The Selkie Bride (5 page)

“Certainly.” Lachlan walked to the sideboard and picked up the decanter. “Have you ever heard of the
Cailleach-a-Phluc
?”

No, I hadn’t. And I didn’t want to, since even the words sounded evil. In the usual course of events, I am not an unregulated neurotic who is ruled solely by instinct and emotion, but these proceedings were hardly
usual and I thought a degree of trepidation and even fear was in order. And yet, I could not omit any knowledge that might improve my safety. Caution was required but I could not afford ignorance, however taxing the truth on my sanity.

Putting a glass in my hand, Lachlan turned to the fire. I didn’t gulp the contents, but I wasn’t sipping daintily either. Lachlan continued speaking.

“The
Cailleach-a-Phluc
was a black witch of unsurpassed evilness wha often visited this village. It was the finmen’s theft of her wicked magic that turned them tae creatures of ravenous hunger and depravity. Made strong and bold by this stolen magic, the chief wizard of the finmen worked an evil spell that he sent against my people who lived aen the caves that stretch beneath the village and up the coast a day’s journey.” Lachlan’s voice was cold. “Findloss had been warned about what would happen if they didnae expel the finman from among them, but they were greedy and anxious to keep their nets full of enchanted fish. And so they let the finman remain. Our wizard and I managed tae turn back the terrible storm of sand that the finman had sent tae Avocamor, also called
Tir-fo-Thuinn
—Land under the Waves—and instead this village was buried…and the finman along with it.

“We thought that was the end. The others of the tainted tribe were hunted down and banished or killed. But we were wrong tae relax our guard. The most evil of the finmen didnae die, and eventually he was able tae unbury the village and escape. I believe he survived all those years off the souls of those trapped in the church. They were his personal larder while he schemed
and eventually discovered the means tae escape his own curse.”

“And now someone has called this monster back?” My voice was barely a whisper. “But why? That seems like madness.”

“Aye. And I am at a loss tae know wham it may be. Only twa humans survived the inundation and would have known of the creature. And Fergus Culbin is now dead—at the hands of the finman. Unless they had a falling-out after the summons, I cannae imagine why the finman waud kill him.”

“And the other survivor?”

“Died without issue a decade ago.”

I thought about this. “You know, you are making an assumption that may not be true.”

A dark brow lifted. “Aye?”

“We know that only two survivors ended up in Keil, but that doesn’t mean that someone else might not have escaped to somewhere else if they fled overland. If they never mentioned the storm or the finman, no one would have thought anything about a traveler passing through Glen Ard or elsewhere.” Lachlan nodded slowly, and I went on without considering. “I think the trick may be to have a look at the church records and see exactly who was in the village at the time of the storm and then see if any of their off spring have come back. Assuming the offspring are witless enough to use the family name.”

Lachlan shook his head. “I have ceased tae marvel at how witless some people can be. I shall look on this when I am finished wi’ other inquiries.”

I doubted his investigation involved any methods
with which I was familiar, but sadly, I had to agree about the general state of human witlessness. Was I not even now being careless with my trust? How could I know if anything Lachlan said was true? For that matter, how did I know that he was even real and not a figment of a disturbed imagination?

I pulled my chair closer to the hearth, getting as near as I could without setting my shoes on fire. It was a wasted effort. I simply could not get close enough to drive off the new chill in my bones.

The wind comes rushing down through the openings between the hills, carrying with it immense torrents of sand with a force and violence almost overpowering. Clouds of dust are raised from the tops of the mounds and are whirled about in the wildest confusion, and fall with the force of hail. Nothing can be seen but sand above, sand below and sand everywhere. You dare not open your eyes but must grope your way about as if blindfolded.

—John Martin of Elgin, describing the village of Culbin during a 17th-century sandstorm

Lachlan’s late visit—and promised return by the next full moon—left me disturbed and with my brain seething. I didn’t know if I was more frightened or amazed or exhausted by the constant low-grade panic and lingering disbelief engendered by what I had heard; all three emotions took turns being in ascendance and I found myself pacing the cottage instead of preparing for bed.

As I walked through the rooms, I discovered that
there was something bothering me about the second bedroom, some deformity of space that tugged at my eyes every time I entered. I was using it for storage of unneeded house hold items, and it was therefore far from tidy, but every time I walked into the room, it felt smaller to me than the time before. This should not have been the case, because the cot in that room was actually smaller than the bed I slept in and the space should have felt more spacious instead of less.

Eventually, to satisfy my nagging brain, I paced off the two rooms and discovered that the smaller-seeming room
was
smaller. By two large paces. Once the anomaly was identified, it took little effort to discover the loose stone in the back fireplace chimney that hid the latch that released the false wall. The reason for the paneling in the cottage was then clear; secrets and not warmth or ornamentation had been the cause of its installation. Someone, perhaps several someones, had wanted to conceal something from their neighbors.

The air that puffed into the bedroom from the dark hole was not unpleasant, though a bit stale. It reminded me of the lending library back home, and I felt a degree of lessening in my trepidation as musty air and nothing else rushed out at me. Fetching the lamp, I ducked into the secret cupboard and let my eyes adjust to the greater dark. Herman followed reluctantly, sneezing from time to time.

There were dust and cobwebs in abundance, telling me the narrow room had not been cleaned for some while. If the cottage had been grander and more on the beaten path of Europe’s traditional religious turmoil—or on any pathat all—I would have suspected
the hidden room was a priest hole. But of holy relics there were no signs. Nor were there any secret staircases leading to hidden passages used by so many smugglers in Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories. This sudden idea of smugglers was fostered by the discovery of a heavy keg of brandy in the far corner of the closet, which was mostly full. How old it was, I could not say, but it smelled potent when uncorked and the oak of the cask was quite dark, suggesting that some liquor had seeped through.

Though I saw no place in the walls, floor or ceiling where another secret door might be, I did take the time to tap the panels and pound the floorboards. I had not forgotten Lachlan’s insistence that Fergus Culbin had been murdered in the cottage by a rogue finman who must have found some way inside. The lack of secret passages was therefore doubly reassuring. Since the chimney was barred and all the windows too small to admit a human, the only place the creature could enter the cottage was the front door, and I had a heavy bar and sturdy lock to take care of that.

What the tiny room lacked in religious icons, it made up for in books and folios. Most were written in Latin and Greek—the second, a language for which I had little facility—but one handwritten journal was done in some form of Gaelic, which Fergus (I assumed) had glossed extensively in English, and another was penned in an older form of border English. These I put aside, though I hadn’t any reason to assume that I would be able to translate the villainous handwriting that was faded, had some water damage and was blithely unconcerned about
conforming to any of the grammatical rules with which I was familiar.

That was all of the room’s contents, except for the one chair—taken from the dining room, I assumed, since it matched the others, though it brought the total to thirteen, an unlucky and odd number of seats—and a small table with a dusty lamp, a pot of dried ink and a broken pen. Taking the two books with me, I closed the panel back up and decided to wash and then retire to bed. I also retrieved the yew carpet beater and iron shackles from the linen basket and put them beneath my pillow. Perhaps my faith was misplaced, but I felt better having them near at hand.

I feared that my mind would keep me awake, but fear is exhausting. After reading for a short while, I put the disquieting books aside and fell into a deep sleep that was disturbed only once, when Herman jumped on the bed and insisted on wiggling his way under the covers. I patted him once in sympathy: The journal had revealed something nasty that I hadn’t previously suspected of Fergus. Duncan’s uncle had been attempting to find the lost Spanish gold through divination. His notes suggested that had he not been killed by the finman, Herman would have been headed for a sacrificial death and mummification at the next dark of the moon.

I am not an early riser, if I can avoid it. It is not that I am slothful or unnaturally indolent, but I see no need to be up before the sun when it is cold and I will need to make a fire just to be comfortable. Neither coal nor peat was cheap in Findloss, so I felt justified remaining in my bed until normal inclination told me
to rise and rub the laziness from my eyes. But even for me, that morning was making an exceptionally late start. The sun was high in the narrow bit of scarred glass that I had forgotten to shutter before retiring to sleep.

Looking at the situation optimistically, I decided I could skip lumpy breakfast porridge and just have an early lunch.

I had previously resisted the temptation to pay a visit to the local
Sithean Mor
, a supposed abandoned faerie mound mentioned by the locals and in one of Fergus’s handwritten books, believed by the natives to be a tomb for a race of giants, though Fergus did not mention this in his notes. The mound is reachable on foot if one is undeterred by hard climbing and the possibility of broken bones and drowning. None of those things appealed to me in the least, but that morning I found myself sufficiently curious and willing to consider the existence of what had previously seemed impossible that I tied up a lunch and a small sketchpad and pencils in a large scarf, which I hung down my shoulder like a peddler’s sack, and started off on my adventure.

First I stopped in at the post office, ostensibly to check for mail but really to mention where I was going. The post office is also our only shop. It is not a very impressive store, and Mistress MacLaren who runs it does not spend her time trying to lure customers into buying her multifarious wares withattractive displays or signs—mostly because she has no competition to lure customers from, and also because the wares are not all that diverse or alluring. What is it about a shop
counter that turns a mere table into an insurmountable obstacle one would never dream of crossing? And why does the person behind it seem more in charge than the one offering custom? I have often wondered if Mistress MacLaren had a stool concealed back there that she stood on whenever she heard the door, because she seemed much taller on one side of the counter than on the other.

Mistress MacLaren was not a licensed grocer (or even a postmistress), which probably explained the lack of variety in her goods and why we sometimes ended up with wooden seeds in supposed raspberry jam. (I had never encountered counterfeit jam before and found the experience at once amusing and annoying). But, to be fair, I doubt she would have made enough money in commerce to pay the license fees the government required, so we were grateful for whatever she carried. My main purchases were oats and eggs. Though as thrifty as any native, I had found it hard to do without certain things and so had asked my solicitor before I arrived to arrange for a shipment of a few luxuries, among them potatoes, dried apples for baking, fine milled flour, some sugar and a small amount of cinnamon. I don’t think Mistress MacLaren ever forgave me for buying these things from an outsider.

To the villagers, I am slightly tainted by sinful worldliness because of where I was born. This also makes me foreign—as in, not a Scot—a fact for which I am to be pitied. If they were not themselves also transplants from several other villages, I should likely be completely ostracized, but none of us here can say we actually belong to Findloss. And frankly, I have the best
claim, having been left one of the original residences by my late husband’s uncle. Perhaps they would have trusted me more if I had explained that my mother’s family was of the MacCodrum clan. Or perhaps not. There were a lot of blood feuds here, and the people have long memories and some rusty claymores in their cupboards.

Mistress MacLaren clearly wanted to ask me why I was taking such a strenuous hike, and I considered being teasing and refusing to answer her curiosity. But it seemed best not to alienate one of the few people who would talk to me, however reluctantly, so I volunteered that I had heard there were still some sea-blooming orchids out that way and I was going to sketch them. This satisfied her as to my intentions and also allowed her the chance to later gossip to the others about my foolishness and eccentricities. I tried not to begrudge her this entertainment, since she would be the one, I hoped, to send a rescue party to find me if I did not return by nightfall.

Outside of Findloss the cliffs rose almost immediately, hence the village’s preference for sea rather than land travel. There is a narrow strip of sand that one may traverse around the cliff arms for the few hours that the tide is out, but it is stony and wrack strewn. The terraced crags loomed large on either side of the pier, which had been built on the only bit of smoothish beach in the tiny harbor. The town was erected on the second low terrace of the mountain, except for my own cottage, which sits on its own out-thrusting hillock on what I am told is an igneous extrusion. There were stairs to the beach and a path of sorts that led to
the cliff tops by a series of switchbacks, but one could also scramble both up and down the giant sheets of limestone that had pulled away from the cliff and fallen like dominoes. The cliffs would probably not seem formidable to anyone who had lived in the Alps, but to me they seemed quite impregnable and scary, being inhabited only by screaming birds whose shrill cries seemed mean and aggressive.

An hour on, I stopped at a small stream that spilled out of the white cliff walls and had a drink. The water was clear but tasted peaty, so I did not drink deeply as I squatted among the small rushes in the miniature quagmire of moss and bog myrtle, which was blazing the shade of candle flame as it huddled in the tiny and cold oasis in the sand. Along the way were curved beaches where the cliffs had been carved out into a chaotic series of arches and caves. Most were shallow, but a few seemed deep. I was not tempted to explore them. I had heard too many stories of people being trapped in caves when the tide came in and drowning for their curiosity. This seemed a terrible fate to me: life choking out of you in total darkness, your body perhaps swept away at the turning of the tide. Also, I heard, or imagined I heard, a low-voiced crying. This belonged to a seal, one of the supposed emissaries from the court of King Lochlann that frequented our shores on sunny days. The seals are lovely from a distance, but knowing what I did in that moment—and not knowing a great deal more—I thought it best to stay away from a creature that might not be exactly what it appeared.

I continued a while more and then stopped at a
grassy meadow, called a
machair
, where I found myself a flat rock in the sun to sit on. There I had my simple lunch of bread and jam, and one rather tired apple that nevertheless tasted delicious because of my hunger. If I had had any worries about being observed in my travels, they would have been allayed. I had seen only one boat, and it was far out at sea. Other than the noisy birds and a few curious hares, I had no companions in my narrow meadow. Feeling generous, I tossed my apple core to the nearest of the doe-eyed bunnies and a small crust of bread to the sharp-eyed curlew that had stood patiently at the base of the rock, watching as I ate. My offers accepted, I rose slowly, had a stretch and then resumed my travels.

The entire way I kept an eye on the tide. At the first sign of it turning, I was giving up and turning back for home. Fortunately, the sea continued to ebb, and I was lured onward by the rare sunshine and the increasingly smooth sand bar. I decided that if the next day were as nice, I would make a trip to the cockle beds and dig up my own dinner. Herman always enjoyed digging in the sand and I was ready for a change in diet.

As I walked, I discovered that my brain was soon back to pondering the same two questions that had bothered me since Lachlan’s visit. Why, if my husband had in fact known that his family and mine were participating in some kind of family feud, had he married me? It is said that in Scotland it is a tradition for enemies to put rings on each other’s fingers and dirks in each other’s hearts, but he had come to America to make a fresh start and knew well that this wasn’t our custom. It made his behavior confusing and mysterious.
Perhaps even sinister. Was he something more than he appeared? Certainly he had been keeping secrets.

And now, more urgently, I wondered who and what Lachlan was—and could I trust him? After all, my current relieved supposition that my husband may have had some compelling outside reason for disliking me came from this stranger. How did I know that he was telling the truth? My instinct was to believe him, but my instincts had been wrong before. Attraction affected judgment and I had to admit that at some level, and against all wisdom, I was attracted to Lachlan, whomever and whatever he was.