“I am in no hurry to go, Miss Clara,” he says, brushing past me.
Simon gets on one knee beside Maren, his square face inches from her sparkling cheekbone. “I came to ask you to the Christmas dance, Miss Maren. Father says I can use his new carriage. Your sister can come along, too. I bought a new suit last week just for the occasion.” His adoring, eager smile makes me feel quite sorry for him.
“Too sick,” Maren mutters. Her eyelids close.
“Well, you have eight days to get well. Doesn’t your aunt have the cure for everything?” He places a small box in her blanket-covered lap. “I brought you a Christmas gift. I’ve been saving it for months.”
Her eyelids flutter. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“I am sorry, Simon,” I say. “She simply cannot stay awake at times. It is her condition. I am sure she will enjoy opening your gift later.”
He stands, still wearing the same lovesick face he always wears in Maren’s presence. “I will pick her up for the dance on the twenty-sixth at three, Mrs. Amsell. And Clara, too, if she cares to go.”
Auntie puts her hands on her hips. “We do thank you for your kind invitation, but Maren is too ill to go to the dance, Simon.”
“Surely the sickness will pass,” he says. “I will say many prayers, and I know you will nurse her well. If I may tell you a secret, I plan to announce our engagement at the dance.”
“She has not agreed to marry you,” I say. “She would have told us if she had.”
Simon fingers the buttons of his woolen coat. “She has implied her consent. She likes to tease me, and that is why she pretends to refuse my offers. I know I can make her happy. I swear I will.”
Auntie puts an arm about him and somehow maneuvers him to the door. “Good night, Simon. Thank your mother for the foodstuffs, will you?” Before he can don his hat, he is outside. Auntie shuts and locks the door.
“I’ve never seen a boy so smitten,” Auntie says, turning back to the stove and stirring the preserves. “Perhaps I should brew up something to relieve him of that.”
The box rolls off Maren’s lap and I pick it up. “Can you do that?”
“Infatuation is easy to cure, if that is his problem. A little dandelion root, a sprig of hare-foot plant, a shaving of nutmeg, and a drop of moonrose nectar mixed into a cup of chamomile. True love is another story, I’m afraid. There is no cure for true love.”
“I thought as much,” I say. I turn the little box over in my hands and I think of my long-absent, much-missed friend O’Neill. I wonder if I could be cured of my feelings for him. It is not at all what I wish.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I recognize the thick, muffled feeling of snow in the air before I even open my eyes. I roll over to wish my sister a merry Christmas, but she is absent from the bed we have shared since we outgrew our extra wide cradle.
After slipping on woolen socks (hideously lumpy, made by me) and a robe of purple Chinese silk (last year’s Christmas gift from O’Neill and Scarff), I hurry to the kitchen. The aroma of Auntie’s special Christmas apricot scones meets me halfway.
With her fin-feet in a festively painted coal scuttle filled with water, Maren sits at the kitchen table. She has roses in her cheeks and a bright smile on her lips. The sash of her pink silk robe is tied in a huge bow.
“Merry Christmas, sister,” she says, offering her cheek for a kiss. Her voice is stronger this morning. I am certain of it.
“Isn’t this a Christmas miracle?” I embrace her. My ear to hers, I hear the sound of the ocean. I draw back with a start.
“Doesn’t she look lovely?” Auntie says. She sets a steaming plate of scones on the table beside jewel-colored jam and a saucer of pale yellow butter. “I brewed up a tisane of dried kelp, crushed shark’s tooth, and powdered mussel shells. Perked her right up.”
“And look!” Maren points to the window. “It’s snowing.”
Osbert stretches his long neck to get a glimpse of the weather. His barbed tail bounces up and down, drumming a happy beat on the floorboards. Our wyvern loves to play in the snow.
“After breakfast, could Clara harness Osbert to the little sleigh and take me for a ride to the meadow?” Maren asks. “Please? I feel ever so much better, Auntie.”
“Well, maybe for a few minutes. Girls of your particular temperament are not meant for the snow, Maren dear.”
“I am not a mermaid yet, Auntie.” Her familiar pout returns. It makes my heart sing to see her so much herself again.
“I suppose,” Auntie says. “But just a short ride, mind you. We have Christmas gifts to open.”
Maren and I wolf down our breakfasts. Auntie indulges our lack of manners. In her eyes I see her thought: This will be Maren’s last Christmas with us. And Auntie cannot tell a lie, cannot even think one.
Auntie wraps Maren in coats and capes and every spare blanket she can find. Outside, I buckle the red leather harness around the exuberant wyvern. His wings flap snow into my eyes. His wagging tail has swept three inches of snow from the ground to reveal sprigs of brown grass.
Together, Auntie and I settle Maren into the sleigh. She is light as a feather, even covered in woolens and down-filled quilts. Her sparkling face peers out of Auntie’s paisley shawl. Has anyone ever been more beautiful than my sister?
“Just a short trip,” Auntie cautions as I lead Osbert across our white-clothed garden.
After the kitchen door shuts with a thud, there is silence—the holy silence of winter, broken only by the pings of snowflakes meeting their siblings on the ground, and the soft shushing of the sleigh.
The glorious meadow twinkles and glimmers in its winter finery. Towering pines stand at its edges like ermine-clad kings. Maren sighs and squeezes my mittened hand. We do not need to speak.
From a distance, a sound reaches my ears. First, it seems like the scratching of some animal’s claws against metal. As it grows, I recognize the sound of bells.
“The Halsteds must be taking a sleigh ride,” I remark. But a moment later, a small horse trots out of the forest, his black coat almost painful to behold against the white snow. His mane is woven with silver bells and ribbons, and on his back he wears fat saddlebags of green leather, but no saddle. He stops when he sees us and bows his head as if in greeting. Steam rises from his nostrils in roiling clouds.
“He is darling!” Maren says. Her voice is muffled by a thick, woolen scarf.
“You poor, frozen dear,” I say to the horse. “Follow us and we will warm you by our fire.” I shake the reins. “Home, Osbert.” The horse trails behind the sleigh, his bells jingling merrily.
“What have we here?” Auntie says from the doorway. “The poor creature! Bring him in before he freezes solid!”