The cord between her and Levi was less perfect, less idealized, but it was no less strong. She loved him, and she loved the baby he had given her, and that love would remain sure and strong and true. She had seen into his heart, the way that women do, and she knew his love would be the same. She would wait for him on a sandy shore on a faraway island, her eyes always watching the sea for some sign of him. She would wait.
Until then, she was swimming fast and free in the ocean, and the ocean welcomed her home.
Well, Barnum reflected, the mermaid show was good while it lasted. He’d had an idea that he might be able to change the girl’s mind and make her stay longer, but after the debacle in Charleston, it probably couldn’t have been salvaged even if she hadn’t disappeared into the sea.
Poor Levi had been mooning around the museum since he got back. Barnum had given the boy the notebook with Amelia’s sketch in it and Barnum had been genuinely afraid Levi would burst into tears when he saw it. The boy had managed to restrain himself, though.
Barnum was on his way back from a business trip to Albany that hadn’t borne the fruit he’d hoped. Because the river was frozen, he’d been forced to take the train; the only consolation was that it stopped in Bridgeport. His half brother Philo had a hotel there, and so Barnum thought it right to spend the night.
Yes, he thought again as he ate his dinner in the hotel restaurant. He’d made a good dollar off the mermaid. It was really too bad it hadn’t lasted longer.
“Taylor,” Philo said, shaking Barnum out of his reverie. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Standing next to his brother was a little boy, so little that he was practically doll-sized. “This is Charles Stratton. Charles, this is my brother, Mr. P. T. Barnum.”
Barnum looked at the boy, who politely said, “How do you do.”
A doll-sized boy! Barnum thought. Barnum could put the little fellow up onstage, dress him in costumes, give him a name. Tom Thumb. He’s just like Tom Thumb from the stories.
A boy like this could make his fortune, Barnum thought. And there would be no disappearing into the ocean this time.
He smiled, a wide showman’s smile that showed all of his teeth.
“I am very pleased to meet you, Charles.”
FOUR YEARS LATER
Amelia watched over her daughter as she splashed in the shallow pool. They were in a little cove, protected by the shade of wide-leafed trees, and the water was not very deep. Despite this, Amelia had to keep a very sharp eye on Charity—the girl was likely to dart off into the deep water if Amelia looked away for a moment. Charity, like her mother once had, was always looking over the horizon for an adventure.
Amelia was grateful for the shade. While the waters of the South Pacific were blue and clear and beautiful, the island was far too warm for one long accustomed to the cold of the North Atlantic coast. Still, they were protected here—protected by the native people who kept them hidden from European colonists, so that word would not spread back to the mainland of a mermaid and her daughter.
Savages, the white men called them. But there was less savagery in them than ever she saw in a civilized country. They accepted Amelia and Charity, accepted what they were without judgment. The people here did not see the mermaids as a wonder, or a horror, or as animals, or as humans. The people saw them as mermaids and accepted them as part of the order of the world.
“Charity,” Amelia said warningly.
The little mermaid had seen a hermit crab carrying its shell across the shallow pool, and followed it closely. When Charity reached the edge of the shallow, the place where the sand dropped off into the deeper water, she glanced over her shoulder to see if her mother was watching.
Amelia shook her head. Charity’s small mouth twisted when she realized she could not explore past the edge of the pool.
Charity’s tail was red-gold and flapped in the water as she swam back to her mother. Amelia’s daughter looked more like Barnum’s woodcuts of a mermaid—her skin was still human above her fin and only changed to scales at her waist. She would, when she grew older, look exactly as so many sailors had dreamed—half human, half fish, a man’s dream of a mermaid.
The tiny mermaid touched the sand and turned completely into a human toddler, dark-haired and dark-eyed like her father and nut-brown from the sun.
“It’s time for dinner,” Amelia said, and took Charity’s plump little hand.
They strolled along the beach away from the cove. There was a little hut where they slept and ate a short distance from the shallow pool. Amelia had caught some fish earlier in the day, and they would roast these over a fire. Charity had very human tastes, preferring her food cooked instead of raw. Her teeth, even when she was a mermaid, were not sharp like Amelia’s but flat like a human’s.
She squeezed the hand of her daughter, the little miracle that she had wished for, for so long. Her daughter would grow up here, safe from eyes that stared and claimed and tried to make something of her that she was not. When she was older she would make her own choice—to stay here, or to return to Amelia’s people in the sea, or to live as a human in a land far away.
It was the fate of parents to have to let their children go, so they could make their own triumphs and their own mistakes. When Amelia thought of those days, she would, as now, pick up Charity and hold her tight and wish her daughter could stay in her arms forever.
Charity allowed the hug only briefly before squirming out of Amelia’s embrace. She ran a little ahead of her mother, then stopped and pointed.
“Mama,” she said, “who’s that?”
There was a man standing near their hut, a white man in a suit entirely impractical for the island. His hand shaded his eyes, and he stared out at the ocean, looking for someone.
Amelia’s heart leapt. She’d hardly allowed herself to think of him, to wonder if he would ever come, but she’d felt that cord that bound them always, and sometimes she would roll over in the night and reach for him and find he wasn’t there.
“Mama?” Charity asked as Amelia began to run.
“It’s your father,” Amelia said, picking up their daughter and running with her over the sand. “Charity, it’s your father.”
AFTERWORD
When writing a book that includes a historical figure, there is always the temptation to cleave closely to the historical reality of that person—in this case, P. T. Barnum. Much has been written about Barnum (especially by himself—he wrote several books and modified his own autobiography numerous times), and so there was plenty of material for me to explore in writing this book.
However, I found that ultimately it did not serve the story if I presented the precise Barnum in all his complicated glory. My Barnum is a character who shares some characteristics with the real Barnum, but he is not meant to be a true, historically accurate rendition of Barnum.
He is the Barnum who suits my story, and if it’s not exactly reality—well, the Feejee Mermaid didn’t really exist, either.
I did use much of the existing historical record about the Feejee Mermaid hoax, including the performance by Levi Lyman as Dr. Griffin and the southern tour, and modified it to suit my mermaid.
As for Levi Lyman, he is often presented only as one of Barnum’s co-conspirators for the two most famous Barnum hoaxes—Joice Heth and the Feejee Mermaid. I wanted to know more about Levi Lyman but found information on him after the hoaxes to be very sparse. Like all fiction writers, I made up his story when I couldn’t find the one I wanted to read.