Skin Deep (15 page)

“Hey, you!” Garland heard her call to the clump of men still standing in front of the Captain’s Bridge. “Come tell me if this is straight.”

Garland thought about stepping out and murmuring to Kathy that from the look of them, they wouldn’t be able to tell vertical from diagonal. But the men had already shuffled across the street and were peering obediently in the window.

“Mother o’ God,” one of them muttered. “Will you look at that.”

“Wouldn’t mind seein’ the nets look like that, next trip out,” marveled another, rubbing his unshaven chin.

“Is it…does it
smell
?” asked a third man, rather the worse for drink than the others. He reached under his orange watch cap, scratched, and blinked owlishly at the quilt.

“Probably better than you do!” crowed another. His companions laughed and jostled him, but kept glancing back at the quilt as if they too would have liked to ask the same question.

“Do you think maybe we could borrow that thing when we go out tomorrow?” said the stubble-chinned man to Kathy when the laughter had died away. “It…well, it looks like it would bring the fish into the nets. I could use a lucky trip just now.”

“Ain’t there someone else you should be askin’ about that?” said the orange-capped man with a wink.

An uncomfortable silence met this remark. “You shut your mouth, Joe, and don’t be talking about things you shouldn’t,” the first man who’d spoken finally said. “Is this one of those quilt things my wife was talking about, Miz Hayes? Guess I can see what had her all excited.”

“Oh.” The man who’d asked to borrow it looked crestfallen. “I suppose you ain’t lendin’ it out. But will you leave it up so we can come and look at it, sometimes?”

Kathy’s voice was grave, but Garland could hear the laughter behind it. “I’ll be happy to, gentlemen. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She came back into the shop, grinning from ear to ear.

“That’s probably the first time most of those men have so much as looked in my window. Now they’ll probably be here every day,” she said. The little llamas on her sweater looked as if they were dancing as she laughed.

“Why aren’t they out fishing?” Garland watched as another pair of flannel-shirted men joined the group at the window, their eyes wide.

“Storm last night, remember? Too rough out there till the waves subside. Come on, help me move some things so I can hang the other quilts and clean up this dump. Things are going to get busy once word gets out.”

“Speaking of the storm, did you hear about those people whose house fell in the water?” Garland followed Kathy and held a small ladder steady while she climbed it, then accepted the baskets Kathy took off the wall and handed down to her. “What an awful thing to have happened. That poor woman.”

Kathy dropped a basket and cursed under her breath. Garland picked it up and set it with the others. “This is getting kind of spooky, don’t you think? First Alasdair and Conn wash up on my beach, then that guy who’d been clamming, and now this, all in the space of a few weeks—”

“Forget about it.” Kathy’s voice was tight and low.

Garland looked up at her in surprise. “What?”

“I said,
forget
about it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even think about it.” Kathy climbed down from the stepladder. The llamas on her sweater were no longer dancing.

“But why—”

“Look. Most of the town makes its living through the sea, one way or another, or is closely related to someone who does. They’re a superstitious bunch. They don’t like to talk about things like that. You’ll make enemies if you bring it up, even in passing.”

“Then why did the woman at the library—Mrs. Shirley—”

“She’s only been here a couple years, since they retired down here. She doesn’t know any better.” Kathy hesitated. “Especially don’t talk about your—your former houseguests.”

Garland thought about the bags of clothes in her car and bit back the rest of the questions she had. “All right,” was all she said.

Kathy’s relief was apparent. “Good. So let’s get these babies up on the wall.”

* * *

Alasdair stood by the window of his room, staring out at the sky and whitecap-edged water spread before him. There had been a storm last night and he had lain in bed listening to it, sensing the cries and shouts of Mahtahdou’s creatures that blended with the wind. It had sounded like the night he and Conn…but no. He was in Garland’s house now. As long as they were here within her walls they were safe. Thank Lir she hadn’t been out in that storm last night, dining with the healer.

But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Not even his grandmother had possessed stronger magic. Some magicians used magical wands or rings. His grandmother had knotted a circle of beach grass that had kept Mahtahdou safely enchained for a century. Garland took thread and cloth and turned them into objects of power.

He and Conn had been beyond fortunate to land on her beach. When they were healed they could slip out of Garland’s house and be back in their world in seconds. He would find his scattered people in their hiding places and resume their fight. There were only three problems: Garland, Conn, and himself.

Mahtahdou had left him for dead but kept his sealskin, no doubt as a symbol of victory over the selkies. Without his skin, how could he return to his people and live a selkie’s life? Without it he was only half a selkie—and only half a lord. Would his people even want him back, lacking as he was?

Then there was Conn. He looked behind him at the child, wrapped as always in his purple shirt, curled in a chair and absorbed in one of the books with colored pictures that Garland had given him. She and his son had formed some mysterious bond that he couldn’t fully understand. What would happen if he took Conn back to the selkie world? With Garland he did things he’d rarely done before—smiling and laughing and…and being a child. Mahtahdou had not only taken Conn’s birthright—he had also stolen his childhood.

He hugged Garland’s robe closer to him. It made him feel less naked, less incomplete. He could feel it—her power, not as strong as when he touched her but there nonetheless, like a cloak. Like…his breath caught. Like a new skin, to shield him in place of his lost one. Garland possessed a power that defied description. Was there some way he could convince her to use it to help him defeat Mahtahdou and free the selkies? Would she believe that Mahtahdou existed if he told her the truth? And even if she believed him, how could she help? How could they harness the power of her quilts?

He gazed out at the long slender island that men called Monomoyick and shifted his weight uncomfortably. His body ached, but not because of his healing wounds. He ached to feel Garland again as he had the other night, all her softness and her warmth under his hands and pressed so lusciously against him. But he never would again—not if he could help it. He must not—must not—let this unexpected desire for her get the better of him. How could he betray the memory of his dead Finna?

Surely when he was stronger, Conn would be able to let go of Garland. And by then he himself would have figured out how to use her power. Then, when Mahtahdou was defeated and he was back in his rightful place, Conn would again be the happy little boy he should be. And he could again take lovers, selkie females who would his ease body’s needs. But never love. Not again. And never the love of a human—

Downstairs, a door closed. A few seconds later Garland practically danced into the room, her eyes shining, and dropped several large paper containers on the floor near him. Conn set his book carefully down, then held his arms out to her.

“Kathy loved the quilts! In fact, she’d already sold two of them sight unseen! A thousand dollars each!” she announced.

Alasdair felt suddenly ill. “Sold them?” he asked. “Did she have to?”

“Yes, she did. Hello, sweetheart. Do you like that book?” She sat on the edge of Conn’s bed and gathered him onto her lap. He wiggled into his favorite position, with his head tucked against her throat. Alasdair had begun to envy him being able to do that.

“You don’t understand,” she continued. “I’ve never really earned any money on my own since college. My husband wouldn’t let me. And he didn’t like my quilting, either. Now that he’s gone I can quilt, and it seems like I’ll be able to quilt and make money at the same time. It means…it means—”

He held out a hand to her. “I’m sorry, Garland. I didn’t understand. With your husband dead, you must find a way to support yourself.”

She laughed a bitter-sounding laugh. “Oh, he’s not dead.”

Not dead? “But you said he was gone.”

“We got a divorce. He left me for another—well, I’ll be honest—a younger woman.”

“He
left
you?” He stared at her clear sea-colored eyes and smooth brow and generous mouth that tilted up at the corners and sturdy, curvaceous body. How could any man have left Garland?

Garland’s laugh this time was much less bitter. “Thank you. That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since Rob…well, since the day I found you, anyway.” She smiled. “Now I’ll go unpack the groceries, and then let’s try on the clothes I bought you. You too, pumpkin,” she said, bouncing Conn on her knee then setting him back on the bed and rising. “I want to get busy on another quilt before I leave for dinner.”

“Are you going out again with the healer?” Alasdair hadn’t been able to call him “Rob” the way Garland encouraged him to. He knew that the healer was in love with Garland and didn’t like his continued presence in Garland’s house.

“Yes, I am.” She patted his arm and turned toward the door. She looked so pleased at the thought of spending the evening with the healer. Was she beginning to return his feelings? And why not? She deserved to be loved, really loved, after the way her first mate had treated her.

Garland came back upstairs after a little while and unpacked the paper bundles she’d brought in. He watched her unfasten the little white discs up the front of one of the clothes and hoped his fingers could repeat the action as dexterously. He hadn’t really cared about clothes, but she’d been adamant about getting them for him. “You can’t wander around practically naked all the time,” she’d said to him before she left this morning.

“Why not?” he’d asked, and seen immediately that that was a mistake when her eyes widened in surprise. It had been a good thing he hadn’t asked her why she didn’t go naked as well in this warm house, which had been the next thing he was going to say.

She’d turned pink and looked away. “It’s…I suppose you don’t remember, but it’s just what we do. We wear clothes.”

It was convenient, her attributing his strangeness to a loss of memory. He’d meekly agreed with her, and now he stood, letting her slide the tubes—no, they were called sleeves—over his arms and slip the little discs through holes, so that the short robe stayed closed across his chest. The fabric was cool and smooth on his shoulders as he moved them experimentally.

“Well, I got the shirt right,” she said. “Let’s try the pants.”

She made him put on a strange garment that covered just his nether region, and then something that covered him all the way down to his ankles. He was delighted to see that it had a zipper. He had discovered the one on the edge of his pillow and loved to slide it up and down, marveling at the faint whizzing sound the tiny teeth made as they meshed.

Now Garland stepped back and examined him. He stood still and returned her gaze. She smiled, her head to one side.

“Am I all right?”

“You’re perfect.” She turned to unpack the other parcels, and he heard her say under her breath, “Even though I think it was a crime to cover you up.”

Lir knew he’d rather be in his own skin, too. But he only said, “Thank you, Garland.”

He sat back on his bed and watched her help a bewildered but cooperative Conn into his clothes then go over to her quilt tables. He liked to watch and try to see just at what point the power started seeping into the quilts she made, but it was too subtle a process. First there were pieces of cloth, full of striking colors but otherwise ordinary. Then there was a design up on her cloth wall, beautiful but only hinting at what would come. Finally, as she sewed, the power shone through the pieces of fabric, stronger and stronger, until she was done and held up to his astonished view the glowing webs of magic trapped in cloth.

She set aside the pieces she’d already cut for the quilt she’d promised him—all triangles and diamonds and squares that, when set together, created the illusion of curves in restless motion. He’d been excited when she showed him part of the design on her fabric wall. But clearly her mind was on something else today.

She’d chosen a fabric that she’d explained to him was called batik, made in a far-away place called Bali. He liked that they came from an island. They had a faint background magic all their own, woven of color and sheer exuberance. They also seemed to complement her power, to focus it somehow. She’d used almost all batiks in his quilt.

This batik was a rich spring green, the color of trees in mid-May. Little splashes of magenta here and there made the green sing louder, and the pattern was short and spiky, like the wild cedars that grew close to the shore.

“I thought I’d do something different with this one,” she said out loud, half to him. She’d started doing that a few days ago, and he liked it. It drew him closer into her world, and he hoped he’d get a glimpse of how she did her magic.