The Faeries In Central Park ~ 4

Installment Four:

Anna and Nell fell into peaceful, exhausted sleep, curled up together in the narrow upper bunk. In the bunk below, Ma, barely slept at all.  The pitching and turning as the ship cut through the sea, combined with the sounds of laughing and singing in the other cabins, made her feel quite ill by morning.

Although they couldn’t tell day from night down in the hull of the ship, Da woke them at first light with a rap on the door.  After one look at Ma, he instructed the girls to hurry and dress and go out on deck, while he went in search of tea and toast to settle Ma’s churning stomach.

Ma was so tired and weak she never even noticed Anna open her case, or Daphne flit up and out and into Anna’s pocket.  Nell did, though, and immediately began to squeal with delight, “Daphne!”.  Ma shushed her and rolled over in her bunk. Anna grabbed Nell’s hand, a little too tightly, and pulled her out into the hallway.

“Why is Daphne here?  I want to see Daphne!”  Nell pulled at Anna’s coat, trying to open the pocket.

“Not now, be quiet!”  Anna whispered, “I’ll explain it to you when we get outside.”

“You made me forget Sally”, Nell pouted indignantly and stomped back into the cabin to retrieve her doll.  She emerged from the cabin a moment later with Sally tucked securely under her arm.

“Is Ma going to be alright?” She asked Anna as she gingerly shut the cabin door.

“Da says she’ll be fine once she has some tea and fresh air.  Look, here he comes now.”

Da was carrying a tray of tea, toast and marmalade, adorned with a pretty red flower.  Nell ran down the hallway to meet him.  “Where did you get the flower? Can I have it?”

“From the garden on deck”  Da winked at Anna, “It’s for your Ma, to make her feel better.  Here, take this with you.”  He handed Anna a mug of tea and some bread.

“Come on, Anna.”  Nell tugged at her sister’s sleeve “Let’s go find the garden.”

“Mind your sister, Nell.  Anna, be back at midday.  We’ll have a proper meal, then.”

“We will, Da.”  Anna kissed her father’s cheek and started toward the stairway after Nell, picking Sally up from the spot where Nell had dropped her.  Once in the stairway, Anna paused to check on Daphne.  She also looked a little pale and weak. Anna wondered if faeries got seasick.  She hoped it was nothing more and tried to push her concern for both Ma and Daphne to the back of her mind.

Still in the stairwell, Daphne climbed out of Anna’s pocket and fluttered up to the railing.  “I need some air, myself.  Please, take me outside.”

Anna handed Sally to Nell, “Here, I can’t manage the tea and your doll, too.  Keep hold of her.  Let’s go find someplace where we can all have some fresh air and sunshine.”

They climbed the stairs leading to the opening of the outer decks and found an unoccupied corner out of the wind, behind a lifeboat.  There were people wandering all over the deck, some looking pale and weak like Ma had earlier. Anna took off her scarf and folded it, making a spot for Daphne to rest.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Daphne was coming with us?”  Nell wanted to know.

Anna tore a piece of bread and gave it to Nell, then tested the tepid tea.  “Because, you can’t keep a secret.   You always tell.”  She handed the mug to Nell.

“Yes I can.” said Nell, noisily slurping tea.  “I wouldn’t have told anyone.  Ever!”

“I asked her not to tell you, Nell.”  Daphne’s color was returning somewhat, but her voice still sounded weak.  “I wanted to surprise you.  May I have a bit of your bread?”

Nell tore off her crust, she didn’t like crust, and offered it to Daphne.  The three of them shared the tea and bread in silence.  Tired from the previous day’s journey and lulled by the rocking of the ship in the warm sunshine, Anna and Daphne began to drift off.

After a few moments, Anna jolted awake.  Daphne was asleep on the scarf, but Nell was nowhere to be seen.  In a panic, she woke Daphne.  “Nell’s missing!  Get up! We have to go find her!  She could drown!  She could freeze to death if she fell overboard!”  Anna remembered what her aunt had said about the waters in the North Atlantic and what happened to the people on the Titanic.

Half running, pushing past the who seemed to be everywhere, Anna made her way along the deck.  “Nell!  Nell!  Answer me!”  She was almost hysterical when she reached the door they’d come through from the stairway.  Nell’s doll, Sally, was carelessly lying to one side.

“Nell must have dropped Sally and gone to look for her!”  Anna cried to Daphne “Where could she have gone?”

“It’s not a very big ship, someone must have seen her.” said Daphne, trying to console Anna “We’ll find her.”

In the meantime, Nell was on the opposite side of the ship, looking for Sally.  The doorway she thought would lead her back to the stairs, instead took her into a hallway with many rooms and now she was completely lost.  Her search for Sally forgotten, Nell sat down in the middle of the hall and began to cry.  Loudly.

A bearded man in a white uniform opened one of the doors.  He knelt down next to Nell.  “There now.”  He said, wiping her tears with his handkerchief “What’s the problem here?”

Nell sniffled “I can’t find my sister and Daphne. They're lost.”

“It’s alright, I can help you find them.  My name is Captain Smith and this is my ship.  If anyone can find your sister, I can.”  He picked up Nell, carried her to the bridge and placed her on a stool.  “Tell me your name and your sister’s and parent’s name.”

“My name is Nell Darlington.  My sister’s name is Anna and my Ma’s name is Elizabeth.  My Da’s name is Frank. And my other sisters are Mary and Frances and Agnes and my brothers are Michael and James and John. Also Patrick and Laurence but they stayed behind in Dublin.” Nell swung her legs, making the stool spin from side to side.

"That should be sufficient information to locate them, they can't all be lost." Captain Smith said, with a grin.

One of the ship’s officers came over to see what the commotion was about. Captain Smith handed him a piece of paper with the names Nell had given him and instructed the officer to locate her parents. He handed Nell a glass of water. “Who is Daphne?  Another sister?”

“No” answered Nell, wiping the water from her mouth with her sleeve.  “She’s my faery.  She’s going to America with us but it’s a secret.”

“I see, she’s a stowaway then”  The Captain’s bearded face remained stern, but his eyes were smiling.

“What’s a stowaway?”  asked Nell.

“A stowaway is someone who hasn’t paid for their passage.  That is a very serious offence.  In the old days they would be put off the ship while still at sea.  It’s a good thing your faery lives in these modern times.”  Captain Smith winked at Nell but she missed it.  She was too busy taking in her surroundings, fascinated by the instruments and charts.

“Daphne’s not a stowaway.  Da paid her passage, he paid for all of us.”  Nell sincerely hoped that was true. She knew she wasn’t supposed to lie.

“I’m sure he did then” said the Captain.  “It wouldn’t be the first time a faery travelled on my ship.  There are usually at least two or three, the ones that I see anyway, on each voyage.  Most of them are quiet.  Seasickness usually hits them pretty hard but they recover quickly once they reach dry land.”

“Really?”  asked Nell as she hopped off the stool to take a closer look at the papers on Captain Smith’s desk.  “Daphne is sick.  Do they ever die?”  She stopped and looked straight at him, somberly.

“No, no. Not ever.”  he patted her hand, reassuringly.  “Make sure she has a little tea with sugar, some bread and not much else.  Take her outside whenever you can and she’ll be fine once you get her to Central Park.”

“Central Park?  Is that where the garden is?  Where my Da got the flower for Ma this morning? He said it was from the garden on deck. I’d like to see the garden, please.”

“No, Nell.  Central Park isn’t on the ship.  It’s in New York.  That’s where most of the faeries go, once they get to America.”  Captain Smith rose to answer the knock at the door.

“Not Daphne.  She’s staying with us."

"Anna!”  Nell threw herself across the room into her sister’s arms.  “Where did you go?”

“Where did I go?  You wandered off, you naughty girl!  I should….”  Anna just hugged her tighter.  “Captain, thank you!  I thought she’d fallen overboard!” Anna’s relief finally dissolved into tears.

Captain Smith gave the girls a hamper of sandwiches and cakes to take to their family, along with instructions to bring their parents and their brothers and sisters to his quarters that evening for tea.  “And bring Daphne too, if she’s feeling up to it.”  He said to Nell as he ushered them into the hall, and closed the door.

“You told him about Daphne?” Anna admonished, “That’s why I don’t tell you any secrets!  You can’t keep them.”

“I can so”  said Nell, peering into the hamper of treats.  “Captain Smith said lots of faeries have sailed on his ship.  He said they all go to someplace called Central Park when they get to America, but I told him Daphne was staying with us.”

Daphne poked her head from Anna’s pocket.  “He told you about Central Park?” she said, excitedly.  “Then it really does exist!”

Anna closed the hamper firmly.  “These are to share.  We’d better hurry back to the cabin before we’re late and Da starts to worry.”

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