Mum wasn’t from around here. She only moved to Selkie Bay a little before she met Da. She didn’t tell anyone where she came from, but some guessed. They thought she came from the island, the one out there, the one she tried to show us that day in the boat.
That island is a mystery. Some people can’t even see it, did you know that? But we can see it, because we have the same blood as Mum. That island hides a secret, too. It’s where Mum’s people are from.
But what I haven’t said, not really anyway, is that Mum’s people aren’t really people. They aren’t the same as everyone else. How do you think Mum managed to swim to the bottom of the sea and save Da? She could do it because she was a selkie. It’s true, our mum can change shape from human to seal and back again, as long as she has her special coat.
You’re probably waiting for the once upon a time part, so this will feel like a real story. Well, once upon a time, there was a selkie princess who was as beautiful as the moon is bright. She was sent to live among regular people because her father, the king of the selkies, told her she must.
“It is your duty as royalty to act as ambassador between the seal people and the land people. But you must keep it a secret. There are those who might not understand about a person who can change into a seal and back again in the blink of an eye,” he said. That is why she never told anyone the truth about herself. Folks might not understand.
So she lived in Selkie Bay in a little house by herself, the same one we are living in now. She liked to collect small, fine things, like perfume bottles and silver saltshakers. Whatever she could find at the bottom of the sea and bring back home—for you know, selkies love to go shopping for treasure in shipwrecks.
But she was lonely. She missed her family. She knew that if it were really an emergency, she could call them by shedding seven silver tears into the sea, just like the book said. That’s probably where Mr. Doyle got the idea for the name of his shop.
Anyway, there was Mum, the selkie princess, all lonely, out for an afternoon swim in the storm, for selkies don’t fear storms at all. They are very brave. You can be brave like a selkie, too, Ione. That courage is just hiding inside of you, and if you stop crying long enough, it will find its way out.
Speaking of crying, well, there was our da, being washed over the side of his boat. He never liked the water much, but he loved seals. Isn’t it a coincidence, then, that the man who loved seals gets saved by one? He cried seven tears because he was sick to his stomach from the waves and because he couldn’t unstrap his equipment, not because he was a coward. Crying doesn’t make someone a coward, don’t ever think that. Crying just makes it hard to know what you are thinking. It clogs up your brain. And if you are swept overboard by a wave, you need an unclogged brain to save yourself.
Luckily, Mum could smell the tears in the water. She didn’t know whose they were, but that didn’t matter. She knew she had to help. So she did.
And so she saved him. But she never told him her secret. She never told him what I told you, about the sealskin coat, and the kingdom of the selkies on that isle. Because that’s probably where she is right now. Every few years, a selkie has to go back and be with her seal family for a while. That’s the way it has to be. She has to report to her father, the king, about the land people. And I guess that takes a little time.
But she’ll be back, Ione.
Of course she will.
Seven Tears to the Sea
I DECIDED THAT I WOULD BE THE FIRST to go and help out at Mr. Doyle’s. I wasn’t really the braver of the two of us, but I didn’t want Ione starting a fight with the old grump. We needed the money, and I couldn’t chance having her leave in a huff. What was Mum thinking, hiding that sugar jar of money away from all of us, anyway? Why didn’t she just tell Da where she’d put it before she left? It was the least she could have done.
I yawned as I mixed a thin cereal for Neevy’s breakfast. Ione could eat the other half of the banana she started yesterday. It was brown and speckled on the outside, but the inside was still okay. I wasn’t even hungry yet—being too tired from not getting much sleep.
Da had left before it was light, which was very early considering it was summer and all. He’d knelt by my bed and whispered, “Good luck at Doyle’s,” which was his way of saying that although he wished it weren’t necessary, it kind of was.
After feeding her the usual unappetizing bowl of mush, I dumped Neevy, desperately in need of a diaper change, on top of a sleeping Ione. A Child’s Book of Selkies peeked out from under her flowery pillowcase.
“Oof,” Ione groaned.
“That’s what you get for sleeping so long. I’m going to Mr. Doyle’s. I’ll be back at lunch,” I said. “See you later.”
I could hear Ione and Neevy starting a game of peek-a-boo as I left. Hopefully, Ione would change the diaper before it leaked and she’d have to wash all her sheets. Oh well.
I was dreading my morning. It was a windy day, but even so the twenty-minute walk to town passed in seconds. The shop looked dark on the inside and the CLOSED sign hadn’t been flipped. Maybe Mr. Doyle wasn’t there yet. All I could see as I tried to peek through the dingy window were some small ceramic seal figurines that lined the window ledge. Would he make me dust them all? The thought of going home right at that moment felt very good. But then I wouldn’t be able to bring home the money, so I reached for the knob of Seven Tears to the Sea and gave it a turn.
As I pushed the door open, a bell sounded in the store.
“In a minute!” called a gruff voice. Mr. Doyle, no doubt.
The inside of the shop was just as brown and boring as the outside. There were mermaid piggy banks lined up on one table and small stuffed seals with evil-looking faces on another. All in all, the store was no bigger than our sitting room, and not much different from it, except that there was a cash register along one wall and a sign that hung over the hallway that said TO THE BOATS with an arrow pointing to some steps on the right.
“Interested in a tour, are you?”
I jumped a little, and then turned quickly, face-to-face with Mr. Doyle.
“You?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
Had he forgotten about hiring me? My face felt hot, even though it was no fault of mine if he had made a mistake.
“Um … yesterday, you said I should come and help at the shop.”
“I said what?”
I knew he had heard me, from the way his own face reddened. But I could tell he wanted me to repeat it, so I did.
“You hired me to help in the shop.”
He was quiet as he looked me up and down. He didn’t like me one bit.
“Did I now?”
“Yes. You did,” I replied. I stood straighter, just as straight as Mum had when she’d stood up to him months ago, when she took us out in the boat and he stood on the beach, shaking his head at us all.
Mr. Doyle glared for a moment, then rubbed his chin.
“Fine. Start over there.” He pointed to tall wooden shelves, stuffed full of old books and random objects, and handed me a ratty cloth. “Dust.”
For the next three hours, I dusted Mr. Doyle’s shelves, which apparently hadn’t been cleaned for a hundred years, while he rummaged around looking for stuff he couldn’t find. I had to ask for a new rag twice, for they got filthy quickly, and dusting with a blackened cloth just moves the dirt around instead of picking it up. We didn’t talk, or whistle, or hum. The only noise was the sound of his feet as he shuffled about the place, and my occasional sneeze.
“Done?” Mr. Doyle asked as I came down from the chair I’d been standing on so I could get to the layers of grime on the top of the bookcase. I started to smile a bit proudly, for it was a big job that I’d just finished, when he pointed to the table with the mermaid piggy banks. “Now you can start on that one. Straighten it up, and try to make room for more without making it look like a junk pile. Lots of folks will be interested in these.” He picked up one of the evil-looking seals. “Had these s
elkies made overseas for almost nothing. They’ll be hot sellers when the tourists come.”
“That doesn’t look much like a selkie,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?”
I wanted to bite my tongue, or kick myself in the pants. Mr. Doyle looked like he wanted to kick me in the pants, too. “I mean, it just kind of looks like an angry seal,” I mumbled, remembering the beautiful pictures in A Child’s Book of Selkies.
“As if you know what a selkie looks like!” he muttered. Then the wrinkles around his eyes crinkled up and he laughed. It wasn’t a jolly-sounding laugh, but a cross between a cough and a wheeze. “You wouldn’t recognize a selkie if it was right under your nose, Cordelia Sullivan! Now, get to work,” he ordered.
So I did.
I tried to make a pyramid from some of the little stuffed gray creatures. They were awful-looking, like they had fangs or something.
“That’ll do,” said Mr. Doyle. “That’ll give me room for these!” And he plopped down a massive stack of booklets with titles like How to Spot a Selkie and The History of the Selkie Beasties.
I thought of Mum then. She was just so beautiful. And I remembered her telling such tales to me, about the selkies, tales from the old book. She was the only one who could make those old stories come alive for me. Without her voice reading the lore of the selkies, the whole thing just sounded ridiculous—to think that people could change into seals and back again.
And I felt stupid for filling Ione’s head with it all.
But Ione was old enough to know better, old enough to figure out I was just making it all up.
“Reading something interesting, Cordelia Sullivan?” Mr. Doyle barked, startling me into dropping a booklet. I hastily picked it up and put it in the stack.
“No.” I stacked the booklets neatly into four piles.
“You’d do well to stay away from them, selkies I mean. Oh, I know, folks say they’re just a legend. But if folks truly believed that, there’d be no horde of tourists in Selkie Bay at the close of each summer, now, would there? Folks say they don’t exist,” he said, his voice for once softer and smoother than butter melting on sliced bread. “But we know different, don’t we?”
Mr. Doyle winked a wrinkly wink.
I stood there, still as stone.
“Whatcha waiting for, girl? You don’t expect me to pay you after just one day, do you?”
“Um—er—” I stammered. I wanted to ask him what he meant, and why he’d winked like we shared some kind of joke, which I was sure we didn’t, when he thrust some bills into my hand and then almost shoved me out of the store. “All right then. Have your money. Your work for the day is finished.”
Fever
WHEN I GOT HOME, Da was there already. Da never came home early.
Neevy was sick.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked Ione as I marched into the house, past Da, who was holding Neevy close to his heart.
I could see her chest rise and fall. But she wasn’t moving much.
“I wasn’t going to call old Mr. Doyle. And I was afraid to walk to town and leave Neevy. And I couldn’t very well carry her with me in this wind, could I?” Ione sassed back. “I called Da at the docks. After five times someone finally answered. And he came.”
Da was cooing to Neevy, and she was listening, I think.
Ione was already cooking the broth on the stove. The same kind Mum always made when this happened. At least she’d thought enough to do that.
“Neevy, little one, wake up,” Da whispered in Neevy’s ear, though I could hear it across the room. I walked over and touched her head, praying with all my soul she wasn’t hot.
She was.
“Da,” I said, “I think she’s got the fever again.”
I hadn’t wanted to say it. Neevy’s fevers were strange. They used to worry us sick when she was first born. Neevy would turn red as a beet and her dark eyes would be large and glassy. She wouldn’t cry or eat—she’d just lie there limply.
“Maybe we should take her to the doctor,” I said even though I knew there would be no money to pay the medical bill. And besides, the doctors never did much for her. They always said the fever would just run its course. Unless it didn’t. Then we were to bring her in again.
“In the morning,” he said. “If the fever hasn’t broken, we’ll take her in the morning.”
I nodded across the room to Ione, who poured the broth into a small bowl.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
The fever was still raging when Ione and I turned in. I hadn’t wanted to go to bed, but Ione wouldn’t go without me. I knew that she needed her sleep if she was to go and help Mr. Doyle the next day, and I knew that we needed money, especially if we had to pay the doctor now, so going to bed seemed like the smartest thing to do.
Of course, Ione wanted another selkie tale about Mum. With Neevy being sick, I didn’t have it in me to argue. So I told her how our selkie mum took care of her little cousin selkie pups during a horrible storm, how she stayed with them on the island so the other selkies could go save shipwrecked sailors, and how the sailors repaid the selkies in treasure. At some point during the telling, I was so tired I wasn’t sure what I was saying anymore. But by that time, Ione was fast asleep.
At about midnight, I crawled out of my bed, crept into the sitting room, and there Da sat by the hearth, still holding Neevy in his arms.
Mum’s rocking chair creaked a little as I slid into it.
“Da,” I said, rocking back and forth only the tiniest bit, like Mum used to. “What are you thinking?”
He was quiet. I thought he hadn’t heard me, but before I could ask again, he said, “I am just thinking about … things.”
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Neevy? Yes, I think she’ll be okay. She’s feeling cooler. But I think she needs…” His voice trailed off.
“Mum,” I finished for him. “Neevy needs Mum.”
There were no words he could say, so he just nodded.
He held my baby sister there for a moment, gently rubbing her forehead.
“And how was your day, Cordelia?” he asked.
He was a master at changing the subject.
“Oh, fine.” I got up, walked to the small bookshelf where I’d stashed my meager pay from earlier. “Here’s this,” I said, handing him Mr. Doyle’s wrinkled bills.
He took them without even counting them and nodded, like he was trying to say thanks but couldn’t get the word to come out.
As I sat down again I must have scooted the chair over, for the floorboards underneath Mum’s rocker groaned. It was as if the chair or the floor or maybe even the house itself was daring me to fill the empty space between Da and me with words. Not just any words—questions. For a few seconds, I felt brave.
“Are you mad at her?” I asked Da for the very first time since she’d left.
“Neevy?” he replied, even though he knew I hadn’t meant Neevy.
“No,” I said, my own tiredness adding to my courage. “I meant Mum. Are you mad at her for leaving?”
Da was quiet. Then he shook his head from side to side.
“No, Cordelia,” he whispered, “how could I be mad at her?”
“What if she needed your help or something? Would you go help her?”
“Your mother doesn’t need anyone’s help, Cordie.” His voice cracked and I knew I had pushed too far.
“I’m sorry, Da, I—”
“Your mum is strong, the strongest person I ever knew. She always was. If there was something she thought needed to be done, then she just did it, no question. Your mum is strong,” he repeated. “Like you, Cordie.”
Daughter of the Selkie
IN THE MORNING, I assured Da I could look after Neevy on my own and sent him to work. She had no fever when she woke. So I bundled her in a couple of soft, faded blankets and laid her gently in the pram. She was a sleepy thing this morning.
“Hurry up, Ione,” I said, stuffing some bread in the toaster. I didn’t feel great about Ione walking all the way to town by herself, so I’d offered to accompany her. True, during the school year she often walked home alone, since we got out at different times. But that was before.
She munched her toast loudly instead of talking to me as we walked to town. And when we got there, she went grudgingly off to help Mr. Doyle. I’d made sure she looked presentable, which included dressing her in her cleanest shirt (the purple one with stripes) and attempting to brush her tangled hair. I had warned her numerous times not to be a pain. And all during the walk, she didn’t mention the selkie stories I told her about Mum, so I didn’t, either.
“Be good, Ione,” I called as she turned the knob to his store. She whipped her head around and stuck her tongue out at me. There were toast crumbs all around her mouth, but it was too late to do anything about it.
I was left with a sleeping lump of a baby in the pram. I wheeled her across the street to the Mermaid’s Tresses, but there was Maura’s sign, CLOSED UNTIL THE 1ST, taped to the front of the door. So I found my way to a tourist throne—that’s what we called the benches that lined the harbor and faced the water—and sat for a bit.
It was early, but not too early for the shops to open. Flipper’s Fast-Mart was always first. You could smell their coffee all the way down the street. Most of the shopkeepers went in for a cup, even those who liked tea better. The town moved slowly today, not like it would in a few weeks when August hit. Then the light traffic of those out for a morning stroll would be replaced by the bustle of families, all hoping for a summer swim, a harbor tour, or maybe a glimpse of a selkie.
Even though the brisk air of the morning felt good to me, Neevy gave a little shiver. Her cheeks were deep pink, not the healthy pink of a laughing baby, but the reddish pink of a baby who’s not feeling well.
Secrets of Selkie Bay Page 4