Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  Parking near Dr. Linares’ office is easy, perhaps more easy than I’d like. I’m almost an hour early for my appointment, and at last, now that I’m here, the situation begins to sink in, weighing me down. My lingering in the car is not so much a conscious decision as an autonomic response to my sudden feeling of extreme inertia. The parking lot looks exactly the same as it did two weeks ago, when I came in for my forty-year exam, and yet I’m the one who’s different, completely out of sorts.

  Keep it together, I urge. Instinctively I reach toward my pocket for an anti-anxiety pill, but it’s been a month since I maxed out the prescription, and my fingers find nothing but lint. The fact that the doctor scheduled an appointment to review your results doesn’t necessarily mean something bad, I tell myself. But it’s difficult to take myself seriously.

  Walking with monotone numbness, I make it to the front entrance, enter the elevator that will usher me to the medical office, and take a deep breath.

  Again operating from habit, I seek the companionship of Hydrargyros on the ride up. Again I come up empty-handed. It’s been a week since I bid my even-keeled companion farewell.

  I greet the receptionist, who asks me to repeat my name because I mumble it the first time. With a critical gaze, she checks me in and advises me I’ll be called shortly.

  I sit and wait.

  Memories of previous visits to this office are unavoidable. Except for the most recent one, they all include Jann. Dear, dear Jann. My now ex-wife. It’s been six months since the divorce was finalized. Does this deserve a commemoration of some kind, I wonder? Does a divorce warrant an anniversary?

  Our separation was almost immediate upon returning home. I made several attempts at reparations, promising that the source of my distraction had been dealt with, but—wily Jann, observant Jann—she sensed I was lying and dutifully rejected my overtures. She was right, but not in the way she thought. It wasn’t future-me, that time, that had been consuming my energy, but present-me’s obsession with understanding how it all went wrong. I think back to—

  My name is called out over the intercom.

  I shuffle into Dr. Linares’ office.

  “How are we today?” she says, looking up from the touchscreen on her desk.

  “Huh. Not bad.”

  “Please, sit.”

  I do so.

  “Thank you for making the time to see me,” she says. Her expression is friendly, calm—studied?

  As though I really had a choice, I don’t say. “Of course.”

  “Before we proceed to review your results, I’d like to ask you a few questions that’ll give me a better context for the data.”

  “Uh,” I say. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Would it be fair to say that you’ve experienced several stress-inducing events over the last six months?”

  My more morbid side wonders if this is the equivalent of physician’s humour. “You could say that,” I reply.

  Prompted by the doctor’s question, the last half year plays out before me with startling clarity. Obsessive day after obsessive day, compulsive week after compulsive week, I directed Hydrargyros to analyze the problem of why my system had broken down, and all the while the rest of my life fell into disrepair: my remissness at the University provoked my dismissal, the divorce papers came in, I took to drink and medication, ghosted on the few remaining friends who reached out to offer moral support, defaulted on my mortgage, and had to move into a small apartment. None of it mattered. I just wanted an explanation. Hydrargyros and I segmented my life into chapters using clustering algorithms, ran every manner of stochastic retro-predictive analyses, parsed countless causal chains. And at last, on a crisp fall day in the late afternoon, with the pent-up sugar in the sap of the maple trees in my new neighbourhood causing their leaves to blaze auburn-red with the declining sun, at last, we arrived at an answer.

  Of course.

  So obvious, in hindsight.

  The false assumption of personality matrix cohesion.

  In other words, I changed.

  Each decision I had made based on foreknowledge of how things were to turn out altered me, shaped me into a different person, so the way I responded to circumstances itself changed. A vast model of non-linear concatenations centred around an endlessly self-refracting variable—me.

  It was bound to collapse.

  “And how would you say you’ve coped?” Dr. Linares says, bringing me back to the present. She leans forward.

  Once I possessed the knowledge I’d sought, I had expected to find relief, liberation. Instead, I’d felt barren, completely bereft of closure, thoroughly un-enlightened.

  “For a while, it was a bit of a struggle.” I recline back in my chair.

  She nods. “Your insurance benefits include counselling, if that’s something you’d like to explore.”

  Counselling. I close my eyes, wondering if this is the fate that befell future-me. Did he succumb to despair? An end is approaching, he said. A voluntary end, perhaps? “I appreciate the offer,” I say vaguely.

  And then unexpectedly her face relaxes and her eyes smile. An invisible wall has come down. “I can see something is bothering you,” she says. “Try to take a deep breath and let it out. I’m here to help, if only you’ll let me.”

  I hear warmth in those words, genuine caring. I want to tell her of my fears, of my sense of being marooned. But how can I explain to someone who’s never had the advantage of future knowledge? “I . . .” I lose myself, thinking about future-me, somewhere up there in the timeline, always knowing more than I do, always several steps ahead.

  “It’s okay,” she reassures. “Just being here in the moment with me is enough for now. You don’t have to speak if you don’t wish.”

  Those words do something to me. A part of me still wonders about the news that she’s leading me toward, the prognosis we’re building up to, but my mood is curiously altered. I pass from anxiety to genuine calm. Naturally, I’m skeptical at first, since someone in my situation might well rollercoaster from glumness to elation and back again, but something about this feels different—like it’s a new type of happiness that’s here to stay. With every part of my being, I want it to stick. I believe it will.

  And then it dawns on me.

  I’m thinking about my future now, rather than being preoccupied with future-me.

  He doesn’t matter. He never did. Future-me is beyond my reach—and in the most important sense, even when I could talk to him, always was.

  “Good,” Dr. Linares says, as though sensing the shift in my demeanour. “Are you ready to review your results?”

  This moment, this present, is all I have to work with.

  I decide it’s enough, and so it is.

  Let the work begin.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: Control won’t pre-empt regrets, so relax, and use that energy to forge deeper connections with those around you. Make yourself vulnerable. Do your best to be worthy of the love in your life always, rather than taking it for granted. Remember: panta rei. Therefore: amor fati.

  The Selkie’s Skin

  Bev Geddes

  I was with friends the day it began. We had come ashore on a sandy stretch of beach protected by a headland of jutting rocks. Waves broke wildly against them, sending flumes of water skyward. No human came to this beach for there were few limpets to collect for bait and the tide was strong, not easily navigated by the small coracles the villagers used for fishing.

  We dove through emerald waters, laughing as the sun sparkled silver discs across the surface. We shouldn’t have come ashore during the day. It was forbidden. Only when night stretched shadows along the sand was it truly safe for us to leave the sea. The villagers were a superstitious lot. They feared the darkness and things that blossomed along with the full m
oon. That suited us fine. Most days. But today was free of clouds and rain and I longed to feel the sun against my skin. We had lingered on the rocks for hours until the bone-white beach beckoned. It didn’t take much to convince my friends to accompany me.

  Six of us dragged ourselves out of the water onto that warm shore and shrugged out of our skins. I heard it said once by a villager, when he didn’t know I rested just beyond sight, that selkies are fallen angels, forgiven by God, but forever cast out of Heaven. This was foolishness, of course, but such is the belief of those who care only for their own small ways.

  We delighted in the warmth of the sun on our naked forms. Human skin is much thinner than seal pelt and the wind tickles soft bellies and sand scrunches beneath toes in the most delightful of ways. We danced in a circle and sang as daylight faded on the horizon, unaware that we had been heard and were no longer alone on that beach.

  The first warning something was amiss came from the sky. The gulls, which had been flying high like scraps of cloud, swooped toward the earth and circled above our seal skins piled next to a rock pool on the headland.

  Awareness stirred. A scent on the wind. A dark energy. I cried out, sending everyone scrambling for their skins. One by one, they slipped beneath the waves and were gone without a backward glance. I reached the rock last, stumbling through the sand on two legs that wouldn’t move as I wanted them to, salt tears sheeting my cheeks.

  “No. No. No,” I cried.

  There was nothing there. My beautiful skin, silver-grey and soft, was gone.

  I looked up into the pale blue eyes of a human man. He took in my form hungrily and, for the first time, I covered myself, ashamed of what I was. His judgment hung in the air. So too, did his lust.

  He held my selkie skin in one hand.

  “Please,” I wept, my tongue awkward around human words. “Please, give me back my skin. I can’t return home beneath the waves without it. My family is there. Have pity. Give me back my skin.”

  The man’s eyes softened with kindness for a moment, and my heart leapt at the sight, but they quickly clouded over with desire. He turned away and began marching up the beach, his broad shoulders set.

  “I will nae give ye back yer skin,” he said. “Ye’ll come wi’ me and be my wife. I’ll treat ye kind enough and not abuse ye, but ye’ll take on my ways and do as I say.” He glanced back at where I stood. “I’ll call ye Ailish. ‘Twas my wife’s name afore she died in childbirth, taking our bairn with her.”

  The man’s eyes darkened and he frowned as though angry with himself for saying so much.

  “Tis an honour, and ye’ll do well to remember tha’.” He strode away from me as though nothing else needed to be said.

  I watched his steady progress up the beach and onto the rocks, heading inland. My heart wilted like seaweed on the shore. But the body doesn’t always die when the heart is broken and I couldn’t return to the sea as I was. I followed, weeping.

  The man led me to a small croft nestled between two hills close to the beach. I took in the simple walls made of fieldstone and the ratty thatched roof. A few chickens scratched by the door. I heard the lowing of a nearby cow, but little else, save the chirr of crickets. A thin ribbon of smoke trailed from the chimney pot and light glowed in the windows as night dropped down.

  I willed myself forward, legs trembling from the unaccustomed walking, as the man pushed open the front door and waved me through impatiently. I noticed one eye twitching as he did so, and his fingers tightened on the seal skin in his hands. I stumbled through, feeling the pelt brush against my arm as I passed. Tingling. Begging to be donned once more.

  “Wha’s this, then?”

  An old woman dragged herself up from a chair perched close to the hearth, dropping the ladle she had been using to stir whatever was bubbling in the pot above the peat fire.

  “Dinna fesh yerself, Mam. ‘Tis a selkie lass I found down on the beach jus’ now when I was searching for driftwood fer the fence.”

  The man looked down at his feet and shifted back and forth beneath his mother’s black stare.

  “And I’m keeping her,” he added belligerently.

  The old woman narrowed her eyes and stepped forward, drawing the shawl from her shoulders and draping it across mine. “Ye’ve never had enough sense to lick up a spill, Willy-boy. Ye’ve taken wha’ is nae yours and against her will, if I’m nae mistaking the tears. There’ll be hell to pay for it. Give her back her skin and let her return to the sea where she belongs afore she curses ye.”

  “She’s but a lass. There’s nowt she can do. I will take her as my wife and you’ll teach her to be one of us. She’ll forget who she once was, soon enough.”

  “A lassie doesna forget her soul, William. Ye may take her selkie ways from her, by ye canna touch her soul.”

  “She’s a selkie, old woman. She hasn’t a soul.”

  The woman just stared sadly at me, shaking her head. “That I dunna believe, son,” she said. “But ye will have yer way, I ken well enough. I’ll teach her what I know, but there is heartbreak here for all, mark my words.” And with that, the woman took my hands in her own and led me back behind a curtain to the sleeping area of the tiny croft.

  True to her word, the woman taught me to spin and cook and mend. She helped me with the human words that scratched and grated as they left my lips, and how to dress modestly, and to look down rather than gaze directly into the eyes of another. Their ways were not my ways, but I learned.

  The man didn’t touch me. I’m not sure if the old woman forbade it, but I think that must be so, for early each morning he would leave in a right temper and storm off to spend the days fishing in his boat and the evenings drinking with the men of the village.

  Many a curious neighbour came to call, for word spreads quickly in such a place. The old woman sent them off with a curt hand, muttering to herself how this was no good for anyone.

  She was strict with me and frowned at my clumsiness. She wouldn’t allow me to sing in my own tongue as I battled with the prickly skeins of wool or stirred the watery seaweed soups.

  “Ungrateful,” she hissed as I pushed away plates of fish cooked until tasteless, so unlike the fresh mouthfuls of juicy raw cod I was used to. I nibbled on a piece of oat cake, not because hunger drove me, but because the woman sat glaring at me until I choked down a few mouthfuls.

  Over time, I felt my shoulders bow beneath the demands of donning human ways. All that was light and breezy in me disappeared to a place I could no longer reach. I walked wrong. I spoke oddly. My hands fumbled and my movements were too slow.

  But at night, when the moon silvered the surface of the ocean, I slipped out of the croft and away from my snoring captors and crept to the sandy beach. Standing by the shore, I listened to the water purl against the stones and sand and breathed in the salty air. The weight of what I had become lightened and lifted.

  I sighed, calling out for my family until sleek heads popped up from beneath the waves, their almond eyes shining in the moonlight.

  “Take me with you,” I begged in selkie tongue as they swam closer. “Take me home.”

  Each night, their answer was the same. “Find your skin and we will come for you. It is the only way.”

  I dropped my head into my hands for, although I had looked endlessly, I couldn’t find where it had been hidden.

  “There must be another way. For even if I do find my skin, I’m not sure it will fit anymore. A sadness dwells inside me. It prickles and sticks and its roots have pierced my soul. I do not belong here.”

  My selkie friends would nod sadly and slide beneath the waves.

  “Neither, it seems, do I belong with you, my anam cara.”

  I stood and stumbled away from the ocean, certain I was consigned to walk between the worlds forever and belong nowhere.

  On that endles
s night, I sat with the wind and the stars and gave over to the thought of throwing myself off the headland. Death whispered in my ear. Death’s voice was gentle and I believe, even now, that it was simply lonely for the touch of a friendly hand.

  What stopped me from following its persuasions, I’m not sure. All I know is a light flickered somewhere deep in my heart, plucking at my resolve. It spoke, faded, then gathered itself and spoke again. It was not my time. Not yet.

  I wandered back to the croft in the bruised silence of night and crept behind the curtain onto my cot, pulling the thin blanket over me. And slept.

  I awoke early, for there was rain on the roof and a chill wind rattled the window panes and scurried down the chimney, causing the fire to lap in on itself with a muffled roar. The old woman was already up pulling a bannock from the pan. William was nowhere to be seen.

  “Up, lazy girl. There’s much to be done today and ye’ve slept long enough.”

  I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and pulled the shawl around my shoulders, shivering in the damp air.

  “Where’s William?” I asked, accepting the proffered cup of tea from the woman’s blue-veined hands.

  The woman glanced back at the fire, her shoulders stiffening. “He’s gone to the kirk to talk to the minister.” Turning, she glared at me. “To set a date for yer marriage, girl. He says he’s waited long enough and he would have ye to wife sooner than later. I’ve tried, ye ken. Tried to talk him away from this, to send ye back where ye belong, but he will nae have it.”

  “I cannot,” I whispered hoarsely. “I cannot be married.”

  The old woman nodded. “They will nae have it either. Ye’ll have ta be baptized first. But they say ye hae no soul. The minister would put his eyes out afore he does such a thing. And if ye canna marry, William will have ye anyways and then both will be properly shunned by the village. I’ll nae have that.”