‘What happened to them?’
‘My wife left me, a long time ago,’ said Ted. ‘Then Cara and Jessie died.’
Jake started. He looked up, confused. Jessie was staring at him placidly.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Well, I’ll explain it to you, boy.’ Ted sat heavily back in his chair. He stretched out his hand towards Jake, who handed the photo back to him. The old man started to talk as he stroked the glass of the portrait.
‘When I was younger, about your dad’s age, you wouldn’t have recognised me. I was a lawyer. I lived in a big house, high up on the hills overlooking the sea. I wore smart suits every day, went to expensive restaurants. I defended big businesses, gave them legal advice, and they paid me far more than I was worth, I can tell you. I thought I was happy. I’d worked hard to get to that point. But I’ll admit that I was lonely. Oh sure, there were women in my life, but I always felt a bit suspicious of them, thought they were only after my money.
‘I bought a boat, the Sea Mist, which I kept in a special boat shed and launched down at Island Bay. Even though I was always working, any time I managed to steal was always spent in that boat. Powerful motor it had. I could blast out past the breakers and into the open sea, feel the wind on my face and forget about work. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job — the sense of power all that money gave me. The challenge of winning cases, especially if I suspected my client was in the wrong. I saved them so much money, they practically showered me with champagne. But deep down I had a cold feeling in my gut, and after each case it would take longer and longer in the boat for me to feel calm and clean again. And always, I went home to my huge empty house on the hill and I’d pour myself a glass of whiskey and sit alone on my deck, looking out at the sea. I got to realise that the huge gulf inside me was an absence of love.
‘It was like Alice had heard my thoughts. One summer evening, after a gruelling day at work, I was in the boat, preparing to take it out to sea and forget my troubles. The tide was at its highest, about to turn. I saw something floating in the water. At first I thought it was a dead dog, but when I looked closer I saw that it was a perfectly preserved animal pelt. I fished it out and looked at it. It was a beautiful sealskin, reddish brown, but with silver flecks in it that caught the light as I turned it over in my hands. I was enchanted.
‘I put it away in my hold, intending to take it home and keep it for my collection of curiosities.
‘I’d only just made it past the breakers when the engine started to make a terrible graunching noise. I didn’t want to risk being stranded out to sea, so I guided the Sea Mist back into shore, thinking I’d get a mechanic to look at her before I took her out again. The light had dimmed considerably, and as I bobbed towards the boat ramp, engine off, I heard a splashing beside me in the water. I looked down and saw a woman there, out for an evening swim. She had pale skin and huge dark eyes, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Realising that I was staring, I thought it best to speak to her.
‘“Hello,” I said. “How’s the water?”
‘She took a moment to reply, just floating in the water, looking back at me. When she spoke it was as though her voice made a beeline for my heart.
‘“Kind sir,” she said, like something out of a fairy tale. “If you could please help me. I have lost my clothing. I came down to swim here and I fear that the tide rose higher than usual and the sea took it. I have been swimming around here for an hour or more, looking, and I am very tired.”
‘She was the most free and beautiful creature I’d ever seen, but the poor thing looked scared as well as tired, so I looked around for something to give her.
‘“Here.” I put a towel and a spare shirt and pants at the ladder, which I lowered into the water. Then I went and stood on the other side of the boat with my back to her.
‘I heard her splashing out of the sea, her light footsteps on the deck, and when she announced that she was covered, I turned and I knew I’d found the love of my life. At the time I couldn’t explain why I was so sure, and I didn’t really want to know why. I just knew that from then on my life was going to change.
‘Alice had the most profound effect on me. I saw my life for what it was — shallow and corrupt. I quit my job and sold my house, but I kept the Sea Mist. We lived for a long time on the proceeds of the house, and on the money I’d invested. We lived in a small cottage in Owhiro Bay, possibly even the house your father lives in now, who knows? I was very happy. I fished every day, and Alice was always waiting for me at home when I arrived. She fell pregnant and we had a beautiful daughter, Cara, and not long after that, another, Jessie. I thought I might die of happiness.
‘But things were not quite right with Alice. While I was content just to have her by my side, her unhappiness grew clearer by the day. I’d come home and she’d have an exhausted, haunted look about her. Her feet were often cut and bruised, but when I asked her why, she’d brush me aside and say she’d fallen, or that she’d been gardening. I urged her to wear shoes, but she wouldn’t.
‘At nights I often found her standing at the open window, letting in the freezing wind, while she looked out to sea.
‘Finally, she broke down one night and told me what she was. A selkie — one of the seal-people. She’d shed her skin that day, and the tide had risen and taken it from the rocks, where it had floated my way. She told me that she only needed to find it and she could leave and be happy.
‘But of course I didn’t want her to leave. I had forgotten about the sealskin, and it had sat all those years in a box in the hold below deck. Alice had been in the boat, but she’d never guessed that the skin was right under her nose. I think the boat’s proximity to the sea somehow masked the smell of it. After she’d told me her story, I held her in my arms for a long time, but I didn’t tell her that it was me who was keeping her captive.
‘She was growing sicker by the day, and yearned for the sea more and more. The girls were neglected. Often I’d come home and they’d be crying with hunger and I suspected she’d been leaving them alone while she went out walking, searching the streets and the water for her skin.
‘One evening, I came home and she wasn’t there. The children had bloodied fingernails from trying to claw their way out of the locked house. They clung to me with fear and confusion when I opened the door and I saw them for what they were — they were as thin as flower stems and just as weak. I’d have to do something about it. I’d have to choose between my wife and my daughters.
‘She arrived home in the middle of the night, drenched and clammy, but didn’t seem to feel the cold. Her briny smell when she climbed into bed beside me was overpowering. She fell into an exhausted sleep and I knew what I had to do. I woke early, and, while she slept, went down to the Sea Mist to collect the skin.
‘There it was, in its box where I’d left it all those years ago. I worried that it had been attacked by insects, that it’d fall apart when I lifted it, but it was as glossy and beautiful as the day I found it. When I took it from its box the smell — her smell, Alice’s — was all around me.
‘I brought the sealskin home. The children were playing happily on the floor while she was in the kitchen, making them breakfast. She turned to greet me, a smile on her lips, but her face changed when she realised what I had in my arms. I don’t know how, maybe it was the way her eyes grew and went black, but I sensed what was coming. I dropped the skin on the floor, picked up the children and all but tossed them into their room. I turned to face her as she threw her body against mine, shrieking.
‘She nearly killed me. I’ll say no more, but when she had finished with me, I could hardly walk or see. As I lay bleeding on the floor, she picked up the skin and ran from the house, ripping off her clothes as she went. By the time I’d dragged myself to the window and pulled myself to standing, she was a silky missile in the ocean, leaping and arcing, rippling the water. Then she disappeared.
‘My heart and body were broken. I lay on the couch while t
he children called “Mummy, Mummy” around me, pleading for me to get up and look for her. Somehow I managed to get off the couch and feed them, put them to bed that evening, where they cried themselves to sleep. I hated myself then. It was all my fault. I’d unwittingly trapped Alice and now I was alone and my children motherless. She was a wild beast that should never have been tamed, and I blamed her for attacking me no more than I would blame a caged lion that turned on its trainer.
‘I don’t know how the girls knew, but it must have been in their blood. When I woke up the next morning, they were gone. They must have sensed what had happened to Alice, and had opened the front door and wandered down to the sea, looking for her. A neighbour found their little bodies washed up on the beach. They possessed neither a sealskin to transform them nor the ability to swim. They had tried to follow their mother and the sea had rejected them. I still wonder if she could have saved them, but perhaps she was already far away. I’ll never know. I never saw her again.’
17
The sound of the sea rose up around them. Ted was staring at the photograph in his hands and Jessie was looking at Jake, as if waiting for him to speak. When it became clear that Ted had finished his story, Jake said to Jessie, ‘You’re not his granddaughter, are you?’
She shook her head — a little sadly, Jake thought. He looked around the room, and for the first time registered that with only one single bed, where did Jessie sleep when she stayed? That was one clue he’d missed. Now that he knew the truth for sure, that Ted wasn’t really her grandfather, Jake knew she didn’t sleep in the hut at all.
Ted looked up. ‘There have been many Jessies, my boy. And Caras. They don’t replace my daughters, but if I can look out for them, even just while they’re small — give them clothes to wear, offer them some protection from humans — it takes away the worst of the guilt. And I can pretend for a while that my girls never left. This Cara first came to me last year — she was the same age Jessie is now. She was a sweet girl. Seals grow up a lot faster than humans, so she’s an adult now and I’d thought we wouldn’t be seeing her again. But she was drawn back. And this is the first time in all these years that one of my girls has lost their skins. I feared for her, and for the poor sod who had found it, but there wasn’t much I could do. Cara and your dad are both wrapped up in the enchantment now. Nobody can reason with either of them.’
‘But why do they come to land and shed their skins?’ asked Jake. ‘Nobody’s explained it to me.’
Ted sighed, then shook his head. ‘Who knows, lad? Maybe it’s loneliness and sorrow that brings them out of the sea. Mine …’ He hung his head, as though ashamed. ‘… and now your dad’s. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because they can. I’m sure they couldn’t explain it to you any more than I could.’
Could it be true? Was Dad so lonely that he had drawn a woman from a seal? And Jessie: was she just one in a line of selkie-children brought out of the sea by poor Ted’s suffering? Jake couldn’t believe that. She was too curious, too much her own person. He remembered what his dad had said, that night by the fire. ‘Wouldn’t you? Just to see what it was like?’
Jake looked at Jessie again. ‘Would you have ever told me? That you’re …’ He couldn’t finish his own sentence, and Jessie didn’t react. It didn’t matter what she was. She was his friend, that was enough.
Jake fell silent again, thinking. Things were even scarier than he’d realised. Ted’s limp, and his badly scarred eyelid, were all because of his selkie wife. Dad was in danger — two-fold. If Cara found out he was hiding her skin — wherever it was! — she could hurt him, badly, even if he gave it back to her voluntarily. On the other hand, if Jake’s dad managed to keep the sealskin from her for long enough, he and Cara might have children, and Cara could die and leave him heartbroken, or worse, their children could follow their mother into the sea and drown.
Jake had to admit to himself that even though he’d been urging Dad to give back the skin for his own good, it had really been for selfish reasons. Jake had been jealous. He didn’t want his dad to start another family. But after Ted’s story, Jake realised things were far more complicated than that.
With a start, something came to him that had been nagging him all this time — his dad could end up like Ted. Alone, sad, and slightly crazy.
Then another terrible thought struck him. Dad had insisted that Cara would stay with him even if he gave her back the skin. What if he decided to test his theory? Jake had to get back home, fast, to make sure he didn’t. He jumped to his feet.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
Ted stood up. ‘You know what you have to do now? Where to look?’
‘I think I have an idea. But even if I find it and give it back, won’t she be angry?’
Jessie piped up. She practically rolled her eyes, as if Jake was just a silly child. ‘You do not give it back to her, Jake. You put it back where you found it, then the spell will be broken and she can leave.’
‘Will you come with me? Help me look for it?’
‘No. She will get suspicious. You must do this on your own.’ She sounded to Jake like a grown-up in a child’s body. All this time he had thought of her as a little kid, but she was quickly becoming far wiser than he could hope to be in his lifetime.
He opened the front door cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible. All was quiet. They must be out, thought Jake, but when he entered the living room, there was his father, sitting at the dining table, staring out the window. He was hunched over, wearing his holey black fishing jersey and faded brown corduroy pants. His whiskers were starting to resemble a proper beard. It was happening already — he was already starting to look like Ted. A younger version, but Ted all the same, like the Ted in the photograph.
There was no sign of Cara. Jake dared to hope that she had left, and everything was fine.
‘Hi, Dad.’
Dad turned his head slowly and looked at him. His eyes were glassy and it was as though it took him a second to recognise his own son. ‘Oh, Jake.’ His voice was listless. ‘You’re back.’
Jake sat down opposite him. ‘Where’s Cara?’ he asked.
‘She’s gone out for a walk.’
Looking for the skin, thought Jake, but didn’t say so. ‘And what are you doing?’ Jake was surprised his dad wasn’t taking the opportunity to work on his book.
‘I’m waiting for her.’
This was worse than Jake thought. Dad was completely under the selkie’s spell. He was like an empty shell; or a child waiting for its mother, not knowing how to entertain itself. But as Jake sat with him, the colour slowly came back into his father’s cheeks, the life back into his eyes. Suddenly Dad’s eyes opened wide.
‘Jake!’ he said, as if only just noticing him. ‘How’s your day going? Do you want some lunch?’ He stood up and started moving towards the kitchen. Jake realised one important fact: his own presence was somehow diluting Cara’s spell. There was hope after all that they could fight this thing. Ted had been alone, with nobody to distract him from his enchantment. Perhaps things were going to be different this time.
‘We have to talk,’ said Jake.
Dad stopped. ‘Okay,’ he said, and sat down again.
Jake told him what had happened to Ted, in much fewer words. For the first time, his dad looked as though he might be listening. But still, he refused to believe that what he had with Cara was anything but love.
‘I’m sorry that happened to Ted,’ he said. ‘It must be horrible to lose your children like that. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.’ He grabbed Jake’s hand across the table. ‘But, mate, this isn’t what’s happening here. I’m sure Ted’s wife just left him and he was so sad he just made up the story to make himself feel better.’
‘Dad!’ Jake shouted in frustration. ‘Don’t you see? We have to let Cara have her skin back, and we can’t let her know we’ve had it!’
But his father wasn’t looking at him any more. He was staring at th
e doorway to the living room. Jake turned, his stomach a pit of dread, knowing what he would see. Cara leant against the doorframe, listening.
‘My skin is here?’ Cara’s voice stayed calm, but she began advancing slowly towards them. Jake found himself shrinking away from her. She radiated a coldness that he could feel on his skin. ‘Where is it?’
Neither Jake nor his father said anything. Dad was staring at her, mesmerised, just the way Jake had stared at her that day in Ted’s cottage.
And then she began to change. It was her eyes at first — they seemed to grow in her face. Her pupils expanded in her irises, then her irises expanded and covered the whites of her eyes. Jake was cold with fear, and Dad gasped. But still neither of them spoke. They were both in danger, and yet Jake couldn’t move.
‘Where is it?’ Her voice rose in pitch and volume and filled the air around them. She pulled her lips back in a grimace. Her teeth were small and pointed. She looked wildly around the room. Then she ran to the couch and started tearing at it with her bare hands. Within seconds the cushions were shredded, their stuffing floating through the air. She whirled around the room, throwing all the books from their shelves, upturning the coffee table. Next, she swept into the kitchen, and the sound of smashing glass and crockery rumbled through the house.
With Cara in the next room, Jake came to his senses and jumped to his feet. He grabbed his father’s arm. ‘Come on, we have to get out of here! If she finds it, she’ll kill us!’
But his father wrenched his arm free. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘She’s just a bit upset, that’s all. I’ll tell her you were joking, that it was just a game.’ Jake could barely hear him over the sound of splintering wood as Cara tore the kitchen apart.
‘Dad!’ Jake shouted. Suddenly, silence spilled from the kitchen. Cara appeared in the doorway. When she spoke, her voice was gravelly and low, a mixture of human voice and animal growl. Her eyes were black coals throbbing in her face. They pulsed with an unearthly light.
Red Rocks Page 9
