by Mark Teppo
They were legends, ancient beings with split tails; stitched creatures of fish scales and monkey bones. They were creatures mad by standards of sea and land, but wholly themselves, comfortable in their skin.
I sang, and they sang back to me. They pressed shells, honed razor-sharp, into my hands. They traced maps for transformation onto my flesh and poured new songs into the whorls of my ears. They kissed my lips, my cheeks, and my eyes, just to be sure they were free of tears. Then they bade me well.
I took their blades and swam harder and faster than ever before. My pulse beat my skin, my tail beat the waves. With a final spasm of my entire body, shocking me from the sea, I came, foam-flecked, to lie upon the shore. And there, with my honed shells, I opened myself. Blood ran as I slit myself wide.
I wept, and oh my song was so like my sisters’ in their ecstasy. I planted new feet firm in the sand, pressed down until I could feel the thrum of the ocean buried beneath the shore. Hot, wet, and salty, the ocean rushed between my new legs and slicked my new skin. I let the world of dry air and sunlight fill me, pounding the echo-chamber of my heart until I could breathe again. This new lover demanded everything of me, but it was nothing I wouldn’t give willingly.
Kit folds arms around a body both hollow and full. Could the letter in her hand truly be written by a mermaid? It is any stranger a thought than forgetting your face from one moment to the next, never knowing who you are? For a moment, he almost remembers a story of his own—one of drowned lives, stolen from the sea and stitched beneath his skin, a witch’s gift and curse, allowing him to change. She can almost remember how the story begins. Once upon a time . . . But it slips from his hands.
In the morning, there is another letter. The cries of seabirds fill the small cabin. The ship rocks softly. They’ve put down anchor at another port, another sunny island Kit will not see.
The other passengers have already left the ship in their floppy hats, overlarge sunglasses, and flip flops, wearing loose-fitting t-shirts over burned and peeling skin. Kit doesn’t belong among them. Even with the fear of drowning, Kit feels safer onboard than setting foot on dry land.
This new letter is crisp. Fine grains of sand linger in its folds and cling to sweat-damp fingertips as Kit sits on the narrow bed and reads.
The Selkie’s Tale
Then, I knew nothing of human men. I only saw the small boat abandoned by the larger one. I saw a man blister his palms rowing to shore, to the tiny island where my brothers, sisters, and I used to play. He beached the boat, flung curses at it as though it was at fault, then flopped down on the sand. Marooned.
I watched him try to light a fire. It smoked and sparked, but wouldn’t catch. I was curious, and I pitied him, so I left my skin on the rock I’d watched from, and dove deep, filling my hands before coming ashore.
He reacted first with fear, calling me a demon. Next, his eyes traced me with desire, seeing the water beaded on my skin, the dark waves of my hair, my limbs smooth and strong from swimming. Last, a look of cunning came into his eyes, lit by the light of his sputtering fire.
But what reason did I have to fear? I knew nothing of men, but I hungered to know more.
"There’s driftwood along the shore. It will burn well, and your fire won’t keep dying."
I held out my hands, full of kelp and good weeds, cockles and mussels, salty and waiting to be sucked from their shells. When he didn’t answer, I laid my gifts on the sand. After a moment, he darted as hermit crabs will from shell to shell, seizing food with both hands and retreating to the other side of his fire.
I left him to his feast, walking the shore and filling my strong arms with sun-bleached wood. When I returned, he’d eaten everything, bloodying his fingers on the sharp edges of the shells. Unasked, I built up his fire and sat beside him, then took his hands to examine his wounds.
"What are you?" His full belly made him bold.
I knew nothing; what reason did I have to lie?
"Selkie."
His bloodied fingers were chilled. I took them into my mouth, sucking the blood clean and warming them.
Desire is not so different in selkies and in human men. Despite my walk along the beach, water still beaded my skin. The fire, rather than drying me, only warmed the moisture and made it gleam. The man’s gaze was as sure as a touch.
And still, what reason did I have to be afraid? I laid my hand along his sunburned and unshaven jaw to feel his skin.
"You’re like this all the time?" I asked, wondering at a being that could live its whole life inside only one skin.
Misunderstanding, he said, "I was a captain. My brother stole my ship, roused my crew to mutiny, and left me to die."
I could see talking would do little to let us understand each other. I pressed my lips to his instead, tasting weed and fish. His eager roughness brought no more pain than I’d known abrading my back and belly against rocks with my selkie mates. His hunger and need were almost refreshing—his speed and insistence so unlike the languor I knew. I let him take all he would in a rush.
While he recovered, he asked me about the ocean and my skin. I told him all with aims of my own, getting him drunk on my voice. Lulled, I did not let him run ahead the second time. I showed him the way of selkies, satisfying my curiosity in a slow, unhurried way. I tasted his salt-dried skin and urged him to taste mine, sea-slick and so different from his own. I pressed him against the sand and moved over him like the tide, building to a crest. When my curiosity was satisfied, I let the wave break.
When he slept, I swam back to my skin. I returned to the waves and forgot the man. Underwater, the rush of salt becomes the rhythm of blood; the flow of tide becomes the measure of days. It surprised me when I next surfaced and heard the man cursing and weeping.
I slipped my skin and swam to him. His eyes were red and wild.
"I thought you’d abandoned me. I nearly starved." He bared his teeth in fury or grief, then buried his head in the crook of my sea-damp shoulder. I could feel the bones beneath his skin, smell the ripeness of his sun-baked flesh. His matted hair and the growth of his beard rasped against me.
Pitying, I brought him food and helped him build his fire. He ate ravenously, never taking his eyes from me.
When he was done, he rinsed the sweat from his skin and the taste of fish from his mouth in the sea and came to me smelling like home. Though my curiosity had been sated, I didn’t object when he wrapped me in his arms. I liked the way the ocean smelled on him. I had claimed him, changed him; he was my private treasure, washed ashore.
Tracing his lips over my throat, slicking his hands over my skin, he said, "I want to watch you change."
There was a strange light in his eyes, but curiosity I understood. He had sated mine. What harm could it do sating his in return?
I swam to my rock, returning with my skin. The surf washed around my ankles; I pulled my skin over my head, showing him one form then the other. His eyes widened, and when I turned human again, he seized me with renewed hunger, spending himself in me with fierce urgency as we rolled over and over on the shore.
Afterward, as I bent to collect my skin, a sharp pain struck behind my ear. My knees buckled. I hit the sand. Saltwater rushed into my mouth. Another blow, and in the pain, I lost sight of the world.
When I came to, I had been dragged near the fire. My wrists and ankles were bound with strips torn from the man’s shirt, and a final strip fit into my mouth for silence. My skin lay across the man’s lap, gleaming slick and black as spilled oil in the firelight. With a splinter of wood, and a hair pulled from my scalp, he stitched it into a new shape.
I could feel the needle going in and out, each time he pushed the sharp point through my skin. He looked at me as he worked. Once, there even seemed to be sorrow in his gaze.
When he was done, he placed a sharpened shell within my reach, a means to cut my bonds. He was pitiless, but not without mercy.
He walked to the water’s edge and pulled my skin over his head. I felt the touch of
saltwater as he slipped beneath the waves. I felt the ocean close over his head, felt him fight to breathe before surrendering to my skin. Long powerful strokes, stolen from me and worn over his wasted frame, carried him sleek and fast away from shore.
I cut myself free, but I was trapped. How do humans bear living life in only one skin? It is so small.
My sisters and brothers visit, bringing me gifts from the ocean and running their fingers through my hair. We talk of revenge. When they leave, they swim far and wide, searching for the man who stole my skin. I can be patient as no mere human can. One day, they will find him. They will drag him down and press their lips to his until they have drunk every last breath. Then they will peel my skin from his bones, and bring it back to me. The ocean will welcome me back, and I will be whole again.
At night, Kit walks the deck, breathes sea air, leans over the rail, and tries to get used to the sea. There are moments when the salt in Kit’s body yearns toward the salt in the sea, and it terrifies him. She has been here before. She will be here again. What if the Kit standing upon the deck becomes yet another ghost trapped in unfamiliar skin? If only he could remember.
The ocean is not terrible, the letters seem to say. But there will a price; there will be pain.
The next letter smells like clean wind, like seal blubber and whale oil—things Kit has never touched in this lifetime, but knows just the same. The paper is chill beneath his fingers, like bright ice and colors staining the sky. The ink is not ink; it is infinity, closed within a space of paper (as she is infinity, closed within a space of skin) speaking of the vastness of the world. He almost remembers.
Kit takes the letter back to the netting, less afraid now. Waves break against the ship’s hull; the wooden ship-woman stretched above him is almost an old friend.
He reads.
The Goddess’s Tale
They will say I drowned. They will say I was stolen, sold, given away. They will call me mother of monsters and mistress of the deep. All and none of this is true.
The world ever expects a rift between fathers and daughters, between husbands and wives, between self and other. I will tell you the truth before you drown.
In the beginning, the ocean was lonely. It caressed the earth, loving it desperately, but they could not make a child.
I lived with my father in a small hut by the shore—wood built upon a stony beach with thatched grasses over our heads, singing in the wind. Every day, I worked my fingers numb, weaving nets to cast upon the waves.
"Why do you do this thing?" my father asked me.
"I do it because one day there will be fish in the sea, and our people will be hungry. You will use these nets to catch the ocean’s children when I am gone."
"How do you know these things, Daughter?"
"I know because I have seen them in a dream."
"And where will you go, Daughter, when you leave me?" was my father’s last question.
"Into sky and into sea, Father. I will not be what I am. I will be multitudes and feed the hungry world."
As satisfied as he could be, my father went back into his house to think upon my words.
From dawn until dusk, I wove my nets. From dusk until dawn, I cast them over the empty waves. Every day at noon, I let the waves taste my bloodied fingers and warm them.
One day, the sea spoke, asking, "Who are you to put your blood in my mouth?"
"I am Sedna," I replied.
"Sedna. I have tasted your blood, and I know you are strong. Tell me, what do you dream?"
"I dream the ocean teeming with fish and whales, seals, squid, and eels."
The ocean’s icy tears lapped my feet.
"Ah, I have wished for these things," the ocean said. "But I cannot bear a single child, let alone multitudes."
"I will help you," I said. "But in return, you must make a promise. When my people are starving, you must give them your children to eat. They will cast the nets I have made, and pull your children from the waves so their own children might fill their bellies."
"Will it hurt?" the ocean asked.
"Every time," I replied.
The ocean thought a moment and said, "It is agreed."
"I will return in seven days and give you all the children I have dreamed for you."
I returned to my father’s house, and found him warming his fingers by the fire.
"Father, you must find me a husband," I said. "He must be wicked and strong. Will you do this thing?"
"Ah, Sedna, my child. I will do this thing if you ask it, but I will mourn."
"I ask it, Father."
So my father went out of his house and stood upon a cliff he knew. He sang a song his grandmother taught him, calling all the birds of the air to land at his feet where he looked at them one by one.
"Who will be the husband of my child?" he asked. "Who among you is most wicked and strong?"
"I am, Father," answered Raven, and spread his wings so my father might see midnight in his feathers. The moon was in one of Raven’s eyes, and the sun in the other.
On the morrow, I was wed.
As I made myself ready to go to my husband’s home, I spoke to my father again.
"Father, there is one more thing you must do for me. I will come back to you in five days. You must take a boat of bleached wood, row into the middle of the ocean, and wait for me. You must bring a little knife with a handle made of wood and a blade made of bone. In five days, you will see me in the ocean, Father, and you must kill me."
"Ah, Daughter." My father wept, but said no more. I took my husband’s hand, and he spread his black wings and carried me into the sky.
For five days, we lay together as husband and wife, black feathers against brown skin. I looked into Raven’s eyes, into the moon and the sun, into the left eye and the right. When I looked into his left eye, I knew he had lied to my father about being wicked. When I looked into his right eye, I knew he had told my father the truth about being strong.
"Husband," I said. "There is something you must do for me."
"What is that, wife?" Raven asked.
"You must take me to the highest place you know and cast me down into the sea."
"Ah, wife, must it be so?" my husband asked, but his eyes remained dry.
"It must."
So my husband took me in his strong arms, folded me in his black wings, and carried me to a cliff he knew. There, he threw me into the icy waves far below.
My body struck the water, but I did not drown. The ocean cradled me, and held my head above water so I could watch for the little boat of bleached wood the color of bone.
The boat came, and in it my father held his little knife.
"Daughter, climb aboard," he called.
I clung to the boat’s side, but did not obey.
"I cannot," I said. "I made a promise, but if you ask me again, I will break, so you must be strong. You must kill me, as you promised you would."
"Ah, daughter," my father said, but he did not ask me to enter his boat again.
"Father, I am freezing," I said, because it was the truth. "Let me in."
I tried to climb into the boat, but my father cut off the fingers of my left hand with his knife of bone. There were tears in his eyes.
My fingers sank beneath the waves and became fish of every kind.
"Father, I am bleeding," I said, because it was the truth. "Let me in."
I tried to climb into the boat, and my father cut off the fingers of my right hand. My fingers sank beneath the waves and became whales and dolphins and seals.
"Father, you have killed me," I said, because it was the truth. "But my hair is caught on your boat and I cannot drown."
"Daughter," he said, and used his little knife to cut off my hair. It sank beneath the waves and became seaweed and plankton and sightless eels.
"Father," I said, "I am drowned."
I sank, and the ocean folded its arms around me. It held me tight, mother of its children, dreamer of its dreams. Now I am multitudes,
and my children feed those who walk upon the land. I am vast, I am the mother of worlds.
It is almost time for the cruise to end when Kit finds the last letter. It is damp, the ink still wet.
I have lied to you, the letter says. I am neither, mermaid, selkie, nor goddess, but I am all of these things, just as you are Katherine, Kitteridge, and Kit. Do not be afraid of drowning. Find a shipwrecked sailor, a father, a monster with shells honed to blades. Cut yourself open, stitch a new skin, become multitudes. It is time to come home.
Kit’s heart pounds. He folds the letter, tucks it between shirt and naked skin. She almost remembers. Once upon a time, he was a witch, and he ran away.
No.
The deck rolls, but barely. The sails drop, slack, no longer catching the wind. The ship will dock soon. If Kit steps foot on land, it will be too late.
Once upon a time, Kit bound her breasts and cut her hair. A witch taught her how to be changeable as the sea. He stitched ghosts beneath his skin; the trickster sea stayed true to its word, but Kit lost his way.
Of course.
Kit climbs into the netting, and turns to look back at the ship who is a woman, who is a witch, who was lonely once upon a time and cursed and gifted Kit with the ability to change.
Ghosts clamor inside Kit’s skin. There is a flicker of movement under the waves, a beckoning hand, a flash of tail, a welcoming smile. The letter presses between cloth and skin. Music rises up from the waves, singing Kit down. The ocean tells the truth; the ocean is a liar. It is one and both all the time. Kit smiles, climbing to the edge of the netting, remembering hands caressing flickering, changeable skin, remembering choosing not to choose.
It is time to go home.
Blackbird Lullaby
— George Cotronis
And He asked him, "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many."
—Gospel of Mark 5:9
I’m lying in bed, alone. My arm extends over the side of the bed, wrist resting on the night table. I move my fingers, and I can feel the tendons in my arm pulling them like puppets on a string. My middle and last finger are stripped of flesh down to the second knuckle, leaving the bone visible. The blackbird makes two small jumps and comes closer, disturbed by my sudden movement. I stop moving, and it starts to peck at my flesh again. I watch it for a while. There is no pain. When I get bored, I shoo it away, and it takes flight across the room to join its murder. His buddies are everywhere in the room, perched on furniture and lamps. They seem to be waiting for something.