May: Daughters of the Sea #2 (11 page)

She swam close to the seal pup. His eyes were rolled back in his head. He was so exhausted when she approached that he didn’t even put up a fight when she tried to lift his snagged flipper. She treaded water with her tail, and sang a water song
that seemed to come to her while stroking the pup’s head:

It was the watery language that she seemed to know without even realizing that she knew it. The words seemed to hearken to an old memory from the very beginning of her life, and she felt those spaces on either side of her begin to tremble. The seal pup grew calm, and May was able to free his flipper so he could swim back to his mother, who greeted him with yips and whimpers of relief. The mother seal tossed May a fish, but May was not hungry. Still she felt it wouldn’t be right to refuse it. She took a bite and giggled when she realized she was actually eating raw fish. It didn’t taste bad at all. Very fresh, but not bloody like rare meat.

On her first dive down to the wreck she spotted the rudder stuck firmly into the sea bottom. But she
still couldn’t see the hull, and the churning water kicked up screens of sand and mud. The currents were confused here, and there were more eddies than May could count. But she was patient. She anchored herself beside the rudder and decided to wait and watch. She had found that she could stay underwater for great lengths of time and only needed to surface for a few quick gulps of air. May knew that if she waited long enough, she would find a pattern to the seemingly confused currents.

A large school of smelt arrived on the back eddy of one current she had been watching. Almost immediately she noticed them caught by another, stronger current that sucked them straight out from The Bones. She swam in that direction.

It wasn’t long before she saw the hull of the ship rearing from the seafloor. It was half the hull, for as she recalled it had split in two just before it was raked off The Bones. The currents swirled in a counterclockwise direction, so the rest of the ship and its debris might have been carried south and west from this point. Had this happened to the
Resolute
as well? The letter mentioned a lifeboat being found south of Martha’s Vineyard. It was as if the ships were caught in a cross fire of wind and currents and their parts were strewn all over the ocean floor.

But she soon spied the other half, the bow, not far from the aft part of the schooner. The bow was destroyed, but the aft section was amazingly intact. It sat up on the remnants of its keel and looked ready to resume life at sea. There were even portholes still intact. Slowly May approached the round windows. It was a miracle that the glass had not been smashed to smithereens. She was frightened to look in. What if there was a dead man? The captain had never been found. Suppose he was still sitting at his navigation desk? She swam closer, then pressed her nose to the glass. No dead man, but she almost swallowed a mouthful of water and choked. For what stared back at her was a pale face. Was it a specter? She raised her hand, and the specter did as well. She waved and then smiled. She knew that this was her reflection, and yet with the slight distortion
caused by the water, she could imagine another being almost identical to herself. Once again she felt the tingle in those empty spaces and the song she had sung to the seal pup filled her head once more. She pressed her mouth to the glass and whispered, “Someone sang us the song. Someone really did.”

The following morning, after she had finished her chores, May went down to the beach to gaze out to sea. She was thinking about the reflection in the porthole. Water, she knew, distorted light, bent it. This was not called
reflection,
but
refraction.
If she gave it time, she might better understand those mysterious shapes that seemed to swim beside her. She was thinking about all of this when she caught sight of a small day sailer approaching Egg Rock. The lines of the boat were unmistakable. It was a Phineas Heanssler craft. It must be Hugh—Hugh Fitzsimmons! He was actually coming for the book. She could not quite believe it. She had tried to banish any thought of him
since the dance. But she looked out now and saw that sail with a bellyful of wind pulling him toward Egg Rock. Then it dawned on her: She had to get the book before he walked up to the lighthouse. There was no way she would let him inside. Zeeba was especially cranky today. And what would she think of a college boy from away? It would be like mixing oil and water.

May took off and raced up to the path. She must get the book before he got to the dock. A few minutes later she was on the ramp of the dock, panting slightly, with the book in hand.

“Hello!” she called when he was a few yards from the dock’s float. He let the sails flap as the boat coasted in.

“Hello, May. Great day for a sail.” He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat—a summer-folk hat—that cast a slanting shadow across his face. “Can you catch my line?”

He tossed her the painter. She jumped up, still with the book in one hand, and caught the tail end midair. “Good aim,” she said.

“Good catch.” Even through the shadow she saw the flash of his smile.

“I’d invite you up to the house but my mother’s not very well today. But we can walk around the island. It’s not very big.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Here’s the book,” she said, extending her arm. She did not look at him directly. She was unsure what to say next—how to continue the conversation.

“You don’t need it anymore, May? You’re sure?”

“Well, I might need it again sometime. But no, really, you take it for now.”

He tucked it into a satchel and then climbed onto the float. “This island is beautiful. Not a tree on it, but a lovely place.”

“There was a tree once—once upon a time.”

“You make it sound like a fairy tale.”

“Sometimes I think it was. The tree came and went long before my time.” She inhaled sharply. “It’s a hard place to live and grow.” He looked at her and seemed about to say something, and then—she saw it clearly in his eyes—he decided not to.

“Where do you come from?” May asked.

“Rhode Island, but I spent a lot of time in Washington, DC, growing up.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“How can you be from Rhode Island but grow up in another place? It’s different here, I guess.”

“Oh, it was my father’s job. He was a congressman back then.”

“You mean in the United States Congress?” May’s eyes opened wide.

“Yes.”

“You said ‘back then.’ What does he do now?”

“Well, now he’s a senator, actually.”

May was almost speechless. The very air seemed to beg the question.
What in the world are you doing here on Egg Rock?
The words pounded in her head.

They walked around to the east-facing beach, just beneath the cliff she always dove from. The wind had died, and the water stretched out before them like a
metallic sheet. It was an unusually warm day for this time of year.

“You ever go swimming here?” Hugh asked.

It was as if she had been punched squarely in the guts. “Never!” she answered quickly, and there must have been a sharpness in her voice, for Hugh turned to look at her, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

“The currents, I suppose?” he replied. “But not even wading?”

“Not even wading,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

He laughed and bent over and began to unlace his shoes. “I’m going wading. Come on, join me.”

“No, I’d rather not.” She shut her eyes tight. She saw her feet—the glistening scales melting out from beneath her skin. Her toes gradually fusing together …
I am a freak!
And she felt the first tiny fissure cracking in her heart when she looked down at his tousled head as he peeled off his socks. His feet were slender and white. He rolled up the cuffs of his pants. His calves were strong.

When he looked at her over his shoulder his gray
eyes twinkled. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to go wading?”

No! No! I’m not sure at all. I’m not sure of anything!
she wanted to scream. But instead she merely nodded and replied in a low voice, “I’m sure.”

M
AY WAS WALKING BACK FROM SCHOOL.
She had not seen Hugh since the day he had come to pick up the book. But since then he had occupied her thoughts completely.

May had replayed their walk on the beach in her mind a hundred times. There were moments when she thought that he had looked at her as if he was interested in her. When she had said that Egg Rock was a hard place in which to live and grow, it seemed that he had wanted to ask her more but had stopped himself. Was this the detached curiosity of a scientist or something else? It was neither, she thought.
He is the son of a senator. I’m not his kind. Not anyone’s kind!

The image of him removing his shoes and socks was burnished in her mind. She was sure he thought her behavior odd, but that was nothing compared to what he would have thought of her feet if her toes began to web and her skin broke out in its shimmering rash of scales. Before that day she had considered her scales beautiful, but now they felt like a sickness or an allergy. Until Hugh had shown up at Egg Rock, her life since her transformation had arranged itself into two neatly organized existences. At night she crossed a border into one world. By dawn she was back—the slightly awkward tourist in the other world. She thought that she might learn how to balance the two. But since that day on the beach, she realized that it was not likely. The freedom she had reveled in had darkened.

She was always on the lookout for Hugh. He did not seem to be around the village, and when she had asked at the library two days ago, Miss Lowe had said that he had to go back to Boston for a “family reason.” The two words sent a shudder through May.
Of course, he has family.
Why had she
never thought of that before? Something wilted in her as the unspeakable thought flooded through her. Hugh Fitzsimmons had a proper Rhode Island family. She was only a downeast island girl with no family, and only part human.
Which part,
she wondered.
Where does my humanity begin and where does it end?

When May went to school, which she did much more regularly these days, she was caught between the hope and despair of seeing him. So far she had not, and although she always felt slightly deflated, she knew it was for the best.

School seemed rather dull to her since she had returned. Two older girls had dropped out to marry. She was now the oldest student in the small clapboard building on East Street, the only sophomore. Miss Gilbert, the teacher, had her hands full with some rowdy eleven-year-old boys, and May seemed to spend most of her time helping eighth graders learn about common denominators. Her swim to the
Josiah B. Harwood
made it clear that she needed to learn about something called vector diagrams, which showed the motion of an object if it was influenced by forces in more than one direction. Forces like wind and current and objects like the broken hull of the
Josiah B. Harwood
and the spars of the
Resolute.
If she could learn this kind of math, she might be able to calculate where the main part of the wreck of the
Resolute
lay in this vast ocean. But poor Miss Gilbert just didn’t have the time. And good lord, May was sick of teaching kids about common denominators. Percentiles, too! Leon Beal could not for the life of him understand that percentiles were just another way of expressing fractions. And his nose was perpetually snotty, dripping all over his math papers.

May was walking through town toward the wharf because Cletus Weed, the mail boat captain, had said he could drop her off and spare her father the trip.

“A penny for your thoughts, MayPlum.”

It sounded like one word to her, the way Rudd said her name. Since she had started going to school more
regularly, he often caught up with her before she hopped on the mail boat to go back to Egg Rock. He was more deferential, that was for sure. But on the other hand the glint in his eyes had hardened and was no longer simply a flirtatious gleam but one of suspicion. May felt she had to move carefully, and it was perhaps best to keep things light. “Oh, I wouldn’t know where to begin with such penny thoughts.”
With Leon Beal’s snot, perhaps?

“At the beginning, maybe.”

But there was no beginning, really, or at least not one beginning. Since her dive to the
Josiah B. Harwood,
her head had been filled with all sorts of thoughts concerning drift and currents and winds as she tried to calculate where the
Resolute
might be. She was now more certain than ever that the ship had been her birthplace.

After her initial forays into the study of vector diagrams with a book she had found in the library, it was as if she had opened a mathematical can of worms. She had to learn some trigonometry, too, as it would help her pinpoint the location of the
wreck. Dr. Holmes had come into the library just that afternoon and sat with her for forty-five minutes to try to teach her some of the very basic formulas, which focused on measuring the surfaces of spheres. This in theory should help her figure out where the wreckage of the
Resolute
might have drifted.

Should she start speaking in formulas to Rudd? The angle of addition—sine A over sine a = sine B over sine b = sine C over sine c? She had looked at countless charts and maps. She had now reached the conclusion that the wreck of the
Resolute
was either on the edge of Georges Bank or Nantucket Shoals, or possibly the Gulf Stream.

Miss Lowe had even helped her look for old newspapers and had written to the Augusta library. She turned to Rudd. He was easy to fool.

“Oh, I guess I was just dreaming,” she said, and smiled.

“Dreaming of what?” he asked.

Again she noticed that glint of suspicion. He had no right to ask her what she was dreaming. She resented it, just like when he had asked her about
the locket. But she had vowed to keep the conversation light. She must look as if she were just another high school girl thinking about the next dance, a new dress, a new hairstyle. But it wasn’t that easy with Rudd. He might not be smart in the way Hugh was — book smart—but he was sly. She often thought that Rudd might perceive some change in her long before Hugh ever could. For Rudd knew the sea and he knew fish. The thought was alarming. She had heard him on the wharf, bragging about how he could sense where the cod runs would be or the alewife schooling, and May often felt as if he were looking at her. Rudd Sawyer was gaining a reputation as one of the best offshore fishermen on Mount Desert. He had a knack for setting weirs where the biggest schools of young cod and striped bass swam. Then offshore they said he just seemed to have an uncanny sense for where the sword and big cod went for their prey—hake, squid, bluefish. He was making a lot of money and was said to have the largest share of the catch other than Gus Bridges, captain of the
Sea Hound.