran along the sidewalk with only one hand swinging, the other gripped close to his side. Anyone looking carefully at the towheaded seven-year-old might have noticed that he was carrying something under his shirt. He charged round pedestrians and took only the briefest looks for traffic before darting past alleyways.
With one hand he pulled himself onto the tar-papered roof of the shed behind the old molding mill, and still holding his secret prize close to his side, he scurried over roof and gable till he came to a place that perhaps only he and Melanie had ever visited since it was last shingled. There was a bell-like cupola above the soap factory, and nearing it, he could smell strange odors wafting from the vats below. Several slats on the back side of the cupola were loose, and he removed them before pulling his prize from beneath his shirt and stashing it inside.
He was pleased. Once he had replaced the slats, he moved along the rooftops more slowly, almost ambling as he climbed to the widow’s walk above Mr. Ealing’s Shipping Firm. From there he could see the harbor and the observatory on Munjoy Hill; more important, he could see the Grand Trunk Railway Station. Maybe Mr. Ealing would come up to view the signal flags on the observatory or to watch the ships come in with his spyglass. He might have a bag of peanuts. Timothy would tell the businessman about Melanie, and the old fellow would certainly be surprised. He was a kind man, Mr. Ealing, and Timothy actually looked forward to his reaction to such strange news.
Tim scrambled over the railing onto the widow’s walk and sat in the afternoon sun beside the trapdoor, looking out over the water, watching for a plume of smoke, and listening for the shriek of a locomotive whistle from the north. They would not be back today, he knew, but he would wait. A fellow had responsibilities.
39. Among the Droone and Normell
Burne Ring did not wake up dead that afternoon, though he expected this to happen “sooner than later.” But when he opened his eyes and realized that he wasn’t rocking on the Bosom or rafting the Styx, he felt only the smallest comfort. Before him sat his only surviving child, slumped in sleep against the portly driver, representing life’s tenuous hold and the single frail argument for living a little longer. There had been a time when he saw his lost wife in Melanie’s face, but in the past week, gazing from his bed at the Faithful Mermaid, he had been sensible of her standing over him and also how much she resembled his own father’s mother, who had raised him. Looking at Melanie, he sometimes wondered where Mailon was.
Burne had difficulty remembering things; this afternoon he couldn’t remember the name of the young man who had been traveling with them on the train, but he did wonder where the fellow was. He vaguely recalled the man who was driving the carriage, but didn’t know why he was driving it or why they were rattling through a small town beside a long expanse of lake. The bottle clutched to his chest afforded him queasy comfort; sometimes he lifted it to his mouth without knowing what he was doing till the harsh liquor touched his lips.
The carriage flickered beneath lengthening shadows, and the breeze near the lake was almost cool. They were not far past China Lake before the blue of another water gleamed past the intervening fields, and the scattered trees assembled into something like a wood at either side of the road. The driver hummed tunelessly as he looked around and caught Burne’s gaze. Mr. Normell turned back to the horse and did not look back again till the carriage came to a halt before a wide gate in the shadow of a parklike wood.
Burne sat up, as awake and aware as he had been in days. A boy of about thirteen appeared from somewhere, looking alarmed. He watched them from the other side of the fence and asked, “Did you find someone?” in a small tone when the chaise pulled up before the gate.
“Don’t quiz your elders,” said the driver. “Open the gate.” Jeffrey Normell shot a glance back at Burne Ring that was as startled as the boy’s.
The boy obeyed, head down, shoulders up. Melanie roused as they ambled forward. She sat up quickly and leaned away from the portly man, her cheek red with the reflected heat from his side. She saw the boy by the open gate and turned her head to watch him as they passed. He looked as if he wished he could follow, and when they were almost out of sight, he raised one hand and waved uncertainly to her.
“Daddy,” said Melanie when she realized that Burne was awake. “Daddy, Mr. Normell says there’s someone down this way who can help you.”
Burne pulled a frown and looked down at the bottle in his hands. “Are we in Brownville?” he said, his voice hoarse with disuse.
“No, no,” said the driver hurriedly. “Not Brownville. China. We’re in China. You were so sick.”
I wasn’t sick, I was dying, thought Burne. “What are we doing in China?” he asked.
“There’ll be people down this way who can help you,” said the man, but with less conviction and a good deal less bonhomie.
“Where’s the young fellow who was with us on the train?” continued Burne with more energy than he would have credited. He gripped the bottle with both hands as they went over a series of ruts and bumps.
“He was very insistent that you go on to Brownville,” said Mr. Normell, “but I thought you needed help sooner than that. We can get you another of those, if you like.” He turned ever so slightly to indicate the bottle.
“Oh,” said Burne, after a brief silence, and then added bitterly, “You are my friend.” He wondered if he had strength enough to strangle the man, and some of this inclination may have carried with his voice, for Mr. Normell glanced back several times. Burne wondered where they were. It wasn’t enough to say that they were in China. Where were they? And why had this man taken custody of them?
The mare clattered over a granitic hump, and the carriage bumped up and over the rock. The hooves quieted, and the rig dropped off the hard plate with a jolt and descended in more gentle degrees down a wooded slope. Stone walls lined the way, and irregular piles of rock and the occasional lone boulder stood among the gathering trees like figures poised to watch them pass. It seemed very quiet among these trees. Burne felt uneasy, though his daughter looked brave enough. She was in boys’ clothes, and he wondered if the man in front knew her real identity.
They came to Dutten Pond, or within sight of it, for the blue water flashed between the trees and bushes along its eastern shore. The westering sun hurt Burne’s eyes, and he shifted his gaze to the darker side of the wood, where patches of light touched the boles of trees, and clumps of bright leaf shone like faces peering from holes in the shadows. Burne thought he was having visions again—the le
af faces appeared so real—and then, with a start, he knew they were real and that people were coming down half a dozen paths toward the road the chaise traveled, wary creatures of the forest pausing at the sight of the newcomers.
And seeming to rise out of the very ground but only coming into view as the carriage topped the next little knoll was Mr. Normell’s taller, wider self standing like one of those glacial castoffs, but in the midst of the road. The shell of his ruddy face appeared unmoved and imperturbable, but his eyes had the same frightened shine as the boy’s at the gate.
As the chaise approached him, the large man held his hand out, palm up, till it stopped, whereupon he stepped up to the driver and said, “What is this, Jeffrey?” His voice as well as his face and figure marked him as close kin to Mr. Normell. “Who are these people?” He did not consider Melanie for very long but turned his gaze to Burne and, for a moment, the bottle in Burne’s grip.
“I looked for three days and finally found someone,” said Mr. Normell. “I looked for someone for three days and couldn’t wait any longer. Suppose the Droones had found someone and I was away?”
“Is this him then?” Before the driver could answer, the larger man looked at Melanie and said, “And who is this?”
“He’s coming,” said Mr. Normell weakly.
“Who is coming?’
“The man I found. He’s on his way.”
“But who are these?” asked the larger man again.
Mr. Normell cleared his throat, considered his next statement, and, instead of talking, looped the reins on the carriage rail and clambered down. The two men walked off and conferred, Jeffrey Normell steeling himself with paper-thin courage and the larger, wider man once more taking on that rocklike aspect as he listened to Jeffrey’s explanations. Twice the larger man looked back at the passengers in the chaise, and once, to Jeffrey Normell’s obvious relief, he nodded.
