Tides (24 page)

“I know,” Maebh said. “We must not press her too hard.” But her voice trembled.

Mara pulled back, searching Maebh’s face. “Can you get her skin?” she asked. “I think it might help her to have it back, even if . . .” She remembered the spent look of Aine’s half-skin.

Maebh nodded. She beckoned to Lir. He ran to her, his skin clutched tight under one arm, and she hoisted him up so he could wrap his legs around her waist. She lumbered up the dock with him, over the rocky ground to the crest of the island, and into the cottage.

Gemm took a rope to make the boat fast to the dock, and Noah stepped out to help her.

“Where’s Lo?” Her eyes darted toward the ocean.

“She went to the hospital,” said Noah, “but she’s okay, Gemm, I swear.” He laid a hand on his grandmother’s shoulder, but she saw the blood on his shirt and made a noise of protest.

“You should have gone with her. What on earth did he do to you?”

Noah shook his head, curling his other hand into a loose fist so she wouldn’t see the cut there. “Really, Gemm, it’s not that bad,” he insisted as she exclaimed over the blood. “I can still move my arm just fine—see? It was a lot of blood, I know, but the cut’s not that deep.” He pulled his shirt off, wincing as he raised his arm over his head. He turned around and showed her his back, the wound jagged across his sleek runner’s muscles.

Gemm took Noah’s shirt from him and used it to gently wipe some of the blood away. She raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised you didn’t pass out,” she muttered.

Noah scoffed, but Mara felt a tinge of embarrassment in their link. “I’m tougher than I look, I guess.”

“Well, now, of course you are.” Gemm smiled. “At least let me bandage it for you. There’s some antiseptic in the medicine cabinet.” She bustled off toward the cottage.

“She’s right, you know,” said Mara, joining Noah at the boat’s side. “You’re lucky it wasn’t much worse.” Her fingers wandered out, brushing against the bare skin of his lower back.

Someone behind them cleared her throat. Mara jumped backwards, embarrassed, as if she’d been caught doing something private.

She turned to see Maebh walking toward them with Aine’s mutilated skin. Lir followed her, his own skin clutched tightly in his arms. Gemm came last, carrying a small white box.

Aine stared at her skin from the boat, shaking again.

Maebh stepped toward her, but Aine backed to the starboard edge. “I—I want Mara,” she said.

Maebh looked down for a moment, her smile breaking. When she looked up, her expression was calm and unmarred. She held the skin out to Mara. “Should I get yours, too?” she asked.

“No,” Mara said. “Aine might need me to hold her up.”

Aine looked out at the waves. She chewed on her lips, tonguing the thick scar that ran down their center and extended over her chin and neck. She wrapped her arms around her body and shook her head.

Mara climbed back into the boat and knelt beside her sister. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’ve been so brave, Aine. You don’t have to do this right now if you don’t want to.”

Aine kept her eyes on the water. “I do. I—I want to. But it scares me, that I had forgotten about the ocean.”

It was strange—Aine looked no older than Lir or any other youngling at her first change. But the way she spoke and the sound of her voice were much older, almost adult. She carried herself like an old woman, her hands shaking, her shoulders hunched.

Mara closed those hands softly in her own, wishing she could still them. “Just follow me,” she said. She stood, and without letting go, she moved backwards off the dock.

Aine followed, hardly looking where she stepped, her eyes locked with Mara’s. At the shoreline, she pulled her hands away and began to walk on her own.

The tide was almost slack, the ocean nearly quiet. Small waves lipped onto the shore. The edges of the sky grayed with the end of night.

Aine winced when the first ripple crept over her toes. She was still wearing an old white shirt of Professor Foster’s, and it dipped into the water with every slow step, its hem growing wet and heavy. As she walked deeper into the water, it rose around her, drifting in the waves like a round white flower.

When she turned back toward them she was smiling, pushing her arms against the currents, almost swimming. “See me, Maebh?” she called, a hint of childhood in her voice again.

“Yes, Aine, I see you.” Maebh’s voice hitched, and Gemm left her ministrations at Noah’s shoulder to come stand by her side. The Elder brushed her hand over Lir’s dark hair.

Mara walked into the water and dipped Aine’s skin below the surface. The dry cracks it had accumulated from years on land softened, and she could feel them starting to heal. But they would not mend completely, she knew, unless Aine could change. She saw Maebh’s face, tight with worry, and she shared her fear. So little of the skin was left.

Aine waded toward her and held out her shaking hands for the skin.

“Feet first, remember,” said Mara, trying to sound as if she couldn’t imagine the change failing.

Aine pulled off her shirt and dropped it into the water. She swam closer, and Mara caught her under her arms, holding her head above the water while she pushed her feet into the sealskin. She could feel everyone on shore holding their breath.

Aine shuddered in her grasp. The skin slithered over her knees, then wound past her thighs and up to the childish line of her waist. It curled over the humanskin below her navel, knitting into her flesh, and stopped.

It was clear it could reach no farther.

Mara thought she would cry. It was foolish to have thought the change would work, she knew. But now Aine could never really change.

Aine twisted around to look at her. Her eyes were wide, and the trembling in her body was fading. The scarred corners of her mouth rose in a smile.

“I think . . .” She closed her eyes, listening for something inside herself. “I think I’m growing again, Mara. I think I’m getting older, now.”

“It’s the change,” said Maebh, wading toward them. “Every time you change, you’ll grow a little older.” She held out her arms, her face tight with hope.

Aine swam toward her. She reached out to grasp Maebh’s hands, but just before they touched, she winced and pulled back.

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I just . . . can’t have everyone touch me right now.”

Mara tried to ignore the jealousy simmering in Maebh’s link. She didn’t understand, either, but she knew they had to give Aine time. She tried to offer Maebh a sense of patience.

“Do whatever you need to, Aine,” Maebh said. “The important thing is that you’re home now.”

Aine looked out to sea. She ducked her head under and swam away from them, aiming for the open ocean beyond Gosport Harbor.

“Oh—” Maebh’s link filled with fear.

But soon Aine circled around and returned to them. She was panting as her head emerged from the water. “They’re coming,” she said, her voice high and shrill.

A line of dark, slick forms cut through the waves: Ronan and the younglings. Mara stepped in front of Aine, worried that they were all going to tackle her at once.

But the younglings hung back, shy. Mara realized they might not remember much of their lost sister. Only Ronan swam right up to them. He changed as he rose out of the water, his sealskin sliding down from his head in sticky folds.

“Aine,” he said, reaching past Mara.

“Careful, Ronan,” Mara warned. “She’s still overwhelmed.”

Aine stared up at Ronan. “I remember you,” she said. “I missed you the most, Brother.”

The muscles in Ronan’s shoulders twitched, and Mara knew it was all he could do not to swing her up in his arms. But he was better with the younglings than either she or Maebh, and he seemed to understand why he couldn’t touch her. “I missed you, too,” he said.

Four youngling heads popped up behind Ronan. Mara smiled at what she felt in their links, the overwhelming curiosity drowning out their shyness. She heard a splash behind her and watched Lir run into the waves, tripping as he struggled to pull on his sealskin and join his siblings.

“This is hard,” he said, scowling at his skin.

Ronan turned to help him, but Aine was there first. “Wait,” she said. “Breathe for a moment. You have to want it, have to want the change.”

Lir closed his eyes; the muscles in his face softened. Aine put a hand on his arm. “Yes, that way.”

Ronan and Mara looked at each other, surprise and pleasure meeting in their links.

The other younglings, seeing her kindness to Lir, began to approach Aine. They circled around her, sniffing the air and gauging their links. The circle began to move out to sea, and Aine moved with them at its center, until they were racing out to Whale Rock together, spinning and tumbling under the waves.

Ronan turned away and swam after the younglings, and Mara heard his laugh turn into a seal’s bark as he chased them.

A ringing sounded on the shore, and Gemm pulled a black rectangle like Lo’s from her pocket. “Oh—” She pressed it to her ear. “Lo, honey? Are you all right?” She started walking back toward the cottage, and Maebh followed. “Oh, good. Oh, thank goodness.”

Mara waded over to the dock. Noah was waiting for her, holding out his hand to help her climb up. She gave him a look, just to make sure he knew she could do it by herself, then took his hand and smiled.

She settled next to him, and they dangled their legs into the water. She looked at his face, then down at her hands, not knowing what to say.

Noah was quiet too, and she felt a weariness in him even deeper than her own. She could barely fathom how only yesterday they’d set off for the Midsummer dance in Gemm’s boat. She felt as if months had passed in the hours of that night.

Finally, Noah broke the silence. “Aine is like a mermaid now, isn’t she?”

Mara looked out to Whale Rock and saw her there, a pale streak among the dark seal forms of the other younglings. “Not really.” She looked at him, amused. “Do you think so?”

“Of course, I mean, the tail, the . . .” He trailed off. A slow smile grew on his face, and his link vibrated with excitement. “Wait. Are you saying she’s not like a mermaid because—because those are real too? Have you seen one?”

Mara smiled. “No. Maebh told us stories about people like that—sirens—but the way she talked about them, I always figured they were
only
stories.” She shrugged, not wanting to disappoint him. “Maybe there are real ones in some other part of the world. But selkies don’t know of them—at least, our pod doesn’t—and they probably don’t know of us, either.”

He scooted a little closer to her. “Good. It’s nice to know some things are mysteries to you, too.”

They were quiet again, but their silence was more comfortable than it had been before. The sun was beginning to rise in front of them. Waves slid onto the shore like stroking fingers.

“Gemm was right,” Noah said after several minutes had passed.

“What do you mean?” Mara glanced toward him and immediately saw the white bandage on his back. “Oh.”

“It could have been way worse, you know? I mean, I should have been so much more afraid. And I was afraid.” He frowned, remembering. “But I could tell you were coming, Mara. I could feel it.”

He slipped his arm around her and drew her close.

She nestled into him, resting her head under his chin. She took a deep breath; when she exhaled, her lips brushed the indent under his throat. Their link sparked. She smiled and tried it again, kissing him more purposefully.

Noah touched her chin, urging her face upward. She looked in his eyes, suddenly embarrassed at the heat in her. They were linked. He would feel everything she felt.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb, his eyes somber. His other arm clasped tighter around her back, and he bent his head and kissed her.

Mara leaned back onto the dock, sliding a hand into Noah’s hair and pulling him down with her. He flinched when his injured shoulder met the wood. Mara pushed herself up with her hands. Had she hurt him?

He shook his head no before she could ask. He touched the side of her face again and brought her down for another kiss.

The first sunlight touched the dock, warming the wood and her skin. Mara could feel her wet clothes starting to dry in the morning air. Each moment brought more light, and she knew that soon everyone on the Shoals would be able to see them.

Noah took her lower lip between his and sucked on it gently, his hands tightening on her hips. Mara forgot about anyone who might be watching and put all her attention into kissing him back.

thirty-six

L
O
tapped the end of her pencil against the clipboard in her hand. The Center had been a disorganized mess ever since Professor Foster’s “absence,” as everyone was calling it. It had been almost a month, and things still weren’t back to normal. Lo quickly discovered that none of the research staff was particularly interested in the paperwork necessary to keep the Center running smoothly.

It wasn’t that Lo was so eager to do it, either, but the new director had offered her actual
money,
and Lo was suddenly too busy picturing all the art supplies she could buy with the money to say no. Besides, she liked making sure everything was in its rightful place. She was learning how nice it was to be in control of something.

Thinking of that, she decided it was time to set Professor Foster’s office to rights. They had destroyed all the dead sealskin samples, everything really dangerous, as soon as they could, but the mundane scattered
mess
of it all was something they’d decided they could deal with later, when they had all recovered. Well, later had come, and Lo found that—as usual—she was the one cleaning the boring bits up. The new director would be on-site in a week, and it had to be spotless by then—it was a snowdrift of loose papers at the moment. The police had chalked up its disorder to Professor Foster’s “mental breakdown,” but Lo knew better.

She set her clipboard down on top of a stack of back issues of
Aquatic Conservation.
She glanced around the room and realized she had no idea where to start. She’d really made a mess of this place.