House. I’d heard the word somewhere before. He built us what they call a house.
I jerked the harness. “Stop!”
Mam kept swimming toward shore.
“Stop!” I slipped off her back.
She swerved to look at me. Her eyes weren’t cautious, like they should have been, but determined.
This was all wrong! I was supposed to be going to live on my own, proving myself by my skill and my wits. Instead she was taking me to a house, and in the house . . .
I reared back with a splash. “No!” I said. “You can’t leave me with him!”
“Him?”
“My father. If I get my pelt he’ll steal it and—”
“Aran, what are you thinking?” Mam shook her head as if I were the one who’d gone mad. “Your father lived far away from here. And I’d never leave you with him. Never. Why would I do that when I’m going to the ends of the earth to find your pelt?”
I treaded water, confused. “Then why are we here?”
“To get you clothes.”
“Clothes? Human clothes?” Now I saw her terrible plan. “You said I’d be on my own!”
“No, I didn’t,” Mam said firmly. “I told you I’d find you a safe place to wait for me, and that’s what I’ve done. Why do you think I was gone so long? I swam to island after island, searching for a woman who lives alone, and then I watched to make sure she can be trusted—”
“You can’t trust any of them,” I said.
“And then I had to convince her to keep you, without her suspecting you’re a selkie. We’ll grab clothes here and then swim to her island. You’ll be safe there until I return.”
“Safe? With one of them? I’ll be safer alone. I have my knife.”
“One little knife!” Mam gave a dismissive snort. “It can’t make fish swim toward you, or keep the skies from storming, or hide you from men. On your own, you’d be at risk from all humans. I’m leaving you with one, a good woman.” The tide kept pushing us closer to shore. “I’m not doing this for me, Aran. It’s for you, to get you what you need. What you deserve.” She paused. “And you promised.”
I was trapped. Even if Mam had misled me, I wasn’t the kind of selkie who’d break a promise. Gritting my teeth, I turned and swam to shore.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Spiderweb
Mam slipped out of her pelt and stashed it in a hollow, covering it with a layer of stones. Her black hair whipped in the rising wind. Behind a bank of clouds, the sun was threatening to rise.
She headed up a steep slope. I forced myself to follow. In my head I heard Grandmam chanting: Beware the ship, beware the net. Beware the black gun in his hand.
I was in the enemy’s realm now.
We crept forward through the trees. A crow cawed, and then there was the house, monstrous and gray in the half-light. I could barely breathe. We tiptoed past a wall of wooden planks and around a corner.
Behind the house, a fat cord stretched from tree to tree like a strand in a giant spiderweb. And the spider had been at work: arms and legs hung in the web’s clutches, the empty shells of people sucked dry.
“Clothes,” I whispered.
“Shh!” Mam snuck up to the web, grabbed a pair of legs, and tugged. They tumbled down limp in her hands.
A light shone out from the house. Mam’s head flew up, and she pushed me back toward the trees. We crouched down low.
“She’s up early,” whispered Mam, as taut as the web.
Something was banging and crashing around in the house. My hand hovered by my knife. I leaned closer to Mam. “Let’s go. I don’t need clothes.”
Ghost clothes, shivering in the wind.
Before Mam could answer, the door flew open. A short, wide woman sidled out carrying a load on her hip. She set it down, pulled out a wet clump of cloth, and shook it roughly. Before my eyes it turned into a wrinkled pair of legs. She stuck them on the web and they hung there, kicking.
As she worked, a mangy animal came creeping around the side of the house. Its ribs poked through matted fur. I raised my eyebrows at Mam.
“A dog,” she whispered.
It gave a hopeful whimper. The woman’s scowl deepened. She picked up a stone and hurled it, striking the dog’s side. It yelped and ran away.
I jerked back as if the rock had hit me, too.
I leaned closer to Mam. “How can you leave me with one of them?”
“They’re not all the same. You can tell a lot by their faces. And their hands.”
The woman’s hands snapped more clumps into clothes.
A shrill ringing burst from the house. She hurried back in. Then another door slammed, a motor roared to life, and a battered hull chugged away from the front of the house.
I gasped. “A land-boat!”
“That’s a truck,” said Mam. “Thank the Moon she’s gone! Now let’s dress you for your visit, and me for my part.”
She hurried back to the web. She grabbed a faded skin, so shapeless, it didn’t even look like a body. “This will do for me,” she said. Then she started pulling down arms and legs, holding them up against me one after the other until she found what she wanted.
I had to lie down to slide the legs on. They were dingy blue. I stood and tripped over the ends; Mam rolled them up. When we were done, I was blue on the bottom and gray on top, like a crag jutting up from the sea.
“It itches,” I said.
“You get used to it. It’s just another skin.”
But she was wrong. It was a disgusting joke of a pelt.
Mam put her hands on my shoulders and turned me around so she could see me from all sides. “It needs something else,” she said. Her eyes landed on my hair. She led me to a tree stump. “Sit,” she said. “Give me your knife.”
She pulled a hank of hair away from my head and slashed if off, high and short. As she worked, she snapped instructions. “The woman you’re staying with is called Maggie. Her house is isolated, but there are other people on the island, so make sure no one else sees you. That means no roaming around the island or out to sea.”
“I can’t even swim?”
“Only close to shore, and after you’ve made certain there’s nobody about.” She moved around to the back of my head. “Now listen, Aran, this is important. Maggie has to think you’re human, so act human in every way. Watch what she does and copy her. She must never suspect what you really are.”
A slash, and a hank of hair fell down.
“I told her your father’s a cruel man who beats us. I’m getting a divorce—that means leaving him—and that makes him so angry, he might try to kill us both. That’s why you need to stay hidden while I find us a place to live. I’ll be back for you by the second full Moon.”
“Divorce,” I said, trying to memorize a word I couldn’t understand. The story reeked of shame and deception. The worst part was how well it matched my own feelings.
Mam stepped back to judge her work. “Good,” she said, looking at my face. “Try to have just that expression when we come to her door.”
I reached a hand to my shoulder, then higher. My hair was a short, jagged fringe. I looked down. No arms, no legs: I’d disappeared. My body was buried in clothes.
Back at the inlet, Mam rolled all the clothes into a bundle for the swim. Then she reached into the hollow where she’d hidden her pelt. She carried it to the shoreline, spread it out, and pulled it up around her . . .
It didn’t tighten.
Her eyes widened. She gripped the fur closer, but it hung on her shoulders, loose and lank and wrinkled, like it wasn’t even hers. Like she was trying to force herself into a strange, borrowed skin.
I sucked in my breath. When I was little and Mam took longlimbs, Grandmam would warn her to be careful. “Don’t take the Moon’s gift lightly,” she’d say. “Take off your pelt too often, and one day it won’t go back on.”
Now I smelled the sharp, bitter tang of Mam’s fear. “Please,” she whispered.
The w
ind grew stronger. It was starting to rain. The drops trickled down Mam’s loose pelt like tears.
“Oh, Moon,” she begged softly. “Please.”
A dark hope swooped into my chest, a bat looking to roost. If Mam couldn’t turn, she’d have to stay with me forever and ever and ever. She couldn’t force me to wear clothes. She couldn’t leave me with a human. The dark hope stretched out its wings to land.
No! I reached down deep, and with every drop of my strength, I pushed the darkness away. I thought of Moon Day, how we all stood under the Spire, our voices singing as one. Now that song rose inside me. I opened my mouth and the notes rang out, bright and clear, as if I were the Caller:
“Sing, O Moon, the song of the sea!”
The notes hung sparkling in the air. Mam gasped, then joined in:
“Sing of the salt-spray, the tears, and the freedom
Erasing the border twixt wave-foam and shoreline.
Sweet comes the turning that sets the soul free.”
There was a sound like a quick intake of breath, a gathering together—and the wrinkles in Mam’s pelt smoothed out.
She looked at me, her seal eyes deep and shining with tears.
We didn’t talk for a long time. We lay there in the tiny inlet, surrounded by lapping waves, her flipper on my ankle. All around us came the sound of falling rain.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Spindle Island
We waited until nightfall. The rain drizzled to a stop, but the air weighed heavy on my skin. The birds had fled. A storm was coming.
I tucked the bundle of clothes under my arm and climbed on Mam’s back. We swam out from the sheltered inlet into a deafening roar. Waves crashed high around us, wind bellowed, and clouds pressed low. I stared ahead into darkness as we swam and swam, Mam’s body straining forward, my hands aching from clenching the straps.
Finally, darker against the darkness, a brooding shape loomed before us. Land.
We rounded a rocky point. It blocked the wind, and there was a sudden stillness. Mam paused to catch her breath. In an inlet that was little more than a gulp of water, a dozen boats rocked, roped and tamed. A cluster of houses huddled on shore.
“That’s the only town on Spindle Island,” said Mam. “The harbor is too shallow for fancy yachts or a ferry, and the undertow keeps tourists away. Hardly anyone lives here. Those who do keep to themselves.” She nodded in satisfaction. “It’s perfect.”
I swallowed hard. “Which house is it?”
“Not here. I wouldn’t choose a place with so many eyes to see you.” She started swimming again.
Once we passed the harbor, the wind and waves rose with fresh fury. For a long time there weren’t any more houses, only the jagged outlines of trees and rocks. Then we swam around an outcropping. There, on a curve of cliff, a lone house faced into the wind, as bold as an osprey. I stared—it was so different from all the rest!—and suddenly a light blazed out from its heart.
Mam dove. I pressed myself flat against her back as the ocean closed overhead.
We rose far past the house. Mam swam close to shore now, searching the cliff, until she found what she was looking for: a tumble of boulders and what was left of a steep path. Sections had fallen away, leaving strips of sheer rock.
We landed on a flat boulder at the cliff’s base. I helped Mam take off the harness. The wind blew her whiskers back.
“I need to catch my breath,” she said. “You go peek over the top, then come back and tell me what you see.”
“No,” I said, my heart pounding louder than the surf. “I’ll wait for you.”
She shook her head. “Just make sure it’s the right place.”
Her voice was ragged. She was struggling to make her face a smooth mask, pretending everything was all right. So I pretended, too, for her sake.
I climbed up the cliff. Near the top I slowed, carefully lifting my head over the rim.
Past a stretch of lichen-covered rock, past tall grasses hissing in the wind, a small house hunkered down against the coming storm. It tilted sideways, like a shore tree bent by constant winds, struggling with all its might to hang on.
I scrambled back down to Mam. She’d opened the ball of clothing with her teeth and was separating my clothes from hers. I told her what I’d seen.
“Good,” she said. “That’s Maggie’s house. I’ll keep watch while you get dressed.”
I struggled to pull on the sopping clothes, forcing my arms and legs through the clammy fabric. When I finally got them on, it felt like I was coated in mud. I rolled up the cloth legs higher than before, baring my knife. Just in case.
“Take out the doubloons,” said Mam.
“Why?”
“To give to Maggie. People will do anything for gold, and I promised her some. Tell her it’s to help with the costs.”
I pulled my knife from the sheath and scrounged out the doubloons. The knife felt reassuring in my hand. I forced myself to put it back.
“Cover it,” said Mam.
Reluctantly, I rolled the blue legs down. Then I grabbed the soggy clump of Mam’s clothes and held it out to her.
“Your turn,” I said.
But Mam was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Aran.”
A gust of wind grabbed my name, whipping it away. A few hard pellets of rain struck my skin.
“I was going to come up to the door with you, but . . .” Her voice grew harder. “What if my pelt doesn’t close again? I can’t risk it. This is as far as I can go if I’m to swim to the wise ones.”
I shoved the clothes forward again. “You have to come!”
Mam’s mouth tightened. She swept out a flipper, pushing the clothes—and the harness—off the rocks. They disappeared under the roiling foam.
“I found you a safe place,” she snapped. “You’ll stay here, and you’ll be here when I come back.” She pushed me toward the path, but now her voice turned pleading. “Don’t you see? If I know you’re safe, I can go, and I have to go to help you.”
The pleading was worse than the hardness.
I stared up the cliff face, then back at her, my fear pulsing in my throat.
“Swear it,” said Mam, fierce again, as she held back her tears. “Swear you’ll stay in that house until I return. Even if the Moon brings your pelt first, wait here, or I may never find you again. Swear you won’t let anyone see you besides Maggie. Swear it all by the Moon!”
A blast of wind sent me stumbling to the edge of the rocks. The storm broke with a roar of fury. The waves towered higher, wild with white foam, and then the rain struck—slashing down sideways, ricocheting off rocks, hurling in every direction. In an instant the whole world was water.
“Swear!” shouted Mam over the wind.
“I swear.”
“By the Moon!”
Struggling to stay on my feet, I put my hand to my heart to make the vow. “By the Moon!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maggie
I climbed the cliff, rehearsing the lies that made up my new life. Divorce . . . father . . . two moons.
I pulled myself over the top and looked back. The rocks were deserted.
I turned to face the house, gray behind shuddering gusts of rain. I had to go now or I’d never go. I forced myself to take one step through the howling wind. Then another, across stone, and grass, the rain slapping my face, until I stood in front of a peeling wooden door.
I tried to think how a human boy would stand. I raised my hand, clenched a fist like Mam told me, and knocked. The sound echoed in the hollow behind the door. I was grateful for the dark and the wind snatching at the shreds of my hair and the rain pounding down so the woman couldn’t see me too closely at first.
A harsh light blinded me from above and the door swung open. All I could see was an outline, a shadow without a body. Shorter than Mam in longlimbs, and thinner, and stooped. A voice spoke urgently but my heart was pounding and the gale blowing and I couldn’t hear the words. She took a step closer—
> A bony hand clamped down on my shoulder and pulled me inside.
The door banged shut. My breath rasped against the silence. The air smelled stale and sick.
“What happened?” Her voice was taut. A voice for emergencies.
She wasn’t as old as Grandmam, but her hair was dull and faded, and lines etched deep gullies down the sides of her face. It was as if the life had been sucked out of her, leaving an empty shell behind.
I couldn’t find my tongue.
“Was there an accident?” she said.
The room swirled around me in a confusion of colors and shapes. The walls were crawling with patterns, and the floor scratched my feet, and the heat pressed on my lungs.
“Can you answer me, son? Who’s with you? Is anyone hurt?”
Her questions, her anxious voice—didn’t she know who I was?
I took a step back. What if this was the wrong place? My body was screaming at me to run, but I couldn’t; I’d sworn that I’d stay here in this house, stay with . . .
“Maggie,” I said out loud.
She peered at me. “Do I know you?”
I gulped. “I’m Aran.” She didn’t move. “You told my mam I could stay.”
“Told your what?”
“My mam, my mother, she came to you because of the . . . the divorce, and my . . . my father, he beats me and . . .”
A horrified realization came into her eyes.
“And you said you’d hide me from him,” I sputtered on. “Because he . . . he might try to hurt us, or . . .”
“Oh my Lord!” She was shaking her head in dismay. “Is she still out there?” She ripped the door open and shouted into the dark, “Come back!”
The storm howled in reply.
“Come back!” she called, louder. Under the light, the rain slashed down like knife blades. Then she threw back her head, shouting so loud it was almost a scream, “He can’t stay here!”
It was too much for her. She started coughing and her chest caved in. She coughed and coughed and it didn’t stop, like she was going to cough her guts out. Like she was going to die.
I stared. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run and dive off the cliff and find Mam. I wanted to tell her the human hated me and wouldn’t let me stay. But I forced my feet to stay put. I’d made a Moon vow.
The Turning Page 8
