Lucy

by Kathryn Lasky

  Hannah could not meet her eyes. “I want to be truthful, Ettie.” Ettie had a terrible wrenching feeling inside her. This must be how it feels when your heart breaks. “There are others. Two … but they are not friends really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They are my sisters.”

  “You have sisters? They are like you?” Hannah nodded. “But how … how did this happen? Mermaids are like fairy tales, aren’t they?”

  “No. I’m real. Touch me.” She lifted her tail from the water. “Go ahead.”

  Hesitantly, Ettie reached out her hand and lightly ran her fingers over the scales. They felt silky, and when she took her hand away, she noticed a sprinkling of dust on her fingertips as if a rainbow had shed its colors.

  “Don’t worry,” Hannah said. “It comes back — the colors.”

  “But how did this happen to you?”

  “I was born this way.”

  “B-but where? Who are your parents?”

  “It’s a long story, Ettie, and so much of it is still a mystery to me.”

  “One of your sisters is that girl Lucy, isn’t it? Lucy Snow. I played croquet with her.”

  “Yes, how did you guess?” Hannah asked with a note of fear in her voice.

  “When she took off her hat … I mean her hair … her eyes.”

  “I hope no one else noticed,” Hannah said.

  “Of course not. No one notices servants, you know that.” Hannah rolled her eyes but smiled. “So who’s your other sister?”

  “May Plum.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  Hannah grinned. “Of course not. She’s a native. The lighthouse keeper’s daughter on Egg Rock Island. And summer people never notice natives.”

  Ettie giggled. “Especially ones tucked away on islands in lighthouses.” Then Ettie’s face turned serious. “Where do you go when you swim?”

  “Oh, just out …,” Hannah said vaguely.

  Ettie felt she shouldn’t push, but she was a child cursed with an overwhelming curiosity.

  “Would you ever take me with you? I can swim really well, you know that.”

  “Oh, Ettie, this is a very different kind of swimming. We go deep sometimes into the coldest parts of the ocean, and the currents are strong.”

  “Don’t you ever get cold?” Ettie asked.

  Hannah shook her head. “You felt my skin. It’s warm, right?”

  “I know. How do you do that?”

  “I don’t do it. It’s just the way I am.”

  “Are you ever scared when you’re out there? I mean, there are big fish and storms and all sorts of things.”

  “I’m only ever scared on land, Ettie.” The words seemed to hang in the air, spinning slowly. Like silent wind chimes they echoed in Ettie’s mind.

  “Me, too,” Ettie whispered.

  “Whatever do you mean, dear?”

  Ettie looked far off. The dawn was just breaking. “It’s a nasty place, isn’t it — land?”

  Hannah wasn’t sure exactly what Ettie meant. Or perhaps she did and could not bear to believe that a child so young could have this view of the world. She took Ettie’s hand and held it tight. “It will be all right, Ettie.” For the first time, she felt Hannah was lying to her. Nothing was going to be all right. Ettie frowned. “Come on now, Ettie, it will be. You have a bright future.”

  “Girls like me have no futures. The future is more of a fairy tale than those in books. We just don’t know it until we get there.” There was almost a wild look in her eye, like a netted bird looking for escape.

  Her desperate cynicism took Hannah’s breath away.

  “YOU KNOW WHAT I JUST HEARD, Lucy?” Her mother had sidled up to her as Lucy was testing the strength of her bow.

  “What, Mother?”

  “Letitia Aldrich, Mrs. Bannister’s lovely niece, has just become engaged to a Russian prince. She’s going to be a princess! Just imagine.”

  Lucy sighed.

  “Why so glum, dear?” Marjorie Snow squeezed her daughter’s hand, but tears had begun to well up in Lucy’s eyes. “Lucy, is something the matter?”

  Everything! she wanted to scream. “No, nothing. Please excuse me for a second.”

  “Where are you going, Lucy? The powder room is the other way.” But Lucy was halfway across the lawn by this time.

  She looked behind her one final time before dashing out the gates of the Quoddy Club. She knew her parents would be furious, but she had to escape. She could no longer make small talk, and she couldn’t stand to listen to it for another second.

  She was hurrying along the road, keeping her eyes down to hide her flushed cheeks from the villagers, when she bumped into someone heading the opposite direction. It was Phin.

  His face reddened, and at first, she was convinced he was going to storm off without saying a word, but when he looked at Lucy, a flash of concern crossed his face. “Are you all right, Miss Snow?”

  It all came rushing out. “Phin, forget that day on the path at Wyckmore. I was wretched to you. I am so sorry. I didn’t know what was happening. I felt caught.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Caught? Well, you’re perfectly free now. I promise I won’t bother you again.” He started to walk off.

  “Wait!” Lucy pleaded as she grabbed his elbow. “I’m not free. I’ll never be free unless you forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t know how they do things in New York, Miss Snow, but up here, we consider it bad manners to play games with people’s feelings. Or perhaps that’s just sport for you summer folk.”

  She recoiled as if his words had actually struck her, but then took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Don’t call me summer folk,” she said with more than a hint of anger in her voice. Her jaw began to tremble. “And please, please don’t call me Miss Snow.” She was close to sobbing. “It’s not true, Phin. What you say. I do care about you. More than I’ve ever cared about anyone. You have to forgive me for being so foolish.”

  He stared at her for a moment and then flicked the bow hanging from her arm. “If I say no, are you going to shoot me?”

  Lucy smiled for the first time, then sighed deeply. “The question is, How did I spend the whole morning without murdering the duke?” She laughed. “A homicidal cupid — perfect for an archery tournament.”

  “Murder. You were going to have to resort to murdering him?”

  “I had to get away somehow.”

  Phin smiled and took her hand in his. “You look well, Lucy.”

  “I do?”

  He nodded. “I can’t explain it, but you look … well, just yourself but more.”

  She laughed. “How does one look more oneself?”

  “Not really sure. But you do.”

  Lucy looked at him. “I think you might be the only person who knows what I really look like, who doesn’t try to imagine me as something else.”

  Phin ran his finger along her cheek. “I couldn’t imagine anything better.”

  Lucy cocked her head to the side. “You dream up ships for a living. Surely you could come up with some improvement.”

  He lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers. His kiss said it all.

  “You’re a dear, Muffy,” Lucy said when she met up with her at the entrance to the Quoddy Club, where they had planned to meet to appear as if they had been together.

  “Well, I did my best. But, oh my Lord, here he comes now.”

  The duke was grinning. “Aah, you’re back, Miss Snow.”

  “Not for long!” Muffy said brightly. Lucy looked at her, trying to disguise her surprise. “I have just engaged Miss Snow as a wedding advisor. She must come and look at my trousseau immediately. I need the honest opinion of a New Yorker.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “You know we women from Boston are known for our dowdiness.”

  “Oh, never!” the duke exclaimed. “But what about the archery tournament?”

  “She can’t, not today. Now come along, Lucy. We have to hurry. Boynton is
waiting with my trap.” She grabbed Lucy’s arm and ushered her across the lawn.

  As soon as they climbed into the trap, Lucy turned to her new friend. “Thank heavens, Muffy. You are the best.”

  “Not quite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A cunning sparkle lit Muffy’s cornflower blue eyes. “I am not as selfless as you might think. Tell me. Why did you simply have to get away? You have a secret.” Lucy stifled a shudder. Which one? “A secret admirer whom you find more attractive than the Duke of Crompton?” The color rose in Lucy’s cheeks. “Bull’s-eye! Might I say? Come on now. Tell me, please. Who is he?”

  “You promise not to tell?”

  “Of course I won’t tell.” Muffy looked at Lucy with a level gaze. “I promise.”

  “He’s … how — how to put it?”

  “Put what?”

  “You would consider him inappropriate.”

  “Who, Lucy? Who? I mean, is he married? A drunkard?”

  “No, never. Phineas is not inappropriate in that way.”

  “Phineas! Phineas Heanssler, the young yacht designer?” Lucy nodded. Muffy sank back against the upholstered cushions of the trap. “Good Lord!”

  “You see, I knew you would think that.”

  “Think what? That he’s inappropriate? Not exactly. It’s quite romantic, I suppose, and he is very handsome. B-b-b-but …” Lucy had never heard Muffy stammer. She felt a dread rising.

  “But what, Muffy? You don’t approve?”

  “It has nothing to do with approval, Lucy. It’s just that it could be hard being in love with someone like that. I mean, his life is very different from yours.” Lucy was thankful she did not say that he was different, that he was a native or that “his kind” was different, just his life. It seemed less judgmental. “I mean, do you think it is realistic?”

  What was realistic anymore? If she told Muffy that every night she went into the sea and swam off with her skin turning to scales from the waist down and her legs fusing into a tail with flukes? Muffy must have read the anxiety that suddenly seemed to engulf Lucy.

  “Look, Lucy, don’t listen to me. In one sense, you’re really lucky.”

  “Lucky? How? My parents would lock me up in the attic before they’d allow me to be seen with Phin.”

  “Don’t you see? You have real freedom. I don’t mean to be coarse, but if my father didn’t have all this money … well.”

  “Well, what?”

  “My parents are so worried about fortune hunters. And, in a sense, that is exactly what the Earl of Lyford is. He has no money, not like Daddy, but he has estates and a title. So therefore that counts.”

  “But you love him, don’t you?”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “he is the dearest man. A true gentleman. But it’s not passion. Not what you feel for Phineas. I can tell.”

  There was such resignation in Muffy’s voice that Lucy was left with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. There were so many questions that Lucy was sorely tempted to ask Muffy — Did she really think she should marry Lyford? Had she ever had a deep passion for someone, a true love?

  Perhaps Muffy sensed Lucy’s apprehension, for she began to talk with great animation.

  “Lucy, I think my life will be just grand, so grand! We are to go to Rome for our honeymoon. And then it’s the earl’s custom to spend the spring in Paris every year, as he says England is so soggy that there is no real spring. And he knows so much about art. I don’t know anything. But I’ll be able to see it through his eyes and learn.”

  What about your own eyes? Lucy wanted to scream.

  “It’s really going to be fine … so fine.” Muffy reached out and patted Lucy’s hand as if to reassure her.

  “Lucy, where have you been for the last hour?” Marjorie Snow rushed up as Lucy came into the cottage. “When I saw the duke at the Quoddy Club, he said you went off with Muffy Forbes.”

  “Yes, Mother, I did. I might be spending a great deal of time with Muffy.”

  Ever since Lucy had met her sisters and learned about their true mother, she found it difficult to look at her mother directly. She knew it was ridiculous, but she feared that Marjorie Snow would somehow detect a trace in her eyes, and Lucy did not want to hurt her adoptive mother. And that is how she now thought of Marjorie Snow — as her “adoptive mother” and not Mum. She felt guilty for this small perfidy and had gone out of her way to please Marjorie. She knew what she was about to tell her would be greeted with boundless joy.

  “Really? Why is that, dear?”

  “She has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids.”

  “Lucy!” Marjorie Snow’s pale brown eyes grew as large as saucers. “Tell me it is true.”

  “Of course it’s true, Mother. I guess you would say I have been ‘taken up.’”

  “You certainly have!” Marjorie Snow’s high-pitched joyous exclamation drilled the air. “Stephen! Stephen!” she called. “Come out of your study and listen to this.”

  “What is it? What has so ruffled you up, Marjorie?”

  “Tell him, Lucy. Tell him exactly what you told me … just the way you told me.” Marjorie was fluttering her hands through the air as if conducting an invisible orchestra. “I want you to use the exact same words.”

  Lucy inhaled deeply. “I told mother that I would be spending more time with Muffy Forbes and she asked why and I replied …” Lucy could not believe how stupid this all sounded, but she glanced at her mother and saw the glow on her face, so she forged on. “It is because Muffy has asked me to be a bridesmaid.”

  “Oh my goodness!” Stephen said. “Lucy, our darling Lucy!” He came up and embraced her. Then he backed away while still clasping her hands. “Prettiest girl on the island.”

  What would you think if I told you there were two more almost identical to me? And we sometimes have tails. She almost giggled at the thought.

  “Now, my dear,” he continued, “do you remember what I was saying about Percy Wilgrew and the coast being clear?”

  Lucy felt a dread welling up in her.

  “Yes, Father, something about an entailment.”

  “Or lack thereof,” her father replied. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand that I have no money and that most of these titled Englishmen come over here looking for money so their poor old crumbling estates won’t fall down around their ears and leave them standing in a heap of rubble.”

  “Lucy!” her mother gasped and her father’s face had assumed a granite-like rigidity. He dropped her hands and stepped back from her.

  “How dare you be so coarse as to talk about money?” His face darkened.

  “How dare I?” Lucy’s eyes blazed like green fire. “That’s all anyone ever talks about here. Money. How much the Bellamy yacht cost. How Muffy Forbes’s father is giving her one hundred thousand dollars a year, and how the wedding itself is rumored to cost almost ten thousand dollars. How the Van Wycks are ordering a yacht ten feet longer and therefore at least twenty thousand dollars more than the Bellamys’ yacht.”

  “Now how do you know that?” barked her father.

  Lucy realized that she had said too much. The only reason she knew this detail was because of Phineas.

  “I — I — I just heard it around the Quoddy Club,” she stammered. “As I said, everyone talks about money.” She inhaled deeply and her eyes filled with tears. “Why would you ever think Percy Wilgrew would want me? We simply don’t have the money.”

  “I don’t think he is looking merely for money!” Her father raised his voice to the brimstone level that he always criticized in ministers from certain denominations less elegant than his own. “Lucy, it’s position. His family has close ties with the archbishop of Canterbury.” Her father was now roaring.

  “So what now?” Lucy roared back. “You’re going to trade me for the chance to be the archbishop of Canterbury?” With that she turned and ran from the cottage. From the corner of her eye, she could see her mother collapsing in a chair
and burying her face in her hands.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” she heard her father saying. “Just a bit of youthful rebellion. She’ll be back.”

  “ALL RIGHT NOW, lift up and set your flukes just on the crest line of the wave; dig in a bit with your left one. That’s how you steer.”

  “Eeeyiii!” Lucy shouted, and catching the edge of her other fluke in the curl, she flipped over and slid down the side of the wave.

  Laughing, she swam back toward the ledge to wait for another wave.

  “That was good!” Hannah said.

  “Good? Don’t be crazy. I only rode it for what, five seconds.”

  “That’s four seconds longer than I did in my first storm. Come on, you’ll get better.”

  It had all begun when she found the note in the cave that morning — the morning after the fight with her parents. It was from May.

  Storm coming tonight. Meet us on Simon’s Ledge. M

  She was going to be late, for her parents had taken forever to go to bed. But as soon as she was sure they were quite sound asleep, she was out the door and in the water. She swam fast and hard through the churning seas, but already she was feeling the thrill that May and Hannah had described. For tonight they were going to teach her to surf.

  Within another few attempts, Lucy was riding the waves as well as her sisters.

  “Look! Look! Look at her go, May!” Hannah yelled jubilantly.

  Lucy was skimming through the barrel, the hollow space of a breaking wave between the face of the wave and the crest as it curled over. As the waves moved into shallower water, the bottom of the wave decreased in speed, and the top started to spill forward and break. Lucy began to understand the rhythm and structure of the waves. Her entire being thrilled as she swooped through the watery tunnel. She felt as if she were coursing through the very heart of the sea. Its roar filled her ears, the crushing sound of the water throbbed through her like the rush of blood through an artery. When the rain had ceased and the sky cleared, there was one moment that Lucy would never forget as long as she lived. The barrel had almost closed, leaving an opening like a peephole that framed the sky, and within that frame, seven stars rose in a soft curve scooping the night. It glowed like an upside-down tiara in the August night, and Lucy couldn’t help but think she had been crowned some sort of wild salt princess of the waves.