Tides Page 10

  It was hard to light the beacon alone. The great metal circle that reflected the lamps had to be set in motion, and that required Maebh to turn a huge, heavy crank—one she’d always moved in tandem with Dolores. It felt more than twice as heavy now, and Maebh wondered if Dolores had been pulling more than her share of the weight.

  When it was finally done, she lay down on the floor to read her letter. Every ten seconds she felt heat on her skin from the passing lamp, but it didn’t last.

  Dear Maebh,

  I think Mother must have told you about Roger and me, and I’m not sure how to tell you myself if she hasn’t.

  We’re getting married—oh, I know, you won’t like that very much. But he loves me, and he says he’s going to take me all over the world.

  You know, I’ve only been away from the Shoals for a few months, but it already feels like years and years. The things I did there, the things we did, it’s as if I read them in one of Mother’s books. Well—not Mother’s, perhaps.

  Roger calls me Little Mermaid, because of my hair and my being from the Shoals. That makes me think of you, of course. You said I looked like a siren, and honestly I like sirens better than the Little Mermaid story Roger reads to me.

  Sometimes I hate myself for leaving you, but I suppose Mother is right. I have to grow up sometime. That’s what Roger’s given me: a chance at a real grown-up life. I hope you understand.

  I still love you. I do. I just couldn’t stay.

  Yours always,

  Dolores

  Maebh stuffed the letter crooked into its envelope.

  She climbed down the spiraling steps to the lighthouse door and let herself out into the cold. Another storm was coming, and she’d have to put on her sealskin soon to guard herself from it.

  She took a deep breath and felt her human ribs expand. She waited for them to crack and implode on the hollow space inside her chest. She thought she’d crumble, her bones becoming a little stretch of pink sand on the rocks. But her body stayed whole.

  She scrambled down the cliffs and dug her sealskin from its crevice. She pulled off Dolores’s old dress and stared at it for a moment.

  She buried her face in the fabric and screamed.

  The dress muffled her voice, but she still feared Mrs. Mochrie might come looking for her. She tossed Dolores’s letter into the sea and hoped it would dissolve.

  She shoved the dress into the rocks and swam away, the sealskin still pulling up over her shoulders.

  nineteen

  LIGHT

  NOAH’S sweatshirt smelled clean and warm, like the wood on Appledore Island’s new pier. It smelled like the sun, she thought, knowing that she really had no idea what the sun smelled like.

  Her hand in his—that was even stranger than his clothing, his own second skin, wrapped snugly around her shoulders. She felt his fingers move against hers. She wiggled them a little, trying to get used to the sensation.

  Noah pulled away. “Sorry,” he said. Sorry for what?

  She pulled her hand up into his too-long sleeve, feeling the downy fleece brush against her wrist. She walked faster. She knew she’d ruined something, and now she just wanted to get inside.

  Noah fell into step behind her. The cottage beckoned, and the lighthouse beam seemed cold and alien next to the flickering yellow light radiating from its windows.

  Mara reached the door first, and she stepped inside. She saw the same wooden cabinets, green counters, and pink sofa she’d noticed before. A powdery, sweet, human scent drifted over her, one she’d smelled on Maebh many times. The old woman, the lighthouse keeper—Noah’s grandmother—stood with her back to the door, bending over a cup of something that smelled really lovely, like hot water and smoke. The girl with the sad face and long black hair reclined on the couch—next to Maebh.

  Mara’s sudden confusion flashed out through her link before she could stop it. Does everyone know now?

  Maebh looked up, her face gentle, if unsmiling. Through her link she said all was well. Mara tried to relax.

  “Hi, Lo,” said Noah as he came in behind Mara.

  The girl looked up, startled. She stood slowly. Mara saw that Lo had about the same build that she did, soft and stocky, neither short nor tall. She couldn’t help but start plotting ways to become this girl’s friend, just so she could borrow some clothes. She was ready to shed her big floppy shirt-dress once and for all.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Lo,” she said. “My name is Mara.”

  Lo shot a doubting look over Mara’s shoulder. Had Noah been talking about her? Or was it just because Lo had been in the cottage when Mara and Maebh found each other there?

  “Is the tea ready, Dolores?” Maebh asked, standing as well. She walked over to Noah’s grandmother and placed a hand on the small of her back.

  “Yours is on the counter.” The old woman smiled, bent her head down, and kissed Maebh on the mouth.

  Mara was too distracted by the swell of joy in Maebh’s link to know what she felt herself. She looked at Lo, who had calmly averted her eyes—it appeared she knew about this relationship already. Noah, however, seemed more surprised. She heard him draw in his breath. He stepped away from the door, joining Lo by the couch.

  “You knew about this?” he asked her.

  She nodded, breaking into a wide grin. Noah smiled too.

  Mara couldn’t help but see how different the two of them looked. Noah was tall and lean, with the unruly, bright hair that kept drawing her notice, a straight, large nose, and green eyes. Lo was shorter, not so lean, with hair nearly as black as her own and brown eyes that were a different shape than Noah’s. She thought perhaps Lo might have different parents, like the younglings in her pod.

  Lo moved closer to the edge of the sofa when Noah sat down with her. Mara recalled the growing distance between herself and Ronan.

  She wanted to slide into the space between them. But the sofa was clearly meant for two, and if she joined them, her hip would press against Noah’s. She told herself to stay standing.

  Gemm smiled, as if she could tell that Noah knew Mara’s secret now. She felt even surer, then, that Maebh really had meant what she’d said. Gemm must have known about selkies for years.

  “I think it’s past our bedtime.” Gemm still wore that knowing smile. She set down her now-empty cup. “Stay up as late as you like—you won’t bother us. Good night, loves.”

  She took Maebh’s hand and followed her upstairs.

  Mara took a deep breath and looked down at Noah on the couch. He looked back at her, his green eyes steady.

  “So,” he said. “Are we telling Lo, too?”

  Mara shivered. She’d wanted to tell Noah, and she could feel something welling up between them—something like trust. She’d felt it from the beginning, when she’d told him about Aine against her better judgment. She knew, though, as she was sure Maebh did, that it could never be entirely safe to tell their secrets, not to anyone.

  But she hadn’t been thinking of safety when she’d first disobeyed her Elder, when she’d come on land alone, when she’d first talked with Noah. She already knew there were better things in the world than staying safe. She tried to keep telling herself that.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” she heard herself say.

  “Isn’t it a little late for that?” Noah asked.

  “Late for what?” Lo rose from the couch. “What do you think you know that I don’t, Noah?”

  “I—”

  “You’re so good at keeping your secrets, you don’t think I even notice.” Lo’s mouth trembled. “You do what you like, and I just sit by and listen, and there’s nothing I can do about any of it!”

  It wasn’t just Lo’s mouth, Mara realized; her whole body was shaking. She listened more closely, and she heard something she should have noticed right away: the unsteady, irregular rhythm of Lo’s heartbeat.

  Noah glared at his sister. “Get over yourself, can’t you?” he said, too loudly. “This is more important than yo
ur stupid pathological need for control—” He cut himself off.

  Lo ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Mara was stunned. Couldn’t Noah tell his sister was sick? She knew that with his human senses, he couldn’t hear Lo’s heartbeat as she could. Still, if one of the younglings in her pod had gotten that weak, the signals would be screaming through her link.

  A horrible thought struck Mara: maybe humans didn’t have links at all. There was no other explanation for Noah’s insensitivity. He’d been kinder to her, a girl he hardly knew, than to his own sister.

  “That was wrong of you,” she said. “She’s hurting—can’t you see it?”

  Noah’s head dropped like a chastised youngling’s. “Yes,” he murmured. “I know. I’m . . .” He sank farther back into the threadbare sofa. “I’m just tired of this.”

  Mara felt guilty now, seeing the exhaustion spread over Noah’s face. “Tired of what?” She thought about what he must feel: the confusion, the worry for and anger at Lo, the anger at himself for losing his temper. The panic of learning that the world was so much larger and stranger than he’d thought it was.

  “Everything’s so huge,” said Noah, “and so strange. I just wasn’t ready for it, I guess. And I didn’t think Lo was being fair, and I’m worried about her.”

  Mara frowned. His words were so close to what she’d imagined he felt. Maybe humans did have links, after all. But they still weren’t in the same pod; they weren’t family. Mara would never be able to share the same link with him that she did with Ronan and Maebh and the others. She didn’t like how much that thought saddened her.

  She heard Lo crying quietly in the bathroom, but Noah didn’t seem to notice. She knew humans had ears—she studied the looped shells behind his temples—but they didn’t seem to work as well as hers. She supposed her human and seal forms had more in common than she’d thought.

  Mara walked over to the bathroom door. She pressed her hand against the door frame. “I’m sorry, Lo,” she said. “I have a brother too. Sometimes he’s horrible.” She felt a bit guilty for saying it, as if admitting Ronan wasn’t perfect would make him that much more likely to leave. But it was true, and she was sure Lo needed to hear it.

  She focused on her voice, the sound humans always found so persuasive, so distracting. She hoped this wasn’t the wrong way to use it. “I’ll tell you, I promise. Please come out. I was hoping we could be friends.” That was true, too.

  Lo’s crying quieted. Mara heard a sigh like a cramp relaxing. She pressed her hand to the door for another moment, then backed away.

  She turned to Noah. He sat with his shoulders slouching and limbs hanging down, as if he didn’t have the will to hold them up anymore.

  The bathroom door opened, and Lo crept out. Her face was flushed from crying, but she tried to smile.

  “I already know,” she said, tucking a strand of hair reluctantly behind her ear. “I just—I was just mad Noah didn’t want to tell me.” Her eyes flicked toward her brother.

  Noah stood. “You already know?”

  Lo rolled her eyes. “Gemm and I talk a lot while you’re off at your job, you know. It’s not as if we stop existing when you’re not here.”

  Noah sighed. He started to say something, then stopped and just shrugged. “I know. I’m sorry, Lo.” He stepped toward her and touched her hand.

  Lo turned toward him and they embraced, the muscles in their arms straining. Noah’s eyes closed. Lo’s head rested on his chest.

  Mara’s shoulder blades prickled with sudden desire. Grown selkies rarely touched without a real reason. Mara couldn’t remember putting her arms—or her flippers, for that matter—around Maebh or Ronan since she was a youngling. It was an unspoken rule: just as the sealskins kept them hidden and separate and special, so another skin of privacy wrapped around each of them and kept them secure even from one another. Suddenly the lack of a link between humans didn’t seem so terrible, if they could have this excess of physical linking in its place.

  She thought of Maebh, whose hand had rested so easily on the small of Gemm’s back. She wondered how she had learned to share such physical affection with a human.

  Lo looked at Mara. “Maebh and Gemm told me about you,” she said, “but if you want to tell me too . . . I’d like to know more.”

  Mara nodded. It was long past dark, and she didn’t know how far Maebh’s goodwill would stretch tonight. “I’d like to, but I think I need to go home,” she said reluctantly. “Why don’t you come outside with us?” She pulled Noah’s big clean-smelling sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders. She didn’t want to delve into her reasons for wanting, so badly, to stay.

  Noah frowned. “Wait—” He stopped. She wished he would ask her to stay. But if he did, she might not be able to say no.

  Mara smiled at him. “I just thought . . . maybe it would be easier for her to see it. The way you did.”

  She heard his heartbeat increase. Her own slowed in response, and she inched closer to him, hoping he would catch the rhythm of her relaxed body. At least, the parts of it that were relaxed.

  He looked at her carefully. “All right.”

  She stepped closer, reached down, and took his hand in hers. The hairs on her arms stood up. Her every nerve pushed and prodded her closer to his warmth.

  But she stood straight, resisting. She focused on what she needed to say, all the while feeling each pulse through his veins echo into hers. She spoke to Lo, but her eyes stayed locked with Noah’s.

  “Come with me,” she said, “and I’ll show you everything.”

  twenty

  RIPPLES

  LO couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  She’d watched Mara climb down the cliffs beyond the lighthouse. She’d vanished into darkness for a moment, then emerged into a patch of moonlight on the water, holding something soft and dark. She cut gracefully through the waves. When she reached a rock a little ways out to sea, she slipped onto it as smoothly as if she were boneless.

  Mara uncoiled the thing she carried, held the edges apart, and pulled it over her feet like stockings. Lo barely had time to notice the crescent tail shape that appeared before Mara’s legs were gone, then her hips, then her shoulders and face and hair, all encased in a velvet skin mottled silver and charcoal black. She slipped off the rock, an oblong, slick seal, and was lost to the darkness of the sea.

  Noah had laughed. Under his breath, low, not a laugh of humor or derision or even joy. Lo knew what his laughter meant, because she felt the same way. He was laughing just to make some noise at the edge of this unfathomable, infinite ocean.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  “Do you?” Noah turned to her. “I kind of feel as if I don’t know anything. But it’s almost nice.”

  They managed to smile at each other a little. A few minutes passed before Lo could do anything but look at him and know he was looking at her too, and that he saw the same thing she did—someone already long known and loved. Someone familiar.

  Then Noah sighed and cleared his throat, and Lo knew that with that sound he was bringing himself back down to earth. “I have something to ask you,” he said. “I got a promotion—well, sort of—at the Center, and they need someone to take over my old job.”

  Lo had inherited enough of Noah’s hand-me-downs to know what she was dealing with. This was a bad job, and Noah had managed to weasel his way out of it. Still . . . as good as things had been with Gemm lately, she’d been bored on White. It would be nice to have something to do, some kind of purpose.

  In the morning, she found herself stepping into Noah’s borrowed rowboat.

  Noah took the oars in the stern, and Lo sat at the bow only a few feet ahead of him. He pushed out, and they began the short run across the harbor from White Island to Appledore and the Marine Science Center.

  The islands looked different to Lo today, but she thought that was just because she knew things now that she hadn’t before. The waves pricked with light, and yesterday sh
e would have been itching to draw them. Today she wanted to see into the depths, to peel back the skin of the waves and expose the secrets of the ocean inside.

  Noah pulled them over the water’s surface too quickly. He tied off the boat at the pier and smiled reassuringly at Lo, then grabbed his backpack and set off for the Center’s front door at an easy jog.

  Lo had to run to keep up. Sometimes his legs seemed twice as long as hers.

  The Center was already noisy with activity when they got inside. A boy and girl, each probably a few years older than Noah, huddled on opposite ends of a long desk near the door. Lo saw the girl glance over at the boy. As soon as she turned back to her microscope, the boy looked at her. They back-and-forthed again as she passed, never meeting each other’s eyes. Lo laughed under her breath.

  Still, she couldn’t help but see how pretty the girl was, how poised, how thin. A familiar cramp pulsed through her abdomen. Her cheeks burned. Lo thought she’d done better this summer, had stopped worrying so much about what every other girl looked like. She realized now that there had simply been no other girls to whom she could compare herself.

  Except Mara. Lo wondered why Mara, who was pretty enough and obviously in great shape—she had climbed down those rocks in record time—hadn’t hurt her the way this blond girl’s beauty did. Maybe it was the way Mara so clearly didn’t care how she looked. She always had those old men’s shirts on and that tattered short haircut. Weren’t mermaids and things supposed to be vain? Maebh must spend hours on her elaborate braids, but Mara seemed to value function over form. Lo filed that observation away to ponder over later.

  They’d reached the director’s office. Noah knocked on his door, the sound timid, almost reluctant. How scary was this Professor Foster, anyway?

  The man who opened the door was tall, even taller than Noah, but not exactly what Lo would call intimidating. His white shirt was wrinkled, his glasses sat crooked on his nose, and he smelled like fish and formaldehyde. Still, his jaw was strong, and his smile was bright. He looked as if he could play somebody’s dad on a sitcom.