Chapter Eight
Visitors
Sariah woke the next morning far too early. She rolled over only to look at the pendulum clock on the wall. Eight-thirteen; she was right. It was too early. She embraced the knowledge and snuggled into her bed further—until she caught the sound of voices again.
Her eyes popped back open. She wished the clock would stop that infernal tick-tocking. She could hardly hear what was going on!
“—quite shocked—” That was Nanny Eleanor, and there was nothing surprising enough about her words to rouse Sariah from her bed.
“Ma’am—” Whoever that was, their voice dropped to an uncomfortable whisper. It sounded like a third person chuckled at one point, but that could have been the second person, as well. The other voice—or voices—were definitely male. That, at least, was intriguing enough to get Sariah out of bed.
She threw off her covers and crept to her door. From there, she could see into the living room, but not the two guests. She could just make out the back of Nanny Eleanor’s dress—which was appalling in itself. Who actually got dressed before eight-fifteen? But Nanny Eleanor was not the type of woman who would be caught in her nightgown, no matter what time it was.
“—excuse me—Phineas—”
“I know—Phineas—couldn’t make it—”
“Ma’am—letter—”
The bits and pieces made absolutely no sense to Sariah. She gritted her teeth and crawled forward a bit more. She moved to the hallway on all fours, past the bathroom...maybe she could hide in there to do her spying…
“Sariah, honesty! Child, what are you doing, crawling about like some kind of animal or street urchin?”
Sariah flinched as she looked up and caught her grandmother’s stare from across the room. Besides her were two handsome men who looked very similar to one another, down to their leather coats and ten-gallon hats.
They seemed like caricatures of cowboys Sariah would have dreamed up in her imagination. They even had on leather boots with spurs.
The one on the left—the taller one, who had more stubble than the one on the right—tipped his hat at her. He actually tipped his hat at her! “Ma’am.”
The fellow on the right did nothing. He just stared at her with a bit of mirth on his face.
“Honestly, and in your nightgown, too,” Nanny Eleanor muttered. “Well? Go change. Right this instant. A lady does not greet guests, however uninvited and unexpected they are, in her nightie.”
Sariah hopped to her feet and scampered back to her room. She tossed on a canary yellow outfit and stumbled back out, all within five minutes. She hadn’t even taken time to brush her hair or teeth, so it was best not to stand too close to Nanny Eleanor.
“Who are you?” Sariah stopped at the kitchen table so she wouldn’t kill anyone with her halitosis.
“I’m James Stevenson,” the one on the left said before he gestured to the one on the right. “And that’s my brother John. We work with Mrs. Eleanor and Mr. Phineas to protect merfolk that come to land. We were just telling your grandmother here how we were her backup. Mr. Phineas couldn’t make it in time for this new rendezvous, so he sent us on ahead. Can’t waste any time when hunters are involved.”
Sariah toyed with the wooden back of the chair. She pulled it forward and rested her foot on the spindle. “Cowboys protecting mermaids?” She wanted to add: seems fishy to me, but she couldn’t bear to have such a terrible pun on her record.
The right one—John—finally chuckled. “We’re not exactly cowboys.”
Sariah gave him a look that hoped he knew just how unamused she was. “Well, we don’t have a mermaid.”
James scuffed his boots along the floor as he crossed his arms. There was a little twinkle of mirth in his eyes. Sariah glared at him. He was the kind of adult that probably thought everything children did was “cute,” in the most condescending sort of way. Nanny Eleanor may have been condescending, but at least she was equally irked by children and adults.
“Well, do you have a merman, then?” He crouched down, as if she were no older than Rosalie and he needed to make eye contact.
Sariah glanced up at Nanny Eleanor, but apparently this furtive look gave her away to the cowboys. James chuckled and stood back up. “I promise that we’re going to take good care of him. Merfolk on land—they don’t need to stay in tubs or pools. They’re meant to be free, and if they can’t be so in the ocean, then we relocate them to lakes or rivers. Other places where they can be safe.”
“No!” The word exploded from Sariah’s lips like it was loaded with gunpowder.
The three people her word was aimed at recoiled, as well, as if she’d hit them.
“Sariah,” Nanny Eleanor began, but faltered. “Think of Leon—just snatched away—”
“No!” Sariah screamed. Let James and John treat her like a petulant child. If that was the way they saw her, she was more than happy to oblige. “No! I don’t want to give you George. I can keep him safe! I don’t need you two idiotic cowboys!”
It wasn’t until Sariah was safely in the bathroom, with the doors locked, that she realized how much she had sounded like Nanny Eleanor in that last sentence.
“Sariah?” George popped up from underneath the bathwater. He rubbed his bleary eyes. “Are you okay?”
“We’re running away, George,” Sariah said. “We’ll be real pirates. Pirates don’t need anybody else.”
“But—you can’t just run away!” George balked.
“You did,” Sariah said stubbornly. “And just because I’m a girl doesn’t make any difference. I’m eleven years old. I’m old enough to look after myself! I’ve been looking after Fitz and Connor and Rosalie for long enough to know what I’m doing.”
Sariah tucked her chin in. Let George argue with her. She hadn’t grown up in a family with five siblings for nothing.
“I don’t think that you shouldn’t run away because you’re a girl.” George blinked his large eyes and shook his head. “Or because you’re eleven. I’m only ten and—you’re right—I did run away. But you can’t run away because you’ve actually got people that love you, Sariah. Nobody in the ocean loved me. At all.”
His dark eyelashes brushed his pale cheeks as he glanced down. Water dripped from his cheeks into the tub, and Sariah wasn’t entirely sure if they were tears or just leftover droplets from where he’d apparently slept underwater.
“Your parents—” Sariah began.
George pursed his lips. There seemed to be so much that he could say, but what he finally settled on was: “No.”
“But—” Sariah began.
George only shook his head.
“Well...that makes my pirate plan all the better. You’re my friend, George, and I’m going to keep you safe. All by myself.”
George looked pained, but he didn’t argue with her. Sariah walked over and grabbed his arms before they repeated their process from yesterday, only with a bit more precision so that he didn’t fall on her again. They somehow managed to get him out with only a bit of thudding and thumping and probably bruising.
A knock came out the door far sooner than Sariah was prepared for—and she was even less prepared when Nanny Eleanor unlocked the door and strode right in. “Sariah?” Nanny Eleanor’s voice was soft, which startled her granddaughter so much that she almost dropped poor George on the floor. “Sariah, dear...I sent them away. I told them to give you some time to come around to it. But—you have to see common sense.” Nanny’s voice was a bit firmer here. “There are people who want to hurt George. If you keep him here, then you’re putting him in danger.”
Sariah tucked her chin in. She wished she could be half as intimidating as Nanny Eleanor, but all her grandmother had to do was look down her nose at someone in that imperious way, and she’d make even the fiercest hunters cower. “That’s not true. You and I can protect him. Forever. We’ll take him home, and—and I can keep him in the lake that Father takes me swimming in…”
“And you’ll put your entire family at risk to be slaughtered by hunters.” Nanny Eleanor gave Sariah the very same dreaded look. Sariah only glared at her grandmother all the more.
For the first time in possibly her whole life, someone had withstood Nanny Eleanor’s look.
That must have surprised Nanny Eleanor, because she raised her eyebrows—especially when Sariah said, “Nobody will know. I won’t tell anyone. Father’s an accountant. Who would ever suspect an accountant of doing anything interesting?”
“I’m afraid you’ve conjured up a fool’s paradise if you believe the hunters will never find you. Phineas—the man who organizes these rescue missions—hasn’t been safe since he saved his first merman. He travels all the time, all over the world, using clever aliases, disguises, and shams. Sometimes that isn’t even enough to save the lives of the mermen—but he tries.”
Sariah twisted up her mouth. She would not budge.
Nanny Eleanor must have sensed this, because she snapped, “Don’t prove me wrong.”
This was typically the time that Sariah would relinquish any point she tried to prove, shut her mouth, and just agree with her grandmother. It was a tactic she’d learned from her sisters and parents. It was rumored that the last person who had dared to push their luck further against Nanny Eleanor had been turned into a frog—or had wound up murdered, depending on who told the tale.
Sariah was about to find out the truth behind the legend. “Prove you wrong how?”
“I picked you to come with me because I thought you alone might be able to help me save these mermen. Frances would flitter her days away, Lizzie would want to dissect them and use them for science—I thought you, at least, would be rational and calm-headed. I won’t last forever, Sariah, but the mermen will always need help. Someone has to come after Phineas and me.”
Surely it was one of the poets who declared that flattery was better than fighting, and that a honeyed word worked better than vinegar. Whoever had said it, though, they were certainly right: Sariah almost felt special enough to give up her argument. But to give that up would mean to give up George, which was the whole reason she held on.
“Well—if I’m going to be you, Nanny Eleanor, I guess I need to learn to stand my ground. I want George to stay. I don’t trust them.” And though she hadn’t really thought of it up until this moment, she suddenly had another piece to play. “Besides, you just sent your letter yesterday evening. How could it have reached Phineas yet? I say those two are in league with Miss de Berry and we shouldn’t trust them. They’re taking advantage of the fact that you haven’t done this in a while.”
The whole room was breathless. Maybe the whole world was. Maybe everyone leaned in close to see what would happen when someone dared defy the force of nature that was Nanny Eleanor.
Nanny Eleanor raised her forehead. Her mouth pursed—before it slowly morphed into a smile. “Well.” She opened her mouth several times, but, suffice to say, she’d never been bested before. It looked like she was ruminating over what would come next. “I hadn’t considered that point.” She gathered herself about, because the world could not continue its orbit if Nanny Eleanor was not back in control. She dusted something off her skirt which was more than likely not there and nodded. “I admit, that’s an interesting hypothesis. When the time comes, you know, you will need to surrender George, but...perhaps now is not the right time.”
Perhaps never was, but Sariah didn’t want to push her luck. She’d already won one battle against Nanny Eleanor. To win two would probably make the universe explode.
Nanny Eleanor nodded, though nothing else had been said. “Yes. Well. I’ll go do a bit more investigating, and…” Her voice trailed off. Her hand dallied on the doorknob. “And...well, I’m proud of you, Sariah.”
Sariah thought she might drop into a dead faint, right there on the bathroom floor.
“Do what you have to do to keep him safe.”
With that, Nanny Eleanor shut the door behind her. And though she hadn’t given her explicit permission, Sariah felt some kind of kindred connection with her grandmother now, and they both knew what needed to be done.
“Come on, George. We’re going to be pirates.”
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