Part 10 (1/2)

Where You'll Never Cry No More Once upon a time, in a little seaside town, a boy named Jack was put into bed in the attic room of the town's only inn. Jill sat down on the bed beside him and stared. The bandages on his head were red and soaked through, and his face was very pale.

”Will he be all right?” Jill asked quietly.

The innkeeper stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. She answered Jill in her broad, salty accent. ”I fancy he will. He just needs a bit a sleep, and some food, and he'll be right as the rain, I reckon.” Her Rs were broad and rolling, like everything else about her. They made Jill feel a little seasick. Or maybe that was seeing Jack, as still and pale as death.

”Thank you,” Jill said.

”You can come down when you're ready,” the innkeeper said. Jill had agreed to help out around the inn-sweep the floors, do the dishes, that sort of thing-in exchange for the room and food.

Jill nodded and the innkeeper left. Jill knelt down by Jack. Gently she pulled back the covers. He did not stir.

The frog had been weeping quietly ever since he'd seen Jack there at the base of the hill. ”Leave me here,” he said, and Jill took him from her pocket and placed him, oh so gently, on Jack's chest. ”I'll keep watch,” the frog said. ”You go downstairs now and earn our keep.” He smiled his bravest froggy smile at Jill. Jill returned the smile sadly, stole a final glance at pale Jack, and went downstairs with a heavy heart.

That night, Jill was kept very busy in the tavern. She cleaned up spilled ale and cleared scotch whisky gla.s.ses from the rough wooden tables and brought plates of kippered herring and cracked snails in pails. It seemed that every fisherman and his wife was in the tavern that night. They stank of fish, but their smiles were broad, and their eyes twinkled kindly when Jill came by.

”Now, what have we here?” a big-bellied man said. ”What's this wee la.s.s doin' in our town?”

Jill answered their questions in a vague sort of way and tried not to drop any dishes on the floor. The work and the talk and all the new people helped Jill to think just a little bit less about the pale boy with the red bandage who lay on the verge of death upstairs.

After the townspeople had all been drinking for a long while, the big-bellied man called Jill over to him. He had a s.h.i.+ny bald head and a big red beard. He smiled at Jill and his eyes twinkled. ”You wanna hear a story, then?” His breath smelled like whisky and his clothes smelled like fish.

”Now don' scare the girl,” someone shouted at him, and ”girl” had too many syllables.

The red-bearded, big-bellied man laughed and looked at Jill. ”I don't think ya scare easily. Do ya?” Jill set her chin and shook her head. He bellowed with laughter and said, ”See!”

So he set her on a stool beside him, and the tavern quieted down, and the man began to tell his story.

”Once upon a time,” he said, ”there was a wee fis.h.i.+n' village that sat next to the wide black sea, in the shadow of some high green hills.”

”They're mountains!” someone shouted.

”Me foot!” called someone else, and everybody laughed.

”In the shadow of high green hills,” the red-bearded man repeated, smiling, and his Rs rolled like rowboats on the ocean. ”And in this wee town there was a wee la.s.s. Just about the size of ye,” and he poked Jill in the chest with a thick finger. Reluctantly, Jill smiled.

”Well, this la.s.s loved the sea,” he continued. ”She would go out and stare at it, drinkin' in its vastness and its darkness, as if the black waves made some kind of mirror where she could see herself. At least, that's what the villagers whispered to one another as they watched her, with the wind blowin' her hair this way and that, at the end of the rocks.”

The tavern had gone silent now. Someone began to snuff out the candles, one by one, until the only light came from the flickering peat fire. The hairs on Jill's arms began to rise and stand up.

”But thas not what the la.s.s was looking at. She weren't lookin' at nothin'. She were listenin'. Listenin' to the song of the mermaid.”

”I knew it!” someone shouted. ”The man's obsessed with the mermaid!”

”Shhhh!” hushed all the others. And the red-bearded man went on.

”The mermaid sings more beautiful than any mortal has ever heard. Her notes rise like gulls on the wind, and sink like the moon sinks into the sea. She holds 'em high, and sings 'em way down low, like the very sea itself. But no mortal can hear them save a young girl. And no young girl can ever resist their sound.

”Well, one day, the mermaid spoke to that little girl, her hair bein' blown 'round, way out on the rocks. And the mermaid asked if the little girl wouldna like to come and live with her under the sea. And the little girl said she would. Well, tha' night, as we sat here in this tavern, we looked out the window and saw a great black wave rise up out o' the sea. And that wave swallowed the wee la.s.s whole. And we ne'er saw her again. And that's the truth.”

The tavern was silent now.

At last, Jill whispered, ”Is that really the truth?”

”We don't know,” the innkeeper said. ”We did a lose a la.s.s in the sea years ago. But all this mermaid stuff? That's just a tale told.”

”It's true enough!” the red-bearded man said. ”There is a mermaid out there. I've seen her.”

”Have ye heard her?” someone asked.

”No, she sings only to the little girls,” said the man. ”But she's out there all righ'.”

”And how do you know it was she that took the girl and not jus' the sea?”

”I know,” said the bearded man darkly. ”I jus' know.”

After that, the people of the tavern filed out into the pitch blackness, wending their way over stones and dirt to their homes that climbed the sides of the hills. Jill followed them out and watched them go. She watched the red-bearded man particularly. She saw that he lived all alone, in a small hut that stood closer to the rocks and the sea than any of the other villagers.

Jill wondered about the little girl who had disappeared. She wondered if she liked it under the sea, with the mermaids. She went up to her room, wanting to tell Jack the story. But he was still asleep. As was the frog, who was snoring ridiculously. She decided not to wake them.

The windows were like walls it was so black out. No moon, no stars, no light at all. The wind rattled the door on its hinges, and the sea spumed and tossed. Jill, lying on her little bed of straw, could hear the crash of the waves against the craggy rocks. She had never felt such a night, never known the fear and thrill of lying so close to sea and wild. Her body sang. She could not sleep.

Late, late that night, when the wind had died down and the crash of the waves on the rocks had subsided into a calm, rhythmic beat, Jill sat up in bed. Just above the sound of the waves, she heard a high note, held for an impossibly long time.

A weather vane, Jill thought. It must be the creaking of a weather vane.

The note fell-no, it swooned, as if fainting. Then it rose again, running in and out of the beating waves like a flute among a slow, funerary pulse of drums. Jill lay back down. Just a weather vane. Or hinges, creaking.

She lay in bed, listening to the long, plaintive sound. It stretched out across the darkness, and in the corners of the night it seemed to wrap into a pattern of words. Yes, Jill thought as she stared at the ceiling and listened. The notes had words. She sat up again and tried to hear them. She did hear them.

Come, come, where heartache's never been, the song went.

And where you're seen as you want to be seen.