The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Sigrid laughed, her great body shaking like a walrus caught on a drifting ice floe. “Child, you’ve barely enough in your hand to feed a sparrow! I’m surely parched from all this talking—how I do go on when I’m not interrupted! But I won’t take your meager wages. I shall do the buying, and I shall choose the tavern. Good enough?”

  Snow nodded eagerly, and as the two walked along the quay, among glittering torches and warm-windowed inns full of rough laughter, she gently slipped her thin fingers into Sigrid’s warm hand. She hoped the older woman, whom she now thought of as quite beautiful, would not mind. In answer, Sigrid squeezed her freezing fingers tenderly.

  At length they reached the end of the Muireann pier. The salt-scoured boards smoothed out to a well-maintained dirt road, the noise and bustle of the other seaside folk faded. There Sigrid stopped below a dilapidated sign, which swung like a weathercock above a windowless tavern. The sign was painted oddly, with a rough image of a muscled arm grasping a fat, squirming fish by the tail. Below this strange insignia, it read:

  The Arm & Trout

  “Here we are, girl! Best in town, I promise.”

  She pushed open the heavy oak door and they slipped inside a tavern much quieter than any Snow had seen. It was terribly dark and smoky—pipes sent up tendrils everywhere. A few tables were scattered about the floor, which seemed to have far more than four corners, peopled with shadowy figures she could not quite make out, but they shrunk away from the open door. The bar itself was a decrepit slab of what might once have been cherry wood, but had petrified over the years. It was slightly uneven, and patrons clutched their mugs and tankards to keep them from sliding to the floor. Wedged behind the bar was a great hulk of a man who looked as though some giant had simply dropped an armful of limbs into a heap. He brandished a thick rag like a sword, and the rusted iron of his eyes dared anyone to order a drink. His hair was the color of sandy shoals that trapped the hulls of ships; his hands were the size of well-wrought drums, and he smelt of lamp oil and brine.

  Sigrid marched directly to the ramshackle bar and slapped her thick coins onto the stained wood. “Evening, Eyvind! Beer for me—spiced wine for the little one.”

  Eyvind grunted assent and busied himself with the drinks, turning his back to them. Snow saw that Sigrid did not take her eyes from his hulking back while he worked, seeming to linger on his enormous frame as though trying to memorize it. When he turned back, she drew her eyes back like a thief caught with her hands full of pocket watches.

  Sigrid collected both drinks and settled herself at a small table that gave a wide view of the rest of the tavern. She pushed the wine towards Snow and smirked with satisfaction as the girl swallowed it down—it warmed her from the roots of her colorless hair to the tips of her shivering toes.

  “Specialty of the house. This is the Arm—it’s where those of us who are, well, slightly off the map of Muireann come. Look around, love. Here there be monsters.”

  Snow saw then that the figures huddled at their tables were not so shapeless as they had seemed: Under a woolen hood, one had the beak of a pelican; another’s webbed legs were tucked under his chair. Each drink the Arm had served was attached to some fabulous creature—some on all fours against the back wall drinking from a trough. In the dim light of a rusted chandelier Snow thought she could make out the shapes of creatures at least half animal, and some men on all fours, slurping happily beside their bestial brethren. She could not be sure that she did not spy a Djinn sitting on his cushion of smoke near the back door. Some of the faces were human, but their eyes belied their features. Even Eyvind seemed to be different, his movements not quite manlike. Not for the first time, she wondered if her new friend was indeed all she appeared to be.

  “It is the only place we feel welcome, the only place we belong. Eyvind keeps the place and he turns no one away—it is a kindness. The Muireanners leave us alone, so long as we hide ourselves away. There are two Shadukiams; there are two Muireanns. Maybe Al-a-Nur is the only city which does not have two of itself. Maybe not even Al-a-Nur. But we were not yet returned to my city, were we? We were on the Maidenhead, with Saint Sigrid in her bunk, sharing blankets with a Satyr…”

  THE SAILORS OF THE MAIDENHEAD, DESPITE THE apparently endless amount of room belowdecks, slept two to a bunk. It was drafty in their quarters, and the doubling up kept them warm—besides which, the habit among them was to pair a senior woman to a more inexperienced girl and trust that the one would educate the other in all she needed to know about the running of a ship and the life of piracy.

  Eshkol and Sigrid huddled under their blankets in the damp and cold of any bed at sea, though beneath her fur Eshkol seemed not to feel it at all. Sigrid shivered and was restless—a ship rocked and creaked much more than a barge, and she could not find comfort in the constant rocking and lurching.

  “You get used to it.” Eshkol laughed quietly. “It took me months to be able to sleep without solid ground under me. Some of the other girls take to it like bees to a hive. It’s different for everyone.”

  Sigrid held the gray blanket over her head with tented fingers, studying her companion’s face—it was soft and friendly, and the woman seemed to be made entirely of shades of brown, like the trunk of a tree. Her hair and fur were deep as earth, her skin tan and tawny, her eyes nearly black. “How long until we reach the Boiling Sea? I imagine it will be much worse then. Will the Maidenhead survive the water?”

  “Oh, the Maid’s all manner of magic. Comes from being born, not built, you know? That and the Star’s tears. Don’t you worry—a little hot salt water won’t even chip the paint. We should reach the edges of it by morning.”

  Sigrid sighed and tried to shift to a better position on the wooden bunk. “How did you come to be here, Eshkol? Did they kidnap you, too? Surely the captain can’t steal all her crew; it seems like that would take a great deal of time.”

  Eshkol laughed again, a sound like damp leaves falling into a swift-running creek. “No, no, I came aboard of my own will. I volunteered.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “I’m not tired either. I don’t mind telling the tale—it’ll pass the hours till dawn…”

  I WAS THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER OF MY COPSE—NO other of my sisters or my briar-bearded brothers did our parents love more. The Yew was a large and prosperous family; we had enough to eat and plenty of wine to make us merry. We were known far and wide for the amazing number of offspring each Yew managed to produce—daughters and sons dropped from each of us like cones from a pine. We were envied by the Willow and Larch copses, positively worshipped by the poor Firs, who were lucky to have one child in a century.

  The Forest held us all in its green shadows, and the race of Satyrs went about life as we always had: we chased the prettier fauns and drank ourselves into fits of giggles under a cornucopia of stars. It was a simple life. If a Satyr died, which did happen now and again, he did not so much die as plant himself, and from the place where he went to root a tree would grow that we could still love and converse with as though our uncle or cousin were still with us. From this had come the names of our copses, in the beginning of the world when the Forest was new—the first of us sent up trees of unrivaled beauty and size, whose branches arched like embracing arms over the meadows and glens. Their descendants took the names of these gods among trees and thus I am called Yew, my friend is called Birch, and her friend is called Pine.

  And so it was that I sat under the bristling branches of the great Yew the day the man in the vulture-skin came to the Forest.

  I was too young to mate, but only barely—the fauns were beginning to gather around our door like snails after a rainstorm. As all the Yew girls are, I was lovely as a spring sapling. The color was high and bright as a dahlia in my cheeks, and my voice was high and perfect as a grass whistle. My father kept me near to him, for Satyrs are not known for their restraint in the presence of a sweet-faced girl. But that day of all days, I slipped his sight while he prayed over the cut wood for the evening’s fire and cu
rled up against the dark, knotted wood of Grandfather Yew.

  Good rainfall last winter, he hummed. Too many squirrels, but what can you do?

  I chased a few of the chittering fellows away with flung cones.

  Sunshine this spring was of the highest quality, he harrumphed. Savory as biscuits.

  I scratched affectionately at the bark behind a sappy burl.

  “Would you like to buy a skin?” the voice came from behind the Yew, and for a moment I had the two confused in my ear, wound together like a weed and a rose. But then they separated, and the strangest creature emerged from behind my grandfather.

  He had a lion-skin pulled up over his head—a frayed, ratty old thing with mats in its fur and a mane that hung down into his eyes like unkempt hair. The skinny paws hung limply over his shoulders and the sorry tail hung down around his ankles—which were scaly and black, and tipped in claws like a buzzard’s, and beneath the lion pelt I saw the tips of wings. In his hands was a fat leather satchel, bulging like a wine-skin.

  “How about it, pretty goat-girl?” He smiled, a broad young face with a pointed chin and hairy eyebrows.

  “A skin, sir?” I said, curious as all young things are.

  “Oh, yes, my dear. I am Ghassan, the Skin-Peddler. All sorts of skins! Skins for a penny, skins for a meal, skins in trade and skins in debt, skins for all occasions. Besides the noble lion you see displayed on my own humble shoulders, I have on my person many fine articles: Strix-skins and Manticore-skins and Mermaid tails, cloaks of Harpy feathers and capes of Catoblepas, a number of lovely red Leucrotta-skins, very fashionable, shining salamander coats and even a rare ghost-skin, human-skins and Yale-skins and any skin you can think of.”

  “What in the world would I do with a skin? I’ve already got a very nice one.” But my hand was already reaching for the satchel.

  “Why, you wear them, girl! Make a fine dress for those fetching hips or drape it over your comely shoulders when the winter’s nip comes a-happening by—skins have a thousand and one uses. Some are magic, some are plain, some will change you, some will change in your hands. A skin is a door—step through it, and see what’s on the other side. Me? I like the girl-skins—now don’t look shocked. I peddle; I don’t procure. It’s none of my nevermind how they became detached from their owners.”

  “How odd, to prefer another person’s skin.”

  “No more odd than court ladies who prefer to wear blue sashes or shoes of jade and glass. Why, I’m wearing six or seven skins at this very moment—it always pays to display the merchandise to effect.”

  I peered at his legs, his wings, his long, silvery hair, but could spy no seam. “Then… what are you beneath your skins?”

  He leaned into me, confidant-close. “I’ll never tell,” said Ghassan. “But enough about me! Wouldn’t you like to try one for your own? Better than any blue sash, I assure you.”

  I blushed, deep as damask. “I haven’t any money, sir. My father thinks young folk ought to keep to acorns and leaves until they’ve a good pair of horns on their head.”

  “A shame, a shame. But a man must eat, no matter what skin he’s in.”

  The Skin-Peddler turned to leave, to go on to his next customer, who would surely have piles of opals and emeralds in his fireplace grate and buy up the whole lot, while I had to suffer skinless with no coin at all of my own. I was paralyzed with anguish, and I must have let out a little cry, a half-bleat, because he turned halfway back to me.

  “I suppose I could let you have this one for very little,” he mused, and pulled from his satchel a very strange skin, folded over many times. It was rubbery and gray, dull and mottled, and did not look like it would make a very fine sash at all.

  I did not care—I wanted it like a squirrel wants the highest nut in the walnut tree. “What would I have to do for it?” I asked, shuffling my hooves a little.

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’d trade your own skin—and I’ve no need of Satyr in my inventory at the moment anyhow. But I would take a strip or two of bark from this lovely tree of yours. Quite a rarity, the grandparent-trees.”

  I think not, groused the Yew. Of course Ghassan heard nothing—blood speaks to blood, sap to sap, and to the rest the forest is silent.

  “Oh, Grandfather, you’ll never miss it,” I assured him, “and it won’t hurt a bit, I promise. And I shall keep the squirrels off you all winter this year.” Hurriedly, before he could protest further, I stripped off two long pieces of black bark and handed them over.

  I tried not to listen to him whimper as I pulled them from the wood.

  Ghassan handed over the rubbery skin with a grin on his sparsely whiskered face. “A pleasure, prettiest of girl-slips. Farewell—I don’t imagine we’ll meet again.” He pocketed the bark and strode back over the damp grass.

  I pressed the skin to my heart and hid it beneath my bed when I came home for supper—I breathed its salty, watery scent dozens of times before I reached my own door. How proud I was! When I lay down to sleep I pulled it out again and held it to my chest, feeling its cold weight on my own skin.

  It was such a small sound, when I think on it now. Knuckles on glass, a rapping at the window. I was startled as a sparrow to look up and see two huge, gray eyes looking through the pane at me. They belonged to a young man, no older than I, with dark hair and skin so pale it seemed bloodless.

  “Please,” he said, “let me in.”

  “Certainly not,” I whispered, so as not to wake a father already suspicious of every suitor’s knock. But I unlatched the window and opened it, just the smallest of cracks. The youth looked at the skin clutched in my arms.

  “Miss, I’m afraid you have something that belongs to me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The skin. It’s mine.”

  “I see plenty of skin on your bones as it is. This is my skin, I bought it, just as fair as a pair of golden scales.”

  The youth shook his dark head sadly. “You bought it from a beast and a thief, who stole it from me when I was sunbathing on a craggy rock. I am a Selkie, and that is my skin.”

  I tightened my grip on the little bundle. “But I cut into my grandfather for this. It will grow back, I know it will, but I oughtn’t to have done it and if I lose the skin then I will have done it for nothing. This is the only thing that is mine, and not my father’s or my mother’s or my sisters’ or my brothers.’”

  “It is not your father’s or your mother’s or your sisters’ or your brothers’. It is mine. Please give it back, lovely Satyr, I want to go home, and I cannot until you give it over.”

  I did not want to cry, but the tears pricked all the same—but I was a clever girl, and I knew all manner of tales. “Wait a moment—what is your name?”

  “I am called Shroud.”

  “And I am Eshkol. If you are a Selkie, and I have your skin, that means you must stay with me and be my lover until you can get the skin back, doesn’t it?”

  Shroud’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, that is the way of it, but I was never like the other seals…”

  I WAS ALWAYS SO CAREFUL WITH MY SKIN. THE others let them lie around just anywhere—it is who we are: Who might take it? Whose house might we enter, whose sardines and black bread might we eat, who might we love? It is the chief activity of Selkies to have their skins stolen.

  But I was careful. I loved the sea, I loved the waves and the breakers and the curling white foam. I loved the changing character of the sea, how it could be choppy and gray or smooth as glass, like the brow of a wife. I loved the taste of the water, and I was afraid of what it would be like to be closed up into a house, without the slap of the wind and the cry of the gulls.

  I did not mean to fall asleep. I was sunning my silver stomach on a desolate rock in the shallows, basking in the heat reflected off of the violet waves, breathing the kelp-spattered air. I had only closed my eyes for a moment when he slipped up, silent as a spear fisherman, and sliced through the skin of my back just as easily as tearing paper.r />
  Such a thing had never occurred—he stripped my skin from me, ripping and rending it, pulling my fingers out of my flippers, my feet out of my tail, my face from my muzzle—I cried out, but my sisters saw from afar only that someone was stealing my skin, and high time, too. They did not see the knife. They did not hear my screams. They cheered from a distant outcropping of stone.

  When he was finished he paddled easily to shore and began packing the skin into a fat leather satchel. I followed, swimming clumsily in the man’s body I had never once lived in. When we clambered onto the sand, I lay gasping, air burning my unused lungs.

  “Where are we going?” I gulped.

  The man I came to know as Ghassan stopped and turned to regard me. He was, as he often is, dressed in a woman’s skin in those days, a crone with long tangled hair. “Whatever do you mean, young unfortunate?” the crone said.

  “You have my skin.”

  “Oh, yes, that I do.”

  “I am yours, then. What house will you take me to? What fish and breads shall we eat? Who shall I love?”

  “I don’t care who you eat or who you love, seal. I only want the skin, and I only want the skin for selling. You are incidental, a pit in a peach.”

  I rose shakily to feet I had never known. “But this is what I am. My skin is stolen; I must belong to someone.”

  “You do not belong to me, and I do not want you,” the old woman who was Ghassan snorted.

  “Then give me my skin back, if you will not have me.”

  “Not after I cut it with such difficulty from you—you have very stubborn bones.”

  I was stricken. Ghassan would not close me up in a house, or feed me, or love me. Once I was out of my seal’s body, I no longer feared those things, but needed them, needed them as violently as once I needed the sea. I became panicked; the slate sky turned frightening, the dark sea horrible. I did not know where to go; this body seemed afraid of everything. It was chilled easily and always hungry. I followed the crone because the crone had my skin. That is what a Selkie does.