Atlas and Alice, Issue 16
Kathryn Kulpa
What the Selkies Know It’s easy enough to become human if you really want to. The mermaids are so dramatic about it, tongues lopped off in terrible sacrifice, filling the ocean with their blood, their silent tears. Dry air rasping through their lungs like fire. The agonies they bear, these martyred fish-wives. But changing skin isn’t painful, no more than shrugging off a silk-lined cloak. Knowing when to leave and how to find your way back to where you belong: that’s the art of being a land wife. We selkies have rules, and the rules help. Never let a land man find your true skin is the first rule. One that goes without saying, for then he would master you and bind you to the land forever. Tradition says to bury your true skin under a willow, at midnight, beneath a gibbous moon, but really any safe spot will do, as long as humans aren’t likely to build a house on it. They do love to build houses on things. Keep your water-stone with you always and you’ll never forget the way home: that’s the second rule. I set my water-stone into a golden ring and wore it on my right hand, so I’d never forget. It was a keepsake from my mother, I told my land husband. Of course I had to tell him that, or he’d never stop searching for evidence of lovers. He never stopped searching anyway. These humans and their fearful, jealous hearts. They sense we aren’t prizes they can keep for long, and how that makes them cling! The mermaids enjoy the novelty of it, for a while. A man who won’t just fertilize a purse of eggs and swim away! A man who’ll stay, and stay, and stay… You want to strike out that final “stay,” don’t you? I know I do. Fidelity is novel for us, and what’s novel is fascinating, until it becomes a cage.
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