As always, argument was impossible, and so I took him at his word and allowed myself to sleep, happy in the knowledge that this time, Lachlan would remain with me through the night. I would have been even more ecstatic if he had said that he loved me, but as I
had said nothing either and was being overwhelmed by the tide of sleep, I let the matter go unchallenged. He wanted me and was with me—that was enough for the time being.
A man that doth violence to the blood of a person, if he flee even to the pit, no man will stay him.
—Proverbs 28:17
It was decided in the early morning that Eonan and Lachlan would go to the crypt and track the finman from there. I was, you’ll be astonished to hear, to remain at the cottage with Herman and a pot of tea.
My mood that morning was strange, and I said almost nothing. I felt slightly ill, still infl uenced by physical exhaustion and a surfeit of salt we had exchanged during lovemaking, and I was mainly interested in ending the clamor in my skull by returning to sleep. I was not to realize that outside infl uences were being used upon me until it was far too late to do anything to stop them.
Lachlan was content to leave me dozing on the settee while he and Eonan went out to make war. He kissed me good-bye, but it was not the embrace of a warrior who went to his death. This was no last farewell. My lover was confident that he could kill the finman and return to me before nightfall. I felt no alarm.
I roused from a semisleep near noon, called to wakefulness and longing for I knew not what, by a voice that was not a voice, a song that was not a song, a thought that was not my own but felt very comfortable in my head. I thought at first that perhaps it was the babies telling me they were lonely and bored and needed food, but they were quiet.
Restless, I went to the window and, for an instant, I thought that I could hear Lachlan’s voice calling to me from the beach, but it faded even as I opened the casement to listen. A quick glance showed me Herman was still asleep by the hearth. That was good. I wanted him to stay asleep. It was important that he be undisturbed.
I padded to the door without my shoes. Without clothes. I wanted—needed—to go out into the beautiful sea, which was calm and warm and inviting and so very nearby. It was time I did this. I had slept enough. Of course, Lachlan had been right to leave me earlier. I had needed to rest, the same as anyone would after a terrible ordeal, but I was awake now and wanted to be out in the open. I wanted to be in the deep blue water, not in this cottage where I was kept deaf and blind and all but dead to the world by the drugs Lachlan had given me.
I breathed deeply of the sea air. It seemed odd that I had ever dreaded the waters that surrounded the village. But I recalled that I
had
feared the ocean, as all supposedly sensible land-dwelling creatures did: It had appeared to me as a voracious thing, full of monsters that might swallow up ships and men and brought terrible storms to bury my village. It had even tried to
drown me once, hadn’t it? But I felt that morning that I could ignore that fear when a sort of supra-rational knowledge of my true self and my place in the world came to me. I had a destiny. The sea was not a lonely place, not a vast and empty desert dissimilar from the ones on land only by being covered in water; it was a place of mystery and wealth and excitement. There was even a buried treasure out there. Wouldn’t that be convenient to find?
And the sea had given me Lachlan and Eonan, so I knew that it was not really
lonely
out there. I would soon meet others who lived in the ocean and they would be wonderful and kind, so I had no reason for these silly qualms. There was no need to remain hiding behind my warded door with my sleeping cat.
I looked back at Herman. I was not supposed to venture out of the cottage without Lachlan, and I understood his concern that I not go out alone because…Actually, I couldn’t remember why I was supposed to stay indoors. And the thought of the long wait I might have to endure chafed at me. Who knew how many hours it would be before Lachlan returned to the cottage and was able to join me for a swim?
I went out into the dead garden and paced and sang in my head, and tried any number of things to keep myself from answering the strange siren call that ceaselessly whispered. But it was useless. The allure was too strong. Something powerful and magical was telling me to step beyond my garden gate and go into the sea. Lachlan was worrying needlessly. What could possibly hurt me on such a sunny calm day? There was nothing dangerous out there.
Unable to resist the strange compulsion any longer, I opened the gate—it had a talisman on it too, I saw—and left my cottage behind, door open to anyone who wanted to venture in.
I made it to the shore without difficulty and had begun wading into the surf when Herman screamed. The sound was distant, though, and I did not at first feel alarmed by it. I wasn’t going to go past the breakwater, so there was no need for the cat to be upset about me being in the water. Anyway, water was good for my babies. They would like being in the ocean.
I went confidently onward but paused when the waves brushed at my thighs with dead cold fingers. I had reached the end of the rock pier, and beyond lay deep water. I hesitated a moment as the waves lapped against me, trying to recall why this might be a foolish thing to do. When no answer occurred to me, I arched my body into a steep dive and swam for the open water.
Once under the waves and amid a garden of obscuring sea grass, I hesitated again. Water surged over me, and I heard as it crashed against the sheltering stone on either side of the inlet. I could feel many currents waiting just ahead, weaving one into the other and making the sand swirl. The sea grass had in some places become a snarl that might net me if I wasn’t careful.
I should have felt cold but didn’t. I should have felt breathless but wasn’t. I looked out contentedly through the jungle of kelp, swaying in time with surges that breathed in and out of the cave, and did not feel concerned that I was not rising up for air as I normally would.
Compelled by some last instinct for survival, I looked up at the surface, only a few feet overhead. It was bright with light and sparkled like crushed glass in the noontime sun. It had to be near midday for the waves to be so blindingly bright. Should I go up there?
No. What I really wanted to do was go back to the island of the fisherman’s chapel and see that the monster had not returned. It would be so good to know that the isle was safe. Lachlan would want me to do this. And without the finman, the island would be an ideal place for sunning.
I shouldn’t do this, part of my mind argued back, using two soft voices. Lachlan could come back at any moment, and he would be worried about me. He would probably even be angry that I had not waited to share this moment with him. And what if the finman had returned to the island after all?
But the finman
couldn’t
come back; Eonan and Lachlan had tracked him down and he was probably dead already. So the islet would be deserted. There were no people there now, no spirits, no monsters. And I really wanted to go to that island. I needed to go. And it wasn’t far. No, not far at all. I could go and be back in almost no time. And air? That was silly. I could cavort all day in the strongest current and never tire or need to breathe. I should come to the island…come at once…
I twitched, my muscles wanting something in spite of my mind’s insistence that I didn’t need air and that I wasn’t cold.
What about sharks? There might be something large and dangerous lurking in the water.
Nonsense, the other voice answered impatiently. Lachlan had said that sharks did not come near the shoreline of the village. They did not like the turbulence of the sea when it met land. And they did not like the People who used the beaches, or the water when it was hot and bright. I would only be in open water for a very few minutes anyway. If I left right now I would have dazzling sun for my entire journey and be able to see any warning fins if they should come my way.
Rising up high enough for my eyes to look over the water but not to take a breath of air, I glanced over the delicate wavelets toward the fisherman’s island. There was no fog and its pastel outline was reassuringly close. I
could
swim very fast and be there in only a moment. I would have a quick look to be sure that all was well, and then I would come right back. No one would ever know.
Herman screamed again, the sound much louder, but I still did not look back toward the cliff where the cottage stood. Instead I pivoted to look at the shore behind me, reassuring myself that there were no witnesses to see me leave. Then, turning back and taking one last look at the island, I dropped beneath the oily surface and made an exceptional effort to begin swimming toward the gray islet.
The assault came without warning, and in a flash I was myself again. The finman rushed at me, eyes in his molding face held wide in some form of magical rapture, but he was not as powerful in body or mind as he might have once been. He was fast, though, and he was enraged and I think insane, and I knew immediately that he was far stronger than I, even with his rotting body and missing heart.
I tried to dodge, but he snagged me in those long ropey arms covered with suckers that had vicious teeth and spun me around in his coils and started to drag me down. I managed to avoid his eyes, not certain that he could paralyze me with his gaze but unwilling to risk it, but I felt his presence prying at my mind in some mental crevice that Duncan or the faerie mound—or someone else, perhaps even Lachlan—had opened. It made me sick.
Earlier he had whispered sweetly, acting as a lure. Now he screamed. And the sick thoughts he battered me with were not solely his own; they belonged to all the wicked dead whose souls he had taken. I also saw that this had nothing to do with me—I was irrelevant. This was revenge on selkies, on the People: Lachlan’s female and children were to die.
The finman’s attention wavered. He searched the nearby boulders, which were shattered into knifelike sharpness, and then began towing me toward them. I knew he planned to thrust me onto these rocks after he had sucked out my soul. But the horrified thrall that had me struggling ineffectually ended. Fighting then not just for my own life, I planted my feet on the nearest outcropping, and thrust back with all my might. At the same time I ducked my head, getting as far away from the finman’s mouth as I could.
With all my will I cried out to Lachlan, praying I could reach him and he would understand what was happening. The internal scream was loud enough to shake my oxygen-deprived brain. Hurt followed hurt: My feet were cut. Sharp pain stung my left shoulder and right hip as the finman tried to subdue my struggles and turn
me about for an easy mouth-hold. As he could not trick his way back into my mind, he spent all his effort in trying to squeeze the air from my body and to latch his teeth over my nose. We battled all the way to the sea floor, where our thrashing sent up a mushrooming cloud of sand.
The finman tried a new grip, and though my neck was stronger than before, it was no match for the power of the finman’s tentacled arms. It would be broken if he could get beneath my chin.
I tried clawing at the finman, but couldn’t get a grip on his arms, and my small nails left only shallow wounds. It was all I could do to keep him from wrapping a limb about my throat as he dragged me over the sand and back toward the fissured rocks, there to again try to impale me. My world began to go dark around the edges. I had an indignant and wholly inappropriate thought that the sailors’ stories had gotten the details all wrong; there was no anesthesia to ease the pain of the last moments of life. Drowning was not a pleasant death. It was not peaceful as your life passed before your eyes. There was plenty of time to think and feel as your skull and chest seemed to balloon with used air and your muscles began to twinge with agony. And I wasn’t even to the part where my lungs exchanged cold seawater for depleted breath and I started the actual drowning!
Lachlan,
I screamed again inside my head, beginning to despair that he would reach me in time. Then to my babies:
I’m sorry, loves
.
Regret at this potential loss was so strong that it pierced even my personal horror at the thought of
annihilation. That was what came at the end of life: regret! I could see it all in terrifying starkness. My life—all the struggle and suffering I had done—was for nothing. My babies would die too, and it was all my fault for having been too stupid to realize that I was being lured by magic.
Sorry, Lachlan
.
But then Herman was beside me. Water was not his natural element, but hunting and killing were. His giant claws pulled great chunks of flesh from the finman’s back. And if Herman’s attack was unexpected and vicious, then Lachlan’s was even more so. I saw at once, and perfectly clearly, how selkies differed from normal seals. Lachlan’s arms were strangely elongated and jointed oddly as they reached for his foe, and at the end of each flipper tip was some sort of retractable claw that jutted out into long, wicked hooks that belonged on a raptor. Selkies also have long hooked teeth, like in a skeleton of a prehistoric cat I once saw, and these fangs can shear flesh away from bone. My lover was fast and graceful and lethal, and I understood finally how ruthless he could be.
The shocked finman tried to untangle his arms from around my body to meet the new attack, but he was too slow to make an effective defense while holding me. Then Eonan was there as well. Claws slashed over the creature’s face, rendering him first blind and then hemorrhagic as his throat was cut in four places. He finally released me, and Herman grabbed my hair in his mouth and pulled me to the surface where I at last could gulp in desperately needed air.
Something smacked me in the face as a wave cuffed
my head. It was my necklace—the one from Duncan. My talisman. Herman snarled at me, and I understood. He wanted me to use it.
After a few more desperate breaths, I ducked my head back under the water. Our wounded foe was spasming, his convulsions so sharp that it seemed he would be broken in half at the hips. His tentacles lashed like whips, cutting fur and skin whenever they touched Lachlan or Eonan. The water was full of blood—both red and milky white. My world was still dark at the margins, but I knew what I needed to do—what might kill the finman or weaken him enough that the others could finish him.
Lachlan and Eonan circled their opponent, coming close enough to slash his flesh but doing their best to stay away from the still-thrashing tentacles. I pulled off my necklace and jackknifed downward. As I knew would happen, the finman grabbed me and pulled me close when I got within range. I didn’t fight. Instead, I thrust my fist into his chest and let go of the necklace. And I thought the word
Die,
hurling it at him with all my will.