by Ross Lawhead
It was hot and uncomfortable in the skin, so she tried to push it off of her. That was more difficult than she expected. It seemed to be sticking to her hands and face. She brought one hand up to her forehead to see what the problem was and found that she had raised a fin. Then it struck her—the selkies had all been naked—it would only work on her exposed skin.
Gretchen pulled her hand out of the skin and with a wet sucking sound it emerged. She laid it aside. Then she timidly started to peel off her school jumper. She felt ridiculous as she folded it and put it in a neat pile near her feet.
She had almost unbuttoned her shirt when she heard the first scream of anguish from the selkies who had discovered their burning skins.
Now she couldn’t claw her clothes off fast enough. They would kill her as soon as they found her, and it was a race against her stripping down completely and any one of them discovering her in the small cove with the only remaining selkie skin.
There were more screams now, rising in angry chorus. Everything became heightened, and her hands moved like blurs. Her skirt was off, and she rolled her stockings down with it. She pulled her panties down and quickly started fumbling with the bra clasps behind her back. She cursed it over and over.
And then that was it, she was naked—exposed.
There was a shout from behind her, piercing shrilly through the wall of wailing.
“There! There she is! She’s kept one for herself!”
Another shot of adrenaline coursed through her body. She bent down and grabbed the skin, pulling it up over her. She heard a scrabbling on the rock behind her and in fear and desperation leapt into the dark and freezing waves of the night ocean.
Her leap was short and brought her nowhere near safety. Her feet were no longer separate now—they were joined at the ankle, it felt. Turning to look down at what had caught them—she thought it might be one of her pursuers—she found that the skin was working. She felt it cling tightly to her body as it wrapped itself completely around her hips, her belly, her back and shoulders, and her arms—enveloping her in flabby seal softness. It grafted to her face and encircled her eyes. She was now in the body of a seal, and she turned her head and flicked her tail but found that the water was far too shallow for her to swim in. She turned around and found herself staring into a swarm—practically an army, in fact, of angry, naked people who were fast closing in on her.
She flipped and floundered as hard as she could, gradually inching into deeper water. The closest selkies had their heels in the water now and were splashing quickly toward her.
The water was completely covering her and she started to swim using odd, full-bodied flipper movements that she was very unused to making. The cold hit her like an anvil, and for a moment she was winded and disoriented. The waves buffeted and spun her under the surface, and then she opened her eyes—her new, seal eyes—and saw the course through the rocks around the island, which she manoeuvred in and out of with surprising deftness.
And then, finally, she was in the open sea. She was free of the island and her pursuers. Her body quickly adjusted to the chilly aqueous environment and she swam for a time, losing herself in the currents, wondering where land lay. Then the sky started to lighten and within an hour the sun broke the horizon, giving her a bearing of east-southeast, and a vague direction of home. She started confidently toward it.
It was awkward, obviously, because she was living in a skin that was not her own.
But then, it was no less awkward than she usually felt in her own skin.
_____________________ VII _____________________
Daniel sat in his cell, gripping the edge of stone plinth that served as a sort of bed and bench, fighting desperately to stay awake. He had tried everything he could think of—walking or running around the cell, pinching, hitting, and slapping himself, repeating his lucky words, doing mental arithmetic—but it was no use. The darkness and the exertion of the last days and hours, in particular, had drained him past human endurance, and he found himself sinking into sleep.
Although “sinking” was putting it mildly. “Plummeting” was more accurate a description. Plummeting into a terrifying, swirling blackness that was like the raging waves of a tempestuous sea. He would nod off and feel himself falling swiftly away and then force open his eyes. It was like being pulled out of a fall and having his feet placed on firm ground. But then no matter what he did, soon the flying darkness would pull at him, bent on taking him down.
Consciously, he knew he was still in his cell. In fact, he could feel the stone slab beneath him, but even that was fading away, becoming abstract. He told himself that it was all just in his head, the extreme feelings just a reflection of the extreme dark, but try as he might, he couldn’t convince himself that he was anything more than a tiny particle of fully conscious fear lost in a horrific void, and falling, falling, always falling. The cold stone beneath him, slick with sweat, seemed immaterially thin, more of a concept than an object, and then it was gone . . . His surroundings had finally dissolved away.
Points of light started to appear around him. They moved fast, arcing past him and vanishing into the distance. He was hallucinating, obviously. But it was so persistent . . . What could he actually trust as real? He let loose a long groan, but even his own voice was lost in the dark tempest, swallowed by the void. The number of lights grew, and trajectories started to alter, and the stars danced erratically around him.
Shutting his eyes made no difference at all—what was happening around him penetrated even his eyelids.
He didn’t know how long he could bear it all. He felt that at some point, something had to give; either the whole display would have to stop. Or what? Madness? Death, even? How long could his tiny consciousness survive while tumbling through the cosmos?
In the tumult, he noticed that two points of light remained fixed. One was a speck of bluish-white, the other a small speck of yellow. He flung out his arm—visible only as a black silhouette against the strobing stars—to reach them and found that he was able to draw them nearer, or himself toward them, whichever it was. At last, he thought; some aspect of his situation that he could control.
As he came closer to the stars, he was surprised to find that they were two mostly human forms. They were riders on horses, galloping away from him, tearing across the sky like comets. One was golden, like the sun; the other silver, like the moon.
As they galloped away, they also came closer to him, within the altered physics of his dreamscape.
The riders reared and he saw their full figures, every sparkle of light that shone from every edge of their armour. The golden figure’s armour was roughly burnished so that the colours of red, orange, and yellow swirled and mixed across it, seeming to produce light and heat. The other’s was buffed and reflected a luminescent, ghostly gleam of blue, white, and grey.
Daniel recoiled as the light stabbed into his eyes like pins.
“Who are you?” he asked the golden rider.
“I am Dreams of Life,” the golden rider answered, although Daniel could not hear the words spoken. He felt them, somehow, and it warmed him. “And I have sights to show you.”
“And you?” he asked the silver rider automatically.
“I am Dreams of Death.” Daniel felt a chill roll through him. “I, too, have sights.”
Daniel pushed away at the silver rider and the rider fell into the distance.
The golden rider dismounted and came nearer.
“What do you wish?” he asked in a honey-thick voice.
Daniel did not know, and this uncertainty made him worry that the rider would leave him then, in the cold and uncertainty. But the rider was there, mounted again, with his yellow steed galloping alongside him.
He turned his head to the other side and saw, far off and very distant, no more than a star twinkling in the distance, the silver rider, and again he felt a chill. He turned back to the golden one.
“What do you wish?”
“What do I wish?” Dan
iel asked himself, and it seemed to him that he was being offered a gift, a single gift, whatever he desired.
His father is before him, and his mother. He is a child again, just thirteen, and his parents are back together, and they are eating a meal at the table. It is quiet, but a comfortable, contented silence. Daniel makes eye contact with his dad and he smiles.
There is a pounding on the door. His father’s face blanches.
“Don’t answer it,” his mother whispers. “Leave it.”
“They know we’re here,” his dad explains, rising. “They always know. You can’t fool them.” He walks to the front hall.
“Do we have enough?” his mother asks.
Father doesn’t answer. He opens the door a crack. Daniel peers into the hallway and sees a very tall, very thin man in a black suit and bright orange and yellow tie. He tips his hat, showing wolflike ears, and displays a hungry grin. “Good evening, sir,” he lilts. “Collecting tribute.”
“We gave less than three months ago. They wrote it down. I got a receipt—”
“Entirely different sort of tribute, sir. Here’s a pamphlet. This is the head tribute—for the children? You do have a child.” His eyes find Daniel’s, gazing at him like a cat would a canary—patiently predatory.
The pamphlet shakes slightly in his father’s hands. He puts it down on the cabinet top by the door. “Yes, yes. I remember reading about this. Of course. I have something in here. I put it aside when I . . .” He bends and opens the door of the cabinet, rummaging around amongst some metal objects. “Yes, here it is. A silver spoon. One of my wife’s heirlooms.”
“Ah, yes, very nice,” the tribute collector appraises. “Yes, this would do quite nicely . . . if your son were twelve or younger.”
“He is, he is,” his father chirps.
“Come, sir, we both know that boy is thirteen and three months if I’m a day.”
“Yes! Yes, of course, how could I forget? Here, take this bowl instead. Silver also—see the mark just here? We can just . . .”
His father holds out the bowl and reaches for the spoon. The tribute collector with the wolf’s ears takes the bowl but still grips the spoon. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll keep both,” he says, then tosses them into a black velvet bag that he grips under his arm. The objects vanish with a clinking rattle. “I’ll make a mark here to say that you’re up-to-date on the head tribute, and give you a voucher for the spoon.” He produces a black, padded folder and unzips it, then starts scribbling in it. “And that way, the next time one of us comes knocking, you just whip out the voucher, we make the tick, and Bill’s your auntie, the job is done. What do you say?”
“Well, I think I’d rather—”
“Only I have just accepted the spoon, technically, just by holding it. If you want I could summon my troll; he’s just there at the end of the road, see? And we could all go down to the offices and sort this out. Quite frankly, though, all that hassle is more than my job, or your life, is worth. Wouldn’t you say?” He holds out a chit of paper in front of his father’s face.
“Yes, fine, fine. That’s fine,” his father says, taking the voucher.
“A pleasure.” The tribute collector smiles, tips his hat again—his soft, grey, triangular ears peeking out. He turns, and the door closes behind him.
“Ian?” his mother, above Daniel, her hands on his shoulders, asks.
“Fine, fine. It’s fine—I’ve got a voucher,” he explains, waving his hand.
“What voucher?” There is nothing in his hand.
“Never mind,” his father says with a forced smile. “Let’s get back to dinner, eh? Fish! I love fish! It’s not every day you get fish.”
They resume their meal.
“Mum?” Daniel asks. “When can I go back to school?”
“Quiet. Finish up.”
“Where’s my sword?” Daniel, age thirteen, asks.
“You never had one,” his father replies. “Remember? Remember how you never had one?”
“Shall we watch TV today?” his mother asks.
“I don’t know if we can risk it,” his father replies.
Daniel looked away, and the scene winked out of existence. He was falling again, the golden rider beside him.
What do you wish?
Freya floats before him, and he sees, as if from a great way away, but with every detail up close, the life they could have together. Quiet, warm, lovely. A terraced house in the city, drive to work, drive home, dinner, an evening on the sofa. They sit, arms around each other, the TV illuminating them and the room in a pleasant glow, issuing a chorus of gentle laughter.
A sound from the other room, a cry, almost a squeal of discomfort from a tiny throat. “Every night,” Freya said, rising, her body softer now, plumper, climbing over him. “Why won’t he stay down? Even for just this night?”
She exits and he, the he he could be, sits for a stretch, but becomes uncomfortably lonely. The squeals can still be heard from the next room, growing louder, more piercing. He rises.
The next room is an infant’s room, but there was never an infant in it, he realises, somehow. Freya stands in the centre of the room, not holding a baby, but holding his sword, the blade he received in Niðergeard—Hero-Maker. The squeal, he knows now, upon passing into the room, has turned into a cry of torment, of alarm.
“I can’t put him down,” Freya says, gripping the sword by its blade. “Why won’t he stay down? Even for one night? Here, you try—you try putting him down.” She holds the sword out to him and he grasps its blade, which bites him.
A blink of the eye, the scene disappeared.
What do you wish?
This time it was a deliberate desire of his, something he almost didn’t dare to ask, a desire that had consumed his life for the past eight years.
His face is scarred and raw from battle, but he is wearing royal finery from an age that has past and at the same time an age that has never been. He wears a jewelled crown and on his lap is his sword, Hero-Maker, sheathed, to represent peace. Beneath him is a chair constructed from stone, iron, and gold. The throne is standing atop a mound, much like Gád’s, but not made from the ruins of beauty, but a thing of beauty in itself. Many ridged steps in many colours of marble fall beneath him, trimmed with gold and lit with a hundred candles and silver lanterns set into compartments in the stair structure. He is sitting on a platform of stone and light, and from around every side there are people of the nation, every man, woman, race, and creed, cheering and praising his heroism and bravery. Behind them rise the buildings of Niðergeard, restored, and the tree-carved outer wall, rebuilt, but with open arches between the trunks instead of blank stone. Children run and spin beneath the stone boughs, which glitter with silver light.
“How did he do it?” a little girl asks her mother. “How did he become the king of Niðergeard?”
“He killed all other claimants,” the girl’s mother answers. “He alone was victorious.”
Niðergeard would never be fortified again. The awakened knights would not be put to sleep. There would never be a need for them again.
He raises his eyes and sees a crack in the darkness—the ceiling tears and the sky is visible. Niðergeard is rising and will soon appear in the open air, and it will carry him upon his hero’s throne.
He stares into that sky and it becomes larger and larger in front of him, until whiteness is the only thing he sees.
But now there are shadows, and the sun is the golden rider.
“I wish for victory,” he told him.
“Wish for pain,” a voice said behind him.
Daniel turned. The silver rider, Dreams of Death, was standing before him. “No.”
“Pain will save you. Pain is your future.”
“Pain is not an end—or even a means,” agreed Daniel. “Pain may be unavoidable, but surely it is not necessary?”
“You say that, but true sacrifice is rarely voluntary—very few would ever take the pain that leads to true victory willingly.�
�� He shook his head mournfully in an odd, lurching fashion.
“Certainly. But I’ve given so much up already.”
“Would you give up what you most desire?” the silver rider asked.
“Anything.”
“What is the most that you would sacrifice?”
“Everything,” Daniel replied.
“What is victory worth to you?”
“Everything,” Daniel replied.
“What is the most that you would sacrifice?”
“Anything.”
“Would you give up what you most desire?”
“Certainly. But I’ve given so much up already.”
The rider inclined his visored head. “You say that, but true sacrifice is rarely voluntary—very few would ever take the pain that leads to true victory willingly.”
“Pain is not an end—or even a means. Pain may be unavoidable, but surely it is not necessary?”
“Pain will save you. Pain is your future.”
“No.”
“Wish for pain,” the silver rider told him.
“I wish for victory,” Daniel repeated.
“Wish for pain.”
“No.”
“Pain will save you. Pain is your future.”
“Pain is not an end—or even a means. Pain may be unavoidable, but surely it is not necessary?”
The rider shook his head. “You say that, but true sacrifice is rarely voluntary—very few would ever take the pain that leads to true victory willingly.”
“Certainly. But I’ve given so much up already . . .”
The dialogue continued, as logical as a dream, back and forth, oscillating, endless.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Books, A Sword, A Knife
_____________________ I _____________________
London, Westminster
23 October 1731 AD
It was an hour past midnight. This was the darkest time of the night and the quietest. He had come up near the Banquet Hall, nearly all that remained of the magnificent Whitehall Palace. It had burnt, of course; withering like everything withered in the furnaces of time. All was fire around him.
