Page 66 of The Iron Flower

He pauses just inside the doorway as Diana and I hold our collective breaths.

“Hello, Marina. I’m Gareth Keeler.”

We’ve carefully prepped her for this, and Marina wants to get past her fears, but still, we brace ourselves for her reaction.

Marina looks up from where she sits slumped by the fire, her ocean eyes widening as they meet Gareth’s. Her nostrils give a hard flare and her gills fan out as she slowly rises, bracing herself on my desk chair for balance, seeming both shocked and strangely entranced. Then, to our collective surprise, she lets loose with a stream of earsplitting, impassioned barking that terrifies Ariel’s chickens and sends them aimlessly running about.

Gareth looks at me with confusion, and this seems to frustrate Marina, her brow creasing tight. She tentatively approaches him. When Gareth doesn’t move, she ventures even closer, coming right up to him and pressing her nose into the base of his neck. Gareth remains completely still while Marina inhales deeply, then reaches up to carefully feel along his neck, as if searching for something.

She murmurs something in her flute-like tones, grabs Gareth firmly by the arm and drags him into the washroom. Diana and I exchange a swift, questioning look and follow.

Marina hurls herself into the large tub, splashing all of us with cold water as Gareth comes down on one knee beside her. She reaches up and slides dripping fingers up and down the sides of Gareth’s neck, the frustration in her eyes growing. Gareth watches her intently, completely under Marina’s thrall as she traces his skin over and over with her deft fingertips, a look of wild confusion on her face.

Gareth’s throat bobs as he swallows. “I don’t have gills,” he says gently. “I’m a Gardnerian.”

Marina throws herself under the water, curls around and looks up at Gareth from beneath the water’s surface. “You are one of us.” Her voice is faint, her underwater yell muffled. “Your silver hair is Selkie hair.”

Gareth’s words are halting when they come. “I’m not Selkie. I can’t breathe underwater—”

“You smell like us,” she insists. “Not bad like the others. You are Selkie.”

Gareth grows very quiet, but not in the way of a person receiving outlandish news. More like a person having something they’ve secretly entertained confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“Did your father take a Selkie to mate?” Diana asks Gareth. I realize that if what Marina is saying is true, Gareth’s father had a Selkie lover.

“It can’t be...” I stammer. I know Gareth’s father. His quiet mother. His two sisters. But none of them have silver in their hair, save Gareth.

“It must be so,” Diana says. “He must have Selkie blood.” Her nostrils flare, and she gives us all a significant look. “He smells like a shapeshifter.”

Gareth has stilled, his expression tense and pensive. “There are things I’ve never spoken of,” he tells us hesitantly. “I... I don’t need my sextant to navigate.”

I gape at him. “What,never?”

“I pretend to use it,” he admits. “But I can navigate on instinct. And I don’t ever need a compass. I can’t explain it. It’s like there’s a compass in my head.” He looks to Marina. “And I can hold my breath underwater for a solid hour. Sometimes longer.”

Marina nods, looking at him meaningfully while massaging her gills, as if they pain her.

Gareth looks down at his hands. “No matter how long I’m in the water, my skin never gets wrinkled.” He glances back up at Marina. “And I can predict the weather. I sense the pressure change.” All of a sudden, his tentative approach gives way to a rushed confession. “I want to be in the ocean all the time. When I’m not there, Ilongfor it. Even now, I know exactlywhere the ocean is and how far away. It’s a pull I can’t get out of my mind.” His voice breaks with emotion, like he’s speaking of a lover.

Marina’s eyes fill with compassion. She nods, her mouth trembling. She pushes on her gills and tenses her neck. “Come in,” she says, then takes hold of Gareth’s arms and tugs him gently toward the water.

Gareth resists her pull, surprised. “With you?”

Marina nods, and he gives in, letting her pull him into the wide tub, water sloshing over the edge as both of them sink completely below the water’s surface, crammed in beside each other. Gareth throws his head back, closes his eyes and gives a long, bubbling sigh.

After what seems like a long time, he pushes himself up, breaking through the water’s surface, and Marina follows. Gareth pulls in a long breath as water streams off him, Marina’s slender arm draped around his shoulder. Then Gareth’s face devolves into despair, and he drops his head into his hands.

“Aren’t you cold, Gareth?” I ask him gently. The water is freezing, gooseflesh broken out all over my shivering skin just from being splashed.

Gareth shakes his head against his hands. “I don’t feel the cold. And the water...no matter what temperature it is, it’s always better than the air. But I can’t breathe in it. I can’t live in it.”

“Half-shapeshifter,” Diana murmurs softly, compassion riding out with words.

“Oh, Gareth.” I agonize, my heart going out to my friend—my friend who’s carried this secret alone for all this time. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

“My hair causes me trouble enough. I never wanted to dwell on my other...oddities. And I could always tell it was a wound to my mother.” He raises his head and looks to Marina. Their eyes lock tight in mournful kinship.

Marina reaches up to gently stroke Gareth’s cheek, and his eyes shine with tears. “You are one of us,” Marina says with great effort, barely intelligible. “Even if you cannot come home to the water.”

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