The Selkie Bride

by Melanie Jackson

  “Apparently nowt. At least, nowt when she has her familiar wi’ her. Lass, ye say that the finman was sick? Ye mean ill, not merely repulsive.”

  I touched Herman’s head. My familiar? I had evolved enough in my thinking to like this concept.

  “Yes—sick, not sickening. He was throwing up his insides and he…” I trailed off as I thought about what I had seen. Perhaps he had felt no need to hide his true form, but I had suspected that the thing on the beach could no longer pass as human. Its head had been large and bloated, and covered in gray-green patches of mold or scaled flesh that had replaced most of its hair—assuming he’d ever had any. He had a shark’s mouth, the individual teeth covered in coarse bony bristles. The legs, such as they were, were shorter and more powerful than a man’s, and the arms were not arms at all but rather tentacular appendages of an inappropriate length and covered in large suckers that belonged to a squid. Then there was the gaping hole in his chest where the parasites had fed and died. Above all that, there had been the spiritual miasma; the evil cloud surrounding it was beyond anything I had ever imagined.

  “He could not pass for human now, not even on a dark night in a gale. No one would open a door to him—not unless he could put a spell on them first.”

  “That is guid news indeed,” Eonan said. “It seems the mage’s soul didnae agree wi’ him. Mayhap Fergus made a death wish and cursed the evil beast.”

  “And we’ve just emptied his larder.” There was satisfaction in Lachlan’s voice. “He can hide nae longer. He’ll need tae come oot and fight.”

  “Ye’ve warned the ither finfolk?” Eonan asked.

  “Aye. He’ll surprise naebody else. His taking the merman’s heart has angered many. He’ll be given nae refuge frae the creatures aen the sea.”

  “Sae he’s as guid as deid already!” Eonan was cheerful.

  “Sae long as he doesnae regain his heart.”

  “The crypt,” I said abruptly. “Under the kirk.” They looked at me again. “It’s full of broken pots. Was that you?”

  “Nae. Mayhap it was the merman freeing his folk. The finman has been feeding among them and the water kelpies. Perhaps that is when the fi nman attacked him.”

  “This is the merman at the circus whose heart was stolen?” I asked, just to make sure. Surprisingly, I was beginning to see connective lines between events that felt more like Sight than plain old insight, and while I had no clear picture yet, I felt that I could join enough points of information to anticipate the finman’s next move.

  “Aye, sae I believe.” Lachlan took my hand, running a finger over my wrist. Perhaps he was checking my pulse. Or perhaps he was deliberately inflaming me, deliberately calling my mind to the present, to him and away from what he considered a dangerous puzzle. The latter would not work.

  “I think I know why Herman can track the finman,” I said. Now everyone was looking at me, even the cat. “You were right about Fergus. Part of his soul is still in the finman, and Herman can feel it. This piece must be unchained before Herman can be free as well.”

  The cat grinned at me, proud that I had figured it out. Had he been smaller, the expression might have been amusing. As he was, I think all of us were a bit disconcerted.

  “Sae we’ve anither twa allies,” Lachlan said softly. “A dead mage and an angry imp cat.”

  Our return trip through the sea was not as painful as the journey in. Again, it could have been because I was growing accustomed to our surroundings, or perhaps because the evil water was being mixed with ocean that was unpolluted and so stung less. Beyond the ring of black about the island, we were once more escorted by a group of seals, from time to time some swimming close enough that I could reach out and touch them.

  The cat rode on Eonan’s back, and under other circumstances I think I would have been amused at their mutual unhappiness. Eonan held up well, but his lack of complaint, when I suspected that normally he would have enjoyed voicing his objections to the long trip and the burden of my cat, made me certain that he was actually tired and in need of food and rest.

  We returned to the cottage, watching for ambush and also for villagers who might question my tattered clothing and why I was in the company of two naked men and a black jaguar with one white sock. Though I half expected to find my home burned, the building sat, to all appearances unmolested.

  Inside, I insisted on fixing a meal: fish that Lachlan had caught and carried up to the house and some tired carrots that steamed up reasonably well. After that Eonan curled up on my settee and went to sleep. It was probably unneeded, given the selkies’ constant state of warmth, but I spread a blanket over him anyway and made no objection when Lachlan stirred up the ashes and started a new fire. Herman lay down on the floor near the hearth and sighed contentedly.

  Lachlan and I were tired too, but we did not attempt to nap, though we did retire immediately to bed. Aware that we had company, we undressed in silence; then with the door shut, we set about our own kind of healing.

  I laid my ear against his heart and tried to hear what it might be saying. My supposed gift of Sight had not showed me anything about Lachlan, just potential deaths and cataclysms—important omens, certainly. But what I wanted most to know was how he felt about me.

  “Have ye learned anything frae yer listening?” Lachlan asked, and I realized I had spoken aloud.

  “Just that it sounds like you have two hearts.” I shook my head, not looking up.

  “I dae.” The amused reply brought my gaze up.

  “Really?”

  “Aye. And lungs of much greater size than most men.”

  “Most everything is of greater size,” I said, wiggling against him.

  “Like my hands.”

  I laced fingers with him. “Yes, like your hands.”

  His free hand reached around me, stripping away the remains of the slip I wore, and he laid me down on the bed and stared, as though he were a starving man confronted with a feast. I looked up, unafraid and unresisting as he lowered himself onto me. I would not die from a surfeit of pleasure, but it might be close.

  “For us,” he whispered. “That we may live.” And I knew that he spoke of the selkies.

  His kiss was hard, an immediate onslaught that was perhaps caused by a bit of jealousy regarding my time with and care of Eonan. I did not resist, though it seemed a bit uncivilized and something that in another life I might have protested. In a moment his lips softened and then parted, and our breath joined as it had in the ocean, while something that was essentially Lachlan—his magic or perhaps his soul—was coupled with me. I could feel it making me strong and healthy, healing my heart and body, my mind and spirit. It also filled me with a longing and need for completeness that was almost painful. Words would be nice, but this union was imperative.

  His hands were on me then. There was no time for sweet words, even had I known what to say in that transcendent moment. My legs were pushed apart and I was aware of the rough blanket at my back, the abrasion of my skin another kind of sensation, another arousal. Softer emotions were not on his mind—or in mine either.

  I made no sound as he pushed into me. My breath was gone, all words and thoughts taken roughly away, just as I was being taken, and I reveled in the focused carnality, surrendering to my animal self and what it longed for. The cords in Lachlan’s long neck pulled tight, the muscles of his chest segmenting into ridges, and he began to glow as the sheen of sweat—that drugging sweet madness of his kind—swept upward and overcame him, making him a victim as much as I.

  I arched up to meet him, to receive his warmth, his passion, his ocean of wordless desires. We floated in the same magical sea where the first selkies were born, and found happiness there.

  I wanted to ask about all the strange and vivid impressions I’d had while making love, but got ambushed by a giant yawn. It shuddered out from my torso, shaking my entire body and Lachlan’s as well.

  “Sleep, lass,” he commanded. “Fer the guid of the babes, ye maun be rested on
the morrow.”

  “Babes? Two babes?” I was perhaps not as surprised as I should have been. Eonan was not the master of discretion and I had noticed his slip of tongue even though I had defensively ignored it.

  “Aye, there are twa. Male children.”

  Twins? This would require some thought. And they were boys? How did he know?

  “You won’t leave again?” My lips barely formed the question and I was unable to pry my eyelids open. I could feel the moonlight sneaking through the shutters, so delicate, so light on my skin as it clothed me in silver. I had a groggy thought that, with such light, who would ever need any other clothing?

  “Nay. I shall be here when ye awake.”

  As always, argument was impossible, and so I took him at his word and allowed myself to sleep, happy in the knowledge that this time, Lachlan would remain with me through the night. I would have been even more ecstatic if he had said that he loved me, but as I had said nothing either and was being overwhelmed by the tide of sleep, I let the matter go unchallenged. He wanted me and was with me—that was enough for the time being.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A man that doth violence to the blood of a person, if he flee even to the pit, no man will stay him.

  —Proverbs 28:17

  It was decided in the early morning that Eonan and Lachlan would go to the crypt and track the finman from there. I was, you’ll be astonished to hear, to remain at the cottage with Herman and a pot of tea.

  My mood that morning was strange, and I said almost nothing. I felt slightly ill, still infl uenced by physical exhaustion and a surfeit of salt we had exchanged during lovemaking, and I was mainly interested in ending the clamor in my skull by returning to sleep. I was not to realize that outside infl uences were being used upon me until it was far too late to do anything to stop them.

  Lachlan was content to leave me dozing on the settee while he and Eonan went out to make war. He kissed me good-bye, but it was not the embrace of a warrior who went to his death. This was no last farewell. My lover was confident that he could kill the finman and return to me before nightfall. I felt no alarm.

  I roused from a semisleep near noon, called to wakefulness and longing for I knew not what, by a voice that was not a voice, a song that was not a song, a thought that was not my own but felt very comfortable in my head. I thought at first that perhaps it was the babies telling me they were lonely and bored and needed food, but they were quiet.

  Restless, I went to the window and, for an instant, I thought that I could hear Lachlan’s voice calling to me from the beach, but it faded even as I opened the casement to listen. A quick glance showed me Herman was still asleep by the hearth. That was good. I wanted him to stay asleep. It was important that he be undisturbed.

  I padded to the door without my shoes. Without clothes. I wanted—needed—to go out into the beautiful sea, which was calm and warm and inviting and so very nearby. It was time I did this. I had slept enough. Of course, Lachlan had been right to leave me earlier. I had needed to rest, the same as anyone would after a terrible ordeal, but I was awake now and wanted to be out in the open. I wanted to be in the deep blue water, not in this cottage where I was kept deaf and blind and all but dead to the world by the drugs Lachlan had given me.

  I breathed deeply of the sea air. It seemed odd that I had ever dreaded the waters that surrounded the village. But I recalled that I had feared the ocean, as all supposedly sensible land-dwelling creatures did: It had appeared to me as a voracious thing, full of monsters that might swallow up ships and men and brought terrible storms to bury my village. It had even tried to drown me once, hadn’t it? But I felt that morning that I could ignore that fear when a sort of supra-rational knowledge of my true self and my place in the world came to me. I had a destiny. The sea was not a lonely place, not a vast and empty desert dissimilar from the ones on land only by being covered in water; it was a place of mystery and wealth and excitement. There was even a buried treasure out there. Wouldn’t that be convenient to find?

  And the sea had given me Lachlan and Eonan, so I knew that it was not really lonely out there. I would soon meet others who lived in the ocean and they would be wonderful and kind, so I had no reason for these silly qualms. There was no need to remain hiding behind my warded door with my sleeping cat.

  I looked back at Herman. I was not supposed to venture out of the cottage without Lachlan, and I understood his concern that I not go out alone because…Actually, I couldn’t remember why I was supposed to stay indoors. And the thought of the long wait I might have to endure chafed at me. Who knew how many hours it would be before Lachlan returned to the cottage and was able to join me for a swim?

  I went out into the dead garden and paced and sang in my head, and tried any number of things to keep myself from answering the strange siren call that ceaselessly whispered. But it was useless. The allure was too strong. Something powerful and magical was telling me to step beyond my garden gate and go into the sea. Lachlan was worrying needlessly. What could possibly hurt me on such a sunny calm day? There was nothing dangerous out there.

  Unable to resist the strange compulsion any longer, I opened the gate—it had a talisman on it too, I saw—and left my cottage behind, door open to anyone who wanted to venture in.

  I made it to the shore without difficulty and had begun wading into the surf when Herman screamed. The sound was distant, though, and I did not at first feel alarmed by it. I wasn’t going to go past the breakwater, so there was no need for the cat to be upset about me being in the water. Anyway, water was good for my babies. They would like being in the ocean.

  I went confidently onward but paused when the waves brushed at my thighs with dead cold fingers. I had reached the end of the rock pier, and beyond lay deep water. I hesitated a moment as the waves lapped against me, trying to recall why this might be a foolish thing to do. When no answer occurred to me, I arched my body into a steep dive and swam for the open water.

  Once under the waves and amid a garden of obscuring sea grass, I hesitated again. Water surged over me, and I heard as it crashed against the sheltering stone on either side of the inlet. I could feel many currents waiting just ahead, weaving one into the other and making the sand swirl. The sea grass had in some places become a snarl that might net me if I wasn’t careful.

  I should have felt cold but didn’t. I should have felt breathless but wasn’t. I looked out contentedly through the jungle of kelp, swaying in time with surges that breathed in and out of the cave, and did not feel concerned that I was not rising up for air as I normally would.

  Compelled by some last instinct for survival, I looked up at the surface, only a few feet overhead. It was bright with light and sparkled like crushed glass in the noontime sun. It had to be near midday for the waves to be so blindingly bright. Should I go up there?

  No. What I really wanted to do was go back to the island of the fisherman’s chapel and see that the monster had not returned. It would be so good to know that the isle was safe. Lachlan would want me to do this. And without the finman, the island would be an ideal place for sunning.

  I shouldn’t do this, part of my mind argued back, using two soft voices. Lachlan could come back at any moment, and he would be worried about me. He would probably even be angry that I had not waited to share this moment with him. And what if the finman had returned to the island after all?

  But the finman couldn’t come back; Eonan and Lachlan had tracked him down and he was probably dead already. So the islet would be deserted. There were no people there now, no spirits, no monsters. And I really wanted to go to that island. I needed to go. And it wasn’t far. No, not far at all. I could go and be back in almost no time. And air? That was silly. I could cavort all day in the strongest current and never tire or need to breathe. I should come to the island…come at once…

  I twitched, my muscles wanting something in spite of my mind’s insistence that I didn’t need air and that I wasn’t cold.

  What abo
ut sharks? There might be something large and dangerous lurking in the water.

  Nonsense, the other voice answered impatiently. Lachlan had said that sharks did not come near the shoreline of the village. They did not like the turbulence of the sea when it met land. And they did not like the People who used the beaches, or the water when it was hot and bright. I would only be in open water for a very few minutes anyway. If I left right now I would have dazzling sun for my entire journey and be able to see any warning fins if they should come my way.

  Rising up high enough for my eyes to look over the water but not to take a breath of air, I glanced over the delicate wavelets toward the fisherman’s island. There was no fog and its pastel outline was reassuringly close. I could swim very fast and be there in only a moment. I would have a quick look to be sure that all was well, and then I would come right back. No one would ever know.

  Herman screamed again, the sound much louder, but I still did not look back toward the cliff where the cottage stood. Instead I pivoted to look at the shore behind me, reassuring myself that there were no witnesses to see me leave. Then, turning back and taking one last look at the island, I dropped beneath the oily surface and made an exceptional effort to begin swimming toward the gray islet.

  The assault came without warning, and in a flash I was myself again. The finman rushed at me, eyes in his molding face held wide in some form of magical rapture, but he was not as powerful in body or mind as he might have once been. He was fast, though, and he was enraged and I think insane, and I knew immediately that he was far stronger than I, even with his rotting body and missing heart.

  I tried to dodge, but he snagged me in those long ropey arms covered with suckers that had vicious teeth and spun me around in his coils and started to drag me down. I managed to avoid his eyes, not certain that he could paralyze me with his gaze but unwilling to risk it, but I felt his presence prying at my mind in some mental crevice that Duncan or the faerie mound—or someone else, perhaps even Lachlan—had opened. It made me sick.