The Osiris Stone: Shield Skin Book 2

by F. E. Arliss

  The twins could hold their breath for far longer and dive far deeper. Emery wasn’t about to try and match their achievements, but happily roasted her small, spiny catch next to their far larger ones on the beach fire they’d started to celebrate her first successful forage for seafood.

  The twins' closeness had never bothered Emery and people on Eigg simply took it for granted. Everyone knew that the twins would simply wither away if ever parted. Their mother, Eilidh had given up trying to interest them in finding wives and none of the girls had ever succeeded in coming between the two. No one even tried anymore. Now, Emery felt accepted if they simply acknowledged her at all.

  As the months had gone on and the twins became more used to her, it seemed that sometimes they even forgot she was there. One afternoon as they lay replete after a successful lobster catch lunch, Emery had opened her eyes from a long nap and to her astonishment found the two twins kissing each other passionately. Ooookaaaay, she thought to herself, then slowly closed her eyes again.

  Truthfully, Emery hadn’t ever really given much thought to sex except for her failed high school attempt to lose her virginity as a senior. That had been a spectacular failure when she’d seen her chosen suitor without his clothes on. He’d been, well, unspectacular. Though she’d liked him, she just hadn’t been at all interested in his pale limbs and unattractive male appendage. Emery felt a little bad that she’d probably scarred the poor guy for life with her unavoidable reaction of repulsion.

  She did not find the twins repulsive and had come to accept their tanned, toned forms as, if not magnetically attractive, at least nice to look at. The discovery that the twins loved each other in a way that was not socially acceptable had her dumbfounded for a few weeks. Dorothea had advised her long ago to give up on ‘moral’ judgements as most people thought witches and all the strange creatures she’d met during her trainings, to be evil. So for her, morality didn’t really come into it except that harming people intentionally was a big NO-NO. After all, the wiccan way was, “Do as thou wilt; harm none”.”

  It seemed that this year on Eigg was a time for her to re-adjust her thinking and outlooks and to come to terms with herself, others, and how she was going to deal with the beliefs of society versus her experience of people and creatures in relation to their behavior towards her.

  Finally, in a fit of desperation, she went to have a serious talk with Dorothea. Sensing that Emery was troubled, the older crone had shewed the other women from the study and poured the two of them one of the endless cups of tea that were the norm for the Abbey. In a way, Emery was happy about tea. But after being in or on the water every day, she just didn’t want to have to drink the stuff too.

  “What’s worryin’ ya girl?” Dorothea asked. Since coming to the island, the older woman had dropped the supercilious tones she’d used on the ignorant townspeople in their small rural village in the Midwest of the United States. On the island she’d adopted the shortened language of the area and added the occasional Gaelic word to her speech as well.

  Not knowing where to start, Emery simply jumped in. “The twins are very close, you know?” she said, not really asking a question.

  “Hmmmm,” Dorothea agreed, not even bothering to really verbalize her agreement.

  “I’m with them all the time, hours and days at a time,” she continued stating the facts. “Sometimes those two are literally glued together at the hip,” Emery added, stating the facts in a non-explicit way.

  “Ah,” Dorothea said, clearly understanding what Emery was getting at. “You’re struggling with it, because it’s something that is frowned upon in society. That siblings are together in a way common morality says is unacceptable in a number of different ways,” she said softly.

  At Emery’s soundless and abrupt nod, Dorothea was silent for a while. “Did it surprise you?” came the next question from the older crone.

  Emery paused for a moment, “No, not really. They’re always together. They sleep on top of each other in the berth. They always have their arms around each other’s shoulders and are almost never further apart than a few feet,” she murmured under her breath.

  “Right,” Dorothea said, matter-of-factly. “Did it seem weird to you before you realized the full extent of it?” The crone’s watery blue eyes pierced into Emery’s own, searching for a reaction.

  “Ummm, not really, I have to admit,” Emery said pithily. “They love each other so much and understand each other so much. They’re in their own little world. I get the feeling that if one of them gets hurt or dies, or something dreadful happens, the other one will just die too.”

  “Exactly,” Dorothea said, smiling sadly. “It’s best that they’re here on the island. Don’t you agree?” she asked Emery.

  “Yes. Yes, I agree,” Emery said softly.

  “Do you feel like there is something that you need to do about this?” Dorothea asked her gently.

  “No, not really,” Emery said slowly. “They’re the least gross men I’ve ever met,” she said, grinning cheekily. Then said gloomily, “I have never seen anyone I’m even attracted to. It’s depressing.”

  Dorothea snorted. “You will. Give it time. You’ve only been in isolated areas with heavy populations of women and not many young men of your age. Don’t get in a rush. You’re still young. Love can be a real mess.”

  Emery grinned at the old lady and said, “Don’t worry. I’m salt-water logged every day for hours at a time. I’m lucky I’m a shield skin or I’d be as wrinkly as you and never find anyone!” Both women broke out cackling with laughter, then when their merriment subsided, sat quietly drinking their tea.

  For the next few weeks Emery pondered what she truly felt about the twin’s sexual identities and what moral judgement, if any, she needed to put on it. For her, the Sunday school teachers her mother had forced her and her sisters to listen to had been the worst kind of hypocrites. They’d tried to be good, but had done cruel things like taping her left-handed sister’s fingers together so she had to write right-handed. In this day and age that seemed ridiculously wrong, mean, psychologically damaging and narrow-minded.

  The priestess in the Amazon had tried to kill her, but was still revered as a leader, when in fact she was an ego-maniacal, psychopathic murderer. There were just some things in life that were inexplicable and the twin’s relationship to each other was one of those. She understood from a judgemental point of view how what they were doing was wrong, but knowing them and understanding them and their isolation on the island in some ways impacted and skewed the conditions.

  Finally, after a few weeks of indecisiveness, Emery realized that her own internal values didn’t condemn them. If anything, they’d been a model of what real love should look like. There was no bickering. Sometimes they disagreed, but then compromised and proceeded. What she’d been hesitating about had been the morality of society-at-large, not her own. She thought they were fine. It wasn’t like they were going to reproduce inbred children or hurt anyone with their relationship.

  She was probably the only female of their age on the island who was even able to talk to them. Perhaps the twins themselves didn’t even know that society outside the island would judge them harshly. She was certain that neither their mother nor any of the villagers had ever spoken to them about it. They were naive, young and innocent in many ways. It wasn’t for her to interfere.

  For the rest of the summer, Emery simply let the twins be themselves without comment. They had no shame because no one had ever judged them. She thought that was probably the nicest thing about the twins. Several times they’d seen her watching them kiss and Mur had simply reached one strong arm over to her and pulled her into the pile. Laying there half asleep in the sun. She was kissed simply and without any pressure. The twins stroked her, stroked each other and before she knew it she was no longer a virgin. Neither of them seemed to view her any differently from the other and it was not the angst ridden, painful experience she’d expected. Most times she just left them alone.
After all, they were a couple. She was simply a third wheel learning to sale, swim and free dive. Ok, and learning to make love as well. Though that seemed as natural as learning to dance with them.

  Kern had brought a disc player to the monthly community dance - where did you even find a disc player these days, Emery wondered. And with a few old discs the dances in the gallery introduced music from the 1990’s to the island’s rather dated musical library. Sting was the first disc he brought and when he’d swirled Emery into the music of ‘Shape of My Heart’, Emery grinned at the twins as she’d twirled by in Kern’s arms. They understood. They were friends. But only friends. The twins knew the shape of their own hearts. Emery was not the shape of their hearts.

  Sometimes she’d be swept into a tango by none other than the burly blacksmith. Emery loved to tango and the huge man, always smelling slightly of charcoal and embers, was surprisingly light on his feet. Don Juan had taken to riding his shoulder during their tangos and would often shout, “Turn! Dip! Entwine legs!” in a triumphant chant, swinging his own tiny appendages, while holding tightly to the side of the smith’s beard, as though he was dancing with some invisible partner.

  Kern was the only one who could really do a decent paso doble, but his tight grasp of Emery had the twins clucking in disapproval. Emery would simply arch one white eyebrow at them and swirl on haughtily. The queenie could dance with whomever she wanted. That included Bertha, whom she often jived with and partnered in swing dance. Anything went on the island, and basically if it was fun, or made you happy, the attitude was ‘knock yourself out’. Just as long as you didn’t hurt someone else, you were free to do as you liked.

  That was one of the basic tenets of wicca. “Do as thou wilt; harm none.” As far as Emery was concerned, that was pretty much it. So that, added to ‘semper gumby,’ was now her motto.

  Chapter Nine

  The Skin

  She’d gone to pick up her items from the craftsmen in town three weeks after the first trip. To say that everyone was excited to see what she’d had made would have been an understatement. They tried not to appear to be gawping, but they were - heads peeking around corners and out of windows to see where queenie was going first. The crones had all mounted donkeys and rambled down to the village on one excuse or another.

  Emery’s only stop was the tailor woman’s shop. Emery was in the shop for at least an hour and all of the other artisans came with items wrapped in fabric or plastic and left empty-handed. First the shoemaker appeared and after ten minutes left again, smiling happily. Then came the local woman who was famous for her knitted woolens. The goldsmith appeared, put a hand through the door and then left again. Eiledh, the twin’s mother, went in, then came out. No words exchanged. Finally, Caelan, one of the top local divers, also arrived with a small box in one hand.

  The twins had arrived and dragged a wooden bench out to the front stoop where everyone could see it. They leaned against the side of the cottage and waited, Mur’s arm thrown around Ray’s shoulders in their usual stance.

  Finally the door opened and Emery emerged. At first glance she looked like a cross between an Olympic cyclist and a S.W.A.T. team officer from the telly. A pair of black neoprene dive shorts graced her narrow hips. Above that, a close-fitting neoprene vest-like top cut in at the neck to leave her shoulder’s free for movement, was cropped to several inches below her pectoral muscles. Some sort of clever attachments had been added in the small cups for her breasts and pushed the small mounds up into the slightest bit of cleavage.

  Later, the entire village would see that this was a ruse in order to hide small air bladders, shaped like push-up pads, that stored oxygen for queenie’s animal familiars, the mouse Don Juan, and Deira the jumping spider. The diver, Caelan, had rigged a narrow plastic tube into the tiny air bags and ran it up the center of the vest to a small flat circle that housed a half tennis ball sized chamber between the molded cups of the tactical vest. This was Deira and Don Juan’s hideaway, complete with an oxygen tube when they felt they needed it. There was a tiny velcro flap that allowed Don Juan’s head to pop out if he wanted to see what was going on. Or, he could press that closed and simply hide if he was afraid. Deira was never afraid and usually cared less about what was going on unless it endangered Emery.

  Emery twirled about a couple of times, curtsying to the crowd, then back into the hut she went. When she next emerged she was wearing a pair of calf-high, black-neoprene dive boots with thick, black lug-soles. A wetsuit zipper had been sewn into the front of them and a thick flap of shark-skin from one of the great-whites that had beached itself on the shore, probably due to illness, had been used to make a velcro flap that, when pulled over the top of the zipper, closed off the boots’ front. They looked rugged, tough, and honestly, Ray thought, pretty sexy. He and Mur needed to get a pair of those.

  Out of the top of the boots peaked an inch or so of black seal fur laced onto the upper cuffs of the knitted, black wool socks that clearly protruded from the top of the boots.

  A longer than normal wool kilt of finely woven, red, black and green Ranald plaid - the plaid used for the Isle of Eigg - was slung from Emery’s narrow waist. Sharkskin latches held the many-pleated garment together at her right hip and allowed the below knee-length garment to move freely as the pleats flared and swirled when she walked. If it flared too high, the neoprene bike shorts could be seen beneath.

  The ensemble was finished off with a black, closely-knitted, form-fitting, funnel neck sweater with long sleeves that came down over the backs of her hands. The high neck reached to her ears. The cuffs, hem and top of the funnel neck were also laced with seal fur. It was gorgeous!

  Ray thought queenie looked like a warrior princess from centuries ago, except maybe better groomed and a whole lot cleaner. Plus the items she’d commissioned were definitely of higher quality and style than what they would have had on Eigg back then.

  The four crones who had descended from the Abbey had Emery twirl around a few times to get the whole effect of the outfit, then clapped their withered hands in merriment. Millicent came forward and was handed something from the seamstress and then approached Emery with a big smile.

  “Let me put on the finishing touch,” she said to the smiling girl. “You’ve developed into a beautiful, accomplished, respected member of our coven, our clan, and of Eigg’s family. Today we mark that transformation not only with this style that you’ve developed yourself, but with items that the clan thinks are indicative of what you’ve become.” The older woman’s long gray hair swirled in the sea breeze as she lifted weathered hands and fastened an intricately woven golden-wire ear cuff onto the outer shell of her right ear. In her left ear, the Fijian pearl blinked and glowed.

  As the crowd gathered closer, they could see that what the goldsmith had made was an exquisitely formed cuff with a richly-detailed figure of a sea turtle at the center of the cuff. The sea turtle was mounted in a swirl of sharply intertwined and pointed rose thorns. The woven material was almost half and inch wide and curled securely around the curve of her ear.

  To everyone’s surprise, it was Letty who stepped forward and placed her hands over Emery’s ear with its cuff still in place. With a few words and a movement of her fingers, the cuff seared itself into the cartilage of Emery’s ear. “Ouch!” the surprised young witch exclaimed, flinging a hand up and over Letty’s. “Yowza! That hurt!”

  Letty smiled and said, “It’s always better if it’s a surprise. If you anticipate it, it hurts worse!”

  Emery, for some reason, thought that was funny and began to laugh. Letty and the crowd joined in. The last item everyone had to exclaim over was the embroidered clan shield that the seamstress had made. It was sewn onto the sleeve of the black sweater and, though shaped like the typical Ranald clan shield with the historical green background, differed significantly from that of the history books.

  The history books related a tale of massacre on Eigg’s population first by the clan McLeod and then by the Catholic
church. Human remains had been found in a small cave at the northern end of the island and as far as society knew, all the original inhabitants of pagan islanders had been eradicated. What the coven knew was that only ‘muggles’ - as the Harry Potter books would describe the non-wiccan inhabitants of the island - had perished. The coven and all other magical beings like sprites, selkies, and other witches had all taken to the sea and escaped the three-day siege. Later, they returned and among themselves kept the tale as the history books related it as the public tale. They knew their own story.

  Emery’s new clan shield was on a green background with gold edging. The shield was in the shape of the French style of the 17th century. That was as far as it went in the traditional design of the Ranald shield. The rest was completely different.

  The entire green shield was divided by a large rose thorn embroidered in black. A fan-shaped shell at the top center clearly denoted the coven of Thorneridge. The other two gaps of the shield held a turtle in black, picked out in green thread to show the details of the flippers and shell.