The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  “He did it,” Lir eventually got out. “He killed them.” His words were a snarl, even through his tears. Orla had never heard such vehement fury from a child before.

  Orla knew Lir could only be referring to Cian. Lir hadn’t been playing with his friend much lately, and it was clear that had upset the other boy. But doing something so awful to get back at him Orla simply couldn’t fathom. He was just a child, after all. Killing Lir’s fish was too cruel. Too vindictive.

  “There must have been a technical issue,” she told Lir. “This was a horrible accident. But it’s okay!” She forced a smile on her face. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the pet shop and buy you some new fish to replace the ones who returned to the sea. How about that?”

  When Lir looked up at his aunt she was struck by how empty his grey eyes were. “Like you replaced mum?” he asked, voice as chillingly devoid of emotion as his eyes.

  Orla was horrified by his words, but she knew she couldn’t show that on her face. “Hush, Lir,” she soothed, stroking his hair and leaning both of them against the stack of pillows on his bed as she did so. “I could never replace her. But I love you so, so much. You know that, right? So let me tell you a story. There once was a fisherman who fell in love with a selkie –”

  “A what?”

  “A seal that could turn into a human by taking off her skin.”

  Lir wrinkled his adorable little nose in disgust. “She took off her skin?”

  “Her seal skin, of course,” Orla laughed. Lir had begun to calm down, much to her relief. She had no idea how to deal with conflict or death or anything else complicated regarding real life; Orla had always been that way. The one thing she could do was tell a story.

  Luckily, it was the one thing that seemed to matter most to her beloved nephew.

  “So he fell in love with a seal?” Lir asked, amused by the notion.

  “She wasn’t a seal, though,” Orla explained. “She was a selkie. A mythical being. They liked to come to shore and strip off their seal skins and bask in the sunshine as humans. Well, anyway, the fisherman caught sight of a beautiful woman near his house one afternoon and immediately knew what she was. It was love at first sight for him and…well, people do strange things when they’re in love. He found the selkie’s seal skin and stole it, hiding it in his house so she could no longer return to her friends in the sea.”

  Lir gasped in outrage. “But that isn’t fair!”

  “I know, child,” Orla said, wiping the remaining tears from Lir’s face. “The woman, scared and alone after discovering her skin was missing, came upon the fisherman’s house to ask for shelter that night. He gladly took her in, and the woman came to love the man.”

  “For years they were together,” she continued, “and though she bore him several children she never stopped longing for home. She would stand on the shore and look out across the sea, mourning her brothers and sisters for hours on end. Now, her youngest son, who was her favourite –”

  “How old was he?” Lir interrupted.

  Orla ruffled his messy hair. It needed cut; she made a note to call her hairdresser the following morning. “Why, about your age, I imagine,” she told him. “So her favourite child saw how sad his mum was, and he didn’t know what to do. Then, one day, he found a strange, silky coat like a seal’s hidden deep in the cellar. He took it out and showed it to his mum, who immediately knew what it was.”

  Lir’s eyes lit up. “Her skin!”

  “Indeed it was. Now, the fisherman was still out catching fish when this happened, so he had no idea what was going on. The woman took her youngest down to the beach and told him to look after his father and his brother and sisters, kissed his forehead and said she loved him. Then she put on the skin and turned back into a seal, sliding into the water never to be seen again.”

  When it became clear that was the end of Orla’s story, Lir extricated himself from her arms to confront her. His face was contorted in anger, his hands balled into fists. “Why did she do that?” he demanded. “Why did she leave her favourite son? She said she loved him! She –”

  “The world can be cruel, Lir,” Orla replied sadly. “So cruel that, in order to be granted what we truly long for, we often must pay a terrible price. For her freedom and her home, the selkie’s price was her children…and the fisherman, whom she loved despite what he had done to her.”

  Lir considered this for a moment. He scrunched his brow, concentrating hard on processing the story. “And that’s…is that what happened to mum and dad? They had to pay a price to go home?”

  “Yes,” Orla replied. “And it was a terrible price. But they paid it, anyway, so we can only hope it was worth it.”

  They sat in silence together for a long time after that, Orla feeling just as lost in their situation as the boy in front of her was. In truth she could never forgive her sister for what she’d done to Lir. To her. But Lir did not deserve to suffer more than he already had by learning that his existence was not enough to keep his parents alive.

  No, she would take the secret to her grave, and in the morning she would buy Lir a new tank full of fish.

  Chapter Twelve

  I woke with a start, sitting bolt upright when I discovered that I was in my bed with no memory of having gotten there. It was still dark outside.

  What was I doing? I wondered, trying to force my brain to work out why I was naked and in bed when my last conscious memory was on my parents’ couch with –

  “Go back to sleep…” a voice murmured from my left, low and soft and heavy.

  Lir.

  In my bed. With me.

  I looked down at his tousled hair, sprawled around his face like a messy halo. He hardly seemed conscious. “Did you –”

  “Carry you up?” he murmured, rolling onto his side to run his fingers across my waist. He didn’t once open his eyes. “Yes. Now go to sleep.”

  So I did.

  *

  The next time I woke up there was a dull grey light filtering through my window. Peering at the clock on the opposite wall I saw that it was just before six in the morning.

  I was alone in bed.

  “Was I dreaming…?” I wondered aloud, rubbing at my throat when my voice came out croaky and sore from thirst. No, I was sure I hadn’t imagined my previous evening. Arriving to the pub late, Lir spilling a drink on David, fleeing for the ferry, witnessing my neighbour getting violently stabbed, Lir showing up at my door soaking wet, Lir telling me he liked me, Lir taking off my clothes and –

  No. It definitely wasn’t a dream. Through the awful moments and the blissful ones, everything was real. So where was Lir?

  “Oh, you’re awake.”

  I turned my head from the window to the door so quickly that I cracked my neck. Groaning, I massaged the top of my spine as I slowly blinked focus into my eyes. Which was weird, because I couldn’t usually see immediately upon waking.

  “I – did I sleep in my contacts?” I asked, feeling groggy and useless. The image of Lir swam before me, holding two bottles of water in his hands as he stood a respectful distance from the bed.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Do your eyes hurt? Do you want me to get some saline solution from –”

  “No, it’s fine,” I cut in, waving for one of the bottles of water in his hands as I rubbed my eyes. My contacts could wait until later. “You do realise the tap water is fine to drink in Largs, right? You didn’t have to raid the bottled water.”

  Lir looked bashful and embarrassed as he sat down on the bed. He was wearing my dad’s tartan trousers, though I was sure they’d been abandoned in the living room the night before. “I didn’t know where the glasses were, and I didn’t want to raid your cupboards. When I saw the bottles of water in the fridge I panicked and took them.”

  His answer pushed another question into my head. After taking a large, much-needed gulp of water I frowned at him. “How did you even know where my parents’ house was, Lir?” I asked. “I hadn’t told anybody – not even David.”
/>   At this he looked incredibly guilty. “You can’t judge me because you were stalking me first, okay?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I may have looked into your student records,” he explained, holding my gaze beneath his thick lashes. “Are you mad at me?”

  Anyone else would have been. But, as Lir had so astutely pointed out, I was guilty of stalking him for weeks and weeks. So what if he used the university’s records to find out where my parents lived?

  I could only laugh. “Not mad,” I said. “Just…surprised you went that far, I guess. What else did you find out?”

  When it became evident I truly wasn’t angry at him, Lir fluffed the pillows beside me and relaxed against them, a contented smile plastered across his face. “Oh, just that you’re twenty-five, and your birthday is the seventeenth of September, and your parents earn way too much for you to qualify for student assistance, and you failed second year inorganic chemistry, and –”

  “Okay, okay, okay!” I cried, horrified. I held my hands over my face. “That’s mortifying.”

  “Why did you fail?”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “So you just…didn’t study?”

  I glanced at Lir between two of my fingers. “I guess so. Is that terrible of me?”

  “It’s a waste of tuition to be sure,” Lir said, though he was laughing. He ran a hand through his hair, though it was so messy the gesture did nothing to tidy it up. “I guess I should give you some free passes to ask me questions, since I found out so much about you.”

  “Are you – are you sure?”

  He nodded. “You were terrible at stalking me. I mean, did you even find anything out?”

  “Rude.”

  “Says the stalker.”

  “You were clearly stalking me, too!”

  Lir chuckled. “Touché. So, what do you want to know?”

  I thought about this for a moment. What did I want to know? When the wind battered against the uncurtained window I shivered, then burrowed further into the duvet until only the top half of my head was visible above the covers. “How old are you?”

  “Are you worried you’re a cradle snatcher?” Lir asked, an amused smile twisting his lips.

  “Should I be?”

  “I’m twenty-three. Twenty-four on the tenth of May.”

  “Then you’re hardly younger than me at all!” I exclaimed, surprised and delighted in equal measure. “Why did you start uni so late?”

  Lir shrugged. “I travelled for a while. Next question.”

  “Umm…” I thought hard about it. What did I want to ask him? I’d been so obsessed with Lir for weeks now; why was it so difficult to come up with reasonable questions? “Where are your shoes and jacket?” I ended up asking.

  Lir stared at me, incredulous. “That’s what you want to know?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Back by the pier in Millport,” he said. “Hiding in a plastic bag. I’ll get them when I return to the hostel in a few hours.”

  Oh.

  “I suppose you kind of have to return,” I muttered, feeling my mood drop considerably. Fanciful dreams of spending the day with Lir cooking in my parents’ kitchen and watching stupid cartoons and whiling away most of our time in bed were dashed in one fell swoop.

  When Lir turned onto his stomach and bent his head down to touch his lips to my forehead, I was sincerely glad for the duvet pulled up to my nose hiding my blushing cheeks. “Unfortunately so. But…”

  “But?”

  “I hope this wasn’t a one-time thing,” Lir said, with enough doubt in his voice that I knew he was genuinely fearful that it was.

  Of course it wasn’t.

  Slowly, then with more conviction, I raised a hand to touch his cheek. Lir closed his eyes, leaning into the touch as if he had been starved of physical human interaction for years and years. “I don’t want this to end,” I admitted, not caring if I sounded desperate.

  He kissed my palm. “Neither do I.”

  “Then let’s never let it end.”

  When Lir opened his eyes once more they were earnest and happy. I always wanted him to look at me with such an expression on his face – like I was the first and only person that could give his life meaning.

  With a newly rekindled desire I lowered the duvet, pulling Lir down to kiss him and instigate a far more sober repeat of the night before. But then a buzzing to my right and, then, to my left, caught my attention, and I paused with my lips a hair’s breadth away from Lir’s.

  Both of our mobile phones were overloaded with notifications.

  “Just ignore them,” Lir purred, rubbing his nose against mine. “I don’t want to let in the rest of the world right now.”

  I couldn’t do such a thing. Not when I was waiting for news about Terry. About whether he’d survived the night…or hadn’t. So I rolled onto my side and grabbed my phone, Lir sighing as I did so. I was beyond relieved – and a little annoyed – to see that I had precisely zero notifications about my neighbour. All of my messages were from Max, of all people, as well as the Facebook group for the marine and freshwater biology degree group.

  But any relief I might have felt at knowing Terry hadn’t died yet crumbled in the face of what I then read.

  “Oh my god – David was attacked last night,” I gasped, more to myself than to Lir. “He was airlifted to hospital to get treated. Fuck, it must be bad.”

  Lir was out of bed in a second. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Um, probably still in the machine,” I said. “I put a drying cycle on after the wash. Are you going?”

  “I was one of the last people to see him before he left the pub,” Lir explained. “I should get over there in case I have any useful information for the police.”

  “I – I’ll come with you!”

  “No. Stay here.”

  Lir’s tone brooked no argument, though his face softened when he saw the hurt in my eyes. “There’s no point, Grace. Just message David and see if he’s okay. I’m sure he’s fine. In fact, I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic to get your attention.”

  I knew he meant it jokingly. Right now, in this moment, I didn’t find it funny at all.

  “You don’t think it was the same person who attacked my neighbour?” I asked, following Lir down the stairs and uselessly watching as he wrenched his clothes from the washing machine and pulled them on. “Do you need shoes?” I added on, looking at his bare feet in concern.

  He laughed softly. “I’ll be fine. The ferry’s less than fifteen minutes from here and it’s dry out. And no, I don’t think it’s the same person. Unless they swam across the sea to commit one attack after the other.”

  “Oh, very funny,” I said, though my lips curled into a smile at the ridiculous notion that anyone else was as mad as he was to swim over a mile in the dark, in March. When Lir moved to the front door and made to open it I reached out towards him, realising there was a question I very much needed an answer to. “Lir, wait!”

  He looked back at me over his shoulder, hand hovering above the door handle. “Yes?”

  “Can I have your number?”

  He waited far too long to answer, though by this point I was beginning to understand Lir did such things for dramatic effect. Eventually his face broke into a grin.

  “It’s about time you asked.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three weeks passed in a blur. Lir and I fell into an easy routine: I’d try and fail to write the rest of my thesis or go to the gym whilst Lir went to class or trained, then I’d eagerly open the door around seven to let him into my flat for the night. After week two I gave him a key.

  Once, I asked Lir why he always came to mine instead of the other way around. In response he pointed to my large, plant-covered terrace which overlooked the river, and I laughed. I’d gotten so used to my flat that sometimes I forgot how much nicer it was than most of the places students could afford in Glasgow. Thank god for a good landlord and Louisa’s parents still pa
ying her rent.

  When the teaching semester was over it would have been so easy for Lir to come round much earlier, but we both agreed he shouldn’t. Perhaps we were pretending that we were capable of some restraint. That we didn't need to spend all our time together.

  What I wouldn't have given to throw that pretence away and spend every waking second with him.

  But the fact remained my thesis did need written, and Lir needed to study for exams, so I did my best to do the work I needed to do. Unsurprisingly, my progress was incredibly slow, and by the time the weekend rolled around I was eager to spend a shameless amount of time with Lir under the excuse that we’d worked hard all week and needed a break.

  The weekend, however, was when Lir disappeared, leaving Glasgow to surf and swim along the coast no matter the weather. Both Max and Lir himself had told me about this, of course, but still it came as a surprise that he always left. I understood that this was clearly Lir's alone time so I never asked to come along with him even though I wanted to. Eventually, I hoped, he’d be the one to invite me on his adventures out of the city.

  Until then I could impatiently wait.

  It was on one such lonely Sunday afternoon when Lir was away that Louisa video called me. It was a gorgeous spring day, so I was sitting out on my terrace basking in the sunshine whilst drinking a gin and tonic, listening to music and half-reading a paranormal romance novel that Louisa herself had left behind in her room many months ago. Checking the time I realised it was pretty damn late for my best friend to be calling. Curious, I put her book on the little table beside me and propped my phone against it, fixing my hair using my reflection on the screen before accepting the call.

  “Hey, Lou,” I said, chirpy and carefree. The sun had made it impossible for me to be in a bad mood, even though I missed Lir. “How’s it hanging?”

  Louisa rolled her eyes at me. “You finally tore yourself from your boyfriend long enough to talk to your former best friend?”