Gwenn stopped at the entrance to the attic. Not often had she reason to visit its spiderwebbed corners and dust-coated trinkets. Tonight, however, she had little other choice. Something pulled her there like an invisible string being drawn by a puppeteer. If that husband of hers would not fix the hole, she would.
The door, if she remembered correctly, was stuck with disuse. She bound her hair up, platinum curls framing her face, and used both hands to pull the rusty lever.
To her surprise, it sprang open with little effort.
Gwenn looked up the stairs and into the unknown.
She took the first step, chin raised.
In a small shoppe in a town by the shore of a large sea, Emý was putting together two satchels with every last essential they would need.
She was tired of men.
So terribly and horribly tired.
There were more sea stars in the nooks and crannies of her home than she knew what to do with, and in all different colors, as well: pink, red, blue, green, orange, purple—every shade one could ever imagine, and some one couldn’t. Some with stripes, some with polka dots, some who glittered brighter than any spark of dragon fire, some who were missing their limbs, and some who turned themselves invisible when they were nervous or anxious.
Some who, for some inconceivable reason, decided to attach themselves to the round of Emý’s shoulder, popping against the ever-present sunburn she got from spending so much of her day walking in the sand outside the shoppe’s front door—the only place her gods and goddesses could be found.
Not that Emý minded at all; she was used to it after all these years. Sea stars were to her what moths were to her bedside lanterns. Though, the sea stars weren’t always as well-behaved as she’d like. They didn’t always get along with each other, bickering incessantly, and they did sometimes make bathing inconvenient. But she supposed they were an adorable kind of inconvenient.
Nowadays, she had only one sea star living on her, cupping her right shoulder, a shy yellow one who glinted beautifully in the starlight.
“Ah, there is so much sand in this house!” Emý cursed her wife and her daily visits to the sea. Alas, there was no time for Emý to sweep it all up for the next witch who would inhabit this place, for she knew she had to move quickly.
“I fear our time in this place has come to an end, my dearest krútt,” Emý murmured to her yellow sea star. “I must move us to safety, so that we are no longer at the whim of men who steal creatures and thieve my magick.”
Emý felt the sea star wiggle excitedly, and she used her opposite hand to stroke their center, calming them.
Moving through her home to her storefront, she went to the circular window cut into the wooden door. A human child skipped by, waving happily. Tall. Knobby knees. Black with warm russet-brown skin. Rose. Always such a curious and respectful one. She must be on her way to school. Rose was one of the few humans Emý would miss.
Offering Rose a sad smile, she turned the sign from “open / merry welcome” to “closed / blessed be.”
“That’s odd,” she mused, placing a hand on the doorknob.
Emý could have sworn she’d locked the door before she started packing. Beginning at the top of the door and moving to the very bottom, she bolted its dozen locks. She went to the windows to close the shutters, somewhat unnecessarily since the moss had grown over the gutter and blocked any view into the shoppe or out to the shore.
She must not take chances.
No one could even so much as suspect they were leaving, or she knew they would be killed within moments.
“Ula,” Emý whisper-sang as she pored over the tables and the drawers and shelves, sticking gemstones, candles, goblets, crystal wands, and driftwood into her satchel. “Are you ready, my love?”
Emý had expected to hear her wife clicking and clanging as she gathered her things up to leave, but her stomach sank when she realized her own clicking and clanging were the only sounds in the shoppe.
Maybe Ula had gotten distracted by the bottles of seawater that lined the perimeter of the room, as she was apt to do. Even though they were only a few steps from the sea, Ula simply couldn’t help herself. Emý’s thoughts turned to the way Ula’s love flowed as freely as the currents in the ocean. Her love, like the ocean, was boundless, and she often found herself loving more than one person at once. It was a quality they shared.
Where is she? Emý was frustrated.
Peering into every corner and opening every door, Emý called for her wife. Her voice started to crack with worry.
Emý felt her eyes brimming with tears. Her heart threatened to catapult from her chest. Dread filled her body and felt as though it might burst from her toes. The little sea star on her shoulder was shaking.
No.
No.
No.
In the corner of the store where the bottles of seawater were kept, Emý saw it. Every container was tipped over, the puddles in the carpet nearly dry. The tiny seashells arranged in a shape.
No…letters.
No.
Words.
SHE’S OURS NOW.
Gwenn had expected to search the roof until she found the hole, then put a pot or basin of appropriate size and depth underneath to collect the wet annoyance until the storm season ended. Then she would finally get to sleep as long and as deeply as a breastfeeding babe.
Gwenn had not expected to immediately stub her bare toes on the corner of an oversized trunk with seawater spilling over the lip. In it sat a strange, sapphire-haired woman, as if she had been taking a luxurious bath that Gwenn had rudely interrupted.
“Who the bloody seashell are you?” Gwenn whisper-yelled, huddled over one leg as she held her injured foot with both hands.
The stranger’s eyes grew large not just with surprise, but with, Gwenn realized, pure terror.
“Did he—did he send you here to do it?” she asked, shivering so forcefully her teeth chattered together. Whether it was due to the cold attic or fear, Gwenn couldn’t be sure.
“To do … what?” Gwenn asked, confused.
“You know …”
“No, I don’t.”
“To kill me.”
Standing straight, Gwenn peered down at the woman, brows knitted. “Kill you? Why would I want to kill you?” Gwenn paused. “I came to find out why there is water dripping onto my face each night. I guess I now know the reason!”
“The man. He said—he said if I tried to leave or made even the smallest sound, that he would ‘slit a new pair of gills into my pretty neck.’ And now you’re here, so I must have done something to make myself known.”
A new pair of gills?
Was Gwenn having some kind of fever dream?
“The only man here is my husband. Are you saying my husband said these things to you? Very tall? Very, very pale? Hair like summertime blackberries?”
The woman wavered.
Nodded.
Gwenn blinked.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
Gwenn looked closer at the woman—she felt she knew her but couldn’t quite recall. She was, after all, notoriously terrible with remembering things and recognizing faces. Everyone in the village knew it.
In the dim light of the attic, what Gwenn saw made her gasp so loudly she thought her husband might be able to hear it from below. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
The woman was not human.
From the waist up, her skin was a light, slippery gray, and she had breasts like some humans might. From the waist down, the woman widened to a thick coat of dark gray with splotches of black. The hind flippers met in a trident shape at the end of her body and hung over the edge of the trunk, dripping water.
Dripping water between the spaces of the floorboards.
There’s a selkie in my attic. Gwenn felt the room begin to spin. And my husband is the only one who could have brought her here.
“You’re not going to kill me, then?” the selkie-woman asked, breaking through the swirling cloud of Gwenn�
�s thoughts.
Gwenn looked to the roof as if she were deep in thought, holding up one of her index fingers. “Hold on a moment. I haven’t decided just yet.”
The selkie-woman whimpered, sliding deeper into her makeshift tub.
Gwenn pursed her lips together, experiencing confusion, alarm, and a thousand other feelings she didn’t know how to name. “Of course I’m not going to kill you. I d-don’t know why my husband did this to you, but I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I’m able.”
The selkie-woman’s expression straddled the line between wonderment and disbelief.
But there was a spark of trust there.
And something else.
After Gwenn had crept back down the hall, wringing out the hem of her nightdress, she crawled into bed beside the snoring man she had loved for nigh on seven years now. Do you really ever know somebody, wholly and truly? Though she could barely quiet her thoughts, she slipped into a restless sleep, dreaming in nonsensical fragments—in images and feelings that made up parts of a story, but not the whole.
The sea.
Swimming alongside selkies.
Her white tail swishing.
Happiness.
Rubbing noses with … the selkie-woman?
Love.
Riptides.
Swimming alone.
Frightened.
A mouthful of sand.
So frightened.
Purple light.
Screaming.
Kiernan putting on her necklace.
Emý would likely never know who made the decision to take Ula. The men had betrayed their promise to let Ula be; their happiness in that godsforsaken village couldn’t have lasted. “All that matters now is finding Ula, right?” Emý asked aloud. Every word that left her mouth seemed to glide over the rolling green hills and straight into the vast emptiness of the countryside. Except for her sea star, she hadn’t talked to another being in days, and they seemed to be equally as exhausted as she.
The sea star nodded glumly against her shoulder, agreeing, then promptly dozed off.
Using a long, knobby branch as a walking stick, Emý climbed the steep hill to where she could hear the distinct sound of a river running.
“Ah, there you are, old friend,” she chimed, walking briskly towards it. Dropping her satchel and stick to the side, she bent down to have a look. The water was so clear it mirrored her voyage-worn face back at her.
She smiled. The humans hadn’t had a chance to tarnish it yet.
She hoped they never found it. If only there were a spell powerful enough to stop them all.
While Emý was a sea witch, a water source of any type worked just as well in a pinch. If she didn’t recharge herself at least twice a day, she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the tracking spell she had been using to find her Ula.
According to her pendulum and map, her wife was in a small cliffside town she’d only been to once before, and only because another witch hadn’t been available for the … initiation.
Dipping her hands into the river, she cupped a generous amount of water, of pure energy.
After recharging, she took more careful notice of her face, reflected in the water remaining in her palms. The long, seaweed-green hair she had tied into a knot at the nape of her neck remained perfectly intact, despite the demanding journey. She touched the crusted-over scrape on her cheek from where she’d fallen in a perplexing forest who kept moving the trees to tease her, the wind giggling sweetly with every change.
Emý convinced herself that it had all been in good fun, and packed her things to leave; she knew she couldn’t waste time or magick on quickening the healing process. So there the mark would stay, at least for the time being.
As she walked, Emý’s memories of her time in the shoreside village tormented her. With the exception of the years she and Ula had spent teaching the local human children—Rose and her schoolmates—about the power of the sea and its guide, the moon, she realized she had few happy recollections to ponder.
Powerful men had forced Emý to hunt down selkies, to magick away their memories and their souls, for selkies were the utmost prized possession for any man who could pay the price.
All in the name of human men craving something to have and to hold. Mostly just to have.
Over the years, these men had become greedier and greedier, and the price had gone up and up. The selkies were no longer magnificent sea creatures who took a small break from the sea to roam the land as they pleased, but rare, ornamental things. Trophies. Prize cups.
By magicking their memories away, Emý could make the selkies forget their ability to regrow their selkie skins and return to their home. They simply forgot everything about their old lives, about the sea. Each time she was forced to do the initiation, a part of Emý’s soul withered. But their threat of widowhood was enough to make her keep doing it. She would have done anything for her Ula, the selkie she loved and who loved her. They had been blissfully and consensually wed for three years now.
Deep down, Emý had known the men would be coming for Ula eventually, and sooner rather than later, despite their promises of refuge. They had gotten away with stealing selkies for so long they had convinced themselves the selkies would never catch on. But they were horribly, horribly wrong. Every last selkie, save for Ula and those who were still magicked or in hiding, had now retreated further into the ocean, untouchable by even the most skilled of sea witches.
In the men’s eyes, they were granting Emý a kindness by “allowing” her to be married to a selkie any of them could easily have taken for themselves.
And now that every shore was dry … they had.
Emý poured the water back into the river and said a silent goodbye.
Emý had been born with magick in her. It was in every part of her. But even she could not go back in time and undo the terrible things those men had made her do. The purple lightning. The pleading screams of those selkies. All of those selkies. Those initiations would stay in her heart until the day she was nothing but a pile of ash. Salted tears fell. She grieved for them. For herself. For her Ula.
“How are you doing that?” Gwenn asked Ula, gripping the edge of the trunk as she knelt beside it.
The corner of Ula’s mouth twitched. “It’s magick. Water magick, to be precise. Watch closely this time,” she said, submerging one hand, palm up. She brought her other hand just above it, palm down. They moved in small, careful circles: one clockwise, one counterclockwise. Gradually, both hands broke the surface of the water with a globe of liquid spinning wildly between them.
Gwenn grinned from ear to ear, clapping like a child who had found tiny faerie houses in her garden. “Why, that was simply wonderful! Do it again!”
Ula began to perform the trick again, but with a sigh, she lowered her hands, averting her gaze from Gwenn.
“Ula, is everything alright?” Gwenn’s voice hitched with panic.
Nodding weakly, Ula said, “Don’t you worry, little human. I’m fine. It’s just—this trunk has iron joints holding it together. Iron makes any kind of magick draining, and sometimes altogether impossible.”
Briefly, Gwenn reached into the trunk and gave Ula’s hand a light squeeze. “Don’t cause yourself pain for my sake. Try to save your energy.”
For the past week, Gwenn had snuck up to the attic whenever she could find a moment free of chores and her husband.
Gwenn didn’t know how to explain it, but Ula felt so very familiar to her. Simple things Ula would do would make Gwenn’s world freeze mid-spin with a remembrance that formed and was gone in the same instant. Like the way she twirled her sapphire braid between webbed fingers as she was now.
Watching the hypnotic motion, Gwenn pondered how wonderful it would feel to have Ula’s fingers running through her own hair. In fact, she could practically feel it happening—like the ghost of a lost lover come to visit. The fingers, her head tilting back against a soft palm.
Gwenn blushed, then the reality of the s
ituation came crashing down upon her.
What in the world am I going to do?
She could take her husband’s deceit no longer. Bad men were everywhere. They could be anyone, even the ones with the gentlest of hands and kindest of words.
And her husband—he was one of them.
“Turned out to be an easy, inexpensive fix after all,” Kiernan told her over his teacup the next morning, not meeting her eyes.
Later that day, she called him up to her library. “Oh, husband!”
Turning the corner into the room, nearly out of breath, he said, “Yes, dearest wife?”
He had been sickly sweet lately, at her beck and call, bringing her small gifts from town.
“I was just wondering,” she started.
Kiernan blanched when he spotted the open book resting in Gwenn’s lap. The gold foil words on the spine read, Your Map to Selkies Around the Thirteen Seas. Clearing his throat, he forced himself to look into Gwenn’s eyes.
“Do you happen to know much about selkies—those beings who are half seal, half human?” Gwenn finished, gesturing towards the book.
“Heavensnowhydoyouask?” he said, swallowing so forcefully the apple in his throat bobbed up and down.
“Well, I didn’t grow up near the shore, silly. You did. Selkies are common there, aren’t they? Though, I’m reading that they’ve become less so as men trick them into wifehood.”
Her husband said nothing for a moment.
“That’s about the extent of what I know, dearest,” he finally ventured.
Gwenn cocked her head to the side, flashing him a wide, curious smile. “Really and truly? That’s all? You’ve never had, say, an encounter with one? As a lad, mayhap—”
“No,” he replied quickly, cutting her off. “No, I can’t say that I have.”
He turned on his heel and left.
Who are you? Gwenn thought.
He almost seemed to stall for a moment, and Gwenn thought maybe she had spoken aloud instead of to herself, but she mustn’t have, because he kept walking along the hall, out of sight.
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