by B. J. Smash
And Izadora’s domestic duties weren’t really domestic duties but rather different spells on how to accomplish these tasks with magic. I was becoming adept at being able to iron her sheets and sweep the floors using a nine-herb potion and a candle spell. Her house was spic and span. Well, I had some help from Ivy as well, but she got bored with it easily. And oftentimes she would take to reading her books while I did the “cleaning.”
Apparently, she had taken a trip to Hy Brasil recently while I had been sick on Magella’s boat, and Maximus had given her some strange books to study. I glimpsed one and saw that it was filled with alchemy symbols and strange texts that I never knew existed.
I had overheard Izadora and Ivy talking one day. They were discussing a certain pig on Hy Brasil. A pig with talents. And one day, several months ago, he was out and about searching for truffles when he came upon something of interest. However, they lowered their voices, and I wasn’t able to hear what it was he found. Apparently it had been important though. I was tempted to ask Ivy about it, but then again, it was probably better if I didn’t know. Regardless, she was always in deep thought about it.
She would be leaving soon to work and study on the island. You could say that I was a tad bit jealous of her, but that would be her path, not mine. Also, I had been informed that Maximus had only shown up to punish Magella as a favor to Ivy. Normally he did not involve himself with such things.
The day I had returned to Gran’s, Aggie undid and removed the mermaid spell from me, and I was physically no longer a mermaid—but mentally, I was. She couldn’t take that away from me. I sulked for a few days, but I got over it.
The mermaid, Stella, had been rescued by Ivy and Drumm. I had known that they and the elven could heal themselves using a tree’s energy. And I had also known that one of Drumm’s uncles was very proficient in healing others by using a tree’s healing energies. He had actually performed this bit of magic on me when we were in the outskirts of the land of the elven. Ivy had broken my rib when she acted like a brute and knocked me to the ground. The girl was rough and tough, and she had made me quite mad at the time. Anyway, the point is, both Ivy and Drumm have this ability to transfer the tree’s healing energies, and they fixed Stella. I never got to see her, but they told me she reentered the waters with a delightful smile on her face.
Occasionally, Izadora would insist that Ivy and I walk some goods to Magella’s crannog. We often took her groceries to make breads and rice, and soups. After all, she was not allowed to conjure up any material items. She relied on us. She never liked to see us and oftentimes slammed the door shut when she saw us approaching, and hid inside. She was extremely bitter.
One day I had gone alone, and she opened the door and said to me in her snarky way, “I only humbled you, or you would have been your own destruction.”
To this, I had rolled my eyes. Then I thought it over, and what she said had a ring of truth to it—if only a small one. She had been the one to humble me and teach me a few lessons. For example, I now enjoyed shampooing my hair. Every single time I took a shower, I appreciated my shampoo and conditioner. My soap? I loved my soap. Fruit? I savored every bite of it. A warm bed, cotton sheets. She had taken these things from me, and I had had to sneak to use these necessities. If anything, I had a deeper appreciation for life.
The next time I had seen her, Ivy was present. All I said to Magella was, “You know, you were right. You did help me to become a better person. You might have done this by accident, and you probably really have no idea what I’m talking about, but anyway, thanks.” And that was the end of it. She might have understood, but I doubt it.
Today, I was headed to Izadora’s for a few lessons on scrying, wizard and witch codes, and how to magically enchant items. I loved this stuff. And while I still longed to see Aggie’s book of spells one last time, I never asked. It was best that I left it alone. I would make do learning tidbits about magic. It would never be good for me to own a tome like Aggie’s book of spells. I could see no good coming from such a thing. Sure, I was more humble now, but I never wanted to risk having too much power again. It somehow corrupted me.
The forest now held about a foot of snow; however, Ivy and I paved a path to Izadora’s by walking to her tree house every day. The wind was something fierce this afternoon as it whirred by my face, stinging my skin. I tightened the scarf around my neck and shoved my hands in my pockets. Even the bare tree limbs were bending with the wind. It was depressing. Thoughts of returning to the ocean one day sustained me and kept me in a relatively good mood. However, there were no promises that I’d ever be a mermaid again. This was something that I had to face. What if I never saw Eadgar again? Even if I did, the only way to transform into a mermaid was through binding yourself to a merperson. What if he never asked? And even if he did, would I accept? To me, binding meant the other person had ownership of you.
I had a whole lot to think about. When it all boiled down to it, I hadn’t known Eadgar for long, and he might just change his mind about me. It was a cold hard fact that I had to face. He might have moved on. On the other hand, I hadn’t moved on. I still longed to be with him, and he had promised he’d wait for me.
Arriving in Izadora’s territory, I looked up to see the new additions to her house. If there’s one thing I know about Izadora, it is this: she prefers to stay busy. Just since the time I arrived in Merribay, she had built another set of rooms here and there in the trees. Her tree house was the coolest I’d ever seen. Over the next few weeks she would enjoy herself with the decorating of these rooms. She had ordered (the old-fashioned way, using the mail system, not magic) wallpaper samples by the dozens and had them delivered to Ian’s. He’d get a new shipment once a week. She had said, “There is something about waiting and receiving mail. I enjoy it very much.” This in itself was a lesson to me. Magic can sometimes spoil you with its instant gratification. What is the value of that? Sure, sometimes it’s nice. But then where is the joy of wanting and waiting for something, and then receiving it? Instant gratification isn’t always what it’s cut out to be. There is something to be said about working, dreaming, planning, and then finally receiving.
I walked the planked bridge to Izadora’s and knocked.
“Come in!” Izadora said.
It wasn’t necessary for her to permit me to enter anymore, but of course I still knocked. She had removed the water symbol from my inner ankle using an enchanted tea bag. The tea bag filled with rose petals was applied to my ankle for three days. When Izadora finally removed the tea bag, the symbol was gone! Freedom. It felt nice.
When I walked into the kitchen and shut the door behind me, I found that it was nice and warm and smelled of cookies. She had baked oatmeal raisin cookies, and believe me, she made the best oatmeal raisin cookies in the world.
“Have a cookie. Ivy is practicing how to control her moods,” Izadora stated, not taking her eyes from Ivy.
Tear-jerking, pathetic, whiney music droned on and on in the background—the saddest music in existence! Ivy sat at the table, her hands folded before her, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Failed,” Izadora said, rewinding a cassette tape in the tape recorder. “Try again from the top.” For some reason, Izadora liked her old-fashioned cassette player. Not sure why. Anyway, Ivy wiped the tear and let out a long, winded sigh.
“This is depressing, Izadora!” she said.
“Again!” Izdora said. “When you can make yourself be happy through the saddest, most moving music in the world, you have then mastered your feelings.”
“You are cruel, Izadora,” Ivy said.
The music started over. I had to laugh. In a way this troubled me, and yet…it was brilliant. If you can control your feelings without letting outside forces get to you, you end up the winner of your emotions. I continued to laugh, even snorting once.
This perked Ivy up, and she began to laugh too, and this caused me to laugh harder. To which she laughed harder. It went on for a few minutes, and the funni
est part of the situation is that Izadora sat in her chair with a concrete expression. I know this is why we laughed so hard, as we were both pointing at her while we held our stomachs. Tears did escape our eyes, but it wasn’t for the sad music. I could barely keep them open, I laughed so hard.
Eventually Izadora said, “Okay. That’s enough for today.” And she slammed her pointer finger down on the stop button, and the music stopped. We brought our tee-heeing to a halt. When she stood up to walk away, I could see that she herself was holding back a smile.
***
We had some good times with Izadora. She was the ultimate teacher. While she demanded respect, she had interesting ways of getting her point across.
Eventually, my last day of being “prisoner” had arrived. The following day I would be free to go. Where I would go? I don’t know. Perhaps I would just stay here. Regardless, my sentence would be up tomorrow at noontime.
I sat with Ian and Ivy now, in the McCallister library. The library took up half of the third floor and had several comfortable leather chairs, and thick red velvet curtains that were held back by little golden cherubs. Several windows spanned the wall, and little coves—or nooks, rather—could be found in between the expensive oak shelving. On the ceiling, the planets had been painted as well as the stars, moon, and the sun. It was the ultimate library, with thousands of old and new books.
Ian was telling me how he was impressed that I’d memorized the periodic table and learned all of the constellations—even some that hadn’t been figured out and documented by wizards. I had Eadgar to thank for that.
“Well, tomorrow you are free,” he said, smirking. He sat with his wheelchair pulled up to a dark cherry wood table. Many books were opened before us, and he started to shut them all, bookmarking a few. Ivy and I sat across from him.
I smiled.
“What will you do with yourself? Will you stay on here in Merribay and continue with your studies? You know, you could work for me. I need an antique and rare artifacts hunter. Someone who can follow clues and break codes and find things in a hurry, when needs be. Someone who can travel abroad and attend secret meetings, and—I’ll just be blunt—someone who can be sneaky and get to the bottom of things at those meetings.” He winked.
Indeed, I probably would be good at such a thing. But I said, “Why not Ivy?”
“Oh, posh! She’s about to work for Maximus. She’ll only be here certain times of the year,” he whined.
“I’ll still be working for you too, Ian.” She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know. Let me think about it,” I said. “You know my heart belongs to the ocean—and a certain man.”
“Bring him along. He can help you,” Ian said.
This wasn’t such a bad idea, but how could we keep ourselves from the ocean’s continuous call?
“Maybe he won’t even show,” I said matter-of-factly.
I expected Ian to defend Eadgar. But instead he said, “Maybe not.”
Chapter Nineteen
That evening the family sat around the kitchen table: Aunt Clover, my father, Ivy, Gran, Granddad, and GG Edmund. Adjacent to us, the kitchen island looked like a buffet table, and it was filled with savory foods and a silver four-tiered platter filled with high tea bite-sized desserts.
I sat eating a raspberry tart, and we were all having a great time. Everyone was in a cheery, upbeat mood. My father was telling a story of when he was a young man, and he was hunting for rabbits in the woods and his hounds tracked a legendary white elk. The elk drank from a mystical pond that was said to only appear every seven years. This story fascinated me, and we all sat listening intently.
Suddenly, we were interrupted by a loud wailing scream from just beyond the kitchen bay window. The scream was a mind-numbing, spine-chilling sort of scream, and it silenced us. We all sat with shocked expressions on our faces.
“Oh Lord.” Gran’s face had paled. “Is that what I think it is, John Basil?” She said to my granddad.
He didn’t answer but got up and shut the lights out and walked to the side window in the kitchen. He leaned up to the window and cupped his face while he looked out. The wail sounded again. He backed up in a hurry, knocking a suncatcher from the glass.
He turned the lights back on. “It is,” he said, and seated himself.
Both my aunt and my father said, “No way.”
“Yes way!” Granddad said confidently. “It’s her.”
GG Edmund decided that it was time to get involved. “It’s her? It’s our Maggie?”
The wailing sounded again. The cries sounding like someone in deep, mental anguish. Not a painful cry as if someone were hurt, but a life-crushing sadness. A tragedy.
“Um…who is Maggie?” Ivy asked, clearly confused.
“Maggie, dear, is your grandmother’s great-great-aunt,” GG Edmund said. “She died long ago in a train accident. The train derailed in the forest, and everyone lived but her. Maggie stuck around. She’s the family’s banshee.”
As this sunk in, I recalled what a banshee was: a spirit or ghost that will appear to family members when a tragedy is about to take place. Usually when a family member is about to die. She will wail endlessly all night.
She screeched a blood-curdling wail that lasted thirty seconds or more. I gulped, as did the rest of the family. We all looked at one another.
“Well, this isn’t a good sign. Not to worry, though—we’re tough. We’ll pull through whatever it is,” GG Edmund said. “And I will mention now that hearing our banshee doesn’t always imply a death. It is known that she can forewarn of an unfortunate event. Oh and also…this event may not happen straight away. It can take up to two or three months. Our Maggie…well, she’s a little off.”
That night, Ivy and I slept in the living room. I took the floor, and she took the couch. Both of us slept beneath a heap of blankets—the more, the better. We didn’t say much. Both of us complained of knots in our stomachs. The wailing continued on until 4:11 a.m., the time of day that Maggie had died, seventy-eight years ago. And then, bam, she stopped midstream.
I hadn’t slept a wink prior to 4:11 a.m., but I guarantee by 4:12 a.m. I was asleep, and I didn’t wake up until late morning. When I awoke, I pushed aside the horrid feeling of last night, for this was not a day of sorrow, but a day of celebration. I got to see my Eadgar. That is, if he showed.
***
The water was cold, but I walked barefoot in the ocean as soon as the clock hit noon. Ivy stood on the beach with her elven slippers on. Even she thought it was too cold to go without shoes. She huddled in her green robe, and the gentle winds fluttered her golden hair to the side.
After ten minutes of the cold waters, I sat on the beach with my knees up to my chest and my hands on my feet. “Brrrr,” I said. It was now almost spring, but still too chilly to be waltzing around barefoot. She sat down next to me and watched the horizon. I couldn’t bear to look anymore, and so I lowered my gaze to the sand.
Five minutes later, Ivy thumped me a good one on the arm. The girl was rough. “Ow! Ivy! Someday you’re going to have to learn not to be a tomboy.”
“I am no such thing! But look—look, Zinnia!” She pointed out to sea.
I heard feet splashing on through the water and onto the shore. When I looked at where she pointed, there stood Eadgar, twenty feet away. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved blue T-shirt. He looked extremely well. His face was radiant with health, and he was definitely in shape.
My hands flew to my face, along with the sand that clung to them. “Eadgar,” I mumbled.
He walked straight to me and held out a hand. (By this time Ivy had stood and ran down the beach and up to the cliffside; I suppose she did this so that our first meeting could be alone.) I accepted his hand, and he pulled me up into a hug. We stood like this, in silence for a good minute. He kissed my neck and leaned back to see my face.
“I was so afraid that you would not show,” he said.
“Me too,” I whispered.
“I promised you that I would. And, Zinnia,” he said, and he got down on one knee.
I could hear my sister gasp from all the way up on the cliffs. A smile spread across my face. I couldn’t stop it if I tried.
“Zinnia, will you marry me?” Eadgar asked, and he held out a bracelet made of perfect cowrie shells, and between each shell were green peridots. The bracelet was breathtaking.
“Oh, Eadgar. I—” I had to pause. This would be the biggest step of my life. The biggest commitment ever. But what stunned me was that he wasn’t asking me to bind myself magically; he was asking me to marry him! My whole soul wanted to, but could I actually give up my family in Merribay?
“My family—” I began.
“We would be great partners. I can grant you to become a mermaid, and I am willing to live half the year on land. What do you say?” he asked. He evidently had been practicing his English, as it had improved quite a bit.
He was willing to do this for me? Willing to live on land? It was set in stone, then.
“Oh, Eadgar. Yes, I will marry you.” There, I’d said it. And I meant it.
He placed the shells on my wrist and stood to kiss me on the lips. “We do not use, ah, how do you say it? End-gadge—”
“Engagement?” I asked.
“Yes, we merpeople do not use an engagement ring, we use the bracelet.”
“I love it, Eadgar! Thank you.” We hugged and laughed. Then we walked down the beach hand in hand, discussing our future.
A month and a half later, we were married. We waited until the end of April. According to our astrology charts, this would be the best time for us to tie the knot.
My father wasn’t happy at first. He complained over and over that I was too young, and that I had to learn more of life’s lessons first. In my mind, I had already learned enough. It was Granddad that finally stuck up for me.
