“A stone?” I guessed.
The amused gleam in her eyes only confused me further. “It’s a mermaid’s tear,” she responded.
A what? Did she mean a mermaid-mermaid, like a woman with a fish’s tail and a crab for a best friend? Look, I’ve got an open mind.You never know, after all. I believed in the tooth fairy until I was eleven, and I’m ashamed to admit I still gaze longingly at the fireplace when Christmas comes. Who am I to judge anyone for what they do or don’t believe?
“A mermaid’s tear? You mean like…a real mermaid?” I asked, feigning indifference.
She laughed a sweet, musical, throaty laugh. Her accent was French, not the usual accent of the French Canadians or the islanders. Hers was much softer.
“No, dear. People have different names for them: mermaids’ tears, sea crystals… They’re actually just bits of glass thrown up by the ocean. My name’s Adele, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Harper.”
“Nice to meet you as well, Harper. I haven’t seen you around here.”
There was kindness, but also caution in her approach.
“It’s the first time I’ve been to the island. I got here yesterday on the last ferry. The, uh…the yellow house in Old Bay belongs to my sister.”
She nodded, and her shoulders relaxed. I don’t know why, but my answer had relieved her.
“Yes, I know it. It’s a beautiful place. My friend Molly used to be the owner. She inherited it from her parents and turned it into a cute little bed-and-breakfast, but then she got sick and had to put it on the market. Poor Molly. She left us not long ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, it was a major blow for all of us who knew her. She’s the one who taught me how to look for mermaids’ tears.”
I smiled awkwardly, unsure what else to say, thinking maybe our conversation was at an end, but she continued to study me with no apparent thought of going anywhere.
“Why do they call them that?” I asked to break the silence.
“There’s a legend behind it…”
A gust of wind hit, blowing up sand around us, and I blinked to keep it from getting in my eyes. Another, more violent one followed, and the waves rolled in up to our calves. When they broke, the sound was deafening, and I noticed the white and gray clouds rushing across the sky. The weather was getting worse.
“Are you in the mood for a tea? I live in the blue house on the cliff. It’s close by. And it’s been forever since Sid and I had anyone over. It would be nice to talk with an outsider for a while.”
“Who’s Sid?” I asked, surprised at the invitation.
“My husband.”
I didn’t think it was a good idea. I knew nothing about that woman or her husband. Think of all the stories that begin with an innocent invitation and end with a girl chained up in a basement. Okay, sometimes my imagination gets the better of me. But it was getting windy.I should probably go back home before it gets worse and I can’t, I thought. But then the image of that empty, lonely house with no distractions depressed me.
“It would be a pleasure to have tea with you,” I responded.
Adele’s house was deep blue with white window frames, two stories, with an attic and a dark slate roof. From outside, it was hard to tell how bright and spacious it was inside. I followed her to the kitchen and sat at the table while she put a kettle on the stove and brought out two antique-looking cups from a cabinet. On the counter was a jar of butter cookies. She served a half dozen of them on a plate.
Outside, over the roar of the wind, I heard a rhythmic pounding, as if someone were cutting firewood or maybe felling trees. Inside, I heard the ticking of a clock. Adele, I realized, didn’t mind long silences the way some people did. As for me, they made me nervous.
When I was with other people, I felt I simply had to fill the air for reasons even I didn’t really understand, and when I had nothinginteresting to say, that only made it worse. Often, my mouth kept moving even when my mind told it to close. I could feel this about to happen again as I started to tell her how pretty her house was, but she cut me off with a mysterious expression on her face.
“Legend has it that mermaids are born with the power to control nature. They can change the ocean’s currents or the direction of the wind. They can even provoke storms. But Neptune, the god of the sea, forbade their doing it. One cold, tragic night, a horrible tempest was unleashed, and a ship traveling the ocean found itself in the midst of a hurricane. The captain and his loyal sailors fought the wind and waves for hours to stay afloat. He remained at the wheel, and not even the tearing of the sails or the creaking of the masts broke his nerves. Finally, a powerful wave struck and he lost his balance and fell into the sea.”
She paused when the kettle started to whistle, taking it off the stove and pouring the boiling water into two cups with tea bags. When she sat back down in front of me, she put two lumps of sugar into hers. Then she continued. “A mermaid had been watching the captain from the distance, admiring his strength and courage. Never before had she seen a man so daring, and she fell in love with him without realizing it. When she saw him struggling not to drown, she felt forced to break Neptune’s rule, and she calmed the wind and the waves, allowing the captain to make it back to his vessel safely.”
I was enraptured by her tale and the sound of her voice, and a strange feeling that I had seen Adele before grew in me as I listened.
She continued, “Neptune found out what the mermaid had done. Angry, he exiled her to the furthest depths of the ocean, never allowing her to surface again. She accepted her punishment and swam far away from the captain who had stolen her heart, crying endlessly in despair, eaten up by sorrow. And ever since that day, her glimmering glass tears wash up on the shore as an eternal reminder of her love.”
