Chapter Thirty-Three

The Aerie

The next morning I was swimming toward the bluff when my hand brushed against my side—and against the stone selkie in my pocket. I’d forgotten to put her in the little cave. I was about to turn back but then stopped. It felt good having her with me as I went inland. I pushed her down deeper in my pocket and swam on.

Nellie was pacing back and forth across the bluff. She waited silently while I swam to the rocks and climbed up beside her. Wildflowers tickled my ankles, and the rocks were speckled with green and gold lichen.

“Ready?” said Nellie.

I nodded.

She took off into a tangle of trees. Dark branches closed overhead, and bushes snagged at my legs. It was all I could do to keep up. Nellie ran like a deer, her bark-brown legs leaping along paths I couldn’t even see. I’d always thought of myself as a fast runner, but now I lumbered along cracking every twig. At one point she stopped, waiting for me to catch up, and I felt my face flush.

The trees thinned; sun sparked off water. We crouched behind bushes and peered out.

A house perched atop a cliff, its back sheltered by trees, its face gazing out to sea. It wasn’t much bigger than Maggie’s. But her house was as tilted and ramshackle as an afterthought, and this one! I didn’t know human houses could look like this, so solid and graceful, its beams rising as strong as fir trees. It looked like it belonged.

Nellie pointed to a room at the top, all windows. “That’s where the glass bookcases are.”

My heart beat faster.

“Wait here while I make sure he didn’t come back early.” She walked to the house and opened the door. “Grandpa?” I heard her walking around inside. Then she was at the door again, waving me in.

Maggie’s house was built to keep the sea out. This house, with its wall of windows, asked the sea in. There was warm polished wood and stone the colors of the rocks where I was raised. Everything was as spare and clean as the wave-washed shore. A picture on the wall made me catch my breath. It was just swirling shapes, red and black, but somehow they came together to make a breaching whale.

“Come upstairs,” called Nellie.

I followed her up a dark, narrow chute. A door swung open, and I blinked in bright sunlight.

The room was nothing but windows on three sides. I could see everything from here: whitecaps breaking against rocks in the strait, a speck of a fishing boat far from land, a wisp of cloud on the horizon. A heron flew past, and I felt like I could swoop out and fly alongside. It was like looking out from an eagle’s aerie.

Nellie’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Which one do you want to see?”

I turned. She was standing in front of a wall made entirely of books. They rose from floor to ceiling, packed tighter than a guillemot colony at nesting time.

I took a step closer, my mouth open in wonder. There were so many! They seemed to shimmer with a kind of magic. Did each one have a different song? Would they sing to me, too? I wanted to open them all. But I had a task to do.

“It needs to be like the hurt one,” I said.

“Then I guess . . .”

One group of books had their own little house of dark wood. They gazed out from behind its glass windows. Nellie opened the door and pulled one out.

“This has the same kind of cover,” she said.

The book fell open. Black markings danced across thick, ivory-colored pages. Nellie placed it in my hands.

I felt like an imposter. How could she have such faith in me? I didn’t know how to heal books. I barely knew how to hold one.

But I had to find a way. Like when I knotted the cedar strands: I’d never seen a sheath before, but I made one all the same. Or when the Moon-calling song rose in my throat to help Mam bind her pelt back on. Those were finding a way for the first time, too.

“Go get the hurt one,” I said.

She ran downstairs and returned with the damaged book. It was still damp. That was probably good; some things got brittle when they dried, like seaweed.

I set the books side by side on the wood floor. I bent over the healthy book and sniffed; I licked the page. Nellie’s eyebrows shot up.

“No salt,” I explained. “We’d better start by rinsing the other in clear water.”

“Rinsing it?” Her voice rose. “I can’t make it wet again! Look at the cover: it’s already fading.”

She was right. There were white streaks on the blue skin.

“If things aren’t made for the ocean, it kills them,” I said. “I think this one’s more like a freshwater fish. It can’t take the salt.” I picked up the book.

Her eyes were huge. “What are you doing?”

“Taking it outside to wash it.”

“Outside?”

“Look,” I said impatiently, “do you want to fix it, or not?”

“But what if Grandpa comes back early?” said Nellie. “What if he sees—”

“Sees what?” boomed a gruff voice behind us.