Hidden in Sealskin

by Thea van Diepen

  “Why are you both here?” asked Lord Watorej with a frown.

  “My lord, I can break your curse,” Nadin blurted out as his tongue almost tripped over itself in his rush to say the words.

  Elegant.

  “But you’re a mechanic.” The lord crossed his arms. Adren held her tongue.

  “I can still do magic. I’m the one who got the sealskin out of the clock in the library, not her. I can break the curse.” Nadin’s voice trembled and Adren could see that his hands shook. She hoped that what he was afraid of was only in his mind.

  “If you can, then by all means…” Eyebrow raised, Lord Watorej spread his hands.

  Nadin nodded, swallowed, and took a deep breath. After almost too long a pause, he spoke, his hands shaking even more.

  “I can’t see it.”

  Oh, no. That was a mistake, trying to see a curse. Spells could be seen by those with Nadin’s ability but curses, their opposite, could not. Adren was baffled as to how Nadin didn’t know something this basic.

  “You can’t see what?” the lord growled. Nadin bit his lip.

  “I can’t see the magic that made the curse. I… usually can see magic… I can’t right now. It’s not because I’m distracted or too focused”—he directed that comment at Adren—“but it’s like there’s nothing for me to see.”

  “Are you telling me you can’t do this?”

  “No, he’s not,” Adren cut in before Nadin could make the situation worse. Her words were for him, but she spoke to the lord and hoped he would understand. “He’s only confirmed that it really is a curse. If it had been a spell, he would see the added magic, but curses take away.” Nadin frowned, then raised his eyebrows in surprise… which turned into fear. He shook his head, which earned a glare from her. If he could open the clock, he could deal with a curse. There really was no question about it.

  “My lord, I need to speak with Adren in private.”

  “You may not.” Lord Watorej crossed his arms. Adren considered the possibility of her and Nadin running right then, but a quick glance behind showed that eight more officers had come around back. She might be able to escape, but Nadin wouldn’t. The lord addressed Adren. “Stop wasting my time with this nonsense. It's clear that Nadin only says this because you’ve pressured him. Now, either you remove my curse or you will suffer the consequences of stealing from nobility. I don’t understand why you refuse to do what will gain your freedom.”

  “Because she can’t! I’m the one with the magic, not her.” At Nadin’s outcry, Lord Watorej nodded to his officers, two of which grabbed Nadin and covered his mouth as they pulled him back. When he calmed, they took their hands from his mouth, but they didn’t let him go. Knowing Nadin, if Adren had been the one to grab him, she would have kept him gagged, but she decided not to enlighten the officers.

  “Your hold over him will not help here,” said the lord.

  “If you needed my help so badly, why didn’t you ask when you first met me?”

  “You had a knife out and were accompanied by a unicorn. It seemed you would be disinclined to help. And I needed proof that you could do magic. Last night provided that proof.”

  “Proof of the wrong thing. I may have magic, but it’s the wrong kind for curse-breaking.” Well, in her hands, it was.

  “You burned three people and blinded two others.”

  “You what?”

  That, apparently.

  “Why didn’t you keep your end of your bargain with the potion maker?” Adren said, ignoring Nadin’s outburst.

  Lord Watorej grimaced. “She wanted me to let her control the selkie one day a week for as many weeks as she needed. I couldn’t let her.”

  “Because you wanted to control the selkie yourself.”

  “I loved her! She was mine!” He couldn’t seem to keep his hands still.

  “Oh, sure you did. Forcing someone to marry you is the very definition of love.”

  Lord Watorej paled. Nearly all his officers shifted position, giving him an uncertain look.

  “I didn’t sleep with her!” the lord yelled. Adren raised an eyebrow. First of all, she didn’t believe that he’d done nothing with his wife in five years of marriage and, second, neither would his officers. Not if they had any intelligence. Lady Watorej had been right when she wondered who among the humans would accept their union. According to some, the saints put a stop to the intermixing of humans and magical creatures when they defeated the gods and, included within their group, were those who believed that the children of such unions were, if not outright demonic, then deformed in spirit. Not that demons existed, but that was something for magicians to argue over. Plenty of humans believed in them, Nadin’s mother being one of them, considering her ranting. Did she know about Nadin’s abilities? Adren hadn’t considered that. But enough.

  “Never mind what you didn’t do with your wife. You—”

  “Stop. Stop with all this second-guessing and this stalling. I don’t know why I’m going along with your games when I am the one with the power here. Break the curse. Now. You’re the only one here who can do it and I will wait no longer. I may not deserve it in your eyes, but I will have it.” His voice grew fierce and he stepped towards Adren, his body erect and chin raised.

  “I can’t.” A chill entered the tips of her fingers.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “No, you idiot. I can’t. I can’t break your curse.” The officers shrank back from Lord Watorej at her insult, but he didn’t say anything. His gaze seemed to turn inwards, and he became still. In the stillness, Adren noticed that her chest felt tight, like it did when she held her invisibility in place.

  “Adren,” Nadin said, “what about the…?” He mouthed the word ‘unicorn’ before the officers could suppress him. Unfortunately, the lord saw and heard everything.

  “Perhaps I should follow the potion maker’s advice. She said the unicorn and you had some sort of connection, that it would come if you called. Or were hurt.” He tapped his chin.

  The tightness in Adren’s chest had grown, and cold had spread up her arms, as if her veins had begun to freeze. Nadin shouldn’t have said that. Shouldn’t have endangered the unicorn. Shouldn’t have been stupid. If that’s what it had been.

  She was finding it hard to breathe.

  Lord Watorej would go after the unicorn now, for certain. He would hunt it, he would hurt it. He might even make another bargain with the potion maker. She would put the spell on it, and Adren would feel everything. This had to be stopped.

  As the ice travelled to her shoulders and down her body, it occurred to Adren that something might be happening to her. Perhaps a spell. No, because then her magic would fight it. So something else. The mansion’s lamps, probably. They were so bright. Everything was so bright. And the space so cramped—had the ceiling lowered? The walls come nearer?

  The lord was frowning at her. How long had it been since he spoke? She should say something. But her chest hurt so much. Her heart had so little room left, it had to beat faster to make up for it. Breathe, Adren, breathe. It didn’t help. No matter how much she needed it to help, it didn’t.

  “Adren?”

  Shut up, Nadin.

  Adren’s forehead tingled, stabbed. Her veins had frozen completely. Despite the fact that she’d shut her eyes and covered her ears, everything was getting worse. Fast. And she couldn’t hide it from the unicorn. The unicorn! No, no, no, it couldn’t feel what she was feeling. It would come after her. It would come here, right in the midst of Lord Watorej’s power. Nadin just had to have to mentioned it.

  Get a hold of yourself, Adren. But she couldn’t get a hold of herself. She felt control slipping from her, just as her emotions flew through the connection and the unicorn started to run. And, with every throb of her heart and her forehead, the dark place in her mind throbbed, too. It rattled in place, just another of too many things moving at once, more than she had hands to stop them. The only thing that could be moving that wasn’t was her m
agic, but that only made it worse. What if it were causing everything and no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to stop this?

  The unicorn.

  The unicorn was coming.

  She couldn’t stop it, and she needed to.

  Adren opened her eyes. Everything was still too bright, and she may not be able to stop the unicorn, but she thought she could get it where it might have an advantage, so she squinted.

  “You want the unicorn?” she said to Lord Watorej. “Get me to the forest. Now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They went in a motorized cart, in part for speed and in part because Adren couldn’t manage to walk. Nadin sat on one side of her, and an officer sat on the other. She directed Lord Watorej by pointing, although she had closed her eyes again so that she didn’t have to hate every single bump on the road. Whatever was happening to her body calmed a bit, giving her hope, only for everything to start again as they reached the edge of the town. This time it was worse and she was certain that, if she couldn’t get herself under control, she might stop being able to breathe.

  “Adren.” Nadin. “Adren, can you walk?”

  No.

  She didn’t even want to walk. She wanted to curl up somewhere, somewhere quiet and dark. Maybe she wouldn’t die if she could do that.

  Except she couldn’t do that, she remembered. They were still in town, the unicorn wasn’t safe yet, and there wasn’t much time. If only there weren’t so many images and sounds and sensations floating up from and falling back into the dark place in her mind. They made it hard to think.

  Nadin ended up carrying her—she wasn’t sure how that was sorted out, but it helped to feel his arms supporting her. It kept her inside her body and the panic out.

  “You’re heavier than I thought you were,” he said, but quietly. Probably so the others wouldn’t be able to hear.

  “H-have to be,” she managed to get out. “I had to beat up a lot of people here.”

  “Yeah, and two of them were me.” Adren didn’t need to see him to know he was grinning. It was all through his voice. She wanted to laugh. “Did you really burn three people? And blind two?” He sounded worried.

  “The reports… of my abilities… are greatly exaggerated.” Which was true, in a way.

  “Oh.”

  “Why are you… really helping me?” she asked, to keep him talking as much as to know the answer. It didn’t work all that well. Nadin paused for a long time. But then he spoke.

  “I’m not very good at helping people, but when I saw you and the unicorn, I thought maybe…” His voice cracked. “I thought maybe I could finally make a difference.”

  Honeysuckle sweetness spread over Adren’s tongue, warming it a little, and her chest didn’t feel quite so tight.

  “Keep talking,” she said.

  He told her about his childhood, before his mother was sick and when the livery barn was still up and running. Their neighbours complained about the smell of the manure, so they made an agreement with the farmers south of town, and sometimes Nadin would help bring it down. His favourite part of the trip, right up there with the fresh milk, was seeing the machines some of the wealthier farmers used in their work. When his mother got too sick to work, he tried to keep the business going, but didn’t have the head for it. Or the maturity. He wasn’t sure what had caused them, but after one too many bad decisions, he was forced to close the barn and sell what he had left. Thankfully, his fascination with farming equipment had given him enough knowledge to gain his current position as a mechanic. It wasn’t ideal, but it paid enough for him and his mother to live, and for him to treat her illness as best he could.

  “No father?” Adren asked.

  “No.”

  From the crack in the dark place came a memory of a man in black who knelt by the bedside of a woman, kissing her cheek as tears ran down his face. When it faded from Adren’s conscious mind, the magic caught at it and it left traces. The kiss, his clothing, the tears. She wished she knew where they were from.

  “I guess the reason I kept helping you,” Nadin said, “was because you expect me to be able to do things. You don’t let me sit around and feel sorry for myself when things aren’t working, and you don’t treat me like a failure. I wanted to say thank you for it earlier, but with everything happening, well, it was a little hard.” He chuckled.

  Adren’s chest relaxed and her breath with it, enough that she thought she might not die just yet. Her body unclenched. Not completely, but enough.

  “I can walk again,” she said.

  “Not yet,” he said, his voice so quiet now that it was barely a murmur. “I overheard Lord Watorej say something yesterday on the way to the mansion.”

  “Make it quick. We’ve almost reached the unicorn.”

  “He and the potion maker were arguing about something. I couldn’t hear everything because they were keeping it down and I was a bit ahead of them—I should have turned my head but I thought someone would notice and stop me—”

  “Nadin. Quick. Rabbit-like.”

  “Lord Watorej said something like ‘I let her go, but nothing changed’ and ‘of course she’s what I want most’ and then the potion maker said something about the unicorn and how she could help him get it. Do you think that has to do with the curse?”

  A back door. Of course. Taking away with magic strains both the magic and its user, but if there’s a backdoor, a way for things to return without more magic, then the taking isn’t permanent. It made curses easier, and more gratifying if you designed the backdoor such that the curse itself prevented the afflicted from being able to use it. For the lady, it must have been getting her skin back, which would have meant not only remembering who she was, but also going against the lord’s curse. The lord, being controlled by his possessions, as he said, would never give up the sealskin, especially if it meant giving up the thing he thought he wanted most: the lady. And the potion maker, wanting him to suffer, had told Lord Watorej that giving up what he wanted most would break the curse, and that the curse made that impossible. Given long enough, the lord would have had to bend to her demands in order to be free again.

  But, if the lord didn’t want the lady most of all things, then what did he really want?

  Before she’d left, the lady had said to him: ‘You are a child who thinks love means all must sacrifice at his altar.’ After which he'd given her up, as he'd said. So it wasn’t as impossible as he thought.

  “Nadin.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to try something that might not work. If it doesn’t, I’ll still be able to leave, but won’t be able to save you. Will you still help me?”

  “Of course.”

  Sweetness on the tongue.

  “Stop!” Lord Watorej called, his voice a spear through Adren’s head. She went to put her hands on her ears again, but Nadin stopped her and put her down.

  Wild confusion shot through from the unicorn. When Adren opened her eyes, she saw the lord, sword drawn, the officers around him with weapons out, and the unicorn before them, head lowered and horn ready. Adren’s heart pounded. They would hurt it they would hurt it they would hurt it. She ran to the unicorn and, for some reason, the officers didn’t stop her.

  “You promised it would free me!” Lord Watorej cried, then started to call out an order.

  “No, my lord.” Nadin’s voice was firm. “She needs to calm it. If you stop her, it’ll attack, and that won’t end well for any of us.”

  The unicorn raised its head as Adren came to it. She clung to its legs and slid to the ground. It didn’t matter what Nadin said, the lord wanted the unicorn—no, he needed it—and he would take it. But it wouldn’t do what he wanted, so he would kill it, use its horn for himself and sell the rest. That’s what they all wanted. To hurt it. To murder it. To take a knife and stab it in its side right when it thought it was safe. Gain. That’s all they cared about, these humans. And when they took the unicorn and had crushed all the
y could out of it, they would come for her. They would come for her and they would try to make her do what they wanted, so they would sell her. They would break her. They would give her to people who would touch her in ways no one had a right to touch her, all because she was “exotic.” She remembered the ropes around her, the whisper in her ear as Pider told her exactly what all those ways were.

  She remembered being jumped in the dark.

  And the punch into more darkness.

  She remembered how tightly she held onto the invisibility.

  The pulse of battle.

  Their connection as it fought.

  And the knife.

  Except, this time, it was a sword, and it wasn’t just one man. Her hands shook as she clutched the unicorn, and she couldn’t stop them. Her throat closed. This was it. No matter what she did now, it would all fall apart. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing she could do to control it.

  The unicorn’s horn was cool on her cheek. Fear came through the connection, as did the heartbeat of violence, throb for throb with what Adren remembered only too well. Followed by the aftermath. And a calm, an assurance more silk than steel, of peace. A comforting touch. She found herself humming. It was a lullaby, but she couldn’t seem to remember the words.

  Terror. Away, away!

  But only for a moment. The comfort was back. All was well.

  No, all was not well. There was danger now, hiding in the shadows. Hiding in the light.

  It is gone. All is well.

  That’s because you can’t see it. I know, I know it's there.

  All is well.

  How?

  Because I am with you.

  The fog cleared from Adren’s mind. Bit by bit, her heart slowed and she could breathe again. She could open her eyes and her ears without pain. She could stand. An echo of music threaded through her mind from the dark place, along with the image of a young girl who danced to show off a new dress. As she twirled, leapt and spun, the music faded back again, but the girl remained, giving Adren strength.