Tides Page 3

She flipped back to the sketches she’d made the night before. Seals and women swam in a fluid border around the edges of the page between swirling lines of India-ink water. Lo usually liked to start her new projects with pencil, but the dry, gray graphite hadn’t seemed right for drawing selkies. A thin brush and a pot of blackest black ink had given her drawings the liquid quality she wanted, but there was still a blank expanse in the middle of the page.

  Lo took a pen from the messenger bag at her side and twirled it between her fingers. She started drawing almost without thinking, more wet black lines for long hair, smooth cheeks, large eyes. She had a face somewhere in her mind, but she didn’t recognize it until she leaned back to look at her finished work.

  Long hair straight and black as her own. A round, pale mouth and soft cheeks. Black eyes huge and wide-set and sad, somehow older than the face that framed them. Maebh.

  Lo smiled at the page, proud of the likeness she’d accidentally captured. Maebh was lovely—not with Gemm’s bright and glowing kind of beauty, but muted, like sea glass. Lo rarely liked her drawings so soon after she’d made them, but she could see she’d brought Maebh’s soft beauty to the page. She blew lightly on the paper to make sure the ink was dry, then carefully closed her notebook.

  She looked up and realized she wouldn’t have been able to draw a landscape just now, anyway. The light had changed too quickly. The clouds were clumping together overhead, and a cold shadow was seeping over the island.

  She shivered. When she stood, her legs started to prick and tremble. She hadn’t noticed them falling asleep.

  Lo walked into the cottage and shut the door behind her. Gemm was reclining on the couch and reading a worn paperback copy of A. S. Byatt’s Possession, another mug of dark tea steaming beside her. She put her book down when she saw Lo.

  “A wonderful book—sad, though. But sometimes the sadness makes a story better, don’t you think?” She smiled.

  Lo made a vague agreeing noise. “Gemm,” she said tentatively, “do you think you could finish the selkie story now?” Lo didn’t understand why her mind had hooked onto the idea of selkies so tightly. All she knew was that she really wanted to hear the ending.

  “If you like,” said Gemm. “That one has sad parts too, you know.”

  Lo shrugged. She sat down next to her grandmother, ignoring the heavy sound of the couch springs as she settled in, the sight of her thighs squashed against the cushion, the puff of fat where her legs met her shorts. By next month, she thought, these clothes will be too big. By two weeks from now. Easy.

  “It’s not even lunchtime,” Gemm said. “I figured you’d still be asleep.”

  “I got up early.” Lo looked down at the floor. “I saw Maebh before she left.”

  It was quiet.

  Gemm started to get up, then sat down again.

  Lo waited.

  “Lo, there are lots of things you don’t know about me. Things your parents don’t necessarily approve of.” She laughed, short and bitter. “Actually, there’s just the one thing.”

  Lo looked up and saw that Gemm’s mouth was set hard and that her fingers trembled in her lap. She placed a hand over her grandmother’s.

  “I love your mother,” whispered Gemm, so quietly that Lo had to lean forward to hear her. “But I couldn’t live my whole life lying. I had to be the—the person I am.”

  Lo stayed quiet, sensing that maybe she didn’t need to say anything at all.

  Gemm met her eyes at last, and her face was open and sad. “The story,” she said. “That might help. Now, where were we?”

  Lo smiled. She’d been telling herself the beginning all morning. “He’d just found the selkie skin.” She lowered her voice to imitate her grandmother. “He knew what he must do . . .”

  Gemm took over without missing a beat. “The fisherman crouched there, hidden behind the line of boulders, and he watched the selkies sing.” The sadness in her voice was gone now, as if she’d forgotten she was Gemm at all and had become only a storyteller. “Well, that young woman, who sat apart from the others, she was the most beautiful thing the fisherman had ever seen in all his life.”

  Lo smiled at that, though Gemm’s voice stiffened when she said “thing.”

  “The fisherman ran his hands over the skin. He couldn’t believe his luck. He folded it and tucked it carefully into his satchel. He wrapped it in a net to protect it from his gutting knife and the sharp edges of his shells.

  “He closed the sack, blood thrumming fast through his veins. He turned around and saw shining black eyes looking into his. The selkie had come to him.

  “She said nothing, but reached out and touched his cheek with her hand. He had claimed her sealskin, you see, and in doing so had placed her under his power. He brought his own hand up and clasped hers. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You are beautiful.’

  “The selkie said nothing. Her eyes were soft and metallic. ‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,’ said the fisherman then. Still nothing.

  “He had heard the stories, but even now, with a selkie in front of him, he couldn’t quite believe. He found he was afraid. But if taking her skin really kept her in his thrall as he’d heard it did, he would find out soon enough. He pulled her toward him. ‘Come,’ he said. He turned away, hoping, hoping, and took his first step.

  “The selkie followed. Her family, her pod—they never saw her leave. The selkie followed the fisherman inland, her hand in his. They were married within the week.”

  Gemm shifted in her seat. The creak of the springs brought Lo back from the story’s world. She heard waves beat against the shore outside. Light cascaded through the windows in pale banners. Lo was sure the story wasn’t over, but Gemm stayed silent.

  “Tell the ending.”

  Gemm turned her gaze away from the brightest window. “Sorry, honey?”

  “Tell the end, please,” she said. “What happened to the selkie girl?”

  “Oh,” said Gemm. “Happily ever after. The end.”

  “Tell it right!” Lo knew she sounded childish, but she couldn’t help it.

  Gemm smirked. “Well, she never spoke a word, though the fisherman often asked her to sing again. She never even said her own name. In the village she was simply ‘the fishwife.’ Through her silence, the sound of her own name, sung by her kin, always echoed in her mind. She missed her home and her family, but she could never tear herself away from the fisherman, because he had her skin. She searched for it for years, but the fisherman had hidden it well.

  “In time, the selkie and the fisherman had a child—a girl. She loved her daughter, even though the very sight of her reminded the selkie of her captivity. After she gave birth, she stopped looking for her skin. She tried to forget, for her daughter’s sake. But she couldn’t ignore her true self.” Gemm’s voice had strengthened, and the wrinkles in her forehead were deep and tight.

  “One day, the selkie was sitting on the beach outside the fisherman’s house, staring at the waves, weaving a net. The selkie made the best nets for miles around, and they brought in more trade than her husband’s fishing ever did. She heard her daughter’s footsteps behind her.

  “‘Mother,’ said the girl, ‘I found an old leather coat in the rafters. May I have it?’

  “The selkie turned and faced her nearly grown daughter. She felt herself turning cold, and then warm.

  “The selkie dropped her net and let it tangle in the surf. She ran into the house. There it was—there it was! She saw it almost as soon as she got inside. It was half pulled down from the rafters, where it had been hidden all those too-many years. It was dusty, dry, and cracked along the places where it had been folded. But it called to her.

  “She reached out, struggling to believe. As she grasped it, her voice swam back into her body, tearing into her throat like a riptide. She coughed, and a mist of blood spattered over her lips. She clutched her lost skin, and on the sandy floor of her husband’s cottage, the selkie wept. She cried and screamed until she was exhausted.<
br />
  “When she finally looked up, her daughter was standing in the doorway. She was crying too, but silently.

  “The selkie felt at once that her own voice had returned at the expense of her daughter’s. She walked over to her child and embraced her. Already the sea rushed loud in her ears, pulling at her bones. ‘I have to leave you now,’ said the selkie—the first words she’d ever spoken to her daughter. ‘I love you, but I have to go. You have grown up strong and good. You don’t need your mother anymore.’

  Her daughter’s eyes clouded.

  “‘Would you come to the sea, then?’ the selkie asked. ‘You are my daughter. You could wear my skin. Would you come?’ But her daughter said nothing, and the selkie knew she would not.

  “She took up her skin and left the fisherman’s cottage. She could not bear to look back. The beach was just ahead, the waves sweeping in and pulling back in a heartbeat rhythm. She shed her dress and waded in, then dipped her sealskin in the cold water and watched it come alive. She wrapped it around herself. Her seal and human parts melded together, and the selkie swam out to sea. She was herself once more.

  “Her daughter had many suitors, mostly fishermen charmed by her silvery skin and the black depths of her eyes. Eventually she chose a husband. The selkie risked returning to human form for the first time since her escape to attend her daughter’s wedding.

  “But she was not welcome. The fisherman, you see, had hanged himself shortly after the selkie left. Her daughter would not listen, would not hear her protests that she had been kidnapped, that she had every right to escape.

  “The selkie left the wedding party in misery. She wished she’d been forced to stay and dance in red-hot iron shoes, like bad mothers in other stories. She wrapped her graying sealskin around her shoulders and made her last journey to the sea. She was never seen on land again.”

  Everything was still. No steam rose from Gemm’s mug. No wind battered the walls of the cottage. This time, Lo knew without asking that the story was over.

  She looked around the room, reminding herself where she was. She had watched the selkie slink away into the darkness—or she had been the selkie, and was only now coming back to herself. Gemm’s house was cast in shades of gray. The wood looked faintly damp, the whitewashed walls powdery and thin.

  Lo laughed softly—she couldn’t think of anything better to do. Gemm offered a small smile, and Lo immediately felt guilty.

  “I knew it wouldn’t have a happily-ever-after,” she said.

  Now Gemm laughed. “Well, there will be a happy ending for us. It’s lunchtime.” She walked over to the refrigerator.

  They made corned beef sandwiches. Lo ate two and excused herself. The bathroom was just off the kitchen, so she knew she had to be quiet. She waited until she heard Gemm fiddling with the dishes. Then it was just a matter of two fingers down her throat.

  A hot, thick wave rose up inside her. She bent over the toilet and choked everything out. She had to fight for breath when she was done.

  Lo stared at her face in the bathroom mirror. A blood vessel had ruptured on her cheek, and it spread like a road map under her right eye. She took concealer from her toiletry bag on the sink and dabbed at her face until it looked even again. She squinted at her reflection and scowled, then stopped. Her cheeks stuck out when she scowled.

  When she had gargled and wiped her mouth, she left the bathroom. Maebh was in the kitchen now, eating a sandwich and talking quietly with Gemm. Lo couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but Maebh made shapes in the air with her large hands and Gemm leaned forward, listening intently. Her gray hair had escaped from its knot and hung down her back in pale streams. Maebh’s hair was in braids again, curled into intricate patterns at the nape of her neck.

  Maebh noticed Lo watching them, and she smiled at her. “Come join us, Lo,” she said warmly.

  Lo blushed, certain she wasn’t wanted. But both Gemm and Maebh looked at her with nothing but kindness and interest in their faces. Lo nodded and took her seat at the table.

  six

  RESCUE

  RUNNING usually kept Noah from thinking too much, but it wasn’t helping yet. He kept thinking of the day he’d had and mourning the internship that could have been.

  He remembered the visions he’d conjured up when he’d applied for this job: electron microscopes, bubbling test tubes, shark-tagging expeditions. He’d known, in a small and unacknowledged corner of his mind, that the real thing might not be that exciting. Still, he couldn’t hold back the sinking disappointment he’d felt after arriving at the Center that morning.

  Professor Foster had played a starring role in Noah’s internship daydreams. Noah had heard the professor’s voice in his head many times, saying how talented he was, the best student of marine science he’d seen in years. Professor Foster would eat lunch with him, discuss his latest research, and invite Noah into his advanced seminar at UNH.

  For someone with low self-esteem, Noah thought to himself, you really know how to build yourself up. Idiot.

  Noah knew making a good impression on Professor Foster would open all the doors he needed—this summer, at college, and afterward. But he had obviously failed to show he could really be useful, and now he was stuck in the filing room for the rest of the summer. Professor Foster had claimed it was important work, but Noah knew better.

  “We haven’t gotten a decent grant in years,” Foster had said, “so we still run a lot on donations. We’ve got about four decades’ worth of request forms, replies, and receipts back here, and we need them all filed, first by name and then by date. You can enter everything into our server as you sort, and in the end we’ll have this nice, shiny new database so we can figure out who’s worth the price of the stamp we use to ask them for money.”

  Noah had nodded and smiled. He’d thought it wouldn’t be so bad. But he’d barely gotten through one box of ancient, crumbling papers by lunchtime. He’d tried to keep himself from counting the remaining boxes, but he already knew how many it took to reach the ceiling, and about how big the room was, and his brain did the calculations before he could stop it. There were two hundred boxes—at least.

  At the end of the day, he’d sorted through two and a half of them. Noah knew he would be lucky just to finish them all by the end of the summer. He filed away his dream internship with every wrinkly scrap of paper noting that some old woman had donated five dollars to the Center thirty years ago.

  The filing room was dry and blasted with so much air conditioning that Noah’s ears were ringing and he still had goose bumps when he finally left at the end of the day. He thanked a distracted Professor Foster for the opportunity (for the umpteenth time) and walked out into the yellow island sunshine. He didn’t want to do anything but run.

  Noah knew it was his 5K time, not his brain, that had gotten him the scholarship he needed, much as he liked to pretend otherwise. His science grades were almost perfect, but in every other subject he struggled for his Cs and Bs. He wasn’t going to let his dream get away from him by not being in shape when cross-country season came. He’d changed in the Center’s bathroom, and at first he thought he’d just run on Appledore.

  But staying on Appledore made him think too much. He needed to go somewhere else—not White, where Gemm and Lo would be waiting to pounce on him with questions about his first day. He settled on Star, the second-largest island, where at least he wouldn’t have to pass the Center with every lap. Noah already liked Star Island best, anyway, he thought—it was very green, whereas Appledore was rough and sparse except where the Thaxter garden had been pushed into the unwilling earth. Star was probably green only because of some unrelenting fertilization by the Oceanic Hotel gardeners, but they still managed to make it look natural.

  It took him five minutes to navigate the Gull, Gemm’s ancient red rowboat, from Appledore to Star. Gemm had an old motorboat, too: the Minke, named for the species of small whales that populated the ocean here. She’d laughed at Noah when he’d said he would take th
e Gull, but he’d told her he liked the idea of getting himself places on his own strength. She’d accepted that easily enough, and Noah had enjoyed rowing to work, though he wasn’t very fast yet.

  Noah tied off the rowboat at the hotel’s pier. He stretched for a few minutes and then put his headphones back on, scrolling through his music until he found his running playlist.

  He set off around the hotel, taking in deep, steady breaths. The carefully trimmed lawn bent under his shoes and gave off sweet fresh-mown smells. The wind kept him cool.

  Noah approached a large memorial stone, a rough granite obelisk that was almost completely covered in gull droppings. Another statue stood next to it, small and squat and even dirtier. He saw dozens of tiny monuments around them, stacks of rocks and twigs that people had built in memory of who knew what over the years. He ran past them, toward the low cliffs that bordered the island.

  The ground was rockier here, less green, and the cliffs were pale. Tall waves crumpled against them, wearing them smooth.

  As he approached the edge of the island opposite the hotel, the waves seemed to die down. Fewer shoals here, probably, Noah thought, remembering the shallow, submerged rocks for which the Isles were named. The water was calmer and darker on this side. It rose and fell in deep green undulations.

  Noah saw a shadow move behind a jutting boulder. He pulled off his headphones. He heard a sharp splash, out of rhythm with the waves, and a crack like breaking bones. A deep cough followed, and a gurgling gasp.

  He yanked off his shirt and scrambled down the rocks, scanning the water for the drowning person. He saw a whitish shape under a wave and lunged toward it. There—his arms closed on a soft, struggling form.

  A girl slipped in Noah’s grasp. She had cropped black hair and silvery pale skin, and—he realized with horror—she was completely naked. He pulled back instinctively and held up his hands to show his innocence.

  She stood there glaring at him, fire in her eyes and seawater streaming over her body.

  Then her mouth dropped open. “Oh, Goddess,” she cried, “where is it?” She dove back underwater, vanishing into the green dark.