Selkie Skin

by Mary Leoson

1944. Ohio.

It was late September when the fog rolled into Fairport Harbor, hugging the shores of Lake Erie in mist. It awoke something in Elizabeth, even in the confines of her bedroom on Prospect Street, where she became lost in the waves from her window. Her eyes drifted from the graying evening to the crumpled letter on her bed. She smoothed it out, finding the words smeared from tears and marred by creases she couldn’t erase.

I’m not ready to be a father. 

The ink slapped her. Fury burned beneath her skin and with it came a great shame that washed over her face, flushing it red and hot.

How could she have been so stupid? That’s what Mother would say. Mother, with her prim poise and judgmental stare that haunted Elizabeth as she grew older. Each hint at her blossoming womanhood was an offense. A quiet anger seethed in Elizabeth, buried beneath layers of compliance and the desire for love.

Mother was a complicated word. An unpredictable mixture of salt, bitter, and sweet. A bakery smell that lured her in but rotted on her tongue.

There was nothing about Mother that cherished her. Perhaps there once had been, long before she could remember. But no more. And now she could add her first beau to the raw wound of her heart. Perhaps she was just unlovable.

But no. Something inside her denied this. Sister Mary Catherine had cared for her once, even if it had been her duty at the orphanage. When Elizabeth was unwanted, the nun’s arms had held her tight.

Love was possible. Is possible.

Elizabeth’s eyes returned to the windowpane and beyond, through the fog for a beacon of hope. The lighthouse glowed in the distance, warning seamen of the break wall.

#

Elizabeth drew up the sash and climbed through the open window onto the porch roof. She shimmied down the trellis and landed on dew-covered grass. Her slippers threatened to slide, but she righted herself against the house, pausing to listen for stirring from within. Mother would have her hide if she saw.

The waves lapped the shore. Soupy haze hung in the air. A dog barked in the distance.

She was free.

Elizabeth crept across the street to the lakeshore, following its slope down, down to the place where it met the water. No sand here, just rocks and water. The pale glow of a distant moon fused the mist with silver, just enough to see.

The waves were otherworldly, dark shadows that waxed and waned. A field of wildflowers dancing in the breeze. A tornado of starlings against a pale sky. A blanket shaken between friends before it’s folded. An invitation to a long slumber.

Mesmerized, Elizabeth drew the bottle out from her bathrobe pocket, its glass cool in her fingers. She turned it around and around in the faint light, remembering her scribbles on the rolled paper within. A prayer for grace. A dream of love. A cry for deliverance.

Take me away from here. Far, far away.

She took a deep breath and tossed the message in a bottle into the writhing waters, sending with it all her desires.

The bottle danced atop the waves, and she imagined its journey to Michigan, or New York, or even Canada. But its mission was short-lived. The tide drew it back toward Elizabeth, trapping the message against the rocks, until it lodged in a crevice.

No. The word leaked out of her mouth.

She knelt where it was stuck, able to see it but not to reach it. With a long piece of driftwood in hand, she maneuvered it, prying and poking. She would not let her hope die on this shore.

And then it gave way. Her effort thrust it back out into the waters, taking with it her frustration. And her balance.

She teetered on the edge of the rocks—a pin top spinning, faster as she fell, colors blurring into paint strokes of cream and white and silver. And finally dissipating into a deep, deep blue.

#

Elizabeth sank into an abyss of choking and lights in the corners of her eyes—fairies come to steal her to another realm. Cold needled her body, wrapping her in an icy rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. A dangerous lullaby. Her arms flailed, her legs kicked, and she grasped for the edge that eluded her.

She broke the surface and then was pulled down again. The waves were more ferocious than they had appeared. Not wildflowers, or starlings in flight, or a soft, warm blanket. No. They were angry jaws, open and chomping, drawing her toward an enormous belly where ships in rough waters go to die.

It was Sister Mary Catherine’s soft voice that wafted in like smoke, dancing in turns and shimmers, lingering on the edges of Elizabeth’s psyche, reaching out to save her. Just like she had in that dark time—the time when Mother had held her down in the bathtub.

Elizabeth blocked out the memory in the waking world, but here, under the veils of half-sleep where she walked on the edge of death, it stalked her.

Elizabeth sank down, down, into herself. To a time before. 

Strong hands on her throat. Pushing her under the surface. Gasping for breath. Slippery, so slippery. She wiggled away and Mother fell—the crack of her skull against the tub echoed. Scrambling out, sliding on the floor, to underneath her bed where she hid for hours. Her cave, her safe space. Mother wouldn’t go where the spiders lurked.

Elizabeth struggled for breath between the currents. Her insides had become water, thick with sludge and grime. The wheezing a vibration from deep within, clutching her from the inside out.

Sweet child, come with me to the Tuatha De Danann, to Tir Na Nog, said Sister Mary Catherine. Where the children are fair, the music is sweet, and the land is ever green.

The rumble of a foghorn bellowed from above, sank down beneath her and swam around her in ripples. Its throb was thunder in the lake, waking things that had long slept. It was the sound of her soul, a last cry for salvation.

Come child. Swim with the selkie, forever free and loved.

The blanket wrapped around her, warm like a mother’s arms should be. Fingers morphed into fins, whiskers sprouted from her muzzle, and she slithered through the swells, dancing to the tune of the lake. The base of the foghorn was a call from her ancestors, halfway around the world.

Sing with me, child, said Sister Mary Catherine.  

As she crested the waves, sounds emerged from deep within her belly, wild and raw. Barks, grunts, and tenor notes not meant for a human girl. Her eyes widened, revealing a world under the water’s surface that glowed and shifted, teeming with life.

She was reborn.

She rode the ripples to the break wall and through the breach to open waters, where the fog was thicker. The glow from the lighthouse dimmed in her wake, and with it went memory of her name. There was only the pull toward freedom.

#

The message in the bottle swept upon the shores of Fairport Harbor the next morning. The young girl who opened it knew not what to make of its message save that it sought release: Far, far away. And in the distance, in the pale silver hue that was left of the dissipating fog, she thought she saw a seal bobbing up and down in the waves, singing.