Ione carried Neevy over to me as I searched through our soggy things. In addition to damp diapers, we had some pretty beat-up bananas and a loaf of limp bread. The cheese was okay, and the water bottles were, too. Inside a zippered pocket was the sugar-jar money—sopping wet, but at least it wasn’t at the bottom of the sea. As I took the shovels from the diaper bag, I found what I was looking for—the apples. I raised one high into the air in victory. At the sight of it, Neevy threw her arms around excitedly. At home, we called it the cookie dance. But since we didn’t have cookies, Neevy would have to settle for apple. Pre-chewed apple. It might sound gross, and I felt like a mother bird, feeding chewed-up food to a baby, but she had to be fed and that was that.
Luckily, she seemed not to mind as I placed bits of mushed-up apple in her hand so she could put them in her mouth. Only once was the chunk too big and not chewed-up enough, but she quickly coughed it out.
“Don’t you want an apple, Ione?” She must have been starving, too. Ione was always hungry. “Ione?” I called again when she didn’t answer.
I turned around in time to see her kneel down over by where the silver-black seal had beached itself, midway up the shore. I could see her skinny legs trembling.
“Step back, Ione,” I whispered. “I think we should leave it alone for now.”
“It’s not an it. It’s a she. And she is Mum,” she whispered back. “And Mum is hurt. Right here.” She pointed to a spot between her chest and her left shoulder.
I looked past Ione to the seal’s middle as it rose and fell. I didn’t know how fast a seal was supposed to breathe, but the rhythm seemed kind of slow. But then, seals were used to holding their breath, so maybe this was normal.
But what wasn’t normal was how this seal had showed up at the dock. Or how she had stayed with us during the fog. Or how she had used her nose to nudge us here—to the island of the selkies.
No, none of that was normal at all.
“Cordie,” Ione said, walking back toward me. “I think you should go and look at her. You’re the oldest. She needs you.”
Ione, for all of her conviction about Mum being a seal, was scared and I knew it. It’s one thing to think your mother has turned into a seal. It’s quite another to be stranded with your seal-mum on an isle with no other grownups around.
I was scared, too.
But I knew it would be worse if I showed Ione my fear. And though Neevy was still only a baby, she could smell fear, I was sure. Probably all babies can smell fear. The last thing I needed was a double little-sister freak-out.
“Well, if you come and keep Neevy happy, I’ll take a look at … her.”
Quickly, Ione skipped over to me and took Neevy from my arms.
“Now, take this and see if you can get Neevy to drink some water.” I handed Ione a bottle.
I started toward the seal. I didn’t want to frighten it or have it jump at me or anything, so I thought it would be a good idea to talk to it as I walked.
“Um … seal? Hello there, seal.”
“Her name is Mum!” called Ione. Upon hearing the word Mum, the seal turned its head around and looked at me.
“See?” Smug, smug Ione.
“Okay, Mum,” I began, still taking quiet steps toward where the seal lay. “I’d like to take a look at your, um, shoulder, I think that’s what you call it. I am not going to hurt you.”
“She knows that. She’s your mum.”
I was almost right next to her now. She watched my every move with her dark eyes. I had my hands out in front of me as if to say, It’s going to be all right. She didn’t even blink. So I knelt down and touched her gently with one hand.
She was soft, perhaps the softest thing I had ever touched. Softer than the coat that once hung in our closet. Maybe even softer than a cloud. I put the other hand on her and started rubbing her, as if she were a dog. She seemed to like it and rolled toward me.
The slash on her shoulder was horrible. I gasped when I saw it close up, but still she didn’t turn away. Had she gotten it from the rusted propeller as she nudged us along? I had no idea how she swam with us and pushed us to the shore with an injury like that. It looked like the kind of wound that could kill.
“That cut looks disgusting,” said Ione, scuffling toward me with Neevy in her arms. “But don’t worry, Mum, we are going to fix you up.” Ione knelt down on the other side of the seal, her good side, and put Neevy right up next to her.
“Ione, what are you doing?” I whispered, trying not to scare the seal.
“Mum would want to hold her, don’t you think? She hasn’t seen her in a long time.” Ione then gently put both of her arms around the seal and buried her face in the soft, smooth fur. “I missed you so much, Mum. I know you had to go. But I missed you so much. We all did.”
I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands, then my runny nose with my sleeve. “Ione, you ought to step back from … Mum. Remember how you said that when she is in her seal form, she’s more animal-like? Well, you don’t want to spook her. Besides, she’s tired and needs to sleep.”
And the seal did look tired. So tired. She gave what sounded like a sigh and closed her eyes.
I am going to find a way to help you, I promised her.
A lump rose in my throat and I tried to swallow it but it wouldn’t go away.
I missed you, too, Mum.
Cousins of the Sea
WE SET UP A SMALL CAMP, there on the beach, next to the seal. The Dreaming Lass had washed up on the shore a few hours after we did. The leak in the boat wasn’t near as bad as I had feared; it was tiny, in fact, but big enough to let in too much water, obviously. I’d watched Da repair enough boats to know what to do. I just needed to find the right materials. For now, we set it on its side as a windbreak, which was a good thing, because at the first gust of wind, all the money I’d laid out to dry almost blew away. This time, I placed each bill behind the windbreak, under a piece of shell. Once it was dry, I’d put it back in the diaper bag. Of course, that had to dry out, too.
The seal watched us as we placed our belongings around us, but she did not get up. She just lay there. A few steps from the beach, there were rocks and caves we were dying to explore, as well as those tall, spindly things, but we just couldn’t leave her there, all alone.
“I thought it would be more like a castle. Close up, it just looks weird. Don’t all kingdoms have castles?” Ione asked. I was out of lies, so I let her words float away to the clouds and put her on Neevy-patrol. Neevy was quite the crawler this afternoon, having given up carpet-swimming for fast, stomach-based land travel. “Just make sure she doesn’t go toward the waves.”
“Mum would never let her do such a thing, would you, Mum?” said Ione.
There was a small bark from the seal and Ione smirked.
Maybe it would be easier if I let myself believe the magic of it all. Yes. Our mum is a selkie who is now stuck as a seal. But I couldn’t believe it. Stuff like that didn’t really happen. I knew better.
“Still, Ione, watch her, okay?”
I didn’t even wait for the eye roll, but turned my attention back to the seal. She probably needed to eat. I rummaged through our bag. There wasn’t anything I thought a seal would like, but even if there was, I needed to save it for Neevy and Ione. And me, too. They’d never manage if I died of starvation on the first day.
“Okay, seal, let’s see about getting you some fish. That’s what you eat, right?” The seal remained uninterested in anything I said. “Oh, come on! You need to eat. You need to go and catch yourself some dinner.” Before I realized how stupid I looked, I found myself pretending to swim down the beach to the waves. “The fish are there! In the ocean! And they are nummy, nummy, nummy!” I pretended to eat an imaginary fish.
The seal was unimpressed.
I changed my plan. It was probably okay to let her rest there. After all, she had to be tired after pushing us. But then I looked at the gash again and felt the worries rise. What if the seal died here on the beach?
&n
bsp; Ione would lose her mind.
However, if I got her into the ocean, and then the unexpected happened … at least Ione wouldn’t know. And maybe salty seawater would be good for the wound and help it heal.
“Come on, seal!” I called.
No response.
“Mum?” I called, just to see if it made any difference.
It did. Within seconds, the seal had scampered down the beach, favoring her left side, and was now bobbing happily, if a little weakly, in the water.
Ione came tearing across the beach, Neevy bouncing with laughter on her hip. “What are you doing? Where is Mum going? How could you let her go?” she shouted.
“She needs to eat. Seals eat fish, not apples.”
“Yes, of course. I knew that,” Ione said.
“So while she is gone, we should explore a bit, don’t you think?”
“Only if you take this gigantic lug. I swear she’s gained a hundred pounds since we left.”
Ione struggled dramatically as she handed me the “gigantic lug,” who was covered in sand but very smiley. I heaved Neevy up in my arms and we walked up the beach, past an outcropping of black rocks, to a series of caves.
“Be careful,” I called to Ione, who ran ahead and disappeared within seconds.
The first cave was large and roomy. I didn’t have to duck at all except to get inside. There were two others that were smaller. And all around the black, jagged rocks grew tangles of dark-leaved bushes.
“Looks like a house. A selkie house. This is much better than a castle!” Ione cried, clapping her hands. “This will be the family room, that is our room over there, and Mum can have her own room here.”
“And the kitchen?” I asked absently as I reached down to check out the familiar-looking bramble. I was right, just like at home. Blackberries, and in full bloom, too. I felt a little better, knowing there was at least one source of food on this island.
“The kitchen is on the beach, of course. Easier to wash dishes that way,” Ione said, running back to the beach carrying imaginary dishes.
I didn’t bother to remind her that we didn’t have any real dishes to wash. At least we had found shelter. And I had to admit, I was getting really tired. I yawned big and wide. Neevy did the same.
I sat down in the middle of the “family room” and let Neevy explore. It was funny how just a few weeks ago she was barely crawling, and now there was no stopping her.
Babies grow fast.
And Mum had missed a lot of Neevy’s life, considering Neevy hadn’t had much of a life so far.
Of all of us, Neevy had Mum’s smile. They both had a dimple on the right that made every smile seem so sweet. But when I tried to remember the last time I saw Mum smile, all I could come up with was that day on the boat, when she’d tried to show us this very island. Otherwise, my last memories of her seemed small, and her face was always pale. And her hands were thin. I asked her once how she felt because it looked like the sort of question that needed asking.
“I am fine, Cordie. You don’t need to worry. Sometimes it takes a person a while to get her strength back after having a baby.”
But other kids’ mums didn’t look so weak for months after they had babies.
I rubbed my hand on Neevy’s still-bald head. It was just as soft as the seal’s fur. In the distance, I could see Ione kicking in the waves, dancing about like she didn’t have a care. It must be nice not to worry about everything, like money, Mum, and Mr. Doyle calling the authorities about Da.
Da.
He was going to be really mad. But I just couldn’t think about it now. I was tired of having to be Cordie-Solve-It-All all the time.
I just wanted to run around on the beach like Ione, kicking at the foam, jumping up and down excitedly.
“Cordie! Come quick!”
So I gathered up Neevy and ran to the waves, ready to do my share of kicking and jumping when I saw the head of the seal, bobbing along toward the beach.
“Mum’s back,” I said.
“But she’s not alone! Look, Cordie! She brought pups! She brought our cousins!”
And there, trailing behind the black seal, were the silver-gray heads of about a dozen smaller seals.
“What?”
“Baby selkie cousins!”
I wanted to call for Ione to stand back. Seals were wild animals, after all. But I found myself just standing there. No words came out of my mouth. The large seal waddled over to me, let out a sigh, and lay at my feet, closing her eyes like she was very, very tired. The wound didn’t look any better, but at least it didn’t look worse.
All around her were seals of different sizes, most of them much smaller than her. None of them were dark or black. Their coats were a shimmery sort of gray. I’d never seen anything like them, except they looked a little like Da’s pictures of pixie seals. Except that pixie seals had basically vanished, so it couldn’t be them. They scampered up the beach and found places on the sand or on rocks and just sort of lay there, like they were taking a mid-afternoon nap.
“Oh, look at your little cousin, Neevy. Isn’t he cute?”
I turned around to see Ione trying to carry the smallest seal in her arms, as if it were a baby. He was too big and heavy, though. But Ione was relentless.
“Ione, you better put that seal down before his mum sees you and bites you in the behind.”
“Look at him. He is adorable. I am calling him Henry. Hello, Cousin Henry.”
Remarkably, the bigger seals didn’t seem to mind that Ione was attempting to pick up their babies, looking them in the eyes, and giving each of them a name. There ended up being fifteen of them altogether.
“Oh, Cordie, did you bring something to write on? Maybe we could use that selkie book and write their names in there; otherwise, I am just going to mix them up all the time. Are you really just going to stand around?”
The large black seal at my feet sighed in the way that I was getting used to. Fine, I thought, I’ll get the book from the diaper bag. But the book was gone. And it hadn’t been there when I went through our things earlier. Now it was probably lying at the bottom of the sea.
“Just tell me their names. I’ll help you remember.”
Ione looked at each one carefully before settling on a name. “Betty, Daisy, William, Kate, Brian, Finn, Sorcha, Fergal, Diana, Charlie, Mo, Dearbla, Michael, and Oisin.”
“That’s a strange collection of names,” I said.
“I can’t help it if that’s what they look like. They are a strange collection of selkies.”
“Maybe they already have names. Did you consider that? And what if they are just seals, Ione? Just seals.”
But she wasn’t listening to me. She was having a quiet conversation with little Henry, telling him that she was ready to choose her sealskin and trying to convince him that it was quite all right to change into a human any time he felt like it and that she’d turn her head away if he was at all worried about not having any clothes.
Wounded
THE BLACK SEAL was getting worse.
All through the evening, the small seals basked on the beach or frolicked in the waves hunting for fish, but not once did the bigger seal go into the sea. She repositioned herself a few times, but that was it. Even as night fell, she did not move. There was no chance of us going home tonight—not with the darkness and not with the ruined boat, so Ione and I decided to sleep with Neevy in the largest cave, and a few of the seals followed, but not the large one. She stayed on the beach. I lay so I could watch her in the moonlight. She was there when I fell asleep.
She was there every time I awoke throughout the night, which was about a hundred times.
* * *
In the morning, a soft blanket of gray fog hung over the Kingdom of the Selkies, making the sun a small white circle above the horizon. The sea was smooth in places, like dark glass, but rough and foamy in others. It was beautiful, but not a friendly-looking sea today. Not at all.
On the beach, however, the scene was all
business, with Ione moving about like a little general in charge of the world.
“I’ll make breakfast,” said Ione. She quickly gathered some blackberries and fished out the goat cheese from the diaper bag. It was the same thing we’d had for dinner last night, but we didn’t care. We were hungry. We’d decided to save the apples for Neevy, at least some of them. And luckily, she didn’t seem to mind eating wet, mushed-up bread and brown bananas. I felt a little bad feeding it to her, since it looked so awful, but she needed to eat and the blackberries were too tart for her little tongue.
“No, none for you,” Ione scolded Henry as he sniffed around our picnic. “You have to eat fish. There isn’t enough for you. Go catch something. Shoo.”
Like a puppy following commands, Henry scampered down the beach, approached the big seal, and sniffed at her a few times. She barked at him, so he backed off and continued to the water.
“Mum doesn’t sound happy this morning. Cordie—”
“I know, I’ll go check on her. You deal with Neevy’s diaper.”
“I think Neevy should go without a diaper,” said Ione. “If the seals can figure out where to do their business, so can she. Besides, we don’t have many left.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled, not really listening. I was worried about how I was going to get my sisters and myself off this island. And I was worried about the seal. She looked weaker, with her eyes only halfway open. And I didn’t want to scare Ione, but when the seal had barked at Henry, it didn’t sound good and strong. It sounded just the opposite.
For her part, Ione was having the time of her life. She was playing house with a bunch of seals, and she believed her mum had returned and was lazing about on the beach, watching over her children, her nieces, and her nephews. The part of my plan that involved Ione seeing that the island had no selkies and giving up on the crazy story that I had started was failing splendidly.
“Good morning … uh … Mum,” I said softly as I bent down next to the seal. “You don’t look very good.” She rolled over toward me as if to show me her wound, which was no better. “How did this happen to you?”
Secrets of Selkie Bay Page 9