Fathom (16 page)

“Okay, so my mother was a Selkie,” I ventured and he nodded. I didn’t really believe it, but so far this was the only story he was giving me. “So, that means my sister must have been one too?”

Again he nodded.

“I still don’t get why Riley would try to drown me.”

“You’ve lived on land all your life. There’s a ritual you have to go through to become a Selkie—”

“Yeah, it’s called drowning.”

“No.” He turned serious. “I think it’s more like your water baptism. It’s like a form of rebirth. It’s a very holy ceremony, when done properly.”

I drummed my fingers on the counter, trying not to notice how the setting sun colored the room, how it turned his golden hair blood red. “I don’t believe you. She didn’t care whether I lived or died.”

“That’s the way Riley is.”

“So all of you are Selkies, huh? You just wander into town and then one of you decides to almost drown one of the locals.” I stood. “You should all be thrown in jail.”

Caleb moved closer, probably as close as he could get while I was wearing my cross. I saw him stare at it and pause. “I tried to stop her,” he confessed. “When I realized what she was doing, I tried to get there before she was finished. Nobody should turn unless they want to.”

“You got that right.”

I started to wonder whether I would ever have another normal conversation with anyone. First, there was Sean, suspicious about what Caleb and I had been doing when we were alone together; then there was Brianna, giving me information and then denying it; and now here was Caleb, trying to convince me that I was a creature from the Black Lagoon.

“I’m not a Selkie,” I said, but by now I realized that I was only trying to convince myself. “Did anything happen when you and I were alone on the beach?”

He glanced away from me and his cheeks reddened. Apparently Selkies can blush. Who knew?

“I—I put your dress on you. Then Brianna came down with towels and a blanket. We tried to dry you off. After that I carried you up to the car and talked you into turning back.”

I wondered what the switch was that had turned me from one creature to the other, not because I wanted to use it. I wanted to prevent it from happening again.

“But nothing else happened?” I asked.

“No. Like what?”

I sighed, looking for the right words. This conversation was about as bizarre as the one with Sean last night. Talking to boys just wasn’t as easy as it used to be. “Riley told Sean that you and I were—uh—we were kissing. And that she saw us.”

He laughed and at this point, I was totally convinced every guy I knew thought kissing me was like catching cooties. So much for my ego. I raised my eyebrows, waited for clarification.

“She warned me. Said I was going to regret helping you. Apparently this is her way of getting back at me.”

“I don’t really see how this is hurting you. Boys don’t get a bad reputation for doing something like that.”

“You don’t think it would hurt me?” he asked, taking another step closer. I had a feeling that the hawthorn was bothering him, although he pretended like it didn’t. I noticed a fine sheen of sweat forming on his face, a tremor started twitching in his right hand and his breathing seemed labored and difficult. “You were drunk, Kira. What kind of person would I be if I took advantage of you like that? I would never do anything to hurt you. But now you think I might. I’d say Riley did a pretty good job of getting back at me.”

This didn’t really make any sense. He was suddenly acting like he cared about me almost as much as Sean did, but Sean had known me for ten years. Caleb just met me a few days ago.

“So, you’re a pack of Selkies. Why did you come to Crescent Moon Bay?”

Then a sea of flames danced in his eyes and heat filled the room like a canyon fire. A sweet fragrance wafted off of him, made me feel light-headed and I took a step backward, tried to clear my head. It was almost like being hypnotized and I remembered when he had walked across the room at the party, how I had hardly been able to take my eyes off him.

“We came for the Burning,” he answered and even his words carried heat. Flames licked my skin and a deep longing came with it, something I couldn’t ignore. The ocean would quench this heat, and I wanted to push past him, to run down the street to the beach, to jump in the surf.

I suddenly knew that there was one other thing that would quench it. But I refused to even think about it.

“You should leave,” I told him, my voice low and deep.

“I will.” He moved away from me, each step lowering the temperature. “But there was something that I needed to tell you, the reason I came to see you—”

The door to the shop pushed closed then, scraped against the floor and the sound of heavy boots on tile forced me to look. A familiar face, a welcome voice—

“Kira, it’s time to close up shop and come home.”

My father stood between us, as if he were protecting me. His eyes were hooded in shadow and I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but Caleb turned and left without saying another word.

Caleb had come to tell me something and the tone in his voice made it seem very important. But he had left without telling me and I found myself wondering when I would see him again.

Caleb:

All the way back to the house, I kept going over my conversation with Kira. There had been so many things I wanted to tell her, but one in particular burned in my mind. The words felt like a stone on my tongue.

Don’t take off your cross.

Wouldn’t that have been the easiest thing to say? I wouldn’t have had to reveal the legend or her destiny. I wouldn’t have broken any of my Selkie vows. And yet even those words had refused to come out.

Stay away from the cliff.

Maybe that would have been easier. Vague enough that I wouldn’t anger the gods, yet precise enough to prevent the ending I dreaded. Still—knowing Kira—either one of those warnings could have made her even more curious. They’d probably have the opposite effect on her.

I was almost back to the house when I saw all the other Selkies gathered on the beach, twilight silhouettes that grew more recognizable as I drew closer. Mare stood apart from the others, waist-deep in the ocean, staring off into a hazy distance. Her long auburn hair fell loose, spilling around her shoulders and anchoring in the water.

“The rumors of war are growing stronger, like a sickness,” she said. “I can feel them in the currents, in every breath of wind.”

She didn’t seem to notice that the rest of us waited on the shore, listening to her. Riley glanced at me as I joined the group, some unknown torment hidden in her eyes. I couldn’t help looking at the tattoos on her arm again and noting that many of them were symbols used only by our enemies, the Na Fir Ghorm. I had a feeling that she knew more about this approaching battle than she would admit.

“We should leave. The Elders are calling us,” Mare said, her voice drifting over the lapping waves. She stood with her back to us, absorbed in the gift of the Burning, the revelation of her special talent—that of seer. It’s possible she wouldn’t even remember what she had said in a few minutes.

“She’s right,” Patrick said, stepping forward with a boldness I hadn’t seen him display before now. “If there’s war on the horizon, they’ll be needing us back home.”

“Our future lies in the Burning,” Riley told him, a vehemence in her words that was hard to deny. “Our race will die if we don’t breed. Life is
always
more important than war.”

Sorcha and Dylan nodded their heads, agreeing with Riley.

Until this moment both Lynn and I had remained silent. She watched me with eyes the color of summer sky, her blonde hair recently shorn in mourning. It spiked in wild chunks about her pale face, giving her an eerie look, like she was some exotic flower. I had been waiting to learn what her gift would be, but without Ethan at her side the Burning had subsided. It was possible she might never fully mature now.

She might spend the rest of her life as a wraith, slender and pale, ever the servant of others.

“I’m willing and ready to fight,” Lynn said then, her words surprising me. “I can handle a harpoon and a spear as well as any man.”

I thought of my father, preparing his men for battle. I longed to fight at his side, but I knew it wasn’t time for me to leave yet. Some unknown desire had been borne in my heart last night as I crouched in Kira’s yard, knowing that she had no familiar to protect her.

“I’m ready to fight too,” I said, taking Lynn by the hand, hoping that my strength would flow into her. “But I’m not ready to leave Crescent Moon Bay. We came here for a mission and it’s not over.”

Riley smiled at me, as if glad for my vote of approval. She lifted her chin high.

“That makes four votes in favor of staying,” she said, making the decision for us all. “We’ll remain here until the Burning subsides.”

Kira:

Monday morning—time for my scheduled trip to the Underworld, otherwise known as high school. I had somehow survived the weekend, the lectures, the chores and why in the world hadn’t anyone ever told me how awful a hang-over could be? Made a note to myself to never drink again. Grabbed my knapsack and my lunch and turned to head out of my room when I almost ran into Gram.

Her morning scowl looked deeper than usual. I ran over a mental check list, trying to figure out if I’d inadvertently broken one of her cardinal rules recently. Couldn’t think of anything—although I’d broken nearly every rule in the universe on Friday. Got drunk, got arrested, turned into a Selkie. The only thing I could have done worse was come home with a tattoo, although those words written in sharpie still hadn’t washed off my arm.

Right now she blocked my doorway. She held two of Dad’s shirts in her hand like she was helping him decide what to wear. Then her scowl darkened even more.

“Don’t forget you have a meeting with your English teacher today at three fifteen,” she said.

My heart thudded loud enough for the neighbors to hear. I nodded. I wished I could have forgotten about it, but in reality it had kept me up half the night. I’d gotten up at about four in the morning, unable to sleep and started cleaning my room—something I rarely did. Right now, all my shoes were put away and all my clothes were hung up.

Gram glanced into my room, scanned it and made an assessment.

“Don’t worry about it, Kira,” she said then, all the hard angles in her face softening. There was an awkward pause before she continued, “Remember, you can talk to me, child. About anything. If your mother was here, well, she’d probably be the one you would talk to—about all of this.”

Was she talking about boys or school or something else?

“Promise me that you’ll let me know if there’s ever any—problem.” She raised her eyebrows. “You hear me?”

“Yes. I will.”

Suddenly, without meaning to, I wrapped my arms around her neck, once again realizing how small she was. We stood like that for a long time, my eyes brimming with tears that I didn’t want her to see. Finally I bent down and kissed her cheek.

Then I pulled away and headed out to face the world.

Hoping that none of the kids from school had noticed me at that party on Friday night.

Kira:

Nothing could have prepared me for what waited at school. At first glance, everything looked normal. Throngs of people milled about, chatting and doing their best to avoid walking inside the building until absolutely necessary. Then, the moment my right foot touched the stairs, every student turned and looked at me. Almost as if they had felt a tremor when I drew near. A moment passed, then the girls did their best to ignore me—nothing really unusual about that. But the guys, that’s what was really freaky.

They smiled. Every single one of them. One guy, I think he might have been at the party, nodded at me. Another guy actually held the door open long enough for me to squeeze in behind him. And all the others continued to watch me with a curious gaze.

Since when did this pack of small-town losers realize I wasn’t a leper?

I walked through the front door, immediately engulfed in that pre-morning madness where everybody skitters around, fumbling through lockers, dropping papers, joking about what they had done over the weekend.

And every time I passed a guy, his eyes would follow me, sometimes with a half smile, sometimes with another look that I couldn’t quite identify. When I pushed my way through a huddle of upper classmen, two of them actually said, “Hey, Kira.”

As usual, the Paper Dolls were whispering too. The sun would have to explode to stop them. But now it was stuff like:

“Did you hear what happened at the party?”

“The two cutest guys there were hanging all over her—”

“I still don’t think she’s pretty.”

I paused in the hallway and glanced over my shoulder at the gossiping group of under-dressed, over-lip-glossed girls and they all stopped talking. Apparently, they still weren’t quite as brave without their leader, Lucy. The group dissolved while I stared at them, heads turned away from me, each of them slipping into the crowd like shadows.

This place was giving me the creeps. I hadn’t seen either Sean or Brianna yet, which was strange. Usually if we all went somewhere together, like the mall or the movies, we couldn’t wait to see each other at school the next day and talk about it again. I hated to admit it, but it was possible that they were both here and avoiding me.

Everything was turned upside down. The people who usually avoided me were being almost friendly. But my friends were nowhere to be seen.

I stopped by Sean’s locker and leaned against the wall. He had to be running late today. Normally he hung out by his locker, waiting for me. Just then, the crowd thinned and I saw him jogging in my direction, his head down. He didn’t look up until we almost collided. He skidded to a sloppy stop, slammed his arm against a bank of lockers to avoid hitting me.