Page 71 of The Source of Storms

She pulled off her cloak and drew forth a rolled up bundle from it –– a familiar spotted sealskin. She undressed swiftly, stepped to the edge of the rock platform, and paused, her sealskin tucked under one arm. She looked back at me.

“Follow me. And don’t be afraid. I’ll keep you safe.”

Then she stepped off the rock and into the sea. As she did, her body shifted and shimmered, blurring and warping as if water had splashed into my eyes and made me unable to see her clearly. She dipped beneath the waves and then rose again. Her large eyes were entirely black now, peering at me imploringly from an admittedly adorable seal face. I let out an incredulous laugh. Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it was another entirely.

I pulled off my own cloak and shivered in the wind. Although the rain had ceased, it was nowhere near warm. But I disrobed and piled my clothes with hers. My feet were already freezing as I stood on the edge of the rock, looking into the depths beneath her. I was afraid of them, afraid of what was down there. My body was nowhere near as adapted for this as hers.

And yet these dark, mysterious depthswerefamiliar to me. I’d seen them inside myself every day for months. I’d explored them in my mind, seated in quiet inner contemplation. There was nothing in this ocean that was not also in me. I may not be who I thought I was. This world may not be what I was told it was. But there was nothing down there that I could not survive. There was no monster in those shadows I could not face. No entanglement I could not outwit.

I took a deep breath and stepped off the edge.

The cold hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. My skull ached, my heart pounded, and I thrashed for the surface just as I inhaled a huge, involuntary gasp. Frigid water squeezed in on my body like a predatory snake as I struggled to catch my breath. I closed my eyes and willed myself to regulate my breathing. Steady breath in, steady breath out.

As I struggled to control myself, my mother watched me, her seal countenance unreadable. She slipped beneath the waves and began to circle me. Spiraling down below my flailing legs, she continued to swim in a tight circle, exhaling. Bubbles wiggled up to the surface, tickling my skin as they rose, andI felt myself warming. Not a perfect warmth, but death by hypothermia was no longer imminent. She rose up beside me, slipping under one of my arms while I was treading water so it rested around her. She looked at me and I tightened my grip, pulling myself in close to her. Then she dove.

I had just enough time to pull in a deep breath before I was dragged beneath the waves. I kept my grip, letting her pull me down. I realized I couldn’t feel the weight of the water above me. There was no pain in my ears, no pressure in my sinuses. I couldn’t feel the cold either. Opening my eyes, I could see through gloom and silt suspended by waves. A forest of kelp, reaching from the dark depths to the surface, loomed further out. Jumbled rocks formed shadowy shapes beneath us. I could see well, and my lungs were not yet screaming for air as I expected.

Before we reached the kelp forest, we stopped. I released my hold around my seal-mother and drifted in the water. Shafts of sunlight shone through the surface above, scattering on waves and dancing in an alternating display of sun and shadow, light and dark. We watched the light dance, and I realized it was beginning to form patterns. I saw the outline of figures painted in blue, green, and turquoise rays, in slate-blue shadows. They became more defined, details dancing to life on their shimmering forms.

One was a woman, recognizable as my mother, long pale hair painted bright teal by the ocean light and short pointed ears that peaked out between braids. She swam about first as a seal, then shimmered into human form standing on a rocky shore. A man appeared and walked toward her. Tall, broad-shouldered, hair and clothing shown with deep shale-blue shadows. He had long, pointed ears sweeping back from his head, and piercing green eyes in a handsome face, the stubble of a well-trimmed beardalong his defined jaw. They talked, then separated. She swam away in seal form and he vanished.

But she returned, emerged from the water and stood on the shore where he met her again. They talked, then danced, then kissed. As they spun in their dance, a resplendent, shimmering gown unfurled beneath her, and then they were surrounded by columns, archways, bouquets of flowers. Other dancing couples appeared as shadows around them. They spun to a stop, laughing and talking with other indistinct figures.

Another woman approached, bright and glittering in the waves, agitated and moving quickly. She waved her hands, and my mother broke away from the handsome man, disappearing into the crowd. He reached after her––clearly pained at her leaving, desperate to make her stay––but was reprimanded by the woman, who raised a hand in the air. A large crown appeared in it, spiky and deep-dark in shadow. She tried to place it on the man’s head, but he pushed it away and ran after my mother.

He caught up to her as she walked away, her gait forceful and determined. She whirled on him, hands flying angrily. He shrunk back at first, then grabbed her hands and pulled her to him. They argued, yet closer and closer together they grew, until he swept her into his arms and kissed her. At last they separated, swirling away into mist.

The pattern repeated. The two of them met, danced, kissed, even folded into one another, shadowed behind dark curtains or bed linens. Sometimes in a small home by the shore, other times at grand parties or balls. But always that dark crown appeared. Always it lurked just behind the man, following him, dogging him.

One day my mother came to him, her hands placed gently over her lower belly. He dropped to his knees in front of her and kissed her there. He stood and lifted her in an embrace,spinning her around delightedly as radiant, glimmering sparkles flew from their luminous forms.

But the other woman came again, angry and suspicious. The man hid my mother quickly, cloaking her in shadow, and stepped out to face his pursuer. They argued. She was animated and angry, as she had been before. But he calmed her, and shooed her away. He retrieved my mother and they kissed, but still that crown lurked in the shadows behind him, hovering ever closer.

This pattern repeated too, the two lovers coming together, the third driving them apart and my mother into hiding. My mother’s belly grew with her pregnancy. The man grew more paranoid in each scene, always checking their surroundings, always quick to hide my mother away. And still the crown followed him.

But one day they were not quick enough to hide my mother when the woman approached –– they were lounging in a bed together when she burst in. There was an explosion of shadow around them, and my mother was not quick enough to escape. Dark forms rushed in and seized her. One held a knife to her throat. But the man, my father, dove and grabbed it. The dark form crumpled to the floor and vanished. He did the same to the rest, then stood between the two women, positioned protectively in front of my mother. The other woman pointed angrily at the crown hovering over the man’s head, and he lashed out at it. But it did not leave.

At last the woman stormed away. The man went to my mother, and they held each other as the scene swirled around them and changed. They stood in front of a dark, yawning archway. Blue and green swirled inside. They held each other close and my mother clutched at the man, begging and crying. He kissed her deeply and held her as he began to cry as well.I felt the tears well in my own eyes, but they melded with sea water and were gone.

The man stepped back, away from my mother, and she stepped backward into the swirling doorway––reaching out for him––and vanished. The crown that haunted him finally descended onto his head. He dropped to his knees, hands over his face, and sobbed.

The scene swirled away in refracting light and another appeared in its place. A seal, swimming alone along a rocky shore. It emerged onto a beach and transformed into a pregnant woman. A man approached from down the beach, recognizable as the man who raised me, the man I thought was my father. They talked, and she followed him. They approached a small steading with a cozy house, and when he held open the door for her, she walked inside. He closed the door behind them.

The house vanished into the glassy quicksilver of the underside of the ocean’s surface. We looked at each other for a moment, seal to woman, woman to seal, then swam together for the surface.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

We shivered on the shore, seated on the rock and wrapped in our cloaks. I watched the sun glint off the waves.

“I think I have more questions now than before,” I said, and my mother laughed, a touch of melancholy in it. “So my real father is a fae king?” I asked.

“Archfae,” she said.

“Gods above and below, an Archfae?”

She nodded. “His name is Fenodyr. I used to call him Fen.”

“Why don’t I look like him? More fae?”

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