Chapter Ten

Like All the Rest

Mam stared out across the waves. I could feel the story starting to gather, like the sky darkening with a coming storm. When she spoke again, her voice was different and strange.

“There are those who say longlimbs is only for special rites. They say, in this day of boats and planes, we can’t risk being discovered. But I always loved longlimbs. When I was younger I’d sneak away, slip off my pelt, and spend hours dancing. One night I fell asleep on shore in a tangle of seaweed. Then I sensed someone watching and my eyes flew open. It was a man. I’d never seen anyone so handsome.”

“Did you run?” I asked. Because everyone knows that’s what you’re supposed to do in that situation: grab your pelt and run, or swim away if you can.

She shook her head. “The night was silver with moonglow. I wasn’t afraid.”

“Was his face furry?”

“No, it was smooth. The hair on his head was as golden as the sun.”

I hugged my knees into my chest. “Did he have . . . skinny arms?”

“Skinny? They were so strong, the sight of them made me catch my breath.” Her flipper traced a circle on the stones. “He insisted on putting his coat around me and we talked until the Moon sank low. Once he left I pulled my pelt from its hiding place and swam home, thinking I’d never see him again. But the next night I went back and there he was. And the next night, and the next.

“Before long we were swimming together. I didn’t even hide my pelt away. When I was with him, I only wanted to be in longlimbs. Each night I stayed longer. And then one morning I didn’t leave.

“He built us what they call a house, like a cave made of wood. Each day he went off fishing in his boat, and each night he came home to me. He built a wooden chest and I set my pelt inside. Now and again he’d ask me to change and we’d swim together, selkie and man, but as time went on, my pelt just stayed in the chest.”

“You didn’t swim?” I asked.

“I swam in longlimbs near the house. I had no wish to go very far.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Why would anyone swim with legs if they had a choice?

“Then I was pregnant. We sang to you as you grew in my belly, my songs of the sea and his songs of the land. He built a cradle shaped like a boat. We were happy.

“And yet, mornings, after his boat puttered away, the waves called to me stronger than ever before. I swam dawn to dusk, forsaking all else, and finally I realized why: a selkie pup needs the rhythms of the deep salt sea in his blood. To do right by you, I needed my pelt.

“I climbed to the house, opened the chest—” Her voice was trembling. She stopped and took a deep breath. “My dapple-gray pelt, my path to the sea: it was gone.”

“No!” I said.

But Mam nodded.

“That night, when he came home, I ran up and told him about my pelt. He got a knowing look and said, ‘You won’t be needing that anymore now, will you?’

“My heart split in two. Oh, I’d heard the old songs with their warnings, but I’d thought he was different. How foolish I’d been! He was like all the rest. He stole my pelt so I couldn’t swim away. When you were born, would he steal your pelt, too? You’d be trapped on land forever. You’d never know your selkie soul.”

Mam shuddered; her fear echoed down my spine, and I shuddered, too.

Her words came faster. “For your sake, I pretended to agree with him. But his arms felt different, like a net holding me down. That night I lay unsleeping by his side. Come morning, as soon as he sailed away, I ripped that house apart in a frenzy: dumping out drawers, prying up floorboards, climbing into the rafters. At day’s end, I cleaned it all up and put my smiling mask back on. Day after day I searched. You kicked in my belly as if to say, ‘Hurry!’

“Finally, I wrenched the doorstone aside. There, in a filthy, shallow hole, lay my pelt. I ran to the shore as fast as I could with my great round belly. I sat in the shallows and tried to tug the pelt on. How tight it had grown! I let out all my breath and squeezed—and then I was looking out from my sea eyes once again. I dove.”

My heart was pounding. “You left so I’d be a selkie,” I said, trying to sort it out.

“You are a selkie. One day your pelt will come and you’ll dive deep and strong and true.”

“But . . .” I didn’t want to say it. “Are there some . . . ? Do some . . . ?”

Her voice grew hard and insistent. “It can happen. Some children take after the human parent. They’re left on shore with human kin. But I knew you were a selkie then. I feel it now. It’s your nature, Aran. Your destiny.”

She was so confident. And yet . . .

“One of my eyes is blue,” I said.

“And the other is brown.”

“My hair has light spots.”

She stared at me fiercely. “You don’t need to drink fresh water, do you? Humans do. And you never get cold. That’s proof enough right there.”

“They get cold?”

For the first time since telling me the truth, she smiled. “Why else would they wear those ridiculous clothes?”

Clothes—so that was the baggy extra skin.

The surf splashed over my legs and I looked down. They looked different. My whole body looked different.

I picked up a stone and hurled it into the waves.

Later, as night thickened around us, Mam laid her head on the rocks. I stretched out higher up the shore. I was grateful we were spending the night here, away from the rest of the clan. The tide turned and began to ebb away. . . .

I was swimming, but my body felt all wrong. Geysers of spray splashed up from my arms. Why were they so clumsy? A wrinkled orange hide covered my skin, sagging and shifting as I moved. Its weight was pulling me down like stone. I sank below the waves into darkness, deeper and deeper, until my chest was bursting. I had to get the hide off, now! I dug my fingers in and tugged, hard, and it peeled away— My skin came with it. I’d stripped myself like a fish. And blood brings sharks—

I startled awake in darkness, gasping for air. Then I felt the hard rocks under my back. I heard the waves and Mam’s breath.

Mam kept saying my pelt would come soon, that all I had to do was wait. But how could I wait now that I knew what was lurking inside me? Any day it could start spreading like eelgrass, crowding out the rest of me, until nothing was left but a greedy, blackhearted, two-legged man.

A faint glow showed where the Moon was hiding behind a bank of clouds. Did she even know I was here? I wanted to reach up and rip the clouds away. Then maybe she’d finally see me. She’d remember she left me here, stuck in this skin.