Placing her folded hands in her lap, Auntie begins.
“It was October, of course. Both of you came to me in October. The winds were fierce one night, rattling the windows and howling down the chimney like unhappy ghosts. Rain pelted the roof like rocks thrown by a family of giants. Osbert was in a state, moaning and pacing in front of the parlor fireplace. He kept tripping over my knitting basket and getting tangled in my good wool yarn. I was just about to banish him to the cellar when a knocking started at the kitchen door. I left Osbert in his tangle—a good place for him, as it kept him restrained so he couldn’t scare the visitor. But when I opened the door, not a soul was there. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ I called. ‘You’re welcome to come in for a cup of tea! Nasty night this is!’ But no one answered. I was just about to shut the door when it caught my eye: a great conch shell just lying there on the path like the tide had gone out without it. Never mind that no tide ever touches Llanfair Mountain. That seashell was as big as my good soup pot. I’d never seen the like! Being partial to seashells, I brought it inside and set it on this very table to admire it. It was wet with rain, so I used the hem of my apron to polish it dry. And when I tipped it, a tiny bundle rolled out onto the table—a little blanket woven of seaweed with the smallest face I’d ever seen peeking out. Here was a babe just as pink and white as the inside of the conch. She wore a little scallop shell on her head as a bonnet. That child was you, Maren.”
“I came from the sea, and to the sea I must return,” Maren says, as nonchalantly as one might say, “Two plus two equals four.”
“Indeed,” Auntie says. “Did I ever tell you otherwise?”
“Never,” Maren says, looking quite pleased. “Now, tell us about Clara.” Maren pours tea into her mug and adds two teaspoons of salt, as is her habit. No one craves salt like our Maren.
“Well, it wasn’t but three days later. I’d just put Maren in her cradle for a nap. I went to the window to check the weather because I’d hung my best quilt out to air and the red-sky morning had promised rain. That’s when I saw him. I stood stock-still, and I watched him come closer and closer. The clouds slid a thick veil over the sun, and in the dimness his eyes shone like two bits of polished coal. He was carrying a cloth-covered bundle like it was the most precious thing in the world. I ran out to meet him, and he placed the gift in my arms.”
“Beware of storks bearing gifts,” Maren says, poking me. I slap her arm in reply.
Auntie chuckles. “Let me finish, girls! As I was saying, I took that bundle in my arms, and folded back the edge of the cloth to find another wee babe. Fast asleep you were, your black lashes lying against your cheeks like miniature raven’s wings. ‘A sister for Maren,’ I said. When I looked up to thank him, he was gone.”
“Who? Who was the one who brought me?” I am desperate for a comforting answer. “Was it my true father?” She has never said so before, but perhaps today she might tell me more.
“No, not your father, dear. A stork brought you, Clara mine. You know this. The most beautiful stork I’d ever seen.”
Raised with just enough magic to unquestioningly assume that someday I would become a stork, I had never before found the story particularly disturbing. But on this day, with the evidence of Maren’s transformation before my eyes and beneath my fingertips, I give way to panic. Trembling, I ask what I have not until now. “Auntie, are you saying that one day I’ll sprout wings like Maren is sprouting scales?”
“I said nothing of the kind, Clara my dear.” Auntie lovingly caresses the top of my head. “You worry too much. Worrying gets you nothing.”
“Like wishing,” I say. I slump in my chair and close my eyes.
“What I wish right now is that someone would see to the hens,” Auntie says. The discussion is clearly over. “Go on, Clara—and you may fetch some firewood, Maren.”
“Yes, Auntie,” we say together, like twins. We catch one another’s eyes. In Maren’s, I can see the green-blue of the ocean. A tide of sorrow rushes over my heart.
The ocean is so very far away.
How will I live without my sister? She is the strong one, the outgoing one, the shiny-as-a-new-coin one. The one the village boys smile at, the one who charms extra pennies from the shrewdest of housewives when we sell our vegetables in the square.
What am I without her?
Just a girl left by a stork.
CHAPTER TWO
Osbert races back and forth in front of the cottage, shrieking and galloping like a crazed, two-legged miniature pony. His unruly pointed tail knocks the heads off the black-eyed Susans and tears up the grass by its roots.
“Osbert, hush,” I say. “Go inside, you beast!” I do not know what has provoked him to act so wildly. It could be anything from a trespassing chipmunk to an approaching villager. And if it is the latter, he would do well to hide himself. Few people believe dragons still exist—especially not the practical folk of Llanfair Mountain. It is better for us all if his presence remains a secret.
When I hear the clanging, I know why Osbert is in such a state. Scarff and O’Neill are coming, and Osbert loves no one better, not even Auntie, who raised him from an egg.
Pots and pans bump and bang together as they swing from hooks under the eaves of the brightly painted house-wagon, above the sign that reads “Scarff and Brady, Merchants.” Funny wind chimes made of old spoons and knives, chimes crafted from bits of pottery and sea glass, and chimes created from pieces of copper pipe and tin soldiers add their notes to the music of the caravan’s approach. This symphony lifts my heart like no other, for it means the arrival of beloved friends.
Auntie steps out of the cottage, a wide smile on her round face. The unmistakable smile of a woman in love. For as old as they might be now, my dear Auntie Verity and Ezra Scarff have been sweethearts (according to Auntie) since her hair was chestnut-brown and his beard was the color of dandelions.
From his seat behind his faithful horses, Job and January, Scarff waves with both hands. Before the caravan stops, a young man leaps out its back door, turns a somersault in the air, and lands squarely on two green-shoed feet.
“O’Neill!” Maren shouts, in a most unladylike fashion, from across the garden. To reinforce her lack of manners, she runs to him and embraces him with such vigor that they both stumble and fall into the dusty road.
I blush in embarrassment for my sister. She would not consider being embarrassed for herself.