The Selkie Bride

by Melanie Jackson

  Hunger rode me but I ignored it as best I could. Fear helped suppress my worst cravings. I did my best to remain calm and not upset the baby, but I know the child was frequently disturbed and I found myself stroking my belly in an attempt to calm it. In concession to my new state, I stayed far from the cliffedge where the blustery wind was apt to kick up suddenly. The fog was thick and eddying in strange and most likely unnatural ways, first parting and then closing in a swirling dance whose rhythms I could not discern but was still disconcertingly aware of.

  Herman seemed to know where he was going. Whether he followed the beast’s spoor or Eonan’s footsteps, I could not say, but he led me to the narrow stretch of beach I had traversed on my last walk and then to the faerie mound. We went slowly, the cat having no love of wet feet and I being in no haste to return to the cave where I had nearly drowned, especially if the monster were waiting within.

  Perched atop a large flat stone, waiting for the tide to pull back from the last sandbar, I caught my first glimpse of the finman. I knew immediately what he was. Perhaps once he had been able to pass for human, but not anymore. We were perched up high, perhaps a dozen feet above his molding head as he stalked out of the surf. The wound around the creature’s stolen heart was covered in what looked like dead ticks and leeches. These parasites had supped heavily of the evil flesh, and it had killed them. Now they were beginning to rot. With my heightened senses I could smell them too. They were an odor distinct from his vile scent that made me silently gag.

  Herman was doing his best to flatten himself onto the rock. His ears were laid back and his lips curled in a frozen snarl. It might be that the finman couldn’t hurt him because he was nimble enough to escape, but I knew Herman would not desert me and that this protective loyalty placed him in danger.

  Once fully ashore, the finman dropped to his tentacles and knees and began convulsing. His skin was leprous. Iridescent slime began running out of every orifice—he had a couple of extra orifices that I assumed were gills—and turning black in the air. He let out a roar that sounded like no animal on earth and I saw the rows of sharklike teeth. Then, the fit past, he rose back onto his bowed but muscular legs and continued toward the dreaded cave.

  This creature had Eonan? The awful answer was yes. Had Eonan been elsewhere, I felt sure Herman would not have brought me here.

  Our enemy glanced up at us only once. As he did, I looked into the finman’s face and it was insanity made flesh. A terrible evil animated this creature, and it seemed to me that his body was stretched to its limit, trying to contain a multitude of kidnapped souls that seemed to kick at the flesh. At last fog folded itself around the figure, hiding the horror from my sight.

  Such things were not part of the natural world! Not my natural world. And yet, here it was: A genuine monster more horrible than anything in Grimm’s. I scooped up Herman, turned the other way and fled up the cliff, in spite of my blindness in the putrid mist and the danger of falling. I thought I heard stealthy noises behind me, but it might well have only been blood racing in terrified circles as it tried to outrun the horror in my brain.

  I did not slow or look back to see if I was being chased until we broke free of the fog and Herman had calmed, but then I paused and took stock. I knew now where the finman was hiding. What I needed was a plan and some weapon more fearsome than a carpet beater. What could kill a being that survived with no heart? With nothing else, I found myself recoursing to prayer.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Though their chords like thunder roll, When at Beltane brims the bowl Thou’rt the music of my soul.

  —“The Maiden of Morven”

  I had not gone far when I found a selkie footprint filled with rainwater. My nose was not keen enough to tell me whether it belonged to Eonan or Lachlan—or some other—but the print was enough to reengage my logic and return a degree of calm…and cause me to take an action suggested by my reading in Fergus’s library. Not stopping to consider what might happen if this print belonged to someone other than Lachlan or Eonan, I dropped to my knees and leaned over the mark, so like a human’s but with the blur of webbing between the toes; and then, though the act was bestial, I drank from that small puddle until I was lapping earth. All my instincts demanded it.

  I tasted blood and knew that the mark was not Lachlan’s. It had to be from Eonan or some other. I sat back on my heels and waited for the dizziness and interference with cognitive function I had experienced after tasting Lachlan’s salt, but it never came—perhaps because this selkie was younger and perhaps he was not all selkie? Either way, instead of dazed I felt stronger and more energized, though perhaps less capable of removing emotion from reason as I tried to think my way through my growing worry about the finman’s presence. I was filled with a new instinct that overrode human logic, and suddenly I knew what I needed to do, even if the idea of engaging in an ancient magical ritual was both strangely thrilling and terrifying.

  I can swim tolerably well in a calm lake or pond; the heaving sea I faced was another matter entirely. Whipped into a rage by wind and lightning—and possibly by the finman himself—there was danger both above and below, and the storm and tide were coming nearer all the time. Still, I knew that I could not run away from this enemy if there were any chance that Eonan was in danger; nor could I wait there on the beach with the tide on the turn. Options were a bit limited. Still, I would never again retreat into a sea cave with the tide chasing me to wait and die; if I were to drown, let it be in the open, performing heroic deeds and not cowering in the dark.

  Was I insane then? Perhaps. My courage was bolstered by rage, which put steel in my spine and in my quaking knees. This finman had come into my village and was moving about with the arrogance of a bully who has never been defeated in a fair fight. I didn’t believe that all alone I was strong enough to defeat the creature; no indeed, the entire village probably could not kill him. But cower or clash, the result would be the same: a war. And innocents were not being spared in this struggle because they hid or refused to take sides. If I did not die now, there was every chance that I—and everyone in the village—would die later. But if I acted swiftly, perhaps I could summon help.

  Abandoning the shackles and beater, and Herman, leaving them all on their safe perch on some rocks, I climbed down a short way into the churning surf. The water stung and was unpleasantly cold, but this only helped me fill the ocean with my ready tears. The sea, already salty, didn’t seem to notice or care, but I hoped with all my heart that Lachlan would. If the legends in Fergus’s book were true, by the time my seventh tear hit the waves, my lover—and any other selkie who encountered them—would receive my summons and have to answer if he were at all capable of doing so. If Lachlan’s salt bound me to him, so then did my tears—my salt—bind him to me. For once, I was on the other end of the leash. If the legends were true.

  Message sent, I wiped my face and looked about in hopeful expectation. Indeed, I found immediately that part of my earlier prayer had been answered. Floating in the water beside me was some sort of javelin or gaff with its end broken off in a sharp point, probably lost from a fishing boat. Thanks to my increased sensitivity, I knew it was made of yew. I had been given a weapon. It would not be pleasant to hold, but I would manage.

  Dresses are not made for swimming or climbing, so I removed mine and tossed it to where I could retrieve it later, up on a rock that I hoped would be above the highest tide. A last remnant of modesty had me hoping that I would not encounter any neighbor in this state of undress, but my unrestricted movement seemed imperative.

  Herman waited for me on a tall rock. He was calmer but still looked rather feral and I did not try to pet him. He was also sandy and wet, and I had the feeling that he’d rolled in Eonan’s footprint.

  “We need to find another way into the finman’s cave,” I said to the cat. “If we go in the front, we will surely drown or be captured.”

  The feline turned and took a different path over the rocks. As before, I followe
d, and again Herman found an entrance among the boulders. That it belonged to the finman, I did not doubt for an instant. Even without the cat’s certainty, there was a yellowed flapping husk—a human skin and loosely connected bones—flung over a nearby cleft boulder where a bloated grayish crab watched me with some alarm. Were these remains, perhaps of a neighbor, a prize, or some trophy on display? A warning to trespassers? Or were they simply a cast-off lunch, of no more importance than crumbs left behind at a picnic? At least the husk was not Eonan. This hapless corpse had red hair.

  I shuddered, fighting another wave of hunger and also sudden bile. Horrible things had happened here. Often. The very walls sweated with fear at what they had witnessed, and thanks to the leftover salt and perhaps selkie blood I had ingested I was aware of it all. A heavy weight was pressing down on this part of the world, and the air was filled with the stench of rage and insanity. Here there be monsters. There was also a noise, liquid but terrible even at a distance: If leprosy could talk, if tumors had a voice, this was what they would sound like. I knew it was the finman, chanting. There would be no waving the white flag of surrender if he caught me in his lair.

  I took a deep breath and straightened my slumped spine. Losing my life was not what I wanted, but so much worse would it be to lose my soul to this creature. I would not allow it to happen. I would kill myself first. And the babe.

  This last thought made me livid, and a new maternal ferocity arose in me. This creature would not get my child.

  Tired of waiting, Herman growled softly and disappeared among the rocks. I ventured after him into the narrow darkness, this time untroubled by the fading light because my eyesight had been enhanced along with all my other senses.

  Heaps of rotting sea wrack were jumbled together with uprooted gorse and what looked like human finger bones that crunched unpleasantly whenever underfoot. Every inch of putrescent flotsam was covered with gray misshapen crabs as yet too small and bloodless to compete with their shell-covered brethren out in the tide pools along the shore. The cavern was like a monster’s stomach as it digested a foul meal, and somewhere in these tunnels was the finman, lodged there as a parasite, a tumor growing inside the stony caves and eating away at its host. I feared that Lachlan and the village had left it too long: One way or another, Findloss was doomed and possibly damned. Our only hope seemed flight before disaster struck again.

  A green darkness surrounded me as I descended into the cave. The relentless tides, or perhaps the finman’s magic, had by millennia of grit-laced torrent cloven out a passage from the heart of the stone, but the channel I traversed was not made for those who went about on two legs. I was soon forced to my hands and knees, my freezing fingers and bare limbs making reluctant contact with the green phosphorescence of the walls, which was my only light. The near darkness was Plutonian, and cold as the grave, and the tunnel soon doubled back on itself and headed away from the land and down toward the roaring sea. I was terribly grateful that Herman remained at my side. Anger could carry me a long way, but the cat’s presence was a huge comfort.

  The horrible chanting ceased, and I knew from Herman’s more relaxed posture that the finman had again departed his cave by some other exit. Emboldened, I crawled faster, uncaring of the damage being done to my body by the rough stone. Every instinct was shouting that Eonan was near. I was also certain that he was wounded.

  On I crawled, rounding a corner that required me to turn on my side and squeeze through the smallest of gaps—leaving some of my chemise behind—and then I was in my enemy’s lair. I got to my feet at once. The floor was covered in bones: some human, most not. I did not look at them in any detail or try to count the remains.

  Herman yowled and sprang on top of what I think was a shark’s carcass. Hurrying over to the rotting body with steps that showed no respect for the scattered dead, I rushed to the pile where the cat waited and immediately found a seal skin under the decayed remains. Only, it wasn’t a seal skin; it belonged to a selkie and my nose told me that it was Eonan’s.

  I examined the skin carefully, inspecting it for wounds with my eyes and nose. There were none that I could see, and the inside was not bloody, as I had half expected. It was wondrously soft and smelled of Eonan. It was also warm, a living thing even without its owner.

  “But why is it here?” I asked Herman. “Surely he needed it to swim to wherever he was going.”

  The cat moaned angrily and thrashed his tail. He remained with me but was hating every moment.

  “Did the finman steal it? Perhaps Eonan didn’t need his skin and left it on the beach while…” I stopped. I had finally found a wound. It wasn’t large. In fact, it was no bigger than an arrow hole, but it was very near where a human heart would be.

  I dropped to my hands and knees, heedless of the slime. I searched with eyes and nose and fingertips, but found none of Eonan’s blood on the floor. The injury had not happened here.

  “Herman, we have to find Eonan. He’s hurt.” Not dead. I refused to believe that he was dead. Far better to believe that he had been attacked in the water and shed his skin so that he could escape on land. The finman had captured the skin and brought it here, perhaps to perform magic upon it later. Or perhaps only to deprive Eonan of it. Or maybe to attempt to wear it…?

  The last thought was blasphemous. Herman and I exited the cave with more speed than I had used in entering, even burdened with Eonan’s skin settled on my shoulders as if it had been tailored for my use.

  Outside, the storm had closed in. The clouds were so charged with electricity that it made my teeth hurt, and the color that limned them was a strange shade of green that was exceedingly unnatural. My blood thrummed with terror-driven excitement and beat at my brain with a roar louder even than the sea breaking on the rocks and likely flooding the cave I had just vacated. I did not feel the cold, though. Eonan’s fur kept me warm.

  “Too late, you evil bastard,” I muttered. “We’re out and we have the skin.”

  The wind snatched all smell away as quickly as my nose could grab it, but Herman’s senses were better. Ignoring the rain and wind that threatened to blow him bodily away, we traveled toward the faerie mound where I had seen the corpse candle. I had done my level best to forget about that terrifying day, but that isn’t the sort of memory that fades quickly, and I knew that a corpse candle could not only mark where a body had been, but also where a body was going to be. Nothing had suggested particularly that it would be Eonan’s body I found, but I had to look.

  We forded a sea-bound stream that ran dangerously fast between sea-tumbled boulders with surfaces gritty and abrasive to the skin. Or, I did the fording; Herman was held in my arms as I crossed the frothing water. I should have been debilitated with cold, but was not. Whatever changes had come over my body, they allowed me to ignore the freezing water despite being all too aware of its power.

  Our path turned inland and we had to pass next through a valley of eerie shell dunes. It was not so much an avian midden as a graveyard, a place where many birds through many centuries had made their meals, and the bank of abandoned mussel and oyster shells rose up to nearly twice my height and hid us completely from the furious sea that whipped the shore. The way through the bleached shell hills was slippery, and the sharp-edged shells grabbed at my shoes. Fearing that he would injure the pads of his paws, I continued to carry Herman. I went slowly, but in spite of my best efforts I often found myself off balance and on the verge of falling. This meant slowing the pace even more, though urgency beat at me with every beat of my quickened heart, and I felt the desire of the skin I carried to be re united with its owner.

  Disaster was avoided until Herman and I emerged on the sea side of the mound. Perhaps the wind’s constant battering had had an effect, or maybe it was a deliberate trap laid by the finman. Whichever, the more solid earth gave way to slick sand. The soil beneath my boot-shod feet became unsound, my weight shifted the fragile crust of sand and I suddenly found the shell-strewn earth rushing at me with upthrus
t blades of white and gray.

  “Christ on a crutch!” I gasped. I managed to toss Herman onto a rock before I fell. Startled birds that had been sheltering silently suddenly screamed back at me and fled into the air as I toppled, hands outstretched. The impact was hard, and it forced painful shards of broken shell into my palms and knees with enough force to slice through my wrinkled skin and draw blood.

  Tears started to my eyes as the pain invaded my body, but I did not cry out again or even try to roll away from the shells. Before me lay a quaking seal pup, trapped under a pile of displaced stones. My breath washed over it, brushing its delicate fur. It was wrapped in sea wrack from neck to fl ippers. The pup was hiding its tiny face in terror. There was a small amount of blood.

  Moved by a new compassion for this creature—for all creatures, but especially this one, who was doubtless being hunted by the finman and who had fled inland looking for shelter—I tore off the hem of my tattered chemise. This pup was not my pup, but it was someone’s child, and I felt protective of it.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered softly, pitching my voice like a gentle sigh. “I’m sorry I frightened you. We’ll get that flipper out straightaway. Please don’t be frightened.”

  Slowly, I removed the rocks with my bleeding hands and carefully freed the pup’s flipper, which did not seem broken, if bruised and a little bloodied. With infinite care, I cleaned the tiny wound. The pup did not fight me. It seemed frozen with fear, its trembling body unable to move and the soft panting breaths through its tiny nose the only sign that it still lived.