The Mermaid Collector (28 page)
Read The Mermaid Collector Online
Authors: Erika Marks
Pearl nodded, but Lydia swore she could see in her sister’s warm eyes something suggestive, and for a strange
moment, Lydia thought Pearl knew, thought for certain her sister knew that the child they’d adored in an instant wasn’t Linus’s at all, but Lydia told herself there was no way Pearl could have known. It simply wasn’t possible.
THE SUMMER WEEKS SLIPPED BY
, and, with their passage, Lydia’s worries seemed to fade. Though Linus remained quiet and often distracted, she’d grown used to the man her husband had become in the year since he and the others had survived their shipwreck. She found endless comfort in Henry, who seemed to change with each day. Every development, no matter how small, enchanted her. And the weather! There’d never been such a flawless summer; Miles Keene had confirmed so when he came with supplies one balmy July afternoon. For a while, Lydia watched her neighbors’ expressions each time they were around Henry, wanting to see if Miles or Sarah might have carried suspicions. If they did, they were careful to hide them, and Lydia was grateful to them regardless. With Henry snug in a field basket at her side and delighted with a set of measuring spoons she’d hung from the handle, Lydia planted lavender with the sun warm on her cheek.
SHE WAS SURE SHE HEARD
the baby cry. That was why Lydia woke in the darkness. In the weeks since Henry’s birth, she’d ceased to sleep in any sort of real way. Her eyes
closed and her breathing slowed, but her mind could do neither. She would instead experience miniature sleeps, something altogether different. But that was how Sarah Keene had said it would be. Babies required attention all day and all night, and a mother’s mind knew that, which was why Sarah had assured Lydia that she would never sleep in any true way for the rest of her life.
So it was not at first surprising to her that she should find herself sharp and awake in the dark. Instinctively Lydia rose from bed and moved across the room to Henry’s bassinet. She had set his bed just shy of the beam’s path so that she could always find her way to him. When she arrived, she found her baby asleep on his stomach, tucked under himself, his tiny wrinkled fists hidden.
She turned back to the bed, aware suddenly that she and Henry were alone. Linus’s side was empty; Lydia could tell by the air, the lack of his breathing. She moved to the window, seeing the tower, the lantern room empty but for the lamp.
Had there been an emergency? She didn’t see how it was possible. Surely Linus would have woken her, would have told her if he’d had to go onto the water, or leave the Point for some reason. But what reason could there be?
Lydia reached for her robe, tying it snugly around her waist. She came downstairs, expecting to find Linus milling about, but the rooms were empty. Seeing the faint thread of pink when she passed the window, she realized it was dawn, and her heart settled with relief. That
explained it. She’d overslept, and Linus had wished to get an early start. She’d do the same, grateful to find herself not yet too heavy with milk.
She was setting their table when she saw the log book. It wasn’t unusual that Linus might have left it there to record something he’d forgotten, though he’d grown so terribly secretive with it that Lydia found its display startling. But there was more to it; she could tell. Even from where she stood, she could see the end of a piece of letter paper peeking out from between the pages, crisp and clean against the purple dye of the book’s deckle edges.
She walked slowly to the leather-sheathed book and carefully pulled the paper free.
Her first thought was that it was a strange color: a pale blue, a sort of paper she’d never seen, one she knew they did not keep in their house. She freed it tentatively, not sure what sort of news could possibly require her husband to use such a formal page, or write so much (already she could see the lines of text through the thin parchment).
Don’t open it,
was her first thought.
Burn it instead. Turn to the woodstove, to the fire you’ve just stoked. The flames are stretching and hungry; the page will burn in seconds
.
Instead, she lowered herself into the chair that was thankfully already there. Her hands shook as she drew the folds apart, facing the words.
She read them several times, enough times that the blue light of dawn began to fill the room around her,
pouring in like an enchanted smoke. And each time she thought, no, it was all a mistake. She wasn’t reading it correctly; she was missing something. Linus had forgotten a paragraph, maybe even a whole page.
But he’d already confessed to his omission, which was why he’d left her the log book.
Lydia’s fingers were slow with dread, but she opened the book, the binding cracking, the sound like a slap in the silent dawn. She recognized the first few entries. The handwriting was tidy, flawless; the words she could still recall from Linus’s reading to her at dinner about the warbler sighting and the pair of harbor seals that had stayed all afternoon.
But she knew those weren’t the passages her husband wished her to read.
Those were farther in, where his handwriting was no longer neat and erect, but loose, choppy, pointed instead of curved.
May 1, 1888:
I am so weary of my deceit. Many months have passed since our unfathomable disappearance and our equally unfathomable return; yet the town seems to have already moved on from
our lapse. Would that we four could. But climbing the stairs to face the sea and her secrets only makes my heart swell with disgrace, with shame, with terrible longing. The entries I have made thus far have been false. That is not to say I have not done my job, or done it with the same honor and commitment that I have always tendered this magnificent tower, knowing the magnitude and responsibility of my position. But the heart and the head can work in remarkable opposition. My hands and legs operate of their own engine; my thoughts float away untethered, and it is my dearest Lydia who seems the most in danger of being adrift. Any day now she will deliver our child, the miracle of life we forged in the days after my return; yet where my heart should be filled with eagerness and joy, I have only longing, and try as I do to hide my betrayal, I know my wife can see this bereavement plainly. I find more chores than ever to keep me from her nervous eyes, to keep me in the
tower, close to the source of my confusion, my joy. I only wonder how much longer we four can keep our secret.
May 6, 1888:
My son arrived yesterday: Henry Shelton Harris. Lydia rests. The midwife has departed, and Sarah Keene, our neighbor, has come to help with the house. Holding him was the first moment of peace I have had in so long. It was as if the instant Lydia delivered him into my arms, a rush of wind blew my mind clean. But it was a short-lived reprieve. Try as I did to think on my child as I walked back to the tower, to keep the image of that pink and beautifully wrinkled face in my sight, my thoughts betrayed me, and now I fear I will never know that perfect calm again.
Lydia’s sisters, Pearl and Rachel, plan to come soon. I don’t know how I will conceal my
distractions from them without their thinking me rude, or worse, simply unfeeling.
June 15, 1888:
I saw Duncan Spaulding in town today, this being the first time our paths have crossed in months. We did not stop and talk, merely glanced at each other across the street. It is as if we are contagious, as if distance will keep the virus of our secret contained. But the symptoms of our ailment are unmistakable. I wonder if I wear the same shade of shame on my cheeks as he does.
June 28, 1888:
Eli Banks came to me this afternoon. I was cleaning the lens, and he kept me company, pacing around me. I worked the rag as he spoke, stopping only when he began to sob. This great big man who can command a company
of hundreds weeps now like a lost cub. He told me he hears the mermaids call every night now, and he is sure they are waiting for us to return to them as we promised we would. He thinks I must summon them back, that I must keep watch, that I alone can work the light to guide them into the cove. I tell him we can’t act so rashly, but I know he’s right. I know too that it was my failing to steer that boat expertly, as I vowed I could, the failure that has brought us to this place, and I am desperate for my chance to correct it.
July 15, 1888:
The guilt is consuming. I give in to it only when I am in the tower, which is nearly all the time now. When I hold my son, the anguish is unimaginable. Tiny as he is, barely able to keep his eyes on me, I feel certain he can sense my grief. I have failed them both—my son, his mother. Lydia observes me now with
relief, and the effort to keep this small flame of hope and peace in her eyes is taking its toll. Perhaps Banks is right that we cannot hold off any longer.
July 26, 1888:
Banks wants to hurry our departure, but I managed to calm his haste. I told him the songs are not yet close enough, that all our efforts will be wasted if the sea maidens are still too far out to sea, that we will drown in the darkness without their guide, their breath—as we nearly did the first time. Banks got up several times in the meeting, went outside, and came back in. Timothy Orchard said nothing. Duncan Spaulding swigged from a flask and talked incessantly. These are not the same men I set sail with nearly a year ago.
That night, I am proved wrong. I take leave of the tower to stand at my son’s cradle,
watching him sleep in a ribbon of moonlight, and I am too ashamed to even touch the downy nest of brown hair that lies against his tiny scalp. I close my eyes to force the sound from my head, but it’s no use. Even with the window closed, I can hear their calls, so close now I am certain the whole of the town can hear them too.
August 2, 1888:
The time has come. This will be my last entry, for tomorrow will be our last day on land. There’s no choice in the matter now. I cannot bear the fear and worry that veil my wife’s eyes any longer; nor can I subject my son to a father who feels such shame and guilt that he can’t bear to hold him. I have reconsidered the words I’ve crafted in these previous pages, and I feel no confusion over them, no shock, though I know whoever reads these in the days, or perhaps years, from now will. It is time
then, if today is my last here, that I reveal the truth in the same fashion.
There is no point to recording what is known of our journey that day. Our departure, our course, our weather; all that is well documented. I wish I could say we were concealing the truth of our collision and our subsequent wreck, but that truth escapes even us. One moment the sea was pleasant and yielding; the next we found ourselves tossed beneath it, scrambling and clawing at drenched wood and sodden sails, our eyes and throats burning with salt as we cried out to one another in our panic, even as the sun bore down on us.
It was Banks who saw the first one. He called for us all to see, turning our heads in the caps, even as our vessel pitched to its doom. They glistened like harbor seals, their bodies curving in the water like porpoises, their hair—all shades of gold, pewter, and green—so long it seemed to be
made of the sea itself. They swam up around us, close enough that we could feel the tickling of their tails. We twisted in the water, trying to follow them, and soon their laughter rose high, and I cannot tell you how sweet the sound was. Imagine five months of winter under blankets of silencing snow, and waking one morning to the crisp song of a scarlet cardinal, a sound so joyful and pure, you think you might cry from it.
Whoever reads this will wonder if there was any moment of clarity between us, if for any moment we doubted what we saw. But of course we did. For who surrenders willingly to madness, to a vision so impossible? And yet, as we looked on, and the truth of our eyes sharpened into focus, we saw the impossible swimming beside us, taking our hands as if we were no more rooted than seaweed, steering us deeper out to sea, and we let them.
God forgive us, we let them.
IT WAS HENRY’S CRY, SHRILL
and piercing, the way only a hungry infant can sound, that brought Miles Keene up the path at such a pace.
Lydia could hear the rapping on the kitchen door clearly, for she hadn’t moved an inch since she’d sat down to read. Still she just stared at the wide wood panels, watching them shake, too numb to answer.
After a moment, Miles’s face appeared at the window, squinting in. She looked back at him. His eyes rounded with confusion, but she didn’t rise to let him in.
SEARCH PARTIES LEFT THE
H
ARBOR
at first light, the news of the letters moving quickly through the village. It seemed each man had left a similar confession, Eli Banks himself even using the word
mermaids
in his, a fact known only because Mrs. Banks had fainted before having a chance to dispose of the letter, and the authorities had confiscated the note, much to her outrage.
“Evidence,” the sheriff had said.
“Evidence of what?” Millicent Banks had cried, her eyes wild with panic. “My husband’s been tricked into some sort of madness! Can’t you see it? That’s not even his handwriting. He’s obviously been kidnapped. These other men are to blame!”