Hidden in Sealskin

by Thea van Diepen

  “You can’t?”

  “No, I just like to watch you sweat.” She gave a wry look.

  He made a face, then turned his attention to the clock, after which he made several more faces, each one more interesting than the last. When Adren was sure that the clock had him baffled, he touched it on the side and the front fell off, landing right on his feet. At which point he grimaced, bit his lip, and spent the next short while perfecting his impression of steam escaping from a kettle. Adren had to press her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. She watched with amusement as he carefully removed his feet from underneath the wood and let it down such that it didn’t make a noise once it touched the floor.

  “There it is,” he said, his voice strained.

  Inside the clock body was an entire sealskin, whole as if the rest of the body had been sucked from it. It was folded awkwardly in order to fit inside, but Adren could see the head and flippers clearly. It also seemed the most ridiculous thing possible to hide a jewel in after they’d pulled it out and found it was as long as she was tall. She dragged it off the clock’s front, which Nadin lifted and set back into place.

  “This is heavier than I expected,” Adren said.

  “It’s also hers.”

  No. No, no, no. “It can’t be, or she'd have found it by now.”

  “Only if selkies can feel where their skins are…” Nadin paused and raised his index finger. “No, that wouldn't have helped her. The clock's enchantment drowns out the sealskin. And it’s definitely hers. Its magic feels like her magic.”

  “Then where is the sealskin I need?” Adren asked, her gut clenched. But she knew where it was, even before Nadin said.

  “Right here. I don’t think that potion maker told you the whole truth. I mean, think! Why would anyone keep a sealskin without making it into clothing or something? Why would a potion maker, someone who knows about magic, want to have a sealskin in the first place? And what are the odds of both Lord Watorej and a potion maker wanting sealskins that have to do with magic while there’s a selkie here in the mansion?”

  Much as she had already acknowledged the possibility, Adren didn’t like the feeling that the unicorn’s cure had slipped, just a bit, from her fingers. Again. She wished she could get the jewel out, but remembered that the potion maker had said that only she could remove it. To make matters worse, since Adren didn’t know the size of the jewel, she might not be able to feel for it and check if it was really inside.

  “Fine. Suppose this is the same skin. I need that cure. Even if this is another dead end, I’m not giving up until I know for sure. You and I both want to free your lady. How can we get both? Can you get the lady to come by the potion maker’s shop at some point tomorrow morning?”

  “I can try.” His tone was unconvincing.

  “I need more than that. You have to get her near the shop or in the shop while she’s acting like a human being, and it needs to be when I’m there giving the potion maker the sealskin so that we can see how the potion maker reacts. Once we see that, I’ll be able to figure out why she said the sealskin was hers to begin with, and I’ll be able to find a way for us to make happen everything we want to happen.” She rolled up the sealskin.

  “Isn’t there a way to figure that out without having to do anything?” Nadin asked. Adren raised an eyebrow. “I mean, can’t we just think about it and come to a conclusion that way?”

  “If you want to make a plan based on assumptions and judgements, you go right ahead. I need solid information. Now help me get out of here.”

  Nadin shrugged and led the way.

  Carrying the sealskin was awkward at first, and Nadin helped as they went down the stairs to the first floor but, after a few adjustments, Adren could soon manage. Or thought she could. They had nearly reached the garage when they a woman cried out, at first unintelligibly, then with two distinct words:

  “My skin!”

  Adren and Nadin exchanged a look of terror, and he would have broken into a run had she not shaken her head. If they ran, whoever had heard the lady would hear them and come after them as well. Instead, she walked as fast as possible and Nadin kept pace. Footsteps pounded above them as people woke and went after the lady. Nadin gestured at Adren to run, probably thinking they wouldn’t be heard in the noise, but she shook her head again and glared for good measure. This close, they shouldn’t take any chances.

  The people upstairs must have found Lady Watorej, because they stopped running, and Adren could hear the lady shriek about her skin, the ocean, and covering her nakedness. It took everything Adren had in her not to run up the stairs and give the lady back her sealskin. This was for the unicorn.

  But it still felt so wrong.

  Nadin opened the door to the garage and let Adren in before he followed, checking the door after he closed it to make sure the inside had locked. Then he ran and grabbed a ring of keys, unlocked the outside door, and let Adren out. She peeked around the corner to make sure that none of Lord Watorej’s security officers were nearby, then started on her way.

  “Wait, Adren!” whispered Nadin. “When are you going to the potion maker’s shop? And where is it, anyways? And how are you going to get in there without anyone seeing it if he discovers the sealskin’s gone?”

  “I’ll be there the same time I met you about the plan, and it’s on the east side of town, in that rough part, and invisibility, remember?” To keep the use of that to a minimum, she would have to circle around town, but she was sure she'd manage.

  Nadin nodded, but he drew his eyebrows together.

  “Be careful.”

  Adren hadn’t heard that phrase spoken to her in years. It sounded odd. She cleared her throat, decided against talking, and returned the nod before heading away from the lord’s property and towards her camp.

  Tomorrow, the two of them would make this right.

  Chapter Six

  Adren shifted the weight of her pack again as she decided which way to take to the potion maker’s shop. When she had woken earlier that morning and imagined keeping the sealskin invisible the entire way to the shop, she’d felt more than a little dread at the prospect. Even rolled up, it was annoying to carry around, especially as Adren preferred to have her hands free. Thank the saints her pack, once emptied, could carry and conceal the rolled-up skin. It had taken some work to hide all its contents around the camp, since the food had had to be hung from a tree to keep it out of reach of bears or other troublesome animals, but it made the journey much easier. She still opted for a roundabout route to the potion maker’s shop, though, as she preferred not to deal with someone from the mansion recognizing her and asking why she wasn’t over there. Otherwise, the livery, which she’d kept on, gave her an appearance of respectability. If needed, she could always pretend to be on an errand for Lord Watorej.

  Most of the route went through the forest, so Adren took the opportunity to coax the unicorn to come with her. Its emotions had been fuzzy with an intrusion of its madness, but that meant it stayed closer to her out of paranoia. She didn’t mind, though, and put her arm over its shoulders as they walked together.

  Rain came in patches and the unicorn would shake its mane when it stopped, spattering Adren with droplets. She’d been annoyed at the livery’s lack of hood, but now, with a grin, she shook her head right back. The unicorn jumped in surprise, but its emotions cleared at her amusement and it returned the favour with the next pause in precipitation.

  The corners of Adren’s mouth turned down. When she had first realized there was something wrong with the unicorn, she had tried things like this, tried to play with it and encourage healing that way. But healing never came. And, much as she could calm it through control of her own feelings, Adren had no illusions about the fact that that amounted to nothing more than emotional manipulation. No matter how necessary it might be in the moment, Adren hated every time she had to use their connection to make the unicorn act how she wanted.

  Something tickled her ear, so she turned to take
in a rather lovely view of the unicorn’s nostrils. It snorted, spraying bits of snot, its chuckle clear in Adren’s mind. She raised an eyebrow.

  “Was that really necessary?” She pushed its nose away, letting it prance a bit and enjoy its victory while she planned retaliation. Another patch of drizzle had started, so Adren cupped her hands. When the unicorn returned to her side, she threw the water at its neck, but some of it escaped her control and splashed into the unicorn’s eye.

  This, of course, meant war. The unicorn shook every part of itself it could, coming closer and closer to Adren as she raised her hands to defend herself from the onslaught. She laughed and tried to back away just as the unicorn pushed her with its nose and, caught off balance, she toppled. Its head in her face again, the unicorn blew on her. Adren gave a long, full-on belly laugh and, before she pushed it out of her way, hugged its neck and gave it a kiss below the horn.

  Would the unicorn joke around like this when it was well? Adren had not met any others. Still, mad as it was, Adren could see traces of the true nature and power of a unicorn in it, which gave her faith that not all was lost. Its pranks may be part of its insanity but, if all that insanity had done was cover up, hide the unicorn’s beauty, then nothing in the world could convince Adren that her search was in vain.

  When the time came to enter the town, Adren and the unicorn parted ways again. The sun had come out by this point, hot and bright, to dry the world, and Adren made her way to the potion maker’s shop. A customer had the potion maker’s full attention, so Adren pretended to inspect the bottles on display. They were full of various kinds and colours of liquid—and some filled with what was most definitely not liquid—with several oddly warm to the touch and all unidentifiable. Of course, they had neat labels, which she scrutinized as she had seen others do when they were indecisive. Could everyone here read, or did the illiterate ones just hide it well?

  The customer left after thanking the potion maker far more than Adren thought decent, and the potion maker flipped the sign on the door before approaching Adren.

  “Ah, a potion for strength or a treatment for boils. Such a difficult choice,” the potion maker observed in a dry tone. Adren put down the bottles a little more firmly than she’d intended. She turned and attempted a smile. The potion maker eyed the pack. “Did you really manage to get it?”

  “Of course I did,” said Adren, and she took off the pack and emptied it to prove her words.

  At first, when the potion maker saw the sealskin, she didn’t seem to recognize it but, once it was unrolled, she bit her lip.

  “I hadn’t expected that you would really be able to steal it. It looks like you’ve defied expectation again.”

  “Again?” Adren clenched her fists, her tone steely. The potion maker at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

  “I don’t like telling any potential customers, especially determined and capable ones such as yourself, that I can’t give them what they want… so I try to deter them in other ways.”

  “You can’t make the cure.” It didn’t matter how many times this moment had come, each time made Adren want to scream, want to grab the person in front of her and shake them and shake them and shake them until the world changed and the unicorn didn’t need her anymore. But this time she had the voice of a selkie in her ears, screaming for her skin as Adren stole it. If Adren normally got frosty with her anger, now she was glacial.

  “No, I can’t.” The potion maker hung her head.

  Adren considered tearing the woman limb from limb. Instead, acutely aware of the unicorn’s emotions, she stuffed her anger back down into her heart as she rolled the sealskin up again to put it back into her pack.

  “Don’t—”

  “What?”

  The potion maker shrank back at Adren’s gaze. “I was hoping to keep that, now that it’s here.” The gall of the woman!

  “Oh, certainly.”

  “Really?”

  “When the hell-gods decide to give mercy.”

  The shop door opened and Adren closed her pack to hide the sealskin. The potion maker turned to the new customers and froze, mouth half open. Adren shouldered the pack and raised her head only to find that Nadin and Lady Watorej had arrived.

  “We saw the sign,” said Nadin, his eyes flicking towards Adren, “but I promised my lady that you'd have something to help her sleep. She’s been having nightmares, and the doctors’ remedies haven’t helped.” The lady nodded, her gaze clear and actions crisp. Adren could offer a guess or two as to what those nightmares might be.

  “He assured me you would have something, and I am so anxious to sleep more comfortably that I insisted we come in. The intrusion is entirely my fault.”

  “It is no intrusion, my Lady Watorej,” said the potion maker with a bow. “I have several potions for sleeping problems, here in the corner. Please, survey them and see if there is one that addresses your ailment. I will only be a few moments with this customer and then I will be able to help you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Adren watched the potion maker as the lady and Nadin passed, waiting for some betrayal of her true emotions. She expected anger, perhaps greed if all the potion maker hoped for from the lady was money. What she saw was very different. As the two passed, the potion maker’s gaze went between the lady and Adren, so briefly that Adren almost didn’t catch it, accompanied by an expression of calculated anticipation.

  So, the potion maker knew the lady was a selkie, but how did she plan to exploit this knowledge? What could she hope to gain that Lord Watorej’s pursuit wouldn’t jeopardize?

  “I want to keep it,” said the potion maker to Adren in a low voice. “I know what to do with it. You’ll likely just sell it and be done with it. If it’s money you want, I can pay you. What do you think of three thousand keb?”

  With that money, one could fill Nadin’s livery barn with horses and tack. It was a desperate price, but only to anyone who didn’t know how much money Adren had left behind the last time she’d been in this shop. Three thousand keb lost from that would still leave the potion maker with more money than she’d likely ever had at one time. The best way to tell how much someone needed an object was to find out not how much they were willing to pay, but how much of what they had they were willing to give up.

  “Six hundred olen.” Twenty four thousand keb. A fifth more than what Adren had stolen for the potion maker.

  “Agreed.”

  All the saints and gods besides, that easily? Adren resisted the urge to look at the lady. The last thing she needed right now was to give away what she knew.

  “I never expected you would agree to pay so much; that’s why I asked for it. It’s not for sale.” Oh, did it feel good to say that, but not so good that Adren missed the flash of pure fury on the potion maker’s face at those words. It gave Adren pause. In all the years of her search, she had never seen someone so angry when their wishes had been thwarted. There was something deeper here than simple greed. She and Nadin had to free the lady, then she and the unicorn had to get out of town, before the potion maker chose to act on her wrath.

  Adren left the shop without another word. Once outside, she ducked into an alley to wait for Nadin and the lady to follow. They did so in only a few moments. As they went back along the winding street, Adren stepped out of the alley and was about to join them when the potion maker appeared at the door of her shop, staring out after the lady. The potion maker saw Adren and raised her eyebrows. Then she, one side of her mouth lifted, she turned back and pointed all the fingers of one hand at the lady.

  She was about to perform a spell and the lady wouldn’t be able to stand it. It was like a punch in the gut to Adren. Those fingers tensed. Adren ran out between the potion maker and the lady, just in time for the spell to slam into her with the brunt of its power. The magic ripped through her like lightning, slipped down her arms and legs, rooted her to the spot. She could tell that this spell, once complete, would give the potion maker control over Adren
’s will and body.

  Everything within her that could fight it, did, but that only caused her more pain. She tried to scream, but nothing would come. The unicorn’s eagerness to protect sang through her but, when she tried to calm herself, the spell furthered its attack. So she tried to bolster her resistance again, only to intensify her emotions. Only to intensify the burning. She could not do both. She had to, but the balance could not be kept; she could not have victory with both.

  The blackened, fogged portion of her mind throbbed within her, as if its experience of her pain came as the empathy of a separate being. Its activity unnerved her, but it was the only part of her that the magic had not yet touched. Already, the spell had subdued every other part of her, and now it closed in on that place that she never even peered into for too long. She could see the encounter in her mind, the black part encased in thick glass and the magic as tendrils of shivering light reaching out to touch it. At first, they simply felt its resistance, but then they charged at it and the glass cracked. Again, they bashed themselves against the barrier and the crack widened, opening a small sliver.

  And something came out.

  Another magic rushed through the crack, enraged. It poured like a flood over the spell, its waters overwhelming the feeble tentacles, washing them away as it filled her entire being. No, not like water. Like lightning. Like fire. But the kind that burned without consuming. Adren regained her power of movement in a moment and leapt towards the potion maker, knife out. The woman tried to flee, but Adren grabbed her and put the weapon to her throat. She wasn’t about to let the woman get anywhere near the lady and Nadin.

  “Promise me you will never use that spell again,” Adren said, blade pressed against the potion maker’s skin.

  “I promise,” she said, trembling.

  “Now, we’re going to go inside and you’re going to give me back every single bit of my money.” Adren wanted to interrogate the woman, but Nadin and the lady were getting farther away with every breath. Once all five hundred olen were stowed in Adren’s coat, she put the knife away and knocked the potion maker out the same way she had Nadin when they'd met in the garage. She ran in the direction Nadin and the lady had gone, hoping to catch them before they reached the mansion.