Chapter Text
I’ll tell the tale of the curse of the sea.
Of the ocean that shattered my heart.
Oh I’ll tell the story of what came to be,
And why we’re forever apart, oh,
Why we’re forever apart.
They say she was born with a light in her face
And a spark of pure joy in her eye.
She’d a spirit which warmed up the iciest place
And a smile for whoever went by.
But now we’re forever apart, oh,
Now we’re forever apart.
~Taken from the folk song ‘Shoreside Lament’. Traditional.
There’s a girl sitting by the water when Hitoka goes down to play on the beach one day. She looks a little bit older than Hitoka herself—maybe ten or eleven or so—and as beautiful as the porcelain dolls which sit in the window of the fanciest toyshop of the big town. It’s all Hitoka can manage not to squeak in surprise, because the only thing the girl is wearing is what looks like a fur-skin cloak, wrapped around her body a little like a towel.
What if she’s cold? Hitoka has never seen her before, and dressed like that, she could be a shipwrecked maiden lost and alone! It’s her duty to help her…but she’s so beautiful that she almost doesn’t look real. How do you talk to porcelain-doll people? What if she says the wrong thing and offends the beautiful girl and then she doesn’t want Hitoka’s help at all? She’d be a terrible person, making someone in such trouble feel bad like that.
Faced with the dilemma, it’s almost more than she can manage to keep going along the path until she reaches the little patch of sand which is her usual playground, but she makes herself do it all the same. After all, her mother’s always telling her she needs to be more bold. Be more bold, and less shy, less quiet, less nervous, less…well, less Hitoka , it feels like.
But that’s not the strange girl’s fault. That’s Hitoka’s fault, and however much the porcelain-doll girl is beyond intimidating, she’s also impossible to ignore. Almost before she’s noticed what she’s doing, Hitoka’s traitor feet have carried her all the way down to the beach without her even really telling them to.
“Um…hello?” she says, her voice more a squeak than anything else. The porcelain-doll girl turns and stares at her, eyes wide.
Oh goodness, this close up her face is even more beautiful. Her eyes are soft, and dark as the rock pools at dusk, and she has silky black hair which falls halfway down her back, and there’s the tiniest little mole just beneath her lip on the right hand side of her face and Hitoka swears then and there that she will never see a more beautiful person ever again, and if the porcelain-doll girl is real, then she, Hitoka must be an artificial one scraped together out of mud and dust and not even cooked evenly in the oven, with straw stuck all over her head for hair.
That’s how pretty the girl is.
“Hello,” the girl says, in a voice barely louder than the rush and crash of the nearby waves. It’s just a tiny bit more than a whisper, and Hitoka’s only nine years old but suddenly she understands what all the stories mean when they talk about love.
Well, she probably doesn’t actually, because she’s already had the most embarrassing talk of her life with her mother and that definitely featured a lot more weird body things and a lot less being happy to just stare at someone, but Takeda-sensei never mentioned the body things when he told his love stories about people going on quests to rescue maidens from castles and wake sleeping princesses with a gentle kiss on the cheek, and although the porcelain-doll girl is far too beautiful for someone like Hitoka to ever seriously dream of kissing, that’s rather more along the lines of what she’s feeling right there and then.
Overall, the sensation she has is that this is someone she could go on a quest for—except not a real quest, because she’s just Hitoka, and honestly quests sound like very dangerous and risky things to do, and they all talk about robbers and monsters and corrupted soul animals who hunt down people searching for true love because they’re jealous, and bring them to the evil witches, and—
“Are you alright?” the porcelain-doll girl asks, and Hitoka suddenly realises that she’s just been staring at her for a very long time, and the girl’s lips were moving a little while ago and oh no she was talking and Hitoka didn’t hear what she said .
“I’m fine!” Hitoka squeaks, wishing the sand would part beneath her feet and bury her deep, deep down. Possibly in some sort of underground cave full of glowing plants and slug monsters because surely that’s where she’s bound to end up anyway, mud-and-straw girl that she is.
But the porcelain-doll girl in front of her is watching her, looking almost as quiet and timid as Hitoka feels, and although that clearly can’t actually be how she’s feeling—it has to be that thing her mother calls ‘projection’, which is another one of the habits she’s meant to break—it stops her looking like a perfect, heavenly creature who could never be approached, and gives Hitoka room to take a breath. She is another girl. A real live girl who’s just appeared on the beach, and real live girls can be talked to, however intimidating the prospect.
“What’s your name?” Hitoka eventually manages to ask. It isn’t a very imaginative thing to say, but it would be nice to know what to call her other than ‘porcelain-doll girl’, because if she calls her something like that she starts to sound a lot like a figment of her imagination, and she ought to have grown out of imagining people years ago.
The girl stares back at her, blinking slowly, and goodness her eyelashes are so long and beautiful, and even her confused expression is just so admirable that Hitoka could sit and watch her all day.
“My name?” the girl says eventually, sounding a little unsure of herself. “I…” She pauses, and looks out to sea. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”
Hitoka gasps. How can the girl not have a name? Oh dear, has she lost her memory? Is that why she’s sitting on a beach all alone with no clothes or shoes and nothing but a furskin wrapped all around her? Maybe she’s a princess, kidnapped from a faraway kingdom, only she escaped but when she was fleeing with a handsome prince she fell from his horse and knocked her head and now she can’t remember what castle she’s from and she’ll never go home and her parents must be worried sick and the whole thing is just so awful and sad that Hitoka feels a little like crying.
Her eyes do water a bit, but she’s gotten better at not being ‘overly emotional’, as her mother puts it, so the tears themselves don’t fall. Besides. If the porcelain-doll girl had really fallen from a horse and gotten lost during her rescue attempt, she ought to be injured, or have a special birthmark, or something else like in Takeda-sensei’s stories. And she ought to look sad and lost from being so alone, and instead she just looks rather peaceful, and quiet.
The girl blinks once more, slowly and calmly. “Do you have a name,” she asks.
“Yes of course!” Hitoka replies instantly, wincing as she realises that it was an insensitive thing to say. “I…I mean, yes, I do have a name. It’s…” She draws herself up a little straighter, hardly even noticing that she does so: “I’m Yachi Hitoka, daughter of Yachi Madoka, close cousin to His Imperial Majesty—although not really all that close or we’d live in the capital, and actually Mama’s Papa had a big falling out with the royal family years and years ago so we’re sort of in exile, except they still send Mama money and she does a lot of important work in Town now and then and tells me I still have to know all my manners because if…if something happens to about thirty or forty different people I’d have to go be an Imperial Majesty myself. But I hope nothing important does happen to them, because that would be really really terrible!”
The girl nods. She smiles gently at Hitoka and to be fair to her, she can’t know what she’s doing with that smile, but it’s just too cruel, honestly it is. How can someone be so beautiful and perfect? How is it possible that the girl doesn’t even have a name? She has to have a name. Maybe it’s just that it’s too perfect for Hitoka to ever learn. Maybe it’s so beautiful that her heart would actually stop if she heard it.
“You’re very quiet,” the girl says, and it’s all Hitoka can do to nod in agreement. She isn’t quiet normally, not really, but she can’t possibly disagree the girl on anything, and anyway it seems to be true enough for the moment.
“Where are you from?” she asks in return, although clearly that’s a stupid question, because the girl already said she doesn’t know her name, and if she doesn’t even know her name then how could she possibly be expected to know—
“Mm,” the girl says, and Hitoka’s thoughts fall silent because the hum is so soft and sweet that she could listen to it all day. It’s pure music. “I come from the ocean.”
Oh.
Oh .
The feeling in Hitoka’s poor heart is like a fiddle string, played faster and faster until it snaps clean in two. All the air is sucked out of her and her legs are so unsteady that she could faint. Has she fainted? It’s never happened before, so how would she know? Do people dream of beautiful and mysterious girls when they’ve fainted, because honestly it’s an odd thing to dream about but probably a lot safer than her actually being stood there next to a…a…temptress from the ocean, just like she’s always heard stories of. Creatures which take the shape of beautiful men and women to lure people out to their deaths. Is she going to die? Any moment now the girl could transform into some hideous, horrible thing , and Hitoka would be completely powerless to escape because she’s honestly so surprised that she can’t even more.
But the stories always talk about men and women . Never girls. Never fellow children who just sit there, watching quietly with peaceful and serene expressions on their faces.
No. No the girl can’t be something horrible. She’s not doing anything, she’s not hurting anyone. She’s just all alone, sitting near the seashore without even a name of her own, let alone anything else.
Hitoka chews her lip. “Why are you here?” she asks eventually, regretting the question almost immediately. How rude! The poor girl is just sitting there not hurting anyone and now she’s just bombarding her with questions that maybe she doesn’t even have answers to.
But the girl just smiles, softly and gently, and closes her eyes. Her head tips back and she takes a deep, slow breath, exactly the way Hitoka sometimes does when she smells her favourite food and knows that not only will she have a delicious dinner, but that Mama is home from Town and everything is alright.
The girl tips her head to one side slightly, and opens her eye just enough to peer out of the corner of it at Hitoka.
“I like it here.” She shrugs. “It’s peaceful.”
“Oh,” Hitoka says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” the girl replies, smiling. “I like the company. I don’t have many friends, you know.” Her face falls. “I’m not supposed to make friends, not really,” she says. “But I would like to anyway, if that’s alright with you? I don’t know any humans all that well.”
Years of stories give Hitoka the rules for what should happen next. Politely, she should decline, or make an excuse such as needing to think about it, or agree to be acquaintances but nothing more, or simply run back away from the beach, claiming sickness or urgent chores or anything which gets her out of the situation as fast as she possibly can.
It’s been drummed into her for years, a small girl who lives near the sea—you do not talk to those who dwell within it. You do not risk the wrath of the ocean people, and you do not fall for their ploys.
“Of course I’ll be your friend!” Hitoka says instead. She chews her bottom lip, and reaches up to unwind the shawl around her neck. “Here. Please take it—you look awfully cold in just that cloak.”
For several seconds the girl just stares at it, as though she’s never seen a shawl before. Hitoka winces. She’s from the ocean—she’s either a siren or a shapeshifter, so probably she hasn’t ever seen a shawl before.
“You put it round your shoulders,” she says helplessly. “Or...or you could tie it round your waist like an obi—although you don’t have anything to be fastening closed I suppose. Oh! Maybe you could wrap it around your cloak to keep it closed! Then you could run around without worrying about it falling off.”
The girl’s face brightens with the most radiant smile yet, and if Hitoka weren’t already smitten this would be the point of no return. As it is, she’s sure she can never, ever recover. Nothing else will ever look beautiful again, not after seeing this smile.
“Thank you,” the girl says, taking it carefully from Hitoka’s hands. “How do you tie an..obi?”
“Oh!” Hitoka squeaks, hopping on the spot. How silly of her! “I’ll show you! Here, let me help. You…if you tuck your cloak around you, and hitch it up a little so your arms can come out the sides…”
The girl stands, and it turns out she’s a lot taller than Hitoka, but that’s not so surprising. Hitoka really isn’t all that tall. Mama shakes her head from time to time, calling her a little mouse and remarking that while the sea air might be good for many things, apparently it has not been enough to bring out Hitoka’s Imperial heritage.
But the girl doesn’t care—the girl comes from the ocean, and there are no Imperial Majesties to worry about beneath the waves. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that Hitoka is small and plain, because she lets her help with the shawl, watching with apparent interest as Hitoka folds it over and over again to make a long rectangle.
The furskin cloak is rather bulky, and even with the girl holding it in place it is no simple matter to tie the shawl around her middle and hold it where it ought to be by rights. When she’s finished, the knot looks uneven—too loose in some places and far too tight in others. Just making it stay put is difficult.
But it has to be a lot better than nothing, and at least with it in place the girl can walk around with her hands free. And she doesn’t seem to mind walking along the shore as they chatter to another—or rather, as Hitoka chatters about her life, and her Mama, and the little school in the village and the bigger school in the town along the main road that her mother wants her to attend in the spring, and all sorts of things about living on the land that the girl doesn’t know about because she comes from the ocean, where they don’t have schools, or Mamas, or even towns and villages.
The girl doesn’t say much about the ocean, except that it’s big and wide, and that of all the places along the coast for hundreds of miles, this is the only bay which seemed peaceful and calm enough for her to sit and wait in. As for why she needed to wait, the girl won’t say. She just shakes her head and says it doesn’t matter. That it’s alright for now. Hitoka doesn’t dare ask more when the girl so obviously doesn’t want to talk about it—against all the odds it almost seems as though she’s made a friend , and how could she upset such a new and wonderful friend that way?
They walk back and forth along the shore until the tide has reclaimed most of the sand and shingle, and Hitoka has to hop and skip over the taller waves as they reach out to splash her boots.
“I should get back,” she says at last, bowing to the girl. “Thank you for talking to me though. I…I had a good time. I don’t normally talk to people at the beach.”
The girl smiles, and reaches down to untangle the shawl-obi around her waist. “I should give this back,” she says.
“Please keep it!” Hitoka squeaks, hardly daring to believe her nerve. “I…I have lots of shawls, really I do. I don’t mind! And…and I think you should have it anyway.”
The girl bows, eyes twinkling. “Thank you,” she says softly. “I am most grateful. No one has ever given me a gift before.”
Hitoka almost can’t believe it at first. How could anyone fail to want to give gifts to someone as beautiful as the girl is? Her Mama still gets gifts from various Imperial people because of her beauty and perfect manners, and she is older now and always claims to be past the prime of her youth, when even her Papa’s disgrace with the Imperial Majesty wasn’t enough to stop courtiers calling upon her day and night.
It’s not until hours later—long after the girl has bowed her farewells, and walked out into the water to stand knee-deep and wave Hitoka off along the pathway up the cliff—that she realises what kind of furskin the girl had wrapped around her the whole afternoon. She’s never seen a pelt like it before because no one will wear them for superstitious reasons, but she’s sure all the same. It was a sealskin. It has to be. No other creature would have such short, fuzzy fur and still belong to the ocean.
She’s a selkie , Hitoka realises, looking up from her studybook to stare out of the window as if she could possibly still be there, hopeless as that wish might be. Takeda-sensei has told stories about them, along with the many, many other forms that soul animals take. No wonder she’s never been given a gift before.
It doesn’t seem right. Firstly, the girl is a person . A person so beautiful that Hitoka is not at all surprised to realise that she is ethereal and magical, to be sure, but a person first and foremost. How could anyone consider her a creature or animal? She’s seen soul animals. Not often, and she’s always tried not to pry, but now and then it’s impossible to miss them.
Alone of the creatures she’s learnt to recognise though, selkies have no happy stories behind them. All the tales say that they appear to those without soulmates, like a messenger halfway between soul animal and portent of doom.
There’s no word for the feeling in her stomach. It’s hot and cold all at once, tight and sharp and she can feel her eyes prickling with tears which she has to wipe away quickly because her studybooks are expensive, made of bleached white paper with beautiful pictures here and there and she really doesn’t want to spoil them, even in the middle of feeling like the whole world just ended because does that mean she’s never going to get a happily ever after just like everyone else?
After a few seconds of dabbing at her eyes it’s just too much, and she pushes the book away from her and retreats from the desk, running into her room and throwing herself down onto the mattress with a thump . She’s already crying and it’s not very dignified or ladylike but honestly who would be dignified or ladylike right now?
The pillow is wet through by the time she feels a hand on her shoulder and sits up, turning to sob into her mother’s shoulder instead. Mama stays quiet, holding her tightly until the tears have wrung her dry and the sharp, tight feeling in her stomach has shrunk away to an empty but still bothersome ache.
“Hitoka dear, whatever is the matter?” Mama asks, gently pulling at Hitoka’s shoulders to encourage her to sit up straight.
“I…I…She…” Hitoka sniffs and hiccoughs a few times before she manages to take a deep breath, calming away the hysterics the way Mama taught her years before.
“I met a selkie, Mama,” she whispers, looking down at her lap. “Down at our beach.”
Selkies are portents, according to the big, imposing book on Mama’s shelf which comes down that night to be looked through and studied. They’re technically soul animals, which is why Takeda-sensei included them in his lists, but there are no stories of them leading people to love. Rather, it’s the opposite—their beauty tempts people from an honest path into one of treachery, and weak people steal their skins to trap them on land and marry them. The big book doesn’t say whether those people ever did or would have had real soulmates to make them happy, but it does state very clearly that should the selkie ever find their skin, they would leave and never return.
“There, you see,” Mama says, closing the book with a snap! “I am sure that much of this hysteria about the creatures stems from misinformation and hearsay, made worse by the poor literacy in these rural parts until recent years. I can’t blame Takeda-sensei for teaching things as he knows best, but I will consider having a word with him to update his information and prevent this sort of misunderstanding from happening again. Hitoka, dear, so long as you keep your wits and don’t fall to weakness—which I am sure no daughter of mine ever would—you have nothing to fear from this selkie. However. Should you see it again, I would advise against interacting with it too closely. It seems they are born simply to tempt mortal folk into misdeeds.”
Hitoka nods dutifully, but that scarcely seems fair. The porcelain-doll girl is a girl, even if she’s a selkie too, and she seemed to enjoy talking to Hitoka while they were both there on the beach together. And Hitoka could never do something as awful as take her sealskin away.
Besides. Only adults can get married, and…and the girl even said she wanted to be Hitoka’s friend. Maybe the stories about selkies is only true when they’re grown up. Even Mama’s big book didn’t mention girl selkies, just men and women. It has to be some sort of mistake. She’s only nine years old! Plenty of people don’t meet their soul animals until they’re grown up. There’s lots of time for this all to be just a coincidence.
It’s a lot easier to think of the girl as her friend when she’s just another child. And it’s much easier to sleep when she can simply dream of her new friend at the seashore, and not a mysterious creature who promises a lonely future.
Seven days later, Hitoka sees the girl from her bedroom window. She’s walking along the shore, dragging her toes in the surf and gazing out to sea. It’s a lonely picture, especially under the dreary, overcast skies which stretch from one side of the horizon to the other, and try as she might, there’s no way Hitoka can resist.
She dresses warmly—it’s still only early spring, after all, and the wind is bitter and chill on a day like this—and hurries to leave the house before Mama notices. Before she leaves, she grabs an extra pair of sandals. What if the girl gets sore feet walking along the beach like that? If she’s used to being in the water, she can’t possibly have the hard callouses which Hitoka has built up through years of clambering across the rocks.
The girl is still wandering along the beach when she arrives, seemingly unaware of Hitoka until she runs up and announces her presence with a cheerful: “Hello!”
She looks at Hitoka and smiles, and it’s as though Mama never warned her or showed her the big book of scary stories at all. How can the girl be a bad omen when she’s just a beautiful, perfect friend, one who’s so good that she doesn’t even mind how plain Hitoka is by comparison, and accepts the sandals with a delighted smile which looks like the culmination of everything which is good in the world?
“What are they?” the girl asks, and oh of course she doesn’t know what sandals are, because she spends all her time in the sea where people don’t wear sandals, or shoes, or anything like that.
“You put them on your feet,” Hitoka explains, lifting the lower part of her skirt so that the girl can see the sandals she’s wearing herself. “They help keep them safe from sharp rocks or crabs or anything on the ground which might scratch you, and they keep your feet clean as well normally, but I suppose if you live in the sea that’s like washing your feet all the time anyway. So you probably don’t need to worry too much about that side of things.”
“Oh,” the girl says, kneeling so that she can slip them on. “They feel…strange. Rather scratchy.”
It’s not until a few minutes later that Hitoka realises that there must be sand caught between the girl’s toes and the leather of the sandals, and squeaks in dismay before leading her friend over to a rock where they can sit and let their bare feet dangle in the water, washing them clean.
“If you get sand in your sandals they won’t be comfortable,” Hitoka explains. “The grains rub and rub at your skin, and Mama says that it’s good to rub sand on your skin each day because it stops wrinkles, but I don’t really think anyone ought to worry about wrinkles on their feet , and anyway wrinkles don’t happen until you’re grown up like she is, which won’t be for years yet.”
The girl nods solemnly. Do people who might be selkies ever get wrinkles? She’s not really sure, but either way it probably doesn’t matter. There’s still no need to go around with sandy feet when they can dip them in the sea, and even if it is rather a cold day, that’s fine. She doesn’t feel cold at all, talking to her new friend, and explaining about life on the land. About flowers and seasons, and her favourite festivals throughout the year, when people dance and sing on the village green and she can forget about being thirty people away from becoming an Imperial Majesty, and just be plain old Yachi Hitoka, dancing with the other children from the village.
“How do you dance?” the girl asks. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Oh!” Hitoka gasps. “Never seen…I’ll show you! Come on, we can dance together! You just…you move your body to the music. We don’t have any instruments, but the ocean can be our music. Listen, the waves are like a beat, but slower, so we’ll have to pretend there are twice as many. If we were really at a dance, there would be drums and flutes, but I don’t know how to play those even if we did have some, and you can’t really play and dance at the same time. Not this kind of dancing, anyway.”
She leads the way across the sand to an open area near the cliff edge, and gestures for the girl to join her, showing her the dances which she’s known since almost before she could walk. It’s not quite the same without the music, or without the singing of the people who really can sing, but it’s fun all the same, and it’s not until the tide reaches them that she realises how much time has passed.
“Oh!” she cries, disappointed. “I…I need to go. I’m meant to have lessons and Mama will be wondering where I am. I’m sorry. I had a lot of fun today.”
“I did too,” the girl says, smiling. She reaches down to free her feet. “Here, your sandals.”
“You should keep them!” Hitoka says. “You… if you want to use them for walking on the beach or climbing rocks they’ll be very helpful. I want you to have them.”
The girl stares at her, holding the sandals tightly in her hands. Her face lights up with the most beautiful smile Hitoka has ever seen. It’s so bright that she almost has to look away, in fact, and she’s too dumbfounded to respond when the girl steps closer and wraps her arms around her shoulders in a fierce hug.
“Thank you, Hitoka-chan,” she says, voice soft enough that Hitoka almost doesn’t hear. “They are a wonderful gift.”
She smells strongly of salt water and the ocean, but her hands are not cold like the stories say of sea-people. Her hands and cheek are warm, and even as she walks back up to her house on the cliffside, Hitoka can’t stop smiling. Even when Mama sternly asks her where she’s been this whole time, she can’t quite shake the good feeling.
“I was playing with my friend,” she replies.
“A friend? ” Mama asks, lifting one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Who?”
Hitoka’s mind whites out with panic. If she tells Mama that she was playing with a selkie again, what will happen? She might get sent away to protect her, and then she’ll never be able to say goodbye, even, and what if her friend comes back to play again, and she’s left walking along the shore all by herself and alone, wondering what happened and thinking that Hitoka doesn’t care any more, or worse still died, and then she’ll give up and never come back, and then Hitoka will come home again and she’ll have to walk along the beach all by herself forever, never being able to explain or apologise—
“A girl!” she says as her mother’s brow descends towards a frown. The words are blurted out so fast that she’s halfway sure they don’t make any sense at all. “She…her…”
What can she say? The girl doesn’t even have a name, what’s she supposed to say when Mama asks that? Racing along at breakneck speed, her thoughts crowd and panic her, throwing out possible names to give as a cover. Ocean names like Manami or Yoko—but that’s no good, because if she gives an ocean name then Mama will surely guess where her friend really comes from and then it will be just as bad as telling her she was playing with a selkie only worse because she’ll have lied, and she never lies to Mama—
“Who is this girl?” Mama asks, and Hitoka’s mind is suddenly empty, all her rushed, panicked thoughts leaving her to face Mama’s inevitable wrath alone.
“Her…her…you mean her name, Mama?” Hitoka asks, wilting a little as Mama nods once. “It…she…” An idea hits. “Ichioka! Ichioka…Miyako!”
Mama’s face settles into a more neutral expression, although her eyes are still rather narrow. Hitoka holds her breath, sure she must have been found out.
“Hitoka, I have spoken of this before,” Mama says, and oh no, this is it. She’s been found out and now she’s going to be scolded and sent away and what if there are robbers on the road, or bandits who kill the guards and rob her and kidnap her and she has to spend years and years cooking for the bandits because they set the ransom too high and Mama won’t pay it, and—
“Hitoka, your imagination carries you with it and must be reigned in. I am disappointed that you would lie to cover missing your lessons. You must learn to keep better track of time in future. You will stay at your studies today until they are complete to my satisfaction, understood? It will not do to allow yourself to grow into poor habits. As an adult you must be the owner of your mind and your thoughts. Discipline is vital to that end.”
It’s almost impossible to keep her face level as Mama scolds her, because Hitoka is sure she’s about to laugh with relief. Never has Mama’s stern expression been so welcome. She ducks her face down as though she is disappointed, and mumbles her apology through a face held solemn by the pain of her teeth biting her lips. Banished to the schoolroom, she collapses at her desk and lies there unmoving for long minutes.
She lied to Mama. She lied to Mama and sort of almost got away with it, and now she has to be twice as careful, because surely Mama will be suspicious. But even so, she wasn’t banned from the beach, and she wasn’t sent away, and Mama didn’t say anything about selkies at all.
It’s not exactly permission . But it’s sort of close, isn’t it?
Another seven days pass before Hitoka sees the girl again. She keeps watch, early every morning, and this time she actually sees a small, dark shape in the water, swimming steadily to shore. She loses sight of it as it ducks around the rocks on either side of the cove, but sure enough, a few minutes later there is a figure walking along the sand, hair billowing out around her face in the brisk early-morning breeze. It’s hard to make out at this distance, but Hitoka thinks she’s wearing her sandals.
Mama is still asleep, and the house is cold and odourless which means the cook hasn’t arrived yet either. There’s no one to watch as Hitoka sneaks out and makes her way down the path to the shore, having thrown on her clothes in a great enough hurry that she’s still straightening them as she goes.
“Hello!” she cries, running up to the girl all out of breath. “I…I saw you, I think! Swimming in the sea! I…I mean that is…er—”
The girl silences her with a smile. It’s the most beautiful thing Hitoka has ever seen: broad and confident, eyes crinkled with her lips parted enough that her pure white teeth are visible.
“I’m glad to see you too, Hitoka-chan,” the girl says. “I was…I hoped you would visit. Is it not quite early for you, though?”
“Oh I don’t mind!” Hitoka says, half giddy with excitement. “I was awake, and this way I won’t miss so much of my lessons, so I can stay for a little longer, maybe.”
The girl beams. “I asked the others about names,” she says after a few minutes walking along the beach together. “They were…uncomfortable talking about it. They said that names are very powerful, and should only be shared with people who you can trust absolutely. It’s one reason we don’t have names until we’re older—that way we can’t accidentally share them when we’re too young.”
Hitoka stares at her. “I never knew that!” she gasps, clapping her hands over my mouth. “A lot of people know my true name in the village, and then his Imperial Majesty does too, and all the other people who Mama told about me. Do you think it matters that they all know? I don’t want anything bad to happen because they know my name and they’re not supposed to!”
The girl’s smile drops a moment, before recovering. “Perhaps it’s different for humans,” she says. “You are mortal. I’m sure there isn’t as much power in mortal names as there is for my kind. That’s why you have yours already, while I must wait until I am older.”
“How old are you?”
The question is out before Hitoka has a chance to catch herself, or consider how impertinent it is to ask. She claps her hands over her mouth in horror almost immediately, but it’s too late. The damage is done and the words are said, and…the girl is laughing? Oh gosh she’s laughing , and it’s the most beautiful sound Hitoka has ever heard.
“I have passed twelve winters under the waves, Hitoka-chan,” the girl says. “For a selkie, I am very young indeed.”
“I don’t think I ever heard of a child selkie before,” Hitoka says, nodding. “Takeda-sensei only has stories about selkie women who are adults.”
The girl nods. “My kind don’t interact with yours very often,” she says. “Particularly until we’re grown. My family…” She falters. “My family don’t speak well of humans.”
Hitoka nods, feeling suddenly like she’s on the edge of a revelation. “Mama and Takeda-sensei don’t say many nice things about your people either!” she says. “But I think it must all be just a mistake somehow. I mean, I really…we…we get along okay, right?”
The moment the words are out of her mouth Hitoka is filled with regret, wishing she could unsay them because now she’s done it—she’s pressuring the girl into a reply she can’t possibly want to give. It’s a heart-stopping moment, but then the girl smiles broadly, and nods, and by the time she speaks Hitoka’s poor heart has begun to recover a little.
“We do,” the girl says, slowly and thoughtfully. “I enjoy talking to you, Hitoka-chan. I like being your friend.”
Hitoka eventually makes it back to the house without anyone the wiser about her early visit to the shore, and struggles to focus through all her lessons. It’s true now—really and honestly confirmed—she is friends with a selkie.
There’s something exciting about having a secret like this. It fizzes inside her just like the sherbet sweets her mother sometimes brings back after her visits to Town. She no longer cares about the stories of selkies which Takeda-sensei has told her since she can remember, or the bald facts in Mama’s big book from the top shelf. They’re wrong, all of them, and if they’d met the girl they’d know that too.
The girl just feels too…too right for their friendship to be a mistake. She’s not dangerous, not at all. She’s kind, and quiet, and she never minds even when Hitoka gets carried away the following week (there’s always a week between visits, it seems) and talks for the entire time, hardly letting the girl get a word in edgeways.
Of course, Hitoka knows better than to tell anyone this. She might not be scared of her friendship any more, but the thought of someone finding out…
They’d make her stop visiting, or send her away so she can’t go down to the beach anymore, or…or… Or they might even try and hurt the girl to make her stop coming to the cove instead! Maybe she’d even be killed, and that would be all her fault. She, Hitoka, would be a murderer and then every night she’d dream about what had happened and the girl would become a vengeful spirit and haunt her, asking why she let it happen and—
She has several sleepless nights between visits, tossing and turning and fretting over the welfare of her friend. What if something happens to her? But a week later there’s the girl once more, and all her fears are forgotten. It’s almost like magic—Hitoka can’t remember the last time she felt so confident as she does, walking along the shore with the girl and talking about so many different things she can hardly remember them all that afternoon.
The girl had said something about other selkies, she remembers that much. Cousins and friends—but never siblings, and never mention of any parents. Hitoka doesn’t ask too many questions, worried when the girl leaves out the most obvious-seeming family members that if she were to do so she might upset her friend. What if something bad happened to her parents? What if they were…if they were hunted , by people or sharks, and talking about them makes the girl sad?
The ocean stays something of a mystery to Hitoka, no matter how long they walk beside it, or crouch together next to rock pools formed in dimples along the craggy shore. The girl tells Hitoka the names of things—seaweeds and crabs and minnows and shrimp; shows her how to use her fingernail to lift the stubborn barnacles from the rock and peer at the muscles which they conceal. Hitoka, in return, shows the girl how to braid her hair, giving her the black comb which had been a present from Mama last year. It has pictures of cherry blossoms painted on the back, and is shaped so that after combing, it can be used as a hair grip.
In return, a week comes when the girl is waiting by their favourite rock pool as Hitoka clambers down into the cove, and holds out a large shell, smiling broadly.
“I have a gift for you this time,” the girl says, one hand reaching up to the comb which she has twisted into her hair. “I…I may not be able to return for a long while, so I wanted to say thank you for your friendship. I hope you’ll remember me.”
“O-of course!” Hitoka squeaks, but the words an automatic response and on the inside she can feel her chest stuttering, breaths laboured and short. This sounds like a goodbye—but why is the girl leaving? Did Hitoka do something wrong?
“Hitoka-chan?” the girl asks, pulling the shell back towards herself. “Are you alright?” She pauses a moment, head tilted to one side as she watches with gentle, patient eyes. Finally she sits up.
“Hitoka-chan, you know I would stay if I could, don’t you?” she asks levelly. “It’s… it’s a selkie thing. I don’t know how else to explain. I just…I have to go for a while. But I won’t forget you, and—”she shuffles closer along the rock, holding out the shell once more“—I hope you won’t forget me, either.”
“Of course I won’t!” Hitoka cries, pressing her palms to either side of her face. “I couldn’t ever forget you!”
The girl smiles. “I’m so glad,” she says. “And I’ll still be your friend, even when I’m far away. I promise.”
Hitoka sits down beside the girl then, and they wait in silence together, watching the little waves in the rock pool until the tide starts to wash up against their toes.
“I should go,” the girl says, looking down at the shell in her hands. “And you have to return for your lessons, don’t you?”
Hitoka nods, biting back tears. “Will…will I ever see you again?” she asks, and with those words it’s just too much. The tears start rolling down her cheeks, accompanied by helpless sobs and hiccoughs.
The girl leans close, wrapping an arm around Hitoka’s shoulder and resting her cheek on the top of her head.
“I’ll come back,” she promises. “We’ll see each other again, I’m sure of it. And we’ll walk all along the cove together, and you can tell me more about the land, and everything you’ve done while I was away.”
She places the shell gently onto Hitoka’s lap, and it might not be right or proper but Hitoka can’t help herself—she turns and wraps her arms around the girl, hugging her tightly.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says. “I don’t have any other friends like you.”
The girl nods, and pulls away. “Me neither,” she says, and Hitoka is sure she must be imagining it but it almost looks as though the girl is trying not to cry.
She walks down to the cove a week later even though she’s fairly sure the girl won’t be there, just in case. It’s a bit lonely, walking back and forth by herself, but it’s sort of peaceful as well. The day is a cloudy one, but not too cold or wet, and she climbs up onto the rocks to get a better look out to sea. There’s a boat, out on the horizon, but nothing else.
A week more passes, and then a month, and then more months, and there’s still no sign of the girl in the cove. Hitoka doesn’t give up though, because the girl promised she’d come back. She doesn’t really care how long it takes—she’ll walk up and down the beach every day for the rest of her life if she has to! Although she really hopes she doesn’t have to, because really, that would make her rather a lot like the sort of people in Takeda-sensei’s big book of stories. The ones about the selkies where no one gets a happy ending and everyone sits and listens and nods their heads and makes thoughtful noises at the end as though it’s just a lesson and not real people being sad for their whole lives, which is the sort of thing that leaves Hitoka trying not to sob in the corner.
She does cry once or twice—at Takeda-sensei’s stories and in the safety of her room in the cottage—but Mama finds out about both, and sits her down for a long conversation about growing up.
It’s not what Hitoka was expecting, not at all.
“My dear, this has been going on for too long now. It’s past time that something changed. You’re getting to be a young lady, and this behaviour simply isn’t appropriate for either your age or your station in life.”
Well, that part is exactly what Hitoka’s expecting, and she hangs her head mumbling “Sorry Mama,” with her hands clasped behind her back.
There’s a short silence, before her Mama’s had reaches over, and gently lifts her face by the chin.
“The fault is in part mine , Hitoka. I have been… Well, I’ve been busy for most of your life. You’re too young to understand the way the world outside this village works, perhaps. Too young and too sheltered up until now. But our position here has been precarious at times, and I’ve worked hard to secure it. To secure an advantage for you , so that you’re not doomed to exile in the same way. You have Imperial blood, my dear, and you should have an opportunity to move in the circles your birthright affords you.”
Hitoka stares at her mother. She’s not angry? Not even disappointed? It’s not quite an apology that she’s being offered, but it’s definitely not the near-scolding that she’d been expecting.
“Mama?”
“It’s time you found a place for yourself,” Yachi Madoka says, drawing herself up every bit like the Imperial woman she is. She nods briskly. “I have arranged for you to attend school in Kumanobe, now that you are getting older. It’s a far better environment than Takeda-sensei’s little group, and one in which you will learn some of the skills you will need to move in society.” She sighs. “In truth, you deserve far better.”
“S-school?” Hitoka asks, because there’s one terrible thought in all of Mama’s speech which sticks in her head even though she knows she ought to be worried about growing up and becoming a proper lady, really. “You’re sending me away?”
Mama sighs, and reaches out to take Hitoka’s hand. “Hitoka, my darling, there’s nothing for you in this little village. And while I might be officially in disgrace, there’s nothing to stop you from moving up in the world yourself. I don’t want to send you away , my dear, but it will be far better for you to stay in Kumanobe while classes run. It would be far too dangerous—and too far— for you to attempt to walk there and back, and I cannot afford a carriage to transport you each day. I’ve made plans for you to stay with a close friend of mine. You’ve met her once or twice before, and she has a beautiful townhouse where she lives with her husband and two sons. This will be good for you. It’s an excellent opportunity.”
Hitoka nods, and bites her bottom lip to stop it wobbling. Mama pulls her close, and Hitoka tries not to cry any more, really she does, but she just can’t help it.
And she feels even more miserable for lying, and letting her Mama believe that she’s simply sad about leaving, or scared at the thought of living in Town. She is sad, and she is scared, but far more than either of those things she doesn’t want to leave the sea behind.
What if the girl comes back, and I’m gone? she wonders, lying awake on her tearstained pillow that night. What if she comes back, and waits and waits but I’m not there, and then she decides to stop visiting and I never see her again?
School begins with the spring; blossom-filled cherry trees lining the dirt road from the cottage into Town. Hitoka has never left the bounds of the village before. Has never spoken to anyone but Mama, and Takeda-sensei, and the other children who attended his classes…and the girl, who has vanished somewhere into the ocean.
The night before she leaves, Hitoka sneaks out of the cottage and walks down to the cove. It’s a clear, cold night, and she’s wrapped up against the chill. The familiar rush and crash of the waves is soothing, calming her nerves before the uncertainty of the morning. Mama insisted on her having her bags packed and ready to go days earlier. She’s been rattling around in dresses she outgrew years ago.
Moonlight illuminates the rocky pools and the waves as they break on the sandy shore. She watches the sea creatures for a while: crabs and barnacles moving through the high tide to find food and shelter before the water recedes. It’s a shame the water isn’t low—it’s going to make her mission far harder—but there’s no getting round it. Besides, she has her warm bed to return to once she’s finished.
Hitoka slips off her boots, tucking her socks into them and propping them up on a ledge well above the high-water mark. She’s grown up on the coast and knows how far the water can reach, but it never hurts to be extra careful.
The cold makes her gasp as she takes her first step into the water, but it’s a calm night, and once she’s waded past the stretch of breaking waves to solid water, the depth is even enough for her to adjust. She hitches her skirts higher, wrapping the material up around her hips and tying it into a knot so that she can wade more easily.
The rocky alcove she’s aiming for is further down, knee deep through the moonlit water. It’s not the best place to leave a message—not by a long, long way, but she and the girl have sat beside it a few times talking, and they’d noted the little cubby hole. It’s the best chance she has for hiding something safely so that it won’t get washed away. A storm might be too much for it, but hopefully she’ll be able to come home and check on her safe place before the autumn. Mama promised that she wouldn’t have to stay in Town all year round.
She slips a little climbing up onto the shelf, and pauses a moment to marvel at what she’s actually doing. She used to be scared of the dark (she’s still scared of lots of other things), but here she is, out by herself when no one knows, and at any moment she might fall and drown, alone in the dark water.
But she won’t get another chance, really she won’t—and she hasn’t been scared of the ocean in months now. Not since she really became friends with someone who calls it home. She’s not sure if the gods of the sea will actually look out for someone who’s friends with one of their people, but it’s a nice idea.
Either way, it’s not fear but excitement which she feels as she grips the rock more tightly, and scrambles up to wedge the bottle with her message into the alcove. It’s weighted down with stones, and stoppered up with a cork to keep the water out. Hitoka isn’t sure if selkies know how to read, so she’s drawn pictures on the back of the paper. She hopes the girl will understand, one way or another.
There’s no one but the moon to bear witness to her actions; how she blocks the opening of the alcove with a large, smooth stone which ought to stay put; how she slips getting off the ledge and falls into the water with a shriek; how she drags herself to her feet, shivering and with a scrape all down the back of her leg; how she marches back to the shore and wrings out as much of the seawater as she can before going in search of her footwear, stubbornly and fiercely proud of herself. She might not be much— just the daughter of a noble in disgrace, yet to learn how to be a proper lady— but here in the dark of her cove, she feels for a moment like anything is possible.
She’s kept her secret for a long time now, and there’s no reason to suppose Mama will find out any more. She’s going away in the morning.
She’s leaving the ocean behind, for the first time in her life.
When morning comes, and she rinses the dried salt from her skin before getting dressed, she blames the long, rough scrape down her calf for her tears, and not sadness. When it’s time to clamber into the carriage and wave goodbye to Mama and the cottage in which she’s spent her whole life, she blames her nerves. The sight of the ocean quietly vanishing below the crest of a hill as she makes her way inland feels a lot like the end of the world.