The Edge of the Water

  The finish Ivar was talking about turned out to be in Possession Point. When they got there, it was late afternoon. The shadows from the forest above the point were deep, the trees throwing long caverns of darkness upon the road. A slight breeze was stirring the new spring leaves on the alders and the cottonwoods, presaging a stiffer wind as the night came on.

  Jenn had been trying all along to keep up with what was going on. Becca seemed to be making huge leaps of understanding everywhere, this whole business of Nera wanting that sealskin being one of them. Why a seal might want another seal’s skin didn’t make sense to her. She kept tossing this around in her head. Finally, Becca turned to her.

  She said, as if reading Jenn’s confusion, “It’s about that oil slick. When was it, Jenn? What time of year? I bet anything it was the exact same time of year that Nera always shows up.”

  Ivar glanced at Becca. He looked from her to Jenn. His expression said that Becca was right.

  “She must have seen everything from the water that night,” Becca murmured. “She must have been watching.”

  “But Eddie said he didn’t get rid of that skin right away. So what’d she do? Wait to see him lock that skin in a box? Why? It doesn’t even make sense. And I don’t get why you think there was really a baby, too.”

  “I think we’re close to finding out everything,” Becca told her.

  Ivar looked at her and frowned. He seemed worried about how things were going to play out.

  He had good reason, as it happened. When they rumbled down the lane that led to her family’s house, Jenn saw a couple of things at once. Her mom’s island taxi was gone; the family heap was also gone, indicating her dad had taken the boys somewhere; and Chad Pederson’s truck was parked alongside Annie Taylor’s Honda. Once Ivar pulled past these two vehicles, all of them saw at once that Chad and Annie were up on the dock where the boats tied up in order to buy bait.

  Bait was what Annie and Chad had with them, two big buckets of it. They were tossing live herring into the water. And in that water, the sleek black head of Nera moved. Back and forth she swam, as if trying to decide whether she could trust them enough to get to the food. When either Chad or Annie managed to toss a herring close enough to her, she snapped it up. But she seemed wary of them, as well she needed to be. For on the shore at the end of the dock and just a few feet from the water lay a large fishing net. Next to this was a chair that Annie had brought from the trailer. On this was her laptop along with an array of supplies that Jenn couldn’t make out. But she figured that they probably were what she needed to get her samples from the seal. Containers, tubes, and slides for blood, tissue, and whatever else, as long as the seal lived through the terror of being netted and dragged to shore.

  Ivar jerked his truck to a stop and was out of it in an instant, yelling, even before Eddie Beddoe pulled in behind them. “You hold it right there!” he shouted. Out in the water, Nera backed off.

  Annie swung around, crying, “Ivar, stay where you are. We’re not going to hurt her. You’re scaring her!”

  Ivar charged toward the dock. He shouted, “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. That seal’s dangerous. She’s always been dangerous. She’s capable of anything. She’s attacked before and she’ll attack again.”

  “He knows, he knows,” Becca murmured. “He’s known from the first. He’s always known.”

  Jenn said, “Huh?” and turned to her. She saw her fingering the earphone of her hearing device, but she didn’t use it.

  “Ivar,” Becca said to her. “He’s always known about the seal.”

  “Well, duh. He’s been going on about her ever since I was born. So has everyone else.”

  “But not with his reason.”

  Jenn saw that her friend was totally focused on Ivar and she turned to see what was going on. Ivar was on the dock, shouting and waving his arms. Nera had backed off some distance. Annie was crying, “Make him stop, for God’s sake. We almost had her.”

  This turned out to be Chad’s cue, apparently. He charged toward Ivar as Ivar shouted, “Get back! Go on! Scat!” at the seal.

  In response, Nera began to bark. The sound was loud, and it echoed as it hit the bluff. As if in answer, gulls started to caw. And then suddenly Eddie Beddoe was among them as Chad reached Ivar and blocked his route to Annie.

  “You keep that damn animal away from me!” Eddie yelled. “I’ll do what needs to be done, Thorndyke, but you damn well better keep her away.”

  “What’s he gonna—” But Jenn stopped her own words when she saw what he had in his hands. It was the metal box from his boat. Its top was open. She could see the sealskin lying within it.

  But unlike the others, he didn’t approach the dock. Instead he walked to a large driftwood log, one of hundreds that lined the shore. It lay to the far side of the beach at a distance from everyone. As he made his way toward it, Nera began to follow him in the water.

  “Stop him! Chad, stop him!” Annie cried.

  “Don’t you touch that seal!” Ivar yelled at Eddie Beddoe.

  “I look like I want to come anywheres near that thing?” Eddie shouted back.

  “Chad! Please!”

  And Nera barked wildly.

  Chad jumped from the dock and went after Eddie. Jenn and Becca looked at each other, nodded as one, and went after Chad. Ivar came off the dock, crying, “You damn well know what she wants, Eddie. Give her that skin and do it now.”

  As Chad stormed the beach, Annie thundered down the dock. She was shouting, “Take the net, the net!” and Chad turned to grab it.

  This gave everyone the chance they needed. Ivar grabbed Annie as she tried to get past him. Becca and Jenn tackled Chad. Eddie made his way to the driftwood log. He lay the small skin across the top of it.

  Out in the water, Nera watched him do it. She swam back and forth and barked and barked. She looked from the seal skin to Eddie to the people on the beach. And she continued to bark.

  “Let me go!” Annie screamed. “It’ll just take a moment. I won’t hurt her. I swear it.”

  “You never known a thing ’bout what you’re doing,” Ivar growled. “I been trying to tell you, but you got only one thing on your mind.”

  “Baby.” It was a murmur from Becca, which Jenn heard. Between herself and the other girl, Chad had ceased to struggle, but they held him firmly nonetheless. Becca’s face, though, said she was in another place altogether. She murmured again. “There was baby only it was a seal it was always a seal and I don’t know how. Because he’s saying the seal the seal baby out of the seal and what does that mean?”

  “Who’s saying?” Jenn demanded.

  Annie had begun fighting Ivar, shrieking, “This is my career! Let me go! I have the right to—”

  “You got the right to nothing,” Ivar told her. He held her fast. He began to move her away from the water. He shouted to Jenn and Becca, “We got to get them both to the trailer. You hear me, Becks? We got to get inside and close the curtains and we got to stay there.”

  “No!” Annie’s scream was shrill.

  It was so high pitched that it startled Jenn. She lost her grip on Chad. He stormed toward Ivar. Eddie began to run toward Ivar as well. Out in the water the seal barked and barked. Becca murmured, “Eddie. He knows it all, too.”

  To Jenn, the world was going mad.

  And the trailer door opened.

  Cilla came out.

  Cilla’s World

  I have lived for this moment. I did not know this, for until this moment the world has been a frightening place.

  Even now I am sure of nothing, for people are shouting, the water from the passage is slapping at the pebbles upon the shore, and out in the water a seal is barking. This, finally, is what I recognize. It is, finally, something I am sure of. But I don’t know why.

  I am asleep when the chaos begins outside of the trail
er. My strength is all but gone because of my illness, but I know, listening from inside the trailer, that I am intended to see what is happening beyond its insubstantial walls. From seeing, I know that I am meant to understand. And now I realize that, from the instant I found myself alone with the mommy and the daddy gone, every moment has led to this.

  I am Cilla. I am eighteen years old. I am a girl who cannot talk but who can hear. I will do what I am told if people are good to me. This is how it has always been.

  Beyond the walls of the trailer, I see the woman who has cared for me. I see the girl who found me. Not far away, I see a man backing off from a driftwood log as big as an orca, and he possesses a face that I never thought to see again in my life. It’s a face that was buried within my memories, but seeing it now, I begin to recall. I remember his arms as they lifted me. I remember seeing, over his shoulder, the night and the water deep and black.

  And there he is, backing away from the orca driftwood. On that wood he has placed something. It is lumpy and misshapen but it draws me, and so I step out of the trailer and into the evening air.

  The people before me fall back. The woman who has cared for me cries out something, but I hear her only dimly now. An old man with her cries out as well. I look toward them both and then away.

  I walk past them all. I approach the driftwood and what lies upon it.

  FORTY-FOUR

  The black seal in the water swam cautiously in Cilla’s direction. On the beach, no one said a word, although their whispers crashed into the air so loudly that Becca could not distinguish among them. Instead she watched as Cilla reached the driftwood log where Eddie Beddoe had placed the small sealskin. She climbed upon the huge log and lifted the sealskin to her face. A few yards from shore, Nera swam back and forth.

  “She wants to come onto the sand,” Becca said.

  “She damn well can’t,” Ivar replied fiercely. In the surprise of Cilla’s emergence from the trailer, he’d loosened his hold on Annie Taylor. She ran to the dock for the bucket of bait, as if intending once more to lure the black seal to the shore. She flung a few herring toward her, but Nera ignored them. She ignored Chad, too, released from Jenn and Becca’s grip. He was looking from the seal to the girl on the driftwood, even as Nera swam back and forth and watched the girl.

  Cilla buried her face in the sealskin. The skin was as black as the coming night but not, Becca saw, with the long-ago oil that had spilled into Possession Sound. It was black like Nera, and it told the true tale of Nera’s yearly return to Whidbey Island.

  “It was hers,” Becca murmured. “That’s why she kept coming back. It was hers.”

  “The skin? Nera’s?” Jenn asked. “But me and Squat found out . . . That seal doesn’t shed her skin, Becca.”

  “Not hers. Not Nera’s. The skin was the baby’s.”

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  Becca looked at Ivar and concentrated hard. What she caught among everything else was an answer to all the questions she’d had and had asked about Nera. It came as not here not now keep out keep away because they’ll see and when they know . . . and she understood from this that she had been right. All along Ivar Thorndyke had known everything there was to know about the coal black seal.

  Cilla rose. The black sealskin in her hand, she walked to the edge of the water. Nera swam closer. She was in the shallows, at the point where she could no longer submerge.

  Annie began to ease down the beach toward her. This is it . . . this is it. She continued to throw the bait. She said, “Chad? Chad! Will you help?” but Chad didn’t move his eyes off the seal.

  Cilla walked toward the animal. The seal came toward her.

  “No,” Ivar said as the seal came closer. If it happens here and now there’ll be no protecting . . . “No. No!” He took off for Annie while, in the water, the seal looked at Cilla, then at Chad nearby. And then at Annie, who was lightly tossing the herring her way, who had stooped and picked up the fishing net, who had grabbed up a scalpel that glittered in the fading light of the day.

  “No!” Ivar said. . . . no ending like this . . .

  Chad moved at last, blocking Ivar, holding him back. In the water, the seal came closer, Possession Sound barely inches deep on her now.

  Cilla walked toward the animal.

  “Stop her,” Ivar cried.

  “Chad,” Annie said, “hold him where he is.” She set the bait bucket down. She took up the net in both of her hands. She approached the seal as the seal watched Cilla moving toward her.

  “For God’s sake, stop her,” Ivar said. “Becca, Jenn, don’t let her get near!”

  “Let’s go,” Jenn murmured, and she took off for Annie as Becca did the same. But at that moment, Eddie Beddoe strode past them across the sand, from behind the trailer where he’d retreated. He had his rifle.

  “You done enough meddling,” he said to Annie. With his free hand, he grabbed the net, wrested it from her, and threw it to one side. She cried out. He shouldered the rifle and snarled, “You go near that animal, you deal with me. And it won’t be nice for either of us.”

  “Praise God,” Ivar said.

  “God ain’t got nothing to do with this, Ivar,” Eddie said. “An’ you know that ’s well as me. Now back off, the lot of you. Get away. Scat. You first, Miss Scientific Genius. And Mr. America over there? Get your hands off Thorndyke. Anyone going to punch him out, it’s gonna be me. Now you all back away.”

  They had no choice. Four of them knew the rifle wasn’t loaded. But Annie and Chad were not among the four. They moved a distance away from the water and they watched as Nera finally made her way onto the sand. It was twilight, and they saw what happened next as if in the middle of a dream.

  The coal black seal walked out of her skin. It was as simple as that. She emerged as a woman, paler than pale, unclothed to her toes. She had long black hair that fell to her knees, and she carried the sealskin in her hand, as if it were a cape and not what it was, which was the sign of her identity.

  “Oh. My. God,” Jenn murmured. “What the hell is it? Where the hell are we?”

  “A selkie,” Ivar Thorndyke said. “And you’re where you always were, on Whidbey Island.”

  “A what? She’s a what?”

  “A selkie,” he said. “Human and seal at once. Land and sea at once, because of her skin.”

  “You always knew it,” Becca said to him. “And Eddie always knew it, too.”

  • • •

  CILLA AND NERA approached each other. Cilla gave the woman the baby sealskin she held. Nera looked at the skin and then at the girl, and she draped the skin around Cilla’s shoulders. Nera touched Cilla’s face. Cilla touched hers.

  Jenn whispered, “Cilla was the baby! The one Eddie found on the beach that night. That’s her skin, isn’t it? She’s what Nera’s always come back for.”

  Becca heard this but looked at Ivar. Too late sweet woman . . . The words were so clear, and she caught a flash of vision as she heard them, although she didn’t know if the vision came from Ivar or merely from her own imagination. In it, a woman emerged from the water at night, a beautiful woman with long black hair, a woman seen by Ivar from shore.

  “It’s too late,” Ivar said aloud.

  “For what?” Jenn asked.

  “For what they both want.”

  Becca looked at Nera and Cilla in each other’s arms and understood at last. “She’s always just wanted to take care of her little girl,” Becca murmured. It was, after all, what most mothers wanted.

  As they watched, Nera handed Cilla the sealskin she had stepped out of when she’d left the water. For her part, Cilla stepped into the skin as easily as if it had been her own. For a moment on the beach, she was Cilla, the girl who could not speak. Then she became the image of her mother at the edge of the water, and as a seal she re-entered it. Then she was gone.

  The dark
-hired woman watched her go, the baby sealskin clasped to her bosom. Then she herself walked into the water. She dove quickly and deeply to where the water was coldest, where unprotected from its fierce and frigid touch, she would quickly die.

  • • •

  WHEN IT WAS over, those left on the beach were silent. Their thoughts were present and Becca caught them as fragments, but she tried to ignore them because she wanted to have her own whispers for once. She wanted to think about what she’d heard both in conversations and in whispers and about what she’d seen there on the beach.

  What she understood from what had happened was that Eddie Beddoe had seen the transformation of woman-to-seal all those years ago, the night of the oil slick. It was, after all, the only possibility left. Nera and her pup had been caught in the oil, but the baby would not survive if her juvenile skin was not cleaned of the sludge that would poison her. So her mother had brought her to shore, where they’d both transformed. And Eddie had come upon them, a frantic mother trying to save her child the only way she’d known but without anything that she could use to clean the skin of the sludge upon it. He’d shone a light upon her in the darkness and she had fled instinctively from the danger that this light presented. But she’d left the child and he’d grabbed the child up, knowing in an instant that no one other than a fully grown seal would ever come looking for the baby he’d found. He’d seen an opportunity and he’d taken it. But then what? Becca wondered.

  Ivar supplied the answer. He said to Eddie, “Sharla thinks you killed that baby. But you didn’t, did you? You sold her or you traded her, didn’t you? To get that damn boat.”

  “Oh what the hell’s it matter now?” Eddie asked. “Everyone’s got what he wants. ’Cept her, of course.”

  Her was Annie, who stood stunned next to her equipment. It was useless to her now because the only piece of equipment she hadn’t thought to bring from the trailer was the camera that might have proved a story that no one other than the five other people on the beach would ever believe. The woman was gone now, the girl was gone now, and whatever Annie Taylor had wanted from them was gone as well.