Selkie

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

"What do I do?"

The Reverend got up and walked to the bookcase. I started going through the photos in earnest. There was one of the Reverend with the name Christopher written on the back. He was looking at the camera with an expression so full of love I knew without a doubt that it was my Mother on the other side of the camera. Then one of my Mother was in a hospital bed, holding a tiny baby. It was a picture of me. That one had something written in a language I couldn't understand on the back.

mo nighean ghràdhach solas mo bheatha agus dòchas nan làithean ri teachd

The third was a picture of a handsome man in a suit with my Mother on his arm. It was a newspaper clipping from the 1920s. She looked stunning in a floor-length white gown and short flapperish hair. He looked proud and arrogant, and she looked sad. The caption read: Mr. Theodore Selwyn and his bride pose for the opening of the Selwyn building.

"Wait a minute." Rev Sampson paused and turned around. "Theodore Selwyn?" As in Selwyn Enterprises? My Dad is a billionaire."

Rev Sampson laughed to himself. "You find out that your parents are immortal and that your father is a psychotic control freak who magically imprisoned your mother, and you're focusing on his net worth?"

"No, it's just... magically?"

"Yes, he stole something from your Mother that binds her to him and prevents her from going home. It's why he has been so lucky. It is why he cannot be killed. He stole her magic, and he wants to steal yours."

"I'm not actually magic, though. So, there are no worries on that front."

I kept looking at the photos. My Mom laughing in the garden in peak 1950s fashion. The Reverend leaning on an old car in suspenders and high-waisted pants. There was another yellowed newspaper clipping from the '20s of that same couple - my parents. This one was from the society pages. It was a wedding announcement, her veil draped around her like a shroud.

"So my Dad, who was young in the 1920s, and also in the early 2000s when I was born, is just pretending to be his own son? Grandson?"

"Of course." the Reverend handed me a package he'd just taken out of a hollowed-out book on the shelf. "I've taken the liberty of preparing some falsified documents for you to travel with."

The look on my face must have clued him into how hard my brain was working to connect all the dots. "Don't worry, Edie, they're excellent forgeries. Government espionage level. You won't get in any trouble at all. It would be better if your father believes you're hanging around here just a bit longer. His people are... ruthless."

This man before me was either immortal or aged at a glacial pace. He looked so boyish and apologetic as he stood there telling me I had to turn myself into a super spy. I almost laughed. Almost.

"Okay, so magic is real. My parents are immortal. My biological father is a monster, and I'm what? A dormant wizard?"

"No, silly. Your Mother is a Selkie. Your father will live so long as he has her skin in his possession."

"Reverend Sampson, I do not even swim. I hate it. I have a panic attack the minute I smell chlorine."

"Ah, Child. But how do you feel about the ocean?" He had me there. My sketchbooks as a child were full of stormy, watery scenes. Wave after wave crashing against massive jagged rocks. I dreamed most nights of floating endlessly and weightlessly. But, surely, that cannot be. "Besides," he interrupted my reverie, "Of course, you can't swim without your skin. You'd catch your death of cold."