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Myna crept out of bed, stumbling in the darkness as she crossed the day’s clothes discarded on the floor. She was too tired for this. It had been a week’s work, emptying her parents’ home and shed, adding to the bonfire the things too far gone to save, and saving the things too precious to burn. She should be sleeping, and instead she tossed and turned in the narrow bed, finding no comfort in Ronan’s arms, no soothing from Ebba’s steady breathing across the room.
Outside, the air was chill, a halo around the moon the sign of tomorrow’s frost—and something else? The old women said a ring around the moon was sign of upheaval to come, but Myna couldn’t imagine any upheaval greater than that which already twisted in her gut.
A few short metres found her at Ronan’s shed. The door always creaked and for a moment Myna hesitated, would it wake him? What about Eb? But the tingling down her neck and across her shoulders pushed all concern of that aside, and she pulled the door in one swift movement.
She held the door open, listening. Her heart was beating so loudly she wasn’t sure she would hear anything over it, but after minutes passed with no movement, she decided all was clear and stole inside, fumbling in the dark to find Ronan’s lantern, and strike a match.
The skin gleamed. If anything it looked wetter than it had that afternoon, when Ronan had declared that after a week it was finally, finally, starting to dry out.
Must be the size of it. His words echoed in her mind. Would never’ve thought a skin would take so long to cure.
Now she was here, face to face with this thing, this object that confirmed all the strangeness that had happened to her. It was a relief, in a way. It proved she had not crossed over into madness, that the conversations with the girl on the beach were real, and the skin she had then been shown—the skin that looked like this one—was real, too.
Repulsion fought with desire and she reached out; let one finger slide across the surface. A warmth tingled along her finger, and she spread out her hand, laying it flat on the surface.
It wasn’t slimy, as she’d expected. It was damp, and warm despite the cold, and Myna wondered for a moment exactly what would happen if she put it on—what would that sensation be like? Morphing from one creature into another, losing limbs and gaining flippers, growing whiskers either side of a newly elongated nose.
‘Can’t sleep?’
She jumped, whirled around to see Ronan, bleary eyed, rugged up in his coat.
‘I... ah. I... no. No. I couldn’t sleep.’
‘You’re as intrigued by this thing as I am, aren’t you?’ He stepped into the narrow confines of the shed, and put an arm around Myna’s shoulders. ‘You’ve been keeping your distance, but you’re just as curious.’
Myna felt a knot in her throat and nodded. What else could she say? How else would she explain being out here, examining it like this?
‘Can we look at it in the morning though? I need my sleep.’ He yawned as though to prove his point, and Myna allowed him to propel her back through the yard and into the house.
Could she do it? Could she take the skin and slip it on? What would she do then? Slip into the sea and never return? That’s how all the myths went—when a selkie got her skin she went back to the ocean and never came back. But Myna had no memory of life in the ocean; she’d never even entered it, save that one fateful day when she learned how much her mother feared the salt water. That reaction had been enough to keep her away for good. What did the ocean feel like? How would she survive in a place that required her to catch fish with her mouth, to eat them raw? She shuddered. She couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her place, not anymore. For better or worse, when Dyllis had stolen her from the shore she’d committed Myna to a life on solid ground, surrounded by air, in a body that had legs and arms and hands and feet.
‘Cold?’ Ronan mistook her shiver and pulled her closer, rubbing one arm with his hand. ‘Let’s get back to bed.’
She nodded again, grateful for the arms he wrapped around her as she snuggled in close, but still unable to sleep with all the what if’s circling her mind.
And then there was the girl on the beach, the one who had a skin just like hers. What would she say if she knew Myna was thinking of rejecting it? How would she feel to learn that her mother had decided to stick with the child she knew, the child she’d already began to raise, and neglect the child she’d been told had died?
