“There.” He pointed toward the ferry.
I caught a flash of gold fabric rippling along the edge of a bench facing the water. It was the Princess of Arrows, lying down, with one arm draped over her forehead. Her quiver and her bow lay on the ground beneath the bench, and she’d propped something shiny on her stomach that winked a yellow more golden than the autumn trees.
“Is she okay?” I said.
Berron said nothing as we hurried past the tall ship, toward the ferry. “Sister,” he said, when at last we stood over the Princess of Arrows, “are you ill?”
The Princess slowly removed her arm from over her eyes. She shaded them with her hand instead, and looked up at us, seemingly unsurprised by our presence. “I thought it would be bigger,” she said.
“What would be bigger?” I said. I, for one, couldn’t take my eyes off the treasure she was casually cradling on her stomach: a wheelbarrow crafted of gold, carrying a huge yellow gemstone carved in the shape of a faceted heart.
She followed my gaze. “Not that,” she said. “The statue.” She gestured in the direction of the harbor, where the Statue of Liberty did indeed look tiny, far off between Governor’s Island and Ellis Island. “Here,” she said, handing off the priceless museum piece to Berron like it was a cheap souvenir snowglobe, and picking up the scrap of newspaper it had held in place. She held out the picture of the Statue of Liberty to me. “See?”
“Itisbig,” I said. “You just have to get on a ferry to see it up close.”
“I tried,” the Princess said. “But the closer I got to the water, the more faint I became. I had to lie down, as you can see.”
“The barrier,” Berron said, still examining the gemstone heart in the golden wheelbarrow.
“I should like to see it up close,” the Princess said, following the thought with a great sigh. “I suppose I never shall.”
Berron handed me the museum’s property. It was even heavier than it looked, and I almost fumbled it. Instead, I lost my grip on the newspaper clipping and it spun away in the wind, gone forever. I adjusted my grip on the base of the wheelbarrow, avoiding where tiny tufts of gold grass and miniature gemstone flowers threatened to scratch my hands.
“Sit up, Princess of Arrows,” Berron said. “It is no good lounging in sadness.”
“But I cannot lounge in joy, brother.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, taking her hands and pulling her to a sitting position, “we must try.”
She swung her feet down to the ground, making space on either side of her. Berron sat to her left, and I to her right. The three of us stared out at the Statue of Liberty.
I was the only one who would ever climb to her crown.
I hefted the little wheelbarrow and desperately wished to change the subject. “No wonder they call it theHeavy Heart,” I said.
“Do you know the story?” the Princess asked. “It is from an old tale of unrequited love: a heart that became so heavy it had to be carried in a wheelbarrow.”
Suddenly I found the far off Statue of Liberty fascinating. Anything was preferable to looking at Berron.
“In that sense the gemstone heart is not heavy enough,” she said. “It is a light thing, compared to the weight of wanting something you cannot have.”
The sailing ship slipped free of the dock and glided away.
I cleared my throat. “We may not be able to climb the Statue of Liberty, but there are plenty of fun things to do here—didn’t we see a carousel back there?” I widened my eyes at Berron, hoping he would take the hint.
He met my gaze. The flash of sadness in it could have been the changing light on the water, for it was gone in an instant. He smiled and patted his sister’s hand. “You would like it very much,” he said.
“Would I?” she replied, still watching the sailing ship as it got smaller and smaller. Another sigh, then she turned to me. “Would I like it, my dear friend?”
I nodded with more enthusiasm than I’d ever in my life shown for a kiddie ride.
The Princess of Arrows stood. She gathered up her quiver and arrows. Her gaze lingered over the harbor, taking in all the places she couldn’t reach, and her golden gown fluttered in the breeze. Then she turned. “I am quite ready,” she said.
We left the harbor behind and retraced our steps through the park, to the little silver building with the conical, shell-like roof.
The tickets ate up another bite of my cash-on-hand, and we entered the building itself to wait our turn.
Each carousel vehicle was shaped like a fish, with a circular cutout in the middle to hold a single rider. The fish glowed from within in a soothing ocean palette of colors: muted blue, soft green, lemony gold, blush pink. They dipped and rose, turned and revolved, to a soundtrack of dreamy, drifting music.
