The Selkie Bride (8 page)

Lachlan continued: “He smells a bit of rotting things and his flesh is always cauld and white. And look tae his eyes—briefly. They are black and cannae blink.” He paused. “I shall make thee a charm and bring it aen the morrow. Hang it aen the door when ye leave the cottage and it will keep him oot. And bar the door when ye are within. He can magic locks, but not a bar made of yew like this one.”

“I have this too.” I reached for my blouse and pulled out the necklace Duncan had given me; I had put it on when I changed clothes. Lachlan’s eyes widened. “It was from my husband.” Then, because my mind seemed intent on thinking of all the worst things: “Won’t putting up a charm on the door tell the finman that I know he is here?”

“Aye, but ’tis the lesser of evils. Any road, I believe he already kens aboot ye. Why else send the tide after ye today? He wants ye for some purpose—one ye’d best avoid.”

The finman had sent the tide after me? He could do that? I had thought myself merely unlucky. And had it been his voice I heard calling to me? I had thought it came from the faerie mound, but was I mistaken?

“You must work harder on saying comforting things,” I said absently. “People will like you better for it.”

“I daena want ye comforted. I want ye alive,” he said harshly, and strode toward the door. “Bar this ahind me. ’Tis the
theacht mean oidche
. The auld protective spell aen the door isnae powerful enough tae stand if the finman comes.”

I knew these words and shivered. My grandmother had spoken uneasily of the coming of midnight, but only on Auld Year’s Night and once at Beltane.

Angrily I followed Lachlan so that I could put up the bar, but after the door shut behind him I found myself strangely frightened and unwilling to do what I needed to do if it meant going closer to the outside. Under the lingering influence of Lachlan’s bite I could see Fergus’s spell. Spiked shadows, perhaps real and perhaps only in my mind, cast by some unseen thing brought on by the seeing, enframed the doorway. I was reluctant to disturb them as they stretched and swayed in their effort to guard the door. But by then storm and true night had encompassed the house and I surely didn’t want anyone or anything lingering out there to enter the cottage. I would have to reach through these shadows despite my distaste.

“Bar the door!” Lachlan snarled again from outside. He hit the panel once. The blow shook the door and scattered the shadows.

“Go away!” I snarled back, lifting the bar into place as quickly as I was able. It was heavy and ugly, but I took comfort in that. Perhaps it would be more efficacious.

But pluck the old isle from its roots deep planted Where tides cry
coronach
round the Hebrides…

—“
Cumba Mac-ille-Chalium Rarsaidh”
(“The Lament of Ian Garbh”)

Lachlan was gone—without the damned heart but with more angry words from me, though he couldn’t hear them, being long vanished—and I fi nally had my bath and then went to bed to sulk and read. The wind and rain held a carnival outside, complete with bright lights and what I swear was the distant sound of a calliope that rang out from the
Bearlach nam Cu
—the pass of the hound. Though sensible people would say it was just the screaming of frightened seabirds or seals, I did not believe this, and it was with some difficulty that I finally put out the lamp and drifted to sleep.

That night I dreamed, which was not uncommon, but it was a sleeping vision like no other. No dream or nightmare has ever felt as real to me, and I came awake with the alarmed conviction that I had experienced some kind of unnatural prescience brought on
by Lachlan’s bite. It was through him that I
saw
into another frightening world. In my dream I stood before the faerie mound, facing the corpse candle that still burned there. The sun was setting and my shadow was very long, stretching almost to the dunes. Though I was enthralled by the corpse candle burning in the air, a slight movement at the horizon lured my eyes downward and I saw a little being, a poppet with the face of a catfish, made of aged leather and twigs and stained the color of peat bogs. He was rolling up my shadow, coiling it carefully onto a sort of spindle. As I watched, he finished with my shoulders and then started on my torso. I felt a sudden chill in my heart as his clawed hand touched my shadow’s breastbone.

Another movement caught my eye. I looked down at my feet and there was a second of these creatures, armed with a pair of shears, which it was using to cut away my shadow at my bare toes so the first poppet could carry it away. This one I could see quite clearly. It had whiskers growing from its cheeks, chin and forehead. It was small, no more than two feet tall, and I might have thought it cute if not for it being busy chopping away at my shadow.

I screamed once in protest and kicked out with the foot farther from the shears, but my limb barely moved and my shadow not at all. The sensation was similar to the one that had overcome me in the cave, though pronounced to an extreme degree. The creature hissed back but did not shy away until Herman landed on it with claws outstretched. Then it gave an angry shriek and fell back, dropping its shears. The blood that ran from its wound was white, not red, and this stuck to the ground
in mucuslike clots that steamed unattractively. This was the same milky substance that surrounded the finman’s still beating heart.

Herman turned on me then, howling and swiping at my leg, perhaps attempting to break the spell that held me in place, though maybe only maddened with fear and lashing out at whoever was nearby. At the last moment, he leapt for my eyes. This worked. I came awake in bed with the cat on my chest, crying loudly into my face.

“Good kitty,” I croaked, pushing him aside, and then I reached under the covers for my stinging leg. The warm wetness told me I was bleeding. Then my hand encountered something that chilled me all the way to my soul.

I pulled out the cold metal thing and laid it on the covers. My hands shook as I fumbled for the lamp I kept at the side of the bed. It took a moment for me to light it and then to turn the flame up high, and when I turned back to the bed—with the utmost reluctance, I might add—the shears were gone. But they had been there, of that I was certain, because they had left a bloody print outlined clearly on the white coverlet.

I thought then of the story in the village about how Fergus Culbin often went about without his shadow. Were these nightmare creatures somehow tied to him, perhaps some kind of familiars?

“Lachlan,” I whispered, reaching out in a kind of prayer. “If you can hear me, please come back.”

Morning found me on my bike heading to the village, though it was cold and the damp mist that sometimes
turns into the light rain the locals call
smirr
seemed disinclined to surrender its hold on the shore. My body hurt, especially my leg, where I was scratched in four places, but I forced myself to keep moving. I was frayed at the edges of my nerves, unraveled by nightmares and worry, but as the saying goes: Sometimes the only way out is through. Hiding at home would not help me.

My attention was divided the whole way between the slick, uneven ground and the dim light of a paraffin bicycle lamp glowing eerily in the waves of fog that rolled by irregularly. I had trouble imagining a wicked wizard riding a bicycle with a generous-sized basket about town, but the bike had been in Fergus’s storeroom, so I assume that he used it, withered arm and all.

It had not escaped my notice that I was without a charm to ward my door when I left and it was possible for the finman to enter in my absence, should he be able to force the lock, but so far he had preferred skulking about at night and I stubbornly clung to the belief that he had already searched my cottage and found nothing. He must have done so—if not on the night he killed Fergus, then sometime in the weeks that followed, while the cottage was tenantless. There was no reason for him to come back.

I would, of course, be very careful on my return, regardless of this reasonable rationalization.

Though I admit it only reluctantly, I must confess that I thought some of Lachlan as well on my ride, what he was and that he had been married. To a human woman. And unlike my own union, his had apparently
been loving and happy. That made the end tragic. And he had not married again, which caused me to be curious in the way of my sex: Was he so emotionally scarred by his loss that he could not love again? Or was it that he thought no woman could ever be as perfect as his first wife had been?

At least, he hadn’t said anything about marrying again. Maybe he had. Many times. Maybe he was married even now.

That thought was annoying, so I pushed it away in favor of other things.

If all roads lead to Rome—at least, the properly paved ones—then this would explain the lack of them in Findloss. The Gaels, especially those returned from the Great War, seem to have no desire to travel again outside their own lands. They have a lot of poetry and mysticism in their romantic souls, so what would be the appeal of a world built on logic and in the accruement of our greatest material desires? So many of us, at least for a time when we are young and less wise, spend our souls and limited will on the pursuit of shiny material things, but that seems not to be the way of the Gaels. These people always had very little and knew how to make do with the bits and pieces their villages provided. Pleasures were rare and entertainment limited, but it seemed to make their happy moments all the more appreciated. Here I did not feel my poverty as I had at home.

Sometimes I miss the superficial world of my childhood and its conveniences, but never entirely. Lachlan was not alone in feeling alienated; mechanization and modernization frightened me. It seems in many ways
that machines will control us and not the other way around. Certainly clocks and schedules run most modern lives. These call us to work and to worship, to rise in the morning and retire to bed. They dominated the Great War. In Findloss it was different. This is not to suggest that Scotland has been laggardly in keeping up with the world, but the last war of their making happened nearly a century ago and was an internal aff air. The people of the village—all but one of them, if Lachlan were correct—seemed content to fish and drink and once in a while make some music or tell old tales. They did not look outside themselves or their village for amusement or happiness. Nor did I. I had a cat and my books, though I brought very few to the cottage: the family Bible, a battered copy of
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
, and a Murray’s Diary, which was a sort of railroad map and timetable for the trains in Scotland. It included information on ferry services to the ports and islands, which was how I ended up with a tuppence copy. (This was also where I had learned that dogs may travel on the railroad. The fare is tuppence, unless they are working dogs. Herding canines are considered the same as a tool bag or a doctor’s kit, and are allowed to ride free so long as they remain tucked beneath the master’s seat. No mention was made of cats or livestock.)

I wasn’t at all sure where I would go when I was forced to leave Findloss, and that I would soon have to leave I now believed with all my heart and soul. Lachlan’s bite-caused sight had left me, but the conviction that the village was in danger had not. And Findloss had an unenviable record for deadly storms,
even before the final one that had buried it completely.

Eventually I reached the post office, and was relieved to see a light inside. But I had barely entered the store when Mistress MacLaren leaned over the counter and hissed: “Lights were seen in the kirk last night. They say it was the Devil abroad again. And did ye hear the storm? It’s an ill wind, ye see, wha blaws naebody guid.”

“How can anyone be sure it is the Devil?” I objected, dispensing with the usual wishes for a good morning. “Might it not have been someone walking about who…decided to go in and pray?”

“Would
ye
be sae daft?” she demanded with a touch of indignation.

“I don’t wander at night,” I hedged.

Mistress MacLaren snorted. “Neither does anyone else in the village.”

She had a point, which would make things convenient for the finman. Or for Lachlan. It could have been Lachlan, after all. Hadn’t I suggested he look for records in the church? He hadn’t said anything about being there last night, and what with all the other distractions—like nearly drowning and finding an undead heart in my floor—I had forgotten to ask what he had discovered and what future plans he had made.

“And, someone has been visiting cottages, searching them for something. The villagers are salting their doorways and ye’d best be doing the same.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell the woman that salt wouldn’t keep the village’s visitor out, but I
kept my peace. So far, no one had been harmed. As long as the finman was just searching, I felt no need to admit to any involvement or knowledge whatsoever. This was perhaps cowardly, but I would not have put it past the frightened villagers to kill the messenger. In this case that meant me, as well as Lachlan.

“Was anyone seen leaving the kirk?” I asked.

“Nay, and we watched ’til dawn,” she admitted, making me glad that my cottage was beyond eyeshot of her own. I wasn’t afraid of gossip in the normal way of things, but would just as soon not have people know that I had a male visitor coming and going at all hours of the night.

“Does the kirk have a basement—a crypt perhaps?” I asked.

“Aye,” she said slowly, horror beginning to fill her eyes as she considered. “There was a crypt, and also they say it was part of a sea cave used by vile creatures until they bricked it off.”

I chose to misunderstand. “That’s probably it then! Smugglers are using the kirk again. They likely knocked down the wall and are coming and going from the caves on the shore.”

“Smugglers?” This arrested her panic and I could see her turning the new idea over in her head as she examined it on all sides. The notion lacked some of the drama of the Devil or sea monsters making an appearance, but it was a lot less frightening.

Unfortunately, I didn’t believe my own suggestion. Not unless the finman was smuggling something. Evil, if not the Devil himself, was definitely abroad at night and I feared that I knew what it was looking for.

But then so was Lachlan about in the night, and also in sea caves as he hunted his prey. I’d thought he intended to go immediately to “consult with others” about what we had found, but perhaps he had made a stop at the kirk on the way. Or perhaps he hadn’t. Until I knew which it was messing about in the church, I would have to be crazy to visit the kirk, though the urge to rush out and confront my fear was strong. My mind had somehow not accepted the idea that this time the monsters were real and not just phantoms of the imagination. At least in the daylight, I wanted to strike at them before they crept up behind me in dreams.

“I’ve read about the smugglers in Cornwall,” I said, fingering a bolt of cloth. It was poplin, but in a nice shade of blue. I had a few frivolous frocks, but they were old. I had not dressed in gay inconsequence since my marriage. “They actually had everyone convinced that there was some demon driving a coach with a team of headless horses. It was quite clever of them. They went on their way unmolested for many years…”

“Ye’re not going tae the kirk, are ye?” Mistress Mac-Laren demanded, sensing my curiosity.

“Not today,” I agreed, letting go of the fabric. “It’s too foggy. And I would as soon give the smugglers time to shift their wares before I explore. I’ve no desire to meet one face-to-face.”

“Aye?” She sounded incredulous.

“I don’t care about smuggling, per se. Most of the taxes on imports are iniquitous, and who can blame a man if he has to do a little extra to help his family?” I shrugged and finally saw a faint smile of approval
touch the postmistress’s thin lips. Smuggling was an enterprise that fishermen had engaged in for centuries. Most people saw it as a way for poor families to supplement their income and to put one over on the English. There was also the added allure of limited danger hereabouts: The long arm of the Sassenach law rarely extended to Findloss; its nearest limb of any type was an elderly man with a wooden leg in Glen Ruadh.

I bought some honey and dried plums for the scones I decided to bake; the honey from the local hives is a bit strange to me, being made from the pollen of sea grasses rather than the blossoms of fruit trees or flowers, but I have come to enjoy it on my porridge and bread. I waited while Mistress MacLaren fetched the requested items and then departed from her relentlessly grim company. I did not ask about the faded photograph of a young man in uniform that she kept on the counter, though I had seen it before and wondered. Because of the Great War, Findloss is also haunted by the ghosts of the Lost Generation, the boys who had gone off and not come home. A full third of many highland regiments had been killed and many more maimed while fighting honorably in a war that many considered dishonorable.