Earlier he had whispered sweetly, acting as a lure. Now he screamed. And the sick thoughts he battered me with were not solely his own; they belonged to all the wicked dead whose souls he had taken. I also saw that this had nothing to do with me—I was irrelevant. This was revenge on selkies, on the People: Lachlan’s female and children were to die.
The finman’s attention wavered. He searched the nearby boulders, which were shattered into knifelike sharpness, and then began towing me toward them. I knew he planned to thrust me onto these rocks after he had sucked out my soul. But the horrified thrall that had me struggling ineffectually ended. Fighting then not just for my own life, I planted my feet on the nearest outcropping, and thrust back with all my might. At the same time I ducked my head, getting as far away from the finman’s mouth as I could.
With all my will I cried out to Lachlan, praying I could reach him and he would understand what was happening. The internal scream was loud enough to shake my oxygen-deprived brain. Hurt followed hurt: My feet were cut. Sharp pain stung my left shoulder and right hip as the finman tried to subdue my struggles and turn me about for an easy mouth-hold. As he could not trick his way back into my mind, he spent all his effort in trying to squeeze the air from my body and to latch his teeth over my nose. We battled all the way to the sea floor, where our thrashing sent up a mushrooming cloud of sand.
The finman tried a new grip, and though my neck was stronger than before, it was no match for the power of the finman’s tentacled arms. It would be broken if he could get beneath my chin.
I tried clawing at the finman, but couldn’t get a grip on his arms, and my small nails left only shallow wounds. It was all I could do to keep him from wrapping a limb about my throat as he dragged me over the sand and back toward the fissured rocks, there to again try to impale me. My world began to go dark around the edges. I had an indignant and wholly inappropriate thought that the sailors’ stories had gotten the details all wrong; there was no anesthesia to ease the pain of the last moments of life. Drowning was not a pleasant death. It was not peaceful as your life passed before your eyes. There was plenty of time to think and feel as your skull and chest seemed to balloon with used air and your muscles began to twinge with agony. And I wasn’t even to the part where my lungs exchanged cold seawater for depleted breath and I started the actual drowning!
Lachlan, I screamed again inside my head, beginning to despair that he would reach me in time. Then to my babies: I’m sorry, loves.
Regret at this potential loss was so strong that it pierced even my personal horror at the thought of annihilation. That was what came at the end of life: regret! I could see it all in terrifying starkness. My life—all the struggle and suffering I had done—was for nothing. My babies would die too, and it was all my fault for having been too stupid to realize that I was being lured by magic.
Sorry, Lachlan.
But then Herman was beside me. Water was not his natural element, but hunting and killing were. His giant claws pulled great chunks of flesh from the finman’s back. And if Herman’s attack was unexpected and vicious, then Lachlan’s was even more so. I saw at once, and perfectly clearly, how selkies differed from normal seals. Lachlan’s arms were strangely elongated and jointed oddly as they reached for his foe, and at the end of each flipper tip was some sort of retractable claw that jutted out into long, wicked hooks that belonged on a raptor. Selkies also have long hooked teeth, like in a skeleton of a prehistoric cat I once saw, and these fangs can shear flesh away from bone. My lover was fast and graceful and lethal, and I understood finally how ruthless he could be.
The shocked finman tried to untangle his arms from around my body to meet the new attack, but he was too slow to make an effective defense while holding me. Then Eonan was there as well. Claws slashed over the creature’s face, rendering him first blind and then hemorrhagic as his throat was cut in four places. He finally released me, and Herman grabbed my hair in his mouth and pulled me to the surface where I at last could gulp in desperately needed air.
Something smacked me in the face as a wave cuffed my head. It was my necklace—the one from Duncan. My talisman. Herman snarled at me, and I understood. He wanted me to use it.
After a few more desperate breaths, I ducked my head back under the water. Our wounded foe was spasming, his convulsions so sharp that it seemed he would be broken in half at the hips. His tentacles lashed like whips, cutting fur and skin whenever they touched Lachlan or Eonan. The water was full of blood—both red and milky white. My world was still dark at the margins, but I knew what I needed to do—what might kill the finman or weaken him enough that the others could finish him.
Lachlan and Eonan circled their opponent, coming close enough to slash his flesh but doing their best to stay away from the still-thrashing tentacles. I pulled off my necklace and jackknifed downward. As I knew would happen, the finman grabbed me and pulled me close when I got within range. I didn’t fight. Instead, I thrust my fist into his chest and let go of the necklace. And I thought the word Die, hurling it at him with all my will.
He released me at once, and Lachlan took my arm and flung me away. I couldn’t see much after that for the turbulence in the water. But once I reached the surface and had grabbed a few more breaths, I again forced myself under the waves for another look at the battle. As I had hoped, the finman appeared dead, his chest sporting a hollow cavity that had imploded with the entry of the talisman.
I didn’t fight Herman as he again snapped my hair in his teeth and began paddling for shore, towing me like a fish on a line. A moment later I was joined by Lachlan, who took over the task of ferrying me to land. Over his shoulder I saw Eonan, dragging what was left of the finman’s carcass. He did not look like a conquering hero, aglow with the satisfaction of having vanquished an enemy. His face was white, nearly bloodless, and he and Lachlan both had wounds.
Poor Eonan, I thought. He never gets to carry the girl.
But we were alive, all of us. And the finman was dead.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Houses live and die: there is a time for building…and a time for the wind to break the loosened panes.
—T. S. Eliot
We returned to the cottage and found another finman. He lay on the floor, surrounded by a pool of white ichor, and was a smaller version of the creature Eonan carried. He was also apparently weaker, at least magically, because Herman had been able to kill him without our assistance. I think perhaps the cat received some help, because there was a pair of familiar scissors on the floor, but of Fergus’s shadow thieves we saw no other sign. Mayhap they had also been freed by the death of the finman. I had no love for them or of Fergus, but I hoped their souls had moved on.
The two bodies were loaded into the massive fireplace and set to burning. It required a lot of coal and peat and the rest of my driftwood to set them ablaze, but once started, the fire was hot and they burned satisfactorily. When the bodies were ashes and lumps of bone, Lachlan moved the giant table and retrieved the heart. It was by then a mass of goo, but he poured this into the fire and then smashed the crystal box and let it burn as well.
I don’t know precisely when the change happened, but when I saw Herman next he had returned to house-cat size. He looked the same, but I sensed a difference, and I wondered if it was because Fergus’s soul had departed from the finman and that this had in turn set him free. Or perhaps it was just that he no longer needed to be fierce and large.
I had more sewing to do that afternoon, but it was easier this time to close up the wounds on Eonan and Lachlan’s skins. They were, after all, only physical and not magical injuries. It occurred to me, though, as I worked with surprisingly steady hands, that I had crossed a line—a big one that estranged me forever from my old life. I had killed…not a human, but still a sentient being, and not an animal raised for food. It had been necessary and in a good cause, but by the standards to which I had been raised, this would forever mark me as Cain. But what else could I have done? Nothing. A
nd I felt no regret for fighting beside Eonan and Lachlan and saving my babies. In fact, I was better off for it. At that moment of decision, I had really begun living.
Yes, now I could live my life without looking back and regretting the choices I had failed to make because I was too timid. I had paid back any debt I owed Duncan for failing to protect him during our marriage, if indeed there had been one. I’d freed Fergus from a fate truly worse than death, and I had rid Findloss of its monster. All in all, this seemed to me a good day’s work.
My own injuries were superficial. Lachlan laved the wounds on my feet so that they did not hurt so much, and then bound them up with clean linen. Eonan kept me supplied with tea and a strange selection of foods, which I ate without comment except to say thanks for his efforts.
I had hoped that Eonan would stay the night, but he elected to leave once the sun set; someone had to spread the word that the finmen were dead and that he and Lachlan had survived. It was decided that he would make no mention of the babies I carried. After some thought—probably brought about by his visit to Avocamor—Lachlan decided that perhaps we would like to spend some time with a clan of friendly sea kelpies; this would prepare me for the rest. Still too stunned by events to make any decisions of my own, I simply agreed to the plan. We would have to leave Findloss; that I knew.
“Wi’ the finman gone the village will slowly be reburied. It was his will and magic that kept the sea and sand frae being called inland. Now there is nothing to stop the evil spell from taking back Findloss.”
“I know. It makes me sad, but after all, it is only a house. We have our lives—all of our lives,” I said, brushing my stomach. “That is far more important than property.”
Lachlan knelt at my feet and offered me his hand. “This has been a time of surprise fer me. But sometimes life sets the terms of existence, and who am I tae quibble? Though I’ve said nowt of it afore, I want ye to ken that I appreciate wham you are—and am at peace wi’ whatever roads ye traveled to arrive here. All of it, good and ill, went intae the making of ye. I couldnae ask fer anyone braver or mair bonny. Yer advent intae my life was unexpected but welcome.”
“And I feel this way about you. How could I want you to have had any other life if it would change who you are?” If he could overlook my being a Mac-Codrum and married to a Culbin, then I could get over my envy of his dead wife. From what Eonan had said, it was his human wife who had taught Lachlan to love.
“Are ye nowt sorry we met then? Yer life waud be verra different if ye’d gone on yer way in ignorance of the other warld.”
“No. I am not the least bit sorry—not for any of it.” A moment’s honest reflection told me that this was true. For all my concern about facing my unknown future, I would not want to go back to the days of ignorance. The state has been likened to bliss, but my supposed bliss was always overshadowed by smothering rules, bitterness and worry. It all seemed so petty now: A sad life that belonged to someone else who had allowed herself to be consumed with worry over petty things.
“I am offering ye a last chance. I’ve gold enough tae buy ye any sort of home ye might wish for. Ye can yet be free of me and make a new life among yer kind if ye desire.”
I thought briefly of all the people I could be if I stayed behind in the world of men. Of all the lives I could choose if I gave up Lachlan and my children. And then I put my hand in Lachlan’s and smiled.
“Your life is also changed…if we stay together,” I pointed out. “Do you regret meeting me?”
He did not hesitate. “Nowt a day or night of it.”
“Well then.”
He stared into my eyes. “And if I said that I worship ye?”
I laughed. “I should doubt your sincerity. I am too plain to be an idol.”
Lachlan laughed as well, but more faintly. “Yer anything but plain.” And to prove this, he kissed me.
“I love you, you know,” I said, a short time later.
“Aye, I kenned this when ye sewed up Eonan’s skin. For a moment I feared that it was him ye loved, but he did not behave as one besotted, which he waud hae been if ye’d stitched passion for him intae his fur.”
I snorted. “We will have to work on your turn of phrase.”
“As ye like. We’ve a’ the time in the deep, wide warld.”
Epilogue
For walking with his fey, her to the rock he brought, On which he oft before his necromancies wrought. And going in thereat, his magicks to have shown, She stopt the cavern’s mouth with an enchanted stone, Whose cunning strongly crost, amazed while he did stand, She captive him conveyed unto the Faerie-land.
—Melanie Jackson, The Outsiders
The sand has encroached steadily on the village, and Findloss has all but disappeared in the days it took to finish writing this document. The villagers, the ones not killed by the finman, have awoken from whatever thrall they were under and escaped to Keil or other villages in their boats. Lachlan, Herman and I will leave tonight. The seas are calm and cooperative.
What adventures await I can only guess, but I am excited to be off to see the magical realms I never knew existed. Worry not about my well-being. I am happy and I am at last living the life I was meant to have.
The End & The Beginning
Author’s Note (the real one)
I shouldn’t have to say this, but will for the sake of those who are confused. I do not have an aunt who married a selkie. This is a work of fiction—darn it!
It has been a long while since The Selkie and it was fun to revisit Scotland and all my finned and furred friends. Events of this book actually precede the story of The Selkie, so don’t be confused if you don’t see characters you remember from the first book.
A complete reference list of resource material for this novel would take up many pages, but I especially want to make mention of The Buried Barony by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. This is the book you should read if you want to know more about Culbin Sands, the real Scottish town that was buried by a terrible storm and never seen again. Two other useful books were A Field Guide To Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits by Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack, and my fey bible, The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People by Thomas Keightley. Don’t go elf hunting without them.
If you ever want to visit between books and see what stories are in progress, please feel free to drop in at my website www.melaniejackson.com or send a note to [email protected]. I always look forward to hearing from you.
Melanie Jackson
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THE SELKIE
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The Selkie Bride Page 22
