When you were just a pup, old Iona told you the story of the first of your kind to lose her pelt to the man she loved. You still remember the feeling of damp sand beneath you, the sun warming you despite the cool northern winds. Your brother by your side, his body pressed against yours so close you could feel him shivering. The story scared him, as most of Iona’s stories did. He had yet to leave the sandbank, yet to shed his skin for the first time.
“Why didn’t she just kill him?” you asked when Iona had finished her tale. “I would have ripped out his heart.”
Iona looked at you, her whiskers crusted with salt and sand and time. There was something in her gaze—disappointment perhaps. It was always hard to tell with her. She hardly changed her form back then and swam with the seals more days than not.
“I pray you never have to find out how wrong you are about that,” she said.
Later, as you watch the fisherman lock away your pelt in a metal box at the foot of his bed, Iona’s words come back to you. You stand in the doorway, naked and exposed despite the clothes he bought for you.
“What exactly are you accusing me of?” he asks and his sad eyes turn sharp and angry, like the silver glint of the key in his hand. “Excuse me for wanting to keep you safe! If anybody sees you change it’s going to be all over for us. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not,” you say. And then, because his gaze stays hard and unyielding, “I’m sorry.”
“You can’t be careless like that.” He steps closer and takes your hand and a little bit of the tightness in your chest gives. The old tales paint human men in such violent colors, such harsh lines and shapes. But you have seen the softness underneath, the quick smile and gentle touch.
“I know.”
He’s right, you think. He’s trying to keep you safe, like he always does. That’s love, after all. You chose to be here, to be with him. He watched you emerge from my waters and you saw the wonder in his eyes, like a man reborn. When your brother begged you to stay, you couldn’t explain. You couldn’t find the words. I whispered them to you as you glided through the deep one last time, back to where the fisherman was waiting for you on the beach. Couldn’t you feel it in the pull of the tide? The undercurrent trying to drag you back to me?
He’s a child with a shiny new toy and you have never felt shiny before.
“Are you not happy with me?” he asks and his grip on your hand tightens, desperate. “Don’t you love me anymore?”
“Of course I do!”
Of course. He gives so much to make you happy, to keep you content. He works night and day so he can give you a good life. You can’t be selfish just because you miss the joy of the waves and the taste of salt and your heart racing in your chest. Losing your pelt is a small price to pay for this happiness with him.
You repeat the words in your head until they drown out the crash of the surf and the cries of the seagulls.
By the time you realize what you’ve done, it’s too late. A cornered animal can’t make decisions, it can only react. It will gnaw off its own leg just to escape the trap.
When you finally leave, there’s no confrontation, no fight. You can’t afford it, you tell yourself. You’ve lost too much already. The end isn’t brave or anything to tell stories about—it is the quiet desperation of sidesteps and compromises. You leave your heart and your pelt behind but you have your life. Another small price to pay. That has to be worth something, right?
You stand on the beach for the first time in a while, the waves lapping at your bare feet. It’s freezing. The wind catches your hair, your clothes. Biting at your fragile, naked skin. He didn’t like you coming here, at the end, because he didn’t like to see you cry. But for the first time in years, you can breathe properly. The air tastes like tears.
You want to go home, but how could you? Without your pelt, it doesn’t matter now. Who in the pod would take you back like this, the stench of shame still clinging to your naked skin?
You wonder what your brother would say if he could see you now. You wonder if Iona is still alive. Do the pups still play on the sandbank and listen to her stories? Are you just another cautionary tale now?
At least he never got you pregnant.
The woman in the mirror is a stranger. Sometimes you walk past her and don’t recognize her. You turn your head and wonder at the way she moves, like something torn apart held together by string. When you put a razor to your skin, the woman follows obediently. Small bits of dark hair trickle onto the bathroom floor.
“No human would let her body hair grow out like that,” he told you, back when you still made such silly mistakes. “It makes you look weird.”
He liked you better this way. You could tell by the way he’d run his hands up your legs, your back, afterwards. So you waxed and shaved and plucked until your skin felt raw and hot and too tight for your body. But at least you passed as human now.
Your manager at the hotel doesn’t ask questions about your lack of papers or your accent. You’re not the only one who had to leave parts of herself behind. You have 25 minutes to clean a room, but it’s never enough. During your break, you sit in the back room of the kitchen with the other girls. You listen, mostly, and smile and nod when someone asks you a question. It’s not so bad. Sometimes, you don’t think about him all day.
You’re hours away from the nearest coast, but you still hear me call to you, the constant push and pull of the waves. You tried your best to get as far away as possible, but some ties can never be broken.
The fisherman walks back into your life as a man crossing the hotel lobby and reality crumbles beneath your feet.
It can’t be him. It can’t be.
And yet, impossibly, there he is. As if you could ever forget his face. You know what he looked like when he was sleeping, all his sharpness softened by the night. The way he smiled on that very first day on the beach. His eyes, his lashes, the bow of his brow. You remember it all.
He’s a businessman now, having swapped bib and brace overalls for suits and ties. It shouldn’t come as a shock. Weren’t you the one who showed him all the best fishing grounds? Who made him understand the ocean like no other human could?
He walks with the confidence of money while you hide in the entrance to the staff area. You don’t want to take your eyes off him, but you can’t stop looking at the woman beside him. She has thick black hair and a face you don’t recognize, but her smile seems all too familiar. When she laughs at the receptionist’s joke too loudly, you see the fisherman’s grip on her arm tighten.
You should go. You should run.
When you left, you knew you wouldn’t be the last. But seeing it with your own eyes is something different. He has found another. And you know that she’s like you—desperately trying to be enough. You can feel it, even over the rapid beating of your heart and the blind panic building in your chest.
The woman stiffens at his touch. Her smile grows tight. How much has she already given him? How much is left to give?
You scratch at the dry skin on your arm through your shirt, your nails painful against the already irritated skin. You need to be careful not to bleed on another work uniform.
No, you need to go. Before he sees you. This isn’t your responsibility. This isn’t your fault.
There’s nothing you can do.
You follow the woman into the restroom that evening, while he waits for her at their table at the hotel restaurant. Staff aren’t supposed to use the guests’ facilities, but you slip through unnoticed. Your shift ended hours ago and you’ve spent the time since wandering the halls, worrying. Waiting for them to emerge from their room.
Room 517, six doors down to the left from the elevators. The balcony door keeps getting stuck even though you have told management more than once. The painting above the bed is of a sailboat.
You shouldn’t know this. You shouldn’t keep thinking about it.
But there you are, standing by the restroom door and staring at the back of the woman’s head, trying to keep your hands from shaking.
The woman is by the sink, the sleeves of her blouse pushed up and her hand resting on the faucet handle. She catches your gaze through the mirror, her reflection pale and wide-eyed. Perhaps she fears that if she turns around you will disappear. Or, even worse, that you might turn out to be real. She grips the handle of the faucet so tightly you can see the white of her knuckles.
“You look just like you do in the photos,” the woman finally says, her reflection’s eyes locked on you. She speaks with an accent you can’t quite place. Japanese, perhaps. Or maybe something else entirely, not unlike your own.
“The photos?”
“Don’t play dumb. You must love that he still keeps them, even after what you did to him.”
The photos. You can imagine. You remember the flash of the camera. The way he laughed when you threw a pillow at his head. How the sheets had smelled of fresh linen and how the evening light had filtered through the bedroom window. You close your eyes, feeling just a little nauseous.
“Right.”
“So it is you. The selkie girl.”
“That’s what his kind calls us.” You never liked the word.
The woman nods and turns on the water in the sink. You can see her hands shake from where you stand.
“Has he come here for me?” You need to know. As if running were still an option now.
The woman looks up again. “No. Why would he?”
You don’t know what to say. The answer burns on your tongue, too large and too unwieldy to say out loud. The truth of it all, the whole history. Because he loved me, you want to say, but it’s not enough. Because he loved me and he did this to me and that has to matter.
“I don’t know.”
The woman finally turns around then. Water drips from her hands, leaving dark blotches on the grey fabric of her pencil skirt. “Loving him isn’t easy. I know this. But he finally got over you. I would prefer if it stayed that way.” Her voice is shaking. With fear, you realize.
You got this all wrong. You can’t save this woman. You can’t tread this path for her.
You wonder if she’s tried to leave yet. If she’s gone back to him more than once already.
“I’m not here for him,” you say. “I’m here for you.”
The woman lifts her chin. “You know, he told me you might try this one day. To poison me against him.”
Of course he did.
“I just wanted you to see. You have options, other choices, if you want them.” The words feel empty even though you mean them.
The woman closes her eyes and the expression on her face is not unlike pain. She takes a deep breath. “Will you leave us alone if I tell you where he keeps your pelt?”
She couldn’t have surprised you more if she had slapped you. You stagger a little, reaching out one hand to steady yourself against the doorframe.
“What?”
“He travels with it. He’s always been scared you’d come back and break into the house for it. I saw it when I gave him my feathers for safekeeping.” The woman pulls a couple of paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall and dries her hands with it—casually, as if she hadn’t just turned your world upside down.
Your pelt. It’s here.
You can finally go home again. The sound of waves roars in your ears.
“Where is it?” Your voice is too loud, echoing from the tiled walls. If somebody hears you, there’ll be hell to pay. You get paid to clean rooms, not yell at guests in the restrooms.
You don’t care.
The woman watches you, the paper towel a small soggy ball in her anxious hands. “It’s in a bag at the bottom of his suitcase. You can’t miss it.” She throws the towel into the wastebasket. “We’ll get drinks at the bar after dinner. I want you gone by the time we’ve finished.”
You gave her something by slipping up like that. A foothold to regain her composure. The woman moves to walk past you, barely pausing for you to step out of the way.
“I didn’t come here for him,” you say again, as if it matters.
The woman has one hand on the doorknob. She’s close enough for you to smell her jasmine shampoo. “You never cared for him at all, did you?”
She needs this. To hurt you. To convince herself that somehow, against all odds, it was all your fault. That it will be different for her.
“I pray you never have to find out how wrong you are about that.”
You let yourself into room 517 with your keycard. It will be traceable if anyone ever bothers to check, but by then you’ll be long gone. The room is as you remember it—sailboat painting and king-size bed. You think you recognize the fisherman’s scent, somewhere underneath the familiar smell of laundry detergent and air freshener. It makes your skin itch. It makes you want to abandon this whole plan and run.
But you don’t do that anymore.
Your pelt is where the woman told you it would be, wrapped in an old tote bag at the bottom of the fisherman’s suitcase. It’s too valuable to just leave it at home unattended but not important enough to take good care of. Your hands are shaking as you pull it out. Soft hairs brush against your fingers but something feels wrong. You turn the pelt in your hands. It’s heavy and familiar—its grey spotted coat still shiny after all this time.
It’s also undeniably, irrevocably dead.
You make a sound. At least you think you do. Something like a wail, high and way too quiet. It’s difficult to hear anything over the rush of blood in your ears.
You knew. Perhaps you’ve known all along.
The stench of rot fills your nostrils, of stale smoke and decay and his sweat. He has soiled it, killed it.
You fling the pelt onto the bed as if it’s bitten you and it lies there in a heap. You want to hold it, cradle it. Grieve for it. But the thought of touching it again makes you recoil.
It’s not yours anymore. It’s his.
You get up from the floor, run into the bathroom and throw up into the sink.
You sit on the tiles, your back against the wall. The air smells of vomit and the lemon-scented cleaner the hotel buys in bulk. He could come back here any minute now. You don’t know how long you’ve been sitting here, shivering.
You’re going to kill him. You don’t know how because you don’t even know how you’re going to get off this floor, but it has to be done. He deserves it. You imagine your teeth ripping into the skin of his throat, the taste of his blood. His body on the floor, lifeless like your pelt.
It’s what he deserves.
In the glass door of the shower, you see the stranger whose face has become almost familiar by now. She holds your gaze, patiently waiting for you to make a decision. To make a move.
You close your eyes. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to live after everything he’s done. But she does.
One step at a time, you drag yourself back from the brink, off the cold bathroom floor. The room looks unchanged, like your world didn’t shatter right there at the foot of the bed. You leave the thing that used to be your pelt behind. It’s only rotten skin and hair now, and you know who he’d blame if it disappeared.
There’s something else, however, at the bottom of the tote bag as you move to put it back into the suitcase. A handful of feathers, pale grey at the tips. There’s dried blood on the quills where they’ve been plucked from living flesh. You hold them up against the light. It might not be too late for them yet.
You know he likes to sleep on the left side of the bed, so you slip them under the right-side pillow. Perhaps the woman will find them and put them back into his suitcase before he even notices. Or perhaps she won’t. In any case, she should know that she still has a choice.
Like you did.
Without your pelt you cannot go home, but your feet carry you towards my shore anyway.
You spend your last money on a bus ticket and when the sun rises the next morning, you’re back where it all began. Above, the seagulls watch as you walk across the parking lot and up the winding path through the dunes. You’re still wearing the uniform of a job you won’t return to. Of a life that’s no longer yours. You peel it off before you step out onto the beach—leave it behind in a pile next to your shoes.
The sand feels familiar, damp and warm from the morning sun. The water stretches out in front of you, slate grey and unyielding. The wind whips the waves into angry peaks as they roll to shore. There will be calm underneath, you know. You remember.
You don’t recoil from the cold when the first wave laps at your bare feet. The sand grows soft under its touch and you let yourself sink into it. The second wave reaches your ankles. The sand tickles between your toes. When the wave recedes, there’s fine dark hair where once was only pale skin—like it was always meant to be there.
You breathe in the cold air and take another step. The water swallows your footprints. The hair pushing through your pores, breaking through your skin, doesn’t hurt. You hardly feel it at all. Like breathing. Like turning over in your sleep. Like the ever-present call of the ocean.
My call.
It’s always been there, waiting patiently. You cut it back, you ripped it out, but it never left you.
When you finally dive into the waves, the ice-cold water doesn’t fight you. It pulls you in.
When you were just a pup, old Iona told you the tale of the first of your kind to turn her back on the ocean and to lose herself to a life that wasn’t her own. She never told you how the story ended. You can see it clearly now, as you dive below the roaring waves, faster and faster. As you spin and turn, life bursting at the seams. As you watch the seals dart around you in the dark. It wasn’t a cautionary tale at all. It was merely incomplete, missing its ending.
Despite the lost pelt and the lost love, despite everything, there has always been a way back home.
| T. R. Siebert is a speculative fiction writer from Germany. Her short fiction has been published in Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod and Fusion Fragment. When she’s not busy writing, she can be found attempting to grow vegetables on her balcony or looking at pictures of cute dogs. Tweet at her @TR_Siebert. |  |
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