Salt on Stolen Skin

Woman

He watches me.

Firelight flickers off his squinting blue eyes that track my every move. An inescapable glance I once mistook for adoration. Now I see it for what it is—lust and possession.

I aim an empty smile at him before returning my gaze to my hands busily knitting the tiny pink blanket I have no plans to finish. If only I could cast it into the fire. But no, I must be cautious.

“Fetch me my pipe, woman,” he bellows.

Training my face into a mask of blank submission, I heave myself from the chair and totter to the sideboard. Swollen belly and swollen ankles further reminders that no part of this body is my own.

He watches me like he knows.

His distrust has only worsened since the bay froze over, pinning his boat to the shore and him close to home. I can’t let on that, today, he finally has good reason to suspect me.

“We visited Grandmama’s grave in town today,” our son says as I collapse back into my chair.

“Is that so?” My husband’s eyes narrow, searching my face. I am careful to meet his gaze with innocence.

While our son recounts the day’s trip down the mountain, I retire to the safety of my thoughts.

I’d heard a woman’s sense of smell increases when she is with child. I suppose it’s true because today, standing beside the old woman’s tombstone, it called to me—salt on stolen skin. After seven years of searching, of yearning, of pleading for him to return it to me… my hope lies buried with the bitter woman who helped break me.

I can’t let on that I know where he’s hidden it, can’t risk him moving it again now that I’ve finally found it. Of course he entrusted it to his mother. Even in death she conspires to keep me subjugated.

He watches me like he knows our daughter will be like me.

The girl-child I carry will not be born in this land of thieves. He is a fool if he thinks a pregnant belly and a rotting corpse will stop me from ensuring her future.

***

I’d followed his boat for hours, close enough I could watch him without being seen—the handsome fisherman with a kind smile. He was nothing like the men my sisters warned me about.

Sunlight glinted off the water, caressing his face, striking eyes the turbulent grey-blue of a storm through the waves… A gull perched on his calloused hands, sharing his crust of bread… Gentle waves guided his boat to abundant shoals…

Clearly, the sea favored him. I was naive enough to think that meant something.

---

Wife

“Help me off with my boots, woman.”

He sits on my side of the bed and smirks, offering no help as I struggle to lower myself to the floor. I play up the difficulty, hoping for one last bit of compassion from him, but I receive none. He merely wiggles his impatient feet while I tumble onto my hip.

If I had my old strength, I could crush him right now. Instead, I’ve had to resort to subtler means.

He talks while I fumble with the laces. “I don’t want you leavin’ this house no more. If you need somethin’ from town, you let me know. I didn’t make you my wife so you could have a holiday flitting around town.” His voice fades to a low grumble. “Can’t have you tryin’ ta sneak off to the sea again.”

I look up and meet his gaze.

His eyes are as sharp as his words. No sign that the poison I placed on the mouthpiece of his pipe is taking hold. Did I use too little? Does it always take this long to have an effect? I’ve been wrong before and paid the price. My fingers trace the twin streaks of puckered skin on my arm where his mother punished me for my last attempt at escape. But I had my revenge on her, just as I’ll have my revenge on her son.

This time I was far more careful. I used a secret recipe my sisters once taught me. A secret I carried with me from the sea. One of the few secrets I have left.

While I am lost in thought, for no reason at all, he kicks me in the shoulder, sending me flat onto my back.

“You may think you’re clever, but you’ll never outssshmart me.”

There it is.

That tiniest slur tells me the poison is working. I hold my breath until my lungs ache to keep myself from releasing the slightest sigh of relief.

Eventually, I get up, crawl into bed to lie beside him. For hours I listen to the wind lashing snow and ice against the house, whistling through the gaps in the boards. Waiting.

***

I waited until the other sailors headed home before climbing out of the water, carelessly shedding layers until I stood exposed and expectant on the shore. I longed for him to see me—moon-pale and beautiful. Like him. Worthy of love. Vulnerable.

And he did see me.

Soon, our warm bodies joined, pressed against the cool sand. Before the rays of dawn crested the horizon, I covered myself and returned to the sea.

---

Mother

I tiptoe to the door before stepping into my husband’s boots and wrapping myself in blankets and furs. I curse my own fragility and the need to wear the skin of other animals for my own survival. Then I slip out of the dark, sleeping house.

The distant sea, roiling beyond the callous town and its frozen shoreline, calls me home. I grab the shovel resting against the weathered boards of the shed and begin my trek down the mountainside.

A final glance back, just one, at the house that was never my home. A curtain flutters. My son has witnessed my flight and runs to warn his father. I can only hope the poison keeps him locked in sleep long enough for me to find what I need.

I am not surprised by my son’s actions. Of course he has betrayed me. I’d expect nothing less from the boy-child I birthed only a year after my husband claimed me, back when I was young and too reckless to heed my sisters’ warnings. Like his father, my son will grow to believe himself ordained to rule over female bodies. Bodies like mine. I am glad I will not have to witness it.

Ice and snow cast themselves against my face, slowing my escape. With each step, I sink knee-deep, puncturing the crust of ice with a loud crunch. When I start to despair that it is too difficult, I cradle my belly in my hands. It is all for her. My daughter will not know the cruelty of men like her father.

A sound rises above the wind’s hum. A scream. The voice all too familiar.

My heart jumps in my chest, fearing for my little girl’s future and my own. The wind carries his outraged howls to me as I reach the obscurity of the fog. The name he gave me drums from his mouth like wet canvas slapping gravel. Ice crystals collect on the furs, burdening me further. But I must hurry. He knows where I’m headed.

If I can just reach the ice fog blanketing the valley town below, perhaps I’ll be safe.

The scent guides me down the slope, through the town and to the old woman’s grave. Sometimes I hear my husband’s calls. Sometimes I hear only the sea. I pray to the water in the fog to blind his path, but I can’t trust it will heed my human voice.

Summoning all my rage, I begin to dig. I have lost much over these years, but mercifully I’ve retained some of my strength. The blade slices first through ice and snow, then grass and finally soil until the metal thunks against wood.

After prying back the lid, I lower myself into the dark grave. A familiar musk lingers beneath the stench of decay, guiding me to the wooden chest atop her ribs and I pull it free of her skeletal hands. After struggling out of the hole, I raise the box in the moonlight. Bound by an iron lock.

I am finally free, I think, clutching the box to my heart. All those times I asked—no, pleaded with him to return it to me and he laughed… or worse. But now I—

A metallic crack deafens me. White heat brands my shoulder. He looms, rifle in hand, outrage and thwarted dominion stain his face. I stare into his clear eyes and curse myself. Silly sentimentality stayed my hand with the poison. Worried that our son would be an orphan, I must have used too little to keep him asleep. I should have fed him enough to kill.

Before he can line up a second shot, I plunge into the fog, racing for the bay. Chasing the call of the ocean, I slide out onto the thick ice sheet and keep running. Too slow.

His shuffle-slide steps draw closer. The cold, cruel threat of his rifle bolt notching into place.

His shot goes wide, striking the ice. Glassy slivers dance in the air. He won’t kill me; he wants me to return home, continue to serve his needs. I’d rather he shoots me.

He lurches forward with a sneer. I’m at least fifty yards from the edge of the ice shelf. I’ll never make it. Instead, I dart to where the bullet struck and stomp. The heel of my boot drives a divot into the ice, but it does not shatter, not yet. Again, I stomp. The ice creaks and groans, stopping his advance.

“What kind of woman just leaves her child?” he roars. Once, the droop of his shoulders could’ve convinced me I was wrong. But no longer.

Just as the ice gives way beneath my feet, I fling the blankets and furs from me and stand with moonlight glinting off my female skin, exactly as he found me that night he claimed me from the sea.

“I was never only a woman.”

***

For a week, we met there in the moonlight, on our bit of shore. On the morning after our seventh night, he woke to find me beside him, watching as he slept.

“I wish to stay with you,” I whispered. Then I willingly gifted him the only thing that was still mine to give—my selkie skin.

---

Selkie

The water rejects me in this false form. Just as I once rejected the sea.

The freezing ocean steals the breath from my lungs, and I sink. Though my eyes can’t see well in the murky water, I spy a sharp boulder. I flail clumsily across the sea floor and begin bashing the box against the rock. Finally, the wood gives way, and I shove my fingers into the breach, pulling the box apart in chunks, unbothered by the splinters shredding my flesh.

Grey velvet dances among the splinters, caressed by the gentle current. My fur. My skin.

Kicking his boots from my feet, I wrap my true skin around my shoulders. The change is instantaneous. Although it’s been seven long years, the body remembers. I am home. Protected from the cold, no more awkward flailing, I glide through the water graceful as a silk scarf and I bark with elation. My flipper aches but has already begun to heal. My strength is diminished after so long on land. Even so, I welcome the coiled power veiled beneath my fur.

Vibrations reach my whiskers. Something angry and vulnerable is stumbling on the ice.

Meat.

I will need my strength for what is to come. I swim for the shore. Breaking through the cracked ice beneath its feet, I snatch my prey with my claws and drag it down. The meat-thing squirms and thrashes. The rusty, salty tang of its blood leaking into the depths makes me ravenous. It clasps my face between shivering hands and snares me in its gaze. Above puffed cheeks clinging to a final breath, grey-blue eyes pierce through to something deep within me. I’m reminded of something left behind. The boy, the child of land. He will need someone to look after him.

But it won’t be his father.

This man—who kept me from the water, from my sisters, from myself—will never again touch land. I don’t wait for his final breaths before I begin tearing off piece after piece until I am sated.

I release my grasp and watch as the bones of the man I once thought I loved are carried deeper on the currents.

My daughter dances in my belly, reminding me of my duty. We begin the long swim for the remote rock where I was born. She will be one of us now, born amongst my sisters. Amongst her sisters.