Chapter Nineteen

What Really Matters

I dragged my feet toward the shore. The cove was almost deserted. A last few selkies slipped into the surf, and then only my clan remained, all back in sealform except for Mam.

Cormac was leaning aggressively toward the others. His words rose over the rumble of the waves. “And I say, you’re not thinking about the dangers. Luck only lasts so long. I was talking with the white selkies and—”

Grandmam’s head swung around. “Aran!” she cried, scooting toward me. Then she stopped, a question in her eyes. The question they all had in their eyes.

I shook my head. Their faces fell; it struck me like an accusation.

A pause, then, “All things in time,” said Lyr.

Mam took a step closer, her eyes huge and aching—

I swiveled away in a spray of pebbles and ran. An instant later Mam’s feet came pounding after me. I put on a burst of speed, and then there was hard rock underfoot, and the slick of seaweed. I hauled myself up the crag at the end of the cove and half jumped, half fell to the other side.

“Oona!” cried Grandmam. “Let him go. He needs time.”

Mam’s steps trudged, slow and heavy, back to the others.

Now that they couldn’t see me, my legs buckled. I fell to my knees and my chest caved in. My fists were stone, cold and hard against my face.

“Are you staying longlimbs to go find him?” Lyr wasn’t even lowering his voice. They must think I’d gone too far to hear.

Mam didn’t answer, but a rock scraped aside—that would be her fetching her pelt—and then came a flap as she spread it out, and the gathering sound of it binding around her. Finally she sighed with such pain and sorrow, the world blurred into gray.

“What will you do?” asked Grandmam.

A pause, then, “I’ll swim back with him,” said Mam. “He’s bound to come find me before nightfall.”

“When he’s done moping?” asked Maura.

The silence sharpened. I could almost see her looking around, wondering what she’d done wrong. Then she said, “I just meant, if he isn’t going to turn, he’ll have to get used to it. That’s all.”

A rough scrape across pebbles, the growl of Mam baring her teeth—

“Enough!” said Lyr. “We’ll sort this out later.”

I sank deeper into the rocks.

“No, Lyr,” said Cormac. “We need to talk now. We all hope Aran will turn, but there’s more at stake. It’s a matter of our survival. Up north, the waters are cleaner, and you can go moons without seeing a human. The white selkies want us to come, but Aran can’t—”

“Enough!” Lyr said, louder.

Cormac defied him. “The white selkies see him as a danger. And frankly, even if he could swim that far—”

Lyr’s roar shook me to my bones.

In the shocked silence, he barked out commands. “Cormac, you’re leaving. Now. Maura. Mist. Go with him. Go to the island with two pines. The rest of us will find you there.”

A splash, and they were gone.

For a long time there was only the sound of the surf. Then Grandmam said gently, “Oona, my dear girl, you have to face it. It’s possible he may never turn.”

I waited for Mam to growl, defending my honor once again. But only a harsh keening reached my ears.

“There now, hush,” said Grandmam.

The terrible sound was Mam crying.

Dark clouds rolled in toward the Spire, swallowing the sky.

No bird, no seal, no leaping fish—there was no one to watch me slip into the surf, under the waves, and away.

I swam underwater except to breathe. The sun was high by the time I reached the island. I pulled out the harness, threw it on the ground, and untangled my knife from the pile. I strapped it on my calf.

I was walking back into the surf when something knocked me off my feet.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” Mam was yelling and crying at the same time, her face shoved up next to mine. “You stupid, stupid pup! You could have died! I searched every inch of the Spire. I thought you’d—”

“I heard what Cormac said,” I shouted back, struggling to my feet. “You’re all going to die if you stay with me!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her jaw clamped shut.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Humans will trap you. Or I’ll slow you down and orcas will get you. They almost did on the way here.”

“We were fine.”

“I saw you shaking!” That stopped her. I stood taller, drawing strength up from the waves. “I won’t live with the clan until I’ve got my pelt.”

“Then I’ll stay with you,” said Mam. “I’ve done it for eleven years. I’ll stay as long as it takes.”

“Stay? I’m not staying. I’m going north, far north, past where the white selkies live.”

She shook her head. “You’d never make it.”

Her certainty cut me to the bone. But in that sudden slash of pain, I saw the truth.

“You don’t think I can do anything. You didn’t think I’d make it to Moon Day. But the harness was cheating. That’s why I didn’t get my pelt. I have to swim north by myself. I’ll find the wise ones who speak with the Moon.”

“Aran! No one even knows if they really exist.”

“Finn says they do.”

Mam froze. Then, interested, “He said that?”

The words spilled out of me, raging with anger and hope. “They live at the top of the world, and they’re magic. They’ll know how I can get my pelt. You can’t stop me. I’m going.”

Mam’s eyes got a quick, calculating look. She took a deep breath. “Aran”—her voice was so calm, it was as if I’d imagined the rest—“what really matters here? It isn’t whether you make the journey; it’s getting your pelt. Right?”

I found myself nodding, even though my heart was shouting at me not to listen to her.

“The wise ones, if they exist, may indeed be our best hope,” she went on. “But I’m the one who should go. I’ll get there faster. I’ll convince them. You stay here with the clan—”

That startled me out of her spell. “No! Humans will find them and stick them in zoos.”

Mam’s eyes widened slightly; there was another quick readjustment. “Then stay behind while the clan comes with me.”

I gasped in amazement. “Stay? Without you?” Mam had never even let me spend a night by myself. Did she really trust me to live on my own?

Her voice kept rolling over me. “I’ll choose a place for you to stay. You must wait for me there, so I can find you again when I return. It’s the only way I can undertake this journey for you. Will you promise?”

This wasn’t giving in. The Moon would look down from the heavens and see me surviving on my own, living off my wits and my strength and my skill. Maybe it would make up for cheating with the harness. My resistance swirled away in the surf.

I’d have to catch all my own food, ride out storms, and outwit predators. There’d be no one to help if I got hurt. Was I ready?

“Yes,” I said. “I promise.”

If I’d known where she was taking me, I’d never have agreed.