He wonders what she’s making. Who it’s for. And he’d ask her if she seemed to be awake.
Somewhere around Perth she wakes, and fully concentrates, and the scrap of wool becomes a glove: the kind without fingers which wraps around your thumb.
It’s beautiful.
She tucks an errant thread into the thumb and pulls another matching glove out of her bag. Turns them over. Fusses over this stitch and then that. Places them together.
And at Pitlochry the wizard-woman stands and gathers up her coat and bag of wool.
“Take ’em,” she says, pushing the gloves towards Theodora. “You’ll be needin’ all the warmth o’ extra skin for home.”
And before he can protest, she’s halfway down the carriage. Gone.
Theo blinks.
Reaches out to stroke the wool. They’re soft and warm and solid-real and even though the train carriage is warm, he pulls them on.
* * *
At Inverness, he paces for the entire forty-seven-minute wait. His new, knitted pelt is warm and comforting and it reminds him of a sealskin from his past. He’s restless.
Once, his mother told him of a man who walked seventy leagues to win his love. Others who set out into the road for fortunes and belonging. As a young boy Theo did not get it, but now, in this white-floored waiting room, he wanted nothing more than he wanted to walk.
She’ll be leaving now. Nearly home. Getting his note.
Dear Mama,
Once upon a summer’s day there was a boy who met another, and they swam together. It was...everything you’d hope from fairy tales, two boys tumbling through the Thames.
You’d have liked him, I think.
But they did something foolish, or rather, they did not do something sensible, and well, you know this story: boy meets boy and they...we...
We didn’t use protection.
I’m sorry.
And now I don’t know who I am, or what this baby will be with a dad like me, and I’m going to find some answers. Please don’t worry. I’ll be back.
I love you.
Theodora
It wasn’t...all the truth, not spelled out, because Theodora hadn’t found the words. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. That whether this kid turns out to be Hominidae or Phocidae or something in between, everything would be all right. Somehow.
He wanted to ask her outright whether he was boy or seal, so that he didn’t have to go. And to tear apart the stories which say boys like him—in all the ways—
But he had found his feet before he found the words, and here we are.
* * *
The last train is an anomaly of time, the journey short and long, the train hurtlingboltinggliding down the tracks and crawling, weightless, stuck unmoving. Beauly, Muir of Ord and Conon Bridge pass by in a sort of nothingness. Time stops. But every second—every mile—that should have passed builds under Theo’s skin until he hums with the anticipation.
The tannoy announces Garve, and Locluichart: old, familiar-sweet sounding places, each one more a comfort than the last—lullabies from his own story, pieces of his infant past—Achanalt, Achnasheen, Achnashellach.
And then home.
Almost.
At Strathcarron, he alights. Breathes. The air is different here. Salted. Wet and fresh and wild, and it sits heavy on the skin and clears the lungs, and for a moment Theodora stands there on the platform breathing long and deep until he’s full of it.
Home.
When his mother spoke of it in tales of old, she spoke of earth and air and sea, and he knows what to expect down to the tributaries and the grain of gneiss and sandstone, but he had not expected this...this feeling.
Perhaps this was his answer. Maybe this is where he’s meant to be.
And he’d planned to get a room in tonight, right here beside the station, but now that he’s here with this new air in his lungs, and so close to the beaches that his mother walked, he can’t imagine inside as a possibility. Instead, he hops down off the road towards the burbling of a river, and follows it towards the sea.
* * *
Theodora Hearn was not prepared for rain. In all his mother’s tales, their Wester Ross was wild and full of magic, and of course the winter tales were cold, and the nights in summer long, but—excepting their one storm-story—she’d never told him that it rained.
And he had never met a rain like this before. In London, the rain spots a bit, or it falls hard and fast and then it’s gone.
Scottish rain, it turns out, is as wild as stories.
And Theo’s coat was built for London. By the time he’s walked a mile along the river shore he’s soaked, and somehow getting wetter, and it feels like there are two rains in the air at once—one lashing relentless, and the other mist—a rain that defies gravity and hangs mid-air and clings to everything.
Not that he minds. He walks, and marvels at the wetness of his skin, the bright green purple-freckled-white of everything, the bounce of moss and heather underfoot and the total, utter absence of the sound of cars.
Half an hour of following the river, and it opens wide, becoming less a river, more a loch, and suddenly he’s on a beach, all salt and sea and lapping waves on stone, and all he wants to do is strip down to his skin and swim.
He almost does—gets as far as tugging his arms out of his coat sleeves—but he’s already wet and cold without adding an ocean’s chill, and besides, he is alone and he does not know the tides. Instead, he walks a little more, until the rain turns into drizzle, matching the crunch of his feet on shingle with each incoming wave.
He settles in a small cove as the sun sets, streaking heather-purple lines across the sky. Sits against a rock, unwraps his sandwiches and cake, and tells himself a story.
Once upon a seastorm, a woman, wild and sad and all alone, walked out onto this beach to have a conversation with the sea—
He stops.
Once upon a seastorm, a boy, wild and sad and terribly confused—
He stops again, not knowing how this version of the story goes.
Are there seals out in the water now?
He squints at far-off waves that might be bobbing heads, and wonders how he’s never asked his mother where seals sleep at night or if they sleep at all.
It’s probably different for selkies anyway.
Right?
Probably. But still he watches. And he falls asleep like that, back against a rock, trying not to shiver and staring out onto the beach where everything began.
* * *
He wakes several times that night, each time more surprised at the ice touch of his still-wet clothes, the bite of the wind and the sharp scratch-dig of shingle, each time turning over, hunching down or stretching out, trying to get comfortable.
Seal, he thinks. Think seal, lying like a king out on the beach, all blubber-warm, but as soon as the sun begins to rise, he rises with it, stiffly, and walks down to the sea. Here, he pulls off his gloves and crouches, lets the foam rush up over his fingers, splashes water on his face.
The water here is different from the Thames. More alive. And he watches it with interest. There’s sand beneath the shingle, etched by waves and gulls and oystercatchers, scattered here and there with shells and weeds and driftwood. He could probably look at it for a lifetime and never see half of the life that’s here.
It’s...comforting, somehow.
What isn’t comforting is the hunger gnawing at his core, and as soon as anything is open, it is time for supplies.
* * *
He finds the village store beside a café-gallery and church, right on the seafront and exactly as his mum described: white, salt-crusted walls and blue slate roofs and they look as though they’ve hunkered here forever, right where they belong.
There’s even the perfect-village dinging bell as he opens the door.
&n
bsp; “G’mornin’” someone calls from in the back. “I’ll be right in.”
“Take your time!” he answers, grabbing a basket and filling it with macaroni pies (weird, but he’s here for it, he thinks) and Tunnock’s Caramel bars. He adds a pint of milk, a can of peppered mackerel with a ring-pull on the lid and a bag of apples. Bear Grylls has nothing on a teenage boy for good survival food. And with that thought, he remembers that you cannot drink the sea, and adds a big bottle of water.
He considers midge repellent from a rack beside the till, but so far, despite the horror stories, he hasn’t been bitten—maybe it’s his sealskin, and they only go for softer human flesh.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He blinks. He’d expected your quintessential village granny up behind the till, but instead a tall, messy blue-haired girl with Celtic knotwork inked into her neck is reaching for his basket.
“Find errything you need?”
“Yes, thanks,” he says, adding a postcard featuring a beach of common seals.
She grins. “Quite a feast ye’ve go’ there.”
“Yep. I’m...seal watching.”
“Ahh, a nature lover.”
He nods.
“Well, be sure’n warm up at the café when ye’ve finished.” And she smiles wider and warmer, and Theo’s insides thaw a little. But no. No. He cannot have that. Not again. It is too dangerous.
He drops his things haphazardly into his rucksack, and runs from the shop back to the water, barely calling a goodbye-and-thanks over his shoulder.
* * *
He spends the next days on the beach, up against that semi-sheltered rock. Watching, mostly. Staring at the sea and willing his...what? Selkie dad? Mum? Sea master? Someone from his past, to rise up from the waves and welcome him back to his real life. Even to see seals, but while some of those glints of grey could be something swimming, he’s pretty sure that it is just imaginings.
He writes his mum a postcard. Nothing much.
Dear Mum,
Doing okay up here. Looking for seals and answers. It’s nice here: exactly like you said, but not at all. I love it.
Theo.
He does not post it right away; he waits, until the sea is ink-black and he has no chance of seeing seals. And although he does not want to miss the chance of someone visiting his dreams (such is the way of stories), Theo walks up to the post box by the store. He thinks of the blue-haired girl and how she’d smiled, and how unexpected it was that he cared.
Who had she seen: boy or girl or seal?
And he wanders back down to the water all confused.
It was...quite warm in the daytime, but as soon as the sun went to bed there was a chill. Damper than your city nights, and it got in your bones.
The next day, he tries to build a fire, but he’s worried that he’s done it wrong, and the whole beach could catch alight, and every chance he ever had of finding home would burn. So his neat pyramid of moss and twigs and driftwood stands untouched beside his pack.
He pulls on his new woolskin gloves and wonders how the wizard-woman knew how deeply human he’d feel wearing them against the cold. How much he would need them.
Time passes and stands still. He tries taking the ukulele to the water’s edge and summoning his people with a song, but all he knows is “Hallelujah” and the “Skye Boat Song,” and after a while, he reverts to stories. And he tells the sea the ones he knows, and then pulls out his mother’s book and reads those, and remembers.
He pores over the selkie pages, lets his fingers pass over the words, stares at every line in turn and flips it over in his head in case there’s hidden meaning.
No one comes.
How did his mother do it? All those years alone with a small scrap of a thing counting on her every day?
* * *
On the third night, the sea starts to call louder, and Theodora digs his nails into the shore to stop himself.
He mustn’t swim.
He can’t.
Because what if he has it all wrong and there is nothing out there? Or he’s right, but without his sealskin he must stay on land, an outcast?
What if—what if this wild water does not like him, does not let him be the way the river would?
What if—what if Theodora lacks the strength his mother had, and cannot find a way to stay and so the water claims him, carries him away?
He turns his face away from breaking waves that night, wishing himself in his own, comfortable bed. Wishing himself a new body, one that everyone would understand. Wishing that he knew the media was wrong, and there was somewhere he’d belong.
* * *
Theo wakes to whiskers, cold and wet and snuffling at his face. And weight upon his chest. He reaches up and finds slick, icy fur.
A seal?
And he knows that he should force open his eyes and follow it, because the seal’s the reason that he’s here. His summoning. But the sun is slowly baking Theo’s bones, and it feels good, and he just...
can’t.
help.
but.
sink—
“Oh geez, come on, wake up.”
And there’s something nuzzling-nipping at his neck.
Theodora groans. Stretches hard against the salt-and-sun-baked stiffness in his legs and lower back.
“Thank Lyr,” the voice says, as Theodora blinks open his eyes. The blue-haired girl from the store hovers above him, all anxious. “Muckle. Muckle, ye can stop tryin’ te rouse him, he’s awake.” And she pulls a purring, whiskered creature off of Theo’s chest.
“Is that a cat?” he says, even though its catness was obvious, because he’s not quite awake, and in his dream it wasn’t, and who brings their cat to the beach?
“Yes.”
“What’s it...doing here?” he asks, sitting properly upright and rubbing at his elbow, where he’d lain on a particularly sharp rock.
“Could ask ye the same question. What kind o’ fool sleeps out here wi’out any kind o’ shelter?”
“I told you. I’m seal watching.”
“In the dark though?” She shakes her head.
“It’s not dark.”
“It’s early. And ye must be freezin’.” He was going to deny it, but she kept on. “Let’s go ge’ a cuppa. Warm ye’ insides.”
“I—”
“C’mon. Muckle here’s taken a shinin’ te ye and I’d ne’er hear shut of it if I let you catch hypothermia.” And she stands there, arms crossed, waiting while Theo picks himself up off the floor.
“Ah’m Bran by the way.”
“Like Stoker?”
“Like, raven.”
“Oh.”
Bran doesn’t press for conversation as they walk. Instead, their feet crunch stones in almost unison, and Muckle bounds ahead, sniffing at the rock pools.
* * *
“Ah call it ‘Highlands Secrets,’” Bran says, noting Theo’s wide eyes as she avoids a weaving Muckle and plonks two full cups and saucers on a table.
This café is not what he expected. Or, it half is. There’s a cabinet of china and another full of fine, tall cakes. Tables decked in pink carnations. Seascapes hung over one wall. But Bran led Theo past this, up some narrow stairs, and up here is a leather sofa. Small black-and-white photographs of tired fishermen; of fire-lit dances and a ring of beer cans in the sand; a circled, annotated page from the jobs pages of a paper. On another wall there is bright graffiti, and another houses sculptures made of nets and rusted iron.
“You did this?”
“Most of it, aye. The idea for the fire-dance picture was my brother’s, but I took the shot.”
“They’re amazing.”
She stares hard at her teacup, turning pink. “So, what brings a city boy all the way up here alone?”
“The—”
�
��Seals. Sure. But why?”
And Theo doesn’t want to share, and if he did, he does not quite know how. How do you tell someone that you’re...not what they assume but that you also are? How do you explain that stories can be true? That seals are home and answers and identity and maybe you’re not even human?
“I’m...have you ever heard of selkies?”
Bran raises an eyebrow. “Aye, o’ course.”
“Well... Once upon a seastorm.” And that’s that, he is telling her everything, right from the start.
* * *
That night—still light, in the way of summer—they’re on the beach together, leaning up against a rock and staring out to sea, their hands entwined.
They have talked of everything: art and home and aspirations, and past loves and whether calamari is better than chips, and what story really means.
“Do you think it’s real?” Theodora asks quietly.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes? No. I don’t know.”
“D’you want me to come wi’ ye?”
“Where?” He says, confused.
“The sea.”
Theo blinks in surprise that he’s never wanted anything so much, but then—
No. Because that is how he met the boy; how he ruined everything.
Instead, he lets them sink into a silence. And in that silence, feelings grow, heavy-warm-excited. And air grows heavy too, and a storm-brown sky blows in, and rumbles.
“Uhhh,” he says, as the first flash of lightning lights the sky. “Maybe we should move.”
“Townie.” She grins, nudging him. And then she stands and strips her shirt off with no warning. “Let’s go for a swim!”
“What? No!”
“Wrong answer.” And she’s pulling him towards the water as the sky cracks open.
Theodora’s heart thuds hard, because there’s sea and seals and sky-fire, and a boy and so, so many questions, but his feet go with her, and they’re knee-deep, waist-deep, two-heads bobbing in the waves, and the girl has not let go.
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