Secrets of Selkie Bay

by Shelley Moore Thomas

  At least treasure could solve some of our problems.

  Maybe not all of them, but some of them. And if we didn’t find treasure, because we didn’t find an island and therefore didn’t find selkies, well, that would solve a problem, too. The Ione problem.

  The sun was rising higher, the silver glow atop the water deepening to gold. Even the seal, whose head was still sitting perkily above the water, seemed cast from bronze.

  So this was it, then. I was really going to do it.

  Where exactly did I think I was going to go?

  The minute we’d plopped Neevy and all our stuff into the boat, the wind picked up.

  “Put this on,” I said, handing Ione a life vest. I put on mine and strapped the extra-small one on Neevy.

  “Onward!” I commanded to Ione, and adjusted the choke. The engine stalled.

  “Oh no, captain!” she cried.

  I stood up, gained my balance, and pulled the starter cord.

  It took a few times of pulling with all my might, but eventually, the Dreaming Lass sputtered back to life. I sat and used the rusty handle to steer.

  We left the harbor within a few minutes. I was thrilled. Not a soul was out with their boat this early, except for the fisherfolk—but most of them had left before dawn and were far off the coast by now, and the ones that were on the other side of the harbor were too busy checking their nets and cages to worry about a little dinghy. The morning moon hung above our heads like a pearl in the sky, lovely and hopeful. We could not have been luckier.

  But luck is funny that way. The minute you think you’ve got it all figured out, luck can change, faster than the blink of an eye or the gust of a wild wind.

  Or the thick hand of fog.

  That’s what it’s like sometimes, when fog grabs you. It’s like a giant’s hand, and often you manage to slip through its fingers for a while, but then it reaches out and takes you again.

  We’d been flitting in and out, around and between the foggy fingers for about thirty minutes when it finally surrounded and completely enveloped us.

  I shut the motor off.

  “Which way are we supposed to go, Cordie?” Ione looked behind us, to where the coast should have been. Instead, we could see only misty white.

  I could hear the fear in Ione’s voice. “Cordie? You do know where we are going, right?”

  There was no quick lie that came to me, so I just nodded and looked off.

  The sky over the sea was a beautiful thing—white with fog, except for a small circle where the moon watched over us. Or it would have been beautiful if I hadn’t been so scared I thought I might pee myself. “Uh, Ione…” I started.

  What was I going to say? I am an idiot for taking you and Neevy on the boat? I don’t really know where to go.

  “Oh there you are again!” said Ione, switching from scared to joyful in but a second. She pointed over the edge of the Dreaming Lass. “It’s Mum,” she whispered.

  The seal had popped up again, timidly inching closer.

  “No one followed us, Mum. It’s okay,” Ione said gently, then turned to me. “When she’s her seal-self, she’s not quite like a person, more like an animal.”

  “What makes you think you know so much about selkies?” I asked.

  “Well, I read the book you gave me. Some of the words were big and old, so I had to guess about them. And it is in our blood, after all. Isn’t that what you said when you told me about Mum?”

  “Sure.”

  A wave splashed against our small boat, giving me a mouthful of salty water. I spat it out and wiped my face with the back of my hand. Ione laughed.

  Neevy woke with a whimper that quickly morphed into a full-fledged howling session. The seal turned its head this way and that, obviously not liking the noise.

  “It’s okay, Mum, she’s just got a wet diaper,” Ione said to the seal. “Cordie will change her now. Don’t worry.” Turning to me she said, “She doesn’t like to hear her baby cry. Come on, hurry up. Change her.”

  Changing a squirrelly baby in a life vest on a bobbing boat is not the easiest thing to do. With the taste of salt in my mouth, the smell of the diaper, and the roll of the waves under the boat, I was pretty sure I was going to puke. Just like Da.

  “You look like a ghost, Cordie. A pale ghost.”

  “Well, I am not a ghost because ghosts don’t vomit.” I lay back in the Dreaming Lass, trying to focus on the moon instead of the shifting boards under my back.

  “It’s okay. The map is around here somewhere. Maybe I can find the island.”

  “Yeah, right.” I hoped Ione would just shut up and let us drift for a minute until my stomach settled. Then I’d get us moving again. “Let’s not start the motor up just yet. I need a few minutes.”

  I must have felt really nauseated because I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew, Neevy was snuggled up next to me and Ione’s voice, soft as the breeze, was floating around us.

  Ione’s Tale

  Once there were three special princesses. They were special because they didn’t even know they were princesses. But they were. And they were also special because they were selkie princesses. But they didn’t know that, either. And that was okay.

  Sometimes people don’t know everything that they think they know.

  These princesses were trying to find a treasure.

  And their mum. They were trying to find their mum, too.

  Their mum was a selkie, of course. And she’d been called back to the sea, but she never really left them. Not at all. She loved her three princesses too much to ever be far from them. So she stayed in the bay, hoping her daughters would one day see her and know who she was.

  It was the middle princess, the bravest one, who noticed that the seal in the bay was their mum. The biggest princess didn’t understand because she was too busy being angry at her mother for being a selkie, and mad at her da, too, even though no one was quite sure why.

  She was just busy being mean. A lot. And she didn’t used to be mean. Not all the time, anyway. And the baby princess spent most of her time eating bananas and pooping, so she wasn’t much for noticing important things like mums disguised as seals.

  So the princesses followed their mother selkie to the ocean, where she had been watching over them from the edge of the sea. Selkies will do anything for their pups because they love them so much, so their mum stayed as a seal and swam next to their boat, leading the way to the secret island.

  You are probably thinking they were searching for treasure, and you would be right, but not at first. At first they had to find their seal coats. They didn’t have any yet because they had been born on land. That’s just the way it was.

  They had to get to the Kingdom of the Selkies quickly, because they were racing an old man with a puffer-fish head. He had special powers called the Authorities and he had threatened to use them on the princesses. He wanted the treasure, too.

  Really, everybody wants treasure. Except for maybe ants. Ants don’t want treasure. Ants like sugar.

  Anyway, even though it was scary, the seal mother guided her pups in the boat through the dangerous waters. She nudged the boat this way and that, in between the two gigantic rocks, and through the secret water passage to the Kingdom of the Selkies.

  When they finally got there, they met the rest of the selkie family. They had all kinds of uncles and aunts and cousins. At first, everyone was a little shy, but it didn’t take long for all the seals to adore the three princesses. That’s the thing about being a princess. You get adored a lot. And, the best part was, the sisters each got to pick out a seal coat. Even though the middle princess wanted a purple one, she knew that her mother would say no, for even selkie mums have to say no sometimes. So they picked out coats of soft, shiny fur and their mum helped them learn the ways of the selkies.

  Of all the things they learned about the selkies, the most important was to always stay together.

  The Fog

  IONE WASN’T TALKING ANYMORE. I sat up,
careful not to nudge Neevy. She’d seemed cozy cuddled next to me at first, but it didn’t take long for her warmth to turn to heat.

  The heat was familiar and fevery.

  “Oh no,” I muttered. Our grand voyage to the island was going from poorly planned to insanely stupid.

  “Don’t you feel it, Cordie?” Ione whispered.

  “I don’t feel anything,” I said.

  “That’s what I am talking about. The nothing. The ocean isn’t supposed to feel like nothing.”

  She was right. The ocean was so, so very calm. Once, when Neevy was a newborn and lay sleeping quietly, Mum had said, “Just watch, Cordie, this is the calm before the storm.” Mum had been paler than usual, her eyes not as dark and bright. She said it was the birth of the baby that always took it out of her. She didn’t look like herself at all. But she had been right. Soon after the calm, Neevy exploded into loud cries of hunger.

  But now there was no explosive storm, no howling winds that surrounded us, just the silent sea and an eerie blanket of white so thick I could barely see Ione sitting across from me.

  “Where’s Mum?” Ione asked.

  “How should I know?” It took me a moment to realize she was talking about the seal again, of course. But just like the real Mum, the seal was nowhere in sight.

  “I’m scared, Cordie. This is creepy. Start the boat. Let’s go.”

  “And where would we go? I can’t see a thing, Ione! How am I supposed to tell which way to go? What if I go the wrong direction and we get lost at sea and never come home? How would you feel about that?”

  If you are guessing that Ione burst into tears at this point, you are right. I shouldn’t have said what I did, and I shouldn’t have said it in a mean voice. Neevy started fussing and I had to hold her and rock her, without rocking the boat much.

  “What about Mum? Will she be safe out there?” Ione sobbed, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve, searching the surrounding cloud of white for the silvery-black head of the seal.

  I wanted to reach out and hold her, too. But I was afraid to loosen my grip on Neevy. Ione leaned far, far over the edge, straining to find the seal.

  “Sit down now!” I yelled.

  “But she’s right there!” She reached with one arm, out toward where that seal swam, a few meters away from us.

  “Why doesn’t she come closer? Does she need our help? We have to help her!” she cried.

  “That seal doesn’t need our help! It’s a seal, for crying out loud!” If anyone needed help, it was us—three girls in a boat in the fog, drifting to nowhere. I grabbed hold of the rusty handle, wondering if I should risk starting the motor again. What if I rammed us into a rock? Or another boat?

  Please tell me which way to go. I didn’t know if I was begging God or that seal. It really didn’t matter, as long as one of them did something. But I couldn’t see God, and that seal just stayed right next to us.

  “Keep us safe, Mum,” Ione called out. Her earlier bravery had melted away, leaving only sobs.

  I’d about had it with Ione and her stupid seal. And the way she could just believe something so easily. Gullible. That’s what people who believe anything are called. Here we were lost in the middle of the ocean and there she was, talking to the seal.

  So I was going to let it all out and just yell at her, at how stupid this was, and how stupid she was, but then, just after I called Ione in my harshest tone, that seal turned and barked at me. It barked like a dog only much, much louder. So loud that Ione stopped crying for a moment and got that look on her face like she did when I’d gotten in trouble with Mum. Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Mum’s mad at you, Cordie.”

  And I know it sounds crazy, but when I looked over at the seal, she was looking right back at me with her unblinking black eyes.

  “No, Ione, she is not mad at me,” I said calmly, the moist fog tasting salty on my tongue.

  At least I hoped she wasn’t.

  Castle on the Sea

  “FOLLOW HER. Follow Mum,” Ione said.

  I was about to refuse, even though I myself still had no idea which way to go, when the fog thinned a little and I saw the two large guardian rocks Mum had told us about. Ione saw them, too.

  “Through those rocks, Cordie. We just have to follow Mum through the rocks and then we’ll be able to see the island! We didn’t even need the map!”

  I felt a tickle of excitement in my belly. I pulled the starter and the Dreaming Lass came alive once more.

  “Oh, I’m so proud of us! Aren’t you proud of us, Mum?” Ione waited for the seal to answer, which of course she didn’t. “Quick, Cordie. Let’s go!”

  The seal was a few meters in front of us now, and I didn’t want to hit her with the boat.

  “Move, seal! Get out of the way!” I cried.

  Ione gave me a surprised shove. “Cordie, that was rude. You didn’t even say please. Mum would be shocked at your bad manners. Besides, look, she’s stopped and waiting for us. She wants us to follow.”

  It was as if the seal looked over her shoulder. Hurry up! Come on!

  “Hold on to Neevy while I steer.”

  Following the bobbing silver head of the seal, I motored us onward, hoping with all my heart that we’d make it to the island. It didn’t have to be magical or anything, it didn’t even have to have treasure, it just needed to have a shore and I’d be happy.

  Between the rugged guardians we putted, the fog now only wisps of mist that made everything look mystical, which made me wonder if that’s where the word came from. Then the island appeared, as if the sea were the sky and the land was rising from the clouds. Tall, spindly spires glistened, and giant stones of unusual shapes became clearer.

  “It looks like a castle!” Ione cried.

  In a way, she was right. If a castle had ever been built by a bunch of seals, it probably would have looked like this. Tumbly, raggedy, jumbled.

  But still. There it was. We had found it.

  I was so happy, so focused on the strange castle in front of me that I did not notice the upcoming reef. The boat jerked, followed by the most horrible scraping noise.

  A wave came and rammed the Dreaming Lass against the rocks. Hard.

  “Geez, Cordie! A little warning would have been nice. I almost dropped Neevy.”

  I tried not to panic. Dropping Neevy would have been the least of our problems. The fact was, the Dreaming Lass was now taking on water and I didn’t know how much longer we could stay afloat.

  “Ione, I don’t want you to get scared, but I think we might have to swim for it. You’re going to have to be brave.”

  “I’m not the one afraid of the water, Cordie.”

  I glared, though she wasn’t looking at me any longer. And I wasn’t afraid of the water. Water didn’t make me barf. Waves made me barf. There was a difference.

  “I’m going to try to get us as close as I can. But if the boat flips, hold on to the diaper bag. It has our food in it and we are going to need it. I’ll hold Neevy and swim with her. And don’t take off the life vest whatever you do.”

  Ione nodded. The whites of her eyes were huge. For all of her brave talk, she was terrified again.

  “Mum, keep us safe,” she whispered to the seal we could no longer see.

  Yeah, Mum, don’t let us drown.

  The water was around our ankles in the boat when the motor gurgled to a stop. I saw the shadowy spires of the island growing bigger and bigger before I realized that although the motor had stopped, the boat itself had not.

  “Cordie, look! Mum’s helping!” Ione pointed behind us.

  There was the seal, her nose to the left of the outboard motor, nudging our little boat along.

  And I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I just stared with my mouth open like an idiot.

  “Don’t make her do all the work,” I said finally. “Help paddle!”

  I reached beneath the seat to where two emergency oars were stowed. We paddled hard.

&
nbsp; But despite our efforts, the Dreaming Lass sank just off the coast of the selkies’ isle.

  So we swam. Sort of. Once in the water, I could feel a solidness under my feet. “Just a little more, Ione, and you’ll feel the bottom, too.” I held Neevy as far out of the water as I could manage. To the right of me, Ione dog-paddled, still holding the diaper bag until she, too, felt the sand beneath her shoes.

  Neevy, who had been an angel through most of the trip, decided that since we were approaching land, she should have a nice, fat fit. But I didn’t even care. No doubt she was hungry. We all were. I thought of the bread in the diaper bag, which would probably be soggy, and the cheese. Ugh, the cheese. My stomach started to growl, anyway.

  The fog was still patchy and I could see the seal leading the way to a grayish beach, surrounded by tall rocks.

  The seal turned and barked something.

  It was a strange welcome to the Kingdom of the Selkies.

  Reunion

  THE ISLAND WAS SMALLER THAN I thought it would be.

  I could see how ships might have crashed against it, for it was like one moment it wasn’t there, and the next it was. All around, except for the beach, the edges of rocks jutted out menacingly.

  And it was quiet, but for the sea.

  The beaches around Selkie Bay were rarely quiet during the season. They were loud with tourists, or noisy with seabirds squawking from the sky, claiming fish and trash from the water below.

  But there were no sounds here on the island. Nothing except the sound of a baby screeching as her eight-year-old sister laid her on the sand and started to replace her wet dirty diaper with a wet clean one. And then there was the sound of the eight-year-old saying things she knew better than to say as she tried to get wet diaper tape to stick to a wet diaper. Also, there was the sound of me, combing through the diaper bag in search of an apple.

  And nearby was the heavy, uneven breathing of the large black seal.