Skin Deep

by Marissa Doyle

  She chuckled, but he saw that there were tears in her eyes again. “It never occurred to me that Derek had used Dad. Had used me in order to use Dad. Somehow the divorce didn’t hurt as much before as it does now. I could accept that Derek and I had made a mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake on Derek’s part, was it? He knew exactly what he was doing when he married me. And that’s what hurts so badly now…the being used. I could have gone out and found the right man to love and had my babies if Derek hadn’t decided that I was going to be his means for getting what he wanted.”

  That’s what hurts…the being used. The words felt like an iceberg bearing down on him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, resting her head back on his shoulder and taking a deep shuddering breath. “You probably didn’t want to hear all that.”

  “No, you didn’t…it was—” He swallowed again. “I needed to hear it.”

  “And I suppose I needed to get it out. It was just being hit with it like that, realizing just how much of a lie I’d been living—”

  He touched a finger to her lips. “You were young. And your father wished you to marry him. You cannot blame yourself too much.”

  “I can’t help it. It was my life to screw up.” She sighed. “And boy, didn’t I.”

  “But you overcame him. You are stronger and wiser now.”

  She laughed gently, and it turned into a yawn. “I don’t know about that. But just this minute I know I’m much, much happier.”

  He held her close, stroking her arm and shoulder until her breathing told him that she’d drifted into sleep. His own body longed to follow her there, but the thoughts whirling in his head would not let him.

  Was he any better than Derek?

  Yes! said one part of him. He would never have forced her to bottle up her power inside her for so many years till she nearly burned herself up, consumed by her own flame. He would never be like Derek and hold her back. Her success would bring him only joy.

  But like Derek he was using her—first as a shield until he and Conn had healed, and now to give him a quilt for protection against Mahtahdou. And just like Derek, once he’d gotten what he wanted from her, he would leave her.

  How could he do that to the woman he loved?

  But he was a selkie and she was not. There could be no future for them together. And there was Mahtahdou to contend with as well. He had to leave her for her own protection. But would she see it that way? When he took his quilt and left her, all she would see was that she’d been abandoned once more. She would have given her love again, and would be left again.

  Alasdair lay very still holding her and watched in despair as night slowly gave way to morning.

  Chapter 14

  Garland awoke the next morning with her head still resting on Alasdair’s shoulder, encircled in his arms. She flexed her toes blissfully and smiled. Over the last weeks she’d wondered more than once what it would be like to be in his arms, held firm against that broad chest. Now she knew. It was like being in a cross between an impregnable fortress and a silk cocoon.

  When was the last time she’d been so…so content? Not for years, at least not since she and Derek had been newlyweds. She waited for the thought of Derek to hurt but it didn’t. Not any more. As soon as Alasdair kissed her Derek had been banished. There was no room for anyone but Alasdair in her thoughts right now. Carefully, she turned her head and kissed the hollow of his throat and fel, rather than heard him chuckle.

  “I didn’t know you were awake.” She propped herself up on her elbow and smiled down at him. He smiled back but there were shadows under his eyes. She touched one. “Didn’t you sleep well?”

  He shrugged. “I was too busy thinking about where I was.”

  “Good thoughts, I hope.”

  “There was no other place I wanted to be.”

  Had a certain darkness crossed his face? Well, it had been a satisfactory enough answer. Surely she’d imagined any hint of trouble in his eyes. She bent and gave him a long, slow kiss, exploring the contours of his lips with hers. How many times had she daydreamed about doing that? She felt as if she’d entered a color trance, only this time through her skin rather than through her eyes. To finally be able to touch him, to run her hands over him, to feel him pull her atop him and sheathe himself inside her with one primal, powerful movement, to feel him tremble and hear him whisper her name as his pleasure peaked, to follow him and gasp out her own…

  She made him shower with her just so she could keep touching him under pretext of soaping him. Would she ever have enough of him?

  She was combing out her wet hair, wrapped only in a towel, while Alasdair lay next to her on the bed watching, when a faint scratch at the door made her look up. It was open the merest crack, and an eye and small nose were visible at about doorknob level.

  “Conn?” Alasdair sat up, not seeming to notice that he was naked.

  Garland looked at herself in the mirror and saw she’d turned red. Conn was so young…would he understand that something had happened between her and his father? Would he be resentful or angry? Would he even notice?

  Conn shuffled in, still in his pajamas and tousled with sleep. Garland held her breath as he climbed onto her bed and curled himself against Alasdair’s stomach…and reached out to hold onto an edge of her towel. She glanced down at him and met his eyes, and saw him watching her with a slightly muddled but pleased expression.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him gently.

  He nodded. “Toast?”

  Alasdair smiled. “We’re hungry too, gille mor,” he said to Conn. “Put on your clothes and we’ll all have some.”

  Conn nodded again, still looking up at her, then rolled off her bed and shuffled back to his room.

  Garland exhaled. “That seemed to go all right,” she murmured to Alasdair.

  He looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t it? Conn loves you. When the healer—” he checked himself and shrugged. “Conn loves you,” he said again.

  And what about you? Garland wanted to ask but didn’t. Because she was afraid of what the answer would be. How would last night change things? Was he still intent on leaving now that they had slept together and at least tacitly admitted that there was something deep and compelling between them?

  “I thought I’d get more work done on your quilt today,” she said casually, standing up and going to her bureau so that she could see his reaction in her mirror.

  But his face remained carefully composed. “Yes. Thank you,” was all he said. “I’ll dress too before Conn becomes impatient.” He slid off the bed and padded to the other room.

  * * *

  She spent the day working on Alasdair’s quilt and the night in Alasdair’s arms, and both of them in a strange state of immediacy, of living in the minute, so that each stitch and each kiss or caress had a life of its own, floating about like a soap bubble that would never pop but drift about forever.

  Alasdair was quiet, sitting on the floor next to her quilting frame just touching her leg and threading needles for her as she needed them, but it was a tense quiet. Once or twice she thought he was about to say something, clearing his throat and sitting up straighter, but he never actually spoke. Only at night when they made love could she feel him relax and exist in the moment with her.

  Remember this, she told herself. Remember the feeling of his weight on you, the taste of his skin, the way he fills you as if you were his glove, his voice when he cries your name when he comes. It would be her treasure to hide away and take out to remember, if he left. When he left.

  Was Alasdair doing the same thing? Was he setting up a vault in his mind where their time together could always live, golden and beautiful?

  Only Conn was himself, playing with his scraps of fabric or looking at his books, or coming now and again to hug her or sit on Alasdair’s lap and stare up at her as she worked. He even sang sometimes, little wandering tunes burbled under his breath, which was something he’d never done before. What would he do if Alasdair decided that the
y must leave? The thought of losing him hurt almost as much as the thought of losing his father. Were she and Conn so drawn to each other because they recognized each other’s unfulfilled needs—his for a mother and hers for a child?

  The safest thing to do was lose herself in the quilting and not think because thought led too many places that could hurt. In the quilt she was safe, awash in color and pattern. Sometimes she would wake up and realize she had quilted an entire section without really seeing what she had done. When she looked, silver thread glittered up at her.

  “It’s done,” she said at sunset on the second day, weaving the tail end of her thread into the batting between the layers of the quilt and clipping it close, then sitting back in her chair with a sigh. She felt empty and limp, as if she’d just given birth. “Or nearly done. I have to bind it, which won’t take long.”

  “May I see it?” He rose and leaned over the frame, but she put her hands on top of it.

  “Not yet. It’s—I don’t like showing things before they’re done.”

  “But I’ve seen it already, while you were laying it out,” he said, head to one side, wearing a puzzled air.

  “I know. But this is different.” How could she explain that this quilt was now more than just a bundle of sewn-together bits of fabric, that it was—it was them. Her and Alasdair. She glanced up at the window, lit obliquely by the setting sun.

  By this time tomorrow, would he be gone?

  * * *

  That night Alasdair’s lovemaking was almost rough, with a hard desperate edge to it that was as exciting as it was enigmatic. After a while she felt herself almost disappear into it and dimly, when she could think at all, realized what he was doing—losing himself in it, just as she was.

  When at last his passion was sated he still lay atop her with his head on her breast. She stroked his damp hair off his forehead and tried to catch her breath.

  “Your heart beats so fast,” he murmured.

  “Should that be a surprise?”

  He laughed and rolled onto his back, pulling her with him. “My Garland. You give me such…I’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be happy.”

  Nearly forgotten… “But you remember being happy once,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  He was silent for the space of three or four breaths. “I remember,” he finally said. “Forgive me, Garland. When you found us, I was afraid. It was easier to say I didn’t remember what had happened or who I was. Most of the time I didn’t want to.”

  “I think I’d guessed that.” She propped herself up on one elbow and traced the edge of his jaw with her finger, carefully not meeting his eyes. “Conn’s mother—you remember her too?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly after another pause. “But she’s dead. And I had planned to never love again.”

  Did that mean he loved her? “How long ago did it happen?”

  He sighed. She saw the faint gleam of his eyes in the candlelight from her bureau. He was staring at the ceiling; there was a line between his brows, as if he was trying to decide what to say. “Conn was only a few moons old,” he finally replied.

  A few moons…did he mean months? About three years ago, then. This time she met his eyes. “How did she die?”

  Silence again. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes and remained silent. Then, just as she was about to prompt him, he spoke. “I failed her. She was still weak from bearing Conn and I did not protect her the way I should have. I left her to go on an attack, not realizing it was exactly what the enemy wanted me to do. Finna was taken along with three of her women. One of them managed to get away with Conn, but the others died later of their wounds.”

  Attack? Enemy? “What are you talking about?”

  “He sent Finna’s skin to me the next day, or what was left of it. It was still warm. He wanted me to understand exactly how long it had taken for her to die.”

  Her skin? “Alasdair—”

  “Can you see why I’m afraid to love again? How could I do that to anyone else?” He was gripping her tightly, his fingers digging into her flesh. “That’s why I have to leave. I couldn’t stand it if he…if you—”

  “Alasdair! What are you talking about?”

  Without warning he turned again, pushing her down so that she was staring up at him. Even in the dimness of candlelight she could see the anguish in his eyes. “Garland—please, I hadn’t planned on it being like this. In the old tales, he never has to tell her…she just seems to understand—”

  “Who? Understand what?”

  “That her lover is a selkie.”

  Garland lay still, trying to remember how to breathe. No. This was crazy. Or he was. Rob was right—Alasdair had suffered some brain damage. Selkies weren’t real. They were creatures from folklore, from myth and legend, from her beautiful storybooks. They weren’t men who came into your life and made you fall in love with them.

  In the old tales she just seems to understand— “Alasdair, do you know how nutty this sounds?”

  “It’s true, my belov—” He closed his mouth, then went on. “It’s true. I’ve lived all my life here in the waters near this house, as did my family and their family before them. We’ve been here for four hundred and fifty summers or more.”

  Dear God, he sounded serious. “Selkies,” she heard herself say.

  “Some of us came with the fishermen who sailed into the west, looking for new fishing grounds and new lands. They didn’t stay, but we did. My fathers and mothers led them and became their lords. We’ve ruled the waters around your Cape Cod since then. At least until now,” he added more quietly.

  “You’re telling me that you—that you and Conn—that you’re some kind of magical—”

  “Not magical. Just selkie. If we had the magic we needed, we wouldn’t be in the trouble we are.” He bent over her and stroked her face. “You’re the one with magic.”

  She pushed his hand away. This has gone far enough. “I’ve been avoiding talking about us too, but I haven’t resorted to fairy tales—”

  “Not fairies. Selkies.” He scowled. “How can I make you believe me?”

  Clap your hands! said a mad little voice in her mind. Clap your hands if you believe in selkies! “Alasdair—”

  “Why else do you think we were on your beach? Men don’t wander unclothed on the shore in winter, do they?”

  “Er, no, not usually—”

  “Why do you think your healer couldn’t find out who we are or where we come from?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe—”

  “Maybe it’s because we aren’t part of man’s world,” he finished for her.

  Not part of man’s world. Which meant not knowing about telephones and toast and TVs. Or divorces or hospitals or clothes, for heaven’s sake…“You really believe this, don’t you?” she asked, more quietly.

  He touched her face again. “It is not a matter of believing. It is a matter of truth.”

  She took his hand and held it against her cheek. And then remembered.

  Dear God.

  She raised his hand above her eyes, fingers spread, so that she could see the webs there. “Your hands…” she whispered.

  He looked perplexed. “What about them?”

  Webbed hands, just like the selkies had in her book. “Where’s your skin, then? I thought selkies had sealskins to wear when they became seals.”

  Alasdair closed his eyes and frowned as if gripped by a sudden pain. “We do. When they’re not stolen from us.”

  We do, he’d said. Not they do. “Stolen? By whom?”

  He pressed his lips together for a moment, then opened his eyes. “Garland, there is no point in my telling you any more if you will not believe me. Will you accept that I am what I am?”

  She lay very still and looked up at him. “How about I suspend judgment until I hear everything? Will that do?”

  He returned her gaze steadily. “It will have to.” His voice was low and even a
s he began—the coming of his ancestors from Scottish waters to this side of the Atlantic, until they reached Cape Cod. She heard his words and let them paint pictures in her mind like the illustrations in some of her books—the seal folk standing on a new shore, gentler and less rocky than their old Scottish isles, where the full moon rose out of the ocean for them to dance by.

  But at Cape Cod they met something they’d never seen before.

  “There were evils in our old waters. We knew them, and fought them when necessary. But what we found here was different.”

  Alasdair’s voice shook slightly. He cleared his throat and went on. “The entity we met was younger and hungrier than those we had known. He wasn’t content to lurk in deep places and be left alone. He wanted light even though he hated it, and he wanted to be known so he came forth and attacked men so that he could take delight in their fear and hatred. Most of all he longed to have substance, and hated men because they had what he never would—their own shapes, their own bodies. The men who lived here called him Mahtahdou.”

  Mahtahdou. “Does it mean anything? It sounds a little…”

  “In their language it means ‘Devil Bird.’ He can summon storms and make the waves do as he wishes. If he wanted to, he could send a wave to destroy your house. Or all the houses here. If there is sea water, he or his creatures can travel through it and do as they wish. They liked to grab children who were digging for shellfish and drown them. Or smash the canoes of those who went out to fish. The men who lived here then relied on the sea for their living. Mahtahdou made it nearly impossible for them to live.”

  They liked to grab children digging for shellfish…did Alasdair know about the dead clammer? “What happened when your people first met him?”