Selkie

Part Three

When I woke up, I was facing my worst fears: In a cage. My sealskin was gone, and I gasped, staring around for some hint of where I was. The room was dark, and I gulped when I realized just how large it was. I was not alone, either. I could see other cages on either side of me, made of plastic with air-holes in the sides, and a dark, huddled form in one of them. The other was empty, but for a mysterious stain that I didn't want to think about.
"Is person here?" I whispered. When that got no response, I tried again in the selkie language. The hunched body next to me snapped up and turned toward me.
"Sheyshay?" she whispered. I stared at her face: Certainly thinner, and definitely paler and far more haggard than I was used to, but the wide, staring eyes were the same deep shade of violet as mine.
"Mom? Mom! Sheyshayli, sheyshayli, shosharani! Teshseysa da shonanemshinisha--Teshseysa!" I gasped, pressing my hands against the plastic and babbling like crazy about how sorry I was that I had stopped looking.
<My darling... Please, don't cry,> she said, placing her hands on the other side of the plastic, next to mine. <It's not your fault. David is hard to suspect. But I know that you can get out of here.>
<Not without you!> I cried. <I lost you once, and I never will again!>
I heard the door open, and Mom flopped to the ground. I followed her example, slowing my breathing, and listened to footsteps coming closer. I saw David coming by through barely-opened eyes, and did my best not to tense in reflex.
A cage opened at the end of the row, and I heard someone being dragged out. An unfamiliar dialect rang out: "Shishine--Shisho--Shoha shoa! Shoa!" I winced, trembling, as a splash came and the screams got louder and louder and--
An ugly sound like nothing I'd heard before, and the screams cut off. I fervently hoped that the reason I thought why was wrong.
More sounds came, these ones familiar: I'd heard something of the like when Mom and I were skinning a manatee for bedding.
David was taking the selkie's skin.
I sat, pressed against the back of the cage, trembling in horror and pressing my hands over my ears in an attempt to block out the noises.
They must have stopped, or maybe I slept, because at some point later in the endless darkness it was quiet again. I slowly relaxed. It wasn't a good situation, but I had found my mother and she could make everything alright again.
Then the door opened, and everything flew from my head go be replaced with fear.
<Let us go!> I pleaded, banging on the front of the cage. There was no response, but I heard footsteps approaching. An icy thought gripped me: What if he takes me next?
I had plenty of time to think about it. The footsteps were coming closer, but slowly, and stopping at what seemed like every cage along the row.
I had just tensed myself for whatever happened next when the face came into view: not hard and lean, not red-grey haired, but blonde and freckled with a large nose.
"N--you! Eric friend! Please, help!" I gasped, pressing a hand against the wall.
He looked shocked to see me. "You're that girl from the beach."
"Yes! Mom is selkie, I is selkie. Please take away!"
"Selkie? Like that myth?" he frowned, and I nodded, smiling hopefully.
"Yes. Mom, I is selkie.  Please help."
"Okay, Eric's dad is all kinds of messed up..." Eric's friend groaned. "Let's get you out of here." He opened all the cages and let us out.
There was a rush toward the doors, but as the selkies at the front reached the doors, David opened them.
I staggered back, fear the only thing I could think of when I saw the look on his face. Eric's friend ran out, and David focused on me.
"You. You're trying to ruin everything for me... I'll ruin everything for you."
I wasn't sure quite what he meant, but it definitely wasn't good.

---

I sat up and stared around my room. I was on the floor, and my head felt like it had been bashed in with a rock. The book of folk tales was open on my bed, to the last pages of 'Snow White'. The last time I'd read that one was... "Shara," I gasped, sitting up. My head swam, but I staggered to my feet anyway. Something had happened, something bad, but I wasn't sure what...  I looked around and saw that the sun was resting on the horizon.
"Hey, Eric? Want some dinner?" Mom asked, knocking on my door. "Can you go get your dad, too?"
"Sure," I replied numbly. "One sec." I opened the door and was halfway down the stairs when the scream rang out.
"Sheyshayli!"
"Shara," I gasped, and pelted down the stairs. "Shara! Where are you?" I called as I reached the porch, my mother's surprised face a blur as I shot past the kitchen.
"Na tam tetesh! Na, sheyshayli!" she was wailing, sobbing, and I ran toward the source--the old barn Dad used for gutting fish. "Na, na, David, nasho sheyshayli!"
"Shara!" I yelled, pulling the door open. I saw a room full of cages and Shara banging on the door of one of them. A woman who looked like an older, lankier, more haggard version of her was being pulled out of a cage and toward a table with leather straps and a buzzsaw poised above it. Shara turned a tear-streaked face to the door, the woman tried to wrench her arm away, and my dad turned around.
"Eric," he said, as if I'd just come in and seen him gutting fish. "Time you learned about the family business."
"Killing people?" I snapped, stalking forward. "What kind of family business is that?"
"They're not people. They're animals, that just look like humans," he said, and I had to take a deep breath to keep myself from attacking him right there.
"Let her go," I demanded. "Let her go, or I swear I'll--I'll--"
"Oh, come on, Eric, you won't hurt me," he laughed. "Besides, I'm not breaking any laws. What I'm doing is perfectly legal."
"It's not about if it's legal. A lot of things should be crimes that aren't," I said. "Last chance, Dad." I was bluffing like an addict on the Vegas strip, and all I could do was pray he didn't figure it out.
He evidently did, because he strapped the struggling selkie down onto the table, and she started to scream. I looked around frantically for some kind of weapon, and found nothing. Nothing until I looked at the cages, and remembered how sharp the teeth I'd seen in Shara's mouth were. I ran along the line of cages, sliding back every latch, and Dad turned to yell--but by then Shara was already out, and leading the charge.
"Shoninasheinme tuseirshu!" she yelled, which must have been some kind of rebellious statement, because the rest of the selkies followed her. She gave terse orders, and ran to the woman's side, unbuckling the restraints and pulling her away. I looked around frantically again, ignoring my dad's yelling, and saw a rack of seal skins.
"Hey, do these belong to any of you?" I asked, holding the bundle out, and maybe half of the selkies abandoned the charge. Shara's mother, or at least that's what I assumed she was, pulled a little girl with grey hair and wild green eyes away from him to go pick up a depressingly small grey skin.
The selkies took their skins, at least those with skins there. Two still didn't have them: Shara's mother, and Shara herself.
"He said he sold them, sheyshayli," Shara said, hugging her mother. "What if he sold ours?"
"Have faith, sheyshayti," she smiled down at her, stroking her hair. "We'll be okay. But, in the meantime, do you suppose you have any clothes for us?" This last was addressed to me, and I was sure I turned a brilliant scarlet.
"Oh, yeah--I don't know how I'm going to get this past my mom," I groaned. "I'll be right back."
I managed to scavenge some clothes from my sister's wardrobe--she had left some stuff at home when she went off to college, and I could only hope it would fit them. Shara was short and curvy, and her mother tall and thin, but they both still needed clothes, even ill-fitting ones.
"What is going on, Eric? I asked you to get your dad almost an hour ago!" Mom demanded, stepping in my way. She noticed the bundle in my arms before I could explain. "What are you doing with Emily's clothes?"
"I do not have the time, Mom, just please, trust me. I'll explain later," I tried to make her understand. It didn't work, but she let me run past her.
"You get five minutes to explain all of this to me, young man, and it had better make sense!" she yelled after me. "With your father!" I winced and pretended not to hear the last part.
"Hey, I got you clothes," I grinned once I was inside the barn. Most of the selkies had left, probably to try to find a way back to their homes. It seemed like only Shara and her mother were from our area.
"Thank you, Eric," Shara smiled, taking the small bundle I held out to her. Her mother took hers, looking carefully between the folds of the dress, and cautiously slipped it on without a warning. I closed my eyes in reflex, suddenly realizing that both Shara and her mom had been naked this entire time. I guess panic can do a lot to a guy.
"Ee!" I heard Shara squealing, and turned around. She was wearing the white, flowy dress I'd found in the back of Emily's closet, and it twirled when she spun. Her face looked so happy that I almost forgot she was put in a cage and forced to see her mother almost murdered in front of her.
"I trust not Eric," the woman herself said haltingly, and I nodded.
"I wouldn't either, if I were you." It was pretty suspicious, especially from the point of view of someone who had been locked up for eight years. I was the son of the man who'd done that to her, after all. It still stung a little, though. I wasn't like my dad, and I never would be.
"Thank you!" Shara cried, throwing her arms around my shoulders in a hug. It took a second, but I returned the hug despite a glare from her mother and the worry that Shara should definitely be more traumatized by something like that. It wasn't like I wanted her to be, and selkie brains were probably at least a little different from human ones, but still...
"I can't believe that he did that," I sighed. "I thought he was my dad..."
"Eric!" Mom said, slamming open the door. She took in the scene: Her son being hugged by a strange girl wearing her daughter's shirt, a woman glaring at the both of them and also wearing her daughter's clothes, and the barn lit up and open, displaying plastic cages and a meat-cutting table. "Five minutes," she snapped, and led us all in to sit at the kitchen table.
I finished my tale, half exposition and half hurried explanation of what Dad was doing, with three seconds to spare. Mom was careful about her time.
"So you're telling me that I was married to a man who spent his life exploiting fairy tales."
"We're not fairy tales!" Shara snapped. "We're real! If your husband didn't take our skins, we'd show you."
"Yes, convenient, that," Mom raised an eyebrow.
"You're siding with him, Mom?" I demanded. " Do you need to see that barn again?"
"No, but this girl is obviously traumatized! Thinking she's a mythical creature is just her way of coping!" At Mom's words, Shara stood up suddenly and took a deep breath, closing her violet eyes. She took another one, and starting screaming in agony as she collapsed to the floor. It was like what had been happening in my room, right before Dad hit me.
"Shara!" I yelled, dropping out of my chair next to her, but her mom actually looked relieved.
"She know how. Shosharasheyshayti," she sighed, smiling with an air of pride.
I held Shara's head in my hands, and I could feel bones shifting slightly. I wanted to drop her, terrified she was dying in some new and horrible way, but before my eyes she began to change. Her face lengthened slightly, her neck widened, and her limbs shifted from arms and legs to flippers and a tail. Her long, shining hair melted into a soft, shining pelt--I realized with a shock that I had seen this transformation before, at the cave. Only this time she had no sealskin, and no seawater. I couldn't help smiling back when her seal face, almost the same as her human one, smiled up at me.
<You didn't need to worry,> she said, and something else, but I didn't catch it. Then she said, <Believe me now?> and stared pointedly at my mom.
"She wants to know if you believe her, I think," I said, and Mom nodded wordlessly.
"I'll--I'll call the police, or something--"
"I don't think they're likely to believe you, but go ahead and try. If there's anyone else doing something like this, I want to stop them as soon as possible," I said, and Shara nodded next to me.
"You is not bad," Shara's mom nodded in approval.
"Eric is good!" Shara said, and Mom smiled.
"He certainly is. I'm proud of you, son."