The Long Way Home

by Jasinda Wilder

  “There now, good as new.” She shuffled back away from him, the makeshift bandage in hand.

  Ur-ur-ur-ur.

  “Oh, ’twas nothing. A bit of help for another of God’s creatures. I still wouldn’t mind if you brought me a fish or two, though.”

  Urk! Ur-ur.

  He twisted around and carved under the waves, as graceful in the water as he was ungainly on land. She watched his dark form slice through water and vanish, and she found herself sitting in the sand, thinking of all the work that awaited her, and wishing she could dive into the ocean after him and swim with him beneath the waves and splash and catch fish and sun herself on a rock somewhere off shore.

  She daydreamed, sea foam and icy water licking at her heels, the sun now past the horizon, the light hazy and red and golden.

  Exhaustion snuck over her; the evening was warm now, and she wore a thick wool sweater of Calum’s, and she was just so tired. She felt herself sinking down to the sand, pillowing her head on her arms, slipping into drowsy peacefulness as if in a dream, a return to girlhood when she could lay in the grass in the summer sun and let the warmth soak into her skin and bathe her closed eyes with a gentle yellow heat and drowse and feel time skip and hop and slip as she napped like a cat in a window.

  There was movement. She was dreaming, though. Dreaming of Calum, returned. Scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to bed. Tucking a blanket around her shoulders. Watching her with large dark mysterious eyes.

  Calum’s eyes were gray, though, weren’t they?

  She fluttered her eyes, and saw craggy, swarthy features, a jaw like a cliffside, deep-set eyes like chips of blackest night, scars criss-crossing his cheeks, a thick black beard braided with strands of seaweed, long black hair around burly shoulders. Bare skin, a hint of a stomach, and then her eyes slid closed and when she opened them again, she was in her own bed and the house was empty.

  Her door was open, though. Banging in the wind, the light of a full moon shining bright on the wood planks, staining a line of wet footprints into silver pools.

  “I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.” She rose from her bed, traipsed across the room to the nearest footprint.

  There were grains of sand in the print. And her arms, her shoulders, her cheek were gritty with sand. It was in her hair. In her clothes. She followed the footprints outside into the night—there were flattened patches of grass, blades twitching upright still. It was a considerable distance to the next print, and the next, and then she was following impressions in the sand, where the edges of the impressions still slid in on themselves. Running, now, Brighid tripped and slid down the dune path to the sea and there he was, standing in the waves, hip-deep.

  Watching her.

  “Wait!” Brighid called, splashing knee-deep into the water toward him, uncaring that her skirt was getting soaked.

  He hesitated, his posture that of a man about to dive into the water. He said nothing, waiting. She approached, the water at her thighs and then her belly, her clothing wet and sticking to her skin, the water icy cold. She was close enough that she could have touched him. The water did nothing, this close, to hide his manhood, although he was utterly unashamed of his nakedness.

  Now that she was mere inches away, she had no idea what to say to him. She met his eyes, and he didn’t look away, but his gaze was…alien. Animal. Other than human. An animal soul in a human body.

  A momentary tableau, two pairs of eyes meeting, and then he twisted in a flash of dark skin and splashed into the sea, feet kicking the surface, and then he was gone. Brighid remained belly-deep in the frigid water, waiting, watching. Long minutes passed, and then, far, far, far out, a head surfaced. Too distant to make out anything but a vague shape, but she felt his gaze. And then another splash, a flash of a tail, and then the sea was just the sea, calm and tranquil once more.

  Days passed, and Brighid continued to walk the shoreline in the mornings, and sometimes in the evenings as well.

  One day she went to check her lobster traps, and her pail was gone.

  The next day, it was back, sitting in front of her back door, full of fish. Cod, mackerel, tuna. Massive, fat, freshly caught.

  The next morning, she left her pail on the sand near the rocks, where she’d first tended to the seal, where she’d first seen the naked man. By evening, it was gone; the next day, it was returned once more full of enormous fish.

  For months, through the bitter winter and into spring, she would leave the pail on the beach in the morning and find it by her back door, full of fish, by evening. Those fish would sustain her for days, keep her fed, and prevent her from having to slaughter any more sheep.

  And then, one night there was an awful storm, the kind where the wind blew so hard the windows rattled in their lead panes, and the thunder shook the foundations, and the rain clattered on the roof and walls and windows, and she could hear the sea roaring and churning. It blew angrily well past dawn, and then the sun rose and burned away the clouds, and trees had been downed across fences and sheep were missing and the goats were huddled together under a cluster of trees, bleating piteously.

  It took Brighid hours to right everything, using Shem, her horse, to haul away the trees and then replace fence boards and find her sheep and herd the goats to a different pasture. It was evening before she found time to trudge exhaustedly down to the sea, which was still crashing loudly, whitecaps smashing onto the sand. Seaweed and driftwood littered the beach, enormous shells washed up from the depths, the corpse of something long dead water-bloated, bones showing through partially-eaten flesh. Farther down, near the rocks, a dark shape.

  Something alive, moaning low, writhing. A seal. Her seal, as she thought of him. She recognized his mottled coloring and the spray of whitish dots near his tail, and the scar on one flipper. He was injured again, this time grievously, a huge jagged spar of driftwood speared through his tail, high up, oozing blood.

  As Brighid approached, the seal growled, wobbled toward her.

  “I know, I know. I’m not sure I can fix that here. You need proper care, I think.”

  Another low rowling murmur, weak, piteous. Brighid knelt beside him, examining the injury. “This is bad, I’m afraid. It’s not something I can just put salve and a bandage on.” She moved toward his head, petting him carefully. “You know, I have a belief that you’re a selkie. If you are, you could change, and I can help you to my house and care for you there.”

  Silence, and a profoundly intense stare from the seal, his eyes searching hers, looking for…she didn’t know what, but she met his gaze steadily, not looking away.

  And then he shimmied awkwardly, with difficulty and grunts of pain, into the water. Flapping, splashing, and disappearing beneath the waves. Not very far, not very deep; she could make out his form, but only a darker shape in the gray-green waves. There was…was it a flash of light, or her imagination? And then a roiling in the waves, and the dark shape slowly became lighter, thinner, smaller, legs flashing, kicking, an arm, long hair and that beard, and those eyes as he clawed back toward land, gasping, growling in pain. The spar was now lanced through his left thigh, high up, the jagged tip protruding out of the front of his thigh, the end dragging in the sand behind him. He was on his side, trying to keep the spar from dragging in the sand, clawing with both hands.

  In one of his fists was…something dark, and familiar. Fur? A hide, or a loose skin. Dripping wet, mottled and speckled. She crouched near him, propped her shoulder under his arm, and heaved him to his feet.

  “It’s not far,” she said, “but you know the way, don’t you, then?”

  He didn’t answer, just hobbled gingerly in the direction of her home. His injured leg dragged in the sand, and his weight pulled her down, slowed her, weakened her. She stiffened her spine and bore up under his massive weight. Calum was no small man, and she’d hauled him home drunk from the pub more than once before they’d moved to this farm on the coast, but the remembered weight of Calum seemed much, much less than this m
an. He just felt…dense, as if every pound of weight the seal carried, this man did as well. He was so heavily muscled as to defy belief, a massive, compact, hard, powerful man. And he was nearly limp, barely able to keep on his feet, even with her assistance.

  They had to pause to breathe at the foot of the dunes, and Brighid looked back at their progress here and realized he’d left a trail of blood in the sand, a thick dark reddish-brown stain in the sand, blood sluicing down his thigh and off his foot and into the sand. After a few minutes of rest, Brighid worked herself to her feet, snugged her shoulder under his once more, and they painfully, slowly, laboriously dragged their way up the dune path. By the time they reached her back door, Brighid was sweating profusely and gasping for breath, every muscle screaming in protest.

  He was barely conscious, now, deadweight crushing her into the ground. The spar—a hunk of wood cast off from some long ago shipwreck—was easily three feet in length and nearly a foot thick. It was smooth from being tossed in the briny waves for so long, but the pointed tip was jagged and razor-sharp. She got him inside, and to her bed, where he collapsed, his breath a pained whistle, groans emerging from his lips every few moments. He was bleeding everywhere, laying on his side, facing the wall, away from the doorway, the spar trailing down to the floor.

  “I have to pull this out of you and stop the bleeding before you die from blood loss,” Brighid said. “I need a few things first, though.”

  She hung a cook pot full of water on the hook in the fireplace to boil, and then cut up an old bedsheet into strips and set them in the water to sterilize. She gathered all the rags she had, and another sheet, and brought all of this, along with the freshly boiled bandages, into the bedroom.

  After examining the wound, she leaned close to the man’s ear. “I’m going to pull this out now. It will hurt quite a lot, I’m afraid.” She shoved an old leather belt of Calum’s between his teeth. “Bite down, and do not be afraid to scream. There’s no one to hear but me.”

  Gritting her own teeth, Brighid took hold of the spar at the back of his thigh, a handful of rags close by. She braced her hand on his buttock, sucked in a steadying breath. “Ready? On three, then. One—two—three.”

  On the last count, she drew the spar out swiftly but carefully, and he screamed, an animal roar of agony as blood squirted out of the wound. He stiffened, and his hand clawed around his thigh, his fingers trembling. She gingerly moved his hand away and wadded a rag against the hole in the back of his thigh, and then another against the front side wound, and then swiftly wound a strip of bandage around the rags to bind them in place, tying it so tightly he snarled in protest.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she murmured to him, crooning. “It’s got to be tight to slow the blood flow.”

  He was groaning and growling and snarling, the sounds utterly inhuman, totally animal. When the bandages were tied, she settled a blanket over him, as much to hide his nakedness as to keep him warm—although he was now shivering and shaking. He moaned low, a guttural sound, weak, pained.

  Brighid left the rags on the bed and tossed the bloodstained hunk of wood outside, and then sank down into the grass, cross-legged, exhausted, breathing raggedly, night having fallen to bathe everything in darkness. Allowing herself to rest only for a few moments, Brighid forced herself back to her feet and inside, to check on her patient. He was asleep on the very edge of the bed, his back to the room, the blanket draped over his mammoth form. Her heart caught; a man hadn’t been in her bed in over two years, nearly two and half years now and the sight put her heart in her throat and fear in her belly.

  Calum she’d known. She’d grown up with him, born and raised in the same village, courted and married in that village and then moved to Dublin together, and then here. Calum had been familiar. Marrying him, going to bed with him had been…home from the very beginning.

  This man, this nameless selkie, this creature from the ocean, part beast, part human…he was utterly unfamiliar.

  Brighid was beyond exhaustion, having put in a full day’s brutal work before finding him on the beach. Now she was…just done in, completely. And there was only the one bed, nowhere else to sleep save the grass outside or the hard floor.

  Cursing under her breath, Brighid resigned herself to sharing the bed, because she desperately needed the rest. Her dress was sodden, however. She dug a nightgown out, checked to see if he was sleeping, and then quickly stripped out of her wet clothes, down to skin. She felt a shudder run down her spine as she tugged the nightgown on, and when she emerged from the neck hole, discovered that he was awake now, and watching her carefully, the fur clutched in both hands now, like a child with a favorite blanket.

  “What am I going to do with you?” She asked, meaning it rhetorically. “You probably don’t even think of nakedness as anything much, though, do you? You’re certainly unbothered by it.”

  He didn’t answer, only stared at her, and his eyes roamed her form, flicking from head to toe several times, scrutinizing her openly. He’d seen her before the gown was on, she was sure.

  “I have to sleep,” she said. “I can’t very well kick you out now, but I also can’t manage sleeping on the floor either. So I’m sharing. Do you understand me?”

  Another long, curious, blank stare.

  Brighid sat on the edge of the bed opposite him, meeting his gaze. “Do you speak English? Do you speak at all? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  He nodded, once.

  Brighid laughed. “Well hell, man, I asked you three different questions, and I get a single nod in response?”

  The intense, piercing, animal stare once more.

  “Well, you nodded, so you understand English just fine, clearly. Can you speak though, or no?”

  A long stare, and Brighid thought she was going to get more silence.

  “I…speak.” His voice was hoarse, gravelly, rough from extreme disuse. “Not well.”

  “Sounds fine to me.” She slid a little further onto the bed. “What’s your name?”

  Another of those silent, intense stares that seemed to be a primary form of communication for him.

  “Your name?” She touched her chest. “I’m Brighid.”

  He only shrugged, and shook his head.

  “You don’t have a name?”

  He glanced at the ceiling briefly, a gesture of thought; he made a hoarse two-tone barking noise in his throat, and then shrugged again.

  “Your name is…that noise?”

  He shrugged, and then nodded again.

  “Well, that’s not going to work. I can’t make that noise now can I?” She thought for a while, tapping her chin with a forefinger; all the while he stared at her, unblinking, a steady, intense gaze that no human could sustain. “How about Murtagh? Means skilled in the ways of the sea, which I feel is somewhat…erm, appropriate, given who or, um, what you are.”

  This got her the tiniest of smiles, a ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “Right. Well. I’m going to lay down, and you’re going to stay there on that side, and you’re going to keep your hands and your feet and your—” she glanced downward, an embarrassed suggestion, “—everything else, to yourself, you understand, Murtagh?”

  “Yes.” He murmured the word, a single syllable that felt heavy, thick, deliberate.

  His voice wasn’t accented in any way that she recognized, but merely as if words at all were a foreign concept to him.

  She laid down then, under the blankets, whereas he was on top of them with a different blanket covering him. Layers between them. And still, she didn’t fall asleep for a very long time, feeling him beside her, sensing him, smelling him. He smelled of man and of the sea, brine and musk. His breathing was steady but not sleep-slow, and she felt his stare.

  “You’re staring at me, Murtagh.” She didn’t look at him.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  A silence. And then: “You…save me.” Another silence. “You appear much good.
”

  Brighid laughed. “I’m not sure what the means.”

  He was silent awhile, again. “To look upon you. It is good.”

  Brighid felt heat burn in her cheeks, and her pulse flutter. “Oh. I…thank you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen many women? Have you ever spoken to a woman? Like this?”

  He grunted, a noncommittal or unsure sound. “Not as this. I see them. They swim from land, and I see them. Some with the coverings, and other times without the coverings. I like to see them better without the coverings. More of the skin. The body. It is good.”

  “I suppose you would.” Brighid laughed. “Still a man, I see.”

  “Always am I man.”

  “Are you…a man, or a seal, or both?”

  Another grunt. “This, that, all. I do not know. I am in the sea, the sea is in me. Her voice, her salt, her magic. She is everything.”

  “Have you ever been…” Brighid paused, realizing her question might be rude. But then, he wasn’t human in the sense of understanding social mores, was he? “…with a woman?”

  “To mate?” There was a hint of a smile. “Yes. She does not know I am this. A selkie, as you call me. Only that I am a man, coming from the sea, and she likes to look upon me, and touch me, and we…do this. In the sea. I show her my way. The currents, the waves, my breath. Not like upon the land. Not very good, like that.”

  “Isn’t it cold?”

  “Not with me.”

  “I—she couldn’t hold her breath as long as you can.”

  “I swim deep, very deep. To swim so deep, I do not breathe for a long, long time. As man, as seal—it is the same. I breathe for her.” He paused. “For you.”

  He’d caught her slip up, then.

  “She never knew you were a selkie?”