Hidden in Sealskin

by Thea van Diepen

  The only problem was that, no matter how far she went, she couldn’t find them. They had to have taken a turn at some point, but where? The unicorn’s fright for her, still not abated from the encounter with the spell, only grew as it began its approach. Adren tried to calm herself, but the potion maker should have returned to consciousness and could be coming after either Adren or the lady. Not to mention this new magic pumping through her veins, soaking into every part of her body. Adren didn’t believe for a moment the potion maker had told the truth when she promised not to use that spell again. While she'd be a fool to use it again on Adren, she'd most definitely use it on anyone else who came in her way. And, now that she’d shown her hand and it hadn’t succeeded, she'd be scared. She wouldn’t be acting rationally. Adren needed to get ahead of her. Now.

  Gods in hell, but these roads were infuriating! No matter which she picked, they always led her the wrong way, which made it difficult for the unicorn to come to her, but provided no other benefit. The magic pulsed within her, begged to be used, but she dared not touch it. Without any skill with it, even the skill a child who had grown up with it would have, anything could happen. And not a good anything. Oh but, sweet saints, it was tempting. It felt like… like living song. Like what the sun would sound like if all its being were turned into music, or if the ocean were given a voice instead of wordless roaring. Adren had never experienced its like before and, while she knew she should fear it, all it brought was peace.

  She shook her head to clear it of such thoughts. She couldn’t give in to them. The magic hadn’t even finished filling her yet. It may come to the point where she could afford to ignore it no longer, but for now she would.

  Ah! There! The dye shop of the annoying woman with the bangles. This wasn’t the direction Adren had thought she was going, but no matter. She could head to the mansion by way of Nadin’s house and hope to all the saints that Nadin had enough sense not to have taken a direct route back. Still, Nadin would be returning home after this errand, so she could find him, at least. Part human as he was, she hoped his fairy ancestry was enough to ensure she could depend on his help.

  When she reached Nadin’s house, she broke into a run, pushing past those who were too slow to get out of her way. Someone came by on a horse and they nearly collided, but she swerved at the last instant. The horse spooked and broke into a gallop, leaving the rider to swear at it for as long as Adren could hear his voice and the pounding of hooves. She paid it no mind. All her attention focused on the mansion. The sooner she arrived, the sooner she could leave the town and lead everyone to safety.

  At first, she couldn’t see Lady Watorej or Nadin, so she had to force herself to slow. Even so, it wasn’t until Adren was only a few steps away from the grounds that she saw them. They had just turned onto the street. She ran to them.

  “You’re in danger,” Adren told the lady.

  “From who?” The lady put a hand to her chest.

  “Is it—?” Nadin started, and Adren nodded.

  “The potion maker knows what you are and she will use you if we don't leave town.”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Honeysuckle spread across Adren’s mouth, the taste so amplified by the magic that it hurt. If it hadn’t have been for Nadin seeing both the lady and the sealskin as having the same magic, Adren would have believed her. It looked as though she had been right: her sense picked up not so much on truth as what someone was convinced in both mind and heart was true. Lord Watorej would have a lot to answer for when the time came for the consequences of his actions to catch up to him.

  “You may not understand, my lady,” Nadin said, “but you have to trust her.”

  “Why doesn’t my husband know about this?”

  “He does.” The lie burned on her tongue as strongly as the truth had sweetened it. “He asked Nadin and myself to keep you safe, once we knew for sure where the danger was coming from.” The inside of her mouth ached, but she kept from betraying it. They couldn’t afford the time that would be lost explaining the true situation. Lady Watorej pressed her lips together.

  “My lady, you know my reputation. Trust us,” said Nadin.

  The lady paused. “Then what do we need to do?” They both looked at Adren.

  “We need to get out of town, now. Once we’re out, we can make a plan, but we need to go before the potion maker comes to take you.”

  “Lead on, then.”

  Adren took a deep breath, then headed towards the edge of the town. It was the quickest route not only away from the lord, but also towards where it was safe for the unicorn whenever it arrived. Something seemed to have confused it, and it wasn’t taking as straight a route to her as it normally would.

  Despite both of them being taller than her, the lady and Nadin could not keep up with Adren’s pace and they had to stop to catch their breath more than Adren liked. Once they were in the forest, she allowed them to slow, but she found it odd she could go so much longer and faster than they. Her stamina was great in general, but it seemed to have increased since earlier that day. How deeply had this new magic affected her?

  Lady Watorej and Nadin were both flushed and panting by the time they reached Adren’s camp. While they caught their breath, Adren leaned against a tree, clenching her fists to keep from shaking. The sounds of the forest soothed her—robins singing, the wind in the trees—and the dappled light through needled branches brought with it a warmth that the light breeze didn’t negate, but softened with coolness.

  It felt healing, this balance. Everything fit and had order, an order that brought beauty with it. The countryside had always suited Adren better than human communities, but the woods held a special peace for her. She didn’t think much about what she hoped for herself after the unicorn was cured except when she would stand under the trees and stare at the sky. However long this took her, however far, wherever she ended up, there had to be a forest. As that dream rose within her again, she was able to relax. The unicorn, soothed, finally stopped its approach. Thank the saints.

  Now, the lady.

  She and Nadin had sat down, Nadin right on top of where Adren had hidden some of her supplies. He’d caught the corner of a pot without knowing it and kept making unsuccessful attempts to get comfortable. Adren decided not to tell him. His squirms were entertaining.

  The lady’s condition, on the other hand, was not. It could be that Lord Watorej had placed a spell on her or hired someone to do so, causing her to forget her true self. If this were so, then they had little hope of recovering her, and Adren prayed this wasn’t. Considering the actions of the potion maker and what Nadin said about the sealskin’s and the lady’s magic being one and the same, Adren now doubted the sealskin contained a jewel, magic or otherwise, which meant that she had no tool to combat any tampering with the lady’s mind. But, if the jewel didn’t exist, then that meant Lord Watorej hadn’t had a tool to tamper with her mind, so… she took off her pack and pulled out the sealskin.

  “Nadin, do you remember that first magical thing you found in the mansion and then lost track of?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  Nadin swallowed, then looked at the lady. Adren couldn’t tell if this was a signal or if he was reluctant to talk about his magic in front of Lady Watorej. She raised her eyebrows and inclined her head. His response was to pretend to scratch his face while pointing with that hand in the lady’s direction. The lady followed this interaction with interest and, even though Nadin froze when she turned her attention to him, smiled as if she’d just figured out the rules to a secret game.

  “You two think I have some kind of magic in me,” she said.

  “Not think,” Adren said. “Know.” She spread the sealskin out in front of the lady. If anything would remind a selkie of their true nature, it was their skin. The lady opened her mouth as if to speak, frowned, closed it. Her hands began to tremble and she clasped them together, holding them close to her body. G
ood. It was working.

  “I know—” But her mouth snapped shut before she could finish her sentence. All she seemed to be able to do was stare and stare and stare, caught by the magic of the sealskin. Caught by her magic. One of her hands freed itself from the grasp of the other as she reached out, her fingers stretching, stretching, stretching until she could almost touch it—

  “My lady.”

  She pulled her hand back as if she had been burned, and Adren glared at Nadin. He shook his head at her.

  “I know what that is,” said the lady, her tongue loosed from whatever had made her keep it still.

  “Then you know that using it now wouldn’t be a good idea,” Nadin said. Adren realized he had been wiser than she. If the lady had touched the skin, enraptured as she had been, she would have used it to transform, and it was best to hold off until they'd found the ocean. A seal was not fit for the forest.

  “Aye, ’tis so.” The lady sighed, her gaze wistful. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “And it will never be mine again.” It broke Adren’s heart. She wanted to explain everything, especially the part where she and Nadin didn’t really work for Lord Watorej.

  And she would have, too, if the unicorn’s fear had not entered her, a black blade that shot through their connection. She became stiff, and Nadin raised a hand to her, but she couldn’t respond. The fear opened like a deadly flower, shifting to unbridled terror in an instant and growing with such speed that she had to use all her power to keep it from overwhelming her.

  Then the potion maker’s spell struck the unicorn. Adren could feel it working, a pain that the magic within her only heightened. The unicorn fought the spell, and the backlash tore through both it and Adren, causing her to double over.

  “Not again, not again, not again…” Adren couldn’t stop saying it or else she was sure the pain would overwhelm her. “Not again, not again, not again, not again…” Her face became a mask of agony, frozen in its distortion and she could not relax it. Spell-magic attacked the unicorn, attacked the back of Adren’s mind, like the lightning of a thousand storms all striking the same place at the same time. The unicorn had lost control of its body and was rapidly losing control of its mind. It needed her help, but Adren could do nothing. Even if it had been right next to her, this secondhand experience held such strength that it had incapacitated her completely.

  Oh, saints, the spell had found the link between the unicorn and Adren. That was the last of the unicorn that remained out of its control. It poised, that hateful tendril of magic, as if posturing for an audience, then struck. It wrapped itself around the link and clogged it. The unicorn vanished from Adren’s mind. All she could feel there now was a throbbing where the spell had coiled itself. It was so small.

  The release left Adren gasping as if she’d been underwater the whole time and only now had a chance to breathe. She found herself staring at her knees. She straightened, still trying to get her breathing under control, and suffered an immediate attack of vertigo.

  “Adren, what happened?” asked Nadin, now standing himself. So dizzy she was about to fall over, Adren closed her eyes and gestured at him to wait. Once the vertigo had passed, she could speak again.

  “The potion maker put the unicorn under a spell.” Adren ignored the lady’s confused expression and focused on Nadin.

  “You felt that? How?”

  “Never mind how! She found it and she’s controlling it. We need to do something.” The back of her mind felt so empty; as if her thoughts echoed across a vacant theatre. She resisted the urge to curl up and bury her head in her arms.

  “How did she find it? How did she even know about it? Where did she get the ability to do that kind of thing?” Nadin had chosen the worst time to be this thick.

  “Never mind how it happened,” Adren bit off every word short, her jaw clenched in anger. “The unicorn needs our help.” The grief within her touched the edge of the place where the unicorn had been, at first constrained by long habit but then, finding no resistance, it flooded through Adren, larger than she had thought it could be. Tears formed in her eyes and her inability to do much more than slow them made her angry.

  Nadin opened his mouth, but the lady put a hand on his shoulder. For a long, silent moment, Adren struggled to regain some semblance of order within herself.

  “Where is the unicorn? What need we do to help it?” asked the lady, her voice gentle.

  “I don’t know,” Adren whispered. A tear slipped through her control and ran down her cheek, past her mouth to her chin. It pooled, too small even to drip. “I can’t feel it anymore.”

  Chapter Seven

  The place where the unicorn’s emotions used to reside felt like the spot where… Adren lost her grip on the memory and it tumbled into the dark place in her mind. There were too many places, too many things taking up residence inside her. She wondered if she had ever—could ever—only be herself in her own body. The unicorn may have been gone, but the spell still pulsed in a tight knot that Adren couldn’t reach; the dark place was as dark as ever and now there was this magic that slid inside her as if she’d been made to hold it. The fact that it had always been in her, hidden in that dark, fogged place, made her approach it a moment, curious about what else lay underneath before she recoiled. This new magic was trouble enough. The unicorn’s plight was enough. The last thing Adren needed was to release anything else. Not that she was sure she could.

  Around them, the trees dropped needles as a breeze passed through, high enough so Adren could feel little of its movement. The sun had reached its zenith, but clouds hung thick in the sky, having filled it in fits and starts since the rain that morning. Even the air felt thicker, closer, a weight that pressed itself against Adren’s skin. The swaying of trees seemed a roar in her ears, the sun blinding when it broke through. This should not be happening here! Adren inhaled to steady herself, expecting to smell dirt, trees, and the freshness of leaves from the dogwood. All that came to her aid, plus, when the wind was at its height, the scent of seawater. The ocean. Finally, something she could use. She smiled.

  “Do you know the way to the ocean from here?” she asked Lady Watorej. The lady nodded and pointed towards the source of the wind.

  “’Tis but an inlet, and a small one for, but it is the ocean nonetheless. Why—?”

  Adren waved a hand, both at the lady and her own worry. It only worked with the lady. Since the spell had found the connection between Adren and the unicorn, Adren was sure the potion maker would want to trade for the sealskin. Rare as the ingredients were that a unicorn carcass would supply, rare as the free use of the power a unicorn’s horn was to a human, Adren knew how much the potion maker wanted the sealskin and the lady. But that was small consolation. Even if the potion maker didn’t kill the unicorn or maim it in some way, she now knew how much it meant to Adren. There was no way of knowing how cruelly she would treat the unicorn if Adren didn’t give her what she wanted. With that spell, the trauma inflicted would be far more insidious than the physical kind.

  “We lied when we said we were working for Lord Watorej,” Adren said. Blood pounded in her ears. “We’re here to free you from him and the potion maker, but now the potion maker has something precious to me, so you need to tell me everything you know about the two of them and why the potion maker wants you so badly.”

  “Adren!” Nadin was aghast. “Don’t you know how to speak to nobility properly?”

  The lady laughed. “Oh, I am no true noble, only taken in marriage by one.” Nadin sat back, only somewhat mollified. “It may not give much help, but I will tell you what I know.”

  “Anything more than I already know would be a help.”

  “I dearly hope that is so. But where to start?” The lady tapped her chin. “Yes. It’s always the beginning that’s best, isn’t it? It happened like this: before he took me, five years past, my family and I would come to the inlet and become human to rest and feel the sand between our toes. Lord Watorej
watched us. He thought we knew naught of him, but he hides poorly. So, we set a guard of two on our skins, lest he take one. After a time, he would try to speak with me when I was with only one or two of my family. I liked him then. He caused no harm and seemed to have no intent for such. As our friendship grew, it was clear he wanted more and, though I also desired it, I could see no future for us. What human here would accept our union? What could he give that would satisfy the loss of the sea? But he saw it not so and went to the potion maker for help.

  “One day, while I and my brother guarded the skins, a spell fell over me. I fought it with my magic, but in vain, and lost myself. I could do nothing while the potion maker, who had cast the spell, bid me take my skin and run to her while Lord Watorej fought my brother and kept him from me. We then left that place such that none of my family could follow, and he hid from me my skin. And so, even with the spell gone from me, I could do naught but what he wished, for I could not escape him. I had been losing myself in pieces ever since, but whether that is from the doctor’s treatment or the separation from my skin, I cannot say.”

  “That doesn’t explain why she wants you or your skin.” Adren pressed her chin into one hand and rested the elbow the other. “She was willing to pay over five hundred olen for it.”

  “Five hundred olen? How would she even get that kind of money?” asked Nadin. Adren raised an eyebrow. “You mean you…” He turned pale.

  “I got it back,” Adren replied, irritated.

  “Will you return it to Lord Watorej?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Um.”

  “Don’t faint on me, now.”

  Nadin’s face had approached Adren’s natural skin colour. He sat down.