The Girl with Stars in her Hair Read online

  Mother came out of her bedroom wearing white linen trousers with a long-sleeved seafoam-green blouse. Never, ever, had I seen my mother in pants.

  “Close your mouth,” she said. “A woman can wear trousers nowadays.”

  I made a show of clamping my lips together and ran my fingers across my lips as if zipping them shut. Mother laughed.

  “I have a pair for you, too,” she said, excitement in her voice. She disappeared back into her room and reappeared carrying a pair of tan trousers. She held them out to me as though they were encrusted with jewels.

  I took them, asking, “What’s this about?”

  Mother crooked her finger. “Come sit in the parlor. I’ll tell you.”

  A funny, nervous wiggle slithered through me. What could she have to say that was so strong I needed to be seated for it? Molly must have wondered, too, since she levered herself up and slowly followed us in. She flopped down on the floor by my feet and looked expectantly toward Mother.

  When we were all settled, Mother drew in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “We’re going to find the sea goblin and make him return Jimmy to us.”

  I stared at her, my mind stunned by the crazy statement. Mother didn’t sound or look crazy, though. She sounded and looked the way she did when she’d made up her mind about something.

  “How would we find the sea goblin?” I said, cautiously.

  She stood and drew a small gold compass from her pocket. “Diana, the finder woman, gave me this. It will point the way for us. If it points west, there’s nothing we can do—the goblin is safe in his water home. But if it points north, south, or east, we can find him. Capture him. Force him to give Jimmy back.”

  First of all, I doubted the finder woman had given Mother the compass. More likely another piece of valuable jewelry had changed hands. Second, no compass could home in on an individual. Nothing but disappointment could come from this adventure. Third, Mother’s voice was much too matter-of-fact for the statement she’d just made.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve been testing the compass for three days now. I’ve stood in the backyard in the same spot each time and faced west. Sometimes the compass points west, but mostly it points south. South is the way we’ll go.” The fire of belief shone in her eyes. She nodded forcefully. “We will find the gremhahn, the sea goblin. We will get Jimmy back.”

  I knew my mother. She’d go without me if I raised an objection. I couldn’t let her go alone.

  “When are we leaving?”

  Mother smiled; relieved, I thought. “Today. Go pack a bag. I’ve arranged care for Molly. We’d take her with us, but she’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a journey that could last a day, a week, a month.”

  She said the times like they were all the same—a day, a month. Why not a year?

  “How are we going? Papa took the car.”

  Mother pursed her lips and nodded—at the problem that had been in her mind, I supposed—and then smiled ruefully. “We’ll be walking. Mostly on the shore, I assume. The sea is his home. Diana says he doesn’t like to stray far from it.”

  Diana it was now—familiar, like a friend. While I was at the market or rode downtown to the big library, did Mother spend time with the finder woman?

  And walking? For a week? A month?

  “It’s the only way, Cassie,” she said. “I have the compass. We’ll find Jimmy. We’ll bring him home. That’s all there is to it.”

  I knew Mother wasn’t crazy, not in that lunatic asylum way, but this—this was determination that stood very close to the edge. Determination that could only bring sorrow. All the more reason I had to go with her.

  *

  Mother took Molly, who probably thought she was going on a nice walk, to Mrs. Lou’s while I packed a bag, trying to guess what I might need. I changed out of my church dress and into a white short-sleeved blouse, the tan trousers, and black-and-white saddle shoes, the most comfortable walking shoes I owned. All the while my mind spun with practical questions. How were we going to eat on this week, month, who-knew-how-long journey? Where would we sleep? If we were gone when Father came, what would he think? He’d worry. I hoped he’d worry. Had she called and told him, giving him the truth or some story that would be more comfortable for him to believe? What had Mother told Mrs. Lou about where we were going and why? I supposed I should ask Mother—get our lies straight.

  I heard the front door open and close and Mother’s quick steps coming up the stairs and then toward my bedroom.

  She knocked twice and opened the door without waiting for me to answer.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, her voice so light and cheerful that anyone else hearing her might think we were heading for a picnic.

  Where does Papa think we’re going? I wanted to ask. You have told him, haven’t you, so he won’t come and find the house empty, frightening him to bits? But I only picked up my bag, painted a smile I didn’t feel on my face, and followed her down the hall toward the front door.

  “It’s a grand day for it,” Mother said. “The weather is perfect for a walk.” She put on her broad-brimmed sunhat and picked up her bag, then turned and looked at me over her shoulder. “We’ll find that goblin in no time. A day, two, a week maybe, and we’ll have Jimmy back.”

  “What if we don’t?” I said as she opened the front door.

  She stopped then, and her face grew serious. “I can’t think that, Cassie. We can’t think that. To even suppose we won't find the gremhahn, or that we will but not get Jimmy back—that we will fail—it is too much to bear.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Then we will,” I said. “All of it—find the goblin, make him give Jimmy back.”

  Because I hoped that, even if there were no such thing as a sea goblin, if by some amazing turn of events we did get Jimmy back—that he could be gotten back—that it would bring Father back, too, and we would be a family again.

  Three

  Hermosa Beach, California

  August 1923

  It was a good day for a stroll—the temperature cooler by the water. We trudged across the beach lugging our bags, past people stretched out on blankets in shorts or bathing costumes, down to where the tide packed the sand tight.

  Half a dozen kids from a church group, to judge by the dress clothes left neatly folded on individual blankets, spotted us and came alongside, some hopping up and down, as if we were something out of an exciting sideshow.

  “Where are you going, all dressed up?” asked a boy of about ten with neatly combed brown hair.

  “Don’t you have bathing costumes?” a red-haired, freckled girl asked in a worried voice, as if she thought us too poor for proper bathing attire.

  I wanted to slide under the sand and hide. Mother, though, smiled and crouched to their level.

  “We’re on a quest,” she told them, her voice mysterious and her eyes gleaming.

  “What’s a quest?” the brown-haired boy asked.

  “It’s a search,” Mother said in her normal tone. “A search that could be long and hard but is important, so it must be done.”

  “What are you looking for?” the freckled girl asked.

  Before Mother could answer, a woman in a black bathing costume ran up and shooed away the kids. I was glad for the interruption. I didn’t want Mother to say we were looking for her son who’d been stolen by a sea goblin and we were on our way to get him back.

  “I’m very sorry,” said the woman who’d shooed off the kids. She wore black shoes tied with ribbons halfway up her calf. Her gaze slid up, down, and all over us, no different from the way the children’s had.

  “They were no bother,” Mother said.

  The woman turned to chase after her charges and we continued on.

  *

  The farther south we went, the fewer people we saw, and I was glad for that.

  I wasn’t used to this much walking, and my legs
were sore. My arms hurt from lugging the traveling bag that held my clothes, brush, comb, toothbrush, two pairs of shoes, two sets of white gloves, an evening hat, a Sunday dress and hat, and Anna Christie, the book I was reading. I certainly didn’t need any more stares from the curious weighing me down.

  Every twenty minutes or so Mother would take out the compass, face the ocean and check her bearings. She’d press her lips together and lead on.

  We walked across Redondo Beach and then Torrance Beach to the end, where it bordered the hills and cliffs of Palos Verdes. The sand gave out here, changing to rocks and boulders visible beneath the water’s surface. Ahead, the hill rose up, presenting a sharp, unwelcoming cliff face. Mother frowned. She took out the compass and inhaled sharply.

  “He’s near, but not close,” she almost whispered, even though there was no one around us to hear.

  I shifted my gaze to the ocean and then back to the hill, a tan cliff that looked sliced by a knife, the brown and green vegetation, and the white boulders standing proud. “On land?”

  Mother nodded. “Close to the sea but on land.” She looked at the hill that stood between our quarry and us. “You always did like climbing.”

  Truth was, I was a tomboy when I was young and the love of adventure hadn’t left me now that I was considered a young lady, old enough to marry. I could climb the hills near as easy as walking, but I wasn't so sure Mother could make it. She was a strong swimmer, though, and I thought maybe we should swim around the point. But we’d either have to abandon our goods or get all we’d brought with us soaked. So, climbing it was—if Mother could make it.

  But I’d let slip from my mind how determined she was. Resolve drove her up the hillside. She picked her way up a narrow, rutted path likely carved by rain, choosing her foot and handholds carefully, moving nearly as fast as I did.

  Our reward for reaching the top was a flatish mesa, the land wild and studded with milkweed, sagebrush, and purple-blue-flowered phacelia. Mother took out the compass, drew in a deep breath and headed off at a quick pace along the cliff’s edge. I followed her, glancing down at the sparkling blue ocean below, looking for a trail that would take us down again, but the cliffs dropped straight into the boulder-dotted sea.

  Finally I spotted a trail that seemed to lead back down to the water. Mother had slowed her frantic pace by then, and we were walking side by side. My legs were feeling the strain of so much unaccustomed walking. Words seemed too hard, so I touched her arm and pointed down.

  She raised her eyebrows. I supposed she was growing a little too weary for words as well. Out came the compass again, Mother staring down at it, a tight smile forming on her lips.

  “Closer now,” she said.

  “How can you know that?” I asked, finding the strength for words.

  She sighed lightly. “There’s something I didn’t tell you. This compass, it does more than tell what direction the gremhahn is traveling. It shows how close we are to him. It’s in the colors.”

  She held the compass so I could see it, and I realized she had not done that before, not let me see what she saw on its face.

  “See how the background is pale blue?”

  I peered into the compass. The directions were in red. The needle was silver and pointed southwest. The background was a pale shade of robin’s egg blue. I nodded to her.

  “The closer we are to the gremhahn, the lighter the background becomes,” she said. “When we set out this morning, the background was dark indigo. This light blue shows we’re close.”

  We started down the narrow trail, following it even though we couldn’t see where it would take us, knowing only that we were descending and that, hopefully, eventually we would reach water again. The ocean was calm, waves rolling gently toward some hidden shore. A dim sound like barking reached us and I could see dark shapes in the water.

  We came around a corner and saw a small crescent-shaped cove. Tall cliffs rose to the east and south. The barking was louder now, and I saw it came from maybe a dozen seals swimming in disjointed circles offshore. Usually seals were quiet, not like their noisy cousins, the sea lions, but these were clearly upset about something.

  The man surf-fishing near the far end of the cove didn’t turn to look when Mother and I came off the trail and onto the beach. The man was calm, lifting and dipping his pole as though all around him was perfect silence and peace.

  I looked at Mother. She had the compass out again and I could see her eyes had widened even though she was looking down. I saw her jaw clench and her gaze shift over the fisherman as she slipped the compass back into her bag.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The background is white. It’s him.”

  “It’s just a man,” I said.

  “No,” Mother insisted. “It’s the gremhahn. It’s the evil goblin that stole our Jimmy. I know it.”

  She seemed so sure, I almost believed her.

  “And if we catch him?” I said.

  “Diana gave me a binding spell,” Mother said, as if that were the obvious answer. “And ways to make him talk.”

  I shaded my eyes and stared at the fisherman. He turned his head slowly and stared back. There was something in that stare, something cold, not human. And in that moment I believed my mother.

  I ran.

  Straight toward the fisherman, faster than Mother could run. Nothing mattered now, nothing but reaching the sea goblin first and bringing him down.

  He saw me—he must have, since he kept looking right at me. He watched me, casually cranking in his line as I sped toward him. The rocky sand was wet; the bottom of my shoes made of smooth leather. I slipped on some seaweed, caught my balance, and ran. I heard Mother behind me, the slap of her shoes on the beach. The seals were going crazy, bobbing in the water and barking like an angry mob. I glanced over my shoulder at Mother. She was a distance behind me. I’d reach the goblin first.

  My foot hit a hole. A sharp pang blasted across my ankle, and my right leg collapsed like a broken twig. I landed on my side on the wet sand, my breath knocked from my lungs.

  In the few moments it took me to recover, a strange silence settled over the cove. Not a complete silence, just sounds that were gone—the raucous seals. I sat up and blinked. Seagulls wheeled overhead. The surf rolled in. The seals were gone. The goblin was gone.

  Mother ran to me and crouched at my side. “Cassie! Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” I said. Mother took my arm and helped me stand. I took a deep breath, rolled my shoulders, shook out the leg I’d twisted. Everything seemed to work, but just to be safe I shifted my weight off the turned ankle.

  “He knows we’re after him now,” I said.

  Mother nodded. “I dare say he does. But perhaps he knew from the first moment. Perhaps he came to this deserted cove and showed himself on purpose. To demonstrate he knew we were coming. To show that he was a step ahead of us. To show that we would never capture him.”

  “He didn’t look the same,” I said, wanting to cheer her. “He wasn’t Dr. Gremhahn. Maybe it wasn’t the goblin at all.”

  Mother exhaled a hard breath. “It was him.”

  Her voice was calm and firm, and I felt she was right. I thought the sea goblin didn’t know my mother. If he had, he wouldn’t have shown himself this way—it would only make her more determined.

  She put her arm around me gently. “How’s the leg?”

  I shifted to try my weight on it, still nervous I might have seriously hurt myself. The ankle held.

  “Fine. Let’s keep going.”

  Mother took out her compass and frowned. “No point. He’s gone west, into the sea. We might as well find a place to eat and sleep.”

  I looked at the nearly vertical hill between us and the dirt road that ran along the cliff edge. The only way up was back the long path we’d taken down. Mother and I sighed at the same moment and headed toward it.

  At the top Mother stopped, looked me up and down and laughed.

&n
bsp; “We look like a couple of hobos,” she said.

  I gave her the once-over back. “You certainly do. I‘m sure I still look the fine-young-lady daughter of a prominent local physician.”

  I grimaced at my own words, worried that I’d upset Mother by mentioning Father. But she just laughed and ruffled my hair.

  “That you do, Cassie. As beautiful in muddy trousers with sand in your hair as any debutante at a cotillion.”

  I rolled my eyes, but her words warmed me.

  “Do we still head this way?” I said, taking a few steps.

  “Yes,” she said, checking the compass while walking alongside me. “He’s back on land now and heading toward San Pedro.”

  “How far is that?” I was fading. Maybe saddle shoes hadn’t been the best choice for a long walk.

  “A ways,” she said, “but at least we have a road to follow. I promise we’ll rest once we get there.”

  “Good,” I said. “I was afraid you’d want to walk all night, too.”

  She stopped and faced me. “I’m so sorry, Cassie. I’ve just been raging on in my own world. You’re tired, aren’t you? You should be. I’m exhausted. Honestly, if we had camping gear I’d not go another step, but spend the night right here.”

  “Mother!” I cried in mock horror. “There could be mountain lions in these hills. Coyotes. Wouldn’t you prefer a bed in San Pedro?” I gave her a sly smile. “Of course I am much younger, with more stamina. I could stay up all night to sit watch.”

  Mother laughed and we set off again with lighter hearts.

  We hadn’t gone far when a stake-bed truck with boxes piled high in the back pulled over and a Japanese man with two small children—both girls, their dark hair styled in two long braids—leaned over and said through the open rider’s-side window, “Where’re you heading? Maybe I give you a lift.”

  He didn’t seem to think it at all odd that two women in dirt-smeared trousers carrying overnight bags were walking along the dirt road a long distance from anywhere. His girls stared at us goggle-eyed. They, at least, seemed to realize this was not a usual situation.