Why I Let My Hair Grow Out Read online

  “And yet you swear there was no tilling?” the king challenged.

  “I’m sorry,” I said meekly. “But what is tilling, exactly?”

  The guy with the scroll cleared his throat. “Tilling. It’s when the plough is pushed deeply into the life-giving soil. When the blade of the hoe pierces the warm and welcoming earth. When the farmer’s tool plunges into the fertile field—”

  “Nope,” I said quickly. “There was none of that.”

  The king seemed skeptical. “But the earth turned?” he demanded again. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! God. Did it ever. And absolutely no tilling.” I didn’t want to get into any more details in front of Erin, but this time the chief flunky came to my assistance.

  “Don’t worry, your majesty,” the fish-man said, loudly enough for Erin to hear. “If she’s lying, they will not survive the trip back. The power of the enchantment will see to that.”

  “Indeed.” The king scowled at me. I could see Erin’s eyes grow wide with fear.

  “Very well then. We will give you the girl,” said the king. Without waiting another second, Erin raced to my side and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “But still,” the king continued, “we must ask for something in return.”

  I have a nonrefundable Aer Lingus ticket to New York for a flight that leaves on Sunday, I thought. And my enchantment-breaking services are pretty booked. But I listened.

  “One of our own kind is marooned on land. Foolish girl! She lent a fisherman her red cap, and now he refuses to return it unless she marries him and gives him all her sea treasure.”

  “What a jerk,” I said sympathetically. “But can’t she get herself another hat? You seem to have a lot of them.” And in fact every one of the naked merrow-people was wearing a small red hat made of feathers, all identical except for the king’s, which had a crownlike shape and a starfish perched festively on top.

  They looked at me like I was stupid.

  “Without our red caps, none of us can pass through the sea,” explained the flunky. “We’re not fish, you know.”

  Erin had her arms tightly around my waist. If they expected me to leave her here while I went shopping for a hat for this gullible mermaid—no way. I was taking Erin with me, no matter what.

  “What is it I have to do?” I said, preparing to stand firm.

  “All we need”—and now the king sounded humble—“is a lock of your hair.”

  My beautiful, waist-length, reddish-gold hair? Please. “You can have it all,” I said. “Give me a scissor; I’ll chop it off right now.”

  He held up a hand. “One lock will be sufficient to weave a cap that will bring her safely home. Besides, you will need the rest to secure your safe return through the waves,” he said, “and that of your sister.”

  She wasn’t my sister, of course, but whatever. With the sharpened edge of a piece of whalebone they sliced off a lock of my hair for their lost merrow and another that I braided tightly into Erin’s wheat-colored hair.

  “I wish I could see,” Erin said, excited. “How do I look?” Tammy was the same way, always decorating her hair with little plastic bows and barrettes and dancing around in front of the mirror.

  “Like a little mermaid,” I said, and turned to the king. “Now how do we get home?”

  He pointed straight ahead. Behind us was the cave entrance. Outside we could see the dark ocean water, held back by whatever magic kept this merrow-world dry at the bottom of the sea.

  “Go back the way you came,” he intoned. “Follow the green lady; she’ll show you out.”

  We did as we were told, and the same stacked merrow who’d escorted me here led us back into the mouth of the cave. Erin stuck one finger into the wall of water and pulled it out quickly.

  “Cold!” she said.

  “Once you get in it’s fine,” I told her. I took her hand and held it tightly.

  The green merrow pointed up.

  “You’re not coming?” I asked.

  She shook her head and smiled and wiggled her webbed fingers.

  “Ciao!” she said, and ran off.

  “Do you know the way?” asked Erin, looking up at me with eyes full of trust and hero-worship.

  “Sure,” I said. Find our way back to dry land from the bottom of the middle of the ocean, and all without a map or an oxygen tank? Of course I could do that. Why not?

  Still holding hands, Erin and I stepped out into the sea.

  going up Was much easier than coming down.

  “Relax,” I said to Erin, as we gently kicked our feet. “The water will float us right to the top.”

  “Why?” she asked. Kids, always with the why.

  “Because we’re not as dense as the water, which makes us, um, buoyant or whatever—it just will, okay?”

  She smiled and enjoyed the ride, but I was far more worried than I let on. The merrow had said up, but where would we surface? In the middle of the Atlantic? The Bermuda triangle? A backyard pool in Connecticut? The possibilities seemed pretty random.

  Just go with it, I reminded myself. It’s gotten you this far.

  And I made a mental note to thank Colin, if I ever saw him again, for his role in breaking the enchantment. If he’d been a less spectacular kisser or a less decent guy—

  “Look!” Erin pointed. There was light above us.

  We kicked harder. The water seemed to get thicker and dirtier as we approached the surface. We both broke through to the air at the same time.

  We were in the swamp. The same swamp where Erin had disappeared and Fergus had wooed his frog-love and where he always waited for the moment of enchantment to strike him so he wouldn’t harass any tender-hearted human women with his uncontrollable passion.

  Wouldn’t it be really awesome luck, I thought, dreamily, if we had somehow fast-forwarded to the night of the new moon and Fergus was right here in the swamp, waiting to fall in love with the first female creature he sees when the first star appears in the sky? And here I come, popping out of the slime like a wet goddess flying out of a toaster, just in time to become the object of his hot ’n’ heavy devotion—

  “ERIN!” I screamed. “Hide! Get behind me!”

  “What!” After managing that whole underwater journey so bravely, now I’d succeeded in making the poor girl terrified. “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Because,” I said, slowly scanning the swamp for signs of Fergus, “you don’t want your own brother to fall in love with you, do you?”

  “GROSS!”

  Her little-girl voice could cut through your skull like a machete. A log moved. It raised its head and saw me, soggy and coated with slime. I pinned Erin tightly behind me.

  “Morganne!” Fergus started to paddle toward us. Judging from how the fading rosy light was quickly turning to gray, the sun had recently set. “Any news of poor Erin? Is there any hope of finding her?”

  “Fergus!” Erin yelled. “I’m a mermaid now!”

  “Don’t move!” I scolded her. “Stay right where you are.”

  Obediently Erin hid behind my dress, but I could feel her shaking with giggles.

  “Is it really her?” Fergus cried, getting closer. “Is she safe? Where is she?”

  I looked at the horizon. The last rays of light had disappeared beyond the hills.

  “Look at me, Fergus,” I ordered. “Erin is fine. Just look at me.”

  He glanced up at the sky too, which was growing darker by the minute.

  “Morganne—” he said, realizing. “It’s the night of the new moon—”

  “Look at me,” I demanded. I was not taking any chances. The poor kid had been through enough. “Don’t look anywhere else. Just at me.”

  He did, and the first star of the night sky appeared. Fergus took in a sudden sharp breath and his voice got low.

  “Oh, Mor.” He sighed, reaching out to me. “Morganne, Morganne . . .”

  He reached and reached, until he lost his balance and slipped off the log, right into t
he swamp. The water was so thick with glop his fall made more of a thud than a splash.

  By the time Fergus climbed back to his feet, shook himself like a wet dog, embraced his wriggling sister and then put his muddy arms around me, Erin was laughing hysterically.

  I would have laughed too but I couldn’t. I was too busy being on the receiving end of Fergus’s enchanted kiss.

  And, just for the record, I didn’t feel the least bit slutty making out with two different guys in one night. Partly this was because I was the half-goddess Morganne, and I kicked butt and swam oceans and could kiss whoever I wanted.

  But mostly it was because Fergus’s kiss was Colin’s kiss too. I’d recognize it anywhere. It was magic.

  seventeen

  in long-ago, sixteen Was plenty Old enough for tilling. However, we were many, many centuries before the invention of CVS, and tilling without contraception could lead to some accidental, uh, harvests. It’s true that my long hair did not travel back and forth with me from Long-ago to my own time, but the rest of me did, and I wasn’t about to take that kind of chance.

  Mom, Dad, guess what! I got knocked up by an ancient warrior-dude! No, you can’t meet him, because he’s been dead for thousands of years. But don’t be surprised if the kid likes pulling the limbs off all his dolls.

  No, thank you. There would be no tilling for me. Sigh.

  I tried explaining all this to Fergus, but a man under an enchantment is not about to listen to reason. The more we talked about it the more he suffered and moaned and longed for me and the more irritated I became. After a while I started to see the wisdom in his I-only-date-salamanders plan, but it was too late for that now.

  There were times with Raph when I’d imagine what it would be like to be with someone else. Someone who wasn’t just hanging out with me because he liked having a girlfriend and my number had randomly come up.

  Wouldn’t it be amazing, I would think, to find a guy who really, really loved me, adored me, fussed and fawned over me and made me feel like I was the center of his universe?

  I thought I would never be unhappy or lonely or critical of myself ever again, if I had someone like that in my life.

  Now I did. And it was driving me nuts.

  Wed fire and gold to the king,

  But the lady herself must be willing. . . .

  After the jewelry seller got over the initial shock of being kidnapped and dragged to the castle and told by a posse of shouting warriors that she had to marry King Conor or else (would it have been so hard to set the two of them up on a date and let nature take its course?), she started working the situation for all it was worth. Cúchulainn in particular had a very hard time understanding why she didn’t just say yes.

  “The man is a king! What more could she want?” he grumbled. “Why must she be feasted and wooed every hour? Have you heard her latest demands? She wants to postpone the wedding again because she feels they need to ‘get to know each other better’! Have you ever heard of such madness?”

  “She sounds like a woman ahead of her time,” I said. I fed another sprig of Queen Anne’s lace into the mouth of a very cute little goat. All day long, Fergus had been running out to the fields and coming back with armloads of wildflowers for me. Erin and I had made the first dozen batches into floral arrangements, wreaths, swags, headpieces and everything else we could think of, but then I got sick of it so I started feeding the flowers to the livestock.

  “My women come when I call and leave when the tilling is over,” said Cúchulainn. “As it should be.”

  I had to smile. Funny little rooster of a guy, that Cúchulainn. Always making a spectacle of himself. If he lived in the twenty-first century he’d be driving an MG convertible with his comb-over flapping in the breeze and a skinny, bleached-blond trophy wife in the passenger seat. It made me wonder how Stuart and Carrie’s honeymoon was going.

  “She may have a point, you know,” I said. “It takes time to find out what someone is really like.”

  He looked puzzled. “What do you mean? People are what they are. A person of honor hides nothing,” he declared.

  I was tempted to explain to him about psychology and stuff, but why bother? Freud hadn’t even been born yet. “Maybe so,” I said. “But how do you know if someone is a person of honor?”

  “If you have to ask”—he shrugged—“that’s your answer. Slay them before they slay you.”

  I should remember that advice, I thought. It could come in handy for junior year.

  Fergus burst back into the cottage, his face flushed. This time he was carrying an entire shrub. It looked like an azalea in full bloom, yanked whole from the ground. The dirt was still clinging to its roots.

  “Oh!” I said in dismay. “That’s enough flowers for now, Fergus. Let’s see if we can replant that one. It would look very nice by the front door.”

  Fergus dropped the shrub. “There is some commotion by the castle!” he announced. “The jewelry maker is threatening to leave! She says she will never come back!”

  Cúchulainn’s eyes turned into two blinking red turn signals. “Says she!” he growled, heading for the door. “I’ll bring her back, never fear.” A dust cloud started to whirl in a tiny spiral above his head.

  “Guys!” I shouted, as I jumped up and body blocked the door. The goat spied the pile of flowers that fell out of my lap and started munching. “Relax! She has to be willing. That’s the whole point. Calm down. Give her some space.”

  “You talk to her, Morganne,” Fergus begged. “You found Erin, and you found the woman of fire and gold. Surely only you can help this woman find her own will to marry King Conor.”

  I suspected he was right, but I also suspected that the jewelry woman and I could not resolve this alone. “I’ll talk to them both,” I said.

  “Don’t trouble the king about this matter,” said Cúchulainn.

  “I have to,” I said. “It takes two to tango.”

  The word tango echoed in my head. I had a sudden feeling that I’d stumbled on to something, but what was it?

  “To what?” asked Fergus.

  “To dance,” I said, holding my arms out to him. Fergus joyfully hurdled over the goat to embrace me, and I let him nibble on my neck while I tried to figure out what I might say to the king and this woman to help true love blossom.

  “i hate to say this, but he really is a pig. have you ever seen him eat?”

  “It’s not my fault!” cried the king. “I’m under a spell!”

  “Right. And I’m Queen of the Faeries.”

  This was not going well.

  I racked my brains. Other than my months with Raph, I didn’t have much relationship experience to bring to bear as a couples’ counselor. My parents got along pretty well, I guess, but I’d never thought about why. They were Mom and Dad, they were together, I took it for granted. Which I shouldn’t have, since half the kids at school had parents who were either divorced or so cold and mean to each other that their children wished they were.

  By the time I’d arrived at the castle, someone had finally bothered to find out that the jewelry woman’s name was Dana. Now the three of us were sequestered in the king’s royal chambers, with the usual gang of armed warrior-dudes standing guard at the door.

  Dana gestured to them. “You see what it’s like here? How could a person live like this? It’s so tense!”

  Conor pounded his fist. “I’m a king! I have responsibilities! You want me to walk away from all that? Who’s going to pay the bills?”

  Dana crossed her arms. “I may not own a castle, but I have a thriving business, remember? I’ve been paying my own way for quite some time, and if you think that just because you were born a king you can boss me around, you are talking to the wrong woman.”

  Conor turned to me and threw his hands up. “You see? She’s impossible. Are you sure she’s the right one?”

  “Hear that? He’s not even interested in me!” She was just as mad. “He only cares about this stupid spell. Once it’s
broken, who knows what will happen to me?”

  “You make me sound like an ogre,” the king grumbled.

  “Don’t talk to me about ogres,” she snapped. “I’ve dated ogres, and it was damned exciting, I have to tell you.” She leaned back on the tufted cushions. “That doesn’t mean I’d marry one.”

  There was something about the way these two argued. Like they’d been together for years and years. Instant chemistry, but they’d really gotten off on the wrong foot, what with her being kidnapped and him being under a spell and all.

  We argued like an old married couple the moment we met. That’s how Lucia described her first meeting with Jack Faraday. Could these two be soul mates as well? Maybe, but how could I get them to stop arguing and realize that for themselves?

  “Do either of you guys know how to tango?” I said, impulsively. Since the tango had not been invented yet, I was pretty sure the answer would be no.

  “No,” they said in unison. It was the first thing they’d agreed on.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”

  Why the tango? it Was the Only two-person dance i knew, and I only knew it because Sarah was the dance lead in the school production of the musical The Pajama Game freshman year and she had to do the big tango number. She’d taught me the guy’s part so she could practice. We’d had some hilarious good times dancing around and knocking stuff over in her living room, believe me.

  But now I was going for romance, not comedy. I needed King Conor and Dana to hold hands and put their arms around each other’s waists and shut up long enough to feel the chemistry that was lurking underneath the surface. The tango would be the magic love spell this strawberry-blond goddess was about to cast over the sparring, star-crossed couple, and I really hoped it worked because I didn’t know what else to do.

  One rather silly-sounding worry crossed my mind as I coaxed my two dancing students into position: Was there any chance that introducing the tango to ancient Irish culture at this point in time would change the course of history? Prime Directive purists would say, You betcha, but come on—it was just a little dance.