Nettie's Tale
By Cathrin Hagey
Copyright 2011 Cathrin Hagey
Smashwords Edition
Cover Design by Cathrin Hagey
Cover Photo by LoriCarol/iStockphoto
Author's Note: This story was previously published in New Fairy Tales, Issue Six, with original illustrations by Daria Hlazatova
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Nettie was a fair girl underneath the grease-slicked soil of her outer skin. Her hair, if washed, would have shone like the autumn moon. Her skin, if caressed, would have glowed like hot coals beneath a blanket of snow. Nettie lived with a foul-smelling, toothless man called Uncle. Whether or not he truly was her uncle was not important because he was the only caregiver Nettie had ever known. Uncle sent Nettie out collecting every day. If Nettie returned with sellable wares she ate a crust of bread or a hard biscuit and was allowed to sleep in peace. If she did not return with sellable wares Nettie was sent to forage and sleep in the alley, where restless men and beyond-all-hope women roamed, none of whom appeared to ever require a good night's rest.
One dreary day, when the sky was smudged out and rain spattered like shrapnel against the road, Nettie set out to collect things for Uncle. She did her best to avoid Nick, the young thief who lived in the next hovel. Nettie had known Nick since they were both knee high to a mangy dog. Nick loved to torment Nettie; and Nettie, for her part, ran at the sight of him.
Nettie walked with her head held low against the stinging needles of rain. She hoped to find a bit of cloth to sew into her tattered dress, a bit of cloth Uncle might allow her to keep for once. It needn't be fine.
At the end of the day when Nettie returned to Uncle's hovel she carried an empty spool, a half penny, two small bottles, an ancient slipper for the left foot and a cracked china doll's head. She carried the wares, except for the head, which she hoped to keep for herself, within a fold of her dress which was lifted up to reveal two rough feet and two red legs.
Nick spat when he spied her coming. "She can't have much there," he said to no one. "Only her shins are showing."
Nettie never saw him coming. Nick flew from his hovel, a battering windstorm of a boy.
"Go away," cried Nettie, "or I'll call Uncle."
"Call him if you like," said Nick, licking his lips at the sight of the bottles.
"I will," said Nettie, softly.
"No you won't. You're afraid of him same as everyone else."
Nettie wasn't sure whether Nick meant that she was afraid of everyone or that everyone was afraid of Uncle. But then she thought, with great sadness, that both were true.
Nick helped himself to the bottles, the slipper, the spool and the half penny. "Thank you milady." He bowed low, gave Nettie a shove, and ran off barking with delight.
Nettie was afraid to go back to Uncle's empty handed, but she had nowhere else to go. Uncle's hovel was a damp, windowless rat hole; but it was her only home. Nettie crawled through the doorway until Uncle pulled her up by the hair, growling, "What did you bring me?"
Nettie described the things she had found and carried home, except for the doll's head which she kept hidden between her legs. Nettie prayed that Uncle wouldn't find the doll's head.
"You're lying," said Uncle in a sinister whisper that barely escaped his spongy lips.
Nettie shook her head back and forth and held her breath. The blows that followed were half-hearted. Even Uncle was weary of the task. When it was over, Nettie was tossed into the street. She saw Nick one last time before nightfall, as the sun sank behind a jumble of hovels thrown together like wooden crates in a rubbish heap.
"Beware of the bogeys!" shouted Nick from his window.
Nettie settled in between two barrels at the back of a drinking establishment. The doll's head was warm in its nest between her legs. She reached under her dress and pulled it out. Two painted blue eyes looked out from a pure white face. Tiny cracks in the cheeks gave it an impish look. She cradled the head in her arms and rocked it until her own head came to rest against her shoulder.
As Nettie slept, a black cat wound along the alley, avoiding a rivulet of filthy water that drained along one side. It saw Nettie and froze. The doll's head stared out from the middle of the child as if it were the face of death itself. The cat remained frozen until it was convinced that the glowing thing wasn't really alive.
Nettie awoke to the feeling of something rubbing against her. The alley was dark and she cried out a little because she was frightened, forgetting her cries were more likely to bring foe than friend.
The cat said, "It's only me. Don't be afraid."
"Who are you?" whispered Nettie.
Before the cat could reply, a man and a woman tumbled through a gap in a far wall. The cat hid behind a barrel while Nettie tucked the doll's head back under her dress. The man caught sight of her as she did so. He said, "What you got litt'l miss?"
The woman at his side clucked, "Poor wee thing--not likely to last the night, is she? Let's take her with us."
Nettie shuddered but she held her tongue.
"Show me wot you got, dammit!" The man's lips smacked together like two raw fish.
Just then the black cat stepped out from behind the barrel. In those days many people believed a meeting with a black cat in the dead of night was a bad omen. The man and the woman each had a lifetime of back luck behind them. They weren't inclined to invite more, so they trotted away down the alley as fast as the woman's swollen legs allowed.
When the man and the woman were gone, the cat purred, "What happened to the rest of your doll?"
Nettie brought the precious doll's head out from under her dress and cradled it as if it were alive and its life depended on her. She didn't say anything, but her actions told the cat all it needed to know. The girl had found a doll's head and it was more valuable to her than were a hundred dolls to the Royal Princess.
"Poor thing," said the cat, thinking of Nettie.
Nettie heard and thought the cat meant the doll. "Yes," she agreed, "she needs me."
"Does she?" purred the cat. It rubbed its whiskery face against Nettie's cold feet. "You are only a girl, and a poor one at that. Someday you will drop the doll's head, or lose it."
"I won't," cried Nettie.
"You won't mean to," said the cat, "but it will happen, unless …"
Nettie had been staring into the doll's twinkling eyes, but she looked up. Her own eyes were very sore and she blinked away the pain as best she could. "Unless what?" she asked.
"If you give the doll's head to me, I will take it to my friend. My friend is an expert in taking care of doll's heads, among other things."
"Oh no!" cried Nettie. "She's mine. She needs me."
"Could you be so heartless as to keep her for yourself when she would be better off somewhere else?" The cat wound around the barrels, around Nettie's legs, and then came to a stop directly in front of her. Nettie didn't answer, but she kissed her doll tenderly on its china cheek.
"If you allow me to take the doll's head to my friend, I will bring you something in return," said the cat. Then it licked the edges of a sore place on its skin.
Nettie was far from heartless. She stroked and kissed and bathed the doll with her farewell tears, but she did not put up a fuss--something the cat took note of. And after handing her precious doll over to the cat, Nettie curled up and cried herself to sleep.
When morning came, a fact that could be told from the movement of people in the alley more than the dawning of light in that dark place, Nettie sat up. Her eyes were glued shut with muck and she used her dress as a towel, rubbing and scraping at herself until she could open them.
An unexpected bobble of light made Nettie look down as soon as she could see again. A gleaming mirror lay on the cobbles at her feet. It was a hand mirror with smooth glass like a silver pool in the road. Nettie looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then she picked up the mirror and aimed it at a patch of sky. The patch of sky had a brownish hue, but the mirror version was a twinkling green jewel. Nettie gasped.
A vain girl might have admired herself in that mirror, but Nettie did not. Her first thought was to show the prize to Uncle who, if he was pleased with her find, might give her a little more than a mere crust of bread to break her fast. She picked up the gift and shuffled back to Uncle's hovel. Alas, dear Nettie was not to arrive there unmolested. Nick, the young thief, ambushed her and tore the mirror from her hand.
"What's this?" He doffed his cap and danced a jig. When he looked into the mirror, Nick's eyes widened with fright.
"What do you see?" asked Nettie.
The ruffian fled, dropping the mirror. Nettie did not move but watched the mirror float like an autumn leaf, until it hit the ground with a splash. Nettie stared at the mirror. Its silver green eye was fixed on the sky.
She had heard a splash. Nettie was certain she had. But how could a mirror make such a sound? And why did it not have even one crack in it after such a fall?
Nettie tiptoed toward the mirror. She picked it up and polished it with her patchwork dress, which became damp from the effort. Nettie did not look into the mirror, but went straight to Uncle's hovel and offered him her prize.
"What the--" Uncle stopped abruptly when he spotted the gleaming object in the girl's outstretched hand. "Well, you've finally done something worthwhile." He slapped her hard on the back with one hand while snatching the mirror in the other. "I think you've earned a proper bite to eat this time."
Nettie thought she saw the cat slink past the open doorway as she took a bite of biscuit and a sip of tea, though she couldn't be certain. She moistened the dry morsel in the hot tea and delighted in the smell of it, and then the taste of it. Nettie smiled. The hovel was, for the moment, a place of peace.
The moment didn't last.
"What's this?" cried Uncle. He gazed at his own reflection in the mirror. "Is this one of your tricks, girl?"
Nettie coughed down the last of her tea. She was afraid to come to Uncle, and so the great brute of a man came to her.
"Look at this," he demanded, flailing the mirror before Nettie's face.
She closed her eyes.
"I told you to look!" Uncle pulled Nettie close to him and forced her to open her eyes. She saw at once a mirror image of him, looking even more brutish than the flesh and blood version. And while the flesh and blood Uncle was standing in his hovel, the mirror image of Uncle was a bloated head floating in the sea.
"It's a trick." Uncle stared, wild eyed, at Nettie. "It's witching."
Nettie looked from the mirror, to Uncle, and back again. She shook her head.
"You're a witch. I should have seen it before with all the skulking about you do. You tricked me into sharing my roof and my food."
Nettie ducked under the blow that followed and saw her own reflection in the mirror. In the mirror Nettie had clean, flowing hair, glowing skin and the sickle tail of a fish.
Then the image was gone and Nettie was forced, headfirst, into a sack, tied in, thrown over a shoulder and marched into the street. No one stopped to listen to Nettie's muffled cries. No one begged Uncle to reconsider during his breathy, unsteady march to the dock.
Nettie couldn't breathe. She couldn't see. She knew, in her ignorant way, that the end was coming--the end of her. She cried a little, but her eyes sealed up and she stopped.
Uncle said nothing when he reached the dock and tossed Nettie, and then the mirror, into the foam. He watched Nettie and the mirror sink beneath the surface. And then he thought he saw the sickle tail of a large fish flip him farewell.
It has been heard tell that a half-girl, half-fish lives in the Thames and its myriad tributaries. She isn't exactly a mermaid as can be found in other parts, but more of a fishy girl, or a girly fish. She has been seen, on rare occasions, holding a brilliant mirror, which reveals, oddly enough, along with her own reflection, the heads of a monstrous man and a greedy boy floating endlessly and forever in a deep green sea.
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About the Author
Cathrin Hagey lives in Saskatoon with her husband, children, dog, and an assortment of tame rodents. She holds degrees in mathematics and education, and is glad to have returned to her childhood love of storytelling.
Connect with Me Online
Blog: http://www.cathrinhagey.com ("The Giant Pie")
Web site: http://www.thegiantpiebookcorner.com (coming December 2011)
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cathrinhagey