Adrift (18 page)

Dawn found us packing the horses for the return back to the cottage.  Kip inspected our work like a professional, his mouth occupied with what seemed to me to be an entire tree-branch.  I paused in buckling up Saffron’s girth to scratch his head.  “You’re such a goofy boy, Kip.”

The golden dog wagged his tail happily and trotted off, to inspect Devin’s packing no doubt.

The morning air was nippy.  I rubbed my hands together, trying to warm them enough to get the small buckles on Saffron’s bridle to fasten together smoothly.  The leather was stiff, and it didn’t help that my fingers were too cold to do much more than make a fumbling attempt at fastening the buckles.

“Here,” Devin said, appearing at my side.  He lifted his shirt and tucked my icy hands against the warmth of his belly.

“Don’t!” I protested, curling my fingers up.  “My hands are too cold!”

Devin laughed.  “Anything to get you warm.”

I felt my cheeks burn, aware of the smooth and soft skin under my fingertips.  I glanced up at Devin, shyly.  He smiled down at me, pulling me into a hug.  He pulled my hands up to his mouth and brushed his lips against the knuckles.  I shivered at the delicate touch.

Devin smiled down at me, fully aware of the effect he was having on me.  He brushed my hair back with a lingering finger.  I swayed towards him.

“Time to go,” Devin announced abruptly.  His eyes twinkled wickedly at me.  He ducked my half-hearted blow in his direction and pressed a firm kiss against my lips.  “There, that will have to hold you until we get you back home.”

Home.  I shivered in delight.  He had called Maura’s house my home.

We rode home in silence.  This time the silence was companionable.  Devin smiled at me from the lofty height of his horse.  There was a tenderness in his expression that brought a lump to my throat.  I wanted to throw my arms around him and never let go, just spend my life listening to his heart beating against my ear.  I wanted to linger in his embrace, feel his fingers stroke through my hair.

The bags containing the berries hung precariously from my saddle.  I prayed that they were not becoming a sodden, mushed, mess, though Devin reassured me that, if that did happen, Maura would just make the world’s best wild strawberry jam.

My mouth watered at the thought.

We arrived back at the cottage late in the afternoon.  The day had warmed up, despite its chilly beginnings.  I pulled my sweater off over my head before unsaddling Saffron, reveling in the touch of the sun against the skin of my arms.  I waved my arms in the air, happy as a cat in the warmth.  I caught Devin grinning at my antics and smiled shyly back at him.  I couldn’t get used to the idea that all of this was real, that Devin actually cared for me… no, that he actually loved me, as I loved him.

The world couldn’t be more beautiful.

Maura greeted us with a knowing smile that sent the dimples in her cheeks flashing.  I blushed hotly under her gaze, uncomfortable with her knowing that I had been kissing her son-- that I loved him with all my heart.

“I knew he would come around, given time,” she murmured in my ear, giving me an affectionate hug.  I squeezed her back, enjoying her motherliness. 

Devin ducked down to peck her on the cheek and presented her with the berry bags.  “Two bags full of strawberries,” He announced.  “I hope that’s enough.”

“Oh, gracious,” Maura laughed, her blue eyes twinkling.  “I should hope so.  There’s enough here for eating and for jam, too.  You two must have worked your fingers to the bone.”  She winked at me. 

I could feel my ears turning red.  “Um, I’m going to go take a shower,” I mumbled.  I stumbled past Devin and Maura.  They laughed at my discomfit. 

Dinner was a chicken pie, hot and homemade and delicious.  Maura served it with a salad dotted with wild strawberries peeping through the baby spinach leaves.  For desert there was strawberry-rhubarb cobbler.  I watched Devin and Maura playfully banter together, smiling and laughing together and felt warmth spread through my body.  It was good to be home.  It felt like home, here with the two people I loved.

Chapter:
 
Fifteen

 
Maura hadn’t exactly let things slide while Devin and I were gone, but there was plenty of work waiting for me to get it done.  Weeds had obviously taken my absence as permission to run rampant and I spent much of the next morning blissfully covered in mud, yanking the little buggers out by their roots.

One of Maura’s Muscovy hens had hatched out a litter, while we were gone, and she proudly paraded her family of nine ducklings around the garden beds, teaching the little things how to hunt for slugs and other delicacies.  I sat back on my heels to watch them, laughing at their awkward antics.  The little ducklings were surprisingly fast.  They zipped around the garden beds like little fluffy crickets, dashing this way and that after every little grasshopper and moth.

The garden was full of ripe bounty.  Once the weeding was conquered there were rows of greens and vegetables just waiting for me to gather them together and present them to Maura for a new life in the shape of delicacies that would have made the five star restaurants of New York City jealous.  There was nothing like eating a tomato fresh out of the garden, or enjoying a fresh green bean and feta cheese salad with dinner.

There were eggs to gather, fruit to be picked, wool to be carded.  I didn’t have a second to sit and rest, and that’s the way I liked it.

“Dad would have loved it here,” I thought to myself, thinking about him for the first time without a lump of sadness in my throat.  Dad would have loved it here, and he would be happy, if he knew I was here, doing the things I loved, taken care of.

“I’m happy, Dad,” I whispered.  “For the first time in a long time, I really am happy.”

My mother was waiting for me on the other side of sleep. 

As always, I was struck by how very young she appeared.  She sat quietly, a smile touching her full lips, her dark curls tumbling down her back.  She dangled her legs in the water, letting her bare feet splash quietly.  Her smile widened as I approached her, and she patted the rock beside her.  I obediently sat next to her, painfully aware that I was all to awkward and human next to her pixie-like delicacy.

She clasped my hand in hers, staring up in my face.  Startled, I realized that, for once, her hands were empty.  Was she done, then?  Had she completed the seal skin that she had so long worked so hard on for me?  I didn’t see anything of that nature around her.

Instead, my mother gently stroked my hair with one hand, the other hand still clasping mine.  I sighed under her little, cold, hands.  For the first time she actually felt like she could be a mother, not just any mother, but my mother.  She smiled at me and pressed a kiss against my forehead.

I awoke smiling.

I was up to my elbows in dishwater, listening to Maura humming to herself in the other room, while I did the evening dishes from dinner.  Devin hadn’t shown up for dinner, so I had my other ear tuned in the direction of town.

The sun was still up, apparently the norm for Canada in the summer, even though it was growing late.

At first, I thought I was beginning to dream of Faerie, even when waking, then I realized that the music, streaming through the open window, was the soft croons of Devin’s violin.  The song he was playing was gentle and sad.  I forgot the dishes I was washing.  I was transfixed, hearing in the music the heartbreak and the breathing sorrows of the sea.

I wiped tears off of my face with my forearms, hands dripping bubbles.  I looked up to see Devin coming in through the garden door.

He dropped his violin on the table and placed his arms around my waist, pressing his face in my hair.

“That was very beautiful,” I murmured, rinsing out a glass.  “What do you call it?”

Devin kissed my cheek, brushing a tendril of hair behind my ear.

“I wrote it for you, sweet.  I call it ‘The Selkie Bride.’”

I felt my face grow hot and the cup I was washing slid out of my hands.

“Will you?” He asked.

I tried to steady my voice.  “Will I what?”

Maura’s humming from the other room had halted and I was aware of the electricity in the air. 

“Will you be my ‘Selkie Bride’?”

I turned to face him, searching his face—oh, so serious!  How I loved him!

 
“Oh, Devin!” I could not finished a thought, but I didn’t need to.  This meant he truly loved and trusted me now—that he accepted the selkie part of me.  He was ready for us to have a real relationship, to admit out loud what was between us.  He was announcing to me and the world that he was ready to face his destiny, and he wanted me, to be a part of it.

Devin silenced anything I would have said by sweeping me into his arms for an eager kiss.

“I love you,” he whispered into my ear.

“I love you, too,” I whispered, my heart overflowing with him.

So, why was Omyn there whenever I closed my eyes?

Chapter Sixteen

It was waiting on the tree limb outside my window when I woke.  I knew that it would be there.  There was something of her in the air, some tang of sea and salt, with the softness all around that I associated with my mother.

A seal skin coat, my ticket to faerie, to my mother, to a whole new life.

I had watched her make it in my dreams, from the first time I had seen her in that cottage, and yet, as I held it in my hands, it seemed that no construct of earth or heaven could have made such a thing.  It was light under my fingers, but warmth radiated from it, and something else--- yes, that breath of Faerie, of power, humming beneath it all.

I rubbed my cheek against the softness, it was soothing, like curling up as an infant on my mother’s lap.

There was something so right about holding it.  It belonged to me.  It was mine.  It was part of me.

It terrified me.

How easy it would be to don this coat and go to the sea as my selkie-kin before me had.  How easy it would be to shrug off mortality and become something else, something different, something more.  There was so much that Immortality offered, knowing I would be unchanged, to never face death.  Having seen Death face to face with my father, I knew that I did not want that long, agonizing pain.

But I could not cut the cord so simply.  Unlike the Fae, I was a creature of ties… of love, and having experienced it, I could not turn away.  There was so much of Mortality to crave, so much left to experience.

I went to find Devin.

“I found this outside my room this morning,” I told Devin.  I held out the sealskin coat my mother had painstakingly labored over for so long.

Devin’s welcoming smile left his face as he took in the coat.  He scowled as he realized what it was that I was holding.

“I thought you had decided to stay.”  His voice was harsh and accusing.  I winced away from it.  “You are going to stay with me.”

I was put off by his attitude.  “Devin, it’s my mother! I’ve never known her.  Don’t you think it’s natural that I want to know her?  She’s who I came from—half of my heritage.”

“So, you suddenly want to become a selkie?” Devin’s face was quickly changing to match his scarlet hair. “Give up mortality? Never age? Never have children?”

I stepped back.  “I never said that.  I also never said I didn’t want to be a selkie.  Devin, I don’t know!  I’m lost and confused.  I came to you because I don’t know what I should do and all you are doing is yelling at me.  If you truly loved me you would support me, not yell at me.”

“And, if you loved me,” he retorted, “You wouldn’t be so conflicted.  If you can’t let go…” He took a deep breath.  “If you’re not sure that you can love me enough to let go of all of that, then maybe you don’t belong here.  Maybe you should go.”

I felt tears scald my eyes.  “If you truly loved me you wouldn’t be asking me to throw away the only family I have left.”

I paced the stony beach, twisting my hands and gnawing my lips until they almost bled. 

I didn’t know what to do.

I hadn’t gone to Devin expecting him to freak out, I had just intended to show him what I had found.

His over-reaction—his assumption that I was telling him I was leaving, left me confused and angry.

My heart pounded with adrenaline. I was so full of fury that I could hardly see where I was walking.

How dare he make assumptions about me? How dare he act like turning away from my mother was the only option, if I chose to love him? How dare he make his love for me so very conditional?

I had given him my heart. I had trusted him, and he had told me he was ready to trust me in return.