Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

Steal Away

by

D. H. Parker

"Did you know some seals are humans under enchantment?" David MacLachlan rested gangly elbows on the black iron railing as he peered at the newest addition to the pool. "The Selkie, they call them. The People of the Sea."

His older companion, dressed like David in the navy slacks and blue shirt of the zoo's security uniform, grinned. "Enchanted humans, huh? Whoever named you 'Dreaming Davie' sure got it right."

David grinned back. "I could be called worse."

"I reckon, but sooner or later you'll have to grow up and live in the real world."

"Who wants to live in a world where people call crime and tragedy and obscenity 'real' and relegate goodness and faith, and happy endings, to fairy tale status."

"That's the way things are."

"Then things are warped, Mr. Snider. I'll stick to dreaming."

Snider was no philosopher. He rolled his eyes and changed the subject. "How about that new seal?"

David gladly let the conversation revert. "She's an Atlantic grey, isn't she?"

"That's what Doc says."

"Look at her eyes. It's almost easy to believe there's a beautiful lady inside that skin."

"Looks like an overgrown slug to me. How can you see anything human in that?"

"How can you not? She's crying like a lost human child."

Snider sighed. "If you'd touch earth once in a while, you'd know it's only keeping its eyeballs moist. It's not really crying."

David knew the scientific explanation. "Where'd Hugo get her?"

"It tangled with some fisherman's net, and the fisherman had to have a conscience. Instead of finishing the animal off, he called us. Doc had it air-lifted out here and fixed it up. Hugo didn't have any Atlantic greys, so he decided to keep it."

David frowned. "Her, not it. He can't keep her. She needs her freedom."

"Freedom! It-- she's got it made here. No killer whales, no nets, all the fish she wants to eat."

"But no freedom. It must be like prison to her."

"She's a dumb animal, son. What does she know about freedom?"

The seal, who was hauled up on one of the artificial rocks in the pool, lifted her head and gazed directly into David's eyes.

Her expression kicked the breath right out of him. She did know. She knew all there was to know about freedom. And about the loss of it.

Refilling his lungs with some difficulty, David shot a quick glance at the man beside him. Snider's eyes had drifted to a group of raucous teens. He couldn't see beyond his own definition of reality.

David felt a spark of near envy. He almost wished he could blind himself like Snider had. Why should he have to witness the seal's pain? Why should she expect him to help? "She's sick," he muttered, shocked at his certain knowledge of her expectation.

"What you need is a nice girl friend to take your mind off fairy tales," Snider said kindly.

David groaned. "Mr. Snider, this seal is sick."

The man reluctantly changed focus. "Yeah. It's not eating."

"He has to put her back in the sea," David said.

"You might as well forget that. There's no chance old Hugo'll let go of anything that might bring in another dollar. The only way that seal will leave here is if it dies or some other zoo buys it."

David licked dry lips. "What's a good price?"

Snider laughed. "Noble thought, son, but you couldn't afford it. Her. Come on. Lunch time's over. We've got work to do."

~ * ~

At the end of his shift, David went straight back to the seal pool. The new seal fascinated him. Selkie or not, it was a shame she'd been trapped. Most of the animals here had been born in captivity. She hadn't.

With a jolt, he realized she was watching his every move. Even though there were other people around the pool, she was watching him.

Enchanted, a bit flattered, he stared at her in return, his mind sifting and sorting old legends. Had this lady of the sea called him? Was he right in thinking she expected him to help her some way?

For a moment, he gave himself up to the fantasy. She would have a haunting, sweet voice, he decided. Her round, melting eyes wouldn't change when she took human form. The rest of her would merely become as beautiful as her eyes. Those magnetic, hypnotic eyes. They clung to him until he began to believe he was hearing real words--

"It is a sin and a shame that she is caged. She must be freed."

The soft, sad, almost-Irish lilt of a voice came not from the seal, but from near his shoulder. He was startled, not only because he hadn't heard anyone approaching, but because the voice was so like what he'd imagined for the seal. And because the girl was echoing his own thoughts.

David risked a glance at her. Knowing his face was blazing, he was ridiculously glad she was watching the seal instead of him.

A silvery-brown curtain of hair hid most of her face. He could see just her chin and the end of her nose, which was adorned with a surprising sprinkle of freckles. She might have been fifteen or twenty-five. Off-balance as he was, he could think of no response except to repeat Snider's words. "They don't have to dodge killer whales or nets here," he repeated, "and they have all the fish they--"

She turned.

Thinking about it later, David decided it wasn't biologically possible for his heart to do what he thought it did.

It was her eyes that nearly finished him, eyes large and brown and liquid-luminous in her pale, pale face. The seal's eyes. In human form. Complete with a large tear that escaped and slid, glittering, to her chin.

"What is your name?" she demanded, before David could regain coherent thought.

"D-David." He rushed to say it before he fell so deeply into those eyes that he couldn't remember it. "David MacLachlan."

"Ah." It was the tiniest breath. "MacLachlan, is it?" She examined every detail of his face. "So, then, Davie MacLachlan, is this false security sufficient consolation for what's lost?"

David couldn't say a word, and the girl's voice kept hammering at him. "Had you known the thrill of the hunt beneath the glowing glass-green waves, could you swallow food thrown you from a pail? If you'd all the width and depth of the living sea in which to swim, and your family there with you, would you be content in this shallow, dead puddle so lost to your own? Had you danced among the wild, black skerries at the full of the moon, and taken your ease in corridors of sparkling crystal below the sea, would you not weep with being denied it?"

The melody of the girl's voice, like some minor-keyed lament, stirred an odd, empty ache in the vicinity of his middle. He could almost smell the fish in the sea; could feel the chill, silken water rushing against sleek skin. He had to swallow hard before he could speak. "I never thought of it like that."

"You should have done. And you a MacLachlan. You, of all of them, should know something of what she is feeling."

The worst of it was that he did know. He knew, and the knowing made him physically dizzy. He gripped the rail hard.

There was sudden surprise in the girl's expression as she watched him. And something almost predatory. "Davie MacLachlan. MacLachlan. MacLachlan." She repeated his name as if it were an incantation.

"What's my name got to do with it?"

"Long ago your folk came to these shores from the islands they call the Hebrides. It is my home, as well. And hers."

"How do you know where my ancestors came from?"

"How could I not? The proof of your ancestry is in your name. It's in the look of you, in the color of your hair, the shape of your bones. It's in the very scent of your blood."

David bit back an involuntary yelp of nervous laughter. "The scent of my blood!"

The girl caught her lower lip between her teeth, then released it. "I was thinking you could be a help to us, but perhaps, after all, you cannot. Perhaps you are no closer than the rest, despite your name and your dreaming." She turned her back on him, stiff and angry.

He reached out a hand, but didn't touch her. "Wait!"

A glance over her shoulder. "For what will I wait? We have no time for waiting."

"I want to help you if you need me. I want to help the seal. But what can I do? What do you want me to do?"

The tight lines of her face relaxed. "Davie MacLachlan, you are a great man for a story."

Dreaming Davie smiled a little. "Are you going to tell me one?"

"It may be that I will give you a grand story. Or it may be that we will make a new one between us. Have you heard the tales of the People of the Sea?"

David blinked. "People of the Sea," he repeated.

"The Selkie, the Seal-folk."

"I know. I was... thinking about them earlier."

"That's why I dared speak with you. It's not everyone I could be asking."

"You heard me talking to Snider."

An unexpected glint of humor touched her face. "If you like," she said. "I'm sorry. I should not have been angry. I was forgetting the years of denial. I was expecting too much, you having a name like MacLachlan on you."

"You've got a thing about my name."

She leaned on the rail, her arm touching his. Her skin felt feverishly hot and, though the nearest ocean was many miles distant, the faint perfume of a cold sea wafted over them. "Lachlann," she said. "The People of the Sea. The Selkie folk. They were human children of the king of Lachlann before the curse was laid on them. There is in you a lingering few drops of their blood. You've read the tales, but you'd not be believing them, I suppose?" Her eyes accused.

He ached to confess just how much he'd always wanted to believe, but he'd been laughed at once too often. "According to my friends I believe every story I've ever heard."

"And do you?"

"I like to think I have an open mind."

"That is no answer. But neither is it complete denial."

"What's your name," David asked belatedly. "Who are you?"

"It is allowed only to my own folk to be calling me by my birth name. You may call me Mara."

The line came straight from a folk tale. Maybe he'd been right to keep his confession to himself. Maybe his more skeptical friends had set up this meeting. "Mara. Okay. How can I help?"

A spasm of real pain crossed her face and he instantly dismissed the idea of a joke arranged by his buddies. "Mara?"

"Tomorrow is the full of the moon."

More than anything in the world he wanted to erase her pain, to see her laughing. "So? Do you turn into a werewolf on full moon?"

"Ah, no. I stay as I am, but my mother..."

"She's a werewolf."

Mara's smile was fragile, but it was a smile. "She'll be as human as yourself in the full moon's light." The smile flickered out and she gazed up at him, her eyes dark and deep. "Do you truly wish to free her?"

David's head spun with the quick change of subject. "The seal, you mean? Sure I do, but I can't afford to buy her and take her back to the sea. Snider said that was the only way Mr. Hugo would let her go. You have any ideas?"

"There is one other way, and Mr. Hugo will have no say in the matter at all. Tell me, my Davie, are there guards here after the zoo's closing each day?"

He felt a prickle of cold sweat. "I can't help you steal her. I couldn't even if it was possible."

"We'll not be stealing her. Just tell me, are there guards?"

"Six of them. And Garner and his crew act like this is some kind of top security installation. Look, even if you got in here, you couldn't get her out. You'd need a truck and maybe a winch to lift her out of the pool. Besides, burglary's... well, it's wrong."

"It is. And kidnap and unlawful imprisonment are wrong, as well. Is that not what they've done to her?"

"Yes, but-- Mara, who are you? You're not one of those animal rights people wanting to free all the animals. It's just her."

"Were you not thinking yourself that she is special? Tomorrow is the night of the full moon, Davie. She must be freed then. After that night there will be no other chance. She is ill. She will die in her sorrow and her captivity before the moon is full again. And we would be needing no truck, nor anything to lift her from the pool."

"Why not?" he asked, but niggling at the back of his mind was another seal legend. Something about a full moon--

She broke into his thoughts. "Tell me this one thing more: Is he a sympathetic man, this Mr. Garner?"

"I guess so, but what's that got to do with it?"

Mara's eyes went almost mischievous. "Away to your home, now, my lovely Davie. Until tomorrow. Sweet dreams to you."

In one fluid movement, she balanced on tiptoe, kissed the corner of his mouth, turned and ran. David looked up and saw Snider grinning at him from across the pool. Heart singing, he returned the grin.

~ * ~

"I read all the stories again last night," he said to Mara the next afternoon.

"Did you, Davie?"

"There are some things I don't understand."

"I know. This most of all, perhaps. What is she to me?"

David nodded.

"She is my mother, but I'm thinking deep inside yourself you knew that already."

He was silent for a moment, bewildered, trapped halfway between Mara's world and Snider's. "Are you... Then why aren't you like her?"

"I have never been forced to swim as a seal, though sometimes the longing is strong on me and I do it. I do not share the full curse of my mother's people because my father was earth-bred. You must remember, Davie, that my mother is not a seal as these others are seals. It is a woman they hold there against her will. She is under enchantment, a human woman who must live as a seal."

"Except..." David plunged gloriously and completely into Mara's world. "Except on full moon nights."

"Except on full moon nights." They gazed at each other.

"What do you want me to do?"

Visibly relieved, she pushed a beach bag at him. "Take this," she said. "Leave it near the pool, but in a place where it will not be disturbed until she is ready for it."

"What is it?"

She grinned. "It's clothing, of course. Without the seal skin, she'll have need of it."

"Oh."

"Just be sure she sees where you've put it. She'll manage the rest, with the help of your Mr. Garner."

"Mr. Garner's going to help?"

"Indeed. It's himself who'll be opening the gate for the lady."

The simplicity of the plan delighted David. "I'll hide these clothes. Anything else?"

"Once she's free, we'll need transport. Could you, maybe, provide that for us?"

David promised to meet them outside the east gate at midnight.

~ * ~

"Hey, Dave, hear what happened last night?"

"What happened, Mr. Snider?" He bit back a yawn.

"That new grey seal, she's gone. Hugo's havin' a fit."

He didn't doubt it. "Gone?"

"I guess somebody stole her. Man, if it was me, I'd take a nice, friendly monkey or a cute little lion cub or something. What would anybody want with a fat, scarred up old seal?"

"She wasn't all that ugly," David said. "Or old." In fact, as a woman, she was... exquisite. He frowned over the word, but it was the only one that fit. She had an eerie, ethereal perfection that he recognized, but didn't understand, and didn't greatly care for. He much preferred Mara's very human sprinkling of freckles.

Snider glared at him. "You were pretty stirred up over that animal. You didn't steal her, did you?"

"You think I'm some kind of super man?"

"I think you've got brains, if you do waste 'em on fairy tales. You didn't answer my question."

"I didn't steal her. I didn't help anybody steal her. I didn't even hire anybody to do it for me. You want me to take a lie detector test?"

"Hugo may want to hook us all up to the machine sooner or later. Let's see what's going on."

Bernard Hugo was angry, but so was Garner. The men outside had no trouble hearing through the closed door of the office.

"It's impossible," Garner said.

"The seal's gone and it sure didn't walk out on its own."

David bit his tongue to stop the nervous giggle that lurked in his throat. The suspicious look Snider sent him only made it worse.

"Tell me again about that woman," Hugo was saying. "She had to be in on it."

"You think she carried the seal out in her bag?"

"How would you know? A pretty woman? You wouldn't have seen it if she did. Tell me again."

Garner sighed. "She said she sat down for a rest and went to sleep. When she woke up, it was dark. She came banging on the office door, scared to death somebody would hand her over to the police. It was pitiful. I've never seen anybody cry like that. I swear she left a puddle of tears on the floor."

"And what was going on at the seal pool while you were mopping up her tears?"

"I'm not deaf. Neither is my night crew. That seal weighed nearly a quarter ton. You don't move anything that heavy without making noise, or at least disturbing the other animals. Somebody would've heard something."

"I want that woman found. She's our only lead. I want to talk to her myself. I can't believe you just let some foreign trespasser walk out the gate. Call the police, Garner."

David and Snider were yards from the door when Garner emerged.
"Ok, Dave. What's the smirk about?" Snider asked.

"Am I smirking?"

"Yeah." He watched David for a moment. "Maybe you didn't steal that animal last night, but you know something about what happened, don't you?"

"I know he won't find that foreign woman. Or the seal. He won't ever find any trace of a thief, either, because there wasn't one."

"Where's the seal then?"

"Well on her way to the north Atlantic, I imagine."

"How did she get out of the zoo, Mr. College Man? Levitation?"

"I think they call it transmutation. Plus there was a smattering of old-fashioned gallantry."

"Trans-which?"

"Mr. Snider, your education in fairy tales is sadly lacking."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. If you'd studied fairy tales, you'd have learned how the right kind of seal could escape a zoo."

"The right kind?"

"Atlantic grey seals. The People of the Sea, remember? In fairy tales you learn they can take off their seal-skins and be human again on full moon nights."

"So?"

"So that seal was a grey seal, and last night was full moon."

The side of Snider's mouth twitched. "I get it. Last night your seal turned human and walked out under her own power."

David looked Snider straight in the eye. "Who do you think Garner's weeping beauty was?"

"And I suppose, after she walked out, you volunteered to drive her to the beach yourself."

"To the airport."

"Airport! Oh, sure. You put a seal on a plane. Where to?"

"I put a beautiful woman and her daughter on a plane. To Scotland."

He'd managed to get only a moment alone with Mara at the airport. "Won't your mother turn into a seal again before you get back? When the moon sets or something? How are you going to explain it?"

Mara was laughing. "She will not. I have her seal skin and I will not return it to her until we're safe home."

"Why don't you keep it so she wouldn't have to be a seal at all?"

"You've forgotten the sea-longing. There is no escaping the curse for her, but she has accepted that. She is happiest in the sea. Here, you must have this."

He looked at the thin ring she pressed into his hand. "What is it?"

"Selkie gold. Legend says there's magic in Selkie gold."

"I don't want any pay for what I did."

"A hundred thousand blessings on you, my Davie. There is no proper payment for the saving of my mother's life, but take this."

"I don't understand."

A sideways glance, and there were tears in her eyes. "I'm not wanting you to forget me."

An airline attendant pronounced Mara's flight ready for boarding. David slipped the ring onto his finger and felt like crying himself. "With or without this I couldn't forget you in a million years, but I don't have anything for you."

She smiled. "You have believed in us. There is no greater gift."

"Mara, will I ever see you again?"

The girl looked at him. "Perhaps. If you wish it. Even these days there is maybe power enough in the ring for the granting of a wish or two when you're ready. Shall I tell you how to do it?"

Snider was looking blank. "A woman and her daughter?"

"The seal's daughter. You saw her kiss me."

"Son, if you looked at that pretty little girl and saw a seal, we've got to get you into the real world quick, before it's too late.

David grinned. "You want to talk real? In your real world, Hugo will insist that the police spend a lot of energy and tax money looking for a non-existent criminal to blame for a crime that never happened. I know exactly what happened, but if I broadcast it to the world from now until I die, I won't find one person in a billion who'll believe me. Anybody who's heard about the Selkies at all knows they're just fairy tales. Nobody can convince 'em otherwise, even though what I've told you logically explains everything. Now you tell me: Who's living in the real world?"

For a fraction of a second, David saw Reality-According-to-Snider go a shade blurry around the edges. Then the laughter erupted. Great booming gales of delighted laughter.

David remained silent as Snider wiped his eyes, still chuckling. "You had me going there for a minute, son. Yeah. Those fairy tales of yours may be worth something yet. You can be a comedian, or maybe a writer. But don't try it on old Hugo. He's got no sense of humor."

Snider suddenly frowned. "Seriously, Dave, I'll tell you like I'd tell my own kid. You be careful talking like all that stuff's real. One of these days you'll convince yourself. You'll cross the line into your dream world and not be able to find your way back."

David considered Mara's love for her mother, the faith she'd had in him, the hope she'd held out in the form of a circle of gold that exactly fit his finger. He could feel its living warmth radiating through his hand, the promise of his very own real happy ending.

He would have to live in Snider's twisted version of reality a little longer, but when the time came to join Mara, he would go with no regret at all.

"You're right, Mr. Snider," Dreaming Davie said, with great kindness. "You're absolutely right."

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