| |
‘You already have it.’ Ebba found her mother donning her coat, ready to head out the door to visit Wayanna herself.
Myna blinked at her, her face blank.
‘I spoke to Wayanna. She said you already have your skin.’
Myna shook her head.
‘Don’t lie to me!’ Ebba’s throat was raw from the fury.
‘I’m not lying, Eb.’ Myna closed her eyes and Ebba realised how tired her mother looked.
‘But Wayanna said you’d found it.’
‘I did.’ Myna nodded. ‘But I don’t have it anymore.’
Ebba frowned. ‘Then where is it?’
‘I asked your father to hide it.’
Ebba’s mouth dropped open for the second time that night. She wasn’t sure she understood the words escaping her mother’s mouth.
Myna sighed, removing her coat and hanging it back up on the peg.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said, removing the hot kettle from the hob, and putting some tea leaves in the pot.
‘I’ve already told you what happens when I go into the sea without a skin. Imagine what would have happened if I’d had one. I’d be gone. You would’ve been left, at three years of age, without a mother. Your father without a wife. I couldn’t do that to you, or him, or to me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Myna sighed again. ‘I missed seeing one daughter grow up. I didn’t even know she was alive until I had you. I know that if I go back to the sea I won’t return; generations of stories can’t be wrong about that. I couldn’t miss those years with you.’
‘And what now?’ Ebba put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m grown up now. There’s nothing to stop you now.’
Myna shook her head and Ebba realised there were tears in the corner of her mother’s eyes.
‘What else will I miss? Seeing you marry, meeting your children? I discovered as an adult that my family was not mine—that I’d been stolen from my true family. How can I leave the family that is mine, the husband I love, the daughter—my own flesh and blood—I gave birth to?’
‘You’d be going back to family.’
‘Family I don’t know.’ Myna shook her head. ‘Why are you pushing this? Do you want me to leave?’
Ebba shrugged. ‘You’re always so sad. All my life you’ve been sad, always yearning for something more than Father and I can give. I used to think if I changed you’d be happier. Can you imagine how good it was to learn that your sadness was nothing to do with my lack? And now there is a solution. Your yearning could come to an end.’
But Myna shook her head again. ‘Don’t you see? I would always be yearning, if not for the sea, then for you and your father. I don’t want a split life—half in the sea, and half on land. I have to pick one. And this is the one I’ve chosen.’
‘You’ve always lived a half-life, Mother. Your body may be on land, but your heart is always in the ocean.’ Ebba crossed her arms. ‘You’re just afraid, and you’re using Father and me as an excuse.’
She turned and stormed back out the door, winding her way along the track, away from the beach, tears pouring down her face. Why can’t she see? Why do I have to be mother to my own mother? As Ebba threw herself to the ground, rolling onto her back to gaze up at the stars, she knew one thing. If she had her own skin she’d be joining her sister, not pining away on land making everyone else’s life a misery.
