The Mermaid

by Christina Henry

  That evening there was another performance at the Masonic Hall, and the next day another review of the show appeared. This time it was in the Charleston Mercury.

  It was written by a man who called himself “the Rev. John Blackman” and it stated, in no uncertain terms, that the mermaid was a fraud perpetuated “by our Yankee neighbors.” The Reverend Blackman claimed to be an amateur naturalist and thus spoke with greater authority than the editor of the Courier.

  “Did this man actually attend a performance?” Amelia asked.

  Levi scanned the article. “He claims to have done so.”

  “But it’s absurd,” she said. “If he saw me then he must know that I’m real.”

  “He says that your very presence in the company of such tricks as ventriloquism prove that the mermaid is nothing more than a clever illusion,” Levi said. “I wouldn’t let it trouble you, Amelia. I don’t think that very many people will agree with his opinion, especially if they have attended the exhibition themselves.”

  But in that Levi was wrong. Almost immediately letters began appearing in each publication both for and against the veracity of the mermaid. The Courier’s editor, Richard Yeadon, wrote daily pieces dismissing the claims of Reverend Blackman, and Blackman took up the opposite cause in the Mercury.

  The crowds that attended each performance swelled. It seemed every person in Charleston wanted to see Amelia for himself and take a side in this very public disagreement.

  “Barnum will be pleased, at least,” Levi said. “We are selling so many tickets that people have to be turned away each day.”

  There was still no response from Barnum or Charity, a fact that Levi found ominous. He didn’t share his worries with Amelia, however. He still hoped to complete their run in Charleston without the sudden arrival of the showman.

  The next night the exhibit went on as usual, at least at first. Levi watched Amelia from the wings of the stage as she climbed the ladder and dove into the tank that Barnum had sent especially for this exhibit.

  It was larger than the small wagon that had served as performance space since they left New York, but Levi could tell that Amelia wished for the unfettered freedom of the ocean. There was nothing in her performance any more besides dull obligation.

  Not that it mattered, Levi thought. People’s reactions were always the same whether Amelia swam in circles, waved to them, or simply floated in the tank with a blank expression on her face. First surprise, then disbelief, then dawning realization that what they saw was true.

  A scuffle broke out at the back of the hall. Levi, fearing a repeat of the first night at the Concert Hall when the crowd rushed the stage, ran out of the wings to see what was happening.

  There was a thud, the sound of flesh on flesh, and several people gasped. A small circle of people had gathered around two men who apparently had decided to disagree with their fists.

  Levi gestured to two of the men stationed near the front of the stage to break up the fight. The laborers who worked in their wagon train were not as large or as intimidating as the guards Barnum hired in New York, but they were plenty able to disrupt a fight between two gentlemen.

  The workers were nearly to the crowd when another fight broke out. This time Levi heard what they were saying.

  “Use your eyes, man! How can she possibly be a fraud?” one man screamed at another, his eyes bulging.

  “I for one am not about to be fooled by a pack of damn Yanks here to steal our money,” the second man said, shoving the first.

  Several men shouted down the second man, while another chorus joined in favor of his argument. Women stumbled away from the suddenly jostling and dangerous group, several of them fleeing out the doors of the hall into the night.

  Levi realized the crowd had turned ugly. He bent to another one of the workers and said, “Better go and get the local constable before this becomes dangerous.”

  The man nodded and climbed the stage to stand next to Levi. “Best if I go out the back exit. Else I might get caught up in that mob.”

  Levi nodded as the man disappeared backstage. Then he ran to the rope that controlled the curtains and pulled them shut. The noise seemed to grow louder once the crowd was out of sight.

  It’s only your imagination, Levi told himself. Terrible things always seemed more terrible when you could not see them.

  Amelia was already climbing out of the tank, her hand in the jar of sand on the platform. He scooped up her dress and carried it to her as she stepped quickly down the ladder.

  “We have to leave,” Levi said.

  “Of course we do,” Amelia said. “Even I can tell that lot will kill each other over their sense of injured honor, and if we’re still here they might decide to kill us, too, for fooling them in the first place.”

  He took her hand, and they hurried to the backstage area. Just as they slipped out into the night they heard an angry cry.

  “The mermaid’s gone!”

  “They must have sneaked out the back!”

  Levi pulled Amelia along, thinking only of getting her back to the hotel. They would be safe there, he thought. Once they were in their room and out of sight, the crowd would calm down. The constable might arrive soon, in any case, and disrupt the proceedings before they could go any further.

  Amelia struggled along beside him, and Levi realized her feet were bare. He hadn’t thought of her shoes, only of covering her body and getting her away before someone tried to hurt her.

  I’m not having another Elijah Hunt, he thought. It would kill him to see her hurt like that again, even if he did know the cure.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, panting from the effort of hurrying. “Can you walk?”

  “A rock cut my foot,” Amelia said. “It’s bleeding.”

  Levi glanced behind them and saw, in the dim light, the dark track that Amelia left behind her. He also saw—and heard—three men searching for any sign of them behind the hall. Soon enough they would notice the blood trail and they would follow it.

  He scooped up Amelia in his arms.

  “You can’t walk very fast like this,” she said.

  “Your foot is leaving a trail,” Levi said. “If those men notice it, they’ll follow us. And you can’t walk very fast with your injury in any case.”

  They hurried along in the dark as fast as Levi could manage. Amelia weighed practically nothing, but it still wasn’t easy to carry her this way for very long, and soon he was sweating and breathless from the effort.

  “You’d better put me down,” Amelia said.

  “We’re almost to the hotel,” he said between his teeth.

  But they rounded the corner of their building and Levi pulled up short. A surly crowd of twenty or so men had gathered outside on the porch, and the manager of the hotel stood in the doorway holding up placating hands to a red-faced man who pressed his nose very close to the manager’s.

  “Oh, no,” Amelia said.

  Levi disappeared back into the notch between the hotel and the building next door. He placed Amelia carefully on her feet and bent over his legs, panting.

  “What should we do now?” Amelia asked.

  It was strange, he thought, that the one time she seemed inclined to defer to him was the one time he had no answers.

  “The wagon train is on the outskirts,” he said. “If we can get there we can take one of the wagons and leave.”

  Amelia shook her head. “That will be the next place they go if they can’t find us at the hotel. Besides, what about everyone else—the workmen, Mr. Wyman, Mr. Veronia? The mob might go after them instead.”

  “I don’t think they will,” Levi said. “They just want you. They want to prove you’re not real, or that you are, whichever it is that they believe more.”

  “I think the ones in front of the hotel want to prove I’m only human,” Amelia said grimly. “They
want a lynching.”

  “The only way to keep you from them is for you to leave,” Levi said slowly. There was only one possible solution—the one that he wanted the least, the one that he’d known somehow would always be the only answer. Where did a sea creature belong except the sea? “They won’t care about the others once you’re gone. Amelia, you have to go to the ocean.”

  She stared at him. “You mean leave you? Leave forever?”

  “Yes,” he said, and grabbed her hand. Charleston was flush up against the sea. They only had to reach it in time. “It’s the only way.”

  “Levi, I’m not going to leave you here,” she said. “You’re my husband, and I love you.”

  “And I love you, more than I can say, and I won’t watch you be hanged by that lot,” he said.

  He didn’t think that throwing her in the ocean would fix a hanging the way it had undone her bullet wound. Everything inside him was breaking apart at the thought of her leaving, and all their arguments seemed foolish beyond reason. Did any disagreement matter more than the one you loved? But he would give her up to the ocean, and gladly, if it meant she would live. If it meant that one day he might see her again.

  “Please, Amelia, if you love me you’ll go. The only possible way for you to be safe is if you are in the ocean.”

  Amelia put her hand over her belly, “Levi. I’m going to have your child.”

  He felt as though he’d been sideswiped. He stumbled, his breath hitched, and then he stopped to look at her. “Truly?”

  “Yes,” she said, and kissed him. “Truly.”

  His child. His child inside the body of his wife, and an angry mob wanted to tear her body apart.

  “If they kill you, they’ll kill the baby, too,” Levi said. A baby. His baby.

  It was then he saw the realization in her eyes, and the resolution. “I’ll go,” Amelia said. “I’ll go to Rarotonga, far away, and I will raise our daughter there. But, Levi, you have to come to us. You must.”

  “I will,” he promised. “No matter how long it takes, I will find you there.”

  They went on in silence then, staying to the shadows, avoiding anyone who strayed near them in the night.

  Levi remembered that night for many months after—the only sound their breath and their soft footfalls as they made for the salvation of the sea.

  He remembered her kiss, and the way her hands clung to his arms, and the way his own arms didn’t want to let her go. He remembered how she tore her dress away and ran toward the breaking waves as if she were afraid he might try to change her mind.

  He remembered how he scooped up her dress and breathed in the smell of her, and for a long time afterward he slept with it curled around his pillow so that he would not forget, and sometimes he could almost imagine she was there.

  He remembered the silhouette of her tail against the horizon, and how it disappeared under the water, and how it did not reappear no matter how long he watched or hoped for it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Amelia swam, swam away from Levi standing alone on the shore, and she felt like she did on that day long, long ago when Jack caught her in his net and then let her go. She’d felt tethered to him then, tethered by his loneliness, and it had made a long cord that bound them and brought her back to him.

  The cord between her and Levi was less perfect, less idealized, but it was no less strong. She loved him, and she loved the baby he had given her, and that love would remain sure and strong and true. She had seen into his heart, the way that women do, and she knew his love would be the same. She would wait for him on a sandy shore on a faraway island, her eyes always watching the sea for some sign of him. She would wait.

  Until then, she was swimming fast and free in the ocean, and the ocean welcomed her home.

  * * *

  • • •

  Well, Barnum reflected, the mermaid show was good while it lasted. He’d had an idea that he might be able to change the girl’s mind and make her stay longer, but after the debacle in Charleston, it probably couldn’t have been salvaged even if she hadn’t disappeared into the sea.

  Poor Levi had been mooning around the museum since he got back. Barnum had given the boy the notebook with Amelia’s sketch in it and Barnum had been genuinely afraid Levi would burst into tears when he saw it. The boy had managed to restrain himself, though.

  Barnum was on his way back from a business trip to Albany that hadn’t borne the fruit he’d hoped. Because the river was frozen, he’d been forced to take the train; the only consolation was that it stopped in Bridgeport. His half brother Philo had a hotel there, and so Barnum thought it right to spend the night.

  Yes, he thought again as he ate his dinner in the hotel restaurant. He’d made a good dollar off the mermaid. It was really too bad it hadn’t lasted longer.

  “Taylor,” Philo said, shaking Barnum out of his reverie. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Standing next to his brother was a little boy, so little that he was practically doll-sized. “This is Charles Stratton. Charles, this is my brother, Mr. P. T. Barnum.”

  Barnum looked at the boy, who politely said, “How do you do.”

  A doll-sized boy! Barnum thought. Barnum could put the little fellow up onstage, dress him in costumes, give him a name. Tom Thumb. He’s just like Tom Thumb from the stories.

  A boy like this could make his fortune, Barnum thought. And there would be no disappearing into the ocean this time.

  He smiled, a wide showman’s smile that showed all of his teeth.

  “I am very pleased to meet you, Charles.”

  Four years later

  Amelia watched over her daughter as she splashed in the shallow pool. They were in a little cove, protected by the shade of wide-leafed trees, and the water was not very deep. Despite this, Amelia had to keep a very sharp eye on Charity—the girl was likely to dart off into the deep water if Amelia looked away for a moment. Charity, like her mother once had, was always looking over the horizon for an adventure.

  Amelia was grateful for the shade. While the waters of the South Pacific were blue and clear and beautiful, the island was far too warm for one long accustomed to the cold of the North Atlantic coast. Still, they were protected here—protected by the native people who kept them hidden from European colonists, so that word would not spread back to the mainland of a mermaid and her daughter.

  Savages, the white men called them. But there was less savagery in them than ever she saw in a civilized country. They accepted Amelia and Charity, accepted what they were without judgment. The people here did not see the mermaids as a wonder, or a horror, or as animals, or as humans. The people saw them as mermaids and accepted them as part of the order of the world.

  “Charity,” Amelia said warningly.

  The little mermaid had seen a hermit crab carrying its shell across the shallow pool, and followed it closely. When Charity reached the edge of the shallow, the place where the sand dropped off into the deeper water, she glanced over her shoulder to see if her mother was watching.

  Amelia shook her head. Charity’s small mouth twisted when she realized she could not explore past the edge of the pool.

  Charity’s tail was red-gold and flapped in the water as she swam back to her mother. Amelia’s daughter looked more like Barnum’s woodcuts of a mermaid—her skin was still human above her fin and only changed to scales at her waist. She would, when she grew older, look exactly as so many sailors had dreamed—half human, half fish, a man’s dream of a mermaid.

  The tiny mermaid touched the sand and turned completely into a human toddler, dark-haired and dark-eyed like her father and nut-brown from the sun.

  “It’s time for dinner,” Amelia said, and took Charity’s plump little hand.

  They strolled along the beach away from the cove. There was a little hut where they slept and ate a
short distance from the shallow pool. Amelia had caught some fish earlier in the day, and they would roast these over a fire. Charity had very human tastes, preferring her food cooked instead of raw. Her teeth, even when she was a mermaid, were not sharp like Amelia’s but flat like a human’s.

  She squeezed the hand of her daughter, the little miracle that she had wished for, for so long. Her daughter would grow up here, safe from eyes that stared and claimed and tried to make something of her that she was not. When she was older she would make her own choice—to stay here, or to return to Amelia’s people in the sea, or to live as a human in a land far away.

  It was the fate of parents to have to let their children go, so they could make their own triumphs and their own mistakes. When Amelia thought of those days, she would, as now, pick up Charity and hold her tight and wish her daughter could stay in her arms forever.

  Charity allowed the hug only briefly before squirming out of Amelia’s embrace. She ran a little ahead of her mother, then stopped and pointed.

  “Mama,” she said, “who’s that?”

  There was a man standing near their hut, a white man in a suit entirely impractical for the island. His hand shaded his eyes, and he stared out at the ocean, looking for someone.

  Amelia’s heart leapt. She’d hardly allowed herself to think of him, to wonder if he would ever come, but she’d felt that cord that bound them always, and sometimes she would roll over in the night and reach for him and find he wasn’t there.

  “Mama?” Charity asked as Amelia began to run.

  “It’s your father,” Amelia said, picking up their daughter and running with her over the sand. “Charity, it’s your father.”

  AFTERWORD

  When writing a book that includes a historical figure, there is always the temptation to cleave closely to the historical reality of that person—in this case, P. T. Barnum. Much has been written about Barnum (especially by himself—he wrote several books and modified his own autobiography numerous times), and so there was plenty of material for me to explore in writing this book.