Page 76 of The Secret of Drulea Cottage
“Yer grandmother had burned up yer mother’s sealskin.”
“Wait…my mother had a sealskin? But that would mean…” Briony couldn’t finish.
“She was na a full selkie, but aye, she was one too.”
A Mother’s Love
Briony tried to stop the shaking in her hands, but it was useless. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing was as she had thought. She looked away from Mr. McLaren and focused her attention on the letter.
She slowly unfolded it, surprised to see multiple pages when she’d thought it just one, and read.
My dearest Briony,
I hope that after you read this, you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I also hope, though it may be foolish, that you find happiness here in Everton. Happiness has not come easily for our family, but if anyone can grab hold of it, I know ’tis you.
By now, you must have realized you’re more different than I led you to believe. I suppose I always knew you would eventually figure it out, but I wanted to give you as close to a normal life as I could, if only to spare you from the heartache I went through.
You could say the Fairborn family truly began when your great-grandmother Edith Fairborn fled to Everton from Rousay to escape an unwanted marriage to a man nearly twenty years her senior. The others in town were wary of Edith, but she made a good name for herself as a respectable member of the community. Even so, it was not easy for her when she began to desire a husband; no one knew her background, for she had kept all of it a secret. Edith found herself very alone, and one day, she became desperate enough to try something a little mad.
Legend claims if a woman cries seven tears into the ocean, a selkie will come for her and love her as his own. While Edith didn’t place much faith in this tale, she thought it would not hurt to give it a try. How wrong she was.
Indeed, a selkie did appear, but as soon as he got what he wanted from her, he returned to the ocean, and Edith was left with child. The scandal of it all afforded her one small blessing: when she gave birth to the child alone, no one discovered what her daughter was.
Edith saw the sea in the selkie child’s eyes, so she named her Greta, meaning “pearl.” Edith told Greta the truth of her heritage, and Greta grew up as an outcast who had to keep her secret well guarded. She finally did catch a young man’s eye, but, being naive and in love, Greta gave him something precious that she should have saved. So in love was she that Greta then did something far more stupid: she showed him her sealskin.
Once he knew she was not human, he ran from her in terror and disappeared from Everton like a ghost. Greta was so hurt that she destroyed her own sealskin and cursed her father’s heritage.
But by then, I was already growing within her. And when I was born and my mother realized that the selkie blood had passed on to me, she locked my sealskin away in the hopes I would never find it.
For many years, I had no idea what I was. When the other bairns began to mock me for my webbed toes and obsession with the ocean, my mother told me the truth. Well, part of the truth. She told me my grandfather had been a selkie, but she also said my sealskin had been lost.
There was a chest my mother kept behind the bed. She always told me not to open it, that it held my grandmother’s old things and that I would have no interest in its contents. I was eleven winters when my curiosity got the better of me. What I found in that chest brought tears to my eyes: ’twas my sealskin! All those years, I had thought it lost, yet here it had been the entire time. I was so enraptured that I immediately took it to the beach and put it on. I had never felt so alive as I did that day! By the time I returned home that evening, my heart was full.
But my mother discovered what I had done. She hit me and took the sealskin, saying I would soon leave her, just as my father had, just as my selkie grandfather had. I begged her to return the skin, told her I would never leave her, that she was all I had.
She would hear none of it. She built a fire and threw my sealskin into it, not caring how hurt I was. To this day, I don’t know why she kept the pelt only to destroy it as soon as I found it.
On that day, Vincent McLaren became my dearest friend. I was so distraught over what had happened that I, like a fool, told him the family secret. And yet…he did not run away. Instead, he kept my secret and told me he would always be there for me. If there is anyone in this world you can trust, ’tis him.
I always strove to keep you from knowing of the tension between your grandmother and me. I wanted you to have only happy memories of her, despite the great rift that lay between us. It nearly killed her when she found out who your father was, but I can honestly say she loved you from the moment you came into the world.
That brings me to the rest of what you need to know. You’ve always been curious about your father, so let me finally tell you what you’ve been seeking all these years. His name was Einar, or at least that was the name he told me. Aye, bairn, he was a selkie too. And I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on him. I also knew he was no good for me, but I wanted to spite my mother for the horrible thing she had done all those years ago.
Einar came to Everton with the sole purpose of producing an heir. He was handsome and charming, as all selkie males are. I never had a chance.
Your father kept his true purposes to himself until after I was with child. Once I told him I was going to have you, though, he revealed his true self. He told me of his selkie nature, thinking he would frighten me into submitting to his whims. He wished to take the bairn to the sea, never to see me again. What he did not realize, though, was that I’d known what he was all along and I did not fear him.
I refused to give you up, and so it became a battle of wills. He threatened to reveal my secret, so I threatened to reveal his. He threatened to destroy Everton, so I threatened to have the seals hunted down. He threatened to steal you in the night, so I threatened to burn your sealskin.
Eventually, he said it was not worth the trouble and left shortly before you were born. But I feared that was not the end; I told Vincent everything and made him swear that if your father ever returned to take you away, he would stop Einar by any means necessary.
Perhaps you also know that has already happened. I’m so sorry, dearest one. I never meant for it to turn out like it did, but I hope you’ll one day realize that everything I did was out of love. Please do not blame Vincent for his part in it. He was only trying to keep you from harm.
If your father had taken you away, you would have lived such a dangerous life as a selkie. Every time one of the fishermen brought back dead seals for meat and oil, I thanked the Lord that it was not you.
Selkies are very alluring; ’tis almost impossible for an unwed human to resist when one comes to claim a mate. This is why I’ve always kept you from sharing your lovely singing voice. If a man were to hear it, he would become enthralled with you for a short time.
You, my daughter, have the blood of the sea from both your parents. This shall give you the ability to make your own choices, should a selkie male ever try to claim you. Be better than I was, than Edith was. Don’t rush into anything; don’t give your heart away too easily.
