The Selkie (10 page)

“Oh, God,” she whispered, but no sound came forth from her seared lips and parched throat. She lifted her hands off Rory’s body and stared at them. They were coated in a film of glistening silver that burned.

And suddenly she understood, fully and completely, that Rory was
not
human. He had told her the truth. He looked like a man, but he was not.

She stared, dazed. His slender build was so deceptive. The slim bones and muscles of his arms and legs, his very flesh were hiding places for unexpected, even frightening power. His ways, his very biology and physiology, were not hers. She could see it plainly in the silver on her hands.

And still she wanted him. She would, she thought, even die if she were not given an antidote for the fire running through her. She might die anyway. Sweat was pouring off her in briny rivulets, adding more scent to the linens
as her body tried to purge itself of the flames of desire. Only the ocean seemed large enough to put out the conflagration, but she would never reach it in time.

“Rory?” she whispered, forcing her voice to work. “I think I’m dying. Please, if you can, help me. I need water.”

Rory lifted his head from her neck where he had been laving the salt from her skin, his own eyes glazed and uncomprehending. Twin, gilded reflections looked down at her from the bronze mirrors of his eyes.

“Lass?” He touched a finger to her tears. His words were indistinct. “Ye’ve nae need of these. Ye already called me here.”

“Rory, please. Wake up. I’m frightened. I need water. Look at my hands, my arms. They are dry. My skin is shriveling. I’m burning.”

His eyes slowly focused. His breath sucked in sharply.

“There is nae call tae be frightened. I’ll not let it hurt you. I ken what tae do.”

“You knew this would happen?”

He shook his head, sending his hair to tumble down on her in a cool wave. “Nay. Believe me, I didnae ken all of this. They didnae tell me it would be sae strong.” His voice was thick and drugged, and he seemed to have trouble shaping words. “But yer a MacNicol. And something else. Ye willnae die. Nae woman of yer
clan has ever died when she came tae the selkies. We shall finish it and the fire will end.”

“I don’t understand. But please, just finish it before it’s too late.”

“Aye.”

He kissed her once, a meeting of lips that was both pain and pleasure, and then he rolled her onto her stomach. He reached for the carafe beside the bed and poured the cool water over her, from her head to the base of her spine. Her flesh seemed to drink it in, for none spilled onto the linens.

“It will be better this way,” he said, lying between her trembling legs, forcing them apart. Somehow he was able to ignore the construction of human limbs and twined his legs about hers. His hands were laid over hers and he gripped her fingers. He set his lips to her nape and she felt his teeth.

If there was pain when he entered her, she could not discern it amid all the other sensations racing through her overstimulated body. She only knew that he began rocking, relentless as the tide at its peak, slamming into her with all the strength of his unhuman legs and hips and back. She buried her face in the sheets, biting the linen as she screamed, fighting for control of her body against the fire running through her.

He stiffened against her, exhaling in a low
growl, and an anodyne was suddenly there. It took several moments for the cooling sensations to spread, but slowly peace and calm lapped their way through her body, quieting scorched nerves.

Creation. It was done
.

When the pain reached a manageable level and she relaxed tautened muscles, Rory let go of her neck and moved again, slowly and gently, this time taking her like the peaceful surf as it captures a flattened beach. In her ears she could even hear it, the ancient lullabye of the sea.

Pleasure rippled through her body, spreading out to encompass her.

“Rory!” she gasped as her inner muscles spasmed.

She was thrown into sensual release. The ocean seemed to pour through her, over her. She let go and drowned.

The bathtub on the second floor was vast, the length of a man, and a yard wide at least. It squatted inelegantly on thick legs, waiting patiently in the moonlight to be filled with hot water from a coal-driven water heater.

“It will take forever for the water to heat,” Hexy said, staring at the cold metal monstrosity. “I am not even certain how to light the thing. Let’s bathe in the morning.”

Rory smiled and shook his head. “I think ye’ll find that the water isnae sae cold and unpleasant as ye think,” he said gently, reaching for the pump handle that would start the cold water’s flow. “And we had best wash the salt off of ye. Fetch a cloth, lass, and I’ll bathe ye.”

Doubtful about the pleasure of a cold bath, even at Rory’s hands, but unwilling to complain when she was so tired, Hexy went to the shaving table to gather up some soap and a washcloth.

A pace from the table, she recoiled, fighting the urge to sneeze. Usually she loved the scent of lavender soap, but for some reason, right then the perfume in the fine milled soap made her recoil. It smelled strong enough to be nauseating. Probably it had something to do with her allergies, though she noticed that for the first time in weeks her sinuses were clear and her eyes did not itch and tear.

Abandoning the cake of soap, she snatched up a washcloth and returned to the bathtub. Too tired to lift her legs over the high sides, she allowed Rory to take the cloth and help her into the iron basin.

It was a surprise, but he was correct that the cold water did not bother her, not even when she stretched out in it. It felt refreshing as it covered her now nerveless skin, though lacking in something important. She happily surrendered to the lethargy that Rory’s slow sweeps
with the cloth seemed to conjure as he cleansed her body of the glowing brine of their lovemaking.

“That’s it, lass, close yer eyes,” he murmured, urging her to lean back against him. The washcloth traveled slowly between her breasts and along her neck, then down the length of her arm. His voice came from far away: “Ye’ve had a dose and then some. Sleep now. We’ll talk about what has happened and what it all means in the morning. It’ll be hours yet before ye begin tae feel place-parted.”

Obediently, Hexy closed her eyes. She should be asking Rory what he meant about her feeling extrinsic—could he mean this longing she had to go down to the sea and lie in the surf? It was important for her to understand, she knew that. But she had never been so exhausted. It was too much effort to ask him to explain.

A short while later, Rory lifted Hexy from the tub and carried her to bed. Holding her in one arm, he pulled the covers aside and tucked her in, kissing her a last time.

Hexy did not awaken.

Stretching out beside her on the bed, he stared at the scattering of fern tickles on her nose and cheeks, smiling at the tiny freckles even as he thought about what had happened between them, and what it might mean. If he was stunned, then she would be doubly so.
They would eventually need to discuss what had occurred, but after her journey back into her own senses. Perhaps by then he would have some words to explain their situation to her.

He also needed to return to the People and speak to his father about the oddities of the extraordinary coupling that had taken place between them, and what it meant. Hexy was more than she appeared to be, and apparently so was he.

They also needed to talk about what he had discovered on the islet where the strange chapel had been raised and then desecrated.

Yet what he needed most was the return of his skin. He had been too long without it. It was affecting his judgment, subjecting him to extremes of emotion. Without the sea and his skin, he would eventually grow feral and dangerous. Many selkies withered away and willed themselves to die, but it would not be so with King Lachlann’s children.

Sighing, Rory turned his head and looked out toward the ocean that danced beneath the glittering stars. It was the fourteenth night, and both the sky and the sea called to him. But tonight he could not answer them. His place was with Hexy and with any new life that might be growing within her. He would know by the morning if his seed had quickened. If there was a babe, the new life would whisper to him.

It was strange to think that this beautiful creature sleeping beside him was the only credible human witness alive who knew who and what he was. The lasses before her who had lain with the selkies had all died or forgotten them when the blessing of amnesia was given. Secrecy was paramount to the People, but no one would question why he had revealed as much as he had to Hexy and taken her as soon as possible. She was the savior of their race.

Had he had his skin, he would have gone back to Avocamor and sought his father’s blessing before bespelling her with the salt, before forcing the knowledge of what they were upon her.

But he did not have his skin, and Hexy of the MacNicol—and some other magical clan—was too precious to risk losing. Tying her to him was paramount.

He curled himself around her, feeling fiercely protective.

He only prayed that when she understood the desperate straits they were in, she would forgive him for what he had done.

She simply
had
to forgive him. He could not bear it else.

Hexy dreamed and was terrified.

“Good evening, Reverend,” a deep, raspy voice said.

The man in the oilskin cape turned and peered into the darkness. The flask in his hand caught the light of the moon and redirected the lonely, silvery beam into the night. The same moonbeam danced over the rectangular lenses of his spectacles, making him appear eyeless and vulnerable—which he was.

“Who is there?” the old voice quavered, nearly carried off by the wind pouring in off the sea. He shoved the silver flask into a deep pocket and took a grip on his walking stick. His heavy shoes with their wooden soles were clumsy on the slimy rocks, littered with the
peculiar clots of rotting flotsom, he had climbed down to investigate.

“They call me Sevin, the guardian of the pool—when they call me anything. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?” A dark shape shambled out of the rocks. It was huge, misshapen, covered in decaying sea wrack where tiny white hermit crabs crawled. “Why do you trespass among the soul gatherers? Did you think to actually hunt us, meddlesome priest?”

The reverend stared in amazed horror, finally confronting the evil that the sin eater had warned him of. The evil he had long feared existed in his coastal parish, causing so many deaths, stealing so many souls. How could he have ever suspected that it was the selkies who were causing such harm? He should have heeded the words of the mad sin eater!

Phosphorescent mist followed the creature—and cold. There was a musky, rotten odor that filled the unnatural damp, and it drove chill and terror down into the marrow of the old man’s fragile bones.

He wasn’t prepared for this! He would never be prepared for this! His faith was not great enough to carry him through a war with true pre-Christian evil. He was a sinner, given to drink and other weaknesses of the flesh.

“Sevin! No, I do not seek you! Get thee behind me!” he gasped and turned to flee, but he could find no purchase on the lichen-covered stones, even when he
dropped his stick and scrabbled at the rocks with desperate hands.

An impossibly long white arm reached out. It arced through the air like a whip. There was a violent blow to the old man’s back that cracked bone, and he fell to his knees, crying out with pain when bits of broken shell were driven into his kneecaps.

Tentacles quickly enfolded him, lifting him into the air, spinning him about so he pointed head downward. A hole opened in the bloodless blue face of his attacker. He saw the needles of bone jutting out before the mouth closed over his nose. Then the world spun and he was flattened against the slimy rock, a horrible weight bearing down on his chest as it squeezed the air—and his soul—out of him.

The reverend screamed, but weakly. Blood and brine were running into his mouth, and the turning tide was lapping at his face, trying to snatch away his tears, his breath, his life.

And then it was too late for struggle. His soul was gone. He didn’t even cry out when the blue-gray beast crawled off his chest and hoisted him back into the air.

“It’s called faleste, priest. Your kind use it as capital punishment. It is less popular than burning, but I think that in this case it shall serve us best.”

The reverend was thrown down hard, a flesh-and-bone stake driven into the ground. He heard the bones of his skull splinter and grate against one another when he was wedged headfirst into a crack in the
slimy boulders. Agony filled his body as it was forced into the too small place, but the physical pain was no match for the horror of having his soul wrested from his body.

“You’ll meddle with us no more, priest. Your soul belongs to Wrathdrum now, and it will feed my children.”

There was a horrible noise, a gurgling rasp, and the reverend realized that the creature was laughing.

Waves closed over the reverend’s head, closing out sound, and this time did not draw back from the pebbled strand. With his dying eyes stung by salt, he watched the retreating finman step into the sea and transform, his pale legs knitting together into a single black fin that cut the phosphorescent water like a whip.

The reverend wanted to pray, but for the first time in his life, conviction failed him. He had failed his test of faith, and he had been forsaken. Soulless creatures could not talk to God. They were an abomination in the Lord’s sight. There was nothing he could do except bear silent witness to the transformation of the hideous beast who had eaten his soul and cheated him of a chance at Paradise.

He thought of the Eighty-fourth Psalm, understanding it in a way he had not before:

Incline your ear to me cry—adrift among the dead, like the slain who lie in a grave,
whom you remember no more. Lord, why

have you cast off my soul?

Only it wasn’t the Lord who had cast off his soul. It was a monster who had stolen it away, robbed him of his most precious possession because he had been weak and careless, and vain about his strength of office. And he had been too curious about the dying Campbell girl’s confession and why the family had sent for a sin eater, a man to consume the funeral meats with which they’d arrayed her body, and take on all the girl’s sins on himself.

Finally alone, except for the darkening sea and his endless agony, Reverend Fraser accepted what had happened and willed himself to die. He opened his mouth and sucked the merciful black water down into his crushed lungs.

Hexy awoke with a gasp. She sucked air into her chest as if it was she, and not the man in her dream, who had drowned. It was several moments before she lost the sensation of rank water burning in her lungs.

A familiar shadow appeared at the foot of the bed, backlit by the waning moon.

“Rory?” she asked, sure of who it was but needing the reassurance of his voice.

“Aye, lass.” His comforting weight settled onto the tick and he drew her into his arms.

Hexy suddenly realized that she was naked,
exposed to the chill night air, as was Rory. Vaguely embarrassed, she slipped out of his arms and wiggled down under the comforter, which still held the warmth of their lovemaking. She breathed deeply of the peculiar but reassuring smell of sex and sea that clung to the linens, and tried to calm her terror-wracked heart.

“I remember this time. Remember the monster who is always in my dreams.”

“Hush now. Ye’ve been rovin’ in yer mind, ramblin’ in dark and strange places. It will seem more normal soon, these watery places that are now in yer mind.”

“But I saw him,” she whispered into Rory’s smooth, hairless chest as he settled beside her. She fisted hands into his glossy hair.

“Who, lass?” he asked gently. “Whom did ye see?”

“
Sevin
,” she whispered, her voice hardly louder than a breath. “The guardian of the cave sleepers, the monster of Wrathdrum.”

Rory stiffened, his arms tightening. “What?” His voice held disbelief and displeasure, even as his hands continued to be soothing.

“The blue finman. I saw him. He was awful!” Hexy began to tremble. “I sometimes dream about him…and Rory Patrick.”

“Ye actually saw him in a vision?”

“Yes, he…” Hexy swallowed and burrowed
deeper into Rory’s arms. “He killed Reverend Fraser. He sucked his soul out with his horrible pointy teeth and then crammed him into some rocks to drown. He said he was taking it to Wrathdrum to feed to his children.”

Unbelievably, she yawned on those horrible words. Her eyelids began to get heavy and her body slumped as though her bones had suddenly lost their rigidity. Her muscles ran like hot wax, pooling her on the sheets in a lazy
S.

“I didn’t believe it was true. But it is, isn’t it? All of it.”

“Aye, it is. But how is this? I ken that the Reverend Fraser did die on the rocks—at the time of the mellowing moon. But that was four hundred seasons back.” Rory stroked her slowly, his voice distracted. “It is passing strange that ye should see this happening now. Father didnae tell me that this could happen when ye were disvirginaired. Have ye the sight by chance, lass? Is that the magic I sense in ye?”

“The sight?” Hexy asked, her voice slurring.

“Aye. Some humans hae the way of it and know when things hae happened, or will in the future.”

She shook her head slowly, not in negation but with confusion. “Rory Patrick used to ask me that…”

“Your brother? Ye said he drowned? Was it
long ago? Was it here?” Rory’s voice held concern and urgency.

“Yes—and no. They said he was looking for an island, a sort of paradise. But his ship went down—so many ships have sunk there.”

“I know the place. The isle is lovely, but tides are treacherous, the waters as cold as they may be and not freeze, and the rocks deadly. Nae sane person would gae there.”

“Rory Patrick did. He wasn’t afraid of the ocean, and he was sure he would find plants there that would make new medicines. He wanted to help people,” she told him, defending her brother.

“Aye? And mayhap that is so,” Rory soothed. “But sleep now.”

“Could that thing really still be alive and guarding the caves? Could a monster like that live this long?” she asked with ill-formed words, hoping Rory would assure her that whatever her dream had been, it was not proof of what he would have to face if he sought out the finmen in his quest for the drowned fisherman’s soul.

Rory was a long time answering.

“I fear he could. Finmen, they say, dae nae die naturally. The only way they leave this warld is if they are parted from their sorcery by violence or magic.” Rory slipped beneath the covers, urging her to turn on her side while he
wrapped his arms around her. He stroked her neck with gentle fingers. “But that is for the morrow. Ye must sleep now, lass. There isnae fighting the love sleep that comes after. It’s amazin’ that ye woke at all. And dinnae fear. I’ll stay here and guard yer dreams. Ye’ll not see that monster again, nor worry about yer brother.”

As much as Hexy wanted to argue, to ask about her brother, she found that Rory was right. Sleep washed back up over her brain and drowned out both thought and memory before words of protest could form.

When she next woke it was to see the heavenly cresset flare with sunrise, which melted the after-storm mist in a rush of orange light. It bathed the room in morning glow and painted it bright gold.

“Good morning, Hexy love,” Rory said gently, taking a seat at the side of the bed and brushing back her tangled hair. “Ye look less davered today. The dazed look is gone frae yer eyes.”

“I feel well,” Hexy answered, wondering when embarrassment would overwhelm her. “Just a slight headache, like I drank too much wine.”

“Aye, the clamber skull is normal enough,” he said gently. “And it shall pass away soon if ye lay still and don’t gae clointering about. And
if ye’d like it, I’d be honored to comb these elf locks while ye waken.”

“Elf locks?”

Rory picked up a lock of tangled hair and dangled it before her eyes.

“Oh.” Finally embarrassment began to dawn. She didn’t so much mind being naked in Rory’s presence, but to be slovenly was out of the question. “I should go to my own room and dress.”

“Nay, ye must rest a bittock more or ye may harm the babe.”

Hexy stared at him blankly. “The babe?”

Rory hesitated and then rose to his feet. “I’ll fetch a comb and then we maun talk about last night.”

“The babe?” she repeated. Then, still uncomprehending: “What babe?”

Rory returned to the bed with a comb, looking at it as though he had never seen such a thing before. He toyed with it idly, running long fingers over the teeth.

And maybe he hadn’t seen one before.

“Lass…It is almost certain that ye are wi’ child,” Rory said, distracting her from the diversionary thought.

Hexy raised her gaze from Rory’s hands. The eyes that looked at his face were wide, awe-filled and frightened.

“What?” She swallowed, started to deny the possibility, and then abandoned the idea as futile.
She could be pregnant. Instead, she asked plaintively, “But—but how would you know?”

“The salt,” he answered. “It would not hae come if ye were not ready tae conceive.”

Hexy took a deep breath, and then another, trying to fight her way to some level of awareness where Rory’s words meant something other than what he appeared to be saying.

“The
salt…
” She said the word, testing it to see if it had some other definition than the one she knew. “And because of this
salt
, you think that in nine months I will have a child.”

Rory cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable.

“If ye carry a female, then it will be nine months. If it is a male, then it will be a bittock longer.”

Hexy closed her eyes, convinced now that she was still dreaming.

After a moment, Rory began combing out her hair, being careful not to pull on the knotted tangles. She tried to relax and sink back into her comfortable dream state. If she were to hallucinate, she reasoned, then she might as well enjoy herself.

“How much longer?” she asked, curious about what her fevered imagination would reply.

“Six seasons,” Rory answered.

“Six seasons!” Hexy’s eyes popped open and
she sat up straight, uncaring when the covers fell away. “But—but that’s…”

“Eighteen of your months.” Rory nodded, looking both guilty and pleased. “But, lass, I am almost certain that ye are with a female child. Our coupling was sae odd that—please dae nae look sae distressed. ’Tis a gladsome thing tae be sure.”

“Gladsome!” Hexy clapped a hand to her head, trying to hold the painful jumble of thoughts inside before they exploded her throbbing skull.

“Aye,” he insisted doggedly. “A babe is cause for happiness.”

“That is debatable,” she muttered. Then: “Did you just say that our—that—that what we did was
odd?”

“It didnae strike you as unusual?” he asked, surprise and a shade of disapproval in his tone. “Is it always thus for ye?”

It
had
been odd, she now recalled,
very odd.
But the strangeness of their lovemaking came in a distant second to the news that Rory thought she was with child.