Chapter Forty-Five

The Torrent

I ran and the land felt wrong under my feet and the air burned my lungs. I needed to be in the water away from houses and humans and smoke. I needed to be with my kin.

Was the story true?

It had our ritual greeting: Come to me! Come! That woman had no webbing, like I had no webbing. Her eyes were like theirs. She was half-selkie, I knew it, and she loved her kin, and she loved that man, and they killed him. Ripped off his flesh like salmon skin and left a pile of bones.

And my clan? At the first hint of humans, they’d always rushed me into hiding. I’d thought they were just protecting me. But it was more than that. They couldn’t risk being discovered. How far would they go to keep their existence a secret?

I shivered and stumbled as I ran. I’d begged for that story, but it wasn’t about turning at all. It was a warning. About what happens if a half-selkie never turns.

Somewhere behind me, Nellie called, “Aran!” I glanced over my shoulder. There was a flash of movement back in the trees. “Aran, wait!”

That pile of bones at the foot of the pier. The man died. The selkies never came back. And that woman, the half-selkie, now she had no one.

I ran faster. The forest was a whirlwind of whipping branches and cracking twigs. The low roar of surf came through thinning trees. I’d dive in and never see Nellie again—

Her hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me around. “You’re one of them!” she cried.

My breath scraped the air like stone on stone.

“You’re a selkie!” Nellie was smiling, a strange brightness in her eyes, like this was some kind of game. “I should have known. Remember how I thought you were a seal, that first time I saw you? And when I was drowning and you carried me to the rocks—no kid can swim like that! And the way you have to be so secret—”

I had to make her stop. I had to get away. But my feet were stuck to the ground.

“And the way you’re so desperate to find stories about selkies, and how you said the one today was a lie, like you knew—”

Heat was rising inside me. Nellie’s words were like dry wood tossed on a fire, sparking and ready to catch.

“You knew because you’re one of them. You’re a selkie, aren’t you? Change for me! Show me how you do it!” She was so eager, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like all I had to do was reach behind the closest rock and pull out a pelt—

It all burst into roaring flame. “Go away!” I shouted. Fire burned through my veins, and the world turned a searing, blinding red. “Go away. GO AWAY!”

But my voice faded, and Nellie was still there. She took a deep breath. Her eyes were thoughtful, figuring it out.

Now I could see too clearly. The red rage was slipping away. I tried to grab it back, so I wouldn’t have to think or feel.

“That woman in the story,” said Nellie. “The selkies were her family, weren’t they?”

I gulped.

“But she didn’t leave with them.” Her voice dropped. “Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe . . .”

“She didn’t have a pelt,” I said.

It was like a stick shifting in a logjam. The dam shuddered and burst, and the truth came rushing out in a wild, whirling torrent. “I don’t have a pelt, either!” I cried. “I’m the only one in my clan in longlimbs and I can’t keep up. I can’t go on the long journeys or even the hunts, and Mam kept saying it would come any day, but it never did. And then the clan came back—”

I told her how the man came to our haulout, and I found out about my father, and how I’d counted on Moon Day. About Finn and the fight and the pelt cave, and how Mam insisted on swimming north to the wise ones instead of me. How she should have been back by the second full Moon, and I knew she was in danger. . . .

Nellie listened until it was all out. Every last, terrible word.

We walked from the trees to the top of the bluff. I sat beside her in the rain.

“You need your family,” she said, soft but determined.

I nodded.

“And your pelt.” She turned and looked into my eyes. “I’ll be your partner. We’ll figure it out together.”

“No. Not after that story. What if you’re with me and . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I was seeing the attack again, but this time the arms rising from the water were Nellie’s, thin and brown.

“Selkies aren’t like that,” she said firmly. “You said so yourself. And you know better than some stupid story.”

I should refuse. I should swim away and never see her again. But to have her by my side, not to be alone with the searching anymore . . .

“You wouldn’t tell?” I said.

She shook her head. “What do you think I am?”

In the old days, I would have said, human. But now I put my hand on hers, on the rain-speckled grass, and said, “My friend.”