Celine nodded, and Ronan gently squeezed her hand. She almost felt the anticipation emanating from him.
“Good, then,” he said, laying down his dark leather jacket behind a rock and grasping the hem of his thick wool sweater.
“What? What are you doing?” Celine stepped back and gave him a suspicious, sideways look.
“Huh? Oh,” Ronan said, stopping with his sweater mid-way. “We’ll have tae swim.”
“Is it far?” She skeptically glanced out to sea. The water was relatively calm, and she a strong swimmer, but…
“No,” he said with an irrepressible smile, “Unless ye canna swim.”
“Oh, I can swim, all right,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth. She realized he was baiting her, of course, but she found herself rising to the challenge, shedding her backpack beside Ronan’s jacket and peeling off her outer layers.
In a matter of minutes, Celine stood with her arms folded against the lingering chill and self-consciousness, attired in nothing but a floral spaghetti-strap tank and denim blue, boy-cut underwear. Thank God she’d opted for a compromise between comfort and prettiness that morning. Ronan rose from his knees, clad in a knee-length pair of swim trunks. Lucky for him, he’d left home thinking about swimming. Celine couldn’t help but notice—and admire—the sculpted elegance of his long, lithe body, and the expanse of pale skin covered in faint speckles. But as he turned toward her, she looked away in embarrassment.
“Ye’ll have tae leave that here.” He pointed a long finger at the camera, which still hung on its strap around her neck.
“Oh!” she laughed as she removed the camera and carefully stowed it in her backpack.
“Ready?” he asked, wading into the water.
“Yep,” she replied, following. The water swirled around her bare ankles, only slightly cooler than her skin. “Oooh, that’s nice. I thought it’d be colder this far north.”
“Och, no,” Ronan shook his head. “The seas of Scotland are bonny and warm.”
The water was knee high and rapidly rising to the waist as Celine matched Ronan’s smooth stride on the ridged sand. When the purling waves reached mid-thigh, he surged forward and arced into the water. In an instant he was ten feet away from her, a dim shape under the undulating water. He surfaced, still moving straight and swift as a loosed arrow, leaving a gleaming wake on either side of his glossy dark head. She shrugged and followed suit, emerging with laughter beside him.
“Is it far?” she asked again as they settled into a comfortable stroke.
“Just there.” He jerked his head out to sea, where she barely made out the shape of a dark, rocky islet drifting out of the receding mist. She had a sudden, uncomfortable feeling—as though the islet hadn’t actually been there a moment before.
“Some have said Eileann o Shean is an Otherworld island,” Ronan said, his voice smooth despite the exertion of swimming. “It comes and goes—and sometimes it takes someone with it.”
“Oh great.” She emitted a nervous laugh as the darkness of his words settled on her. Nonsense, she told herself. The island wasn’t going to disappear with her and Ronan on it. But then, she became suddenly aware of Ronan’s form swimming beside her, the strength of his arms and the ripples of displacement in the water. For the first time, she realized she knew nothing about this man. Here he had her in the middle of the sea with no one around for miles. He could drown her in an instant.
Looking at him, she tried to measure whether he were capable of such a thing. With a sudden shock, she thought, yes, he could do it. But with equal certainty, she knew he wouldn’t. Ronan peered over his shoulder and threw her a delightful, childlike smile.
“Just wait till you see this,” he said, urging her to greater speed.
The islet loomed up before them, a sheer wall of sea-polished dark rock.
“Can ye hold your breath long, do ye think?” He puffed out water in a fine spray.
“Why?” She treaded water and looked at him suspiciously.
“Hold on to my ankles,” he said, and reversed himself in the water. Celine had barely a moment to consider, no time to object, before his feet appeared before her and she grasped them firmly. With a deep breath, she followed him down.
Ronan’s legs wavered in the water, levering him downward as though they were a fused tail. Celine held on for dear life, her lips pressed tight and shimmering bubbles floating up from her nose. He was a vague shape in the deep water, and his arms laboured like wings in air. Suddenly, he seemed to disappear, swallowed up within the darkness, and she was enveloped, entombed within the rock. Pressure surrounded her, the darkness so thick it was tangible, and she fought down a wave of panic.
I’m going to die down here, she thought. I’m going to die and no one will know. She clung to Ronan’s ankles so tightly her fingernails sunk into his flesh.
All at once, darkness succumbed to faint rosy light, and Ronan broke the surface. He reached down, released her grip on his legs, and pulled her toward light and air. She broke the surface with a gasp, gulping down air as though it were water in a desert.
“All right, there, lass?” He supported her under the elbows as she refilled her lungs.
She nodded and lifted her eyes to take in the surroundings. They’d emerged in the heart of a great cavern, lit with shafts of morning light from hidden gaps in the rocky ceiling. It was vast—as though the whole islet had been hollowed like an empty walnut shell. The sea filled the bottom as liquid in a bowl, surrounded by a golden strand. The walls were composed of rocky ledges and alcoves, glistening with collected sea mist. It reminded Celine of the picture of a mermaid’s palace in a book she’d cherished as a child.
Her eyes adjusted and she gradually grew aware of subtle rustlings and shufflings on the ledges all around the subterranean beach. A sharp, dry bark erupted from the shadows to her left and another behind her, and she realized the whole island was filled with seals. She gasped in wonder.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Ronan smiled at her, towing her in toward the shore.
“Breathtaking. How did you ever find this place?”
“No one else knows about it,” he said reverently, ignoring her question. “At least, none that will tell.”
The seals seemed restless, alert, but when Ronan crawled out of the water and stood on the beach, a watchful peace settled over them. It was as though they recognized him and trusted him. She looked at them in awe, seeing a nearby male cast her a glance of mild interest and roll over into a sunbeam. Never in all her years of studying seals had she felt this—this sense of understanding.
Ronan took her hand, flinging wet strings of hair out of his face with a shake, and led her over to the nearest seal. He guided her hand slowly until she was touching the young male’s pelt, coarse and smooth, warm and moist with lingering seawater. She was close enough to see the pale speckles on his dark grey skin, to smell the peculiar animal smell of him, to feel the ebb and swell of his flanks as he breathed. The seal watched her mildly, black eyes deep and untroubled by her presence.
“This is Ciaran,” he said with the casual tone reserved for friendly introductions.
“Pleased to meet you,” she murmured, spellbound. The seal, Ciaran, snorted as if in response.
Ronan led her around the cavern, addressing each seal by name, touching their heads, telling a story about them. They were farfetched, but Celine absorbed every word, enraptured. He spoke with such conviction she almost believed the stories were true.
“This is Muireall.” He knelt beside a female on one of the ledges and she joined him, feeling her legs trembling from the swim and sensing this would be a long story.
“Muireall spent many a year on the land as a fisherman’s wife. Ye’ll maybe have heard the story before?”
Celine nodded, but listened as he retold the story of Muireall—her quiet bathing on the shore by moonlight in human form, the fisherman’s desire for her, despair at losing her seal skin, the happy years spent on the land, but pining st
ill for the sea and her other life. He recounted the mate and seal-children who missed her during those years, of finding the missing seal skin, and the deep sense of betrayal Muireall felt when she knew the fisherman had hidden it.
By the time Ronan told of Muireall’s escape to the sea, Celine felt tears stinging her eyes. She dashed them away, feeling foolish, and shivered as a breeze filtered in through a crevice in the rocks.
“Oh, are ye cold?” he asked, concern in his eyes. Before she answered, he’d leapt to his feet and wrapped a long arm around her shoulders. Carefully, he led her down to the strand, to where the sea invaded the land. “Here, now. I’ll make ye a fire. Sit here.”
She sat in the bright circle left by a sunbeam. The beam was nearly vertical and Celine was amazed how much time had passed. The sun warmed her, dried her skin until she felt deliciously languorous. She lay down on the beach with her hair spread on the sand, watching Ronan climb up the ledges. He disappeared, and a shaft of light was momentarily blocked as he passed outside.
Still dazzled by the beauty of the place, she wished she had her camera. But then, a mere photograph couldn’t do justice to this amazing sight. Besides, this moment would be engraved on her memory for all time.
Ronan returned with arms full of dead brush and branches. He laid the pile on the sand, and removed a lighter from a waterproof pocket.
“Resourceful,” Celine commented, watching in fascination as he skillfully built the small fire. She sighed at the growing warmth, rubbing her hands in front of it. Then Ronan disappeared again, down into the water, so swift, so deep that she wondered if he had drowned.
She watched after him for a long while, staring down into water as dark as his eyes. He was unlike anyone she’d ever met—not just by virtue of his foreignness. It wasn’t so much that he came from another country or continent. It was as if he was from a different time—a forgotten time. From a time that knew magic and remembered what it was to love—loyally and eternally.
When he resurfaced, Celine was struck again by the remarkable similarity to his selkie friends. The large eyes and slick black head were all she could see. Then he rose out of the water, glistening runnels pouring from him. In his hand he held a large fish, and Celine stared at him in astonishment. He smiled with mischievous pride.
Some time later, the fish cleaned and cooked with items found on the island, they sat companionably to eat.
“This is delicious!” She licked her fingers. “I wish you could cook for me every day.” She’d said it facetiously, but meeting his steady gaze, she realized she really meant it, and he felt the same. She swallowed a dry mouthful, thinking dimly of the return ticket in her carry-on back at the hostel.
“Ye could stay,” he said softly, not blinking.
Celine stared back. She couldn’t possibly—her parents, her career … well, not her career, and certainly not Jake … Her excuses slipped away, each deserting to a powerful, attractive possibility.
“I could,” she confessed. “I don’t have a job.”
“There are jobs here—anywhere the selkies are, right?” Ronan encouraged. “Well, how old are ye, then?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Only that?” he hooted. “Why, ye’re but a bairn! Ye’ve plenty of time to find your place in life.”
“Why?” she protested, slightly annoyed he thought her so young. “How old are you?”
“Oh, about five hundred, give or take,” he said flippantly.
Celine choked on a bite of fish, then laughed. “Oh, I know what you mean,” she said, still giggling. “Sometimes I feel about that old myself.”
Ronan gave her a strange look, but went on eating his fish. Finished, she washed her hands in the lapping water and started to remove the elastic in her hair. The strands had dried around it, looped in disarray. She succeeded in forcing the elastic out, only to come up against an impossible mass of tangled knots. She thrust her fingers into her hair and they were caught in a snarl within seconds.
He laughed, popping the last bite of fish into his mouth, and came over to sit beside her.
“Ye’ll never get through it like that!” he said, sputtering with laughter. With bold familiarity, he bundled up the hair at the nape of her neck, sending shivers like tiny waves down her back. He held it in place while he reached into his pocket. “Here, let me do it.”
He pulled out a comb—at first glance perfectly ordinary. But Celine looked closer and saw something incredibly ancient, made of something that looked remarkably like bone or ivory, carved with interlacing sea creatures and curling waves.
“What don’t you have in your pocket?”
He smiled knowingly and took hold of her with one hand behind her neck and the other on her upper arm. He laid her in the shallows so her head was in his lap and her body supported on the sand. The water rippled about her, exerting its subtle pull to and fro and distorting the sound as it flowed past her ears.
Ronan took her hair and started to comb it with long, gentle strokes. She closed her eyes, lulled by the drift and by his touch. Her hair fanned out over his legs, rippling in the water. She felt like a mermaid princess in a hidden sea palace.
“Ye’ve lovely hair,” he murmured, and she listened to the crystalline quality of his voice through the water, her eyes still closed. “The colour of toffee.” He spoke with such open admiration that a sudden wave of loneliness swept over her. Why couldn’t Jake have been like this man? Why hadn’t he adored her this way? Despite herself and the peace of the moment, tears stung her eyes and her chin began to quiver.
“What’s amiss, lass?” Ronan said, startled, and the comb suddenly stilled.
“Nothing,” she whimpered. “It’s just…”
“Tell me.” He put the comb aside and stroked her hair with his fingers. And Celine told him of the death of her dreams, Jake’s betrayal, and a future bleak and empty. Then she told him about her childhood, her home, the pursuit for knowledge, always asking questions. He listened—really listened.
They talked for hours, lying beside the slow-burning fire—her head cradled on Ronan’s shoulder, his hand linked protectively on her elbow.
“How is it that I can talk to you like this?” She inhaled the sea-scent of his skin. “I’ve told you everything about me—things I’ve never told anyone. Could you tell me about you?”
“I have,” he said, surprised.
“No, I mean the mundane things—where did you grow up, what are your parents like—stuff like that.”
Ronan shrugged. “I suppose we might have to save something for the second date,” he said, with an impish smile.
“So … you want to go out again?” Her heart felt like it would explode into dancing fragments.
“If ye want to.”
“How are you going to top this?” Celine asked, encompassing the submarine palace, the seals, the lunch, the ivory comb in one sweep of her hand.
“Oh, aye,” he laughed. “Well, I dinnae suppose I can. But would dinner and a film suffice?”
“It might,” she said softly. They lapsed into comfortable silence, listening to the murmur of the water and the soft grunts and snorts of the seals. Celine let her fingers drift idly on his chest like seaweed in the waves. His chest rose and fell under her fingertips, more quickly with each stroke.
“We should be going back,” he said suddenly, nudging her away. She stood, blinking slightly in surprise. She yawned and stretched luxuriously.
“What time is it?”
“Oh, about suppertime, if I judge the sun aright.” He closed one eye and peered upward. “Sorry to cut things short, but if we wait much longer I dinnae think I’ll be able to see the way.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, looking about for her elastic. She took one last wistful glance around the mermaid palace. Would she ever be back, she wondered as Ronan doused the remains of the fire? She hoped so.
The swim back to the mainland of Skye was hushed and a little sad. Celine stole glances at Eileann o Shean as it recede
d behind them, and at Ronan as he strove toward shore beside her. As she planted her feet on the sand, she saw an exquisite sunset over the peaks of the mountain range. Behind her, the moon was rising over Eileann o Shean, faint as a blue bubble above the soft pink sea.
“The sgarthanaich again, eh?” she said to Ronan as he waded out of the water beside her. “It’s beautiful. Where’s my camera?” She stumbled through the sand to the pile of discarded clothes and rummaged through her backpack. “May I take your picture?”
“Sure,” Ronan smiled, and pulled a crazy face. She laughed, then froze as she saw the picture of herself and Jake immortalized on her camera’s viewscreen. With purposeful decision, she pushed the delete button and brought the camera up to bear on Ronan’s silhouette under the pale moon.
They dressed quietly, side by side. Celine felt she had to say something, anything to keep him from walking away.
“You know, it’s funny,” she said, musing.
“What is?”
“You didn’t even try to … well,” she broke off, blushing.
Ronan caught her meaning immediately. “Are ye disappointed?” he asked with a sideways smile.
“Well, no,” she answered, wishing she hadn’t brought up the subject. “Surprised, maybe, and relieved.”
“Celine, lass,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking deeply into her eyes. “I willna say I didna want to. But I could search a thousand years and never find another woman like ye. Why would I jeopardize ye for that?”
“Do you really mean it?”
“I never say things I dinnae mean,” he said evenly. “And if ye must leave me, I’d swim the whole ocean to be near ye again.”
Celine wouldn’t normally call herself a bold person, but she flung herself forward into Ronan’s arms, boosted up on tiptoes and kissed him. His hands tightened on her shoulders, opened and retightened as he welcomed her kiss. She melted into him, understanding at once the gripping power he’d fled in the cave. She broke away, breathless and mortified.
“I’m sorry, I don’t usually…”
“Don’t.” Though an overwhelming smile lit his face, his dark gaze pierced her. “Ye canna be sorry for that.”
Blue Moon Magic Page 4
