My sister is a mermaid. She is small enough to sleep within a two-quart jar of salt water.
Yesterday, when the sun was noon-high, I bought the jar from an old woman we met along the eastward-leading road, filling it with fresh, clear water from her well and salt from her pantry. O’Neill guessed the woman’s favorite song and sang it through three times, making her laugh and cry simultaneously. For this, she gave us a loaf of warm bread and a thick slab of cheese. As we left, she asked O’Neill to marry her. He declined, of course. “Alas,” he said sweetly, “My heart is not mine to give.”
Today, the horses carry us as if we are no trouble at all, as if they are merely going where they please. O’Neill rides Plato with the grace of a prince, and I manage not to fall off Cleopatra’s muscular back.
O’Neill keeps Maren’s jar tied to his body as we travel. He talks to her often, although she rarely responds. He sings to her until his voice is hoarse. Let him cherish her while he may. She is almost home now.
The soil becomes sandier with each passing mile; the trees here are not like Llanfair Mountain trees. They are silly-looking pines: skinny, knobby trunks—and branches with sparse tufts of needles. And when we stop to rest the horses, O’Neill points to the cloudless sky. I recognize the white and gray bird above us; it was Maren’s favorite in Auntie’s bird book, the ring-billed gull.
O’Neill loosens the knotted rope and lifts Maren’s jar. “Look, Maren,” he says with the radiant joy of a little boy, “A sea bird!”
Her eyelids flutter and she nods. She is so small now, just a handful. A miniature doll with tiny scales and smooth, pale, blue-gray skin.
“We will be there soon,” he says. “You will finally have what you have been longing for, dearest.”
She is asleep again before he finishes speaking.
My heart aches for his loss, and for mine.
We sit in the rough, dry grass beside the road. I scan the sky for sea birds while O’Neill holds Maren’s jar between his knees and stares at her wistfully.
“I will ask the Sea King to release her,” he says. “I will demand that he restore her to her human family.”
How many times have I told him that Maren is a mermaid? That she was never meant for the land? How can I say it again? I tear a piece of grass from the ground and use it to poke at an ant.
“You will keep your sister,” he says with conviction. “Even if I must trade my life for hers.”
I stand and wipe the sandy soil from my dress. “Wishing gets you nothing,” I say. The words are bitter on my tongue, but I do not know what else to say to him.
“I am not wishing, Clara. I am telling you the truth.”
“Your truth is not the truth,” I say. I want to lie down on the sandy ground and go to sleep for a hundred years, to wake up after the world has righted itself somehow.
“Do you regret using the healing blade on me instead of her?” he asks. “Is that why you are angry with me? Or are you still holding a grudge against me for kissing you? Will you never forgive me?”
“I am tired, O’Neill. I am tired and we are wasting time here.” I walk to Cleopatra and rub her black nose. “Help me up, will you?”
He cups his hand, I step into it, and he boosts me onto the horse’s back. He looks up at me and says, “I am sorry, you know. Sorry for offending you so greatly.”
“I know that,” I say. I close my eyes and wait for him to mount Plato. The coming end of Maren’s journey fills me with dread. My heart is a tangled knot of love and hate and hope and despair. If I were a stork, life would be much simpler.
When I return to Llanfair Mountain, perhaps I will ask Auntie how to hasten my change.
As we ride, I remember the only time I have visited the ocean—the summer Maren, O’Neill, and I were seven years old. Scarff brought us in the caravan, and he parked it behind a dune when we arrived. When the clanging and ringing of the pots and chimes all but ceased, the sound of the roaring waves filled my ears. We joined hands, three almost-siblings, and with feet slipping in the sand, ran over the dune to see the water.
We stopped, all of us as one, as soon as we could see the ocean spread out before us, vast and blue-green and powerful. The curling waves caught sunlight in their bellies before bending over it and crashing onto the beach. The sea birds called and dove above us. I remember happiness, as pure and sweet as any in my life, filling every part of me. O’Neill shouted for joy. And then Maren tore her hand free of mine and returned to the caravan in tears.
Three days we camped there. Maren, who practically lived in the pond and creek at home, refused to set foot in the ocean. All day, she sat on the dunes and wept quietly while O’Neill and I splashed and swam and collected shells.
Did she cry because she already knew that one day the ocean would take her away from us? Or did her sorrow stem from a soul-deep longing for the ocean to be her home even then?
The road before us becomes sand, and the scent of seawater taints the warm breeze. Cleopatra follows Plato, her mane ruffling in the wind. Gulls screech above us as we top a small, grassy hill, and then . . . we arrive.
It is as I remember, beautiful and untamable and wider than my vision. I grip the reins and hold back tears.
O’Neill brings Plato alongside me. After a few minutes of silence, I say, “What do we do? Should there not be a ceremony or trumpet blasts or an earthquake or something? A rainbow?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I never considered this part.”
I look at him from the corner of my eye. The bloodstains on his torn shirt have faded after days in the sun. His hair is dirty from travel and more thatch-like than usual. Now that we are here, everything about him says sadness.
On the horizon, a pod of dolphins swim together. Closer and closer they come, splashing and leaping in arcs above the water. “Dolphins,” I say, pointing them out to O’Neill.
He shades his eyes with one hand and squints. “No,” he says, “those are mermaids and mermen coming to meet Maren.”
“My sister,” I whisper.
We dismount and walk down the beach, Maren’s jar still bound with rope to O’Neill’s waist, as the merfolk continue to approach. Soon, we hear them singing, high and sweet and unearthly. I remember ruined sailors and glance at O’Neill. “Be careful,” I warn. “They might take you in spite of your tattoo. Can it protect you from so many of them?”
But perhaps that is what he wishes for in his heart of hearts. For then he and Maren would never be parted.