The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Please, I would say. Love me or give me my skin. You are hurting me.

  I do not want you, would come the answer.

  Please, I would say. I can be useful. I can make stew and tea. You would like me, if you tried me. Or give me back the skin. You are cutting me.

  I do not like you, I do not want you, would come the answer.

  Please, I would say. I will wash house walls and mend fences, I can build cradles and beat the dust from rugs. Let me be a Selkie, or give me back my skin. You are killing me.

  I do not care, would come the answer.

  And so it went on, but I could not stop. I learned he was not a crone at all, and what house he had was on a far distant island where he would certainly not lead me. But I could not stop. The skin is knotted in my belly like a sailor’s rope, and the harder Ghassan pulls to escape me, the tighter the knot becomes, and the more desperately I chase him.

  My skin is gone, but I belong to no one. I am no seal and no man. The skin calls to me, but I cannot answer.

  Please, I would say. You are killing me.

  “HE ONLY TRADED IT TO YOU TO BE RID OF ME. I have hounded him for three years and he would not let me touch it, but he traded it to you for two pieces of bark. They may have cost you dear, but to him they mean nothing. They are pieces of skin, not a skin. He only wanted to show me how little my skin was worth. I am so tired, Eshkol. Please.”

  I grinned up at him through my curly hair. My voice was soft as pine needles underfoot. “I am very good at hiding things, Selkie. You could belong to me. I could close you up in a house, and feed you sardines and black bread, and love you under towering trees. And you know, we Satyrs have very well-deserved reputations. My father says I am too young for a lover, but you are very handsome, and I am not tired at all.”

  I leaned out of the window very suddenly and kissed the Selkie-boy right on his pale lips—I don’t know why I did it, but the moonlight was so bright, and he seemed suddenly ever so much more lovely than the skin. Our lips met over the windowsill and his mouth was so cold, cold and salty and sweet as the sea, and my lips warmed him as the sun warms a tidepool. Even through the kiss I was smiling, and he put his silvery hands gently on my face, just the way a faun does. I moved the skin behind my back.

  “Oh, Eshkol,” he said breathless and bashful, when we parted, “perhaps I could rest here.”

  Shroud stayed with me for seven years and seven days. My father was in a rage fit to crack oak boughs when he found us in the morning, a sea-eyed boy with arms wrapped around his daughter’s downy neck, but it passed. Shroud was gentler and quieter than low tide, and like the tide, no one could resist his slow presence. We could not kiss often enough—the water loves the green earth and the green earth loves the water, and so we were, twined up like vines on a riverbed, and he told me I tasted of red berries and sunlight on long grass, and I told him he tasted of clamshells and kelp and a wet wind. I taught him to plant grapevine, and he taught me to fish with my bare hands. I grew up; I grew less silly, though no less overeager and bright of heart, and in all my barters since, nothing I won was ever so precious to me as that gray and mottled skin.

  My only sadness in those gold-specked years was Grandfather Yew, who had not spoken to me since the day I took his bark, who would not speak to me even after it had long grown back.

  One evening Shroud sat next to me in our own house and took my hand. “Eshkol, heart of my heart,” he said, “please give me back my skin.”

  I laughed. We had played this game many times. “It is my skin, my love, and I like it very much.”

  “No,” he said, very carefully and slowly. “I am not teasing; I am not playing. Give it back to me, if you love me.”

  “Shroud, why? Have we not been happy? Do I not still taste of red berries and sunlight on long grass?”

  “Warmer sunlight and sweeter berries than I ever thought possible. But I am a Selkie. No amount of wishing will make me a Satyr. This is what I am. Selkies stay until they leave, and the instinct for leaving is so powerful in us, far more powerful than the instinct for the sea. I understand that now. It is not the sea that calls us back. What calls is stronger and more inexorable than any current. I long for the sea, yes, my skin is always dry, and I am always thirsty, and I miss the crash and swell of the black waves, but more, I long for the leaving. I am restless, I am ready, and the leaving whispers to me at night. It says that I will breathe easier when the air is full of fog and seagulls, that I will breathe easier when I am at the start of a story, rather than at the end.”

  Tears trickled to my chin. “No, no, I won’t give it to you,” I whispered.

  “Eshkol, I have not looked for my skin for seven years. I have not rifled the thatch of the roof, or pulled up the floorboards. I have not thought of it; I have not checked the hanging wash for a gray scrap. But the leaving will not let me be, and I must answer it. I don’t want to.” Shroud clenched his fist and for the first time his pale face colored, red and pained. “I don’t. I want to stay with you and eat chestnuts and curl my fingers in your fur. But the seal is stronger than the man, and the leaving is stronger than the seal.” He spread his hands helplessly. “This is what I am.”

  “If you don’t want to, then don’t! I am a Satyr, yet I am hopeless at playing the pipes—we are more than just our bodies.”

  “It’s no good, dearest of all bodies to me. If you do not give it to me, I will find it, and one day you will wake up and I will be gone. I have looked for it for seven days and found nothing, but you are not so good at hiding things that I will not find it one day or another. Please. You’re hurting me.”

  Slowly, I unbuttoned my vest and my belt, and reached into their folds. I drew out the gray skin, warm from lying next to my own.

  “I’ve always had it just here, sweet seal-boy. I wore your skin every day.”

  Shroud reached across the table and took it from me—I only resisted a little. He touched it with wonder, as though it was woven light studded with stars. “I am not tired anymore, Eshkol,” he said, his voice hushed as river rushes.

  “Oh,” I said, sighing, “then I am happy for you. But I am as tired as an old aspen bent double.”

  In the morning he was gone, and I went walking in the dew-and-dim to see Grandfather Yew. I lay next to his roots and stroked them, chased off a few squirrels. I didn’t cry; I couldn’t bear the touch of water on my skin.

  I liked him, hummed the Yew. And I’ve thought about it some—it’s all right about the bark.

  “I WANDERED FOR A WHILE, OUT OF THE FOREST and away from everything. I didn’t mean to find the sea, but eventually the soil turned to sand and the air became full of fog and seagulls, and there it was. A dockside beg gar told me of a ship which wanted women for a crew, a magic ship with a red hull and a fox for a captain. I signed on faster than a leopard catching a rabbit in her jaws—Tommy was glad to have me. I never understood what he said about the instinct for leaving till I saw this ship, but once I did, there was no telling me I couldn’t have it. The leaving had me, and I went with it, just as my Shroud did. I don’t miss him the way I used to—Satyrs aren’t made for grieving. But once in a while, when the sea is very calm, I dream of skins, endless skins, like the layers of an onion. But here I am—anything that happens belowdecks on the Maidenhead is my territory—and that’s not such a bad story to be in the middle of.”

  The ship suddenly lurched to one side and a strange sizzling sound filled the air. Eshkol leapt from the bunk, her hooves sounding heavily on the floorboards.

  “The Boiling Sea!” she cried. “Sigrid, you won’t want to miss it! A sight no other crew will ever survive!”

  The pair emerged above decks to find a riot of sound and movement. The Arimaspians were leaning over the prow in their eagerness, oblivious to how difficult it was for the sail-riggers to work around them. One of the lesser men leered at a young Djinn, who flicked her fiery fingers at him and ignited his beard. His companions howled in indignation and beat out the f
lames.

  Tomomo herself stood calmly at the wheel, guiding her ship through the Boiling Sea, which no longer buffeted the sleek craft with waves, but with violent bubbles and hissing steam. The ocean was alive and furious, sizzling against the flanks of the ship, sending up rolling columns of scalding water that caught more than one woman across the face with its blistering spray. At first, most had been fascinated by the suddenly raging sea, but one by one they learned to stay well away from the rails and give their attention only to the lines and sails. The sound of it was deafening—it was like a scream of wind tearing through a child’s paper house, crumpling the walls and rafters as it blows.

  Sigrid hung back near the stern, leaning over the rails and breathing the steam of the sea. She looked into the horizon, wind whipping her dusky hair into her cheeks, and for a moment, just a moment, she could see, on the edge of the water where the calm met the boil, a gray seal’s head bobbing up and down in the surf, barking softly, mournfully, unable to follow.

  “Sigrid! Attend me!” Oluwakim hollered from his position at the bow. She turned reluctantly and trotted up to him, standing just behind his group and hoping he would not need her for anything. The King held a long brass spyglass in his fierce black fist, brandishing it like a sword.

  “Look! The Hidden Isle! Not very well hidden, of course, but no stupid Griffin hen can hide from the Ocular!” He held out the spyglass to Sigrid with an expression that made it clear he felt he was being extremely generous. She put it to her eye and indeed, a slim line of land was glimmering in the distance, looming larger with each moment that passed. The Maidenhead was cutting through the roiling water with incredible speed, hardly slowed at all. Sigrid hoped in vain that the wind would die, that they would not be able to reach the isle and murder poor Quri. But before she knew it they had moored offshore and filled one of the longboats with eager-faced Arimaspians and Long-Eared Tomomo, and Sigrid herself was reluctantly climbing into the crowded craft.

  The Hidden Isle was little more than a scrap of sand in the middle of the angry sea. The surf bubbled up onto the white beach, and the drift-wood scattered along the shore was scalded red as flesh. There might once have been a tower in the center of the patch of earth, but it had crumbled into little more than a jumble of broken rocks. Some of them still stood, one atop the other, so that a piece of a wall could be seen, and the arch of what might have been a window—but no more. The troupe clambered onto solid ground and almost immediately the Arimaspians charged over the dunes with a dreadful cry, having easily sighted the nest of the White Beast on the north end of the strand. Sigrid hung back with her captain.

  “You’re wondering why I would take these men aboard, when they are only going to render an entire race extinct,” Tomomo said gently. “You think it is hard and cruel—but that is what piracy is. We are free women, and so we do not obey the rules everyone bows and scrapes to. If the gold they give us will patch our sails and put wine on our table, we will ferry them. If it turns your stomach, I will leave you on this island and you can make your own way off it.”

  Sigrid said nothing.

  When they arrived at the nest the White Griffin was screeching like a wounded bear and beating her wings against the wave of Arimaspians jabbing their swords and spears at her. She desperately fought to shield her nest, snatching one of the men in her jaws and tearing into his soft belly, hurling another against the jagged ruins—and under her haunches the two women could see three large eggs, blue and white as slabs of sky.

  “That’s a very inefficient offensive, Oluwa. I thought you and your tribe were expert hunters! Clearly I was misinformed,” Tommy hollered. The Griffin hissed at her, bright feathers flying. She was white from the tip of her tail to the crown of her head; even the fur of her lion haunches was pale as a glacier. Only her claws and beak were golden, the rest of her entirely blanched of color, pure as the sandy beach. Her eyes flashed, crackling with panic and despair. Oluwakim seemed to consider for a moment, then nonchalantly signaled to his men. They obeyed instantly, backing away from the rabid creature.

  “What would you suggest, sea rat? Will you lend us your beast-cannons? A single broadside could have us a fine Griffin supper in a mere moment—and you your payment,” he snapped.

  Seeing her opportunity, Sigrid dashed past the adorned hunters and dove into the nest, while the Griffin roared her protests. She spread her skinny body as wide as she could, pitifully trying to block any spear’s flight to the beast or the precious eggs. Of course the Griffin towered over her, entirely vulnerable.

  “I won’t let you kill her!” she screamed.

  Both monarchs, the one of the sea and the other of the land, looked at her with amused impatience.

  “You are a very bad servant, little girl,” Oluwakim observed. He was quite calm—not at all perturbed by the notion of dispatching a child along with a beast.

  “Do you really think a creature of that size needs you to shield it?” Tommy asked, grinning mischievously.

  “Of course I don’t,” bellowed the Griffin, her voice echoing over the desolate beach like the flight of a single black bird. “But it’s the gesture that counts.” She nuzzled Sigrid roughly, a strange kind of reward for her bravery. “So you’ve come for me, have you, Oluwa? My brother told me you would, one day.”

  “Was that before or after he quickened your eggs, you barbaric half-breed? Even dogs don’t deign to mate brother to sister,” he scoffed.

  “Don’t try to shame me, ape. I know your nest is empty of roosters; what right have you to mock mine, which is not? We have no law against such things—and where was there another male to give me chicks? Thanks to you he was the last.”

  “I did nothing to him,” sneered the Arimaspian. “He was torn into carrion, dumb meat and nothing more.” She flinched and stared at the King with such hatred the rest of his companions stepped slightly away from him, expecting a furious attack. “I saw it, Quri,” he taunted, tapping his golden eye with one dark finger. “I saw them devour your blue brother. They licked their lips and made a feast of him; they threw his bones to their dogs. Why don’t you tell us the tale? We have time—I shall kill you before or after; I have no preference. I listened to the sire prattle on like a wind-up toy; I can extend the same courtesy to the dam. Everyone here loves to hear tales. Tell them how your brother died the day he lent his color to your eggs.”

  Quri bent her head in grief, staring at the iridescent colors of her unborn chicks. When she spoke, her voice was thick with anger.

  “Not for your pleasure, little king of a little hill, but for the child who put her body between you and my eggs…”

  I WAS BORN UNDER THE ROSE DOME OF SHADUKIAM. Alone of all Griffin, a woman carried me in her belly, like a human child, and from her my egg issued, and from her I was born. It is a famous story—I will not repeat it.

  My Griffin-mother always told me not to return to Shadukiam, the city of my birth. It is a wicked place, she said, a man who keeps his knife hidden when others show theirs plain. I wanted to obey; I wanted to be happy on the heights of Nuru, happy as Jin was, nestled under our mother’s wing with the moon on his cerulean feathers.

  But I could not. I was drawn back and back again to the strange, sweet smell of decaying roses, to the mildewed walls which tapered into diamond turrets, to the dark gutters swollen with rain. I was drawn back to Giota, to the scent of her, which smelled more like mother to me than the soft golden straw of the nest. I followed that smell, the smell of blood and violets crushed underfoot, the smell of Giota’s mouth. I did not remember, exactly, being inside her, but my heart knew that it had once beat beside another heart. I followed the memory of my heartbeat through the silver streets of Shadukiam, the lacy shadows cast by the diamond turrets, until I found her, the woman who gave me birth, sleeping on a rubbish heap outside a ramshackle inn. My throat was tight and I lay next to her, covering her body with my wings, weeping tears of gold into her hair.

  I flew over the plains between Nuru and
the city many times. Giota was always pleased to see me, though we rarely spoke. We pressed our heads together in the shade of wide-armed trees; we nuzzled each other and picked leaves, I from her ever-growing hair, she from my pelt. It was rarely necessary for us to speak, only to be together, in secret, mother and daughter who could never call each other by those names.

  Jin did not understand, of course he did not, who never grew in the womb of a woman, but he never betrayed me, and my true mother thought me hers and hers alone until the day she was slaughtered and her beak cut from her face to decorate an Arimaspian head. We hid ourselves away in the blinding cliffs, for we were still young and could not defend ourselves against so many. Jin covered my face with his wings as the last screams of our mother echoed through the crystalline crater.

  On that day I left him to the nest that was his, and went into Shadukiam to console myself on the breast of Giota. I could not stay under the Rose Dome—I was far too large to comfortably live in a city—but I built my nest of cedar and camphor outside that blooming arch, and each day one of us went to the other to hold our quiet communion. We were happy together, for a while.

  I wept the day she forged her chain and beat the bolts into the wall of the great Basilica. I did not understand. I could not bear the thought of never sleeping again with her tiny heart beating against mine in my nest of red woods. She tried to tell me it would be no different, that I could still come to her in this strange churchyard—which was so near to the place where she bore me. But I knew, I knew it would be different, that something was ending before my eyes and I could not stop it. I stared into her dark eyes, my own lost in tears.

  “Am I not enough?” I whispered hoarsely. “Can I not make you happy?”

  “Oh, my darling,” she answered, her mouth muffled by her rumpled, wet dress. She put her hands into my feathers as I longed for her to do. “You have always made your Giota happy. But I am not a Griffin; I have allegiances which are not to gold or egg. And I have this duty to perform.”