In the Night Garden

“You do not belong to me, and I do not want you,” the old woman who was Ghassan snorted.

“Then give me my skin back, if you will not have me.”

“Not after I cut it with such difficulty from you—you have very stubborn bones.”

I was stricken. Ghassan would not close me up in a house, or feed me, or love me. Once I was out of my seal’s body, I no longer feared those things, but needed them, needed them as violently as once I needed the sea. I became panicked; the slate sky turned frightening, the dark sea horrible. I did not know where to go; this body seemed afraid of everything. It was chilled easily and always hungry. I followed the crone because the crone had my skin. That is what a Selkie does.

Please, I would say. Love me or give me my skin. You are hurting me.

I do not want you, would come the answer.

Please, I would say. I can be useful. I can make stew and tea. You would like me, if you tried me. Or give me back the skin. You are cutting me.

I do not like you, I do not want you, would come the answer.

Please, I would say. I will wash house walls and mend fences, I can build cradles and beat the dust from rugs. Let me be a Selkie, or give me back my skin. You are killing me.

I do not care, would come the answer.

And so it went on, but I could not stop. I learned he was not a crone at all, and what house he had was on a far distant island where he would certainly not lead me. But I could not stop. The skin is knotted in my belly like a sailor’s rope, and the harder Ghassan pulls to escape me, the tighter the knot becomes, and the more desperately I chase him.

My skin is gone, but I belong to no one. I am no seal and no man. The skin calls to me, but I cannot answer.

Please, I would say. You are killing me.

“HE ONLY TRADED IT TO YOU TO BE RID OF ME. I have hounded him for three years and he would not let me touch it, but he traded it to you for two pieces of bark. They may have cost you dear, but to him they mean nothing. They are pieces of skin, not a skin. He only wanted to show me how little my skin was worth. I am so tired, Eshkol. Please.”

I grinned up at him through my curly hair. My voice was soft as pine needles underfoot. “I am very good at hiding things, Selkie. You could belong to me. I could close you up in a house, and feed you sardines and black bread, and love you under towering trees. And you know, we Satyrs have very well-deserved reputations. My father says I am too young for a lover, but you are very handsome, and I am not tired at all.”

I leaned out of the window very suddenly and kissed the Selkie-boy right on his pale lips—I don’t know why I did it, but the moonlight was so bright, and he seemed suddenly ever so much more lovely than the skin. Our lips met over the windowsill and his mouth was so cold, cold and salty and sweet as the sea, and my lips warmed him as the sun warms a tidepool. Even through the kiss I was smiling, and he put his silvery hands gently on my face, just the way a faun does. I moved the skin behind my back.

“Oh, Eshkol,” he said breathless and bashful, when we parted, “perhaps I could rest here.”

Shroud stayed with me for seven years and seven days. My father was in a rage fit to crack oak boughs when he found us in the morning, a sea-eyed boy with arms wrapped around his daughter’s downy neck, but it passed. Shroud was gentler and quieter than low tide, and like the tide, no one could resist his slow presence. We could not kiss often enough—the water loves the green earth and the green earth loves the water, and so we were, twined up like vines on a riverbed, and he told me I tasted of red berries and sunlight on long grass, and I told him he tasted of clamshells and kelp and a wet wind. I taught him to plant grapevine, and he taught me to fish with my bare hands. I grew up; I grew less silly, though no less overeager and bright of heart, and in all my barters since, nothing I won was ever so precious to me as that gray and mottled skin.

My only sadness in those gold-specked years was Grandfather Yew, who had not spoken to me since the day I took his bark, who would not speak to me even after it had long grown back.

One evening Shroud sat next to me in our own house and took my hand. “Eshkol, heart of my heart,” he said, “please give me back my skin.”

I laughed. We had played this game many times. “It is my skin, my love, and I like it very much.”

“No,” he said, very carefully and slowly. “I am not teasing; I am not playing. Give it back to me, if you love me.”

“Shroud, why? Have we not been happy? Do I not still taste of red berries and sunlight on long grass?”

“Warmer sunlight and sweeter berries than I ever thought possible. But I am a Selkie. No amount of wishing will make me a Satyr. This is what I am. Selkies stay until they leave, and the instinct for leaving is so powerful in us, far more powerful than the instinct for the sea. I understand that now. It is not the sea that calls us back. What calls is stronger and more inexorable than any current. I long for the sea, yes, my skin is always dry, and I am always thirsty, and I miss the crash and swell of the black waves, but more, I long for the leaving. I am restless, I am ready, and the leaving whispers to me at night. It says that I will breathe easier when the air is full of fog and seagulls, that I will breathe easier when I am at the start of a story, rather than at the end.”

Tears trickled to my chin. “No, no, I won’t give it to you,” I whispered.

“Eshkol, I have not looked for my skin for seven years. I have not rifled the thatch of the roof, or pulled up the floorboards. I have not thought of it; I have not checked the hanging wash for a gray scrap. But the leaving will not let me be, and I must answer it. I don’t want to.” Shroud clenched his fist and for the first time his pale face colored, red and pained. “I don’t. I want to stay with you and eat chestnuts and curl my fingers in your fur. But the seal is stronger than the man, and the leaving is stronger than the seal.” He spread his hands helplessly. “This is what I am.”

“If you don’t want to, then don’t! I am a Satyr, yet I am hopeless at playing the pipes—we are more than just our bodies.”

“It’s no good, dearest of all bodies to me. If you do not give it to me, I will find it, and one day you will wake up and I will be gone. I have looked for it for seven days and found nothing, but you are not so good at hiding things that I will not find it one day or another. Please. You’re hurting me.”

Slowly, I unbuttoned my vest and my belt, and reached into their folds. I drew out the gray skin, warm from lying next to my own.

“I’ve always had it just here, sweet seal-boy. I wore your skin every day.”