The Selkie (12 page)

“If I didn’t know about my mother…” she began, and then stopped when Ruairidh flinched.

Ruairidh said that they did not speak of the women who bore them. The fact that he was willing to violate this tradition had to be taken as a hopeful sign, however practical his stated reasons. She repeated to herself that she would not stand in the way of his going, or mortify him with further discussion of this painful topic. This was something that would have to be brought up gradually.

“Well, I think that you must go—but I shall miss you terribly!” She buried her face in the curve of his neck. Against her hair she could feel Ruairidh finally smile and his muscles relax.

The pleasure and relief were also in his voice when he answered. “I shall miss ye tae,
aroon
.”

“And you have to promise to be careful! That you won’t go near that finman without telling me first. Nor go off to find any faes. Swear it!”

“Ye worry overmuch,” Ruairidh soothed. “I’ll come tae nae harm in the sea. There isnae a finman yet born wha can catch a selkie in the water. And there isnae any need for me tae talk to the faes. I wouldna ken where tae start my
quest. The
sidhe
are everywhere but live inland and underground these day.”

“You better
not
get hurt or go looking for faeries. You have other responsibilities now.” Hexy twined her arms about Ruairidh’s waist even as she scolded. “Anyway, they are all very dangerous. The stories about them are terrible.”

“Aye,
aroon
. I dae ken my responsibilities, and I promise that I shall protect ye and the babe with my life. Naught shall harm ye while I live. Now dinnae fret any more. Gae on tae sleep. I shall be back almost afore ye know I’m gone.” Rory reached for the carafe of water on the bedside table and poured a glass. He held it to her lips. “Have a drink now, and then close yer eyes. I can see that ye are very tired.”

“I am tired,” she answered, taking the glass and drinking it down in a few large swallows. “But that is all your fault. You drugged me again. It isn’t fair that you aren’t sleepy, too.”

“Aye,” he agreed, not quite smiling. “It is unfair. But the salt doesnae take selkies that way. Instead it gives us strength and speed. Yer gift shall be my shield,
aroon,
and I will return all the faster for it.”

Gently, he tucked her under the covers, and then lifted his skin off the bed. Hexy didn’t protest, but she felt the loss keenly. It was hard to lose both Ruairidh and the comforting fur.

“There is one last thing: Ye maun stay away frae haunted places. With yer blood awake now, it may be that ye’ll feel spirits keenly. I was wrong tae take ye tae the fisherman’s island. Ye must not distress yerself this way again.”

“I won’t go anywhere haunted,” she promised sleepily.

“Good. Ye dwell in happiness until I return,” he instructed, his tone formal, the words nearly ritualistic. “The sea shall send ye some lovely dreams.”

Exhausted, she nodded once.

“Sleep and I’ll return after moonrise on the morrow. Or on the night that follows.” Then he whispered something in that strange language he sometimes used and kissed her eyelids.

Hexy awoke the next morning to the sound of distant singing and a strange play of color upon the clouds outside Ruairidh’s opened window. She watched, half-asleep, as the thin strings of wispy vapor wove themselves into a sheer blanket that slowly pulled itself over the sun.

Unbidden, part of a poem from childhood came to mind. “The Little Sea Horse” was a favorite of Rory Patrick’s written by a Missus A. S. Hardy:

Did the little mermaids ride Through the ocean’s foamy tide…

Do the little mermaids weep In their sea caves, fathoms deep…

The poem’s unhappy question brought her awake. She scolded herself. This wasn’t the moment to be wondering about mermaids. Details about the previous night were somewhat hazy, but she knew that she had important things to do that day that might be of help to Ruairidh, as well as making Jillian happy—though making Jillian happy was seeming less and less important every day.

Hexy climbed quickly from bed, scooping up clothing and hurrying to her own room. She had no wish to linger in the bed now that Ruairidh was gone from it, taking all warmth and happiness with him.

She did not pause to ask herself, as she bathed away the traces of his salt, whether a visit to mad John’s cottage was an impulse best left unpursued; she was not interested in hearing dissenting answers. She
had
to help somehow, and it seemed that she must go to the furrier’s cottage and discover what she could of all skins—selkie, seal or sable.

It did not take her long to dress, for she did little more than brush her hair and fasten it with a comb before venturing into the dimming day.

Though hungry, she did not take the time to
visit the kitchen in search of food. She knew there would be nothing there that she wanted, and the effects of Ruairidh’s presence were still with her, protecting her from hunger.

She took in a deep breath and set off for Crot Callow. The world these days seemed different to her, fresher. She was looking at it with new eyes that saw strange sights and yet perceived them as something vaguely familiar. And wonderful.

The world was rougher here. It had not had the edges taken off and been smoothed into civilized blandness. And there were many dangers here, too, but at the moment she felt confident of facing them—eager, even. Her blood thrummed with excitement, pounding like waves on a stony shore. She felt everything more deeply. Her hungers were stronger, her energy greater, her need for sleep an undeniable compulsion. That morning she welcomed all of it.

The hazy day welcomed her back. Velvety bees hummed in the furze, their song a lovely drone that underscored the sea’s soft voice, and she watched with intense interest as her fluttering shadow strolled before her, growing more pale with every step, seeming to rub itself away as it was pushed over the stony path until it disappeared altogether as she entered the shade of the horse chestnut. The ancient tree
spread its limbs above her, a thin parasol of waxy cream-colored blossoms that whispered softly as the wind moved through it.

Hexy glanced up at the darkening sky through the lacy branches, hoping that it would not rain until afternoon but unwilling to turn back even if it did. Urgency dogged her, pushing her to a hurried pace.

It was a long walk to Crot Callow, made only a little shorter by cutting through MacKenzie’s Rath and using the tiny bridge over the moat, which forded the sea-bound stream that ran there through the early blooming heather. It was there that the mallow trees grew, and Hexy decided that she would stop another day and gather sap to make marshmallow candy. Her grandmother had always sworn that sweet mallow could heal wounds, cure coughs and prevent illness of all kinds. It was a good precaution for her to take for the babe’s sake as well as her own, but it also sounded like something she would like to eat. Lemonade was wonderful, but she could not afford to go on drinking it even if the grocer got more lemons.

She had somehow forgotten that taking this route through the all but forgotten rath also meant that she had to pass through the eerie shell dunes. It was not so much a midden as a graveyard, a place of many birds, where the bank of abandoned mussels and oysters rose up
to nearly three times her height and hid her completely from the sea.

The way through the bleached shell hills was slippery and the sharp-edged shells grabbed at her shoes. In spite of her best efforts, Hexy often found herself off balance and on the verge of falling.

Disaster was avoided until she emerged on the sea side of the dunes, but then the solid earth gave way to slippery sand. The soil beneath her boot-shod feet became untenable, her weight shifting the fragile crust, and she suddenly found the shell-strewn earth rushing at her with upthrust blades of white and gray.

Birds screamed and scattered as she toppled, arms stretched before her. The impact was hard, and it forced painful shards of broken shell into her hands and knees with enough force to slice through her skirt and draw blood.

Tears started to her eyes as the pain pierced her nerves, but Hexy did not cry out. Before her lay a quaking skua with a bent leg trapped in the joint of a mussel. The bird was hiding its tiny face in terror as her ragged breath washed over it, ruffling its delicate feathers.

Moved by a new compassion for this creature—for all creatures, but especially those of the shore—she took out her handkerchief from its temporary place in her chemise and, using
her teeth, tore off the ancient cotton lace that edged it.

“It’s all right,” she cooed softly, pitching her voice so it was as gentle as a sigh. “I’m sorry I frightened you. We’ll fix that leg and then I’ll find you something to eat. Please don’t be frightened.”

Slowly, she folded her own bleeding hand around the small body and carefully freed the bird’s leg, which did not seem broken but was badly scraped and bloodied. With infinite care, she bound up the tiny wound. The bird did not fight her. It seemed frozen with fear, its trembling and the thud of its tiny heart the only sign that it still lived.

“There now,” she said gently to the terrorstricken avian as she returned it to the ground. “We are all done. You can be off now, if that’s what you want.”

The skua slowly untucked its head and looked first from its leg and then to her. Its eyes were wide and black and unblinking. It ceased shivering. Making a small noise, which Hexy chose to think of as thanks, it opened its lovely gray wings and flew away toward the sea to be with its kin.

Abandoned by the bird and feeling suddenly lonely, Hexy scrambled to her feet and inspected the damage to her own person. Fortunately, it turned out to be minimal. She had
apparently imagined the wounds to be more serious than they actually were, hallucinating the white knives piercing her hands. The shells
had
cut her, but only shallowly, and the wounds were already closed and had stopped stinging. A few dabs of the ruined handkerchief removed the last of the damp blood from her right palm, which was the worst afflicted.

With extra caution, she worked her way slowly to the edge of the shell dunes where the alarmed birds impatiently awaited her departure from their feeding grounds.

Hexy muttered an apology for disturbing them and continued on her way.

Because of the malodorous occupation pursued by the furrier, he had bought a cottage well outside the village, located on a bluff in lonely solitude where it would be cleansed by the wind. She had not heard the particulars of Crot Callow’s history—other than that it had once belonged to a shark fisherman who had chosen it for the same reason as the furrier—but she was still absolutely certain that she knew this place. She had a clear image of the path from the dunes, which had in years past been well-beaten down by travelers. Once the flensing shed had been set up and the sharks’ blood had leached into the ground, it had become unpopular. The narrow way had grown steadily more ill-tended as fewer and fewer people came
to visit the sharkman, and then John and his son.

Hexy’s feet slowed, hesitating for the first time. An image of the old Crot Callow swam before her eyes, the past dissolving into the present and then reasserting itself.

“Stop.” Her voice was feeble. She put a hand to her eyes and shivered.

The deterioration of Crot Callow continued to unfold in her mind as her feet walked on of their own accord. Weeds were shoving their way up between loosened stones until it looked as it was today. The thick hedge that encircled the cottage turned gnarled and brown, reminding Hexy of the dead grapevines she had once seen in a vineyard after a root blight had killed the crop. All the vegetation on the bluff looked as though it had been recently hit with a killing frost.

Perhaps that was from the salt leaching through the soil. Perhaps it was some other thing. The furrier and sharkman had both traded in death. Maybe it was this that had poisoned the land.

“Enough,” she muttered, putting some force behind her words, and happily the vision died. “This isn’t the day for an imagination run amok!”

Rounding the dying hedge, Hexy stopped abruptly, her lingering wisps of dreamy hallucination
banished by shock. Just as she had imagined, the small stone cottage’s gray door was opened to the cleansing breeze.

What she had not seen in her waking dream was that the way would be blocked by a nasty snarl of fishing nets and rotting sea grass that still ran with water. Rivulets of misplaced sea ran along the stones’ joints and into the dead ground, adding salt to whatever poison was already there.

Was there something caught in the net?

Her breathing grew shallow, and dread awoke in the pit of her stomach. It uncurled slowly, trying to reach her brain. Without the lingering aid of Ruairidh’s calming salt in her blood, she would have panicked completely.

“No,” she assured herself. “Nothing’s there. It’s just a net.”

The opened door should have suggested that mad John was at home, but this thought never entered her mind. All she kept seeing was the thick mesh from the fisherman’s chapel, the one that Ruairidh had said was a shroud, and she wondered what might have dragged it to the cottage. And for what purpose.

Hexy stood still, listening, watching. There was nothing moving but the shadows of clouds before the sun, no one muttering except the wind and sea.

She wished passionately that she had a telescope,
so that she could see what was in the cottage without venturing any nearer. She wondered for a wild moment if anyone in the village would have such an exotic instrument that she might borrow, but reality was swift with its unpleasant answer.

And if wishes were horses then beggars might ride
. But she had neither horse nor telescope. She would have to go on alone, or else abandon her quest to find Jillian’s missing fur, and to help Ruairidh.

Don’t be a coward. There’s nothing there
.

Taking a shallow breath, she stepped off the path and chose a less direct route to the opened door. She promised herself that she would look inside the cottage, but under no circumstances could she touch that horrible net.

She did not call out.

She also thought suddenly of the old legend that said you could escape faerie enchantment by turning your pockets inside out. Unfortunately, she had no pockets that would invert, and it was unlikely that such a counterspell would be effective against sea monsters anyway.

“Sea monsters! What rot!” she whispered.

Striving for common sense and normalcy, she told herself that it was not unusual for people to open their doors on a fine day and let in the sun and sea air.

But this rationalization was short-lived, for it
was increasingly obvious with every step she took toward the cottage that the day was not particularly nice. And the ugly jumble of out-of-place fishing nets grew more alarming with every step that brought her nearer their dripping, gnarled strands.

What if it was John’s son, or his ghost, come home from the sea? Ruairidh said that the body had returned, but maybe it was not at rest because it was searching for its soul…

Hexy stopped just outside the door, breathing rapidly, reluctant to cross the narrow stone threshold that opened into the room beyond, which was long and low and eerily bare.

Except that was not entirely true. The room was not really all that long, the ceiling no lower than any other cottage’s, and there were furnishings that filled the room: tables, chairs, an oil lamp whose chimney was badly smoked, and a cot made up with woolen blankets. There was peat neatly stacked by the inglenook, waiting to be put on the fire.

Still, the place had about it a feeling of desolation—of desecration—that reminded her of the poisonous air that had enwrapped the fishermen’s chapel, and the illusion of barrenness persisted in spite of her eye’s testimony to the contrary.

Do you go back, or go on?

Onward. She had to.

Doing as Ruairidh had, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to open herself up to the place so that she could
feel
who had been there.

Shadows pressed against the threshold but wouldn’t venture outside the door. She would have to go to them.

When she felt ready, her eyes opened and they slowly adjusted to the dark interior. It was suggestive that there were dirty cobwebs on the shutters, and the beginnings of construction of a swallow’s nest high up in the corner of the room. They would not be there if the door had not stood open, the cottage unoccupied, for a long while. This was evidence for the eyes of what her other senses already told her.

She looked back once more at the wet net, and then in at the empty room. No one was there that she could see—not a bird or a spider or a ghost. She had to go inside and find out what
unseen
things might be there. Since there was nothing and no one about to hurt her, there was no logical reason not to do so. It was simply a matter of conquering distaste and fear.

“I must.”

Slowly, cautiously, and with breath held tight, she stepped over the stone threshold.

Immediately, there was a change in atmosphere. The light took on a metallic gleam, and
the sea sounded distant and immeasurably dreary as it sang its ancient dirge.