Tide

by Lacy Sheridan

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen a man without a shirt before. There were times, when the weather was fair and it had been a long day, that Tobin worked without one. It wasn’t even that it was Aven. But stepping so close to him was different. He kept immobile and silent, wincing when I first pressed the cloth to his shoulder. I searched for something to say, if only to take my mind off the closeness of him, the fact that I could smell something clear and clean off his skin, like rain and wind. “They aren’t deep,” I managed.

  “Good.” He kept his gaze trained straight ahead and, after a pause, added, “Thank you. For distracting it. That was a stupid thing to do, but thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Was I? I hadn’t thought about it yet. But I could move alright, and a quick glance down found a few small scrapes on my legs. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Neither of us spoke as I wiped blood from his shoulder, along his collarbone. “Aven?” I whispered.

  His voice lowered to match mine. “Hm?” I tried not to feel the smooth rumble of it in his throat.

  “You didn’t need to save me. It was focused on me. It wouldn’t have followed you if you’d left. You could have gotten away and left me for it.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because…” Again I couldn’t voice my answer. Because he was a tidesperson. Because his kind and mine had no love lost for each other. Because he’d arrived in that village to kill and maim and wreak havoc, and he didn’t deny it. “Because you don’t need me anymore,” was what I settled on. “You have your skin back.”

  “We made a deal. I’m in your debt. I know you don’t trust me, with good reason, but until that debt is paid I’m responsible for your safety. And either way it wouldn’t be very honorable of me to leave you to be eaten, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” I licked my dry lips and stepped back. “We don’t have any bandages. I used the last for my arm.”

  He shrugged and pulled his shirt on, like it was nothing unusual for him. “I’ll live. They’re not the worst injuries I’ve gotten in the pursuit of adventure.”

  I couldn’t help a tired laugh at that. “The pursuit of adventure?”

  He returned it with one of those slight but genuine smiles. “I’m a restless selkie, Hania. Always have been. I drove my mother to tears more than once as a youngling, disappearing all day and returning home with bloody clothes or broken bones.”

  I couldn’t imagine Aven as a child. I couldn’t imagine him as anything but what he was, fierce and powerful and impossible to interpret. “That sounds like the antics of any boy,” I admitted.

  “Maybe the other boys were just too comfortable with the safety of their homes.”

  Thunder rolled across the ground again, more distant than before but still jarring, and a few thin raindrops snaked their way between the trees. Aven glanced up. “We should find a place to wait out the storm.”

  “I thought it was you. Isn’t the real one a few days off?”

  “I…sped it up. Seemed like our best chance.” He nodded to the path we’d been on before, a silent question, and followed me toward it. Inka met us farther down it, shuffling through the undergrowth, and nudged at me as if to check if I was alright. I stroked her nose so she’d calm and follow us. We trudged our way through the thickening rain until we found a suitable spot, a natural burrow of sorts wide enough at the entrance to provide us with slightly cramped but manageable shelter. We sat across from each other, backs against the sloping dirt walls, but didn’t speak. I watched the rain fall, shimmering in the gathering dusk that turned the forest dim and dreamlike.

  Every muscle ached. My eyes burned with exhaustion, my lids heavy. So long to go, and I was already so ready to be home. So ready for a warm bed and crackling fire, to see Papa’s face, to wander through our fields. But without Tobin there it’d be haunted by him.

  I wondered if, after all I’d seen and done, it would be haunted by me when I returned too. I missed it with an intensity that seared, and yet I wasn’t sure if that calm life was mine anymore. Something stirred in me, something I couldn’t name, but had woken the first time I’d laid eyes on Aven and had passed in and out of the back of my mind since. It had only been days, but I felt so far from my village. Like some thread tied me to my home, and with each step it grew thinner and more brittle.

  What would happen when I entered the Realm of Tides? Would it shatter?

  Would that thing in me—that thing that stretched and stirred awake when Aven looked at me, or when the wind soared around him, heavy with his magic, or when the sellye had caught empty air in its fangs, inches from my skin—wake fully when I was surrounded by those things?

  “Where’s your mind gone, Hania?” Aven asked. “You look worried.”

  I was worried. I was worried about too many things to count, but I shook my head. “Only tired.”

  He took a long swig of water from the waterskin, eyes on me. I knew he was choosing his words, and after a long moment he spoke. “There’s something I can’t decide.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you exceptionally brave, exceptionally stupid, or exceptionally desperate to have sought me out?”

  I stared at him, at a loss for words, but he looked at me and waited. I ducked my head and scrambled to think of an answer, if only to make him stop. “I’m…I’m all three, I suppose.”

  I felt his eyes rake up and down me, their gaze more intense than ever before. “What are you so desperate for? What can you not live without that’s driven you to risk your life on this fool’s mission to a place you know no human returns from?” There was a strange kind of frustration in his voice that I couldn’t understand. Why did he care?

  “What were so desperate for that you came here and let a band of humans rip your skin out of you?”

  He gave an indignant scoff, looking out to the tangle of forest. “What makes you think I let them?”

  “Because you could have stopped them, if you’d really wanted to. You broke that sellye’s neck without trying.”

  “Even we selkies aren’t all-powerful,” he said. “We bleed and die and lose.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You didn’t answer mine.” And he slid his gaze to me, blue eyes a challenge, and I found myself staring into them this time. Fear didn’t push me to look away. Again, I noticed the way his eyes were flecked in that paler shade—not here and there but everywhere and nowhere at once, scattering and shifting like sunlight on the water. A trick of the light, but one that held me captive. I blinked and looked down at the ground.

  My voice came out a whisper, rough in my throat, when I answered him. “My brother. They took my brother.”

  He nodded and asked, “Why would they bother taking a human?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why they attacked. I don’t know why they took him. I don’t know…anything.”

  “I saw the storm. It was on the solstice.”

  I glanced up. “The midsummer festival.”

  Aven nodded. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s a holiday in my world too. Some Courts celebrate with bloodshed and carnage. But I’ve never heard of humans being taken, only killed.”

  “They called him Lenairen,” I murmured.

  His brow furrowed. “Why?”

  I plucked at a weed in front of me. “I don’t know, you’d probably have a better guess than me. Some people say my family is descended from him.”

  “If that’s true, more than likely he’s dead by now. More than likely either way, really.”

  I knew that. I’d known it since the moment they’d taken him. But it didn’t stop the words from piercing through me like a blade. “Aven.” He looked up, waiting. “What about you? Why did you come here?” He’d said he liked adventure but attempting to slaughter a village was more than looking for adventure.

  He paused and shrugged one shoulder, that sorrowful, pensive darkness in his
eyes gone. “There was a wager I couldn’t win against a human army. I half-expected to end up cutting down some human prince and all his forces, I’ll admit, but maybe I should be more careful about what challenges I take next time.”

  “They really just beat you?”

  “They really did. Believe me, I would give anything to go back and spend that time at home. Being a world apart, trapped, beaten…nobody deserves it. So, on the slim chance your brother is alive, I understand how he must feel. And I can’t in good conscience leave you to wander around trying to save him yourself.”

  “I thought you said you’re only responsible for me until your debt is paid.”

  He looked away before he answered, “Well, I’d feel a little guilty if you got torn apart after I left you. Like you said, you’re brave and stupid. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

  I knew there was meaning behind those words he didn’t say, and some part of the cold in me, frozen through with fear and shock and exhaustion, warmed at it. “You’re growing on me, too.”

  “I said nothing of the sort.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What’s the plan now?” I asked as I repacked my things. I hesitated when I lifted my knife, studying it. There was no trace of blood left: I’d cleaned it until it shone last night in the rain, scrubbing every trace of blood from the blade and my hands. But I inspected it again before I made myself slip it into place in my boot. Aven watched me, answering my question when I’d finished.

  “We can go back to the village if you like, and I can search for a weak spot in the barrier. Wait for the next storm to try to break through it. But I think we should look for the passing the sellye came through. It has to be nearby and it’s our best chance. Forcing a passing isn’t a given.”

  I nodded. If it was our best chance of getting to the Realm of Tides soon we needed to try it. “How do you…find a passing?” I’d been going over the question again and again since he’d first brought them up, and the best I could figure out was that he could, in some way, sense them, but I didn’t understand how. Was it something selkies could do, or all tidespeople? Or specific to Aven? Could humans, as well?

  He reclined against a tree, searching for words. “Once there was no barrier. You know that. This place and the Realm of Tides were one and the same. Humans and tidespeople passed freely through both. When humans rebelled, they forced the barrier into place to separate our two people, and because a physical barrier would never hold they resorted to magic. Our magic.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you know where passings are. I’ve never heard of or seen anything like that. Nobody in my village understands how you can come through, we just know sometimes you do.”

  “The magic is our own. It’s made up of a piece taken from every tidesperson who fought in the war. And by the laws of our kind, their descendants’ magic. I can feel it, even though nobody can see it. Even though you can pass right along it without ever realizing it, where once you would have stepped into our world, but now you step through pieces of yours stitched together. When I get close to those spots I know, my magic…reacts. It knows it’s near home.”

  I cut my gaze away. I hadn’t known about the way their magic was tied together, that by taking and twisting a piece of the power of those tidespeople my ancestors had affected the magic of thousands of others. “I didn’t know that,” I murmured.

  “There was no way for you to. Ready?”

  I whistled to Inka, who’d chosen a spot to graze while she waited, slung my pack over my shoulder, and nodded. We walked in silence; I trusted Aven’s sense of direction and followed, listening to the forest. Whether the eeriness that had settled over it before had been broken by Aven’s freedom, or we were far enough to escape it I didn’t know, but the light was brighter than before, the forest livelier. I caught sight of the occasional bird or squirrel in the trees and could hear their calls. It was comforting, after going so long hearing only the sound of our footsteps and Inka’s.

  And I thought, unable to keep the questions from circling around in my head. I’d known the barrier was tidesperson magic; humans possessed none to use. I’d known theirs had been twisted and turned against them. But the way he’d explained it, the loss in his voice, ripped through me. I’d always thought of the barrier as a blessing, the thing protecting us, but I’d never thought of what had been done to achieve it. What their people might see it as.

  I asked, “Your ancestors fought in the war, then?”

  Aven looked startled by the question, but nodded. “My father.”

  “Your father?” I knew tidespeople aged slower than humans, lived longer, but his father? The war had happened centuries ago.

  “I was too young to fight,” he continued. “But I did ask. They laughed at me, told me I couldn’t even carry a blade. Which was true, but didn’t make it any less upsetting. My father said it was better I stay behind, to look after my mother.”

  I hesitated before asking, “Did he come back?”

  “No.” There was nothing in the single word. No grief, no anger, nothing at all. Only an emptiness that made my heart ache.

  I couldn’t imagine it. Being so young and losing a father to a war he wanted to be a part of but couldn’t understand. Waiting for gods knew how long for someone who wouldn’t come home. I’d lost my mother—I knew how it felt—but not like that. Her death had been sudden, jarring, but at least I’d never had to sit and wait for it. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. There must’ve been something better to say, but I couldn’t think of anything.

  Aven shook his head, casting me a smile that I knew was partially forced. “It was a long time ago, and not a topic for today.”

  We continued in silence, and then I broke it again. “How old are you, if you were born before the war?”

  He laughed. “How old do you think I am?” he countered.

  “I…I don’t know. You look young.” And he did, a few years older than me. Certainly not as old as to have spent fifty years in a prison, much less to have lived centuries beforehand.

  “Thank you.”

  “So, how old are you?”

  “You don’t want to know that, Hania.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How old are you?”

  “This is my eighteenth summer.”

  “Eighteen summers.” He laughed again, repeating it to himself. “Eighteen summers.” When he said it, I was struck with how silly it must be to someone like him. How young and childish.

  I lowered my head, unable to help the heat creeping up my neck. “I know to you I must be like a child—”

  “No,” he cut me off, shaking his head. “No, you don’t. You’re young, yes, much younger than me, but there are people in my world older than you who wouldn’t do things you have. And they’re must less fragile too.” I fought off a smile at that. “You walked up to a selkie, knowing there was a good chance I’d kill you, and demanded to make a deal. Against all odds you found my skin. You stabbed a sellye when even I planned to run from it.”

  “Brave and stupid,” I said again.

  “Brave and stupid. Exactly. It’s going to get you killed one of these days, I’m sure, but it also makes you…different from other humans I’ve met.”

  I was pretty sure I was grinning. “Different?”

  He nodded once. “Different.”

  “Is different good or bad?”

  “Both.”

  “You know, I think that’s the second thing close to a compliment you’ve said to me in as many days. It’s a nice change from threatening to eat my horse.”

  He looked away, but I was sure I caught the edge of a smile. “Don’t push your luck.”

  I knew better than that, so I kept quiet a long while and instead focused on the direction we were going. Aven had been weaving, probably searching for the barrier, but I wasn’t sure where we’d ended up. The forest became less dense, more sunlight streaming down on us, the path easier, and something twisted in my chest. Some fear and excitement to
gether.

  “Are we going to the shore?” I asked suddenly.

  “Part of the barrier goes right along it, yes,” Aven said. “And I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t really use a swim.”

  Of course he could. Fifty years away from the ocean had to be torture for a selkie. But before I could think of a reply, I could hear the distant rushing of the tide, and my feet doubled their pace on their own. And then I was running, racing toward the beach, and Aven kept place beside me. The trees broke, and I stopped, staring.

  The waves crashed onto the rocky shore in a steady rhythm, in and out, rolling back and forth. Endless. Above us the sky was clear summer blue, glittering down on the sea’s surface. I closed my eyes and inhaled briny air. A breeze blew my hair across my face and I brushed it away to see Aven stepping toward the water’s edge. His eyes were focused on it, his entire body rigid.

  But when I stopped at his side a smile was spreading across his face—a soft, genuine smile, unlike any I’d seen on him before. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back. When he exhaled, the tension left him.

  “You missed it, didn’t you?” I found myself asking.

  “I did.”

  I pushed lightly on his back, unable to stop a smile of my own. “Well, go.”

  He gave me a glance, as if asking permission, but continued across the shore. He stopped just out of the water’s reach, kicked his boots off, hesitated, then took another step. The waves washed over his feet, and he stared down at them like he’d never seen them before. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  For a moment neither of us moved, and then he reached up and stripped his shirt off, tossing it aside. The sun caught on flashes of sealskin, that strange dance between human and animal that always made my eyes shutter. The wind caught in his hair. He was straight from the songs and stories, breathless and magical. And then in a smooth, familiar motion he dove deep into the sea, vanishing.

  I gave him a moment, but when it passed and I saw no sign of him, I crept closer to the water. He wouldn’t turn back on his word. He couldn’t.