Parry’s smile became a snarl, his eyes two werewolf moons. “You flotsam scum,” he called me, words ground out between his teeth like bones. “God curse the day I ever let you on my vessel.”
“Yes, and that was entirely at your pleasure, was it not? Well, I wish you full joy of that call, just as you once wished Rusk’s ghost joy of his, when you thought no one was listening . . . and joy of this new home of yours, likewise, for however long your stay on it may last.”
Caught gloating as only fools do, I was so puffed with my own cleverness that I barely registered Parry’s hand slipping inside his coat, though I knew what it was he kept there. But when he withdrew the hex-bag, brandishing it like a pistol, I at least knew to shy away; the boat rocked sharply, salt spray slopping in over the side, prompting the quartermaster—shook from his shocked silence, and grabbing for his oars—to swear in three separate languages.
Still: “Not so much as I wish this joy on you,” Parry told me, coldly. And up-ended the whole mess into the waves between us—bottle-finger, eyeball, hair-rope, fetish, tooth and all else, useless to him in his current cheated state, except as one last weapon. Since, at the very end, yet another thing more came slipping out to feed the churn . . . my skin.
My skin.
I must confess I almost went in after it, just on the off-chance, before I recalled what lurked in wait below. But then I caught sight of Mister Dolomance, still crouched in his captor’s shadow, tearing away at his own parody-of-human disguise in a paroxysm of painful delight: mouth already ripped to either earhole with new teeth sprouting up along the bottom jaw in a bloody spray, muzzle punching out triangular, while his eyes—already far too widely spaced for comfort—migrated to either side of his head, losing their minimal ability to blink entirely. Shoulders hunched and splitting down mid-line, too, as his fin’s long-buried crest at last came arching up between . . .
All your bad works brought to ruin in the same instant, I thought, staring Captain Parry down, straight in his silver-penny glare. All you’ve sowed bloomed up full, sir, and ripe for reaping; well, I do hope you relish the taste of it, you sad fellow sport of unnaturalness. What little you can swallow, that is, before the end.
Beneath the captain’s boots, the weed-island rocked and buckled, forcing him down on one knee. I watched it crack, pull apart at its weakest points, and remembered how Mister Dolomance had described the forest that supported it, where his kin (who do not of a custom flock, or even pair, at least for longer than it takes one to get a kit on another) glided so close they risked touching in order to graze the schools that fed on those mile-high weed-fronds. It was always twilight there, a purple half-night forever blood-tinged, the water itself heavy with rotting meat; a bed of infinite appetite upon which every prospective victim knew they would, at least, die full-stomached.
This was what Jerusalem Parry found himself momentarily balanced above—a chasm of open mouths, all waiting to take a bite, before what was left of him drifted to the ocean’s mucky floor. Yet even as he summoned his last few shreds of power to stave that judgment off, if only for a breath, he opened himself to the surprise attack he should have most feared, all along: Mister Dolomance, leaping high in mid-spasm to bite deep into the captain’s unprotected nape, severing spine and the spell which kept him man-shaped alike. The shared arc of that jump threw them both sidelong, dragging Parry off-balance even as Mister Dolomance’s legs shrank vestigial, once more fusing to form a tail; the weight of it put them down together with a great slap, waves gouting high, and slammed shut a blue-water door upon them both.
It was done, then—our revenge, complete—and Mister Dolomance surely got the lion’s share of spoils, though I was the one self-condemned to live out a false man-life ‘til laid in some land-bound grave. And since cowardice, at least, could never be counted amongst his sins, I somehow knew the captain would go down fighting, to the very last . . . that image bringing me a variety of pleasure, at least, even as grief for my own losses cored my buried seal’s heart.
The quartermaster pulled to with a will, meanwhile, and I took up oars as well, helping him put enough distance between us and the Bitch’s overthrow to make sure we were well out of range before the true frenzy began. After which we drifted, delirious with heat and fever, with hunger our only company; it occurred to me more than once, during this phase, that if I had managed to regain my true shape then the man I shared this boat with would have slit my throat long since, and be already picking his teeth with my bones. But t
hankfully, another ship picked us up before he could fully recall what lurked inside me, instead of thinking of me only as a boy—a tender thing, more his kin than not, to be protected rather than eaten.
“Ye’re one of us now, son,” was the last thing he spoke to me, which I know he meant kindly. Yet I just shook my head, waiting until he slept to steal what few coins he still possessed to pay my passage and roll him out through the sluices with a splash so quiet I reckon it was barely heard, either above-decks or under.
It was an impulse and no doubt an unworthy one, for I did feel bad after, if only a little while. But the feeling did not last long, confirming what I hoped was still true, even in my current skinless state: that we were not alike, he and I, no more than I and Mister Dolomance. That we never could be.
By ship after ship and voyage after voyage, sometimes spaced years apart, I made my long way back to the Skerry where I took up residence on the shore, gazing each day from cliffside across to the home I would never regain. I built myself a boat, and fished from it; I made myself a life, and lived it. At a midsummer dance, I told a girl my name was Ciaran, and married her. Our son became Young Ciaran, in his turn.
And then, one day, I pulled up my net to find a skin—my skin—inside it.
***
Now it is late, and the fire is almost out. In the other room, Young Ciaran and his mother lie sleeping; my tale is told, in almost every particular. So I sit here and stroke the long-lost pelt spread out upon my knees, so soft, so durable . . . barely a mark on it, though my own hide has grown rough from ill-use, and not even a tear to show where the scar I once took from Mister Dolomance’s teeth should be. Indeed, it reminds me of nothing so much as its polar opposite, my former co-conspirator’s skin, which—like Captain Parry himself, as one man learned, to ill-profit—could hardly stand to be touched at all, at least from some angles, without danger of wounding. Never without cost, of one sort or another.
Tonight, I think, I will go swimming. And I smile, even knowing what probably awaits me, out there in the dark stretch of water between beach and Sule—something cold-blooded, grown huge as a bull in its far-roaming freedom, with little about it to indicate it was ever forced to walk upright, bowing and scraping at the whim of a man whose magic kept it prisoned in a shape it never would have chosen otherwise. For unlike my own kind, Mister Dolomance was only made to be what he is, not what he could be; his sort have no use for contradiction, let alone for metaphor.
Yet we are both equally treacherous, he and I—just as our Mother the sea is, in Her changeable yet unchanging heart. We cannot be overborne even by the subtlest magics, as Jerusalem Parry learned too late; we cannot be trusted, ever, even by those who love us. And as the sea is my home, so I will be proud to die there, if I must . . . more proud than I ever would have been to die on land, had I been forced to, as for so many years I was certain I would be.
Perhaps, though . . . perhaps I will fight, this time, the way I declined to, so long ago. Why not? What more do I have to lose?
Little enough, in the end.
The tide turns. The fire becomes ash. I rise. And here—in silence—is where I take my leave of all you who listen, closing the circle with these words: Just as any man may seize power if he consents to pay for it, by whatever method, any selkie may be Great, eventually . . .
. . . if he cares to.
SOWN FROM SALT
They made a desert there, and called it peace.
—Tacitus
Reese woke after dawn, dew-stiff, with difficulty; so much blood had dried all over his face, while he slept, that his eyelashes were now almost too sticky to peel open. The hard Arizona sun pressed down on him. Aside from the song of flies, no other living creature seemed anywhere near.
Though there did not seem to be too much to bother rousing himself for, he sat up moments later nonetheless, and nearly threw up. A terribly familiar pain monopolized the centre of his chest, folding him up around itself like a half-screwed winch. Had he not known better, he might have thought the bullet in him still, lodged deep—a truly unlovely thing, harbinger of delirium and death. Yet neither of those was to be his portion anymore, as he was well aware.
There was a dead body lying almost next to him, one of several such—leftovers from the latest trip to yet another town, fresh and not-so alike, scattered where they fell after judgment—but he ignored it; dead bodies were everywhere. This world was a butcher shop at the best of times. He’d’ve been far more surprised not to find one, there or elsewhere, on top of the earth or under it.