The Selkie Bride (16 page)

This stopped my peevishness. Of course selkies didn’t need to write. They lived in the ocean. As seals. Which reminded me: “Oh my God—what have I
done?” I asked, feeling suddenly cold as reality again asserted itself. “What’s going to happen to me? I’m
pregnant.
”

“There noo. Ye just need a cup of tea and a bit of sit-down. Ye’ve exhausted yerself. All shall be well.” Eonan’s arm came around me. I was grateful for the warmth, though very aware that he was not Lachlan.

“Eonan, the finman has killed someone in the village. A monger called Bertie Stornmont. They’re saying it was suicide, but I don’t think so. The creature is getting desperate. And bold. Maybe he’s gone after Lachlan as well.”

“The finman was always these things,” Eonan answered, reaching for the latch at the garden gate and shoving it open. The yard looked sad and dead. It seemed impossible that anything would ever grow there again. “And it waud simplify things a deal if he went after Lachlan directly. The finman might be able tae kill me, but he’ll nowt escape Lachlan. My cousin is a verra dangerous man.”

“Lachlan told you what the finman was after?” I asked.

“His heart, aye.”

“Did he tell you that—?” But here I stopped dead; the words simply would not leave my mouth. I tried again to say that the heart was buried in the cottage floor, but all to no avail. I tried so hard to shape the syllables that my eyes watered. I could feel a prohibition to speak of this like a weight on my tongue that I couldn’t shift. This was some kind of spell. “Damn it, Lachlan! Let go!”

“I beg yer pardon?” Eonan was puzzled. “Megan,
what ails ye? Can ye nowt see that it is I wham holds thee?”

“Of course I can see. It is just that Lachlan did something to me. He doesn’t want me to talk about…
something,
and he…he bespelled me. That bastard! He didn’t say he could do this to me! How dare he? I’ll…I’ll…
ooh!
” I shook off Eonan’s arm. Rage had warmed me and given my weak knees strength.

“Lass, if Lachlan has silenced ye, there is a guid reason fer it. Ye maun be calm.” Eonan actually sounded slightly alarmed.

“I don’t care! He has no right to do things to me without asking!” I charged up to the cottage door and threw it open, not caring that it banged against the wall. I could not express sufficient rage with words alone. I spun about, ready to describe in detail what I thought of Lachlan’s high-handedness, when I felt a small flutter that I knew came from the babe in my womb. The child was distressed, maybe even in pain. That stopped me dead in my tracks.

“There noo. It’s the babes. Ye’ve upset the bairns. This is why we use the salt on ye lassies. Ye maun be calm while the babes are sae wee.” Eonan had followed me inside. He closed the door softly, setting down the pail and spade. He did not take Lachlan’s charm off of the door.

I made my way to the nearest chair and sat down. I was only a few feet from the finman’s repulsive heart, but I felt dizzy and disinclined to move.

“So, I am to be a slave to the baby’s wants as well as Lachlan’s.”

Eonan knelt before me. He took my hands in his, and I realized that I was very cold and again frightened. “Is that not always the way?” he asked gently. “A mither must think first of her bairns.”

He was correct, but I doubt that a human baby would be able to cause so much bother so early on. How quickly did selkie children develop? “So, for nine months I will be kept drugged and coddled like a half-wit who can’t be trusted with her own care?”

Eonan didn’t answer.

“Eonan? The truth, please.”

“Weel, the truth depends on the bairns.”

“How so?”

“Let me make ye some tea.” He made to rise.

“Later.”
I clamped down on his hands and those long, long fingers. He was far stronger than I, but allowed himself to be held in place. “What do you mean, it depends on the bairn?”

“Mayhap Lachlan had best—”

“Lachlan isn’t here.”

“Nay—and I’m wishing noo that I had gone tae Avocamor instead of coming here. It couldna be any more difficult.” He said this with great feeling.

“You have my sympathy. Answer the question. You don’t want me getting upset again. It’s bad for the baby.”

He stared at me, and I knew the thought that he could drug me into quiet flitted across his mind.

“Try it and I’ll pound a yew stake through your heart,” I warned. It was an idle threat, but the anger that made me utter it was not.

“If the bairn is a lassie, then ye’ll be three seasons—nine
months—perhaps a bittock less. But that is unlikely, ye ken?”

“And if it’s a boy?”

“Then ye might be carrying him longer.”

“How much longer?”

“Six seasons.” He said this reluctantly.

I thought it through. Twice. Then I said: “Are you saying that I may be pregnant for eighteen months?”

“Aye.”

I dropped his hands. “Perhaps I had better have some tea. With whisky.” My voice was hollow enough to have an echo.

“Nay. Ye cannae be drinking that poison while yer wi’ child. The pups waud nae like it.”

“The
what?
” I felt the blood leave my head. “What did you say?”

“The babes—er, babe,” he corrected himself. “Noo, put yer head doon,” he instructed, taking hold of my neck and pushing my face toward my knees. “Yer lookin’ swoonish, and Lachlan willnae be pleased if he returns tae find ye sick.”

I did not fight him. I was indeed feeling swoonish. I could barely contemplate the idea of giving birth to a human child; what if the baby looked like a seal?

“I hope Lachlan is bluidy grateful,” I heard Eonan mutter as he headed for the kitchen. “I’d nae be doin’ this if I didnae owe him my life.”

The boat has left the stormy land, Stormy sea before her
—

When, O! too strong for human han
d
The tempest gathered o’er her
.

—Thomas Campbell,
“Lord Ullin’s Daughter”

“Where’s the cat?” I asked, almost dropping my mug as alarm overran me. I had succumbed to Eonan’s coaxing and was sitting by the fire with a cup of rather weak tea. He was obviously less experienced with brewing the universal British panacea than Lachlan, but I didn’t complain. “I can’t leave him outside. It isn’t safe. And he hates rain.” It had started to pour again.

“There is nae need to fret o’er the moggie. He is weel.”

“But the finman—”

“Cannae harm yer puss. He’ll nowt even see him.”

“He can’t?” Lachlan had said this too. I began to calm. My fuzziness of thought was leaving, just as it had the time Lachlan “anesthetized” me, but I still felt
distracted, as though a good portion of my mind was busy listening to something that my ears couldn’t quite hear.

“Nay.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Why can’t he hurt the cat?”

Eonan took a breath and reached for the teapot with fingers so long they nearly could have surrounded it. He topped off my mug. “Yer moggie…weel, ye’ve heard that a cat has nine lives? It is so. It is just that, fer some cats, some lives are a wee bit different from the ones before.”

“Why? How is Herman different?”

“Herman was a familiar. Ye ken this? Fergus Culbin inherited him frae the witch wha lived here before. She was a kindly creature and gentle wi’ the animals and didnae deserve wha happened tae her.” He didn’t pause long enough for me to ask about her fate. “Weel, yer moggie was…” Eonan faltered. “He was sacrificed by Fergus Culbin. The idiot mage didnae realize that ye cannae kill a witch’s cat sae simply.”

“Sacrificed?” I recalled Fergus’s journal. He had planned to kill the cat and mummify him so that he could use the corpse to hunt for the lost Spanish gold. But, in spite of the bag of gold in the desk, I had assumed that Fergus died before he got around to completion. It was a good thing the bastard was dead, or I would have had to do something terribly unpleasant to him, probably involving the iron shackles and the yew beater.

“Yer moggie was slain by a mage. But he wasnae a verra competent mage, and since yer moggie wasnae joost a cat, he’s come back.” Eonan thought for a moment
and spoke mostly to himself. “Think ye that Fergus Culbin was trying tae steal the finman’s powers wi’ a blood sacrifice? Was that why he killed the moggie? The man was a vile sneak-thief.”

“I don’t care about Fergus,” I snapped. This was a lie, of course; I cared, but in that moment I cared about Herman more. “Herman is not a ghost. Or a mummy. And he isn’t out for revenge or anything nasty,” I insisted.

“Nay. He isnae,” Eonan agreed.

“Then what is he, and why would he come back?” I swallowed hard, thinking of the finman. How many undead things had come back here looking for Fergus?

Lachlan’s cousin sighed, apparently feeling that the more he explained, the more he would have to explain. And he was correct, which was probably why his cousin had opted for silence on so many subjects.

“Yer moggie is an imp. Ye can only kill them in verra specific ways.”

“An imp?” I was spending a great deal of time repeating Eonan’s words, but my brain seemed unwilling or unable to take them in on the first try. “I haven’t read about imps. What are they?”

“Aye, weel…imps can be many things: cats, rats, sometimes sma dogs or hares or birds. They live a lang time, a verra lang time. And they need…” Another pause as he picked his words carefully. “They prefer a certain kind of companion. Like a witch or a mage.”

A witch? Did he mean me? I started to ask, but decided I didn’t want to hear the answer. Instead I said: “So, in summation, our situation is as follows: Fergus,
in need of magic, probably to find buried Spanish treasure, first tried to kill his cat. When that didn’t work, he talked my husband into waylaying and stealing a heart from a finman. But not just any finman. They chose the wickedest and most powerful monster around—one who had already buried this village once.”

“Aye,” Eonan agreed. “Mayhap Fergus thought it best tae stick wi the devil he knew. Perhaps he had a spell tae contact this finman too. They are nowt sae easy to meet, ye ken?”

“I ken that Fergus wasn’t merely an incompetent mage. He could have qualified as the village idiot!” I gulped some tea, glad that it wasn’t hot enough to burn. “And Duncan was one too, if he helped.”

“He was o’erqualified as an idiot,” Eonan suggested. I didn’t ask if he meant Duncan or Fergus. “Even a fool waud know better. ’Tis the sheer insanity o’ the act that has had Lachlan sae baffled and wondering if there is mair going on.”

There was a silence and I eventually asked, “Why didn’t Lachlan tell me this? Does he not trust me? I thought surely after…well, all that has passed between us, that he would be willing to confide more.”

Eonan actually looked uncomfortable. “Lass, ye must understand aboot the auld king.”

“Yes? Understand what?” I got up and poked at the fire with more force than was necessary. “That he’s stubborn, secretive and untrusting?” Like my family. Like Duncan. Like me—though I hadn’t ever thought of myself that way before. Still, the shoe fit a bit too well. As was the habit in my family, I had come home from Duncan’s funeral and brushed the unhappy and
rather dirty memory of my strange marriage under the parlor rug and tried my best to do the out-of-sight-out-of-mind trick. But squint as I would, the bulge never got any smaller or any easier to look at. And even having fled to Scotland I could not escape it, since one can never outrun one’s memory.

Well, I’d had enough of sweeping unpleasant things under the rug. There wasn’t any more room under there. I vowed that from here on out I would face the unpleasant things rather than hiding from them.

“Lachlan…he is verra old,” Eonan was saying. “The eldest of all of us. He was born intae an age when there were great wars and our males were ca’ed tae bloody battle at an early age. He’d very little gentleness as a pup, and was given young tae a wizard fer training when he was only nine seasons auld. He learned tae keep his secrets or suffer.”

These words made my heart clutch a little. I could only barely imagine Lachlan as a child, but the thought of any young boy being taken from his mother and given to someone for training was horrifying. Particularly someone who would make a child suffer.

“His first wife…weel, she was of a guid family. Her clansmen were strong allies and she made a decent consort fer a king. But there was little love there. It was tae his second wife that he gave his heart. And she didnae live long after giving birth tae their son. I think for a time he was a bit mad wi’ the loss. The family wasnae verra understanding. It was then he renounced his clan and disappeared.”

“But why? Was he ashamed of loving her? Did he actually agree with the rest of his clan that she wasn’t
good enough for him?” There was a bit of self-interest in this question, I have to admit.

“Nay, nowt a bit of it. Understand, wi’ oor people yer king ’til ye die. Lachlan didnae want the honor, and he kenned that anither should lead us when he was sae weakened wi’ grief and anger at his own clan. Weel, lead
them
. I wasnae even born yet.” This was said with the typical smugness of a human youth, and I had to smile at the similarity.

“How did you meet Lachlan?”

“In happened in the year of the Great Inundation. I was still a pup and couldnae change at will. I’d been caught in a fisherman’s net when the boat capsized and was dragged down tae the bottom of the sea. Lachlan rescued me. He got me tae shore and then left at once. I didnae guess wham he was then.”

I thought of how horrible a death this could have been, and tried not to show my horror at what had nearly been his fate. “You were very fortunate.”

Eonan nodded and went on: “Fer a long while he traveled the warld. It isnae oor way tae leave the clan, but Lachlan went and lived wi’ the merrows and mermen and other sea folk. I found him only by chance many seasons later and he swore me tae secrecy. The clan was thriving and he didnae want tae be king again. He still missed his wife and couldnae forgive them fer their treatment of her. They didnae ken at the beginning that soon the selkie women waud die out forever and we waud all be seeking wives among the humans and especially the fey. They didnae want tae believe this horrible thing.”

“Poor man,” I whispered, staring into the flames. I hadn’t loved Duncan that way, but I could easily imagine the huge hole the death of Lachlan’s wife had torn in his life. Certainly I understood the anger at his unsympathetic family.

“Ladies were different then tae. They were…mair biddable. He isnae yet accustomed tae the modern lassies. And he hasne been thinking of finding anither wife. Ye’ve surprised him. Ye’ll need patience.”

“Let us hope that this old dog can learn a new trick,” I muttered, resisting the urge to snort. “Duncan rather used up my patience.”

“Pardon?” Eonan sounded startled.

“It’s just an expression.” I put up the poker and returned to my chair. I’d had enough of hearing about Lachlan’s unhappy past and felt that to speak any more of it without his presence was to indulge in gossip. “So, what now? You stay here playing guard dog until Lachlan returns?”

“Aye—but I want tae be clear. I am nowt a dog. I am selkie wi’ a bit of pooka thrown in.” He gave me a look.

“I understand,” I said gravely. “Shall we continue to search for the finman during the day?”

Eonan looked shocked. “Are ye daft? Lachlan waud skin me. Yer tae stay inside and keep safe. We leave the searching tae Lachlan.”

“You don’t think I make good bait to draw the finman out?”

“Aye, excellent bait. And Lachlan willnae stand fer it.”

I did snort that time, but didn’t argue. Even young dogs needed a little while to learn new behaviors. I got up and headed for the kitchen.

“What are ye aboot?” This was said with some alarm, as though I might find a way to end my benign confinement by crawling out a window barely wide enough to accommodate a cat.

“Looking for the last of the honey. I’m going to eat those cockles I dug up.”

“Wi’out cooking them?” He sounded hopeful.

“Definitely. But I need honey.” I added: “Lachlan better hurry. I need…something. Sweets. Maybe they have a sweetshop in Keil. I am so hungry all the time, and nothing I eat helps!” It was driving me mad.

“He shallna linger unnecessarily,” Eonan promised, though he sounded uneasy for the first time. “Yer very important tae him.”

“I hope so. Because I don’t think I can do this alone.” This I said softly. Leaning over a much-scarred work table, I cracked open a shutter and whistled for the cat. When he didn’t appear, I asked, “Will Herman come back while you’re here?” In spite of reassurances that he would come to no harm, I did not feel easy with the feline absent.

“Mayhap he will. Pookas and imps are close kin. And, after all, what’s not tae like?”

Eonan proved correct. Herman did appear when we sat down to eat, and he assisted us with the remaining raw cockles. He didn’t want them cooked, either, but permitted me to pry open the shells.

The cat kept his distance from Eonan, but he
showed none of the hostility or shyness that he had with Lachlan or the finman. Though neither of the two males got close to the other, I noticed that each scented the other from time to time. Their flaring nostrils made them look enough alike that I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Why did ye marry a Culbin?” Eonan asked suddenly, after a longish silence. “I hae thought on it and can see nae reason why ye’d be sae daft.”

The words were rude but the tone was not. Lachlan’s cousin reminded me of a precocious child who did not quite have the knack of good manners yet. He also reminded me, even more so than my lover, that these creatures were profoundly estranged from the concerns and motivators of my world.

“It was hope, mostly.” Then I thought for a moment about what I had said. “My world was a very small one—a rather secretive one, it now seems—and I never felt I belonged.”

When Eonan nodded encouragingly, I continued. “I hoped that by marrying Duncan my world would enlarge. And so it has.” I laughed wryly. “Also, let us not forget the power of flattery to turn a young woman’s head. Duncan courted me diligently, relentlessly even. And now I know why. He wanted someone to fight off the finman.”

“Ye shouldna blame yerself, lass. It was wrong of yer people tae move away frae the place they belonged. Yer clan belongs here, near the sea. The way ye felt was yer true nature, trying tae get ye back home. Duncan took advantage of ye in yer weakness. It is the way of vile men to use kind women.”

I nodded, finally feeling comforted after all the blame that had been heaped on me by my friends and family. “Eonan, I’ve been thinking,” I said, trying without much success to wipe honey off of my fingers. Herman and Eonan had declined to try my new recipe of raw cockles in honey, and were consequently a deal more tidy. “Could there be more than one finman at work here?”

He stared at me. “Why are ye asking? Fer that matter, why are ye thinking? Ye should be fast asleep after that enormous meal.”

I gave him what I hoped was a withering look. Though willing to discuss many more things than Lachlan, he certainly was mistrustful of my cooperation with his and Lachlan’s plan for my safety.

“Th is finman seems to be everywhere, and he is managing to evade both Lachlan and me. One day he was in the vaults of the church, but he also seemed to be in sea caves up the coast where Lachlan was hunting. I know that he’s a powerful magical being, but he can’t be omnipresent.
Can
he? It just occurred to me that ‘he’ might appear more all-pervading if there were more than one of him.”

Eonan was thoughtful. “All finmen are born twins,” he admitted slowly. “In that they are like…” He stopped, looking guilty.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Nithing. It is just common in sea folk. Like with water kelpies.”

“So there could indeed be two of them at work. Our finman might not be doing everything on his own. He might actually be holed up in a sea cave somewhere,
nursing his injuries and sending his brother ashore to search while he makes mischief with the tides and weather.”