The only question was how.
I glanced to Edrick again, swallowing another lump rising in my throat. “How did you know I’d think it?”
He smiled, but something in it was sad. “Because your head has always been somewhere beyond here. You aren’t a village girl at heart.”
I stared, thinking on that. If I wasn’t a village girl, what was I? What did Edrick see in me that I didn’t?
Did he see the kind of person who could save Tobin?
And did I trust what he saw?
I didn’t know my hands were fisted until the pain of my fingernails biting my palms registered, and I unclenched them and got to my feet. “I need to go.”
“I know.”
He said nothing more, and I couldn’t find anything to say myself, so I gave him another lingering look, memorizing the face of one of my few friends in case I wouldn’t have another chance, and then turned and started up the beach.
“Hania!” he called after me, and I stopped and looked back. “Goodbye.”
Another lump worked its way up my throat, and I spoke around it. “Goodbye, Edrick.”
And I kept walking.
Papa and I hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words to each other in a day. Dinner had been somber and quiet, and when I’d risen for breakfast this morning he’d already been gone. I knew he was still searching, but I also knew there was nothing for him to find. Even walking home the day before I’d heard the whispers through the village, the other men agreeing there was no use scouring the woods for Tobin. He was gone.
That only reassured me that my plan was the best one. The only thing there was to do. Every second that passed, the house silent and heavy and cold without my brother’s presence, solidified the idea in my mind. I needed to go after him. He had nobody else to fight for him. Papa was trying, but he hadn’t been there. He couldn’t understand why I knew it was useless to fight the way he wanted to. And I couldn’t let him go after Tobin. If he knew my plan he would, but he wouldn’t make it.
I didn’t think there was much chance that I would, either, but I had to try. Better me than him.
I ran my fingers over the worn cover of the book in my lap, tracing the ends. The leather was old and soft, ragged at the corners, and the binding fragile. But it held when I cracked it open and read the flowing script on the first page: Ralisa Thaiv. My grandmother’s journal, the place she had written all her stories. She’d told me long ago, when I’d been just old enough to remember, that as a child her parents insisted a girl had no business learning to read and write, but she’d taught herself, letter by letter each day with the help of the village boys, and by the time she’d reached her tenth summer she could read and write every bit as well as them. When Mama had announced that I wasn’t to learn either, Grandmama had given her a defiant look, sat me down at the table, and read the stories in her journal to me until I recognized every word.
Grandmama had told the old stories in the village center every storytelling day most of her life. She’d known them by heart, known more about the tidespeople than anybody else in the village. If anybody knew how to find them it was here.
I could only hope she’d written it down.
But the longer I read the less I believed she had. She told stories of the old battles, of the worlds of humans and tidespeople being separated, of King Lenairen and his bravery, of ancient warriors and clever princesses. But no mention of how the two kinds crossed. I searched page by page, studying every word as if I might misread it and miss what I needed to know, but none gave me my answer.
By the time I had read the last page for the second time, the shadows in the house had shifted with the sun, and I blinked to let my sight adjust to the afternoon light and the normalcy of home around me. My mind was half with the tidespeople, half with Tobin, and it took a moment to settle into the world again. And when I had, a bitter, dark disappointment fell onto me like a cloud.
It wasn’t here. If Grandmama had known anything about how to reach the tidespeople or their world, she’d taken it with her to the grave.
The realization stung through me, and I slumped against the wall, closing my eyes. I didn’t know where else to find what I needed to know. I couldn’t just leave and wander around the forests and shore; I would die of starvation or exposure, or else be attacked by some wild animal. I didn’t know how to survive away from home, and I didn’t have the time to wander. Tobin didn’t have the time. I needed a plan.
My throat tightened at the thought of the time limit I might be on—what might have already happened. That I might be too late.
No, Hania, stop. Imagining the worst wouldn’t help me.
Grandmama wasn’t the only storyteller in the village. There were others who might know something. But they wouldn’t help me; they would call my mission foolish, dangerous, and tell me to leave things alone. Accept that he was gone.
Then make them help. Prove them wrong.
I got to my feet, placed Grandmama’s journal carefully in its place on the single small shelf, and headed out of the house. A soft neigh drifted on the wind to me as I started down the path, and I turned to find Inka trotting across the fields. I took a deep breath and went to meet her.
“I’ll be back,” I said, pressing my hand to her nose. She snorted a warm breath into my palm, gentle brown eyes boring into mine. “I will. And Tobin will be with me. I promise.”
It was the best I could do. I pulled away and continued. She didn’t follow.
The village was cleaner than it had been yesterday. Most people had disappeared, shut up in their homes working, trying to return to normal life. Trying to forget. Nobody wanted to be tainted by what had happened two nights ago, they wanted to move on. But I couldn’t. I walked straight to the village center, forcing my chin to stay raised and each step to land smooth and solid. Not to waver though my heart felt like it would drop right through me to the ground.
I didn’t know if anybody would be there, but my hopes soared when I saw the movement of a figure inside. From a distance I couldn’t see their face, but I knew the slope of the back, the long white hair twisted at the base of her neck. Shiral.
I opened my mouth to speak when I reached the doorway but stopped. She had her back to me, brushing dust from a seat. Shiral had been one of my grandmother’s closest friends, she had to know more than what was written in the journal. This wasn’t the first attack by the tidespeople she’d witnessed.
Fifty years ago, when they’d raided our shores, she’d been there. Our village had escaped with minimal damage, but hers hadn’t. She’d come here little more than a refugee, seeking shelter and help, and we’d given it. She was one of us now, so much so that nobody bothered to point out her place of birth, but she’d seen and known them more closely than I had.
I swallowed the icy fear in my throat and spoke. “Shiral?”
She turned with a start, hand over her heart, and when her gaze landed on me let out a breath. “Oh, Hania. Don’t sneak up on an old woman like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping into the center. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Surely you haven’t come to help me. You and your father have plenty of work to tend to at home.”
“We do.” I studied the paintings, the places where the walls had been tilted by the violent winds, and rain had struck so hard the paint appeared wounded. The painting of Lenairen had been torn into by a tidesperson: long, jagged strips of wood had been gouged out across him. I stepped closer and traced the ugly wounds with one finger. “I came to talk to you, though.”
“What can I help you with, dear?”
I searched for the words. They’d been on my tongue seconds before, eager to be let loose, but now that she’d asked they’d retreated. I fought to get them out. “The tidespeople. Where did they take Tobin?”
“You’ve seen enough of the tidespeople, haven’t you?” She stooped to pick up a piece of debris. It was a piece of one of the broken murals; she stroked the worn whorls of paint.
“Please, Shiral, I need to know more about them.”
“You have heard every story I know, Hania. You know all we do about them by heart. And your brother…” She sighed. “Humans do not return from their world. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t accept that. I followed her across the center. “There has to be more. Somebody who knows how to get there.”
“The only one who could take you is a tidesperson, and you don’t need me to tell you how that would go. They wouldn’t let you live. I’m sorry about your brother, Hania, I truly am. Tobin was a wonderful young man but…he is gone.” Her eyes were warm when she turned to me, full of grief and pity. I forced myself not to look away.
He wasn’t gone. He’d been alive when they’d taken him. He had to be alive. And if I could get to him, I could bring him home. I knew I could. I didn’t know how, but I would.
“What about the last time they came?” I asked her. “Fifty years ago. Where did they come from? Where did they go? I know you were there. I know you saw it.”
She looked away and busied herself with straightening the benches. I thought she might not answer, but then she spoke softly. “I was younger than you are now. You can’t expect an old woman to remember something from so long ago.”
But I knew there was more to her words. “But you do, don’t you?”
“I don’t know where he came from. He appeared just as they did at the festival.”
“He?” They always said our shores had been ravaged by an army. A fierce group of tidespeople searching for something nobody could name, or perhaps nothing but entertainment and bloodshed. Shiral didn’t answer. “What do you mean, he? I thought there were dozens of them.”
“Stories change over the years. People were panicked. Afraid. They couldn’t believe one person could destroy so much. But I saw him. One man came then, and he was more than enough. Don’t follow your brother, Hania. I know you love him, and I know you would give anything to save him, but our village—your father—cannot take losing both of you.”
I took her hands, a little fragment of hope snaking its way into my heart. I dared to grasp it, all the while expecting it to vanish like dew. “Tell me what really happened. Please. I need to know what they might do to Tobin and I need to stop it. I can’t lose him.”
There was a war in her eyes. We stood like that, me waiting breathless, until she sat and beckoned me to join her. I did. “You know I wasn’t born in this village,” she said. I nodded. “The place where I was born overlooked the sea, on a rocky cliff. It was a smaller village than this one, but very beautiful. I lived with my family—my father, my mother, and my siblings. I had an older brother, like you, and a younger sister. All are gone now. I was thirteen summers old when he came. I remember it as clear as yesterday—there was a storm, a strong summer storm just like the one they brought this time. It tore roofs away and spooked our animals. Some ran straight out of the village. And days later, a messenger arrived from one of the other villages. He was terrified, exhausted. He warned us that a stranger—a tidesperson—had come with the storm and attacked his village. They had sent people to warn every other village in reach, afraid that he would move on to them. And he did.
“Of course we were worried, but most of the village believed it would be alright. They planned to give him what he wanted without resisting and let him go on his way. They assured us that we should go about our daily business as usual, and we would be fine. My sister cried herself to sleep in those few days before he arrived, scared out of her head that he would come kill us all. My father prepared to defend us. He gave me a knife, and told me to keep it in my boot and use if it I needed it. I had never been more scared for what the future would bring. I can still remember how quiet the village was. We were all waiting.
“On the third day after the warning arrived, so did he. My sister and I were at market, buying vegetables, when he appeared. He walked right into the market as if he belonged there. And he was lovely. A young man, very handsome, dressed in the finest. I thought he must have been very rich and powerful to look like that. He acted like a gentleman as well, even though we were all scared of him. We knew he must be the tidesperson. But he was very nice. And my sister—my sister who had been so scared the night before—fell into his trap. He asked her name, how she was. He was very charming. I told her not to go near him but she did.”
My heart was in my throat. “What happened to her?”
“Nothing, at first. She was only one of a handful of children who were lured to him. But once he had them all, he changed. He took them, and he demanded every girl and woman in the village be lined up before him or he would kill them. Some of the men tried to fight. They thought one man, even a tidesperson, couldn’t be so strong as to overpower them. But he did. He fought with teeth and nails, and he killed them. He ripped into my father right before me. I watched him bleed onto the ground.” I shuddered, but I didn’t interrupt. “They lined up the women. I was with them, of course, and he walked up and down before us like he was picking out the finest cattle for slaughter. He didn’t care if we cried in front of him, or begged him to spare us. And when he found us unfit he threw another storm at our village, even worse than the one before it. That was when somebody recognized what he was.”
“What was he?”
“A selkie.”
The single word sent a cold wave through me, and I flinched. The stories gave little detail, but we knew that not all tidespeople were created equal. There were those like the army that had attacked our village, and there were those like the woman who had taken Tobin. Their rulers. The selkies, men and women wrapped in sealskin who brought storms like no other, were among them.
Shiral continued without waiting for me to speak; my face must have been my response. “The man who figured it out gathered as many of us as he could and sent us away. My siblings, my mother, and I all left, bound for any other village that might be safe. Others went with us. Along the way my sister caught a chill from the storms. She passed right after we arrived here.”
“And the people who stayed behind?” I asked. My voice was hollow.
“They meant to capture the selkie. Take his sealskin and hide it somewhere, use his own magic against him to bind him to the village. So they told us, at least.”
“And did they?”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell you, Hania. We never heard from any of them again. Not long after we left came the worst storm. It ripped trees from the ground and destroyed crops. It flooded the lower-lying villages with seawater. It went on for a full day and night, and then it ended. And it has been silent ever since, until now.”
I closed my eyes and let myself think on the story. It must have been so terrible to see and live. If the old stories and Shiral’s memories were to be believed, a selkie like him was far, far beyond the tidespeople who’d attacked here. Far more powerful, and far more ruthless.
But it was another thought coming to life in the back of my mind that took my attention. A selkie like him was more powerful than I could imagine. And wouldn’t have stopped such an attack for no good reason.
A selkie’s power laid in their sealskin, so the legends said. If their skin was taken, the one who took it held power over them. They could bind them—bind them to a single place if they chose. And the selkie would be helpless until they held their skin again.
If the legends were true.
And if the men had succeeded…
A powerless selkie may be bound there, abandoned by all. Perhaps they’d changed the stories to protect the magic sealing him within the village, to prevent anybody from going there and coming across him.
My heart fluttered at the base of my throat, tripping over itself with anticipation and terror, and that slim thread of hope grew into a rope that squeezed me tight.
It was a long shot. A dangerous, stupid chance to take, and one that had so little hope of being real at all. But I leapt to feet. “Thank you, Shiral.” She looked bewildered at my sudden excitement,
but my words were sincere. “Thank you, thank you. I’m sorry about your family. But you have to understand I have to save mine.”
I left her with that, ignoring her half-started protest, and bolted out of the center for home.
My feet ached and my chest burned, but I kept running, flying down the road home. Dust kicked up around me with the force of my steps, but I ignored it. Down the road and through the fields, paying no mind to the bugs and birds disturbed by my haste, by the horses watching me pass. I narrowly avoided treading on the tail of one of the barn cats stalking a mouse and received a hiss for my trouble. I didn’t look back to apologize as I might have under other circumstances.
I pounded up the steps to the house and caught myself in the doorway to retrieve my breath. No sign of Papa—he must be out searching. My heart twisted, but I continued inside. There was no time to doubt or hesitate, not if I wanted to reach Tobin alive. The tidespeople could be doing anything to him.
I went to the small shelf of books and papers we kept, digging through them. A book of children’s stories, a sparse history, a few journals. And there, pressed between them, a bundle of folded yellowed papers. I yanked them out and spread them across the floor. Each was drawn in my father’s familiar hand, older than Tobin or I and only used once or twice a year for trading. I turned each one off the stack—a map of our farm, of the village, and then a third one, of the roads leading all over this shore. I smoothed the creases from it. Each village was labelled with a note: what sold well there, when was the best time of year to travel. Beyond ours, through the swirl of forest to the cliffs beyond, beside a roughly drawn waterfall, was the mark of a village beside a crisp note: Empty – stay away.
That had to be it. The village that made the selkie’s prison.
Unless it truly was nothing more than an old, empty village, avoided as the buildings collapsed with age and neglect.
But I couldn’t think of that now; I had to believe there was something there. Something that kept anybody from returning, something that could help me. No room for doubts. It was a gamble, but one I had to take.
Tide Page 6
