A Drowned Maiden's Hair_ A Melodrama - Laura Amy Schlitz [0]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2006 by Laura Amy Schlitz
Cover photographs: copyright © 2011 by Rubberball/Corbis (girl);
Copyright © 2011 by Nicoolay/iStockphoto (rose border)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2010
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Schlitz, Laura Amy.
A drowned maiden’s hair : a melodrama / Laura Amy Schlitz.
— 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: At the Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans, eleven-year-old Maud is adopted by three spinster sisters moonlighting as mediums who take her home and reveal to her the role she will play in their seances.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2930-4 (hardcover)
[1. Orphans — Fiction. 2. Spiritualists — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S34714Dro 2006
[Fic] — dc22 2006049056
ISBN 978-0-7636-3812-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-5215-9 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com
“O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee.”
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land:
And never home came she.
“O is it weed, or fish, or floating hair —
A tress of golden hair,
A drownèd maiden’s hair
Above the nets at sea?”
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes of Dee.
They row’d her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea.
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee.
On the morning of the best day of her life, Maud Flynn was locked in the outhouse, singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
She was locked in because she was being punished. The Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans was overcrowded; every room in the wide brick building was in use. There were few places where one could imprison a child who had misbehaved. The outhouse was one such place, and very suitable for the purpose, because the children hated it. Though the janitor scrubbed it clean every day, it stank; the single window was high and narrow and let in just enough light to show that there were spiders. Maud boasted that she was not afraid of spiders, but she was no happier than anyone else when she sat on the high bench, feet dangling, and wondered whether any of the itches she felt were spiders creeping over her skin.
She finished the first verse of the song and began on the chorus. The outhouse was chilly, and singing warmed her blood. It also served to advertise — to anyone who might be passing by — that the spirit of Maud Flynn had not been broken. Maud had a hazy idea that the Battle Hymn had something to do with war and slavery. She felt that by singing it she was defying authority and striking a blow against the general awfulness of the day.
Two maiden ladies, the Misses Hawthorne, were coming to the Barbary Asylum to adopt a little girl of eight or nine years: Maud was eleven and therefore ineligible. The three girls who might be chosen — Polly, Millicent, and Irma — had been given what Maud considered unfair privileges. They had taken hot baths the night before, though it was neither Wednesday nor Saturday, and their hair had been put up in rags for curls. The newest of the blue houndstooth uniforms had been washed, mended, and starched, so that they might appear