“I don’t know.”
“I bet it said in the book. I wish Mr. Doyle hadn’t let it rip apart and blow away into the ocean.”
Ione kept talking, but the only words I heard were, When do you think she’ll be able to change back? ringing through my brain, again and again. I laid my head against Mum’s side and felt the beat of her heart, soft and warm, against my ear.
Mr. Doyle barely set one foot into the cave. “Cordelia, get your sisters. We need to leave.” Then he turned his back and returned to the beach.
Mr. Doyle was right. I knew he was right. I could hear the thick patter of the rain starting up again. The drops were getting bigger. If we didn’t go soon, we might not have another chance today.
But I couldn’t make myself get up from beside the seal—from beside Mum. I couldn’t make myself leave my mum. I was holding her, not tightly, because I didn’t want to hurt her, but with strong arms, as if that could somehow make her strong again.
“Cordie, you need to come. Now.” But it wasn’t Mr. Doyle’s gruff voice that traveled the distance from the cave opening to my ear. It was a voice both broken and smooth at the same time.
It was Da.
The Pinniped
DA’S TINY RESEARCH BOAT, the Pinniped, was anchored in the small lagoon of the Kingdom of the Selkies. I could see it from the mouth of the cave, just past where Mr. Doyle stood, bent over the Dreaming Lass. I’d only heard about the Pinniped, never seen it myself except in pictures, but I knew, with its bright yellow hull, that it had to be the old boat.
“I thought it was rusty and ruined,” was the first thing I said to Da. Not I missed you or I am sorry.
But then he was hugging me and I was standing, hugging him back, and Ione and a sleeping Neevy were all gathered in there, too.
“That’s the boat I went to repair. In Glenbay. I didn’t want to tell you in case I couldn’t do it.” He was kissing our heads and nearly crushing us, but we didn’t care. He hadn’t yelled at us for being here, or told us how mad he was. That would come later.
If there was anything I was certain of, it was that at some point, my father would have words for me.
“We need to go, girls. Before the storm hits,” he said.
“So it’s finally coming then. Moving faster than I thought,” Mr. Doyle interjected. Apparently he’d given us enough of a private reunion. “Got here as fast as I could, you know, when I saw they’d gone. But there was a thing that happened with my boat making it rather difficult to leave…”
“If I hadn’t run into Raj Patel, I wouldn’t have known where the lot of you were, now, would I?” Da looked at me as he said it. “And yes, Archibald. The storm is coming. Some say it’s the storm of the century.”
“Storm of the century. That rhymes,” said Ione.
“No it doesn’t. The words just sound the same at the beginning,” I said.
“That’s what I meant.”
“Seriously, girls. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. And believe me, there is plenty to talk about,” Da said.
I knew that last comment was for me, but I didn’t want to think about it. Not yet, anyway.
“Cordie, is that a seal right behind you?” Da said, noticing Mum for the first time.
“It’s Mum,” said Ione, kneeling down beside her. “And this is Henry.” She pointed to the other side of her, where Henry, alert like a little pup, regarded us all.
Da stared at Henry for a long moment, then shook his head in disbelief. “A pixie seal. And I thought I was imagining things out there,” he muttered. Then he looked at Mum.
“You call this big, black seal Mum?”
“That’s because it is Mum. She’s a selkie,” Ione said.
Da looked at me to translate. But I just couldn’t find the words. Neevy awoke with a cry. Henry barked.
And then the wind began keening.
“We don’t have much time if we are going to get out of here in one piece!” Da called over the howls of the wind.
“We are not leaving Mum behind,” Ione cried.
“Ione, come on!” Da yelled. He was holding Neevy and making his way to where Mr. Doyle stood with the Dreaming Lass. “Archibald, tie the Lass to the Pinniped with the towline. We’ll pull her behind us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Mr. Doyle said, saluting Da in an almost comical way.
“Cordie, get Ione away from that seal. We need to get out of here. The island won’t be safe for very much longer.”
“I am not leaving her,” said Ione, holding on to the seal. “It’s Mum! She’s a selkie! Cordie knows it’s true. She told me all about the selkies!”
The whistling and shrieking through the cracks and crevices of the cave was becoming unbearable.
“Ione, that seal is not your mother. If Cordie said so, then Cordie … well, she made it up and she should know better,” Da yelled, over the bluster of it all. “Tell her, Cordie! Tell her the truth!”
But I couldn’t tell Ione the truth because I didn’t know what the truth was anymore.
“Ione. I am your father. I am not lying to you. That is not your mum. Get in the boat. Now!”
I’d never heard Da use a tone like that. Ione hadn’t, either. Stunned, she got up from Mum and walked over to Da.
“But Cordie told me. Cordie said—” she whispered, but she stopped. She could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t lying.
There was a loud crack. I think it was my heart, as Ione walked by with the worst expression of pain I’d ever seen on anybody’s face. “How could you, Cordie? How could you lie to me? Why?”
And again I had no answers because I could not find even a single word to explain anything. Because sometimes there are no explanations. There are only moments, one after the next, when you know what you have to do.
I knelt back down to the seal and held on to her.
When Da came back for me, after taking Ione and Neevy to the boat, I was still there.
“Cordie, we’ll sort this all out later. Come,” he said.
And then there was a word. Just one word my lips formed, and it was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“No.”
The Tale I Wanted to Tell Da
There was a girl who stopped believing in anything. In everything.
And then, for some reason, she started again. And what she can’t tell you is that this seal is really … is really her mum. And she can’t tell you because if she says it out loud and it sounds stupid, it will break the magic and her mum will be gone forever.
So it is a short story of words that will never be spoken.
Because the girl has no words left.
Over the Edge
IT TOOK THE THREE OF US, Da, Mr. Doyle, and me, to get Mum on the boat. And it took a lot of convincing on Da’s part to get Mr. Doyle to even help at all.
“Archibald Doyle, stop being an eejit and lend a hand for crying out loud!” Da had finally yelled. Mr. Doyle crossed himself twice before holding Mum’s tail so Da and I could guide the heavier part of Mum onto the Dreaming Lass. Then we had to transfer her to the Pinniped.
The storm was now descending upon us in full force.
The old Cordie would have already thrown up twice with all the rocking, between the small boat and the small research vessel, but all I could think about was the seal.
Mum.
I wasn’t sure what changed Da’s mind about the whole thing, for since that one word, no, I hadn’t uttered anything.
Once Mum was on board and we had our life vests on, Da and Mr. Doyle secured the Dreaming Lass. The Pinniped’s motor rumbled and Da steered the boat away from the Kingdom of the Selkies.
I held Mum and Ione held Neevy as we left behind all thoughts of gold and treasure.
The waves beat against the side of the boat and then the Pinniped jerked to a stop. Da revved the motor, but we went nowhere.
“What happened?” Mr. Doyle called over the sound of the storm.
“I’m not sure. We’re stuc
k maybe.” Da looked over the edge of the boat, then behind, to where the Dreaming Lass floated.
A large wave came and shoved us all to the side, nearly smashing the Pinniped against the two guardian rocks that protected the island.
“I can’t get her loose!” Mr. Doyle cried, and another wave pounded us.
Da’s eyes widened and his voice shook when he spoke. “I’ve got to get us untangled somehow. It’s the towline between the Lass and the Pinniped,” he said to Mr. Doyle, and he threw one trembling leg over the side of the boat.
Mr. Doyle grabbed my da by the shirt and pulled him back. “Don’t you dare go over the side. The whole town knows your lack of swimming skill. You almost drowned once. And it’s bad enough with their mother gone! Those girls need you!” He looked ready to slug my da in the face, but Da shouted right back at him.
“If I don’t get us loose, it won’t matter! We’ll all be smashed against the rocks!” He jerked himself away from Mr. Doyle.
“Don’t do it, Da! Don’t!” cried Ione, sobbing and reaching out a hand to him, as if that would stop him.
I wanted to cry out, too. But my voice held nothing. Instead I looked down at Mum and she was looking at me. Her dark eyes spoke to me in a way that words never could. Then she waggled her seal body away from me.
No.
My lips couldn’t move and as the giant wave came and swept over the side of the Pinniped, Da ran over and grabbed on to me. Huge buckets of water splashed over us, beating us down onto the small, splintery deck.
When the wave retreated, the seal was no longer there.
“Mum!” Ione cried. Mr. Doyle was holding on to her and Neevy, and Da had me.
“Brace yourselves, girls. This next one is going to be even bigger!” Mr. Doyle called out.
We huddled down, but then instead of the next wave crashing upon us, we rose up on it, past the guardian rocks, into the open blue.
“We’re unstuck!” Mr. Doyle cried. And sure enough, we flew over the next wave. Whatever had tangled the towline below the surface and paralyzed the Pinniped had suddenly, miraculously become untangled.
Da raced to the controls and soon we were speeding out of danger, back toward the town of Selkie Bay, with the Dreaming Lass bouncing behind us.
Ione snuggled up next to me. She gave me Neevy and I held her tight.
“It was Mum that saved us,” Ione said. “I saw her go over the side and then we were free. It was her. And now she’s gone again.”
All I could do was look behind us, as the Kingdom of the Selkies disappeared into the clouds and mist. And there was nothing to say, because Ione had said it all.
* * *
In about an hour, we had gone through the worst of the storm and were nearing the harbor. We were wet through and through. I understood now why Neevy cried to have her diaper changed.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Henry,” Ione sulked. “Or Betty, or Daisy, or Diana, or Charlie, or Oisin, or … oh, Cordie, I knew I would forget their names.”
William, Kate, Brian, Finn, Sorcha, Fergal, Mo, Dearbla, and Michael.
“The seals?” Da asked. “You named them all?”
“Of course. They needed names. And they are selkies.”
“No, Ione, they are not. They are pixie seals, the same species my team tried to find years ago. They’d all but vanished from these parts.”
I looked over at Mr. Doyle, but he was busy driving the boat. I wondered if he felt bad that his own boat was gone, or if he was like Da, just glad to be alive.
“But now,” Da continued, “these seals have made a comeback—probably breeding out on that island all these years. Why, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing in the water. I’d have never found that island myself if I hadn’t followed them. Their little silver heads bobbing along led me right to you.”
“Why didn’t Mum look like the rest of them?”
“The big black seal wasn’t one of them. She was a different kind of seal altogether. Perhaps a gray seal, but she was unusually dark in color. I’ll show you in my book when we get home.”
Ione didn’t argue with Da, but when she looked over at me, I knew she no longer thought I was a liar. We knew the black seal had saved us all.
And we knew it was just what Mum would have done.
Words
“CORDIE, YOU HAVEN’T SPOKEN in two days and I’m tired of it.” Da looked up at me from his bowl of oatmeal and tossed his spoon on the table. “You haven’t said a word since you were on that island.”
I wanted to so badly. I wanted to say something.
Anything.
Not that there was much I could have said.
Ione had explained to Da everything that had happened. And Da had explained to me exactly how crazy and irresponsible it had been to take my sisters out on the Dreaming Lass to find a hidden island.
He was right. It had been irresponsible. And probably stupid. If I still had an angry box, I am sure it would be open and I’d be raging at myself for being such an idiot.
But the box was empty. Gone.
“I’m done with this,” Da said. Then he stood and picked up the phone. “I should have done this a long time ago,” he said. As he dialed, he pointed to Ione and me. “Get ready, and Neevy, too. We are going out.”
* * *
Our car was old and rusty, like the Pinniped, but at least it wasn’t yellow.
It took us an hour and a half to get to the city.
Ione blabbed the whole way, asking Da questions about where we were going and why we were going there, but Da was mostly quiet about it all. Ione didn’t seem afraid to leave the house like she had before. Instead, she was a chatterbox.
Neevy, lucky Neevy, slept the whole way there.
As for me, I just leaned my head against the window and stared. I didn’t see anything but a blur. And I didn’t think of anything except for the black seal I’d come to think of as Mum. Even though now, not being in the Kingdom of the Selkies, it was hard to think about Mum being that seal, hard to imagine.
But hard to let go of, just the same.
“We are here,” Da said as he pulled up to the City Hospital. “She’s here.”
He quietly led us up to the fourth floor, down a white corridor, and into a waiting room painted a soft blue. At a counter, a nurse looked up.
“Hello, Mr. Sullivan,” she said.
Da smiled, then motioned for us to sit on a couch, so we did.
“Stay here for a minute,” he said, and he disappeared down the hall into a room.
“Why do you suppose we are here?” Ione whispered. She might not have had much in the way of manners, but Ione knew to use a quiet voice in a hospital.
I shrugged. She should have known I wouldn’t answer. Or that I couldn’t.
“Cordie, you first,” Da said, standing in the doorway and motioning for me to come. He stopped me as I was about to step inside. “She made me promise, Cordie. And that’s why I was holding on to the money, in case I needed it for the … treatments. But I never should have agreed to it. I never should have.”
The room was white, all white, with wires and tubes and silent machines. There was a window with white curtains, the sheer kind that are almost useless because they don’t keep any light out. And there were two beds. The one by the door was empty, but the one by the window had someone in it.
She didn’t look like I remembered. Her dark hair was gone. She saw me staring at her head. “I guess I look like Neevy. We could be twins.”
And her voice didn’t sound quite the same. It was quieter. And when I got close enough, she didn’t smell like she was supposed to, either. Not like seaweed and mint. She smelled like chemicals.
“Cordie, I know this is hard, so please, just listen,” she said. “I am getting better now, but at first, I was so afraid. I felt I had to fight this battle on my own. I didn’t want you to see me so weak. I didn’t want you to remember me … like this. Maybe I was wrong. Your da thinks it was a mistake to have kept
it from you.”
Her big dark eyes were watery.
“But I missed you, Cordie, I missed you so much.” She held out her hand to me, pale and thin with little webs between her fingers, and I took it in my own. I could feel her heart beating, there in her hand.
So I reached up and put my arms around her and hugged her. And then she was crying and telling me things I couldn’t quite hear, mumbly things against my hair. But I didn’t care what she said, just that she was there, next to me, my heart trying to find the rhythm of hers.
Da brought Ione in then. She nearly climbed over me to get to Mum. She gasped at the baldness, but recovered quickly. “I can give you some of my hair,” she said, reaching up to touch the fuzz on the top of Mum’s head that was so like our baby sister’s. “Cordie says I have too much, anyway.” Then Ione whispered to me, “If you have to get bald to have a sealskin, I don’t think I want one.”
Da placed Neevy in Mum’s arms and then she truly cried, the large kind of tears a person cries when they’ve been holding on to them forever.
“I missed you girls so much.” She sobbed for a long time, then she pulled out of the hug and looked at us queerly. “But I would see you sometimes, in my dreams at night. I saw you out on the Dreaming Lass, just the three of you, and I knew it was a dream, for my girls would never do anything so foolish. And I saw you, surrounded by seals, small gray ones. And I saw you in a storm, a terrible storm, and I was worried.” She reached up and rubbed her shoulder, her left one, then went back to rocking Neevy in her arms. “I can’t explain it because it sounds so strange, but I felt close to you … somehow…”
Her voice trailed off.
I could feel Da’s gaze upon me and so I turned to face him. He was shaking his head. “I didn’t tell her a thing,” he whispered to me. “Not a thing.”
And my tears came then, and the words too—finally, the words came.
“I love you, Mum.”
Things You Can Explain
MUM CAME HOME A FEW WEEKS LATER, just as Da was starting his new job as a scientist again, studying the return of the pixie seals to Selkie Bay. He was awarded something called a “nice fat grant” to continue the research he started thirteen years ago, but supposedly now it is even more remarkable. A species that somehow escaped from extinction can teach us all, Da said.
Secrets of Selkie Bay Page 12