by Janis Mackay
Fin lay quivering on the sand, feeling the warm fur peel away from him. He felt how his soft skin shivered, how out of the bulk that had been his seal’s body, his long slim neck arose, and his spine, and bony shoulders. The pads over his strong flippers had gone and small agile hands trembled in their place. Fin stretched these fingers. He ran them through the sand. He shook his head. This time his mop of black hair clung to his face. His long whiskers had gone.
The full roundness that had been the seal seemed to split in two, as though his legs had been glued together and now were wrenched apart. Fin stretched his legs, flexed his webbed feet and wriggled his toes.
He was all there: wiry, thin, human – and dressed in his wetsuit. Magnus Fin lay on the beach in his human form, shaking. Slowly he rolled round and stared up at the moon, then at the round smiling face of Aquella. Now he was laughing. And so was she. By his side lay his crumpled seal skin.
Slowly he sat up, astounded. He gazed down at the skin then up at Aquella. “How did you do that?” he asked, overjoyed that his human speech had been restored to him, along with everything else.
“I sang.”
“I can’t believe I was a seal. I’m not a full selkie. How did it happen?”
“You are Sliochan Nan Ron,” she said, “related to the seal folk, and it did happen. Why? Because you’ve earned it. Look!” Aquella pointed to the very place Fin had lain. The strong round shape of the seal was still imprinted in the sand. “That was you.”
Fin shivered. He remembered the crab. The mysterious creature had gone, though his small shape had also left its mark in the sand.
“It’s hard to take in, Aquella. It’s like a dream.” Fin rubbed his legs and patted his arms. “Oh boy – I’m so glad to be a boy!” Then he lifted his hand to his neck. His moon-stone was still there.
Aquella scooped up the seal skin and handed it to her cousin. “Here, Fin, your seal skin. Look after it well.”
The warm fur felt both strange and familiar in Magnus Fin’s arms. He looked at his cousin then held it towards her. “Here, you have it, Aquella. You’re a full selkie. I’m only Sliochan Nan Ron. Please – you take it.”
Aquella shook her head. “Thanks, Fin, but it doesn’t work like that. There is only one for each selkie. No one can wear another person’s skin. And I meant it when I said I am happy to be a land selkie. Really – I am. No Fin – you’ve earned it. Now you can travel the sea in a wetsuit or a seal skin. It’s up to you.” She got up and stepped backwards.
Fin lifted the seal skin to his nostrils and breathed it in. He felt his father, his grandmother, even his grandfather, slam into him. Aquella was right; this was his skin. He had earned it.
“So you’ll need to hide it somewhere safe,” she said. “And maybe you should dry your hair by the fire – and, um, meet your cousin. I mean, your other cousin. Come on!” She ran up the shingle beach, waving for Fin to follow her.
The two of them ran over the sand in the moonlight, Fin with his seal skin flapping in the wind, Aquella with her long black hair flowing beside it.
Never had it felt so good to run with two legs, or to feel the cool night air on his face, or the wind run its fingers through his damp hair. “Wheee!” Fin shouted as they ran along the beach. “I’ve got arms and legs.”
“And you’ve got a seal skin,” Aquella cried.
“The best of both worlds,” Fin said, lifting his seal skin up above his head and letting the sleek black pelt flap out like a flag.
Soon they reached the cave. “Wait, Fin,” Aquella said, barring the entrance and panting after the run. “We have to be quiet. Ronan is sleeping in here.”
Fin, folding his seal skin carefully under his arm, drew up close to Aquella. “Who?”
“Ronan. My brother. You saved him. He’s wrapped up in my jacket. I made a bed for him at the back of the cave. I don’t want to wake him.” She whispered now as she spoke and took Magnus Fin by the hand. “Come and sit by the fire – quietly.”
“The thing in the net? The thing that almost killed me in that dump? That’s your brother?”
“The dump almost killed him, Fin. Shh! Don’t wake him.”
They crept in and sat on stones by the fire. Magnus Fin could only dimly make out a figure sleeping under Aquella’s puffy jacket. Faintly he heard soft snores coming from the back of the cave.
“That’s my brother,” Aquella whispered proudly. “It will take a day or so for the poison to leave him. Then he’ll go back to the sea. Ronan was always getting into trouble. You know, Fin, he told me he came to find me. He took off his seal skin and ran around looking for me, then was disturbed by dog walkers. There was a fridge dumped on the shore. He jumped in to hide, then the tide washed it away. He can’t remember any more. But, poor thing, he shakes and stammers.”
“It’s the cause of the sickness,” said Fin. “I know what it is. And your brother was right in the middle of it. Out there, Aquella, under the sea, it’s like a dump. That’s where your brother was. It’s a wonder he didn’t die.”
“He must have been better protected from it in his human form,” she replied. “Like you, Sliochan Nan Ron, you survive all kinds of tricky situations.”
The soft snoring of Ronan mingled with the crackle of burning wood. Fin recalled how afraid he had been of Aquella’s brother. How his wild staring green eyes had terrified him. How the stink of him had made him feel sick. And now the selkie slept, occasionally making little whimpering noises in his sleep, but for the most part he seemed at peace. Suddenly Magnus Fin remembered someone else who was alive and well.
“Hey, Aquella! Did I tell you?” he said excitedly. “Miranda is well again. The sickness has gone.”
“Yes, Fin,” she said, firelight glowing in her face, “you told me. Well done, Magnus Fin. You’re a selkie prince now.”
Chapter 37
Tarkin couldn’t believe his luck. Everything was going according to plan. The rudder was easy to tilt and the engine was puttering away bravely. He was approaching the harbour on course, and apart from a little ripple on the sea, conditions were good.
“Right, Tark,” he said to himself, bringing the boat level with the mouth of the harbour, “you’ve got to cut the engine and let her come in slowly. Easy does it. Don’t forget the buoys. Don’t forget the ropes. Um – what else? Phone the police. What about the anchor? Did Frank drop an anchor in the harbour last night? I can’t remember. OK – might as well drop the anchor too. Um – what else? Do I go in backwards or forwards?”
Tarkin was beginning to panic. There was so much to remember. He didn’t want to mess up after doing so well. Did it matter which way the boat was facing? The tide hadn’t been so far out the night before. Tarkin gasped, seeing, under the orange street lamps that lit up the harbour, how the few boats in the water were tipping over onto their sides. There wasn’t enough water to keep them up.
Just then something bumped and threw Tarkin forward. “What’s that? Help! Oh, help!” The bottom of the boat was scraping against the stones and sand of the seabed. A black cat meowed at him from a bollard. An owl hooted. And a door in the village hall swung open.
Tarkin had been wrong about the circle of pine trees around the village hall. It was more of a horseshoe than a circle, with a gap to the sea. It was through this gap that Frank was now staring. He’d come out for fresh air. Ceilidh dancing was great fun, but hot work. He was taken by the way the moon lit up the slate roofs and glinted on the sea. And the way an owl landed on a branch and called its deep “tu-whoo!”
Frank wiped his brow and watched the owl fly off, down towards the harbour. Following the flight of the owl, Frank saw his boat. He knew instantly it was his boat. The moon sat on it, illuminating the hull, the stern, and the silhouette of Tarkin, all keeling over to the side.
Something snapped in Frank then. He’d had it with being Mr Nice Guy. He’d had it with trying to bend over backwards to be pleasant to his girlfriend’s son. He might have known Tarkin’s sudden friend
liness concealed some other motive. It also didn’t take much looking to work out that the boy and the boat were in trouble.
Frank ran back into the hall. He threaded his way through the dancers, the noise and the music. Keith was trying to teach Martha a quickstep. “I’ll not be long. Just going to check on Tarkin.”
Then he was off, running down the street and along to the harbour. Frank tore off items of clothing as he ran. A green waistcoat flew through the air. On the harbour wall now he kicked off his shoes. As he ran he judged the depth – too shallow to dive headlong into. In his tartan trousers and bright yellow shirt Frank ran down the stone harbour steps then jumped into the sea.
After the shock of the freezing water, Frank, gasping, ploughed on. The water came up to his waist. Frank dragged his body through the water, half walking, half swimming. He drew close to his boat. The freezing water took his breath away. He couldn’t shout and swim at the same time, so Tarkin was just going to have to get the fright of his life. And, thought Frank, heaving himself towards the keeling boat, it would serve him right.
Tarkin had found an oar. He was just about to lower it to try and free the boat from the shallow water when suddenly the boat rocked wildly. Tarkin was flung forward as the stern of the boat tipped and lurched. In terror he shot a glance over his shoulder – and, Frank was right, Tarkin got the fright of his life. “HELP!” he screamed. “HELP!”
Frank fell into the boat, panting and gasping. The water ran in sheets off him. “What in the name of God,” he spluttered, “do you think you’re doing?” Frank’s eyes blazed. “You’ve taken me for a mug, Tarkin – and I’m through with it. No one could have done more than I’ve done.”
Tarkin shook his head. He didn’t know what to say. Tears rolled down his face. His knees buckled and he sank onto the sloping bench. Frank wasn’t done yet.
“I’m here for you!” He planted himself down on the bench opposite. “Can’t you see that? I’m here.” Frank hit his own chest as he spoke, seawater spraying off him. “I know it ain’t easy for you, Tark. Do you think I don’t know that? But I ain’t Mr Nice Guy no more, get that?”
Tarkin felt his heart fit to burst. Clinging to the side of the tipping boat he nodded. He rubbed his tears with his sleeve. And through it all he felt relieved. The boat wouldn’t sink now Frank was here.
“Sorry,” he blurted out.
Frank nodded. “So, Tarkin – out for a bit of mermaid spotting?”
Tarkin flashed a look at Frank, but the anger had gone and there was a smile on his face now. Deep down Frank was a good person, Tarkin could see that now, and it was true, this man had bent over backwards to be nice to him.
“I was – on a mission, Frank. Really! I have to call the police. There are loads of poisonous fridges and stuff down in the sea. But the boat’s stuck, Frank.”
In a flash Frank plunged the oar down and like a gondolier pushed the boat loose of its bed of sand and stones. “Turn the engine now, Tarkin,” he shouted.
Tarkin, amazed to be trusted, did as he was told.
Frank took hold of the rudder and in seconds the boat was free and heading out again to the deeper water at the harbour mouth. “At low tide she has to berth further up,” Frank shouted, as though he was the sailor and Tarkin his trusty first-mate. “There she goes, that’s better. We’ll soon have her home. So – sea cleaning, eh, Tarkin?”
“Yeah. Honest, Frank. I winched up a – um, a thing! Magnus Fin needed me, and – um – I needed the boat. There are leaking storage tanks and fridges and freezers and car batteries out there. Honest. Loads. And I have to phone the police.”
By this time Frank had secured the boat at the wall of the harbour. He flung a rope round a bollard. “You are one adventurer. Hey, you know your knots, Tark? Run up the steps, buddy. Put two half hitches into that rope and we’ll have her moored safe and sound.”
Tarkin didn’t know his knots. Tarkin didn’t like saying he didn’t know things. But he wouldn’t know two half hitches if they marched up and shook hands with him. He looked at Frank and shook his head. “No. Sorry, Frank. I don’t know that one.”
“No worries, buddy. I’ll show you. Then maybe later you could show me how to dance. Deal?”
Tarkin grinned and nodded his head.
“Glad the throat’s better,” Frank said as the two of them clambered out of the boat, both of them soaking, and both of them smiling from ear to ear. “Now then – good thing they still have a phone box in this village. Number’s 999, buddy. Go on. It’s that cute red tardis thing over there. I’ll be waiting right here.”
Chapter 38
The fire in the cave burned brightly. Shadows danced on the walls.
“A whole hour must have passed since I jumped off the black rock.” Magnus Fin was staring out of the cave to the sea. “Look, Aquella – the moon’s gone all that way. Mum and Dad are going to get worried. And we have to tell the police about the dump. I need to make a phone call, then get to the ceilidh.”
“Ragnor knows where you are, Fin. Don’t worry. And he says they’re having a great old knees-up at the ceilidh. Soon as we’re done, he says, we should get ourselves down there and dance.”
Just then a dark shadow flitted across the mouth of the cave. Magnus Fin gasped but Aquella put her hand on his arm. “It’s all right, Fin. It’s our friend, the winkle picker.”
The man stood framed in the entrance, the firelight glowing in his weather-beaten face. “They do their dirty fly-tipping when the moon’s bright,” he said in a hushed, gravelly voice, “so’s they don’t have to use headlights. So’s no one’ll see them. Dirty tippers.”
“Where?” Aquella asked.
“They goes through the farm by the old graveyard.” Then he was gone, hurrying off with his pail back down to the skerries. A pile of whelks lay on a flat stone at the mouth of the cave.
“They’re for Ronan,” Aquella said, seeing Fin’s look of astonishment. “They’re good for him. Do you mind if he borrows your seal skin for a pillow?”
She gathered up the seal skin and the whelks, and went around the fire to the back of the cave. In moments she was back, and ready.
“Well, Fin?” she asked, hands on her hips and her face glowing, “what are you waiting for?”
“Um … the farm beside the old graveyard?”
“That’s it. Let’s go.”
Fin scrambled to his feet. It had been cosy in the cave. It was his father’s cave; the place where he had sat and listened to many stories of the sea. But dirty tippers dumping fridges and toxic waste into the sea had never been part of his tales. These people had killed many of his kind and threatened the selkies’ very existence. He ran to the mouth of the cave. “Wait for me!”
Aquella was already running up the beach towards the hillside. She ran with bare feet. So did Fin. Their webbed feet pounded down over the grass and over the broken bracken, all brown with autumn. Puffing and panting, they clambered up the heathery hillside sending pheasants squawking and mice scurrying. They knew where the farm was. They knew the old graveyard. What they didn’t know was how two children were going to stop the dirty tippers from dumping waste into the sea.
When they reached the farm up by the cliffs they dived in behind prickly whin bushes. “There’s folk in the farmhouse,” Fin whispered, panting after the climb. “The curtains are open. I can see them. They’re watching TV.” The bluish light from a television flickered in the living room.
“They might spot us, Fin. The moon’s so bright. We’ll have to go the long way round. Come on.”
So, instead of dashing straight past the front of the farmhouse, they darted from bush to bush – Aquella, in her new green dress, like a sprite; Magnus Fin, in his wetsuit and mop of black hair, like a sea elf.
“It’s not far now,” Aquella whispered, with bits of bush in her hair and scratches across her arms. “I can see the gravestones. Hurry, Fin.”
Adventures under the sea were one thing. Hanging about in graveyards at ni
ght with a full moon looming above was something else. Fin grabbed Aquella by the arm. “Um, Aquella? Look. Do you think this is a good idea? I mean – we’re just kids!”
“What do you mean – just kids? Kids are powerful and magical – and anyway, you’re half selkie!”
She was right. That was the thing about Aquella. She was always right.
At that moment Fin heard the dim purring of an engine. He glanced down to the sea way below, but there were no boats out that he could see.
“It’s the dirty tippers; they’re coming down the track,” he said. “It’s too late to go back. OK, quick, run to the graveyard.”
They ran. In moments they reached they old stone wall of the graveyard and clambered over. Fin hunched down behind an ancient crumbling gravestone. Aquella hid behind the marble statue of an angel. Magnus Fin’s heart thumped in his chest. To keep in the shadows he pressed his face against the gravestone. His fingers traced the words etched in the stone: DEARLY BELOVED WITH US STILL. 1859. He gulped. He looked down, imagining a skeleton lying just under his feet. The noise of the engine grew louder.
“They’re coming,” Aquella whispered. “What are we going to do?”
Fin felt goose bumps all over him. “I don’t know.”
“Think of something, Fin. Quick!”
The dearly-beloved skeleton beneath Fin gave him the idea. “Let’s give them the fright of their lives!”
Chapter 39
The lorry reversed down a rutted track. The track skirted the graveyard and came to an abrupt end at the cliff edge where an old fence had been wrenched away. As the lorry neared the cliff it slowed down.
Fin was still pressed up against the old gravestone. The crinkly lichen which grew on the stone dug into Fin’s cheek. He shot a glance at the angel. Aquella was crouched down and hiding behind its marble base. They had to act quickly to stop yet more toxic junk being dumped into the sea and getting trapped in the underwater crater. Now Fin could hear the tinny crackling sound of a radio coming from inside the van. He moved to the very edge of his gravestone and peered out. The winkle picker had been right. The dirty tippers were driving without lights on.
