“Your wife, the selkie?” I said in a smart-mouth kind of way. I’d have been in trouble with Mum for using such a tone.
“Didn’t I say as much?”
Ione walked over then, Henry in back of her, hiding behind her legs. “You said there was no island here, Mr. Doyle. You said the map was wrong. Why did you say the map was wrong if you’d already been here?”
“I lied.”
It was then that he noticed Henry.
He gasped, dropping to his knees on the sand. “Saints preserve us,” he said.
Ione stepped to the side so Henry was in full view.
A Child’s Book of Selkies fell from the old man’s fingertips and tumbled with a thud onto the sand. The jolt released the ancient pages from the tattered cover and they began to blow about in the wind and down to shore. Mr. Doyle was mumbling prayers or something, with his hands folded, but not closing his eyes like the folks did at Mass. He kept looking right at Henry.
And even though it was windy and cloudy and I could barely see it, I was pretty sure there was a tear rolling down his face.
Three seals came in from the water. I thought they were Betty, Charlie, and Oisin, but I couldn’t be sure. They joined Henry, who had waddled in front of Ione, creating a barrier, silky and gray, between us and Mr. Doyle.
“Do you know what these are?” Mr. Doyle asked in a shaky voice.
“Selkies,” said Ione with confidence. “Of course.”
“No they aren’t. They aren’t selkies. Don’t you know anything? They aren’t selkies and they shouldn’t be here.” He was shaking his head.
“Of course they should. This is their island.”
Ione had all the answers.
Mr. Doyle wiped his eyes and focused them again on Henry.
“No. These are pixie seals. And they shouldn’t be here,” he said for the second time.
“Why not, Mr. Doyle? Why shouldn’t the pixie seals be here?” I fairly shouted to be heard over the wind, but even without it I’d have yelled, anyway. I didn’t like that he’d showed up here. And I didn’t like that he’d stolen my book. And I didn’t like that he was crying.
“Because pixie seals are gone from here. Gone. I ought to know.” He swallowed, then looked me in the eye hard, like he was daring me not to believe him. “I clubbed the last one years ago. Heaven help me.” Mr. Doyle was sobbing now. “I clubbed the very last one.”
Better Than Treasure
HE TOLD US ABOUT how he was forced by his father to do horrible things. We sat in the large cave, hiding from the wind. When I looked at Henry, Betty, Charlie, and Oisin, I hated Mr. Doyle. But when I looked at Mr. Doyle himself, crying like a baby, I couldn’t hate him as much.
Maybe sometimes we all do things we later wish we hadn’t.
Ione was less forgiving.
“I can’t believe you clubbed baby seals,” she said, her eyes so black and dark and full of venom I would have thought she was putting a curse on him.
“It was a different time,” he said.
Ione snorted and continued to pet Henry, whose head was lying in her lap. Neevy was sleeping, too, in my lap. And Mr. Doyle sat across from us, never taking his eyes from the three seals that separated us.
“And when the seals were gone, my father thought he’d won. Even the fact that his leg—which he broke running away from the black seal—had healed poorly could not diminish his victory. He’d kept the seals away from the bay. But alas, the fishing was never very good again.”
I remembered the story he’d told me in his shop and I thought about my da’s research project, searching for the missing pixie seals. He thought the boat traffic had driven the seals away. Instead, the poor things had been hunted and slaughtered.
And yet, here they were.
“And the nightmares never ceased,” Mr. Doyle continued. “I did lots of wishing, praying, and crying into the sea, hoping to bring back what I’d killed.” He glanced up at me, then down again. “Things don’t always come back just because we want them to.”
He told us then about his wife, Pegeen, and how she’d had the look of the selkies his father had warned him about, but he couldn’t keep himself away from her. And how, almost thirteen years to the day that they’d met, she vanished with all of his money.
Thirteen years.
“I can see you’re doing the math, Cordelia. Yes, your mum lived in Selkie Bay for exactly thirteen years before she left.”
“Doesn’t prove anything,” I said quietly.
A few more of the seals had swum up and now were huddled near the entrance of the cave. But the black one wasn’t there. A sick knot formed in my stomach.
“It is the strangest thing, all of these seals. It’s like seeing ghosts.” He reached out to touch one, Betty, but she barked at him and he quickly withdrew his hand. “Real enough, I suppose.”
We were quiet then; the only noise was the whistling of the wind outside.
“Why did you steal our book? And how?” Ione asked, breaking the stillness of the cave.
“You were too busy looking for that seal at the dock and lying about not going anywhere that you didn’t even notice. And I needed to see the map again. I might have known where the island was, but not the treasure. I’ve searched before.” He pointed to his brown bag. “But not for years. There was never a trace of a treasure or a seal. Not a trace.”
“Why did you have a club, then? Were you planning to use it?”
Mr. Doyle looked shocked. “Oh no! Never again in all my days would I use such a thing. I brought it here … because I couldn’t stand the sight of it. Because … when it sat in my closet at home, I could still hear the cries of the seal mums as we…”
Mr. Doyle didn’t finish. I don’t think either Ione or I wanted him to.
“And did the book tell you where the treasure was?” I asked, changing the subject.
He looked at the silver silken creatures around us. “No. You yourself know the book doesn’t reveal the true secrets of the island.” He put out his hand again, this time palm up, and placed it under Betty’s nose. She sniffed it, then nuzzled his hand. He petted her head and almost smiled through a new crop of tears. “But maybe some things are worth more than treasure.”
Porridge Is Boring
MR. DOYLE WAS STILL SNIFFLING when he said he needed to go check on his boat, so I wrapped Neevy in a cozy blanket rescued from the bottom of the bag, plunked her in a drowsy Ione’s lap, and followed him. Maybe he wanted to have a good cry in peace. Maybe he thought it would make him feel better. I knew it wouldn’t, though. I cried enough when Mum first left I could have written a book on crying, bigger and thicker than any selkie book. It never made me feel any better. Not one bit.
The raindrops were tiny, but there were so many of them, like a curtain of rain.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“My boat? Behind those rocks.” He pulled out a crumpled handkerchief, blew his nose loudly, then pointed to some rocks not too far past the beach.
“I don’t see it.”
“It’s there. Probably just hidden.” He waded out in his long boots, into the swirling foam.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Course I am sure. I know where I anchored my own boat,” he grumbled over his shoulder, still going toward the rocks.
“Well, if your boat is over there, whose boat do you suppose that is?” For there, riding on the waves far to the right of where Mr. Doyle was walking, was an old polluter of a boat, drifting farther and farther away, off into the sunset like the end of an old movie.
I could have sworn I saw six or seven little silver heads following in its wake, as if to see it off.
I thought he’d be mad, but he just mumbled, “Well, good riddance to you, you rusted-out pail of barnacles!” He caught me watching him and muttered, “What are you looking at?”
I shrugged.
Mr. Doyle was perplexing. He’d just lost his boat and he seemed not to care! Instead, he walked slowly, gentl
y, back to the cave and over to the seals, where he sat among them. He began petting them and saying kind things. And they let him.
Except for the black seal.
She had not yet returned from the sea.
* * *
It was getting too late in the day to do anything about our boat situation, not to mention the fact that it was still rainy. So Mr. Doyle built us a small fire in the cave and we began what was sure to be a very long night.
“How did the three of you find your way here?” he asked us as we warmed ourselves. We didn’t have much wood, so we burned the old club. As the flames flickered, Mr. Doyle let out a sigh. Ione and I did, too. That club was something that none of us ever wanted to see again.
“She led us here. Mum, I mean,” Ione said. “It’s okay, Cordie. Remember, he already knows.”
When Mr. Doyle grudgingly produced a small tin of fresh Seal Biscuits in a much more modern tin, Ione decided she could forgive him for his past deeds, as long as they were never repeated.
“She? The black seal? Led you here?” he asked in a broken-up way in between biscuit bites.
Ione nodded. “But she’s not a seal. She’s a selkie.” Mr. Doyle glanced at me and I looked away. It certainly had seemed like the seal had led us here, or maybe pushed us here. Either way, we’d never have made it without her.
“I’m worried about her, Cordie,” Ione said.
“She’s fine.”
But if she was fine, why didn’t she come back?
This was the second mum I had asked such a question about.
Ione looked toward the opening of the cave forlornly. “Where is she?”
I wanted to distract Ione from worrying about the seal, and to distract myself, too. But I didn’t have it in me to make up another selkie tale. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“How about we talk about porridge,” said Ione after a few moments of awkwardness. “Like in the story of the three bears. I have always wondered if it is just the same thing as oatmeal. If it is, why don’t they just call it oatmeal?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Ione waited for Mr. Doyle to answer her question, but he didn’t.
“I guess porridge is kind of boring,” Ione said.
With that, we sat gazing into the flames. Silence hung in the air like mist, so thick you could almost see it. Or smell it. The silence smelled like seaweed and mint and smoke.
Then Mr. Doyle’s scratchy voice, low and deep, began to echo softly through the cave.
A Tale Not About Selkies
There is a tale my father told me once, about a time before the selkies came. There have always been folks who were closer to the sea than others. Folks who hear the call of the sea and feel it thump deep in their chest with each beat of their own heart. The waves rise and fall in time with their own breathing. They say that inside every man and woman is an ocean of sorts. For some, it’s more real than for others.
So, in the time before selkies, there was a kingdom and in this kingdom were two sons, Lorcas and Seamus. Lorcas was fine and strong and a treasure to his parents. Seamus, well, he was dark haired and dark eyed, with more sea in his veins than blood. Seamus was the wild one who stayed not on the path his parents had chosen for him. Little did his parents know that you cannot control a river. It must always make its own way, even if its path is ne’er the straightest one. Nor the easiest.
Lorcas and Seamus were devoted to each other, as good brothers are. But a terrible accident befell Lorcas and he lost his sight. The future his parents had planned for him withered and eventually blew away with the wind. He sat in his home, doing nothing, thinking nothing, being nothing.
But the same wind that carried away Lorcas’s future deposited it at the feet of Seamus. He would now be the favored son, if he chose. He no longer had to cut paths through harshness to make his way. The easy life could be his.
Seamus, however, with the ocean in his veins, simply went to his brother and told him, “Lorcas, I shall be your eyes now.” And whether it was magic or love at work, it didn’t matter, for from that moment on, everything Seamus saw, Lorcas could see, too. It was as if the oceans inside of both of them became one sea. One sea.
In the Wee Hours
IONE AND HENRY WERE SNORING SOFTLY and the rest of the seals were, too. Even Neevy had been put to sleep by the spell Mr. Doyle’s tale cast.
I had started to doze myself, when the abrupt end of the story roused me.
“It just ends there?”
He nodded.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“A story means whatever you need it to mean.”
I was going to ask, What does that even mean? But then I imagined him saying, Whatever you need it to mean, and I would have felt the need to throw a shoe at him, so I didn’t.
“Sometimes, Cordelia, we do things for others, for our family, that might not be the things we want to, but out of love, we do them. That’s what I think the story of Lorcas and Seamus is about. Doing what you must for your family.”
“Do you have any family now?”
He didn’t answer at first, but turned his attention to the opening of the cave. “Rain’s tapering off and there’s work to do,” he said gruffly, then rose and made sure the fire was truly out, without looking at any of us.
I shouldn’t have asked. Neevy snorted a little in her sleep and I put a calming hand on her bald head. To the other side of me, Ione rearranged herself and I reached out and smoothed her hair. I thought about how lucky I was to have them and a lump rose in my throat. I would do anything for them. Anything.
“Well, look who’s here,” said Mr. Doyle as the black seal slowly hauled herself inside the cave, then lay down, breathing heavily.
“Mum!” I extracted myself from my sleeping sisters and rushed over to her. Her large eyes were closed and her skin felt saggy, not smooth and tight like it had yesterday. And when she rolled over to show me her side, my breath caught in my throat.
The gash was worse than ever.
Mr. Doyle made no move to come closer.
“Can you help me? I don’t know what to do for her,” I begged.
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, shaking his head. I saw him scoot a bit away from the fire, away from us.
“You can’t possibly be afraid of her,” I said, all the while stroking Mum’s fur. “She needs help.”
“I promised myself after Pegeen I’d have nothing to do with real and true selkies. Nothing,” he whispered. He had squashed himself up against the side of the cave, as far from us as possible. I was pretty certain he was trembling.
I was, too. But not from fear.
“Nothing except trying to make your living off of them!” I cried. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to Ione—parading her around on your stupid boat. Filling her head with stories about—”
I stopped. I’d done my share of filling Ione’s head with stories. I’d even let my own head fill up with stories of treasure.
And look where that had led me.
“If you’ll keep that”—he pointed at Mum—“her there, I’ll slip outside and start repairing your boat. It’s our only way off this island and someone has to do it. We should leave at dawn.”
“I’ll hold her, but she’s too weak to attack you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said, wrapping my arms loosely around her.
Mr. Doyle crept by, but as he passed Mum’s head, her black eyes opened and she looked right at him. He moved quickly then, like he’d stepped on a flame.
Mum never had liked Mr. Doyle much.
* * *
By morning, Mr. Doyle had finished patching the hole in the Dreaming Lass, using tools from his brown bag.
“Seems clear enough, but we need to get out soon. I don’t want to be racing that storm.” He pointed over to some dark clouds to the north. “Can’t tell how fast it’s coming,” he said. “Your da is probably having fits. First your mother and now—”
&
nbsp; He didn’t need to finish.
“You never called the authorities.” It was not a question.
“Of course not. What kind of man do you think I am?”
That was a question I could not answer. What kind of man was Archibald Doyle? Was he the mean, miserly man who Ione hated just because of the look of him? Was he the strange, gentle man who gave a sad little girl who missed her mum a nice day out on his boat? Was he the exploiter, ready to use a child to increase his business? Was he the crusty yet repentant man who now sat feeding fish to the gray pixie seals he had once caused to vanish?
Or was he somehow a mixture of all these?
I would probably never understand him. Even now, as I tried to put the puzzle of Mr. Doyle together in my head, I was left with a piece that didn’t fit at all. The piece of him that feared Mum.
Mum slept. I placed a sleeping Neevy beside her because she had seemed to like it when Ione had done that. Ione was brushing Mum’s fur with her fingertips, singing to her. I couldn’t tell if she was running a fever or not, because who knew how hot a seal was supposed to be.
“She looks better, don’t you think, Cordie?”
“Yes, she does,” I lied. She didn’t look better at all. I sat down next to her and examined the wound again. I was pretty sure it was from the propeller, and that it was infected. She’d gotten hurt while helping us.
Of the pixie seals, only Henry stayed with us in the cave. Some were out with Mr. Doyle, and some weren’t here at all, probably out frolicking in the waves.
“Are we really going to leave without finding the treasure?” Ione whispered. “We came all this way and we didn’t even dig once.”
I didn’t care about the treasure anymore. Gold, silver, money. None of it would help the black seal right now. “Mr. Doyle has been coming here for years, Ione. Don’t you think if Grace O’Malley’s pirate treasure was here, he would have found it?”
“Pirates are smart and selkies are smarter. And I bet Mum knows where that pirate treasure is. Too bad she can’t change herself back to a person and tell us. Hey, Cordie, when do you think she’ll be able to change back?”
Secrets of Selkie Bay Page 11