Epilogue
"Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service;"
The Tempest, Shakespeare.
I had asked Incacha's advice on seeking out my lost kinfolk and true to form, he had made me answer my own question. I had meditated on it for this last week, but I had also spent time gathering stories of shape-shifters such as the pink dolphins and learning more of the plant-teachers from Incacha. Jim and I made love, sometimes twice a day, and he'd had to gag me with his palm so that I could walk among the tribe without blushing from their knowing looks.
I didn't exactly feel like my old self, the man who had never met Alex Barnes, but I felt strong and free and truly interested in life again. I slept well, deeply, and my dreams were uneventful and ordinary, except for Incacha showing up in the one I'd had last night. He had waved to me to follow him and turned to walk swiftly on a jungle path. When I caught up to him, he was seated at a small campfire and motioned for me to join him. I sat cross-legged on the smooth, hard ground and watched the fire with him.
"Apprentice, your time here with the Chopec grows short. Enqueri tells me that in your own lands, the use of the spirit-vine is forbidden. Ayahuasca is but one path a shaman can travel. You should seek out others when you leave us and return to your homeland."
I nodded my head respectfully. I wouldn't jeopardize Jim's career or my own by using drugs at home, no matter their medicinal potential; however, I would partake again of the plant-teachers when I returned to visit. I still had so much to learn, having barely scratched the surface of what a shaman must know.
"What does your soul need, Apprentice?"
Yeah, I'd been expecting that question.
"Teacher, I wish to know of my people, where they have gone, who they are. I found no traces of them where I looked and perhaps I am not seeking them in the right places. Perhaps they are hidden from me. Perhaps they are gone and no longer swim in the sea or come to the land to dance and laugh and lie down with the lovers who called them to the shore with blood and tears."
Incacha had accepted that I had been a shape-shifter without blinking an eye, unlike Jim who'd told me he had wondered about me being a selkie for a long time before finally allowing himself to believe it. He'd had to stop relying on what his common sense told him and accept the fantastic.
As far as I was concerned, Jim being a sentinel was just as fantastic, but he didn't see himself as anything but an ordinary guy who'd been stuck with better senses than most people.
Most people couldn't see spirit animals, though, or travel to the spirit plane, or bring their partners back from the dead. Jim tried to ignore most of that, except when he really needed to use those powers.
My thinking about Jim must have been communicated to Incacha.
"Enqueri is strong with his gifts, but it is difficult for him to accept them. You are his shaman, you must keep him open to them."
I grinned. "So I'm Jim's keeper? I can't wait to tell him that." Jim would mock growl softly at me when I told him that and then he'd proceed to let me know that any notions I had that I was in charge of him were delusional. Maybe he'd hold me down and make me squirm with desire but not let me touch him, and I'd be his helpless captive while he had his way with me...
A quiet chuckle brought me out of my day-dream and I flushed, realizing that Incacha knew what I'd just been thinking.
"You and Enqueri must learn the steps to the dance that is your lives together. Sometimes he will lead, sometimes you will take charge. Your bond is strong. If you wish to seek the missing ones, you will need that bond to anchor you, or you might become lost also. It is a risk, and one you must think on before deciding to search the spirit world."
"You think I should do it, then? Try and find my father's people?"
Incacha frowned at me. "Apprentice, what do you think my answer should be?"
I made a face. I had known better, but my motor mouth, even in my dream, had gotten me in hot water.
"Teacher, you would tell me that the choice is mine and counsel me to think hard on my decision first, and remind me that I am bonded and to explore how my actions could affect my sentinel."
Incacha looked thoughtfully at me for a time, as the fire crackled and I watched a few stars peep through the branches of the rainforest trees.
"I did not counsel you to stop spilling your seed with Enqueri, after the lost part of yourself was returned to you, and the layqa's soul was rendered harmless. While most abstain during a curing, I believe you and Enqueri are building power together of a different sort. When you lie together, you both must focus your thoughts on the connection, the care you have for each other. You would die for him, he would give his life to save yours. If you decide to enter the spirit world to search for the lost ones, you will need that bond with Enqueri or your soul may never return to your body. Taking this journey will be dangerous, Apprentice. But so is life. A snake might poison you. A sorcerer could attack you, as you learned with the evil sentinel woman."
Sex magic was powerful. Sex was a force that affected your whole body, energy drawn from your very cells and returned in a pleasurable rush of blood and hormones that bathed your brain and body in mood altering and physical changes.
I knew some things about sex magic, in a fairly theoretical way, but I'd never tried to focus my will during sex.
"Incacha, I have much to think about and I need to talk to Enqueri. Thank you, Teacher."
He rose gracefully and walked away from the campfire and I sat and watched the fire burn down to coals until I had thought through what he had told me.
If Jim agreed to be my anchor, then I would take the risk and look for my kinfolk. And I had some ideas of how to handle the ceremony.
Xxx
The foul taste of ayahuasca tea was just a distasteful memory as I walked along a rocky beach, small sea birds with white and pearl gray bodies and black tinged wings flying down from the steep cliffs that bordered the beach.
I heard their high-pitched cry of "Keet, keet, wake, wake" as I scrambled across the rocky shore, stopping to look at the creatures trapped in tidal pools, prisoners until the tide freed them.
My longing to see my kinfolk was beating within me to the rhythm of the waves crashing on the beach. I couldn't have said how I knew, but this place, this coast and most of all the large rocky island I could see, although blurred from distance, was a place sacred to selkies.
The air was chilly, a salt tang on the breeze, and I walked out into the freezing ocean and let the water run over my bare feet. I used my Bar Mitsvah knife to cut my palm. I let my blood form a puddle in my hand, my own personal tidal pool, salt and sacrifice to be dripped, seven drops exactly, into the ocean.
I focused the will Jim and I had built during the sex we'd had earlier, the will that had helped me to come to this place of sea and rock.
I had prepared for the sex magic ceremony by first ingesting the spirit-vine tea laced with Macca, a plant Incacha had taught me was useful for improving sexual vitality. Incacha and I had brewed the tea after I'd woken up and Jim and I had made the decision to do this. Jim had raised an eyebrow when I'd handed him a gourd of Macca, but after a nod from Incacha he swallowed it. His was a very light dose, in deference to how he usually reacted to meds.
Incacha's tea tasted just as bad as it had the first time, and as expected I ended up upchucking in the bushes. Jim helped me, trickling warm water ladled from large gourds over my body. I swished my mouth out, and pleaded with my stomach to settle down. Jim and I went back to our hut and he rubbed my back till I felt the nausea leave and the trip begin.
I had asked Jim to fuck me because I wanted that physical reminder of him with me when I crossed to the spirit world. I had explained that ideally I would be brought to the brink of orgasm and then denied it, over and over, until the experience had exhausted me and I had slid into a kind of trance, held between sleep and consciousness. I would be opened to the spirit plane, especially since the ayahuasca would give me a boost. I'd be focusing my will, the element of magic that allowed change, upon finding my kin.
I'd told Jim to only let me come after I was deeply in that exhausted trance-state, my body vibrating with need so much that I'd be in an overloaded state of being. He'd bring me off and the release of energy would help me to ascend to the spirit plane that I sought.
It had been like hitching a ride on a comet.
My clinical description to Jim had been far removed from the actual experience. Jim had resorted to tying my hands to a hut pole, and I almost made our dwelling collapse around us. Alarmed, Jim had removed part of our wall and the long ends of cloth around my wrists were tied securely to trees.
He drove me out of my mind with lust, until I was begging him for completion, uncaring that everybody in listening distance could hear me.
It had all blurred for me, Jim's body, slick with sweat, on top of mine, touching me, letting me know with his mouth and hands and dick that he loved me. I adored the feel of his oiled fingers opening me up, playing with my prostrate.
I was so helpless with my cravings, my legs over his shoulders, his dick rubbing across my asshole, the sensations leaving me shaking and feeling so empty.
Jim came. Several times, in fact, while denying me the pleasure that caused him to cry out and to bite me, but taking care to not cause any real hurt.
The last time he'd entered me, I had been in such a daze, with colors drifting in front of my eyes and the world becoming hazy, and I heard the far off cry of birds. They weren't the birds of the rainforest. No, these birds had the sound of rocky cliffs in their cries, and far away, so far away, I could hear the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore.
Jim orgasmed, and I could feel the warmth spurting from his body into my own. He withdrew and bent over and kissed me, owning my mouth.
I felt my own orgasm building to incredible heights again and this time he blessedly did not stop it, he thumbed the head of my dick and I climaxed so hard I passed out.
When I came to, I could taste him on my lips as I found myself walking that rocky beach, the birds I'd heard while in my trance swooping and diving as they searched for food.
My attention was re-focused to the here-and-now as a larger wave crashed into me, wetting my jeans to the thighs. I waded further out into the ocean, until the water was past my knees, and I focused my will, my intent to know my heritage, and my longing to see my father's people. I tried once again to shiftbut as before I only felt the pain of severing my soul. I stopped quickly, before the pain rendered me helpless.
Then I dripped seven drops of my blood from my palm into the cold gray waters surrounding me and watched as they stayed bright red, not mixing with the sea water at all. They drifted away from me towards that blur of an island until I couldn't see them any more.
I closed my eyes and waited.
Xxx
I was cold, and my clothes were soaked to the chest from the waves that slapped against me. Still, I kept my eyes shut, hoping, sending prayers out into the universe. I don't know how long I stayed out in the ocean, but I could feel my body shaking.
Becoming hypothermic on the spirit plane? Seriously? I tried the trick that my wolf had showed me, but apparently that only worked for my physical body. The waves started coming in higher and higher, and with each push from the ocean I staggered back a little, towards the shore.
I could take a hint and if the spirit plane didn't want me to be in the ocean, as near as I could to where I sensed the selkies' island homeland, then I'd go and camp out on shore.
I turned around and opened my eyes. I wasn't alone anymore, and I felt a wave of gratitude. Jim was there on the shore, waiting for me.
Xxx
Jim had built a small fire on top of a large flat rock, and I was reminded of the day we'd shared a campfire on another shore and I had made the decision to burn my seal skin. I shivered again, and not from the drenched clothing that was clinging to me. I went to him and he kissed me on the forehead, then unbuttoned my shirt, easing the sleeves down my arms.
"You're cold, Darwin. Let's get these wet clothes off you." He finished stripping me and then gave me the sweater he was wearing, the Irish fisherman one that looked so good on him. It was loose and long on him so when I slipped it over my head it came down to the top of my thighs.
Jim spread out a blanket and sat down near enough to the fire to feel the warmth and tugged at me until I was held within his arms and legs, his body warming me as much as the flames did.
"How did you find your way here, Jim?" I'd been surprised to see him. "Did Incacha send you after me?"
"No. He told me before we started this shindig that this was your mission. Kind of a test, isn't it? A shaman thing?"
I nodded. "So how..."
"You're my guide, Sandburg. You showed me the way, and the taste of the spirit-vine tea from your lips made it easy. I just dialed up my senses and followed your trail. I'm here to watch your back, remember?"
My anchor. Jim had changed so much from the man I'd first met. That man hadn't liked himself very much. Jim had done things he'd regretted, but he'd learned to accept himself. He was happy, and it showed. Shoot, he'd even been patient enough to not get angry with me when I'd been at my prickliest, when I'd been in denial of the feelings of depression and anger that were eating away at me.
I was tired. Disappointed. There were selkies here, on that island, but they didn't want to see me. I wasn't kinfolk to them. Just another bastard child, I guessed. Nobody who had a claim upon them.
Jim tightened his arms around me, and I felt my eyes overflow. The tears rolled slowly down my cheeks and Jim caught them on his thumb. They danced there, taking on a life of their own, and he gently placed them on the rock. They tumbled away, and Jim stared at them as they found their way to the water.
"They're as blue as your eyes, Chief."
"Don't zone, Jim, if you're tracking them in the water. The ocean is full of tears, you know. A few more won't change anything. I guess I've learned what I came here to find out. If there are selkies in the world still, they want nothing to do with me. I'm ready to go home whenever you are, Jim."
Home to Cascade. We'd leave soon, travel the river back to Iquitos. Maybe I'd try to communicate with the pink dolphins. I'd love to find out if the stories of them were true, find out if they were really shape-shifters.
I'd resume my jobs when we returned, and I felt myself looking forward to them. And I was safe now, as were the other potential victims Alex had planned to torment. Incacha had said that Alex would be dead by the time we returned to the great city. She had been dangerous, and Incacha's actions has been justified. I had regretted that such a powerful sentinel had chosen such an evil path in life. Now, I could let go of the hate I had felt for her.
I remembered every minute I'd ever spent as a selkie, and I felt joy at what I had experienced. What was different was that I didn't feel any sorrow when I thought about never transforming again.
"Jim? When you left the Army, was it hard to adjust to being a civilian again?"
"For a while, yeah. I second guessed myself, wondered if I should have stayed in. Some things take time, Blair. I found a new direction to go in, and if I hadn't become a cop, I probably wouldn't have met you. For that alone, I'm glad I left the service. I wouldn't want to return now, although sometimes I think of my team, and yeah, I miss them. Mostly I think about what they would have done in some situation, like knowing that Sarris would have cracked up at some stupid joke, or Johnson would have given his right arm to have a car like one I'd see on the road."
"I'm going to be okay, you know. I'm not going to be like the selkies in the old stories and pine for something I can't have for the rest of my life. I don't regret what I did, and I'd do it again, Jim. But I still want you to teach me to surf, okay? And we can leave. I gave it a shot, and it didn't pan out. I'm not going to try again."
Jim let out a slow whistle. "Chief, I think you're about to have company." He pointed out towards the ocean and I squinted, but I couldn't make out anything."
"What? Jim, what's out there?"
"Looks like seals. Seven or eight of them, and they're swimming fast, just darting through the water. Watch, you'll be able to see them in a minute."
I felt trepidation. Maybe they weren't coming to share their knowledge with me. It was more likely they were coming to warn me off.
I stood up, and Jim packed up the blanket and my wet clothes, stuffing them into a bag.
I could see them now, as they swam around in the shallow waters near the beach, heads and wide eyes above the waves.
They were selkies and I felt their curiosity about me. At least I wasn't sensing hostility.
Jim and I walked closer to the waves running up on the shore.
'Please,'I asked. Mentally, I pleaded for their help, and told them how much I wanted to learn about my father's people. How I had searched for them, and found no recent traces of their existence in my reality.
Seven gray seals rode waves high up onto the beach. The air blurred and three men and four women stood where the seals had been. Two men rolled their skins into a tight bundle and hid them behind a large rock higher up on the beach. Two of the women's had become caps that they wore on their heads, until they untied them and placed their skins on the beach, out of the reach of the waves. The rest of the selkie's skins had been reduced in size until all I could see was a strip of leather that was fastened around their neck or ankle. Just like my own selkie skin had been.
I felt such a longing to go to them, but I heeded what Incacha had told me – I might not return to my body if I became too enthralled with these selkies.
"Jim?" I felt his hand slide into mine.
"Right here with you, Chief. I won't let go."
"Good. Because I'm leaving with you. Don't let me forget that, okay?"
Jim squeezed my hand and we walked down to the water's edge.
They circled us, seven naked, beautiful people with long hair in different colors of black, brown, red, and blond. Some had curly hair like me, but their eyes were all different colors. They didn't speak, but I felt their minds touch mine.
"Jim, are they-"
"Talking to me? Yeah, they are, in the same way you did when you rescued me from the ocean."
I felt confused, trying to respond to all seven of the selkies who were sending thoughts of wary curiosity to me. Finally, a woman stepped closer to me, and the rest of the selkies' voiceless thoughts quieted in my head.
The selkie woman didn't speak in words, but I felt bathed in thoughts of comfort and care. She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me to her and kissed me on the forehead, then raised her hands to my face and looked intently at me.
I felt the concepts of youngest, sadness, and acceptancefrom her, and in return I sent my own thoughts of searching and loss, and the joy I'd felt as a selkie as I swam the ocean. I also showed her my life as a man - my work, the things I enjoyed doing, my mother, and most of all, Jim.
She and I communed for a long time, it seemed, but I always felt Jim's hand in mine.
Finally, she said, "Blair."
Stupidly, I asked, "You can speak to me now?" and then wanted to kick myself. Of course, she could speak to me, she just did. I had theorized that telepathic communication helped a selkie to learn language quickly.
"Yes. You will help me with the words I need, if they do not come to my mind. You are Blair, and I speak for us seven. We saw it was too overwhelming for you for all of us to learn your mind. It has been long, long ago since I last spoke to a human."
A human. Not a selkie, then. "I was once a selkie, like you. I've looked for those like me, but couldn't find any traces of my father's people. Do they still exist in the world? And what is your name?"
"You may call me... grandmother. I am eldest here. And child, we know you were once as we are. You rejected us, burned us from your existence. We held counsel once your blood reached Sanctuary and we learned you wished to speak to us. Most decided that you made your choice and must now live with it, and we would not come to you. Then your tears told us of your sorrow and your love for this one, your watchman. Your tears moved us, child, and so we agreed to come to you this once, as a boon to one who is now lost to us."
There were so many questions I had, I hardly knew where to begin. She smiled at me, and I felt her warmth and compassion. Kindness. Selkies were a kind-hearted folk.
"My father? Is he here, and where is here anyway? I mean, obviously we are on a different plane of existence but why does it look this way?"
"We seven are the eldest now, and this is our refuge. It is a mirror of where selkies can cross into the world of men that you have come from or to other worlds. The seven of us are not alive, not as you know life. We lived long, long ago; when selkies die their souls can choose to come here, to be with the clan. Not all do so, Child of the Open Sea."
Jim started when she called me that. It was a pet name he had for me, although he had rarely said it since I'd burned my seal skin. It was from a kid's book by Kipling, about a courageous seal.
"Is my father here?"
"I do not know. If so, he did not say that you were his child. If he is no longer alive, it is more likely that his soul did not choose to come to Sanctuary. Perhaps he will be re-born. Other human souls, those the sea has claimed, can choose to be selkies if they wish to be re-born, and they take that form here, at our refuge."
Some of the old stories told that selkies had once been humans who had drowned. The folklorist in me was gratified to hear confirmation of those old tales.
"If my father is alive, where can I find him? Can I call him to me, as I did you?"
"I do not know if any selkies still live in your world. Those who have come to Sanctuary speak of the filth that has changed the oceans, the noise that fills the depths of the seas and takes its toil until a selkie is driven away."
God, pollution and the effects of sonar technology. I knew it interfered with whales and other denizens of the ocean. It hadn't really affected me, though.
Grandmother answered my thoughts. "You were new, Blair. It would have hurt you if you had stayed in the ocean much longer. There are doorways to other worlds, and some selkies choose to escape through them. There were never very many of us. The clan is much diminished."
"Where is this place on the earth where doorways to new worlds open?"
"The name has changed over the many long years we have existed. I do not know what it is called now. But, youngest child, those doors are shut to you."
She said it gently, and I felt a dull disappointment. "Because I gave up being a selkie, right?"
"Yes. I am sorry. If we make a child with a human we will come for the child when it is old enough. A child born to selkie parents will live in the ocean easily, but a human-selkie child must wait till it is older before going to the sea. Your father would have taken you, little one, if he had known where to look for you."
"My mother moved us away from the sea, and she hid my new-born seal skin so that I would stay on land. She didn't want to lose me."
"If she had not, you would know your father, but would have lost your mother. A selkie often knows such sorrow, Grandson."
"Where did we come from, Grandmother?"
"I cannot speak of it in words, but open your mind to me again, Youngest, and I will show you, as I was shown."
She took my free hand, and closed her eyes. I did also, and a barrage of images filled my head. A small village by the sea near a rocky coast. The people were fishers, men and women and children, and loved their cold ocean. Pictures of their daily lives unfolded in my mind. They were healthy, and beautiful to look upon, and happy until the night that slavers from a faraway land raided the village. These fierce men had sailed onto their shores in the dead of night and burned the people's simple boats, timed it with surrounding the village, trapping the inhabitants.
All the men and grandmothers were slaughtered, the women and boys raped, babies and toddlers slammed against stone walls to kill them. The survivors, all of an age to make good slaves, were herded down to the ocean. All but the shaman of their clan, who had feigned being dead, each raider supposing another one had killed the old woman.
I saw how the shaman made a great magic upon what had become the death place of so many of her people. She channeled that power and carried it within herself to the sea.
She was too late because the raiders had forced those left alive of her people onto the large, strange boats and had left the shore.
I felt her anguish, saw her climb high up the rocky cliff. She was brimming with power and soon it would tear her apart – humans are not meant to be such vessels – but she prayed to her sea-gods and she felt the power changing her. She called out to her people with her mind and felt them startle as they understood her. She offered them freedom from the slavers, but they would have to trust her. Those who would live free must jump into the cold sea.
She felt their confusion for it seemed as if that would be certain death. She told them wordlessly, with images and feelings, that the magic would ensure they would live.
She bade them to hurry for already the power was destroying her body, a deadly fire creeping through her veins.
With a fierce yell the first woman dove into the sea. The raiders laughed and made to lower a smaller boat to fetch her back, and with gestures promised her punishment when she was captured. She made a few feeble attempts to swim and then went under the waves.
The shaman once again promised to her people that they would live if they went into the water, that they would be safe from the slavers.
Another woman screamed that she would rather die in the sea than be anyone's slave, and jumped overboard. Soon most of the rest did, too.
When all who had followed the shaman's plea were in the ocean, she pointed her arm out to the sea and released the power.
It changed her people. Their forms shifted, and instead of human faces, the slavers saw the wide eyes of seals.
The slavers prayed to their own god and threw the remaining villagers into the sea. They sailed away and never returned to that cove, and the stories spread of the people who could shift into seals.
Those villagers who had stayed on the boat until the raiders threw them into the water did not change into seals. They were rescued by the selkies, and clinging to their clan-folks necks, the selkies swam them and themselves to shore.
When the selkies rode the waves onto the beach, their seal skins slid from their bodies. The shaman was carried down from the cliff, and all could see she was dying.
She told them the magic had marked them, that if they put on their seal skins, then they could return to the sea, in case other raiders came to take them again.
Her dying body still thrummed with power and she told them to find a boat, to put her in it and send her far away out to sea. When she died, the power would leave her and she knew it would make another great magic, and she wanted her people to be safe.
A neighboring village's men came to investigate the fires they had seen while going out at dawn to fish the ocean. The shaman was placed in a boat and they tied the tiller to her hand and fastened down the sail. The wind and sea took her far from the village, out to a rocky island, and with her boat bobbing on the shore, she died.
Her death released the rest of the power and a portal to other worlds and other planes was made upon that rocky island far from the mainland.
All the selkies felt her death, and mourned their savior as well as their dead children, elders, husbands, and brothers.
Grandmother let go of me and stopped the flow of images and feelings. She wiped the tears from my cheeks and touched my hair, then grasped my free hand again.
"Blair, the shaman's magic was born from sacrifice and death. It was a powerful working. Perhaps the shaman did not intend it, but when she willed for her people to shift to seal form, she also bonded them to the sea. All selkies feel the pull and eventually must leave the land. The villagers found this out, as the selkies stayed more and more in the ocean. A neighboring village man courted a selkie and in anger, when she showed more interest in living in the sea than becoming his wife, he hid her skin. She found she must stay with him, and do as he said, for the spell took into account that without their skins safely hid away, a selkie in human form could be taken again a slave. When other men found that this man's selkie must stay with him, no matter her tears and pleas, than they, too, watched to find where a selkie woman would hide her skin when on land."
I remembered my own feelings of being Alex's slave, and saw Grandmother's tears slip down her face, in empathy for me. Jim squeezed my hand, hard, and I sent thoughts to her that I was free now.
"The shaman's magic was built on the blood shed by the raiders. Blood will call to us. The tears of the captured folk, still wet on their faces as they jumped into the sea ,became part of the magic, so tears also call to us. The salt of blood and tears, the salt of the ocean – this is a powerful spell as you have found out for yourself."
She wiped the traces of tears from her face and smiled at me. "We were never many, and we learned to be wary of being trapped. You were taken twice, and I am sorry for the pain you've suffered. Are you sure your watchman was worth the loss of your birthright?"
Jim's hand tightened in mine again and he drew a little closer. "Yes. And Jim didn't mean to trap me. It's hard for people to believe in selkies these days. Anyway, I chose him. I'm glad to have experienced being a selkie, but I made the right decision."
She let go of my hand and instead reached up and cupped Jim's face. "You will take care of our youngest, Watchman?"
"He's my guide and he's my partner and I love him. So, yeah, I will."
"Uh..." Grandmother turned back to me. "Why didn't the shaman use the power to smite those raiders instead of helping the villagers to escape them?"
"Violence was not her way. Selkies do not hurt those who would capture us: we flee instead, if we can."
She took my hand once more. "We must leave soon, but, youngest, dance with us first. The villagers loved music and that trait has also been passed down to their descendents."
She pulled at my hand and I took a step away from Jim. The other selkies began to croon a beautiful tune and to dance, their steps smooth and graceful and their bodies swaying like sea-kelp.
I was passed to one partner after another and each selkie man or woman welcomed me, their earlier hesitation about accepting me gone. I thought that grandmother had given me the thumbs up, and I lost track of time as we danced, the selkies and me. And Jim. Jim never let go of me, but he moved behind me, always keeping my hand in his, his other arm circling my waist.
It began as a whisper in my head from one selkie, and then another, and another, all joining together until seven voices, beautiful and warm and welcoming, were asking me to stay with them.
I sent back mental pictures of me burning my seal skin, let them feel the fire in my soul that had essentially killed me, before Jim had brought me back. I knew I couldn't transform here, I'd already tried it.
All but one voice faded away. Grandmother danced with me and told me, mind to mind, that there was a way, if I desired it. When they put on their seal skins, and went into the ocean, swimming back to Sanctuary, I could follow them. The cold water would exhaust me and I would drown. My physical body would die, and I would resurface from the ocean as a selkie again.
"Stay with us, Blair. You were born to be a selkie, to be part of the clan," Grandmother said, and I knew that Jim had heard her from the sharp inhalation he gave.
I felt a rush of memories from when I'd been free in the ocean, before I'd met Jim, when I was just learning who I really was.
When I'd left Jim for the ocean, sure he didn't love me anymore and afraid of being convicted of being Alex's accomplice and living the rest of my life in jail, I'd wanted to regain those carefree feelings I'd experienced on my short trips into the ocean. That hadn't happened. I had been still tied to him because I found myself unable to travel. I should have been able to swim far away. I didn't want to. And when Jim came to the beach and sent out thoughts of how he loved me and was sorry for hurting me, I found I couldn't leave. I just couldn't. But I couldn't come back to the shore, either, not until he came for me.
With hindsight, I thought my decision to leave Jim had been influenced by my fractured soul, the lost part of myself leaving me more vulnerable to seeing the worst in a situation, and not as able to think things rationally through, and man, I hadn't even consulted with a lawyer about the FBI's supposed case that pointed the finger at me being Alex's accomplice.
Jim dropped a kiss on the back of my neck and I arched back into him.
I was tempted. I was. I doubt that anybody who hasn't experienced life as a selkie would understand how enticing the call of the sea can be.
Jim's hand was in mine, Jim's arm circled my waist, and inside me, there was a pleasant ache where Jim had entered me and shared his body in the most intimate way he could.
I let go of Grandmother's hand. I smiled at her and shook my head.
The dancing slowed until every selkie, my kinfolk, stilled. Each one came and kissed me, some on the lips, some on the forehead, some on the cheek, and then they walked away, picked up their skins and carried them into the ocean.
I watched them swim away. Only grandmother remained.
"You are sure, Grandchild?" I nodded, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Thank you, for changing your mind and coming to talk to me. I'll always treasure your words."
She cupped my cheek, and then looked at Jim for a long moment before stepping back and turning towards the waves. She picked up her skin and ran into the sea.
I saw her blur and transform, then dive out of sight.
"Jim?"
"Yes, Child of the Open Sea?"
"Let's go home, okay? I'm ready."
"All right, Dorothy. What do we do, since we didn't bring our ruby-red slippers?"
I laughed. I felt wrung out, elated, emotional, and a curious mixture of happiness and sorrow, especially for those long ago ancestors of mine. I probably would never meet my father. I'd never look upon his face. I wouldn't let it eat me alive, though. And I wouldn't have wanted to give up my mother.
Choices. They were tough sometimes, but we all had to make them. I'd made the right ones for me. And Jim.
I drew him down and kissed him on the mouth.
"We just say, 'There's no place like home,' Jim."
We did. The rocky coast faded away, the sound of the ocean quieted and the sea birds cries changed into those of jungle birds. It was that easy.
I looked into Jim's hazy eyes, as we lay on our jungle bed, and I kissed him again.
"You know, it really is pretty simple.:
Jim gave a lazy grunt and rolled me on top of him. "What's simple?"
"When I'm with you, I'm home."
"Ditto, Darwin."
The End.
