Water Steps (11 page)

“Since when do you tell us where you're going rather than ask?” Pep wanted to know.

“I . . . I . . .”

“That's what I thought.”

“But I did it. I walked on the beach.”

“Don't think you can distract us, young lady.” Mem tapped my head. “You can't go wandering off without permission.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Well, you just remember that each night next week when you have to bid Tylo happy hunting.”

“No!”

“That's going light, if you ask me,” Mem said. “I could use a bit of help cleaning that house of ours from top to bottom.”

“No way!” When Mem said “clean,” she meant sleeves up, knees down on the floor, scrub until you faint kind of clean.

“And I could use a little help organizing all my files and shelving all my books.” Filing and alphabetizing until my eyes crossed? No, thank you.

Tugging at Pep's sleeve, I said, “Please no, please?”

“All right then, you should be happy with no owl hunting or leaving the house with Tylo for a week.”

“And I can't believe I'm saying this,” Mem shook her head, “but no going down to the lake either.”

“Okay.”

Funny, but I felt a little bigger, like I'd walked through the woods alone for the first time. I'd never
been grounded before. Never left Mem and Pep long enough to get into any kind of trouble. I felt bad for worrying them. Knew I'd done the wrong thing by not asking them if I could go, but I still felt pretty good for heading out on my own and for not going stone freaky when that storm hit. Hey, I'd even faced down my worst memory and come out walking on my own two feet. Grounded or not, it felt pretty good to take a step in the right direction.

T
ylo showed up for owling the next night. All I had to offer him were shortbread biscuits and milk. After a little pouting and a mouthful of biscuits, he seemed just fine with that.

“These cookies are great, Mrs. Monahan!” he said, doing the Cookie Monster spray with his crumbs.

Pep tapped him on the head with the daily paper as he passed. “I made them.”

“You did?” Tylo asked, swigging milk. “My dad tried making rice cereal bars once and he thought if he cooked the marshmallows until they got black they'd be like burned campfire bars. Didn't work. We had to throw out the pan.”

Pep laughed. Mem made a noise while washing the dishes—a warning Pep didn't listen to at all. “Itha there's grand at the cooking, but baking? Run out of the kitchen if you plan to live. That one used salt instead of sugar in making soda bread. Now, I like my water salty like any ocean-loving fella, but not my bread.”

“You drink salt water?” Tylo asked.

Pep took a swig of his tea, “Doesn't everybody?”

Tylo stared at me. I recognized the look. The
are your parents for real?
stare I got any time I brought a new kid home. With all their talk of salt water, fairies, and silkies, who could tell what was real and what was joshing?

But Tylo didn't seem to mind. He just wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then sat forward to ask, “So how many silkies have you seen?”

Oh, no. Now he'd really find out how crazy my parents could be.

Pep tilted his head a little, like he might have water in his ear, then said, “Did you say, silkies?”

“Yeah, silkies. I've seen one. Heard more, but I just saw the one.”

“Did you now?” Pep's smile looked forced, like he heard a joke he didn't like, but wanted to be polite.

I'd expected Pep to go into his now-let-me-tell-you-this-about-that storytelling mode. Why didn't he? Oh, right. He wasn't into telling any stories that day. I'd been trying since breakfast to get him and Mem to tell me more about the friends who'd helped them in their search for me, but I'd only gotten, “Oh, they're just old friends,” over and over.

“That's right.” Tylo pointed at me to tell them about our silkie spotting.

If Pep knew about that, he'd start thinking I believed his fairy tales, so I body-checked Tylo and said, “I told him you know the story of how the silkies got into this lake.”

Tylo stared at me, but I'd found Pep's on switch. He got all chipper and set to telling, “Oh, of course I do. Every good Irish lad knows how the silkies came to Lake Champlain.”

And off he went. I sat there listening, knowing the words so well they just flowed through my head like music.

Why couldn't Pep talk to me like that about the real past? About his own family? Mem had at least told me about Brida and her brother Shannon. But Pep hadn't told me a thing about his childhood. Yet, I knew fairies stole children, pookas preyed on lost
travelers, and brownies would never touch a shoe. I knew more about a bunch of mythical creatures than I did about my own dad.

“Did you hear that, Kyna!” Tylo gave me a shove.

“There's a whole pod of them in the lake. We're bound to get a picture of one. You'll win that ribbon for sure!”

Great. Now my parents were going to think I really believed in silkies. I'd never hear the end of it. But they just stared at me, Mem standing beside Pep, her hand on his shoulder.

Mem sounded distracted, even distant. “How about a board game?”

“Oh, right,” Tylo shook his head. “You're grounded.”

“Doesn't mean we can't have fun here.” Mem forced a smile, then led the way into the living room. We may have taken over Atlantic City in Monopoly and become a human pretzel in Twister, but Mem and Pep seemed to be pushing themselves to have fun. I kept wondering what had happened. Did they finally see something wrong with all their silly fairy tales now that a friend of mine believed in them?

After Tylo went home, full of biscuits and goofy stories to tell his brothers, I said to them, “You know I don't really believe in silkies. I just told Tylo I did so we could be friends.”

Mem glared at me. “Kyna Moira Monahan, what kind of friendship can be built on a lie?”

“Just a little one. He had to have seen something in that lake. I'll just take a picture of it and prove to him that it isn't a silkie.”

“You'll do no such thing. You're grounded, remember.” Mem spoke to me in anger, real face-twisting anger. I'd never actually seen her mad like that before.

“Okay.” I felt like shrinking into my slippers and shuffling off to bed.

Pep didn't even try to lighten things up with a joke. He just kept putting the games away.

“I'm sorry.”

“You should've thought of that before you ran off and tangled the Bishops up in this mess.”

“Itha,” Pep breathed out a warning as he stood.

Mess? What mess? I'd just said I would take a picture of a silkie.

Mem stomped off, spurting something in Irish. Pep followed her, answering in the same language. I hated it when they did that.

As I tromped off to bed, my thoughts started bumping around, trying to figure things out. What had Mem and Pep so out of sorts? Pep seemed awful nervous when I had tried to ask questions of his friends. Is that
what started things in the wrong direction?

I could see all those people in my mind. How they sat so close together, wore such similar clothing, and turned as one when someone spoke. They reminded me of something I'd seen—bright, fluid, moving as one, like . . . like a school of fish. The fish Grandma Brida used to love to watch. That set me to wondering. How'd she just sit there and watch fish underwater?

Mem's description of her childhood echoed in my ears, “Most days you couldn't catch me out of the water.”

And all the sea animals she'd saved. And me. She'd saved me. Pep tried so hard to save my family he nearly died. Practically living in water, saving people, born in Ireland . . .

No. They couldn't be. Silkies aren't real. They're make-believe. Silkies didn't live in that lake or come onto dry land to hide their pelts and walk around like regular people. If they had, Mem and Pep would've died of sadness long ago.

I mean, they'd been away from the water for a good eight years now. How could they live that long out of the water? That question sat me up in bed. Was that why they'd come back to Lake Champlain? To
be with other silkies? To swim at night as seals, then return to the house as humans in the light of day?

My parents couldn't be silkies. That'd be like finding out your grandfather was Santa Claus. But the salt in the tea, the silence about their past, the love of water, the protection of nature, it all fit.

But if it fit, I didn't. I'd kept them away from water. Made them live in a dry, dusty old house miles and miles and miles away from the ocean or even a lake. Was that why they wanted me to get over my fear of water so they could tell me their secret? Return to the sea?

Would they find me new parents and leave me here?

I wanted to cry out. To bring them running so they could hold me and tell me it would all be okay.

“No silkies here,” Pep would say.

“Just us Irish,” Mem would laugh.

That's right. I'd let my imagination run away with me. Mem and Pep just loved the water like I loved photography and walks in the woods, and I'd get that photograph of a dog or a jumping fish or whatever Tylo had seen in the water and prove it once and for all. There are no silkies. And my parents are just as normal and everyday as the bed in which I tried to sleep.

But every time I shut my eyes, I could see Mem and Pep far out on the rocks, looking back at me over their shoulders just before they dove into the water and swam and swam, far away from me.

I
woke up to find Pep perched on my windowsill, his feet in the chair next to it. He sat there writing fast and furious, like it might save a life. Seeing me awake, he said, “Now before you set your mind to thinking, answer me this. What would've happened if Mem and I didn't let you go taking those water steps? Just threw you in a lake to make you learn to swim again?”

The very idea had me scrambling against the wall, pulling the covers up against me, ready to kick and scream until he forgot any such notion.

Pep dropped his notebook and jumped to his feet. “Hold on, now.” He looked frustrated, scared even. He
cursed in Irish, I could hear the bite of it in the words. “I'd never do that, Kyna. You know that.”

Catching my breath, I nodded, agreeing. Sure, Mem and Pep pushed me to get over my fear, but hadn't they given me seven long years to do it?

Yeah, they did.

And if what I'd thought the night before could be, might be true, why would they leave me now if they'd already stayed all this time? Had I taken too long to overcome my fear? Did they have to return to the water or . . . I didn't even want to think it. Not Mem and Pep. I loved them so much.

The idea of it had me stunned. I just sat there, listening, struggling to pull in the fear that came spilling out of me.

Pep said, “You see, Kyna, a pep tries to do the right thing. But it's hard. You don't always know what that is.”

I wrestled with the very same problem. It made me shiver from the inside. Did I tell them I'd figured out they were silkies? Would they laugh at me?

Pep said, “And with the story behind where your mem and I come from, well, telling you that story would be a bit like dropping you into a lake. A little too much all at once. Thought we could do it a bit at a time. In steps, like we've done with water.”

Fairy steps? Was that why Pep had been telling me all those stories about fairies and pookas and leprechauns? He wanted to get me to make room in my mind for the idea that such creatures could be real? To believe that he and Mem were actually silkies?

To find out if that‘d been his plan, all I had to do was say it out loud.
Silkies. You and Mem are silkies.
Just a few little words. Why couldn't I get them to come out of my mouth?

Because I didn't want them to be true. Didn't want to know they'd lived all cooped up and dry so far away from their families and their watery home just because I couldn't face my stupid fear.

But no more. I'd do it. I'd face that water and win. Then they could tell me. I could watch them dive into that water and not be scared. Not worry that they'd drown or swim away from me.

But just the thought of them standing on those rocks, looking over their shoulders, then diving into that deep, dark water where I couldn't go had me ready to curl up into a ball like a poked crab.

Angry at myself for letting fear pull me back again, I stood up, saying, “Maybe you should've just thrown me in. Made me face my fear and get it over and done with.”

Pep's eyes went wide. “Well, I, for one, am not
ready to try that.” He stood up. “Kyna, if we do the wrong thing here, your fear of water may have a hold on you for the rest of your life.”

Not if I could help it.

“We all right with taking a few more steps then?” He looked down at me, hopeful.

I nodded.

“Right, then.” He looked happy enough to float. “I'll set to fixing breakfast.”

Giving me a kiss on top of the head, he walked to the stairs.

I went to my closet to get dressed, but my mind tossed and turned over the very idea that more than just the ocean stood between Mem and Pep and me. All this time, I'd thought they were Irish and I was American. Now they might be silkies and me only human. It's one thing to be a different nationality, but a whole different species?

“You trying your hand at mind control?” Mem asked, walking past my open door as she wrapped her wet hair into a towel. “The door opens much faster with the handle, see.” She disappeared into her bedroom.