The Selkie

by Melanie Jackson

  “He studied the leech craft, did he?”

  Hexy nodded. Then, tired of moving her head, she said, “It’s a tradition in our family. We used to tease him and call him Sawbones, though he was a very good and learned doctor. But the rest of his hobbies—well, they are just silliness. I’ve spent a deal of time in Scotland now and the only thing that bothers me here are my allergies, and I’ve about decided that they are the fault of the yew trees. I’ve noticed that I am much worse whenever I get near those.”

  “Aye, the yews are a bane tae certain of the people,” Rory agreed. “The wood can even blister the skin if the allergy is strong enough. Mayhap yer family suffered frae this.”

  “Truly? The wood can actually blister? But that is hardly an adequate reason to leave Scotland. Anyway, Granddad was talking about sea monsters or some other nonsense.” Hexy shook her head at such silliness, but then asked with a trace of nervousness, “Will you sing ‘The Great Silkie’ for me? I should like to know how the song goes now that I have it in mind.”

  “I cannae sing here,” he said gruffly. “And the song is muckle nonsense tae boot. ’Twas made up tae scare the lassies from taking lovers. I was just curious about where ye’d heard it. Nae many people sing that auld song anymore.”

  Hexy shrugged and sipped from her cup.

  “I’m not certain where I first heard it. I think perhaps I heard the tune one evening when I was walking down on the beach. I often think I hear music when I’m out there in the evening. Or maybe my grandfather sang it for me when I was little. Or played it. He used to play the pennywhistle.” Hexy put her cup aside and reached for a scone.

  Rory watched intently as she set the pastry on a small plate. Self-consciously, Hexy broke off a diminutive piece and tasted it.

  “Ugh!” Hexy grimaced involuntarily. Swallowing hastily, she put the scone aside in favor of having a swallow of tea. “The cook must have been having an off morning. It tastes like she emptied the entire saltcellar into these scones.”

  “Ah!” Rory sat back. Hexy couldn’t swear to it, but it seemed as if he were both satisfied and yet also filled with nervous anticipation.

  “Maybe she confused the salt with the sugar.” She explained, “Maggie’s eyesight is not what it used to be.”

  “I dinnae think so. ’Tis often the case that those who are sensitive to yew can also taste the salt most strongly. Ye’ll hae a care now, won’t ye? The salt they use here isnae healthy for everyone. It does nae come from the sea, you ken. This land salt can make the body behave oddly. Some think it is even bespelling, chaining souls tae the earthy places. Ye’d nae want tae be imprisoned here, would ye?”

  “No, not at Fintry.” Hexy shuddered. “But I don’t know about that legend. It sounds like more of my grandfather’s superstitions, though I do recall that salt is a traditional way of warding off evil and bad luck, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.”

  “But that can’t be what Maggie had in mind. Why would she want to ward off you or I?” she asked.

  “Whyever?”

  “Well, I shall certainly make my own scones for a while. Obviously, Cook isn’t to be trusted. Truly, none of the servants are. They don’t like it here and take out their resentments by being lax and careless.”

  Hexy took another swallow of tea, trying to banish the last of the briny taste from her mouth. She added fairly, “Not that I entirely blame them for that attitude. Fintry is a cursed uncomfortable place much of the year. In the winter, it must sometimes seem like the wind and rain are going to drive it straight back into the sea. There was a bad winter some decades ago when the sea is supposed to have actually pounded on the castle door!”

  Rory nodded. “Aye. It shall likely happen one day that the sea will take back her stones. That is the way of things.”

  Hexy had a sudden thought. “You suspected that the cook would do this, didn’t you? But how could—oh! You’ve been here before.” Hexy laughed once, a little relieved at the commonplace explanation for his seeming prescience. “Of course that’s why you knew. I am surprised that Mr. MacKenzie tolerated such carelessness in his cook, though. He was supposed to have been a bit of a tyrant with the staff. Or so Jillian said. I did not know him well.”

  “Mr. MacKenzie was a man filled wi’ a deal of decision and was stern wi’ his people,” Rory agreed, finishing his tea and setting the cup aside. “But he had his virtues. He lived on good terms wi’ his neighbors. My people always appreciated that.”

  “Your family lives near here?” she asked, pleased and vaguely surprised.

  Rory smiled his odd, secretive smile. “Aye, we’re a bittock distance away, but we hae shared a boundary wi’ the MacKenzies fer nigh on eight hundred years.”

  Hexy blinked. “That’s a long time.”

  “Aye, long enough tae miss the MacKenzies’ presence.” Rory sat forward, his voice and face earnest. “Lass, I maun gae down to the sea for a spell. ’Tis time fer my brother, Keir, tae return frae his fishing. And I waud hae a word wi’ him. Someone’s been attacking seal pups near our home and I maun find out the latest news. Also, my kin need tae know that MacKenzie is gone and his widow is sometimes here in his place.”

  “But it is nearly dark,” Hexy protested, feeling sudden dismay. That wasn’t strictly true, as there was still perhaps an hour of light to be had, but she didn’t want Rory to go down to the sea without her. She had a ridiculous premonition that he would climb into his brother’s vessel and never come back. “And the beach is hardly a safe place to try and put in a boat. He’d do better to come by land. He could come for dinner. I’ll make it myself, so you needn’t worry about the salt.”

  Rory shook his head. “Keir will be in his fishing garb and in no state tae dine at a table.”

  “But—”

  “And believe me, there are safe harbors tae be had fer those wha’ ken the coast as we do,” Rory added gently. He rose to his feet. “Dinna be distressing yerself wi’ worry o’er me and my kin. The People will never be hurt by the sea. And I shall be back, lass. I’ll gae nae distance frae here without my fur, be sure of that.”

  Unhappily, Hexy nodded, accepting the teacup from Rory’s smooth hand and watching uneasily as he left the room.

  She was not left long to anxious musings. The moment Rory left the house a long-faced Robertson presented himself. He was accompanied by a somewhat dusty man who looked to be a silver-whiskered biblical sage but was soon revealed as a more important personage, the local joiner. She had noticed that all the workmen about the castle were elderly and supposed it was because the younger men were all either out fishing or had perished in the war. A more involved landlady would have sent her secretary to check on these things, but Jillian did not care to involve herself with the village.

  The aging carpenter was apparently mute, or perhaps simply loath to try to explain himself to a female Sassenach, for it fell to a reluctant Robertson to make an exhaustive explanation of why the men would need to put in more costly beams instead of joists in the lower floor’s bathrooms, where plumbing was finally being installed.

  The explanation was a long one and made Hexy stare in disbelief. The butler was not an eloquent man, and contrary to the vogue of some career domestics, Robertson had always practiced the exemplary caution of not being too efficient in his job, and therefore having his employers expect too much of him on a regular basis. The rest of the staff, taking their cues from the butler, had followed suit, the housekeeper and cook adding the refinement of the use of a local dialect that was so far removed from English that their speech was nearly always incomprehensible to their employer. Thus, communication, when it could not be avoided, nearly always fell upon dour Robertson.

  Today, the butler’s long face was looking unusually morbid and his tone was one of a man sorely tried by unfair vicissitudes. Hexy withstood the long-winded explanations of privy enhancement bravely until Robertson launched into a second and more detailed clarification of why certain seats were to be preferred in the
newfangled commodes that were to replace the old style cesses.

  “Fer ye’ll want tae keep visits prompt. But there’s nae reason fer people tae actually suffer. The old privies were a horror, mistress! I tell ye, a Scotsman’s heroism is nae always limited tae the battlefield. The bravest man would sob at the feel of those icy seats frozen ontae his bare backside on a wintry day. I recall occasions when flesh was actually left behind!”

  “I see. How unpleasant for you,” was Hexy’s only response.

  The joiner nodded in solemn agreement and then let loose with a powerful yawn, which revealed a mouthful of teeth and a breath that were both malodorous and ominous in size. Whatever his care with his professional obligations, the joiner’s self-maintenance had not extended to dental hygiene. That was one thing she had noticed about Rory: He had perfect white teeth behind his odd smile.

  Before she was called upon to answer this unwholesome and impolite observation about chilblained bottoms, their ears were assaulted by the horrific clatter of pipes falling down stone stairs, and then the hollow sound of anger-begotten swearing.

  “Robertson,” Hexy said, looking uneasily toward the door, where the thankfully incomprehensible voice was berating someone or something with notable vigor. “I trust your judgment in this matter. You are the senior member of the staff. We’ll let this be your particular project. Please choose whatever—uh—fixtures you feel would be best and we’ll tell Miss Foxworthy about it later.”

  Robertson opened his mouth either to thank her for her trust or more likely to argue about whom was to be responsible for the costly decision, but the sound of the hammer being applied to the strike plate at the front door forestalled further argument. It was, after all, the butler’s primary duty to answer the summons, at least when eyes were upon him.

  Their last visitor of the day proved to be one of Mr. Campbell’s sons, sent up from the post office to say that Miss Foxworthy had telephoned and promised to send the missing coat back promptly. She also wanted Hexy to go back to the beach and see if her own coat were still somewhere about, though she was thinking now that perhaps she had left it down on the one sandy beachhead, or maybe at the hotel when she had gone there for tea. The boy added that his da said would Mistress Garrow be pleased to come visit the post office some afternoon for tea, as Mr. Campbell had some old books he wanted to share with her.

  Relieved at hearing that Rory’s fur would be returned, but also annoyed at the prospect of a further search for her careless employer’s missing sable, Hexy escaped from Fintry and the hovering Robertson as quickly as she was able. Pulling an old woolen shawl about her shoulders to ward off the evening mist that would soon fall, she allowed her footsteps to lead her down the narrow path that twisted toward the second, smaller beach, whose tiny, sharp shoals lay between two deep sea caves.

  She couldn’t know for certain that this was the place, of course, because it was a peculiar place to visit when Rory said that he was going to meet someone with a boat; but her instincts insisted that this was where Rory had actually gone when he left the house rather than the more public beach. She couldn’t explain the origin of this odd certainty. It didn’t feel like something her imagination would invent, but its fanciful shape certainly did not fit properly in her orderly brain’s usual inventions.

  But where else could it come from, except her imagination?

  Hexy shrugged.

  Whatever its origin, it was as though something had forced a hole in the shield of good sense she kept around her mind and this idea had wormed its way inside to incubate and probably eventually hatch into some lunacy that would haunt her dreams.

  Yet in the meantime, it compelled. It wasn’t a reasonable impulse, but to the smaller beach she would go.

  Not that there was an urgent reason why she needed to see Rory again before dinner, she assured herself, but he would certainly be relieved to know that his fur was being returned to him. And it was only polite of her to tell him at once and set his mind at ease.

  It was also a fact, she admitted to herself, that Rory elicited some sort of euphoria in her brain. She understood that she was getting involved in something—and with someone—beyond her previous experience, but the loss of life and love that had dimmed her world with grief was suddenly gone. In the space of a few hours, her soul’s winter had turned into spring. She felt emotionally resurrected. The cause of this revitalization deserved further detailed study, and it would get it.

  The first confirmation of Rory’s presence on the smaller beach was a cast-off plaid abandoned in the gritty sand in a careless pile.

  Hexy smiled in satisfaction.

  The plaid was soon followed by a pair of crudely stitched leather shoes, also flung away by a hasty hand so that they’d fallen upside down and unmated; and finally by the finely made borrowed shirt, which had been dropped too near the tide line. The latter was now being taken out to sea by the cold, thieving waters that had crept up on the land.

  Slowing to a stop, Hexy stood over the dead-white shirt, mesmerized, watching its gaping neckline slowly drawn down into the water, where it gasped like a drowning man for a last mouthful of air. It brought to mind the many fishermen who had died in this very sea. And also men who were not after the sea’s bounty, but were simply unlucky in encountering rough waves and had been battered on this cruel, cold shore. She knew firsthand that not everyone escaped such storms with a mere mal de mer. Her own brother had not.

  Something moved at the base of her brain, and a terrible thought about her brother began to stretch its curled limbs and claw at her mind. The intrusion of the expanding notion threatened great pain, and Hexy found her heart racing and her breath coming in gasps. Her brother’s bloodless face rose suddenly in her mind.

  Hexy, help me.

  “Rory Patrick?”

  Help me. It’s dark here and I am alone.

  “Where are you?”

  Unexpected, and perhaps even imaginary laughter floated over her, breaking the conjuration and sending the dark hallucination back into hiding before it overwhelmed her. The laughter was odd, a sound she had never heard before.

  Hexy exhaled sharply. She had to stop this. She had grieved long enough. These nightmares had to end or she’d become one of those hysterics who couldn’t stir from the house without smelling salts.

  Shaking off her sudden morbid thoughts, she waded into the surf and retrieved Mr. MacKenzie’s borrowed shirt. Once lifted from the water, it was no longer sinister. It just looked like an empty, wet shirt.

  “Rory?” she called softly, looking about uneasily for the garment’s missing wearer. The water lapped at her own clothing and invaded her slippers with cold and grit. There were a few places that he might be, and she didn’t want to look into any of them.

  Disgusted with her alarm, and with what was shaping up as an inconvenient infatuation with a slovenly stranger, she began wringing out the sopping garment and retreated up the shore, hoping to escape the water before the sea had climbed all the way up her skirt.

  “You are making a bad habit of leaving your clothes on the beach,” she told him, as if the air would carry her message to his ears. “One of these days you’ll be caught stark naked somewhere—and then what shall you do?”

  In timely answer, a movement out at the surf line caught her eye. Two figures, one pale and human, one darker and larger, seemed to be grappling in some playful embrace.

  “What?”

  The rollicking bodies cut and then recut the sea’s delicate silver line as a peculiar sort of barking reached Hexy’s ears over the waves’ shushing. The sound of the inhuman voice seemed to grasp her ears, to catch her attention in some invisible but inescapable net. This had been the laughter that disturbed her morbid reverie.

  Unaware that the tide was again slowly creeping up her calves and wrapping her skirt about her legs, Hexy stood for several minutes, watching in charmed fascination as the two figures played, then finally parted. The paler one, whom she was certain was Rory, began
to wade back toward the beach. With a last high bark that raised the tiny hairs on her nape, the darker figure waved a flipper and then dove beneath the surf.

  Hexy turned bemused eyes on Rory.

  Several things about the emerging Scotsman struck her as odd, the first of which being that he was actually wading nude in a very cold sea. She had known that he was without kilt and shirt, of course, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to her that he would be completely without clothing. That he would look as naked as—as a newborn coming from a mother’s womb.

  How could he not feel the cold and wet? He didn’t seem aware of the sea’s freezing caress. It was as though he were impervious to the usual afflictions of men.

  The second thing she noticed, as the setting sun painted him in a backlight of glorious bronze, was that his skin looked smooth, flawless even, like the finest kidskin gloves, and that there was no hair on it, except for the locks on his head. None. He looked like an infant, except that no baby had ever moved as he did, with an undulating walk that was as graceful as an otter at play.

  Not an otter—a seal, her inner voice corrected.

  The final thing, and oddly the most incongruous, was the bit of silver Rory had in his hand. She watched in disbelief as he raised it to his lips and took a large bite from the flopping carcass, chewing on the fish with obvious relish.

  Some cautious part of her brain, still mostly untouched by Rory’s odd charm, and perhaps accustomed to the dark thoughts that went with a history of disappointment, uttered another warning about getting involved with such a strange man. But Hexy, in no mood for unhappy caution, told it to take its dire mutterings and go to Hell with them.

  Startled by a stray wave, which shoved at her rudely, she took a tumbling step back, nearly sitting down in the freezing surf as she turned an ankle on the edge of a submerged stone.

  Just as Rory’s movements had betrayed him to her searching eyes, so her own careless movement gave her away to him.

  “Dae ye plan tae run from me, lass?” he asked, tossing his fish aside. “But why? Yer drawn tae the sea as well, are ye not? And ye seem tae find me pleasing.”