by Kim Thompson
“Miss Trang!”
During the drive Willa tried to think of a way to tell her mom, but what could she say? That she saw a tiny little man and this lady got mad and grew real big, so Willa ran away? Not a chance. The only way out was to walk up to the front door, and as soon as her mom was out of sight, get the heck out of there.
Willa got out of the car very slowly. The house looked quiet, the windows dark.
“See you later, hon,” her mom called.
Willa smiled weakly as she started up the walk. She paused below the willow, glancing up, but Tengu wasn’t in the tree. She looked back. Her mom was still there, waiting until she was inside. Her heart thumped as she tiptoed up the porch steps. At the front door she reached out a shaky hand but just pretended to ring the bell. She’d say there was no one at home, it was a crank phone call. Her mom was still watching as she turned, did a big shrug, and started down the steps again. Behind her the door swung open.
“Come on in, dearie. She’s waiting for you.”
Baz stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed and grinning slyly. Willa was trapped. She was steered inside as her mom waved and drove off.
Baz ushered her into the parlour. Willa stared in shock. It didn’t look like the same room at all. Dirty plates and teacups were perched on every available flat surface, books and magazines were scattered everywhere, the plants were yellowed and droopy. Paintings hung crooked on the walls and broken glass crunched under her shoes.
“This is what happens when a brownie quits.” Willa jumped, her heart in her throat. Miss Trang stood in the kitchen doorway, but she was normal size again. Her hair was neatly tucked into her bun, and though stern, she looked very ordinary.
Willa looked down at her shoes, not sure of what to say. Miss Trang continued. “But let’s not talk about that, shall we? Let’s get right to the reason you’re here. I can’t keep up with the work around here. I need help, and despite my reservations, it was suggested to me that you would be the best choice for the job.” She held up a paper — one of Willa’s posters.
“Will you help us out with the cleaning until we can find another brownie?”
Willa nodded dumbly. And that was how she came to work for Miss Trang.
Willa was hired to come in three times a week, arriving promptly at nine a.m. and leaving at noon. She was to clean the entire main floor — entrance, hall, parlour, dining room, and kitchen — except for Miss Trang’s office, which she was not to enter. Upstairs she had to clean the hallways and the washroom, but was not under any circumstances to go into any of the bedrooms or the library. The backyard and stable (Stable! thought Willa excitedly) were expressly out of bounds. Most importantly, she was not to tell anybody anything about the house or its inhabitants. Miss Trang was adamant about that. “And I will know it if you do,” she said ominously, and Willa believed her. On top of everything else the hourly wage was very generous. Willa began right away.
As she loaded stained teacups into the kitchen sink, Willa took a deep breath and tried to still her trembling hands. She couldn’t believe she was actually there. For weeks she had been dying to know what was going on in this place, and now she had her own key! Willa worked very, very hard at her new job. She tidied up after the oldsters, who left things everywhere. She dusted the many, many knick-knacks — china figurines, exotic lacquer boxes, souvenir spoons from around the world, ornately carved letter-openers, framed photos with the images fading away, collections of pebbles, seashells, and pine cones. She washed legions of teacups, mopped the floors, and scrubbed the windows. And she took great care to water and care for the plants, which slowly perked up and stopped dropping their leaves.
As glad as Willa was for the work, as time went on she was not finding much satisfaction in her job. She wasn’t getting any answers to her many questions, that’s for sure. And she felt terribly isolated. Everyone stayed in their bedrooms while she worked. Even Miss Trang spent the entire time in her office. Willa sometimes heard her muttering to herself in there. She ran into Horace in the hall one day, and he admitted, in a whisper, that they were supposed to stay away from Willa as much as possible. Since her friends were out of town, the only people she had to talk to all day were her mom and dad, and she couldn’t tell them anything at all about the house, because of her promise to Miss Trang. It was all very frustrating.
The only soul she had for company was the bird in the parlour. A small tarnished plaque on the cage read “Fadiyah.” Willa began talking to her, calling her “Fadi.” After all, the bird seemed to be her only friend in the house. Just taking a break and gazing into the bird’s eyes for a moment or two gave Willa that warm, happy feeling she had felt the first time she’d seen her.
Days passed without event. Once she found Baz snoozing on the sofa and had to tiptoe around, cleaning quietly. A couple of times she met Belle wheeling to or from the bathroom, where she loved to take long, long baths, but the old lady always ignored her completely. This made Willa very sad, because there was something about Belle that fascinated her. There was a deep, silent melancholy about her that just broke Willa’s heart. Sometimes Willa could hear her humming up in her room. The sound made her stop what she was doing and listen, transfixed, until it faded away to silence. It was hard to believe that such haunting music could come from that cranky old dame.
In all this time she didn’t catch even a glimpse of the cat that she knew had to be there. There were white cat hairs on the sofa, one cupboard in the kitchen was full of cat food tins, and occasionally she could swear she heard, or felt, a deep thrumming purr coming from somewhere upstairs. Yet Miss Trang had insisted that they had no cat. Why would she want to keep it a secret? Her mind reeled with this and other questions.... Why was there a padlock on the doll’s house in the parlour? Why did the brownie leave? How did a bunch of old people come to be living in a house with a magic brownie? Nothing made any sense. Willa was desperate to know the full story of the house, but she wasn’t about to pry or break any of the rules, because she sure didn’t like it when Miss Trang got angry. No, she was determined to stay on the woman’s good side from now on. Of course there was no rule against keeping her eyes and ears open, and that’s what she did.
One grey and dreary day Willa was mopping the second floor hallway. One wall was lined with large windows looking out onto the back garden, and as she wrung out her mop Willa stared out at the view. She could just make out the stable, a crumbling, ivy-covered stone building at the back of the rather large property. The rest of the yard was an overgrown mess of vines, shrubs, huge oak trees, and rose bushes gone wild, so it was hard to see what else might be back there. She was just trying to picture how it might have looked in days gone by when she heard a soft tapping sound behind her.
The hallway was empty. The sound came again. She moved quietly down the hall until she reached the library door. Tap, tap. She looked up. A slender branch poked out from the top of the tall door, sporting three droopy yellow leaves. The leaves were tapping gently against the door. One of them detached and fell to the floor at her feet. She picked it up. It was dry and cracked in her hands. Willa had carefully brought all the other plants back to life, and now she desperately wanted to water this poor thing. She wasn’t allowed to enter the library, but Miss Trang had gone out to buy the groceries, and it would only take a moment....
She refilled her watering can downstairs in the kitchen (since Belle was in the bathroom, as usual) and returned to the library door. She pushed it open. It was dark, there was nobody in sight, and she could see the plant in the corner right beside the door. Carefully keeping her feet planted in the hallway, she leaned in and poured water into the pot, which began to make the strangest gurgling sounds.
“Hello, Willa.” She jumped. Horace was peering around the edge of a high, wing-backed chair by the window. “Come in.”
Willa shook her head. “I’m not supposed to be in here. Miss Trang said. I just noticed the plant was dying....”
Horace raised an amused
eyebrow. “It’s quite all right. Come in. I’ll take the blame if Miss Trang catches you. Besides, the hibiscus has already invited you in.” He gestured to the plant. “Does it look like it’s dying?”
She took a step into the room and looked the plant up and down. It was perfectly green, healthy, and bushy. It was sending runners out all over the room. They trailed across the tops of the bookshelves and down the sides. One little vine was even draped over Horace’s chair.
“But ... the leaves that were sticking out of the door were dead.”
Horace laughed and shook a finger at the plant. “Playing tricks on our new friend!” He turned back to Willa. “I think it was just curious to meet you.”
“Curious? How could it be curious?”
“Come over here. Have a seat.”
She gingerly walked over to join him. She sat in one of the big leather chairs, her feet dangling. Horace pulled a volume from a shelf and flipped through the pages. He showed her a diagram of the same plant. “Gossiping hibiscus. Very rare.”
“Why is it called that?”
Horace smiled. “Plants have all the patience in the world. The only thing they have to worry about is growing. This one, however, listens. It knows all our secrets and one day it might just tell all!”
Willa was staring at him. “But plants can’t talk.”
“It called you in here, didn’t it? You heard it.”
He replaced the book as Willa thought about the tapping leaves. And the other odd things in the house.
“Can you tell me about the brownie?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I still don’t know why he left. And is he really a brownie?”
Horace leaned on one elbow. “He certainly is. Brownies are very hard workers. That little fellow kept this whole place together. Worked day and night. Never complained and never took a day off. But brownies are also very secretive. If you try to see one, they pack up and leave forever.” He snapped his fingers. “And you’re left to wash your dishes yourself.”
Willa thought this over. “When Miss Trang got so angry ...”
Horace stopped her. “Willa, surely you’ve noticed there are some rather ... odd things about this place. Miss Trang is very worried about people out there finding out about us. She just wants to keep outsiders out. When she became so angry with you, she wanted to scare you into staying away.”
“So she wouldn’t really have hurt me?”
Horace sighed. “Well, I can’t say that for sure. Miss Trang is full of surprises. None of us are entirely sure what it’s capable of.”
“It?”
Horace smiled. “I meant ‘she,’ of course. Now maybe you’d better scoot out of here before she gets back, hmm?”
Willa nodded.
On her way back down the hall she paused at the bathroom door. Belle loved her two- and three-hour baths, but it sure was a pain to mop up all the water she left on the floor. Willa had no idea how Belle managed to climb from the tub into her wheelchair on her own. She tapped gently on the door.
“Belle? Are you going to be much longer? I need to clean in there.” No answer. “Do you need any help? Belle?” She put her ear to the door and to her horror heard a faint gurgling sound. Dropping the watering can she jerked the door open, but it caught on the chain. Through the crack she saw Belle sit up in the tub with a splash, hissing at her angrily: “GET OUT!!”
“Sorry!” Willa quickly retreated. She leaned against the closed door for a moment and shut her eyes. The scene flashed through her mind ... the silvery hair, the shiny white skin ... the green scales, the fins.
Belle was a mermaid.
Chapter Four
A weekend of worries and a very, very strange dinner
Willa finished up her work in the kitchen, trembling and anxious. Above her she heard Belle roll out of the bathroom and down the hall into her room, slamming the door behind her. Willa left for home soon after, ducking out before Miss Trang came home. It was Friday, so she had all weekend to fret and worry. Would Belle tell on her? Willa figured the fact that Belle was a mermaid would be pretty high on the list of things Miss Trang didn’t want her to know about. She shivered every time she thought about Miss Trang getting angry. And every time she shut her eyes she saw the glimmering scales. At least now she knew why Belle wanted so badly to go to the ocean.
The weekend crawled by. There was no distraction from her worries until Sunday night, when Grandpa came over for dinner.
“Willa the Whisp!” he cackled as she ran up to give him a big hug. His ratty old sweater smelled of pipe smoke and salt air. His sunbeaten face was set in a perpetual grin, and his white hair stuck out in all directions, like he’d just come in from a gale. Willa always teased him about his hair. She even put a comb in his Christmas stocking one year, but he’d just laughed and played a tune on it with tissue paper.
Over dinner Grandpa entertained them with his favourite topics: the weather, the sea, and the weather out on the sea. Willa even forgot about Belle for a few minutes, listening happily.
Grandpa was loud and full of life. She could just picture him out on the water in his little boat, waving and calling out to the other boats. She knew his bad luck had made him infamous among the other fishermen. They all had good years and bad years, but Grandpa hadn’t caught a single fish for as long as Willa had been alive, and even before. Whenever his boat wasn’t rented out he’d still go out on the ocean, but not to fish. He claimed his trips were “picnic pleasure cruises,” but Willa knew he still had nets and rods stowed away on the boat, all carefully maintained and at the ready. Once he’d told her some of the other fishermen wouldn’t even talk to him, they thought he was bad luck. Willa had been outraged, but he’d just laughed. “Superstitious old fools!”
Now, as Grandpa paused to shovel down his vegetables, Willa stared down at her peas and carrots and thought about the ocean. In her mind she saw Belle, slipping out of her wheelchair and sinking down into the sea, her silvery hair floating on the water and her tail flicking shimmery droplets into the air.
She cornered him after supper while her parents cleared the table.
“Grandpa ... there are a lot of ... strange things living in the ocean, right?”
“You bet.”
“Things that seem ... magic, even?”
He looked at her curiously. “Spit it out. What do you want to know?”
“Have you ever seen a mermaid?” She was afraid he’d laugh at her, but instead he started, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Well, now. What an odd question.”
“I was just ... I’m reading a book about them,” she fibbed. At this he relaxed, his face falling into the smile she’d been expecting in the first place.
“You want to know if there is magic out there in the world. Well ... that depends on who is doing the looking.” And that’s all he would say on the matter.
She was still thinking about his words when she went up to bed. She found a small white card on her pillow and smiled, thinking it was from him. It wasn’t. It was not signed, but Willa knew in the pit of her stomach that the long, spidery handwriting had to be Miss Trang’s. The card read:
It is not necessary for you to come in to work tomorrow morning, but you are cordially invited to join us for dinner tomorrow night. 6 p.m. Do not be late.
How did the card get there? Was Miss Trang angry? Belle must have told. What was going to happen? At best she would probably lose her job. And at worst? She had no way of knowing. Even Horace said he didn’t know what Miss Trang was capable of. And yet she had to go to the dinner. If she didn’t, she knew she would never be able to go back, and the thought of all her questions about the house going unanswered forever was enough to drive her up the wall.
And so the next evening she walked up to the front door of the boarding house at exactly six o’clock, knees shaking, hands trembling, and brain rattling. Baz swung the door open. She didn’t say a word, simply waved Willa into the parlour.
The lights were so low she could barely see. Miss Trang stood in the centre of the room and seated around her were Belle, Horace, Baz, and another gentleman in an armchair in the darkest corner — she could barely make him out at all. Miss Trang stepped forward, her eyes glittering in the gloom.
“Willa, we have invited you here tonight for a reason. You know ... about Belle.” She raised an eyebrow and Willa nodded. “A very serious matter. We held a house meeting to discuss what was to be done about you.” A shiver ran down Willa’s spine. Miss Trang looked her straight in the eye.
“Willa Fuller. Would you like to continue working here?”
Willa nodded quickly.
Miss Trang regarded her for a moment before going on. “This house is exactly what it appears to be. An ordinary retirement home for seniors. The only part that isn’t so ordinary is that we have retired from, shall we say, rather unusual careers in ... a different world from yours. A different time.”
The others were all nodding.
Miss Trang pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You might be someone useful to us, someone from the outside we can trust. Someone of uncommon character. ”
Someone useful? What did they want her to do? Willa wondered wildly. And did she have uncommon character? She didn’t think so. Miss Trang was looking her up and down as if she was thinking the same thing.
“We need to know whether you can handle the rather odd things in this house without losing your nerve.”
Willa didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded.
Miss Trang continued. “Tonight’s dinner will be your test. You will finally meet all the residents of this house and see them as they really are. You will have dinner with us and ask no questions. You will be on your best behaviour and not stare, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” How hard could that be? Just be polite, keep quiet, and eat. Still, butterflies were fluttering in her stomach and she felt short of breath.
