L onglimbs
safest that way. One night I overheard Grandmam telling Mam, “You need to be more careful, Oona! What if they saw him, a boy living with seals? They’d take him away, that’s what they’d do! They’d trap him on land”—her voice dropped, and I crept closer to hear the rest—“and he’d never get his pelt, and his selkie-soul would die.” The memory made me shiver. Now I sat up tall and lifted my face to the Moon. Please, I prayed. Please. The rest of my prayer didn’t have words. I closed my eyes and imagined the Moon—she who calls the waves— calling to me. I pictured myself with graceful flippers, my pelt sleek and shining. I opened my eyes and spread my fingers wide, searching for webbing, a sign of the turning, the beginning. They still looked the same. Maybe the change was too small to see. I ran a finger down from the top of my thumb and along the arcs of skin. Mam sighed. She was awake, her eyes following my finger as it traced every dip and rise. Her mouth set as she tried not to show me the ache she felt, the place in her heart as hollow as the gaps between my fingers. The place that only my pelt would fill.
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5p The Turning interior CC15.indd 5
5/14/18 8:47 AM