Page 88 of The Unkindest Tide

Magic gathered in the corners of the room, gently at first, like a wave lapping at the shore, and then with more and more strength, until it was everywhere, until we were drowning in it. I leaned against Tybalt and struggled to keep breathing as the magic chased the air from the room. The Luidaeg and Pete bent over the skin, their movements silent and precise and nowhere near as fascinating as the magic they were generating. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

The Luidaeg’s magic was familiar to me, more familiar than it had any right to be. It smelled of brackish water, of the point where sea meets shore, where freshwater blends with salt. It smelled like peat and moss and loam, like blooming bog myrtle and sweet bluebell. Its complexity was dizzying, and enough to remind me that Faerie gets simpler with every generation. Most of us only have two elements to our magic. She had an entire world.

Pete’s magic was softer, gentler and crueler at the same time, because it wasn’t a cudgel, wasn’t a hammer: it was a knife slipped between the ribs and into a lung, it was a blade in the dark that cut and cut and never stopped slicing. It smelled like clean sea air immediately before a storm, wind and wave and ozone and impending doom. It smelled like driftwood, bleached bone-dry on the shore, and like sand bathed in moonlight, like ambergris and mist. Half those things shouldn’t have been scents, but I knew them all the same, and as I breathed, they blended with the Luidaeg’s magic, tying complicated knots all around the room.

The Luidaeg moaned when she made the first cut in her grandson’s skin. It was the sound of something dying. Pete hummed in wordless encouragement, and it was the sound of that same thing rising from the depths of the sea, coming back to life, coming home. I opened my eyes again. It was the only way to keep myself from being overwhelmed.

I could have stayed there forever, bathed in the painful radiance of their magic. I could have turned and run and never looked back. In the end, I needed to do neither of those things. In the end, the Luidaeg dropped her knife and put her hands over her face. Pete stepped back.

Five sealskins lay on the table, each shining, perfect, and as large as the original. They weren’t quite identical; their spots and striations had apparently spread out from the piece of Beathan’s skin that had been used to make them, creating five subtle but genuine variations.

“Come on, Annie,” said Pete gently. “Let’s go see if these work.”

The Luidaeg nodded, and said nothing.

We walked together through the Duchy of Ships. The Luidaeg carried Marcia’s basket, now containing all five skins, against her chest, keeping her eyes fixed on the dim, distant line of the horizon. Nolan and Cassandra met us at the start of the shopping district. The Lordens didn’t. Their ties to the Undersea were too strong: this wasn’t for them to see. This was for the Luidaeg, and the few people she was willing to share it with, and for the Roane, who had been lost for so very long.

It was hard not to wonder whether the Roane had seen this moment. Whether some of them might have wept over the sight of their mother, their grandmother, walking with a basket clutched in her arms, her shoulders bowed by the weight of centuries they hadn’t been able to set aside. The future can always be changed. There’s never once been a prophecy that couldn’t be somehow undermined or averted. Why hadn’t the Roane set their own deaths aside?

What about this moment had been worth losing so very much?

The Selkie clan leaders were waiting when we reached the artificial beach. René stood alongside the others, his hand clasped in Mathias’. I was glad to see that. One way or another, they were going to find a way through this. They had to.

The rest of us slowed our steps, even Pete, until the Luidaeg approached the Selkies alone. She stopped a few feet away from them, the wind whipping her hair around her face, even though it barely ruffled the others. Her eyes were still green. Still so green.

“I promised on the day the Selkies were created that I would see the Roane swimming freely in the seas once more, and I keep my word,” she said.

Joan closed her eyes. Claude clutched his webbed hands into fists. Mathias and René shifted closer together, until there was barely any room between them. Only Liz remained exactly as she was, watching the Luidaeg with the mixture of longing and loathing that always stretched between them.

“But words are malleable,” continued the Luidaeg. “I was reminded of that today. I was reminded that sometimes, justice and mercy can exist in the same breath, in the same shining space.”

Joan opened her eyes.

“René Lefebvre, your sister has stopped her dancing. For that, I am truly sorry. I granted permission to the Selkies to steal from one another out of bitterness. I did not grant permission for a cruel Merrow to slay your sister. It was wrong and unfair.” The Luidaeg held the basket out toward him. “I can’t bring her back to you. But I can let you see what we’ve made of her loss.”

René bit his lip before letting go of Mathias’ hand and stepping unsteadily forward to remove the basket’s lid. He slid his hands into the oil, eyes widening with surprise before he pulled out a sealskin.

“It’s hers,” he said. “But it’s not hers at the same time.”

“The rules have changed,” said the Luidaeg.

René blanched. He didn’t hand the skin back. The Luidaeg didn’t reach for it.

“The tide is flowing out on the Selkies,” she said. “I made a promise, and I’m bound by Titania’s own grace to keep it, whether I want to or not. But I can bend the way it’s kept. Each of you will give me your skin. All the gathered Selkies. Every single one. I know you’re all here; I know none of you could avoid my summons.”

The Selkie clan leaders drew closer together, horrified and afraid. All, again, save for Liz, who didn’t move.

“My sister and I will split it along the seams of the spell that has kept it alive,” continued the Luidaeg. “It will happen today. We’ll make as many new skins as we can. After that, I’m banished for seven years.”

Hope was dawning on the faces of the clan leaders.

But the Luidaeg wasn’t done. “Your skin will be returned to you, as will the new skins we’ve made from the substance of it. They’ll be passed as you see fit, and all but one will be bound to their holders. The Roane return. Tonight, the Roane return. And the Selkies remain: one for each original skin. You’ll have time to settle your affairs. Some of you may still choose to set aside the sea. In seven years, when my exile is ended, we’ll come here one more time, and the final binding will be done.”

“I’m sorry,” said Joan. “I don’t understand. Are you saying we don’t have to be Roane?”

“No. I’m saying I understand it was unfair of me to give you all this time to learn how to be Selkies, and then to be angry when you had forgotten how to be Roane,” said the Luidaeg. “The tide is going out. I can’t catch it, any more than you can. I can’t keep it here. But I can grant you time to make this an easier transition. I can give you gentler waters.”

“When do we start?” asked René.