She was looking at me like I was supposed to understand what she’d said. So I just stared right back, beginning to tire of this game.
“Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve gotta throw me a bone, here. What’s first contact? And I assume you’re not talking about a fashion magazine when you say glamour.” Now that I was asking questions, the most obvious one popped into my head. “And what the hell are you people, anyway?”
Nell and Trill exchanged looks, and Nell said, “How much did your mother tell you about her… family?”
I was taken aback. The last direction I thought this conversation would go was toward my mystery mother and her unknown origins.
“Her family? Nothing at all. She was apparently too busy planning her abandonment of me to bother filling in a family tree.” Okay, fine, I’m bitter.
Nell sighed. “This always makes it harder.” She got that same look of concentration on her face that my college professors had when we couldn’t grasp a particularly difficult concept and they knew they were going to have to reduce it down all the way to idiot speak.
“Your mother, like us, wasn’t really… human,” Nell said, finally. “She was… more like Trill here.”
I made a face. I’d been six when my mother disappeared, but I could remember she wasn’t gray and clammy and seaweedy. She’d been beautiful. And what did they mean, not human? Fine, Trill was obviously not human, but my mom was obviously not like her, ergo my mom was not not human. Yes, I minored in rhetoric.
“Well, not really,” Trill interrupted. “I’m a kelpie. Your mom’s a selkie. We’re pretty different.”
Oh, I thought, frustrated to the point of screaming. Of course! I finally met people who claimed to know something about my mother and they insisted on speaking in riddles.
“From the beginning, please,” I said through gritted teeth.
Nell took over, the voice of reason. “Kelpies,” she explained, in her professorial manner, “are two-formed, as are selkies. They have a human, or in the case of kelpies, a humanoid form and an animal form. Trill, here, changes into a sort of sea-pony. Your mother was a selkie; her other form is that of a seal.”
Oh shit, I thought. I’d seen The Secret of Roan Inish. If what this little person is saying is true, so much would be explained…
The thought that I’d finally have my mother’s desertion made understandable pulled at my heart, but then the weight of reality crushed my hopes. How could I have been such an idiot to get sucked into this shit?
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. “I’m sure that Linda, or Stuart, or whoever, paid you good money to come down here and make me look like an idiot. I’m sure they gave you a great excuse for hurting me by telling you what a monster I am, and how I deserve this sort of treatment. And they’re right. But I can’t be hurt anymore. I’ve been hurt as bad as I’m gonna get, and nothing you or they can do will ever be as painful to me as losing Jason. So, just take your fake fangs off your dog, wash off the makeup, and go back to your circus. And don’t forget your big light. I’d like my cove put back the way it was, not that I’ll ever use it again.”
I started to get up, my already-cramping legs wobbly, but I registered with more than a little pride the stunned expressions that “Trill” and “Nell” were exchanging.
My momma may have walked out on us, but she didn’t nearly halfway raise no fools, I thought smugly.But that thought, along with my very slow upward momentum, was cut short as the air around Trill began to shimmer. An iridescent bubble the same color as her skin but more transparent encircled her. It looked like it was made of energy and it pulsated slightly, just like the light above Nell’s head. Underneath the surface of the ball something was happening that looked like the shadowy development of a fetus played in fast-forward.
When the bubble popped, there stood a weird gray pony, with a seaweed mane and tail. Its small black hooves were the same color as Trill’s toenails, and Trill’s muddy brown eyes were staring out at me from the pony’s face. I could see the faintest hint of gills ribbing the beast’s short neck.
I’d never fainted before today, but I had the distinct impression I was going to make it a two-for-one deal here in the hysterical woman department.
Anyan had crept closer, maybe to keep me from running if I had actually made it upright or maybe to break my fall if I fainted again. Whatever the reason, I was grateful when the hand I put out to steady myself met with a solidly muscled, very furry, and surprisingly high shoulder. The dog’s broad back came up to well over my waist. I was only five foot one, but that was still a whole lotta dog.
I sat back down, heavily, and Anyan parked himself next to me, propping me up. I watched, deliriously, as the bubble once more extended out from Trill and, with another pop, she was humanish again.
Unless Stuart’s or Linda’s plot involved slipping me hallucinogens or plugging me into some Matrix-style virtual reality computer program, what was happening before me was real. I felt a chill of fear work its way down my spine as I took more than my fair share of deep breaths.
Okay, Jane, I told myself firmly, get a grip. Whatever these things are, hellhound here could have killed you at any point and he hasn’t, so you have to assume they want you alive. And you may not like what they have to say, but they’re going to tell you about your mother. This thought seemed to fortify me, and so I honed in on it. For the first time in your life, someone is going to tell you the truth about your own mother. I got my breathing under control, and if I didn’t feel fantastic, I did feel like I could face what was happening.
Anyan’s soft tongue grazed my cheek and I couldn’t help but smile at him. It’s funny how sensitive dogs are to people’s moods. You’d think he understood how hard this was for me.
“All right,” I said, looking Nell in the eye and trying to avoid looking at Trill. After her little performance, if I looked at Trill I’d need more than just a few deep breaths. Maybe a few deep breaths alongside of a few shots of Jack Daniels. “You’ve made your point. You’re not… human. And you weren’t sent by anybody to fool me. So what are you, and why are you here? What do you have to do with me and my family?”
My voice sounded strong. I was proud of myself.
Nell, damn her, was still beaming away like the figure on a syrup bottle. “You’re taking this very well, Jane,” she said, and I only just managed to keep from giving her the finger. “As I was saying, your mother is a selkie: a two-formed who can take either the shape of a seal or of a human. But she’s not really human or seal; she is, for want of a better human word, supernatural.”
I grunted. It wasn’t particularly erudite, but it was all I could manage to summarize the maelstrom of emotions flooding through me. On the one hand, I wanted to scream that none of this was true. That my mother wasn’t some monster from legends. Despite that loud, angry voice, there was another whispering echo, more profound for its restraint, that acknowledged that what Nell said made sense.
My memories of my mother—the swimming, her happiness in the water, the way she plunged me into the ocean as if she were taking me home—weren’t normal memories. They weren’t natural, at least not by human standards.
Supernatural, I thought, letting my mind sink into the curves of the word. I was surprised to discover it felt good. Or, maybe it just felt like something where once there had been nothing.
“Supernatural creatures are all around you, and have been throughout history, as you can tell from the impact we’ve had on human myths and legends. You know us, all of us, but not necessarily in our true forms. For example, I’m a gnome. Humans have made us into little clay sculptures that protect their gardens. That’s not entirely false. We gnomes are earthbound and we protect our territories to the death—usually the death of the intruder. Selkies, like your mother, are known in stories throughout the world. But they don’t shed their skin, nor are they the captive of whoever steals their skin. They come of their own free will to mortal men and women, usually with the intention of begetting a child.” Here, Nell paused, and I could see she spoke her next few sentences with some discomfort despite the fact that she never stopped smiling. “We supernaturals find it difficult to… procreate successfully with each other, but we seem to have fewer problems when we liaise with humans. You, Jane, are the result of one such union.”
I was trying not to look too scornful of her words, but this was ridiculous. I was Jane True from Rockabill, Maine. I was not the half-supernatural love child of a seal woman and a mortal man. If I was, surely I’d be taller… more statuesque.
Eyeballing Nell, however, I realized that was an entirely illogical train of thought.
I also thought about how my mother had appeared, out of the middle of nowhere, and how she’d disappeared as mysteriously. I again thought about my swimming, and my tolerance for cold. I shivered, a knot in my throat, as my still resistant brain slowly started to accept that this woman might be telling the truth.