Hannah: Daughters of the Sea #1 (15 page)

S
TANNISH
W
HITMAN
W
HEELER
had left Gladrock in a fury. It was understandable; his work had been destroyed. It was his work, however, and not his reputation. A week after the party Perl came into the kitchen for his usual mug of coffee.

“Guess who’s back on the island.”

“Not Lila, I hope,” Mrs. Bletchley said, setting down the mug in front of him.

“No, Mr. Wheeler.”

“The painter?” Hannah turned around so quickly that the tea she was drinking slopped over the rim. Her face flushed and the thumping of her heart seemed deafening to her own ears.

“The Stanhopes have engaged him to paint one of
them. Don’t know which. And I understand that people be lining up to get him to do their portraits.”

Hannah could not quite believe it. She had tried not to allow herself to think about the painter. She had come back, of course, swum back to see him, but when she had heard about the ruined painting, she had given up all hope.

“He’s staying over at the inn.”

Hannah’s mind was in a fever. She had to think of a way to talk to him. A housemaid could not be seen, however, meeting in public with a man of his stature. It was an island after all. The gossip would spread like wildfire. She would have to leave him a note. All morning long as she went about her chores, she composed the note in her head. She was not at all prepared when, just after serving luncheon, Mrs. Bletchley asked if someone would run an errand and go into the village for butter. Nonetheless, Hannah jumped at the chance.

“Just a minute while I change my uniform.” Dashing upstairs, she found pen and paper and scrawled a terse message.

Must see you
.

Meet me at Seal Point this evening, 11:00—H

Daze and Florrie and Susie were going for an end-of-summer gathering at the lake. Since the disastrous portrait party, the Hawleys had been retiring early.

Half an hour later Hannah walked through the entrance of the Spruce Inn. A man in a waistcoat and bright green tie approached her. He perceived immediately that she was not a potential guest. “May I help you, miss?”

“Yes, a message for Mr. Wheeler from one of his clients.”

“Certainly, miss.” He took it crisply and walked it over to the desk. Hannah was quick to leave.

The hours between delivering the note and eleven that night were the longest that Hannah had ever endured. She arrived in the sparse woods of Seal Point an hour early. She dared not swim although this was one of her favorite coves and there was a beautiful ledge where there were seals that she
sometimes played with. The ledge was sparkling now in the silvery light of an immense moon.

What would the painter say to her now? What would he do? How could he explain who he was and how he knew…knew that she was not quite human? She remembered that on the night of her transformation her first thought as she had lifted her shimmering tail from the water was that she must show the painter. But if he really wasn’t one, what would he think? Would he be repulsed? Would he find it disgusting? A sudden panic seized her. She hunched over her knees and, pressing her face into her hands, began to weep.

She was so fraught with her own despair that she did not hear him approach but then felt a touch on her shoulder.

“Why are you crying, Hannah?”

She looked up. His face, though creased with concern, was glorious. “I did go away. I did as you said. I left.” She paused. “For the sea.”

His shoulders sagged a bit as she said this. He then sat down on the moss-covered forest floor beside her and took her hand.

“Yes, and?”

She looked straight into his eyes, then shook her head wearily. “You know what happened.” He pressed her hand to his mouth and kissed it. A deep thrill coursed through her. He was whispering something into her hand. She bent closer to hear the words.

“Why did you come back?” She knew what he meant. Back from the sea, but she needed to hear him say more.

He slipped his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “What do you mean ‘back’?”

“Back from the sea. Why did you come back?”

“For you,” Hannah said simply.

He now took her face in both his hands. His eyes seemed suddenly hard and yet his hands held her face so gently. “Don’t you understand?” she asked.

“No, Hannah, you don’t understand.”

She began to ask what he meant, but the words would simply not come. She was suddenly frightened not of the painter but of what he might say, or was about to say. She raised her own hands to her ears as if to shut out his words, but she couldn’t, for his
hands still held her face. “Listen to me, Hannah! Right now you can go back and forth, between two worlds. But it will not be this way always. In a year, at the very longest, you must make a choice. You must be of one world or the other.”

“No! No!” Hannah was shaking her head now violently.

“Yes, Hannah.”

“It’s not true.”

“It is true. I am living proof. You can never go back!”

Hannah tore herself away and jumped to her feet. “I don’t believe you. I just don’t.” His eyes no longer looked hard, just sad. Terribly sad.

“You must choose your world.”

“But it’s not fair.”

“It has nothing to do with being fair.”

“What does it have to do with, then?”

He stood up and looked at her and sighed heavily. “It has to do with being Mer.”

By the time Hannah left the point and returned to Gladrock, it was after midnight. She went down to the cove and stood on the lavender rock at its edge. Could it be true, what the painter had said? Why must a choice be made? She looked out on the water. It was a calm night. The lightest of breezes blew, wrinkling the surface into tiny sparkling wavelets. It was as if the moon had broken into a thousand silver pieces. She looked back at the house. She could see a light on in Clarice’s room. She was reading late as usual. Ettie’s window was dark, but she could picture her softly folded into sleep.
Sweet, sweet, funny little girl. “Am I just your job, Hannah?”—was that how she had put it?
She sighed.

Right now in this moment Hannah felt pressed between two worlds. She had found a place on land. The house was perfect now with Lila gone. She had a position. Daze had told her that when they returned to Boston, she would certainly be promoted to parlor maid. That a new scullery girl would have to be found. This would mean more money. But it wasn’t just money. In Boston she could find a way to see the
painter. And if, as he said, she had perhaps as long as one year before this choice would have to be made, she could still go into the sea, although how she would manage it in Boston in the winter, she was not sure. Boston was not an island in the middle of the ocean but a port city. Was she greedy to want it all?
But just for now
, she thought.
Just for a little while
.

A
HEAVINESS HAD HUNG
in the air for several days and erratic gusts of winds slapped the usually calm waters of Frenchman Bay. There was a low boil with spume flying this way and that.

“Hurricane down south, barometer dropping like a shot,” Perl announced as he came into the kitchen with a bushel basket of lobsters. “’T’ain’t raining but might as well be. I brought these in ’cause we have to get the dories out of the water and sail
Lark
over to the hole. Think we best secure the buckboards, carts, and traps. Nothing more dangerous than a wheel flying through the air.”

“The hole?” Hannah looked up from the peas she was shelling.

“Hurricane hole, safe place for boats during a storm. We’ll take her over to that one just by Otter Creek.”

“Hurricanes never come here, Perl. They’re tropical,” Mrs. Bletchley said. “That’s why they call them tropical storms.” She continued rolling out a piecrust without looking up.

“Maybe, but the fringes of them can skirt us. That’s what we got, the outer fringes of this one. She’s in the Carolinas now, but telegraph office over at the Revenue Marine station says she’s coming up the coast at a steady pace, fifty miles per hour.”

“How come they always call hurricanes and storms ‘she’?” Susie asked.

“’Cause they’re wild, de-ah,” Perl retorted with a gruff chuckle.

“Men are wild, too, and I’ve heard of wicked, wild ones,” Daze said with a gleam in her eye.

“Hope you don’t go courtin’ any of them, daughter,” Perl snapped.

Hannah listened to the conversation with interest. She had never thought of storms as he’s or she’s, but
reflected on what Perl said about their wildness. Did she share this wildness, then? She thought about how much she had loved swimming through the storm a few days ago.

All day it was blowy and the servants of Gladrock were busy moving in porch furniture, putting up shutters, and securing the cottage for the major storm that was crashing up the coast. Mrs. Hawley walked around all day long fretting and wringing a handkerchief until it was almost in shreds. “I knew we should have left earlier. I just knew it, Horace. It’s insane to stay here this long, through the first week in September. Oh, I wish we were in Paris.”

“The last place you would want to be right now is on an ocean liner heading for France, my dear.”

“I think it’s exciting!” Ettie said. Clarice stuck her nose deeper into the book she was reading. By seven o’clock that evening, telegraph reports came in that the winds had strengthened as the storm made its way up the coast. By midnight it would be ferocious. It was decided that it was much too dangerous for the servants to sleep on the very top floor. The noise
on that floor was already deafening and God forbid the roof should be torn off. So soon all the male servants were transporting beds from the third floor to the hallways and corridors of the second floor where the family slept. The female servants were running back and forth with linens. Mrs. Hawley briefly entertained the notion of moving beds to the basement but Mr. Hawley dashed that notion as foolish when he pointed out that there could be storm surge and already there were warnings of coastal flooding.

“Storm surge,” Mrs. Hawley repeated with a look of absolute horror, as if the devil incarnate were about to be unleashed in the hallways of Gladrock.

Perl arrived at nine o’clock that evening with the grim news that the hurricane had made its landfall at Cape Rachel, near Portland, with a brutal fury. Forty summer cottages, including the Cape Rachel Yacht Club, and nineteen people had been swept away into the Atlantic. “Oh my God!” Mrs. Hawley gave a little yelp and collapsed on a sofa.

By now the rain was pouring down in slanting sheets blown almost horizontal by the wind. Inside,
the noise was a fearsome cacophony of creaks and moans as shutters clattered on their hinges, shingles flew from the roof, and the stately trees creaked in despair at the wrathful winds slamming across the lawn. Then suddenly there was a tremendous crash and the whole house shook.

“What’s that?” Clarice cried out. Horace Hawley and Mr. Marston looked at each other. “It must be the grand oak,” Mr. Hawley said.

“I’m afraid you might be right, sir,” the butler replied.

But while everyone was trembling with fear as the eye of the hurricane approached, Hannah was fraught with anticipation. She tried to imagine the bay, especially the seas off Egg Rock—towering waves crashing, spume flying, immense surges swelling all around her. She prayed that everyone would fall asleep, and soon, so she could steal out. She knew that the worst dangers would be those on land—falling trees, the wheels of wagons careening on gusts of wind—but if she could get to the water, she would be safe.

They were all, servants and family alike, now huddled together in the large drawing room. Mrs. Bletchley had made a kettle of cocoa and Susie and Daze and Hannah had prepared four platters of sandwiches. Mr. Hawley stood up and walked to one of the many barometers in the house. He summoned Perl and Mr. Marston.

“Look here. She’s dropping like a shot. Hit twentyeight and now the mercury’s going to twenty-seven. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the atmospheric pressure this low.”

Perl yawned. “Makes you sleepy when she gets that low. The eye must be near.”

So
, thought Hannah.
Not only are storms and hurricanes female but mercury and pressure are
. She was not quite sure what he meant by atmospheric pressure. Hannah noticed that suddenly everyone appeared to be rather lethargic. Perl was not the only one yawning.

“Well, I think we should turn in,” Mr. Hawley said. “Perl, Marston’s and your cots are near our door. If there is anything untoward, don’t hesitate one minute to come in.”

“A-yuh,” replied Pearl.

“Certainly, sir,” said Marston.

Hannah was not one bit sleepy. If anything, she had never felt more alive as the atmospheric pressure continued to plummet and the mercury slid down to almost twenty-seven inches in the barometer. On one side of her in the hallway Daze slept, on the other, Susie. Hannah slipped from the bed, made her way downstairs to the kitchen, and stepped outside.

She stood for a moment on the pantry porch, clinging to the post. It was an amazing night. The grand oak had been uprooted and fallen on the porch, crashing through its roof. She saw random boards, most likely from the outbuildings, tool sheds, stables, and greenhouses, flying through the air. Hannah immediately knew that if she tried to run across this wind, there was no way she would make it to the water. She would be picked up by a gust and smashed against a tree or a building. But if she crawled on her belly, she would offer less of a target. She sat down on the steps and scooted on her bottom down to the path, then turned onto her stomach and began slithering across the lawn. Now the only thing she feared
was something falling upon her. She was nearly halfway across the grass when she heard a clacking and squawking above her. She covered her head and looked up.

“Good God in heaven,” she muttered. It was a chicken coop complete with chickens flying through the air. It crash-landed a few yards from her. Momentarily stunned, the chickens stopped their squawking, then erupted again in a mad clucking. One of them managed to walk from the coop but in another second it was picked up by the wind and was soon tumbling head over tail through the air. Feathers blew down into the grass just in front of Hannah as she continued her crawl toward the sea. In the path, a large birch had been torn up but she managed to get around it. She saw the bodies of some tiny baby birds flung from their nest.

She was almost to the cove when suddenly the sea came to her. A surge of waves like immense watery hands plucked her from the lawn, from the grass, from the crashed chicken coops and uprooted trees, and bore her into the water.

She felt the wonderful familiar tingle in her legs as they fused together, the power and strength of that glistening tail. With one flick she propelled herself into the deeper water. She kept swimming down beneath the churnings and the surface rage of the bay. She felt the drag of the undercurrents, but they only made the swimming more interesting. It was as if she were trying to thread her way through a water maze. She wanted to get out to beyond Egg Rock where the really big waves would be crashing. In calm weather it took her only two rises to break through the surface for air. But in this hurricane she might have to take three. It was on her second rise that she noticed that everything around her had grown incredibly still. She swam now so that she was almost in a vertical position and lifted herself higher out of the water, which she could do easily by treading water with the flukes of her tail. She seemed to be in a windless pocket of the sea. The water was smooth. When she looked around she saw a swirling vapor, but when she tipped her head straight, it was clear—only stars.
This must be the eye of the hurricane
, she
thought.
I am finally at peace
. Then she laughed.
At peace in the eye of a storm!
It seemed as if she had traveled vast distances to discover something at the very center of her being that she had always known.

And yet
, she thought as she swirled herself about in the still water to face the coast that was only a dim scratchy line behind a veil of flying froth and spume,
and yet all that I have known of love is there
. She could almost hear Ettie’s voice and feel the painter’s eyes on her. She realized with instant clarity that she did not really know what awaited her.

But suddenly she sensed a presence. It was nearby. It wasn’t a seal. She knew how seals swam, she knew their scent. Her heart began to beat wildly. There was someone near…someone…She looked about, frantic with excitement. There was no fear, only the joy of sensing another. The clouds and rains were scraped away and a stream of moonlight fell upon the calm lake in the middle of the stormy sea. There was a glistening flash as the moon’s silver light illuminated a tail, a tail just like her own.

I am not alone! There is a world out there
.