Seagulls cried at her but she had never learned the language of seagulls. She blew the water out her nose and breathed in sea foam, then sneezed. Her throat ached. She sneezed again and tasted sweetness. The water in front of her splattered with mucus, hissed as she burst the foam. Now she smelled blood. She would lay on the beach in the sun and wait to feel better. She wouldn’t go to the rock now.
The tide started to go out. So much for her skill at finding the one place where no change need be made. She slid backward. No. Not now. The rock that would take her skin off turned into a shadow, then a shell, then a pebble, then gone. She hid in the cave that no one else could reach, because she had brushed the rock with her flipper before, and now she could change that flipper into a—a hand.
She could climb.
But only her sister Ma’a knew of it.
—
Their beach was a shifting pile of pebbles that could be hollowed into the shape of a seal’s belly and warmed with sunlight or with one another’s flesh. Omanu flopped to where her sister was sleeping and shoved her with her shoulder to wake her up and to push her out of her spot. Ma’a grunted and slapped her, but allowed herself to be moved a little to share her spot.
Where have you been?
To the cave.
Ma’a quivered and twisted her head to bite her own shoulder where it touched Omanu’s side. Hide your hand. I don’t want to see it.
I changed it back.
You can do that now? You couldn’t do it before. Maybe you should stop going to the cave. Who knows what would happen to you.
I could scratch your back, Omanu grunted mischievously.
Not here. I don’t know why you want to do this.
I’ll come right back.
No you won’t. You’ll go up on shore and a man will take your skin and you’ll—
People go all the time and nothing happens.
Something will happen to you. You will walk around with no skin on until something happens. I see the water flowing out to sea as plain as you.
I won’t go anywhere. Not the first time.
Her sister stopped biting her itch and shoved her out of the hollow of warm pebbles she had made, putting her heavy head under Omanu’s shoulder and shoving until Omanu rolled over on her back.
Ma’a flopped down the pebbles that clattered over themselves and said, You will have no sisters and no family! Man will take your skin and you will have no fish but what he gives you! You will learn nothing but—her head splashed into water and took the rest of her words.
Ma’a was always afraid. Omanu was not brave. But Ma’a was always afraid.
Her chest ached.
With Ma’a gone she couldn’t stop herself from coughing.
More blood ran through the yellow spatter. Before she could stop herself she flopped down the beach.
The water was so still she could hear the stones chatter as the small lapping waves flipped them over. Ma’a used to say that the stones would tell her other seals’ dreams when the sea was quiet enough to for her to hear them. They told Ma’a the character of the tides and the weather and all the gossip from up and down the coast for a hundred days’ swim, and it was true that Ma’a knew Omanu’s heart before Omanu did. Today even Omanu could almost hear what they said, so she hurried off the beach as fast as she could. Under the water she was free, except from the tides and the things left behind when man came and went, and herself.
Ma’a shouted, her voice echoed off rocks. It really was a calm day, to hear her from so far away.
Just go. Every day it’s the same, just go.
What if I go and nothing is different?
But Ma’a did not answer.
The seagulls cried and she snapped her teeth at them. She did not need to understand the language of seagulls to know they laughed at her. Well enough. She was laughable.
The place where she could balance in stillness among the currents had shifted, she searched for it with her nose. She could feel the edge of it, where the long river that fell swiftly from the echoing rocks, passed under the bridge over which the men flashed in their quick and reflecting boats, and met the sea with the flavors of earth and green tangle, but she could not find the down current, without which she would spin slowly. As a calf-child she had spun and spun in such waters but she was sick and today it would make her vomit.
The tide poured toward the river, so she let the current take her closer to the rock. She could feel the rock before she could see it. The ocean had gone silent, the clacking rocks at the beach popping and sucking instead.
Omanu put her head under and swam, but her breath hurt in her. She surfaced and coughed again. Her breath came back foul in her own mouth, like death, and coated her teeth with sweetness mixed with blood. She kicked and floated, and even though the tides should have pushed her forward up the river, they pulled her fur, turning it sleek.
She swam forward as fast as she could, under the bridge, the water falling back to the ocean and sucking at her. The rock split the sky in front of her, but now she didn’t want to touch it and she swerved away.
Suddenly a seal hit her from the side, knocking her toward the rock that would take off her skin.
Ma’a!
A wave was coming, filling the sky as she twisted and Ma’a hit her again from the other side. She turned her flipper into a hand and tried to hold onto Ma’a but the wave took them. End over end, the rock sliced her from throat to tail, and then the water lifted her up into the tangle above the river. To a place where her hand could hold.
—
The seagulls cried in her ears so loud she thrashed and grunted to get them off her head. Oah my god. Take her hand deyeh. Get it oahf her. The stoahm must have thrown it all the way up heyah on toppah her. I cannoaht believe it. Heyah, help me lift this, it’s crushing her.
Her eyes could see only light and dark. The shadows of the seagulls were all over her, pecking her, ripping her apart. Anoahdda one. Landing on her and pulling, screaming at her.
She sobbed and flailed and grunted and twisted but they had her. Don’t do it don’t make me do it I changed my mind don’t do it.
The air around her bit the back of her throat and she sneezed and the last of the ocean dripped from her mouth. Oah my god Bobby she’s bleeding out her mouth. She won’t die befoah we get her to the hoaspital. Shouldn’t you check her now? I already checked her as much as I need to. We should take her offa dis rock is what we should do, now help me lift her.
She was a tangle of white under the gray sky in the tangle on top of the rocks. Her skin stung, but not from the air, from the tangle that reached for her, the tangle that cut red lines onto her. She screamed. Put me back, put me back inside.
The men pushed her inside a boat that stung her skin and pinned her arms to her sides and pulled her hair to keep her from moving. Why you gotta…Bobby, what is that? It’s disgusting.
She shouted my skin where is my skin you have to put me back!
Weyall, I cannoat rightly say what it is. You don’t know what it is and you put it in the trunk. Why noaht? Just throw it away.
—
The smell of seagull shit stung in her mouth and nose and the world was the white of winter sunlight on the water, pale. The men had wrapped her in tangle and the seagulls shrieked but they didn’t talk anymore, just barked a high squeal over and over. She lay on a high shelf of seaweed or moss surrounded by metal.
Next to her a man’s dark-furred head, with a tangle of white—clothing. Clothing covering his shoulders and arms and hands, hiding his hands entirely with his arms over his torso. She reached her arms across her own self and shuddered, it was like being tangled in seaweed. She untangled one arm from herself and it was as heavy to lift as though she had tried to lift her whole body out of the water to stand on her tail. Her hand fell on his shoulder.
His head wobbled and his eyes opened. His arms reached in front of him for a second, then folded over his chest again. Holding something tangled. Oah! My deah, you
’re finally awake.
With her breath taken in, the coughing came out. Don’t talk, my deah, you have pneumonia. Youah very sick. But you didn’t have any identification on you, we need to noah who you ah.
She said her name but it was a grunt.
Sorry my deah, I should noat have asked you to say anything.
My skin, where is my skin?
Heah, drink this. Water to her mouth that tasted of poison from man, coating the inside of her mouth and all of her teeth. She coughed it out. Noah, you need to drink it. The water shimmered next to her mouth, and she butted the glass with her head.
My skin.
Maga? Margaret? Your name is Margaret?
My skin.
He must not have her skin, or she would have to mate with him and bear his pups. Her skin was gone. What happened when your skin was gone? Ma’a would have told her if she knew. Ma’a had argued all horrible things to keep her from taking off her skin. And now Ma’a was gone. Omanu pushed the metal on the side of the shelf with her shoulder and it creaked. She grunted, hunched her back, and unleashed into the metal again.
Doan’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself. The man moved the metal out of her way, and she rolled onto the floor, without thinking, slapping her hands on it to break the surface. The floor was a beach made out of a single rock. She flopped forward, dragging the tangle with her. The seagulls shrieked louder.
Whoah, my deah, don’t do that.
She turned from side to side. She was inside a cave full of thin winter sunlight. Before her were a dark cave that smelled more of seagull shit than the cave they had put her in and a bright cave that echoed of seagulls and pebbles rattling on the beach. She turned toward the bright cave on her belly. That was not how the men walked, but she didn’t have time to learn how to walk.
The man pulled on her arm. She butted his legs with her shoulder and he let go of her. She flopped into the bright cave, her human skin sticking to the floor and stinging when she moved. She had no fur. She coughed from the smell of death in the bright cave but did not taste blood.
Wait! He pulled harder on her arm, and she whipped her head around and bit his hand, crushing down with her teeth, and tossing her head to break his bones. It twisted, his hand could twist about, as she should have remembered from her hours of curling around to see her own human hand, in her private cave. His hand grabbed her again. His fingernails scratched in her mouth, blood again, she bit and his hand left her with a yell.
What had she wanted? Her skin cut open on a rock and a woman to come out. She had imagined herself shining in the sunlight like a seagull laughing, her hair blowing in the wind. She would walk and turn around in circles with her arms out like a pup spinning in the current.
But she could not even stand.
Other men in white clothing lifted her up. My skin, my skin! Her arms were not strong but they could twist around, the men could not hold Omanu with their hands if she had hands to twist back with! And then her feet were under her, three slaps of her feet on the ground and she was falling on the floor, no water to hold her up. She had not walked but she had run.
She keeps saying something. Maga? Maska?
I think her name is Margaret.
Back on the shelf again, the walls around her. She shoved them, she thrashed, they tangled her up so even twisting could not get her hands free.
She cried, my skin, my skin!
The others left, the first man remained.
My skin!
When she could no longer move, one of the man’s eyes opened and closed without the other. Yoah looking for yoah skin, ahn’t you? This is yoah skin now.
She tried to twist away again, but they had tangled her like a fish. She kicked the metal on the sides of the shelf and beat the back of her head against the cave wall. The man laughed.
—
The side of the boat opened and the wind from the sea came in like a sister, making her tangle of dried-out hair billow around her face like seaweed in a current.
Come out, come out. He showed her his hand. He would pull her out of the boat like a seagull pulling a clam out of its shell. We’re all the way on top of the ridge, which is lucky. A house lowah down on the hill didn’t make it. Too bad foah Curruthahs. Now come out, theyah’s someone I want you to meet.
They had tangled her in more clothes, so it didn’t sting when she slid out of the boat. The car. Her feet weren’t sure of the ground, but he grabbed her arm, and rather than twist free, she grabbed his arm back and walked on top of her shoes more like a turtle walking on sand than a long-legged bird picking its way through the shallows.
Remembah, you must do what I say, or I will throw your skin away.
I remember, she said.
The seagulls laughed at her. Look at you, look at you!
She grunted. Through the tangle of trees the gray sky turned into the line of the sea, her beloved waves running and leaping and jumping white on shores that she couldn’t recognize, looking out instead of in.
Oah no. This way, to the house.
She looked toward the cave. The house, the house. Gray like a fish, gills running from end to end, gasping on the beach. A red door like washed fish flesh to be torn and eaten. Dark, gaping holes flat like dead eyes, the last glint of sunset on them. He lived in a dead fish. With the smell of the car still around her, the house smelled foul, too foul to eat.
The red door opened, and out of the flesh of the house came a man with long black hair and white skin and an open mouth that opened and closed as though near death. The man had teats under her clothes, a female.
Say hello, deah.
Hello.
Omanu hobbled toward the female, taking the last few steps on her own. The female leaned on the wall, and Omanu leaned with her, smelling sharpness from the wall as her clothes scraped on it. She bumped up against the female, and the female bumped her back. She tried to remember the smell but could not.
The man laughed and laughed.
She grunted and the female grunted the stones told me he would bring you to me today.
Ma’a!
It’s all your fault I’m here. He has my skin, Omanu.
Ma’a! She tangled her arms around the female. The smell was not the same, instead of the sea and the seaweed and the smell of even the pebbles they lay upon, which she had not known was a smell until she had not smelled it on her sister’s skin, her sister smelled of flowers and poison and seagull shit, the same smells bleeding into the air from the red door.
She grunted in the language of seals we will kill him, Ma’a.
He has my skin. Ma’a shivered under her clothes. I have to lay with him and bear his pups until I have my skin.
Then I will kill him, Omanu grunted.
What a nice little reunion, Bobby said. Now come in the house before you get cold. I just got your lungs healed up.
Beside the door was a sharp, black stone that looked as though it had been broken off the rock that would take off her skin. She would not have thought anything much about it before but now she had hands.
—
Later that night, Omanu pushed her ear onto the wall. Ma’a barked with pain but without speaking either in the human language or the seal language. The wood door was nothing but hollow sticks, rotten on the inside, but it would have made a sound if she slammed her shoulder into it to break it.
The gaping black eyes of the windows, however, could be opened more quietly, the glass moved like so. She clawed open the clothing that covered the hole, opened the glass, and dropped down onto the rocks below the window. They clattered under her flat shoes made out of skin but told her nothing.
She watched the moonlight through the tangle of trees, the sea and the moonlight, then turned to the red door and found the sharp rock. With both hands she carried it to the window, squatting low to keep from tipping over. One foot. Another foot. She lifted it and it hit the wall. She froze, reaching out with every hair on her skin to feel the current. The wind blew from the land, carrying
scents of tangle and flower and the long trees that pointed shadows onto the beach at sunset. Rotten leaves and other things, from the ground.
She rolled the rock up the ridges of the gray wall, over the white stick at the edge of the window, and over. Then no more time for silence, she put her hands inside the sticks around the window and pulled and pulled and her feet left the ground but slid down again. She had no wave to lift her. She pulled again and went nowhere. Ma’a shouted. Omanu jumped and her shoes kicked on the gray fish wall and she climbed through the black fish eye, scraping her torso from one end to the other as she flopped through.
She fell on the floor and grabbed the sharp rock and shouldered into her door, which would not open unless the man opened it. Her shoulder broke though part of the sticks but not all the way through. She shook her shoulder away from the broken sticks, lifted the rock to her chest, which was losing its clothes, and charged the door again, with her head and her chest.
Ma’a shrieked.
What ah you doing, woman? I told you not to look in theyah.
Omanu stumbled over the broken door and the rock pulled her down and over.
What’s that?
Omanu!
Omanu grunted. Then she lifted hard on the rock. It hit her shins and scraped through the cloth, but she got it back up to her belly with both hands. She could not run.
Omanu!
She carried the rock to the door where Bobby kept Ma’a at night. She lifted the sharp rock to her chest.
Before she hit the door Bobby said Good gahdamn, woman, would you let goah?
Two rocks cracked together and Ma’a grunted.
Omanu ran at the door with the rock, and it kicked her chest so she couldn’t breathe, but the hollow door popped open and crashed away from her. Bobby was behind the bed looking at the floor. He looked up at her with a long face and a mouth like a fish. She settled the rock on her chest and leaped at him, over the bed, into his chest, and the two rocks cracked again.
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre Page 20
