Tides (7 page)

Noah shivered. It had gotten cold, and the wind was picking up. The waves quickened, slapping against the shore. He couldn’t see the sky, but he felt a storm coming.

He stood up. Mara wasn’t looking back at him from the ocean, he knew—she was asleep on another island, not even thinking of him, her legs normal human legs tucked under blankets as she dreamed, her mouth a normal human mouth.

Noah didn’t need a mystery or a fairy tale. What he needed, he lectured himself, was to go to sleep, so he could have some chance of not making a total fool of himself at the Center tomorrow.

He turned away from the shore and made his way back to the cottage.

nine

T
HE
younglings were hungry and anxious, and Ronan didn’t know what to do. He’d tried to distract them, leading them in races out to the edges of the harbor. He wanted to go hunting. But that wasn’t his job tonight—at least, it wasn’t supposed to be.

The younglings were too tired to play anymore. They huddled on Whale Rock, their little bellies rising with each yawn. Ronan circled them protectively, spiraling in the water, diving up and down to run off his energy. Bubbles from his angry breaths spurted up to the surface.

He shouldn’t even be here. He should have been gone months ago, searching for the others. The Elder had told him he could leave this year, but she’d gone back on her promise just as he knew she would. He’d been grown for almost seven seasons, but he was still trapped here like a youngling. She even refused to let the true younglings mature, and she knew Ronan wouldn’t leave while they still needed his protection.

He looked away from the shallow water around the islands, out into the wild deep of the open Atlantic. They were out there somewhere, the ones who had left him behind. They were waiting for the Elder to lead the younglings to maturity, and then they could all leave these crowded islands and join their family at the other edge of the sea, their true home on the Irish coast.

He still missed them, each one. Now Ronan was the only grown male left. He tried to be father and brother and teacher to the younglings, but he couldn’t be everything at once.

He watched Lir and Bram and Nab, still little boys, teasing their sisters even as their own heads sagged with weariness. They needed someone to show them how to be men, and Ronan wasn’t up to the task alone. He knew the best thing for them would be to bring them ashore so they could start to grow up. The Elder was supposed to do that for them, but it had been five years since she’d let the younglings go on land. Five years since Aine had vanished.

He felt Mara and Maebh approach. Their minds hummed with anxiety and anger.
What have I done now?
Ronan wondered, before remembering that he was the one who should be angry. They were both late, both irresponsible; yet they still managed to make
him
feel guilty. As always, Ronan was outnumbered.

They finally swam into his line of sight, Mara trailing obediently behind. Large stripers trailed from their mouths—at least the younglings would eat well tonight. Fear radiated from both of them, Mara’s tinted with shame, Maebh’s with deep sorrow. Of course, Maebh was the Elder, which meant she could hide some of her feelings. Ronan would probably never know what Maebh truly felt unless she desired it.

In seal form there was only so much he could say, mostly “Food over here” or “Look out!” Instead, Ronan sent curiosity through his link to Mara, hoping she would meet him on the surface later. He sent his indignation, too, just to make sure she’d know how he felt.

He couldn’t believe this. He knew Mara had her reasons for leaving the pod from time to time, just as he did, and he respected her privacy as long as she respected his. But she’d never come back so late before, and she’d been found out. Maebh was obviously furious—and scared. And that meant what Maebh’s fear always meant: hiding the pod in deeper water, keeping the younglings farther from land. More important, it meant neither Ronan nor Mara would get much time away anymore.

To think he’d hoped Maebh was close to letting go. Mara’s carelessness would cost the younglings another season at least before Maebh would let them grow up, and that meant another season of Ronan’s staying stuck here on the Goddess-forsaken Isles of Shoals.

Mara nodded at Ronan on her way to the younglings. Maebh herded the smallest toward the fish first, making the stronger younglings wait their turn.

Ronan kept telling Maebh how sparse the fish populations had gotten here, but she’d told him to be patient. That was when Ronan started raiding lobster pots. He took only the best, females with lots of tiny, savory eggs or big males with tender, oversize claws. He liked to imagine the frustrated fishermen pulling up their traps—his favorite, in fact, was a lobster from a pot already reeling up to the surface.

Maebh took over his guard, switching between watching the younglings eat and glaring at Mara. Ronan swam over to Maebh, hoping he could do something to help. She was so angry—even the water seemed murkier around her.

He nudged her flipper gently, for once pretending he was the youngling she wanted him to be. Her black shining eyes flashed at him.

He made a short series of moans and purrs, sounds that meant,
I’m going away.
He nodded toward Mara. In his mind, he tried to show Maebh only concern, not the curiosity and hurt he truly felt.

Maebh huffed out a stream of bubbles, then said,
Come back soon.
Her mind was all fierceness and potential punishments.

Ronan dove and swam to Mara.

She set off before he reached her, tunneling through the water, kelp parting in her wake. They swam toward White Island, far enough from the pod that they wouldn’t be overheard.

When they broke through the waves, a storm was brewing. Water swept up and down in jagged crests, foaming around them.

Ronan focused—taking off half the skin was always hard, but he needed to both speak and swim tonight. It peeled slowly at first, from his crown, but then it wanted to separate, to let him turn fully human. Mature selkies mastered the skin’s will and their own, denying themselves that temptation, keeping seal form from the waist down. Ronan still had trouble. He had to yank the skin forcibly up his hips and will it to meld back onto his torso.

By the time he sorted himself out, Mara was staring toward White Island, her human arms crossed over her chest. Ronan looked where she looked, but he could barely see through the rain that drove into his eyes. The keeper’s cottage was dark; the only thing he could make out was the flashing beam of the lighthouse.

He looked back at Mara, hoping she would explain herself so he wouldn’t have to ask questions. She said nothing. The only feeling he could sense from her was shame.

Ronan clenched his fists, wishing he could tear the waves apart. He was sick of it, sick of the silence and sick of waiting around for Maebh and Mara to speak up when he could be
doing
something instead of just hanging on their every word.

“What happened?” he demanded.

She said nothing.

He repeated the question, louder, and she flinched.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet and rough. “Maebh found me.”

“Found you?” Ronan tried to keep his voice calm. “What were you doing?”

Mara said nothing.

“Well?” he shouted, his control breaking. He wanted her to know how mad he was, to make her realize she’d taken away both their chances at freedom.

“I was on land.”

His skins prickled against each other, and a low seal growl escaped his lips. He realized his teeth were bared.

“We had an agreement, Mara.” He forced himself to say her name. His tail flicked in the black water.

“I know,” she said. “But what about you? Have you honored that agreement, Ronan?”

“Of course.” He spat the words at her. “I am Maelinn Ronan, sworn as son to Terlinn Maebh. I keep the honor of my line.” He pushed himself farther out of the water so that he could look down at her. “It is you, Maelinn Mara, who have forgotten your honor and your promise.”

She shrank from him again. “I know.”

He growled again. His spine tightened, and his breath came harsh against his lips.

“I was wrong, Ronan.” Mara sounded old when she spoke, tired. “I shouldn’t have used your trust against you. I shouldn’t have snuck on land.”

“You know, don’t you, that you endangered the whole pod?”

Mara sighed. “You think Maebh hasn’t told me that a thousand times already?” She pushed her short hair out of her face. “Besides, Maebh was on land too. That was how she found me.”

“What?” he hissed.

“She was in that cottage.” Mara flicked her hand toward White Island. “She was talking to the old woman who lives there.” She wrinkled her nose. “I could smell the woman on her when we left. Maebh won’t tell me what happened.” Her voice wavered.

Under her shame, Ronan sensed suspicion and fear and the quick anger that had been with her since she’d returned. There was something else even farther down, some warmth she didn’t want him to notice, but he could feel the pulse of it at her core. He didn’t like how good she had gotten at concealing her feelings.

“Maebh is the Elder,” he said, to remind himself as much as Mara. “We should not question what she does.”

“Yes, but . . .” Mara sighed. “She was so angry when she saw me, but she was frightened, too. More frightened than I’ve ever seen her.”

“Of course she was. You put us all in great danger.”

“No. I mean, I did, I know that. But Maebh was frightened for herself, not for me. Not for us.” She looked into his eyes. “Whatever she was doing, she was even more frightened that I’d found her out than that I had disobeyed her or endangered the younglings.”

The ocean cried out around them. Rain crashed down and blended the waves with the wind. Raindrops needled at Ronan’s face.

“What do you do?” asked Mara, finally, raising her voice over the wind.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “When I take the younglings and it’s your turn to go away, what do you do?”

And what could Ronan say to that?

ten

N
OTHING
,” he said. “I do nothing.”

Mara wanted to shake him.

“You know it can’t be as bad as what I was doing.” She sighed. She tried to laugh. It didn’t work.

“No. It’s not nearly that bad.” Ronan looked up at the sky. Mara could hear clouds roiling with thunder, but there was nothing to see. No stars.

“I’m practicing.” He shook his head to fling the water off his long dreadlocks. His voice was gruff. “For when Maebh lets me go. When the younglings are grown. I swim out into the ocean, as far as I can go, and then I swim back. I do it again and again, out and back. Soon I’ll be strong enough.”

“Strong enough?” Ronan was her older brother and the only grown male in the pod. He cared for the younglings, he fought off sharks, and he listened to Mara when she needed someone. What in the world could there be that he wasn’t strong enough to face?

“To swim there,” he said. “To swim to Ireland.”

Mara knew enough not to laugh just then, but she was tempted. “Can’t you just . . .” She wanted to say,
just stay with us,
but she already knew the answer to that question. She remembered Noah’s eagerness to leave for college in the fall. Why did these young men want to leave their families? “Can’t you just take a ship or something? Maebh says that’s how our people came here in the first place.”

“Maebh did say that.” Mara felt Ronan’s rage turn away from her, but whether it shifted toward Maebh or their seafaring ancestors, she didn’t know. Even the storm seemed timid in comparison to the desperation and anger that rolled off him.

“I won’t go back the way they came,” said Ronan. “They came over on a slave ship, bound to men who manipulated and abused them.” His eyes gleamed, his profile angular against the stormy sky. “That is not the way.”

Mara knew as well as he did how horrible those men had been. To steal the selkies’ skins, and then to travel so far from their home, still holding them—the selkies had no choice but to follow. Maebh reminded them often of how lucky their ancestors had been when the ship was driven onto the Shoals and the men had drowned. Mara imagined the skins floating up from the shipwreck like oil slicks, shimmering on the water. The selkies who were her many-times-great-grandparents must have collected them joyously, singing into the sky, returning to seal form for the first time in years, and to the water for the first time in months. It was the birth of their pod as Mara had always known it.

But over the years, more and more humans, European immigrants who probably shared ancestry with the selkies’ first kidnappers, had taken over the Isles of Shoals. That was why most of the Elders had left five years ago, to seek out a more secluded home . . . and to try to escape the emptiness Aine’s loss had left in the pod.

“Why are you so sure they went to Ireland?”

“They must have. Where could they go in America?” Ronan scowled. “Besides, we belong there. Other pods will be waiting for us.”

“Still, to swim the whole ocean . . .” Mara sighed. She didn’t know how to tell him how impossible it was.

“I can do it,” he said, and from the tone of his voice she could almost believe him. “Don’t bother yourself about how. I will do it.”

She wanted so badly to be a youngling again just then, so she could throw herself into his arms and cry. Why, why did he want to leave?

He sent a cool thread of stability through their link, wrapping it around her confusion. Mara cringed, knowing she’d let her emotions become too open. But she was grateful. She opened her link and let his strength flow into her. For a moment they were just brother and sister, and Mara could pretend they would always stay like this.

Then Maebh’s call sparked into their links. Ronan turned away from Mara.

“Stay here for a while, if you want. I can deal with Maebh.” He pulled the sealskin over his head and dove.

Mara knew she shouldn’t stay, no matter what Ronan said. She shivered and pulled her sealskin a little higher, up to her ribs. The skin molded onto her belly, warming her from her tail up to her navel. She wrapped her arms over her chest again.