Go Gently

by Nancy M Bell

  “But I need to stay. I can keep Daddy from flying off the handle, you know I can.”

  Her mother shook her head. “No, Laurel. I know you have good intentions, but this is something your father has to work out for himself. Colt,” she laid a hand on his arm and he looked down at her with a bemused expression on his face, “why don’t you three go somewhere quieter and talk this out?”

  For a moment Laurel thought he was going to refuse. He looked at Vear and shook his head, but followed the pair out of the harbour area. Laurel saw them go into Pam’s Pantry further down the beach. “I still think we should go with them,” she insisted, pulling on her mother’s arm.

  Anna laid her hand over hers. “Laurel, you’ll understand better when you’re older. A proud stubborn man like your dad needs to do things in his own way in his own time. If we interfere he might never forgive Bella. I know he still loves his mother, but he’s got a lot of anger too. And as for meeting his father,” she shook her head and glanced toward where they’d disappeared, “that puts a whole new spin on things. This is something your dad needs to do on his own,” she repeated.

  “What happened? Where’s your dad?” Coll asked when Laurel and her mom found them in the crowd in front of the Ship Inn.

  “He’s talking with Gramma Bella and Vear,” she said unable to control the tremor in her voice.

  “Oh, my.” Emily put a hand to her throat.

  “It’s high time this nonsense between him and Bella was done with,” Anna said with a hint of steel in her voice.

  Sarie smiled at her over Laurel’s head. “Anyone want something from the bar? I’m going in.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Anna took her arm from Laurel’s shoulder. “You’ll be okay with your friends?” She turned to follow Sarie, but then turned back. “Don’t, under any circumstance, go looking for your father. Is that clear?”

  Laurel nodded reluctantly. How did Mom know exactly what she was thinking? She’d planned to go find out what was going on as soon as she got the chance. Coll came beside her and slid his hand into hers. “Did he find out the selkie is his dad?”

  “Oh yeah. Vear just blurted it out without any lead up or anything. He was trying to protect Gramma Bella, but still…”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if my da suddenly came back,” Coll said. Laurel squeezed his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “I wish mine would come back,” Gort said quietly. “Sometimes I‘d like for him to be here and other times I’d like to yell at him and tell what a scrote his brother was.” Aisling stroked his cheek and he turned his head and kissed her palm.

  “Is Gwin still with you?” Laurel had a sudden thought.

  “I am here, Mistress Laurel.” He popped out of Aisling’s hair where it fell unbound over her shoulders.

  “Can you go and find out what they’re talking about? Dad and Vear, I mean. Or if they’re talking at all. Dad might have asked him out behind the barn by now.” Laurel chewed her bottom lip.

  Coll looked down at her in puzzlement. “There’s no barn around here.”

  “It just means he wants to settle things with his fists,” Laurel explained.

  “Oh, that would not be good.” Gwin shook his head. “The big black one is ever so strong.”

  “So is my dad, and he’s really tough when he’s mad,” Laurel argued.

  “Why don’t you just go and see what you can see?” Aisling suggested.

  “Of course, my flower. For you, anything.” The piskie stood up and then popped out of sight.

  “Let’s just hope he doesn’t get so entertained he forgets to come back and tell us what he knows.” Aisling sighed.

  “He is rather unreliable,” Gort observed.

  “But very useful too,” Aisling defended her friend.

  The crowds were thinning a bit and they moved closer to the stone building and leaned near the door to the bar. Anna and Sarie emerged with Emily in tow. Laurel took the cup of hot chocolate from her mom and wrapped her cold hands around it.

  “No sign of them yet?” Anna asked.

  Laurel shook her head.

  “It all goes well,” Gwin Scawen materialized on Aisling’s shoulder. “Oh, my!”

  “Hello, Gwin, you scamp,” Sarie greeted him before he could wink out again.

  “Greetings, Mistress Sarie. Well met.” He hopped down to the cobbles and bowed low. “And to you, Mistress Emily.” He sidled over to stand by Anna’s feet. “Welcome to Kernow, Laurel’s mother,” he said. He bowed so low his nose touched the ground.

  “Hello, Gwin Scawen. I want to thank you for helping Laurel when she needed it. I am in your debt.”

  “Oh, no. Mistress Anna, ‘twas my pleasure, so it was. It is not often one such as I get to see the king of the faeries brought to heel as neatly as you did that day under the Tor.”

  “Yes, well, that’s all still a bit of blur, although Laurel has told me what happened.” Anna looked slightly uncomfortable. “But tell me, you went and spied on Colt and his parents?”

  “Now, Mistress Anna, spy is such a nasty word. Let us just say I popped in to see how things were progressing.”

  “Fine, let’s say that then.” Anna raised an eyebrow at the piskie.

  “There is no blood shed which is a fine thing. And no one has…what did you say, Mistress Laurel…gone out behind the barn. So things are progressing nicely. Bella is crying, but they are happy tears. The son is scowling, but he is listening to what the big black one is saying. That is all I know.

  “Well, it’s something. At least Colt hasn’t stormed out of there yet.” Anna smiled at Laurel.

  “Look, there’s Bella.” Sarie waved to attract her attention.

  She joined them, her eyes a bit red rimmed but she was smiling. Bella gathered Anna and Laurel in a hug. “He says he understands a bit better now and he forgives me,” she reported.

  “Where is Colt?” Anna searched the crowd with her eyes.

  “I left him and Vear talking. There are somethings that they need to settle between them that don’t require my presence apparently,” she said.

  “Is that wise?” Anna looked worried.

  “I think that if there was going to be any fireworks it would have already happened,” Bella replied. “But there is something I need to talk to you and Laurel about. Afterward, I need to speak with you, Sarie.”

  “Okay.” Anna drew Laurel and Bella away out of the lights and merriment around the inn. She stopped by the narrow entrance to Duck Street. Bella glanced around to be sure they were alone.

  “Anna, thank you so much for getting Colton to come here. I feel we have finally begun to mend the rift between us. But that makes what I have to tell you all the more bittersweet.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked, taking Laurel’s hand.

  “As you know from Gwin, the Council ruled in our favour. So Vear and I can see each other as often as we wish. But without my knowledge, he made another bargain. One I’m not sure I approve of. It is weighted much more in my favour than in his.”

  “What is it?” Laurel asked.

  “It seems the great idiot has traded his immortality in exchange for a lengthening of my life,” she confessed. “By the time I knew of it, it was already done.”

  “But what does that mean?” Laurel asked. It didn’t make sense to her at all.

  “It means that sometime in the far away future Vear Du will fade away, in effect, he will die. I will also die, but many many years after I should.”

  “What’s so bad about that? You get to be together, there’ll be lots of time for you and Dad to make up for all that lost time…” Laurel stopped at the look on Gramma Bella’s face.

  “It’s not so simple. In order for me to have long life, we must live in the other worlds most of the time. Vear says I will actually get younger for the first few centuries.”

  “Centuries?” Anna breathed the word, an astounded expression in her eyes.

  Bella nodded. “In appearance I
’ll go back to the girl I was when I first met him, all those years ago. But I will keep all my memories. As you know, Laurel, Vear doesn’t look much older than his early twenties, even now. But I won’t be able to be part of your life, to watch you grow up and see my great grandbabies. Only if you come to Cornwall and call to us using the talisman he gave you will I be able to see you.”

  “I’ll tell my kids, and they can tell their kids so we’ll never forget you and you’ll get to know the future generations of our family,” Laurel said fiercely. “I’ll pass the talisman down from me to my kids and explain why it’s so important they do the same.”

  “That might work, Laurel. At least it gives me hope. I do miss you terribly, but my heart has always belonged to Vear Du.”

  “Is Dad okay with all this?”

  “He’s trying to understand. I have left my house in Bragg Creek to you in your father’s trust until you’re old enough to decide if you want to live there or sell it. Vear is arranging things so there will be money transferred to cover the taxes and the costs for maintenance, with some over to make life easier for you and Colt, Anna, and some to put in a trust fund for you, Laurel.”

  “I don’t want you to leave, Gramma. I just found you again.” Laurel threw her arms around Bella and buried her face in her shoulder.

  “I don’t want to either, but the die is cast, so to speak. This is what I needed to tell you. But for tonight let’s enjoy the fun and each other’s company. Tomorrow is time enough for sadness,” Bella suggested.

  “I wish I had your ability to just live in the moment,” Anna said to her mother-in-law.

  “It’s something I learned so I wouldn’t throw myself off the bluff into the Old Man River,” Bella said with a touch of bitterness in her voice. “I was so terribly homesick for the longest time when I left here.”

  “Let’s go see if your father is finished talking with Vear Du,” Anna said. She took Laurel’s hand and led her back toward the harbour. Bella walked at her other side.

  When they found the others Colt and Vear were still missing. Bella and Sarie went off to speak privately. Laurel wondered how Sarie would take the news. She’d been a part of the story since the beginning and now it seemed their paths were really going in different directions. She managed to fill her friends in on what Gramma Bella told her without crying. She leaned on Coll for support and he snugged his arm around her shoulders.

  “That’s some bargain he made,” Aisling said. “He must love your gramma a whole lot.”

  “I can’t believe he gave up his immortality for her,” Gort looked over at the woman talking to Sarie, the light making a halo around her head.

  “Oh, look. Here comes Dad.”

  Laurel turned to tell her mom, but Anna was already making her way toward her husband. The tall man wrapped his arms around her as if she was the most precious thing on earth. Laurel was surprised and alarmed to see his shoulders shake with sobs. Anna stroked his head and kissed his ear. Laurel shrugged out of Coll’s embrace with a quiet apology and hurried over to her parents. She put her arms around her dad and hugged as hard as she could. “It’s gonna be okay, Dad.” She repeated over and over. Finally, her dad stroked her hair and kneeled down to hug her.

  “Yes, it will be okay, princess. You’re right.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took Anna’s hand with the other. With his wife and daughter on either side they went back to join Laurel’s friends who were just filling Emily in on the news.

  Vear Du loomed up out of the crowd behind her dad. Laurel tried to smile but the pain in her chest just made her mouth twist. The selkie put his hand on Colt’s shoulder and he turned to greet him.

  “It is time we were going, but I couldn’t leave without speaking with you once more.” He extended his hand and Colt took it. The two men held each other’s gaze and Laurel saw them tremble as they gripped their hands together. Finally, Vear pulled her dad into a bear hug and they hung on so long she began to wonder if they’d ever let go. Mom stood beside her with tears running down her cheeks. Finally Vear stepped back and Colton held his arms out to his mother. With an inarticulate cry, Bella gathered him in her arms. Laurel fought back the tears and Gort sniffed loudly behind her. Coll put his hand on her shoulder for support and she covered it with her own. Suddenly, Vear was in front of her. He bent down to her level and gazed at her face. “I think I will miss you most of all. So young and so brave. I would expect nothing else from my granddaughter. You also have a gift from me. Because of the blood that runs in your veins, you can never drown, no matter how rough the water. And you will live a long and healthy life, far longer than an ordinary mortal, for there is nothing ordinary about you.” He hugged her. Laurel tried to say something but her voice was drowned in her tears. “I know what’s in your heart, dear one. There is no need of words between us.”

  He stood up and turned to where Bella still clung to Colt. “Come, my beautiful Bella. There is time for one last dance and song and then we must be going. Say your farewells for now. It is never goodbye between those who love as we do.”

  He led her away into the crowd. Vear threw his head back and bellowed the words. A few villagers obviously knew him, but addressed him as Douglas.

  “Why are they calling him by a different name?” Laurel asked Sarie, never taking her eyes off the couple.

  “It’s a name he uses when he walks the fields of mortals,” she answered wiping a tear from her cheek.

  “He’s ever so clever, so he is.” Gwin Scawen spoke from Aisling’s shoulder. “Douglas comes from Dubh Glas, which is dark or black water in the Gaelic. What better name for a selkie?”

  Laurel nodded. Her gaze met Gramma Bella’s across the crowded square and she smiled. Vear tipped his dark head to her and led Bella in a series of intricate steps that took them to edge of the light.

  “Go gently,” Laurel whispered, and raised her hand with the forefinger crooked to call down a blessing from heaven in a gesture she remembered learning from Gramma Bella in her childhood.

  “Go gently,” her dad echoed from beside her.

  The End

  More Books by Nancy Bell from Books We Love

  Laurel's Quest (The Cornwall Adventures Book 1)

  A Step Beyond (The Cornwall Adventures Book 2)

  Storm's Refuge (A Longview Romance Book 1)

  The Selkie’s Song

  Historical Horror

  By N.M. Bell

  No Absolution

  About the Author

  Nancy M Bell has publishing credits in poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Nancy has presented at the Surrey International Writers Conference and the Writers Guild of Alberta Conference. She loves writing fiction and poetry and following wherever her muse takes her.

  Please visit her webpage http://www.nancymbell.ca

  You can find her on Facebook at http://facebook.com/NancyMBell

  Follow on twitter: @emilypikkasso

  Canadian Books We Love, Ltd