This is going to be easy, I thought.
And glow-worms with lanterns, Blue flowers for my breast; And faeries to kiss me, And lull me to rest.
—Alasdair Alpin MacGregor,
Miann An Fhogaraich
(The Wanderer’s Wish)
“Ye’ve said little of yer family. Dae the MacCodrums live yet in America?”
This might have been idle conversation to pass the ride back home, but since it was Lachlan asking, it seemed doubtful. He did not do small talk about family, particularly when I knew he was thinking hard about what he had discovered at the circus. The body in the freak show had not been a finman, but rather a merman—a different creature, I gathered—and the poor thing had had its heart cut out, probably by our least favorite wicked wizard, who was short one of his own.
Since prevarication was usually useless around Lachlan, and I had no wish to have any sort of liaison with a man who could not accept my personal quirks
and habits for what they were, I decided to speak openly of my family and feelings and see what came of it. Especially since the sea guaranteed we would not be overheard by Mr. Mackenzie, who was at the other end of the boat, smoking contentedly on a large pipe and probably gloating over the haul of fish he’d sold in Keil.
“Some, I suppose, but none who are close to me. My parents are dead and I had no siblings. There is only my mother’s brother. He did not care for my husband or for anything Scottish. No one did—like my husband, that is. Though, now that I think on it, no one talked much about Scotland and our family here either.”
I cleared my throat, finding that once started, I actually wanted to talk about this but was uncertain where to begin. How did I express what had previously been inexpressible? How did I begin to tell the truth that no one had ever wanted to hear, least of all myself? One was supposed to love one’s family and husband. All those rules I had learned at my parents’ knee: rules for manners, rules of behavior, familial rules and societal rules. They meant nothing in this place and at this time. They had given me the skills I needed to survive in their world, but they hadn’t helped me cope with Duncan and I doubted they would help me much with what I was facing. But maybe Lachlan could.
Lachlan waited patiently while I ruminated, and finally I said: “My home life was stifling. I felt that I was existing in an underused life designed for someone else, that I had been mistakenly placed in a family
where I did not belong. I did not marry. Instead I worked—a very daring and scandalous thing to do. Then, at an age when I was considered past prayers, Duncan came into my life. And he was very different, exciting. Had I been a little wiser and not just older, I would have asked myself if different was necessarily better, but…” I shrugged. “So I married Duncan, who was as I said very different from the other men I knew, and who I hoped would let me make better use of my life. Unfortunately, after the first weeks, my marriage became a waking nightmare, a matter of endless performance anxiety and fear of being found flawed in new and previously unimagined ways. And I
was
found wanting. Every day, or so it seemed. And I could not turn to my family for help or advice because they had not approved the marriage and pride wouldn’t let me admit I’d been wrong, even after Duncan became cruel.”
I thought of the last time I had seen my grandmother. She had not aged well. Her face was as old and wrinkled as the sheets of an abandoned bed after a restless night’s sleep. The bitter lines were entrenched, residents of old age and disappointment that would never be evicted. She had never been entirely at home in her life, and I once feared that this bitterness would be my fate as well.
“By the time my husband died and my aunt and uncle and various friends reluctantly reappeared in my life, I was too exhausted and soured to face them. And I found myself avoiding any chance of being presented with a list of emotional debts they thought I owed them for coming to me in my hour of need, especially
since my hour of need had actually come while Duncan was alive. His death freed me, and I didn’t need them. I was offended when they
forgave
me. And I did not forgive them.”
Lachlan nodded. There was understanding and perhaps sympathy in his dark gaze, or so I chose to believe.
“Because I feared that the emotional liability of these associations—mostly the guilt they could inspire—would keep me from acting in our own best interests, even when I needed to take drastic steps to survive, I ran away. Do you see why? I had failed to defend myself once and feared I would do so again. Duncan made me into a mousy coward, and I feared they would also be able to bully me.”
“I believe that I ken yer meaning all tae well, though I believe that ye underestimate yerself,” Lachlan avowed.
“Yes? Perhaps. But you have come to know me now that I am more…healed. More certain of who I am. Then I was different. I was more afraid and bitter and hating. I speak now most specifically of hating my aunt and uncle. They infuriated me and always had. I did nothing that was actively hurtful to them in marrying a foreigner and non-Baptist, nothing that would cause pain and suffering and shame, except if someone believed the whole universe revolved around their feelings and beliefs and wants, and indulged in the sort of self-destructive tantrums that bordered on hysteria when they didn’t get their way. I speak now more of my aunt—she of the voice that can damage brains and make ears bleed. My uncle was more the silently
disapproving kind who thought whatever his wife suggested. Heaven knows that Duncan gave them ample to disapprove of. He actually seemed to delight in it—the whores and gambling and narcotics and drink, none of which he did anything to conceal.” I sighed and then waved my hands, shooing the thoughts away. “I couldn’t face any more recriminations. One more day of it and I should have murdered my aunt with her gardening shears and buried her body in the herb garden.”
Lachlan actually smiled. “I’ve known people like yer aunt, people wham use emotion instead of wit tae forge a path in the world, and who see any disinclination tae participate in their wants, ha’ever stupid, as a personal attack. They cannae be reasoned with. Sometimes there is nowt tae do but leave afore ye dae bloody murder.”
I was not certain he was speaking meta phorically, but I nodded anyway. “Exactly! My aunt seemed to have no conscience to play referee in a fight, and simply vomited her anger on whoever was nearest. Too often, that was me. So, I told myself that I was nearing the middle of my life and past the point of undertaking contortions of personality and habit to please family, or those who claimed to be friends but who actually offered a very conditional sort of approval and withdrew it when they were disappointed in my—or my husband’s—actions. I chose emotional famine and freedom from family and their beliefs and ways of living. I chose Findloss…and poverty, and now danger. I still believe that I have made the right choice. Family and marriage are not for me. Mayhap
that means I’m unnatural and unwomanly, but it is the truth. The only thing I am sorry for is that I did not have a child, but with Duncan as its father…well. I think fate was kind to deny me.”
I cleared my throat. Enough was enough. I did not want to speak any more about Duncan or my kin. “And you, Lachlan? Have you any family?” Other than a dead wife.
“Aye. A cousin called Eonan. He is…young. High-spirited. He…travels a deal. Also two sons, Ardagh and Colm, though only Ardagh lived tae marry. Colm was born tae my human wife and did not survive tae adulthood. Also I’ve a grandson, called Cathair. And twa great-grandsons. They are Keir and Ruraidh.” Lachlan looked out over the sea. The swells remained mild and the sky clear. The lingering smell of the offloaded fish was rather strong when the wind shifted to the south, but his words were too startling to waste time complaining. “Eonan is the only one I’ve seen in centuries.”
I blinked, feeling the news as a blow to the head. “You have sons. And grandchildren.”
“Aye.” The smile was fleeting and wry. “And like yerself, my grandson married a…loveless being. She was bonnie but cruel.”
“She was…human?”
“Nay. Better she had been. Human lasses can be…” Lachlan stopped, but I knew that he had been about to say that human women could be controlled. “We’ve been forced tae looking on land fer wives since the selkie women died. My first wife was the last of her kind. My grandson found a fae wife, caught by
accident in an entailing spell, and was thereafter unlucky in love. That has been the fate of sae many of our men.”
“That’s…that’s very sad. But, a family. How nice. Will I ever meet them?” I asked brightly. I admit, some of the manners I was taught as a child are still useful. They provide the correct, polite question even when one is in turmoil and has not yet formulated a genuine reaction to unexpected news—like the extinction of a species you were unaware of, or a man you had thought unattached actually having a large family. Lachlan, a family man? I had thought of him more as being hatched from the brain of a god like Athena. Or was it Apollo? I can’t recall.
He hesitated. “That maun be a wee bit hard tae arrange.”
“Why? Do they live far away?”
His black eyes looked into mine. “They believe me deid. Yer nowt alone in yer family toils. I also wearied of the endless recriminations of my kin at my second marriage, and thought it best tae leave my past behind.”
I am no fan of pugilism, but I believe that in the sport of boxing, this is what they call a one-two punch. “Truly? They think you’re dead?” Lachlan had succeeded in knocking me off balance, and even manners could not find a proper social response to this, especially when I was mad with curiosity and felt an inappropriate desire to laugh. “But why? For heaven’s sake, how?” And why had I not thought of this? If I were dead I would not have to send gifts at Christmas
or bother writing letters to friends I no longer cared about!
Lachlan sighed. “ ’Tis a long tale, but in the end it comes doon tae the fact that I was in nae fit condition tae lead my people after my wife—my human wife—died. Back then, taking a human wife was a bit of a shameful thing. My kin believed that the selkie women waud come back and they didnae make her welcome.”
I shook my head but said nothing.
“Some selkies wha love human women choose a life on land. If they gie up their skins and stay ashore they donnae live vera long. My grandson believes that I died long ago.” He looked away again. “Tae return waud be tae upset the order of things. My grandson is a guid king—he’s welcome tae the task.”
“A king?” This was a whisper. Shock upon shock had rendered me nearly mute.
“Aye, a king.” Lachlan smiled a little. “Though ’tis not the grandiose thing that humans mean when they use this word. He is mair like a chief of a clan. There’s nae crown of gold or jewels, nae robes of state. My home was a place called Avocamor. It is the first kingdom of the selkies, our last bastion aen this side of the warld. Our numbers are very few.”
“Oh.”
Lachlan had been a king? I digested this in silence. Did this change anything? Were his parenthood and elevated position in life, and his renunciation of it, reasons to retreat from this relationship? My impulses—stupid, greedy and impure impulses, which grew with
every hour—said no. Perhaps a connection of a romantic nature would scar me in some way. But I’d been married to Duncan, the beast. How much more scarred could I get? Anyway, was his decision to run away from his old life that much different from my own? True, he had children, but they were grown and it sounded as though they had abandoned their father long before he left them.
And it was not as if I were planning to marry Lachlan. I had been sincere in what I told him. Marriage was not for me. And I could not even conceive what a marriage to a selkie would look like.
He was beautiful, though, and I desired him as I had nothing else in my life. I impulsively reached over and ran my fingertips down the palm of his hand. As always, I could feel my pulse leap at the contact of our flesh, which instantly warmed. I think he felt it, too, because I saw him catch his breath and his dark gaze fastened on me. His expressions were foreign much of the time, but desire is desire and I saw it writ plain on his face.
“I understand, you know. Running away isn’t the worst thing one can do for one’s children. Sometimes it’s a kindness. As the saying goes—out of sight, out of mind. People grieve a bit and then move on.” Or so I hoped. Everything else was too unpleasant to contemplate that afternoon.
“Nae, ’tisnae sae bad.” Lachlan’s face hardened, but he did not pull away. Instead he laced his fingers with mine. “But the finman is anither matter. His quarrel was made wi’ me when I was king. My family will nae
suffer for it. This creature maun die, and by my ain hand afore he harms anyone else.”
I nodded. It was agreement but also a pledge. We would see the finman dead so we could move on with our lives—whether collectively or separately, I did not know, and in that moment did not care.
Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra.
(All angels, good and bad, have the power of transmutating our bodies).
—Saint Thomas Aquinas
We made love when we returned to the cottage.
I know that this will be shocking and perhaps impossible for anyone else to imagine. How could I have sexual relations with a being who is not like me? Not my species? But humanity, as I define it, is not conferred merely by the blessings of speech and opposable thumbs. It is our capacity for reason and empathy that allows us to rise above the baser impulses of rage, greed, fear and envy. It is only when we triumph over these evils that we can lay just claim to being “human.” In this way, Lachlan was one of the most human—and humane—people I have ever known. Lying down with him was natural.
And so it was that I slept with a king, one from a land more foreign than I had ever imagined.
Lachlan was not like Duncan, who was base and rough by comparison. My selkie’s flesh was smooth, soft. The striking planes of his foreign-looking cheeks, his full lips that lingered enticingly, his long-fingered hands, all were as exquisite as the finest silk ever loomed for any Chinese emperor, for they possessed not the slightest hint of hair or stubble. Yet, with fur or without, he was infinitely touchable. My hands could not resist him and I did not try to stop their wandering.
His plaid was pushed away with great haste until he was naked and I could feel the beating of his heart beneath my cheek where it lay against his smooth chest. It was slow and deep, like the shushing of the ocean on a peaceful day just as the tide has turned. It caught me up, bespelled me more completely than anything ever before. I would have resented the surrender of will, the near mindlessness that happened with Lachlan, had I been alone in my bemusement, but I knew that Lachlan was likewise enthralled by the fiery enchantment building so quickly between us.
I did not cover myself or in any way try to hide my body when my clothes were shed. There was no need for modesty. I felt no shame and I was beautiful in Lachlan’s dark eyes. Besides, it was too late to save my virtue. I was not an innocent bystander in this seduction.
“Are ye sure, Megan lass? There is nae going back once this act is done.”
There was such terrible earnestness in this question that for a moment I hesitated. But then I caught a whiff of the scent that is uniquely Lachlan and somewhere
between my brain and my mouth the message translated from “Perhaps we should wait” to “Absolutely.”
“I’m sure.”
The sliver of waning moon that I knew rose behind the storm clouds as we kissed started its journey across the weeping heavens. A bit of storm wind—rising like Lachlan’s passion—crept under the windowsill, floating on stealthy wings. Its light caress danced over my skin and through my hair. I opened my eyes wide and noticed then that Lachlan’s skin glowed as though lit by the embers of a fire.
We lay on the bed, atop the woolen blanket with which I had replaced the bloodied coverlet, and I wished for rose petals and perfume and linens of silk instead. It seemed an inadequate bower, too earth-bound and common for someone like Lachlan, though he never complained at our humble surroundings or at the coarse fabric on his flesh.
His touch was deft and light, as though he handled some delicate vessel made of fragile crystal. But I was not glass; I was flesh and heated blood. The warmth of my body grew immense and torturous even as my muscles clenched in on themselves, folding tight like a fist around the pommel of a sword that might run me through. I believe that death or some other transformation was near, but I did not care. The warmth in my belly quested outward toward my sweat-damp skin, and inward as well, drawing muscles tight as it traveled toward my womb. Streams of desire, yearning and even love flowed into one another, wove together and made my stimulated nerves dance wildly when the combined emotions overflowed their normal
capacity to feel and sought new channels of sensation and understanding. Fire was conducted instantaneously from nerve to nerve, muscle to muscle and all along my skin as nameless emotion created new heights of consciousness—all in a part of my mind that had previously been locked away from me. Like Lachlan’s skin, my own flesh came alive with an inner fire that made me glow, and it hungered for something it had never experienced but knew was possible on this particular night and with this particular man.
Perspiration glossed us both, and I was soon painted in the same warm glow that enshrouded Lachlan and made him luminous. For a time I was cautious, tasting only in moderation of his flesh and lips, but just a smallest kiss of the salt on his skin let the wild magic free. I was drugged and could feel myself yielding to his desires, anticipating them even. He could ask anything of me and I would not—could not—say no to any need. These were hours of freedom and forgetting.
There was no caution or second-guessing my decision to make love to Lachlan once we had kissed. Our coming together was correct, perhaps inevitable. He entered me, moved in me, and suddenly that clenched hand was flung open, releasing the sword and pitching me toward the clouded sky and past it toward the moon, hurtling me outward into a place so beautiful that it seemed imaginary, perhaps even forbidden to us mortals since we had been driven from the first paradise for defiantly tasting the Fruit of Knowledge. It was not death that came to me; it was life.
I came back to myself in time to see Lachlan arch
back above me, moved by the same ecstasy that existed next to both pain and deepest love. His eyes in the lamplight were bright, a black obsidian being consumed from within by some unknown but holy fire.
Was it degrading that I wanted him so very much? I somehow didn’t think that he felt so. Again and again we joined, until he forced himself away and made me drink to slake an unrealized thirst. And I know that he desired me to the point of madness, too—something I valued above pearls because the world had so often seemed to find me undesirable and unworthy. He gave me the greatest of gifts that night—the certainty that I was beautiful, whole and perfect—and I was at peace for the first time in my entire life.