Secrets of Selkie Bay

by Shelley Moore Thomas

  But I was.

  I led us farther down the main street of Selkie Bay. The wind had kicked up, making it chilly for a summer morning. The road widened and led to the harbor and to the tourist shops that lined the water like colorful jewels in a king’s crown. Next to the bright aqua of the Mermaid’s Tresses was the dazzling emerald green of Seal Biscuits, a bakery that had nothing to do with seals, but everything to do with the best chocolate cookies in the world. Those were the treats that Maura kept in the jar on the counter of her salon. Seal Biscuits had striped awnings that matched the green outer walls perfectly.

  Next to the bakery was Whale of a Tale, a bookstore painted bright red, with characters from famous stories carved into the heavy wooden door. It was my favorite shop because the owner never seemed to notice if you just sat in a chair and read books but never bought any. And across from the bookshop was the giant orange smiley-seal sign of Chippy’s Fish and Chips. Even though Ione feared sliding around on all the splattered oil she was certain covered the floor, we still had to go in and try.

  “Can you imagine having to scrape up all that grease?” She groaned. “Gross.”

  Unfortunately, it was the same story from one business to the next. Well, not the same story, exactly, but they started the same. “Oh, Cordelia and Ione Sullivan. Haven’t seen you around in a while. Oh, look at the baby. My, how she’s grown! So sorry about your … well…” (This was where their eyes shifted around, trying to find the right place to look, which was anywhere but at our faces; our shoes were popular locations.) “What brings you in?”

  And I told them that I was looking for a job. Then Ione would say, “I’m not cleaning the loo.”

  Here’s where the stories changed. Sometimes it was because their nieces and nephews were visiting for the season and so they were already helping out. Sometimes it was because business was slow. Sometimes it was because they had just hired one of the Patel boys from down the road and if only I had come in sooner, they would have done a proper interview. Sometimes it was because Ione and I were awfully young and they didn’t want to get in trouble with the authorities for violating any labor laws.

  But the last part was the same in every shop.

  “I am so sorry, Cordelia.”

  * * *

  Then we went to old Mr. Doyle’s shop.

  Seven Tears to the Sea was painted only a dull shade of brown. No awnings or carvings to make it look pretty. The sign out front proclaimed:

  SELKIE SIGHTINGS

  “Dangerous beasties of the sea”

  GUARANTEED

  The storefront also contained a small gift shop so Mr. Doyle could find yet another way of separating folks from their cash.

  “I don’t like him, Cordie. I don’t like Mr. Doyle. I think I hate him,” Ione said as we stood outside of his store. He’d not yet flipped the handwritten CLOSED sign around and opened up for the day, which was unusual considering it was getting close to eleven o’clock.

  “You do not hate him. He’s just old and cranky.”

  “He’s mean, too. Mum didn’t like him, either.”

  That was the thing about Mum. Most folks in the town loved her. She had that kind of personality that drew people to her like bees to honey. Most people, anyway. Mr. Doyle glared at her just like he glared at everyone else. He didn’t find her that special at all. He just liked things the way he liked them and he didn’t appreciate anyone telling him anything different. That’s what Da said about him.

  The door swung open and there was Mr. Archibald Doyle. If ever there was a person whose face looked like a puffer fish, it was Mr. Doyle.

  “What are you kids doing on my porch?” His voice was gravelly, just what you’d expect from a talking puffer fish.

  “Hi, Mr. Doyle. It’s me, Cordelia Sullivan.”

  “I know who you are.”

  My own throat hurt at the roughness of his voice.

  “Oh w-w-well…” I stuttered.

  I swallowed and tried to remember my little speech, the one I’d said four times over, about wanting to work or do odd jobs for whatever pay he could spare, when Neevy picked this exact moment to begin what looked to be an epic fit.

  “Hurry up and be about your business. Got a shop to keep here and I can’t waste my day listening to a baby squall like it’s being stuck with a pin.” He moved his arms, as if to shoo us away.

  “It’s hard to run your shop if people think it’s still closed,” I said, sliding past him into the store and deftly flipping the sign over to the OPEN side. I came back through the doorway with the biggest, most friendly smile plastered on my face that I could manage. “See? It just must have slipped your mind when you opened up this morning.” Then I gave Ione a hard look. She rolled her eyes, but she got my meaning. She quickly picked up the crying Neevy and began to bounce her around.

  Neevy loved to bounce. And with Ione distracted, I pressed ahead.

  “Look, Mr. Doyle. I am hoping to make some money. Since our mother went away—”

  “’Twas only a matter of time,” he interrupted.

  “Since Mum went away,” I continued, “we need help with the bills. Please, sir, please could you find a job for us here at your shop? We’ll work for whatever you can spare, doing whatever needs doing. Please, sir. We just want to help our da.”

  Mr. Doyle was quiet for a minute, stroking his prickly beard. How it didn’t end up piercing his hand, I had no idea.

  “Never thought I’d be helping out the Sullivan clan.” He scrunched his eyebrows down and looked at me through squinted eyes. “The babe’s not welcome. Too loud. Scare away the customers. People say they like babes, but it’s a lie. They like clean-smelling, silent babes. And those don’t exist.”

  He stood there, all quiet. I didn’t know if he was done with us, or if he was about to give us another lecture. Instead, he just turned his back on us, saying over his shoulder, “Be on time tomorrow, Cordelia Sullivan. Or Ione Sullivan. Whichever of you it is that comes. Be on time.”

  The door slammed behind him.

  “Do you suppose we should ask him what time he means?” Ione asked, taking a biscuit from her pocket and trying to give it to Neevy, who moved her head away like she was a spy and the biscuit was some kind of poison. She wasn’t hungry, then. Probably wet.

  “No. I’ll just get here tomorrow when the other shops open. I’m sure that will be early enough.”

  I wanted to skip down the street. I had gotten a job! I would be able to help!

  But I didn’t skip.

  It was like suddenly there was a little angry box inside of me. For the past two months, I’d had mostly only one feeling, and that was sad. But now, since I’d found the letter, there was this box inside of my head and I knew I didn’t want to open it. Still, the lid creaked up a teeny bit. Your children have to work instead of play. The children you left behind, Mum, came hissing out. I shook my head so it would fly away, out of my ears.

  But I could still hear it.

  All the way back to our house, I could hear it.

  The Scientist

  DA WASN’T SMILING when he came home that night.

  Neevy heard the door open and recognized the sound of his heavy footsteps and turned herself around on the carpet, her legs kicking rhythmically.

  “Hello, little carpet swimmer,” he said softly, reaching down to pet her head as if she were a dog. Neevy liked it and kicked her feet harder.

  He walked past me and planted a quick kiss on the top of my head.

  “Cordie,” he said, “what’s the news of the day?”

  “Same as usual,” I said.

  “Cordie got a letter from the landlord. Oops, that was yesterday,” Ione said.

  I threw her a look. Why did she choose to remember that just now?

  “I’ll look at it later,” Da said. I sighed with relief.

  “Cordie has sold us into slave labor,” Ione said. She was stuffing a piece of banana into her mouth. I got a good view of mashed-up goo as she spoke.r />
  Da looked at me to translate. He was used to Ione’s habit of stretching the truth into fantastic tales. But I wasn’t so sure she was wrong.

  “We got jobs today. At Mr. Doyle’s shop.”

  Still holding his toolbox, Da opened the fridge and looked at the near-empty shelves. He grabbed a wrinkled apple, then shut the door. Then he looked through the kitchen doorway, to the blue-painted table where the telephone sat, and then back at me. “You don’t have to do it, you know.”

  Ione was sitting on the floor now, playing with Neevy. I knew she didn’t want to do it, and that I didn’t, either. Back when Mum was here, her tips from the ladies at the Mermaid’s Tresses were always enough to help us get by. Selkie Bay isn’t a rich town, but during tourist season, ladies would pay well for Mum’s magical fingers. But there were no magical fingers bringing home tips anymore.

  “Yeah. I think we’ll do it. It’s better than sitting around being bored all day,” I said, trying to convince him that his daughters would actually have fun cleaning Mr. Doyle’s dusty store.

  Da exhaled loudly. “I just wish repairing boats paid more.” He sat in his chair, balanced his apple under his chin, put his toolbox beside him, and began unlacing his work boots. Soon he’d be at the sink, scrubbing off the day’s boat grime.

  “Why don’t you go back to being a scientist? Didn’t you make lots of money then?” Ione asked.

  Ione had no manners.

  “Ione!” I warned. “Don’t.”

  “It’s true,” Ione insisted.

  “You don’t even really know what you are talking about. It was before you were born. The research boat Da was on—”

  “Is no longer funded.” Da’s voice was quiet as he slid his feet from the boots and then munched on his snack. His socks had holes. “It’s in a shipyard somewhere, rusted and broken. Besides, the research we were doing on pixie seals was, well…”

  “Was what?” I asked.

  “The research was off base. We weren’t able to find the pixie seal habitats we were looking for. The population was diminishing. There used to be lots of them out there, lots. That’s probably where all those legends about Selkie Bay come from. It would have ended eventually anyway, even if I hadn’t quit.”

  “You quit because you fell off the boat into the sea and almost drowned,” Ione said. She was at it again, trying to get Da to tell the story of how he met Mum. It was her favorite story, but one I knew Da wouldn’t tell us. Not anymore.

  Except Da’s voice began low, as it always did when he told the story. I felt a tingling in my stomach and I held my breath. I felt for the letter in my pocket, as if touching it could somehow make him speak the words that would connect us to Mum once again. And then he started: “I was a scientist, not a sailor. Never quite steady with a boat beneath my feet. Spent a lot of my time half-leaned over the edge, puking. So there I was, pulling my head back up from a nice lean-over when something came out from between two nearby jagged rocks and bumped us, and over the edge I fell.”

  Ione’s eyes were shining. She had gotten her way. Da was, for a moment, like he’d been before Mum left. I wanted to go and sit next to Ione, right at Da’s feet, but I was afraid to move, afraid I would ruin whatever magic was causing Da to be his old self again.

  “And with all of my expensive recording equipment strapped to me, I sank like a stone.”

  Even little Neevy crawled over to Da’s chair. She had the decency not to start squalling.

  “But then…” Ione said, leading Da to the best part. Da sighed and swallowed and I thought he might stop.

  “But then, as I passed all kinds of rocks and seaweed, nearly making it to the very bottom of the seafloor, where I was sure I would die, I felt something around me. Smooth arms that somehow saved me.”

  “Mum!” Ione cried. I was afraid it might break the spell, saying her name, but Da continued.

  “Yes, your mum. She was a fine, fair swimmer and she saved me. It was a coincidence she was close by. But coincidences happen in life, don’t they? That’s why there’s a word for them.”

  He was silent then. There was more to the story, of course—how they fell in love, how they decided to settle in Selkie Bay because that’s what Mum wanted.

  But then Neevy burped, loud and juicy, and the enchantment was broken. The story that only moments earlier had floated in a mist around us now disappeared, seeping into the floorboards beneath us.

  Nightmare

  IONE WAS CRYING IN HER SLEEP, again.

  I switched on my reading lamp, a small fixture with a turquoise shade that turned the room a soft, magical blue. The dim light reflected off her checks, pale and luminous, and a trail of silver tears glittered to her chin.

  With her long dark hair and her thick lashes, she looked like Mum must have looked when she was eight. I crept out of my bed and walked the four steps it took to cross the room and clasped her hand in mine—long fingers with a thin half-moon of webbing at the base of each one. She must have gotten her hands from Mum. My fingers were short and stubby, like Da’s.

  “It’s all right, Ione,” I whispered, snuggling under the lavender bedspread. Ione loved purples; almost everything on her side of the room was some shade of purple. I wasn’t so particular about colors myself, but I did love the aqua pillowcases Mum let me pick out for my birthday last year. They made me feel like I was sleeping in a mermaid’s bed. Gently, I maneuvered myself so that I could have a corner of Ione’s pillow. She didn’t give up much space, but it would have to do. I left the lamp on to comfort us both. When the light was on, I could almost convince myself that things would be all right again somehow. Night was always worse than the days.

  Ione sobbed softly, so I started humming an old song that Da used to sing.

  Away, away,

  We’ll float away

  On a ship of gold.

  We’ll sail.

  The silvery waves

  The salty spray

  The sea is calling

  Let’s go today.

  I stopped humming when I got to that part, the part about going today. Why had Mum left? What had called Mum away?

  I doubted it was the sea.

  The hinges on that little angry box inside of me began to open.

  “Don’t stop, Cordie,” Ione whispered. “Please. When you hum it always makes me sleepy.”

  “I don’t feel much like it anymore,” I said quietly. “Just go back to sleep. It’s going to be okay.” Was it really better knowing that she hadn’t wanted to go away?

  “Is she ever going to come back?”

  I wanted to tell her yes, but I felt strange about it. I will try to come back, she’d written. Try. But why wasn’t she here with us now? People have choices, don’t they?

  The angry lid opened a little more.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said again, hoarsely.

  “But what if she never comes back?”

  I swallowed. “Then I’ll be here for you. Always.”

  “But I want her. I want Mum.”

  “Well, you can’t have her!” I was too tired, too sharp, and I let that little box fly open, though I regretted it immediately. That’s the thing about angry words—once you spill them out, they are like a broken jar of honey on the floor, all sticky and messy. And no matter how hard you try to clean it up, you can always feel that sticky part of the tile.

  Naturally, Ione started crying again, even harder.

  I pulled the old selkie book from the table between our beds.

  “Shhh, I’m sorry. Ione, don’t cry. Here, I’ll read to you.” I flipped to a page with a mother selkie surrounded by tiny baby seals and started to read.

  Selkies make the most devoted of spouses and parents. Truly, no love on earth exists like that between a Selkie mum and her pups. Unless, of course, the Selkie has fallen in love with a human and the children are land-born. In this situation, the mother will stay dutifully with her children until she finds her sealskin coat. Then, despite the love she
feels for her babes, she is compelled to return to the sea. There has been some reported success from the well-known trick of crying seven tears into the sea to entice a Selkie to return, though it is far from a dependable method—

  “This is just boring,” Ione interrupted, sobbing. “Boring doesn’t make me feel better. It just makes me feel worse. Like Mum left because she didn’t love us. Why doesn’t she love us, Cordie?”

  It was the most pitiful question you could imagine, asked in the most pitiful voice I’d ever heard Ione use.

  Something happened inside of me, right there, right then. Something clicked, like the tiny light switch of the tiniest flashlight in the world. I’d been truthful with Ione, mostly anyway, and it hadn’t helped a bit. For an instant I thought of showing her the note, but knowing Ione, she’d get her knickers in a twist because Mum hadn’t left her a note, too. There had to be another way to give her some hope.

  “She loves you, Ione. Mum loves all of us. But she can’t come here because she’s … in a special place,” I said, testing the feel of the lie in my mouth. It didn’t taste as bad as I expected.

  “You mean she’s…?” Ione was on the verge of wailing now, threatening to wake the whole neighborhood.

  “No, she’s not dead. Remember the story of how Mum saved Da?”

  Ione nodded and wiped her nose on the sheet before I could stop her.

  “Well, you don’t know the whole story, the true one. I might be the only one besides Mum who knows it.”

  “I want to know it, too,” said Ione.

  And so I told her the absolutely true story about Mum.

  Except that I made the whole thing up, right there, on the spot.

  How Mum Met Da

  Mum was special, just ask anyone in the town. There was something about her. Of course, what they probably noticed was that she kept a secret. There’s something about a person who is hiding the truth. You can’t see a secret like that, or even smell it, but if you listen close enough, you can hear it. It whispers in the wind, from one person to the next.

  Mum’s eyes were the blackest of black, and her hair darker than night. And remember how, in between her fingers, there was lots of skin, almost like a frog’s flippers? That’s why she didn’t like to shake hands with people—she didn’t want them to see her hands. And then there was her coat, the one she hung in the closet, of the softest silver-black fur. If you did the math and added things up, well, you’d be suspicious. At least a little.