Home From the Sea: An Elemental Masters Novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  She heard a bark to one side that she recognized as laughter and swung her head in that direction. A handsome, slightly scarred bull looked down at her—bulls being twice or three times the size of a cow-seal. Idwal, she knew it already, and knew that she would have known it even if he hadn’t been standing next to her when they transformed. Her seal-form recognized his, just as her human-form recognized the human shape of her teacher.

  That was a fair transformation, my student, she heard in her head. The voice was recognizably Idwal’s and it was full of warmth and amusement. But next time, be ready for the change, and start to crouch as it comes. You’re less like to fall upon your nose that way. He snorted in amusement. Now you see why I told you to shake the sand out. Even the littlest grain would be under your skin now, and an itch and a torment until you changed and got it out.

  She held up one fore-flipper, and the other, marveling at them, then marveled at the feel of the waves over her back. To her human-self, they’d have been cold as a loveless grave; to her Selch-self, they were cool and comfortable, like caresses.

  Come along, Idwal ordered. We’ve much to see before you go back.

  But—she thought at him. She didn’t know how to swim! That is, she didn’t know how to swim as a seal— But I—

  Evidently thinking hard at someone was how you communicated in this form, for he answered. All the knowledge you need is in the skin and our magic. Trust me. Come! And he turned and plunged into the waves.

  She tried to imitate him, and to her delight, her body responded as if she had done this every day of her life. As her head ducked under the water, she felt her ears close, and didn’t even realize she was effortlessly holding her breath until she realized she had been swimming just under the surface for a good long time, and felt the need to come to the top for a breath.

  She followed in his wake, plunging through the surf, her body taking up the pattern of breathing, holding, breathing, holding as her head broke the water or she skimmed below the surface. Now the sun was well up, the water sparkled, and beneath the surface was an entire new world that held her entranced. An entire forest of kelp grew here, waving in the water, and the water itself was alive with shafts of golden light as the sun played on the surface and was reflected or let through.

  Then she spotted a fat fish peering out of the kelp; her stomach growled, and without a single thought, she raced after it. It twisted and turned to evade her; she was just as fast, and this body was more clever than the fish was. Was this because the skin had come from a very old Selch-woman? That must have been it; to her, it felt as if everything she did came out of decades of practice and experience. She out-maneuvered the fish, and lunged, and caught it in her teeth. The thrashing body in her mouth, the taste of the scales on her tongue, awoke more seal-memory in her; she brought it to the surface, tossed it up, took a breath as it was in the air, caught it head-first in her mouth, and swallowed it down whole. All within the space of a moment. All without thinking about it at all.

  She snorted with glee, and did a little leap out of the water to celebrate.

  I told you, Idwal said, cheerfully. The skin holds the knowledge. Are you still hungry?

  I came out without breakfast, she confessed. I didn’t know what you were going to ask of me and sometimes it has been better not to have a full stomach. More than one of his lessons had left her feeling sick for half a day, though she never would complain. She hadn’t wanted to annoy him, or give the clan-leader the excuse to order him to stop teaching her.

  He snorted with broad amusement, as if he had known very well what those unpleasant lessons had done. Well then, let us hunt. Follow me. I know where tastier fish than that one are.

  He plunged through the water, his heavy body shoving it aside; she slipped through it without a thought except to enjoy how fast she was going, her sleeker, smaller body slipping along as if she had been oiled. Before long she could taste what he was leading her to in the water. Fish! Her body even told her what sort. Herring! Her mouth watered. As a human, she loved herring. As a seal… her seal-body craved herring. Herring was to a seal what a juicy, well-cooked piece of beef and batter-pudding and peas were to a human.

  Soon they were on the school, which filled the water ahead with flashing silver forms. And for a moment she paused in her swimming, her eyes dazzled, her mind confused. How was she to catch a single fish when she couldn’t even make out a single fish in all this chaos?

  Don’t think, came the advice. Be hungry! Let your body, let the wisdom of your skin guide you!

  It wasn’t hard to let her hunger take over, not with all that delicious scent in the water. And when she did, her body darted forward and she did her best to keep her mind blank and just—let it do what it wanted to do.

  And in moments, her mouth was full of fat, delicious herring and she was swallowing and chasing another, and another, until she was finally stuffed so full she could not possibly have eaten another. Her body still wanted to chase, but now she let her mind take over, and just watched as Idwal plunged into the school with grace and speed totally at odds with his bulk, coming out again and again to swallow and plunge back in.

  When he was sated, he came to hang in the water next to her, as a strange seal—one, as she suspected, with no green glow about him—dove into the school to hunt. Salmon is even better, he said, meditatively. I shall take you to hunt them one day soon… but for now, I want you to look at this all with a magician’s eyes, and tell me what you see.

  There is green light about you, she said immediately. None about that seal there, and none about the fish. She studied the water around her, went up for a breath, and came back down again to look some more. There is… there is another glow. In the sea. It is faint… it looks like a path.

  So it is, he said with approval. And if I were to let you follow it, it would take you to our home beneath the waters. But you must not do that, or at least, not yet. You can see it from the surface too. What else do you see?

  Off in the kelp now she could see things moving. Hiding, really, watching them furtively. They, too, had that glow, although in different colors of green. Creatures in the kelp, like us, magic, I suppose?

  Even so. The darker the green, the less likely to be friendly. They hide because they do not know you, so they are cautious. Some are true Elemental Spirits, others are things like the Selch or your Tylwyth Teg. Come.

  They both surfaced together, and took a breath. He cocked his head at the sky. Now, that is enough for one day. These things should be approached by degrees. And I promise you, when you get your own form again, you will be very weary, as if you had done a full day’s work.

  Reluctantly, but obediently, she followed him back to the shore below the cottage. She did not need his instruction this time; before he could give it, she wanted to be herself again, concentrating all of her thoughts on being human, and found herself on hands and knees in the surf, with the sealskin draped over her.

  She hadn’t even gotten to her feet when he pulled it off her, and she stifled an objection as he took it from her. When he did, just as he had said, she felt a heavy exhaustion fall on her, and she staggered a little.

  “These things are dangerous to have about,” he said of the skins in his arms. “I shall keep it safe for you.” Then he smiled. “And you, I think, would not find a short rest to come amiss.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said stoutly. “Besides, there’s samphire to wash and bread to bake and a pie to make if I am to feed all of you tonight.”

  He chuckled. “Very well. I know better than to argue with a woman. I will be back in the afternoon for your next lesson.”

  And with that, he became a seal again, and plunged back into the sea, taking “her” skin with him… and she wondered if the feeling of faint loss she felt was for his absence, or the fact that he had taken it away.

  10

  IF anyone had looked very hard, they might have been able to see the two young ladies burrowed into the gorse on a dun
e above the beach, posed in a very unladylike fashion. They might also have noticed that both of them had spyglasses pointed at the vicinity of a cottage near the shore.

  But of course, there was no one about to see this remarkable phenomena except sheep. Or—sheep and the one or two Elemental creatures who happened upon them. But there was—or so Nan had been told—something of an invisible sign on them, that suggested to said Elemental creatures that it was best to move briskly along and pretend that they had not seen anyone. That was Puck’s doing, with the idea of preventing any of the Elementals from telling tales about the watchers to the ones being watched.

  “Pass a mint, would you please,” said Nan to her companion in a very low voice. “The worst part about all this is that we daren’t drink anything, and my mouth is horribly dry.”

  Sarah reached into a canvas bag beside her and wordlessly passed Nan a peppermint rock in a twist of parchment paper. “I really do not think this is the best way of going about what we need to do,” she replied. “There’s only so much you can see through a spyglass.”

  “Well, we’ve gone to Clogwyn, we’ve wandered about, and we’ve asked about the cottage,” Nan pointed out. “That got us absolutely nowhere. Well, other than that we know Mari and her father live there, that her father is very well liked, and Mari is considered a good girl who devotes herself to him.”

  “There’s the constable…” Sarah said.

  “Oh yes. We’ve learned that the constable is one of the nastiest pieces of work I’ve ever seen that wasn’t roaming the worst parts of London looking for a chance to hurt someone.” Nan made a sour face. “He’s a complication we didn’t need.”

  “We did find that lovely bakery,” Sarah replied, impishly.

  “Yes, but that doesn’t signify.” Nan sighed. “Well it does, I suppose, since Clogwyn is nearer us than Criccieth, and the butcher and grocer have errand boys, and the errand boys are willing to bring the baker’s things too…”

  “I know what you mean, though,” Sarah agreed. “All we can see from here is that she is with several young men, and two slightly older ones. One of those looks to be her papa. The other… there is no way of telling what he is, but logically, he would be the teacher. We’ve reported all of this to Lord A, but we can’t learn anything new from this distance.”

  “If this were just London, we could get as close as we liked,” Nan fretted. “That’s impossible here. As soon as we are on that beach, we are visible for… well, quite a long ways.”

  Sarah took the spyglass from her eye and turned to look at her friend. Her expression was thoughtful. “Well, what if we try the direct approach?”

  “What? Go right up to her?” Nan could only blink at her.

  “Why not? And we tell her we can see what we know she can see, and ask if she knows anything about these creatures.” Sarah bit her lower lip. “I think it would be better than what we are doing now.”

  “And I think a bold move is a good move,” said Puck, startling them both, as his head thrust through the gorse branches beside them. “I’ve been doing my own snooping, I have, my pretty girls, and while I have not seen any harm in her, there are dark thoughts moving about her that I cannot read. Not all the sea-things are fond of the maid, and as for me, well, earth and water are allies, and I like what I see of her. I do not wish to see harm come to her. So. I counsel the bold move, and what say you?”

  “I say if you counsel it…” Nan hesitated. “You’ve never given us bad counsel.”

  “Then let us hope I have not now.” He winked at them, and his head vanished.

  The girls looked at each other, and Nan sighed.

  “He makes it look so easy,” she complained, and she and Sarah began the torturous process of wriggling out of the gorse, back to the shelter of some trees where they could stand up at last and make their way back to their cottage.

  In the morning, they put on walking dresses that had not been subjected to the unkind embrace of the gorse, and took a well-worn path down to the shore, carrying a picnic basket between them, and accompanied with Grey on Sarah’s shoulder and Neville flying above them.

  Thanks to Robin, now they could actually see the other creatures around them, and there were quite a few, all of them intensely curious about them. Nan supposed it was all because of Puck’s mark on them, the “Do not meddle with these mortals” sign he had placed on them. Without knowing the proper names for the creatures, there were some that Nan simply couldn’t identify—but there were others that were familiar to her from her reading of fairy tales and myths. The little goat-legged faun, for instance, made her wonder (since it was supposed to be a creature native to Greece and Italy) whether there were also centaurs here. The translucent winged girls—were they fairies or sylphs? Or both? The fire-winged bird was probably a phoenix, and the green-haired women who seemed to peek out of the bark of trees were probably dryads, but what were the beautiful, nearly naked spirits that flocked to the verge of the pond they passed? Naiads? Or something Welsh? And what was the black horse that came rushing up out of the water, stomped a hoof in annoyance, and plunged back in? And what was the thing that blazed with an odd blueish flame that had another sort of winged creature at the heart of it? It was hovering above a bit of marsh they passed, and Nan would have called it a will o’ the wisp if she had been back home.

  Once, a band of three crows approached them, and there was something about the purposeful way they were moving that made Nan feel a moment of alarm. But then Neville swooped down to land between them and the girls. He puffed out his chest and uttered a harsh, warning quork, then, oddly, jerked his beak towards Nan. The crows all jumped, as if they had been startled, then fled away.

  Neville flapped to Nan, and she held out her arm for him. “Thugs,” he croaked scornfully.

  “Well thank you,” she replied. He beaked her hair, gently, and took off again. Clearly he was greatly enjoying his free-flying freedom in a place where, unlike Africa, he was the biggest, strongest bird around.

  They were both used to walking for quite long distances in Africa—and besides, given that they weren’t closely counterfeiting the good daughters of a clergyman, neither of them were wearing the corsets they’d been forced to don in Criccieth. So it was quite the enjoyable walk to the beach, despite all the creatures that would appear and disappear again, making Nan, at least, feel as if she was some sort of spectacle.

  “Do you think they know we can see them?” she finally said aloud—and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, the ones currently trailing them gave various sounds of alarm, and vanished.

  “I think that answers your question,” Sarah said, dryly.

  On reaching the shore, they continued their walk toward Clogwyn, and soon enough, the little cottage showed in the meadow above the beach ahead of them. As they neared it, however, someone got up from the ground beside it, and began to move. A moment later, it was obvious that the person was moving toward them, quite deliberately.

  Soon enough, it was equally obvious who it was. Mari Prothero, who took a stance between them and the direction in which they were going, and stood there, waiting, arms crossed over her chest.

  They glanced at each other over the basket. Nan shrugged. “Well, either she knows, or she’s just seeing who it is that’s about to march past her. In either case, I suppose we get what we want, which is a closer look at her.”

  Sarah bit her lip. “I just hope—if she knows, she isn’t too annoyed.”

  “Oh, chances are, it was the Elementals that warned her that someone who could see them was coming, and that’s what she’s curious about,” Nan said. “In any case, there’s no point in retreating now.”

  That was fairly obvious, as the girl waited, unmoving, eyes fixed on them. Nan decided to take the initiative, and was very glad that Robin had given them command of the Welsh language, for otherwise she’d have been at a great disadvantage even if Mari knew English. “Good morning!” she called cheerfully. “My sister and I are visit
ors here; we’re staying at Gower Cottage.”

  “Are you, then?” Mari said, coolly. “Then perhaps you can tell me why you’ve been overlooking me these past several days.”

  Ah, she knows. Well… tell part of the truth. And part of the story. “Well… that’s a bit of a tale,” Nan replied. “And tales go better over luncheon, if you’d like to share ours.” She and Sarah together lifted the basket. “There’s ham,” she added temptingly. “And scones.”

  Mari weakened visibly at the mention of ham, and more at the mention of scones. “Well…” she said, hesitantly.

  “And jam and clotted cream,” Sarah added.

  It was probably the clotted cream that did it. Wales was not far from Devon, and the making of that delicacy had managed to percolate over the border, but not too many people on the shore made it or made it well. Nan loved it so much she’d learned how, and had made a batch a couple days ago. Now she was rather glad she had, and even gladder she’d brought it.

  “Very well,” Mari replied. “But the tale had best be a good one.”

  It appeared that she was alone, but for an ill-tempered cat who scampered away, hissing, when Neville came down out of the sky and quorked challenge at her. Nan took the rug off the top of the basket, and spread it, and Sarah unpacked the contents. They each took a corner of the rug, with Mari eyeing them suspiciously. Nan quickly passed her a scone and the pots of cream and jam before beginning.

  “I don’t know if you’ve been over to Clogwyn since we came,” she said. “I expect Clogwyn is like our village, and the moment that anyone arrives, everyone knows everything there is to know about him.”

  “Hmm,” Mari confirmed, around a mouthful of smothered scone.

  “Then you know our father’s a clergyman and Sarah’s here to get over a bit of a—shock,” Nan continued. “Actually… they don’t think it’s a shock. They’re hoping it was just being suntouched, because… well… she’s been seeing things.”