Skin Deep

by Marissa Doyle

“Get ready to run, Conn,” she murmured. “Stick close to the wall.”

  Slowly, cautiously, she inched around the edge of the room. She kept her head down, hoping that the enormous grappling figures wouldn’t notice her slow progress or step on Rob’s limp form, and cringed when a limb of wind or smoke crashed into a wall with as much force as one of flesh.

  When she’d reached the wall closest to where the skin lay, she looked up once more. Above her Mahtahdou roared as the storm seemed to get a grip on him, but in the next second he’d squirmed free and they circled each other once more. She resisted the urge to yell encouragement to the storm thing and darted across the hall. Alasdair’s skin was just a few feet behind the throne, a tumbled brown heap. Ten more feet…five…

  “No you don’t, human!” roared a voice.

  Just as her fingertips brushed short sleek softness, something slammed into her. She grunted and grabbed, and was rewarded with a handful of fur before the momentum of whatever had knocked into her sent her sprawling. She heard Conn scream somewhere across the room and tried to shout to him to run, but the blow had winded her.

  Mahtahdou had wrenched away from the storm and stood over her, reaching. She held Alasdair’s skin closer to her and scrambled up into a crouch. He wouldn’t get it. Not without a fight.

  Then another voice spoke. But it whispered, not roared, and Garland wondered for a split second if it had spoken aloud, or only in her head.

  Garland. Use the quilt.

  The quilt? Then she realized that she still clutched the golden fishnet quilt in her other hand. Use it how? What could a small, wet quilt do against Mahtahdou’s huge surging, chaotic power? And who had spoken to her?

  The storm leaned forward and grabbed Mahtahdou from behind even as the threatening shadow bent toward her. She rose and held the quilt up and stared wildly from it to Mahtahdou writhing in the storm’s grip, imprisoned for a few precious seconds. The golden grid of the fishnet sparkled, even in the gray storm-light.

  Net. For trapping things. Could that be it? Was that why the storm had brought it to her?

  Muttering a silent apology to Alasdair she dropped his skin, and with both hands, flung the small quilt over a flailing, billowing piece of Mahtahdou.

  Instantly the quilt became even heavier. She hung onto it desperately as it drew the thick, roiling smoky figure into itself as if it were a sponge soaking up water. Mahtahdou screamed again, but this time his screech was hollow in her mind, receding like a train hurtling down a track. He shrank, sucked into the quilt, and it writhed horribly in her hands as he struggled to escape the pattern that was entrapping him.

  And then he was gone.

  The quilt in her hands rippled, then fell limp as anything made of fabric should.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Was Mahtahdou inside it? Would his shadow roil out of it once again if she moved? After a long moment of hardly daring to breathe she shook it a little.

  Nothing.

  She shook it a little harder. Still nothing.

  With careful, deliberate movements she folded the quilt into a square, then rolled it. Some cord to tie it might be nice just now. Even nicer would be to drop it and run, find Conn, and sail home…if her dinghy hadn’t been swept out to sea by the storm.

  Something sidled up behind her. Conn held onto the back of her shirt and peered around her side at the bundled quilt. He was pale and there were scratches on his cheeks, but he was otherwise unhurt, thank heavens. “He’s gone,” he said.

  “He’s gone,” she agreed, and hugged him against her side with her free hand. “Are you all right?” And Rob—she had to check on him—

  A gust of wind hit them, and then another and another, in a strange sort of rhythm. The storm-figure—she’d forgotten about the storm. She looked up at it and realized what the odd, rhythmic puffs of wind were.

  It was laughing.

  It was standing over them in a nimbus of flying rain and wind, and it was laughing.

  Then suddenly, it too was gone. She blinked and stared up toward the rafters where its head had been. A small movement at the bottom of her field of vision drew her eyes down.

  Another figure, man-shaped and this time man-sized, stood about twenty feet from her and Conn. It was sliding some sort of cloak from its shoulders, a cloak made up of sea-colors, deep blue and limpid turquoise and pale frosty green the color of foam on the crests of waves…a cloak made of triangles and diamonds and squares, set in a pattern of curves.

  Her knees gave out then. But Alasdair was across the room and pulling her into his arms before she touched the floor.

  “You did it!” he muttered fiercely into her ear, holding her so tightly that she could barely breathe. “Grandmother couldn’t have done it better.” He hugged her even more tightly until she coughed in protest, then held her away from him to look at her with shining eyes.

  She clutched at his forearms because her knees still didn’t seem to be capable of holding her up. Joy and vitality radiated from him in an almost visible glow.

  “Mahtahdou said you were dead.” She touched his bare chest, crisscrossed with scars. “But you’re alive.”

  “Because you healed me.” He glanced behind him at the Storm at Sea quilt, lying where he’d shed it. “I woke up and you were gone, but the quilt…with it around me I.…” He squeezed her shoulders. “You saw. I am alive and Mahtahdou is gone. Now do you believe me about your quilts?”

  “I still don’t understand—”

  He was smiling and shaking his head. “The net. Do you remember how it trapped Conn’s fingers? It caught Mahtahdou as well, but it took all of him. Just like my grandmother’s woven band, but stronger. I don’t think there’s any way he’ll ever be able to escape your magic.” His face grew solemn. “You did this, Garland. You gave me back my life, my home—”

  Conn suddenly appeared under Alasdair’s arm, peering up at them. Alasdair pulled him into their embrace. “And my son. You saved my son.”

  “Bad gone,” Conn said again, nodding at the quilt she still held.

  “Bad gone,” Alasdair agreed. He took the quilt from her and set it carefully on the floor, then looked around the room. “And we’re home. This is your home, Conn. We can return to it now.” He turned back to her. “Garland gave it to us,” he said softly.

  Garland looked away, not sure of what to say, and her eyes fell on Alasdair’s sealskin, lying where she’d dropped it before casting the quilt at Mahtahdou. There was one more thing she needed to give him. She detached herself from his arms and bent to retrieve it then stood for a moment, her back to him and Conn. In a moment she would turn and give Alasdair his skin. He would be complete again, free to return to his world. The selkie world.

  Where there wouldn’t be any room for her.

  The thought nearly crushed her but she couldn’t let the pain stop her. She’d known what would happen if she rescued his skin. He would take it and be a selkie once more, and life would go back to the way it was before. Only now she’d be even lonelier, because she’d learned what it was like to be truly loved.

  The skin was heavy in her hands. She smoothed her hand over its sleekness. Behind her Alasdair made a soft sound.

  “This is why I came out here in the first place. This and Conn.” She swallowed hard at the sight of the slashes Mahtahdou had made in it and ran a finger along one. A strange tingle ran through her hand and into her finger, and the slit closed as she traced its length.

  “Garland…” Alasdair said.

  Hardly daring to breathe, she touched another cut. It too closed.

  She touched them all though she could barely seen them through the tears that ran unchecked down her cheeks. Her arm felt as though it were glowing white hot. How she did it was almost beside the point. She could give Alasdair back his world. All of it.

  “I said I’d get your skin and bring it back to you. Here.” She turned and held it out to him, sniffing fiercely. Powerful magic-women shouldn’t cry in public. “You can be a se
lkie again. You and Conn. His skin is here somewhere. I’ll find it and make it whole again.” She’d be losing Conn, too, wouldn’t she? Her little limpet. Her almost-child.

  Alasdair was silent. The hissing crash of waves on the beach and the sigh of the wind in the broken windows were the only sounds she heard. Then he reached out and took it from her. There was an expression on his face that she wasn’t sure she understood—or that any human could understand. Would it be comparable to returning a lost limb to an amputee, or sight to a blind person? He ran his hand over its length, feeling its wholeness, and finally looked up at her with blazing eyes.

  Then, without a word, he strode out of the throne room.

  Conn looked up at her, opened his mouth, then turned and ran after his father.

  Chapter 21

  Garland stood still, staring after them, then around her at the pearly walls of the room. The clouds and fog had lifted and the setting sun illuminated them with soft golden light so that they almost glowed. She bent and picked up the still-folded fishnet quilt then found a length of the cord that had bound Conn and tied it snugly around the quilt. There. She didn’t know if it was necessary, but it made her feel better.

  It was nice that something could make her feel better.

  She’d known it would happen. Of course Alasdair had gone back to the sea, and Conn had gone with him. That was what selkies did. It didn’t matter that she loved him more deeply than the deepest ocean, or that he loved her too…she knew he did. Nature was still stronger.

  Still, he could at least have said goodbye.

  But maybe it was better this way. What good would words be at a time like this? Could they make it easier for her to let him go?

  She rubbed her face on her damp sleeve, making it damper. She was safe and so was Mattaquason. She could go home now and try to be glad that this had happened. Without Alasdair she wouldn’t have learned what she was capable of. If she worked to focus her new-found power, what could she do with it? Could she make quilts that healed the sick or eased grief and pain?

  But in the meanwhile, what was she supposed to do with Mahtahdou’s quilt? Was she stuck being his guardian now just as Alasdair’s grandmother had been? Somehow the thought of drying out the quilt with Mahtahdou inside it, wrapping it in acid-free tissue paper, putting it away a lignin-free cardboard quilt storage box in her cedar closet, and checking it for moths periodically seemed anticlimactic. Would her homeowner’s insurance cover it in case of theft or—she shook her head. Being giddy wouldn’t help now. Surely she could find a way to give it to the selkies to guard. And maybe Kathy would be her friend again, and Sandy and Elizabeth and the rest of them in town. And Rob—if he survived, would he be her friend again too? They could never be lovers—probably neither of them could face that now—but maybe they’d be able at least to nod and smile politely at each other at Friends of the Library and Historical Society events—

  She would go home and find out if she could only stop crying.

  Rob still lay where she’d left him, his broken arm straight beside him. At least it was a clean break and hadn’t poked through his skin; getting him home was going to be hard enough as it was. Or maybe she should leave him here and go for help? But there was no guarantee she’d be able to come back again. No, she’d have to bring him now. Somehow. First she had to find her boat.

  She zipped off her lifejacket and slid it under his head and whispered, “I’ll be back,” then rose and looked around the room. The selkies would restore it and rebuild the damaged parts of their hall. Alasdair would sit here in his rightful place again and Conn would come after him. Maybe Alasdair would take another wife and they would give Conn brothers and sisters. He would love that.

  And maybe sometime, when she was sailing her boat on a perfect, hazy summer day, she would catch a glimpse of this island hanging between the worlds. But she wouldn’t try to land on it. Not again.

  In a corner she found another length of fur, smaller than Alasdair’s and lighter in color, with spots dappling it like a fawn’s coat. Of course. Conn was still a baby, wasn’t he? She healed the cuts Mahtahdou had made in it—it was plusher than Alasdair’s sleek fur, almost like a stuffed animal’s—and held it to her cheek for a moment. Would Conn be as happy to see his skin again? Would he gaze up at her with his large, wondering eyes for a moment before disappearing into the water after his father? Would he try to wear her purple shirt over his sealskin? She smiled, but it felt more like a grimace of pain.

  Then she picked up the fishnet quilt again—much as she hated to touch it, she wasn’t going to let it out of her sight until its final prison had been decided—and turned to the door. She paused next to the Storm at Sea quilt where it still lay on the floor in a puddle of seawater. Alasdair had no need of it now that Mahtahdou was chained and he had his own skin back.

  But it wasn’t hers anymore either, even if she’d sewn her heart into it. It had served its purpose. She stepped past it and out the door.

  * * *

  The sinking sun edged the wrack of dark blue clouds near the horizon with shining silvery orange, and a soft breeze rustled the beach grass at her feet as she ascended the first dune. Just enough wind to carry her home, assuming Alasdair hadn’t blown her boat away. Spending the night on this island was simply more than she could face.

  A small, purple-clad figure appeared in front of her just before she crested the dune. “Hi!” it said, and launched itself at her.

  “Conn! Don’t startle me like that.” She caught him and held him tightly, just for a minute. Then she let go and knelt beside him. “I need to leave soon. But take this.” She put his sealskin into his hands. “It’s all better now. You can use it again.”

  He took it from her but barely looked at it. “Come on,” he said, pulling at her arm.

  “Oh, Conn, I can’t. It’s getting dark and I need to get Dr. Mowbray home because he’s hurt. But I’m glad I saw you so I could say good-bye.” She brushed his hair off his forehead, then leaned forward and kissed it. “I’m going to miss my little limpet,” she whispered. “Be a good boy for your Daddy, all right?”

  “No. Come on.” He dropped his skin and tugged at her arm with both hands.

  She sighed and rose, brushing sand off her knees. Maybe he’d found her boat. That would be helpful. “All right. I was going there anyway. Take your skin, honey. I don’t think selkies are supposed to leave them lying around.”

  He bent obediently and picked up the fur, then seized her hand again and tugged. “Come on!”

  She let him lead her down the dune, pausing to look back across the short plain dotted with yellowed rose and beach plum bushes and skeletal cedars and dune grass. Would they grow strong and green again now that Mahtahdou was gone? Did Alasdair know that beach plums made a delicious jelly that was considered a delicacy on Cape Cod? Not that he’d be able to have toast anymore…oh God, she had to stop thinking about him. He was no longer part of her life.

  Conn let go of her hand to run ahead of her and scramble up the high bank above the beach. “Come on!” he said.

  She clambered up the steep face of the dune—not as easily as she had earlier, what with trying to hold the fishnet quilt as carefully as possible…and damn, but she was tired. “What, Conn?” she asked.

  He pointed down at the dark surface of the water. She squinted into the setting sun.

  Seals, dozens of them, swam toward the shore below where she stood. Some had already inch-wormed their way up onto the beach in their oddly boneless wiggle. They snorted soft whoofling sounds through their noses or made quiet, low-pitched groans to one another, and she couldn’t help wondering what they were saying…if seals could talk, that was.

  But one of them, a large, strongly-built one, had reared up on its flippers as if standing to attention. The air around it seemed to change, to grow hazy and indistinct, like the rising waves of heat seen over a desert. The squat figure inside it lengthened— she couldn’t quite see in the dusky light—

&n
bsp; “Garland.”

  Alasdair stood silhouetted in the dark golden light, gazing up at her where she stood on the peak of the dune. He was shrugging something off his shoulders, something sleek and dark. His skin, that she’d made whole again. Her heart gave an almost painful thump.

  “Alasdair,” she said, and swallowed. “I was just—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, another seal next to him faded into that strange mistiness and someone—a woman—appeared beside him in its place, tall and dark-haired with shining eyes. Ah. Yes, of course.

  But then another woman joined him, and then a man. As she watched, thirty or so—men and women and children—wiggled from the water and changed, and clustered around her and Conn in a wide semi-circle at the foot of the dune. They held their sealskins over their arms or draped casually over shoulders, and they were tall and beautifully formed and totally careless of their nudity so that she felt not only shabby in her rumpled, wet shirt and jeans but overdressed as well.

  Alasdair stepped through the crowd. “Here she is,” he said over his shoulder. “This is she who bound Mahtahdou.”

  Conn grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he said once again and pulled. She was tempted to dig her heals into the sand and resist, but Conn’s determination was going to land her on her backside if she didn’t follow.

  Alasdair was waiting for them at the bottom of the high bank. He took her arm and raised it so that the fishnet quilt was in plain sight.

  A murmur rose among the gathered selkies, and one by one they stepped closer, reaching out to touch it with nervous fingers. Someone took Conn’s sealskin and it was passed from to hand to hand as they stroked it and looked at her. She could see the wonder in their eyes and hear it in their subdued whispers to one another. Then an older woman very gently reached out and touched her arm. “Tapadh leibh, laidire boireannach,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

  “Oh…uh, you’re welcome,” she replied. That seemed to give the others courage; now they touched her too, sometimes saying words she couldn’t understand, sometimes just smiling and nodding. Next to her Conn bobbed up and down on his toes, grinning proprietarily as if she were his show-and-tell object on the first day of school.