Willa.” She jumped. Horace was peering around the edge of a high, wing-backed chair by the window. “Come in.”
Willa shook her head. “I’m not supposed to be in here. Miss Trang said. I just noticed the plant was dying....”
Horace raised an amused eyebrow. “It’s quite all right. Come in. I’ll take the blame if Miss Trang catches you. Besides, the hibiscus has already invited you in.” He gestured to the plant. “Does it look like it’s dying?”
She took a step into the room and looked the plant up and down. It was perfectly green, healthy, and bushy. It was sending runners out all over the room. They trailed across the tops of the bookshelves and down the sides. One little vine was even draped over Horace’s chair.
“But ... the leaves that were sticking out of the door were dead.”
Horace laughed and shook a finger at the plant. “Playing tricks on our new friend!” He turned back to Willa. “I think it was just curious to meet you.”
“Curious? How could it be curious?”
“Come over here. Have a seat.”
She gingerly walked over to join him. She sat in one of the big leather chairs, her feet dangling. Horace pulled a volume from a shelf and flipped through the pages. He showed her a diagram of the same plant. “Gossiping hibiscus. Very rare.”
“Why is it called that?”
Horace smiled. “Plants have all the patience in the world. The only thing they have to worry about is growing. This one, however, listens. It knows all our secrets and one day it might just tell all!”
Willa was staring at him. “But plants can’t talk.”
“It called you in here, didn’t it? You heard it.”
He replaced the book as Willa thought about the tapping leaves. And the other odd things in the house.
“Can you tell me about the brownie?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I still don’t know why he left. And is he really a brownie?”
Horace leaned on one elbow. “He certainly is. Brownies are very hard workers. That little fellow kept this whole place together. Worked day and night. Never complained and never took a day off. But brownies are also very secretive. If you try to see one, they pack up and leave forever.” He snapped his fingers. “And you’re left to wash your dishes yourself.”
Willa thought this over. “When Miss Trang got so angry ...”
Horace stopped her. “Willa, surely you’ve noticed there are some rather ... odd things about this place. Miss Trang is very worried about people out there finding out about us. She just wants to keep outsiders out. When she became so angry with you, she wanted to scare you into staying away.”
“So she wouldn’t really have hurt me?”
Horace sighed. “Well, I can’t say that for sure. Miss Trang is full of surprises. None of us are entirely sure what it’s capable of.”
“It?”
Horace smiled. “I meant ‘she,’ of course. Now maybe you’d better scoot out of here before she gets back, hmm?”
Willa nodded.
On her way back down the hall she paused at the bathroom door. Belle loved her two- and three-hour baths, but it sure was a pain to mop up all the water she left on the floor. Willa had no idea how Belle managed to climb from the tub into her wheelchair on her own. She tapped gently on the door.
“Belle? Are you going to be much longer? I need to clean in there.” No answer. “Do you need any help? Belle?” She put her ear to the door and to her horror heard a faint gurgling sound. Dropping the watering can she jerked the door open, but it caught on the chain. Through the crack she saw Belle sit up in the tub with a splash, hissing at her angrily: “GET OUT!!”
“Sorry!” Willa quickly retreated. She leaned against the closed door for a moment and shut her eyes. The scene flashed through her mind ... the silvery hair, the shiny white skin ... the green scales, the fins.
Belle was a mermaid.
Chapter Four
A weekend of worries and a very, very strange dinner
Willa finished up her work in the kitchen, trembling and anxious. Above her she heard Belle roll out of the bathroom and down the hall into her room, slamming the door behind her. Willa left for home soon after, ducking out before Miss Trang came home. It was Friday, so she had all weekend to fret and worry. Would Belle tell on her? Willa figured the fact that Belle was a mermaid would be pretty high on the list of things Miss Trang didn’t want her to know about. She shivered every time she thought about Miss Trang getting angry. And every time she shut her eyes she saw the glimmering scales. At least now she knew why Belle wanted so badly to go to the ocean.
The weekend crawled by. There was no distraction from her worries until Sunday night, when Grandpa came over for dinner.
“Willa the Whisp!” he cackled as she ran up to give him a big hug. His ratty old sweater smelled of pipe smoke and salt air. His sunbeaten face was set in a perpetual grin, and his white hair stuck out in all directions, like he’d just come in from a gale. Willa always teased him about his hair. She even put a comb in his Christmas stocking one year, but he’d just laughed and played a tune on it with tissue paper.
Over dinner Grandpa entertained them with his favourite topics: the weather, the sea, and the weather out on the sea. Willa even forgot about Belle for a few minutes, listening happily.
Grandpa was loud and full of life. She could just picture him out on the water in his little boat, waving and calling out to the other boats. She knew his bad luck had made him infamous among the other fishermen. They all had good years and bad years, but Grandpa hadn’t caught a single fish for as long as Willa had been alive, and even before. Whenever his boat wasn’t rented out he’d still go out on the ocean, but not to fish. He claimed his trips were “picnic pleasure cruises,” but Willa knew he still had nets and rods stowed away on the boat, all carefully maintained and at the ready. Once he’d told her some of the other fishermen wouldn’t even talk to him, they thought he was bad luck. Willa had been outraged, but he’d just laughed. “Superstitious old fools!”
Now, as Grandpa paused to shovel down his vegetables, Willa stared down at her peas and carrots and thought about the ocean. In her mind she saw Belle, slipping out of her wheelchair and sinking down into the sea, her silvery hair floating on the water and her tail flicking shimmery droplets into the air.
She cornered him after supper while her parents cleared the table.
“Grandpa ... there are a lot of ... strange things living in the ocean, right?”
“You bet.”
“Things that seem ... magic, even?”
He looked at her curiously. “Spit it out. What do you want to know?”
“Have
