Violin music floats through the air. I imagine it is Jasper who is playing. Whoever the musician may be, the song is beautiful and haunting.
As Soraya foretold, an overturned crate awaits me between the stuffed tiger and the African masks. It is too early for me to take my place upon it. Instead, I wander down the aisles and examine the “wonders.” A clamshell big enough for a cat to sleep in, a two-headed lamb floating in a jar, a costumed rat in a cage decorated like a king’s quarters (he nibbles at his little throne, his lips stained red from the felted cushion), a set of a dozen mismatched eyeballs staring out of glass vials, a table of medieval torture devices, a dressmaker’s form clothed in rough robes (once worn by Saint Peter, according to the sign), a bed studded with wicked-looking nails. A hundred small lanterns hang about the room, casting light and leaving shadows in all the right places.
And at the very back of the tent hangs a golden curtain, and beside the curtain hangs the sign inviting patrons to pay five cents to view “an unforgettable living spectacle, a creature of myth and magic.”
My sister, the mermaid.
I step around the curtain. Inside her jar, Maren floats serenely, fast asleep. She looks no smaller than the last time I saw her, and in no worse health. But the inch-deep layer of pearls on the bottom of the jar testifies to her sadness. My salt water tears fall without a sound, and without increasing the wealth of the world.
I wipe my tears away with my fingertips, careful not to smear the thick greasepaint. I tap on the glass to awaken my sister.
With a flick of her tail and a wriggle of her belly, she comes to meet me. She looks curious and unsure until she recognizes me in my strange costume. Then she smiles and presses both hands to the glass as I do the same.
“I love you.” I say, confident she can read the familiar words on my lips. And then I add, “I am so very sorry.”
Maren shakes her head as if to dismiss my apology. She sinks to the bottom of the jar and curls her tail about her body. If, a year ago, she had been told that today she would be a mermaid living in a jar, enthroned on perfect pearls, she might have delighted in the romance of the notion—if she had not known that the pearls would be her own tears.
She motions with her hands, requesting a story.
I can hear strangers’ laughter in the distance. Perhaps O’Neill is juggling spoons or frying pans; perhaps he is pulling flowers from his vest or scarves from his ears. Soon, the show will end, and after that, the strangers will pay five cents to gawk at the weird museum’s exhibits, including a girl masquerading as a Japanese princess and a live mermaid imprisoned in glass.
“All right, I will tell you a short story.” I lean close, hoping she can hear me. “Do you remember the year O’Neill stayed with us through the winter? He wanted to see snow. We were ten years old, yet he had never seen a single snowflake. Remember how he cried in his sleep for Scarff? Every morning his pillow had to be hung by the fire to dry. But in the daytime, what fun we had!”
Maren nods. Maybe she can hear through all that water and glass.
“On Christmas day, the snow came. Standing outside was like being inside one of those water globes Mr. Peterman sells, the ones you shake to make a blizzard swirl around tiny villages. That snow fell in flurries and then clumps until it piled up as high as the cottage windowsills. Auntie had to threaten us to make us go inside again, even though we could no longer feel our toes or our cherry-red cheeks. And Osbert’s tail was frozen straight out like a blue icicle.”
I pause, picturing Maren and O’Neill throwing snowballs at Osbert, hearing in my memory the unbridled, pure-joy laughter of my sister and my best friend.
Maren taps on the jar impatiently.
“Oh,” I say. “Yes. The snowy Christmas. When Auntie forced us inside, we unwrapped ourselves from our layers of woolens and hung them to dry by the fireplace. And you were the first to notice the heavenly scent of Auntie’s hot grape pudding. Steaming in our soup bowls, as purple as an Easter crocus, with dollops of whipped cream melting into froth. I can still taste it if I close my eyes. Can you?”
Maren shakes her head sadly. I do not think she remembers the taste of any food. She has not eaten in months.
“We ran our spoons around the edges of the pudding to scoop up the part that had cooled from scalding to merely hot. O’Neill giggled when he took his first bite. He said it tasted like purple heaven. He said that even without the grape pudding, it had been the best day of his life—although the day Scarff had found him under the apple tree must have been quite monumental as well. He used that word, ‘monumental,’ an odd word for a ten-year-old boy.”
Maren is smiling again. She combs her fingers through her floating hair.
“Yet despite the joy of that day, O’Neill wept all night for Scarff. I think he wanted both worlds. But wouldn’t we all have liked that—to have lived with Auntie and Scarff, together as a family? But we know now that it was the curse that kept us apart.”
In my mind’s eye, I can see him, the boy O’Neill. Almost always grinning, almost always up to some sort of gentle mischief (for which he would receive instant forgiveness from all—except the grudge-holding cat). My memories show me the unruly crop of blond hair that sprouted from his head like stalks of grain sown in crooked rows, the gap between his front teeth, and the way he’d usually forget to button half the buttons on his shirt. A bit of a wild thing he was, a creature raised by an absentminded traveling merchant. The hours Auntie spent trying to teach him manners! The hours he wriggled and played dumb just to tease her!
But we loved that boy, and he loved us.
He loves us still. And he loves Maren most of all.
“Maren, what if this had not happened,” I say slowly, “and you had not become a mermaid? What if O’Neill—”
“Clara!” Jasper calls from the doorway. “Are you bothering the mermaid again? You should be on your box, preparing to bask in the adoration of our guests.”
I slip out from behind the curtain. “She is my sister. I do not bother her.”
Dressed in a ridiculous pirate costume, Jasper strides toward me, hands on hips. “Stare if you must. I know that I am handsome,” he says. “Practically irresistible, truth be told.”
I ignore his comments and step onto my box, careful not to snag the sumptuous fabric of the kimono. “There. I am in place. No harm done.”
“I must say that you look almost as irresistible as I do,” Jasper says. He fingers my sash. “It suits you, you know. You should always wear silk, day and night.”
“Jasper!” Soraya scolds from just outside. “Take your place to collect the money, son. The customers are coming.”
He struts away as if he truly believes himself a dashing seafarer.