Seacliff

Chapter seventy-eight: The stuff of legends

1940

Lying in his skin for quicker healing, Aidan listened to his father tell of how he'd stumbled upon the slaughter when he'd gone looking for food. He didn't know how the fishing boat had ended up there, but he saw the selkies drag the humans ashore and start torturing them.

"Is there such a thing as cannibal selkies? Who eat human flesh?"

Sorley grimaced. "No. I don't know... They were not eating them and they were clearly not defending themselves. It was just that, sport. Killing for the sake of... killing."

Aidan didn't know what to say.

All his life, he'd learned that selkies were supposed to be peaceful people, hiding from humans because they were helpless to fight against oppression. Selkies hadn't always been the stuff of legends. They used to lend a helping hand wherever needed and mingle with human settlements, until 'civilization' took off and selkies became enslaved.

It was no wonder, then, that some had succumbed to unspeakable hatred.

"How are you feeling?" Sorley knelt to check his son's tail.

"Pretty good. How does it look?"

"Also good. Do you think you can swim? We need to get to the colony grounds, we will be safer there. Who knows what these lunatic youths have in mind?"

Aidan tested the flexibility of his tail – it flipped as intended. "Let's go."

The second colony was further south along the coast, in a wooded, mountainous area. Aidan guessed they weren't very far from the US border by now. They were more cautious closing in on the beach this time. Sorley scouted ahead. He returned together with a group of friendly-looking locals, who wore flimsy fur robes.

"You can come out, mo mhac," his da said. "These are old friends."

Aidan surfaced and broke out, rinsing himself in seawater. All the locals except one came to help haul the sealskins ashore.

"Welcome to Canada," the stranger who stayed behind said.

He looked older and had a string of shells and black pearls around his neck. A hint of familiarity glowed in the warm undertones of his copper complexion. Aidan frowned as he tried to place it.

"I am Amaruq, the Chief of the Mealy Mountains colony." He held out his hand.

Aidan shook it. "Uh... it's... nice to meet you, Chief Amaruq. My name is Aidan."

The name drove the resemblance home in Aidan's mind. He saw Mansa Musa's cruel grin and his plaited lion's mane instead of the dense halo of soft curls on Amaruq's head.

"Please, call me Amaruq."

Aidan gulped, at a loss for words.

"Thank you for the warm welcome, Amaruq," Sorley swooped in. "My son is... This is his first time so far away from home and... we had a most unpleasant encounter earlier."

Amaruq's smile saddened. "Yes, indeed. Allow me to apologise, on my little brother's behalf."

Two other selkies came to take Aidan's skin. Sorley motioned for him to allow them. Another one brought Aidan a short, sleeveless robe, which he tied around his waist with a length of rope after putting it on.

"My brother broke away from us some years back," Amaruq continued, guiding his guests into the evergreen thicket, "and took some of the others with him. Young, feckless things. Why should we be scared of Man, he reasoned, if we are more powerful than him? Man should be afraid, not us."

As the forest thinned out, Aidan spotted pockets of activity on each side of the trail. Animal furs and skins tended to, meat and fish salted, children running and playing... Small stick huts, covered with greens and cones, blended into the landscape. Men and women laughing, chatting, kissing, and none of them paid the new arrivals any mind.

"Vengeance poisoned his mind," Amaruq added, "after whalers harpooned his daughter. He is bound on a path of destruction."

The Chief stopped in front of a larger dwelling, something of a hut mixed with a tent, erected in a pit at the base of a dirt mound. Granite boulders drenched in moss and lichen further shielded it from unknowing eyes.

"I never believed Kallik would go through with his rebellion," Sorley said.

"Yes, neither did I." Amaruq clasped his hands at his back. "But perhaps that was my mistake. We all have our paths to walk. I recognised too late that mine and his had... diverged."

"I'm sorry," Sorley murmured.

Amaruq mustered some cheer in his countenance. "Oh, never mind that now – shall we?"

"After you, Chief."

Smiling, Amaruq raised one of the leather flaps making up the front 'door' of the dwelling and disappeared into the darkness within.

*

Torch holders lined the walls of the underground passage. A member of their entourage picked one up and lit it, leading the way.

Aidan marvelled at the clay-and-stone tunnel reinforced by wooden beams, even though it reminded him of the Western Front trenches. The memory started a shudder in his spine, which caught him unawares. He gasped from the shock, however minuscule.

"Are you cold?" Amaruq asked over his shoulder. "We can find some warmer robes for you, if you wish."

"No, I..." He gulped. "I mean, trousers would be great, but I'm not shivering because of the cold."

"I hope my brother hasn't frightened you irrevocably."

The passage took so many twists and turns that Aidan didn't even try to keep track.

"No... no, I've seen worse."

Amaruq slowed down so Aidan could fall into step with him. "Oh?"

"I, um..." The boy rubbed at his nape. "You know about the war, don't you?"

"Yes, of course. We've been helping relocate refugees and rescue soldiers. Were you in the war?"

Aidan nodded. "France and Norway. And then back to France. It... was a nightmare."

"I'm so sorry."

Amaruq squeezed Aidan's shoulder as they stopped by a doorway. Sentries with horned skeleton masks guarded it. The Chief waved his hand and they uncrossed their bladed staffs, granting the visitors access.

They walked into a chamber half-flooded by brightness. The roaring sound of crashing waves drew Aidan to the source of the light – a round opening, like the mouth of a cave, straight into the sea. Soft ripples lapped at the stone floor and a formation of pointed crags spiked from the water in the distance. A bout of homesickness overtook him.

"Aidan," Amaruq called out and put an arm around the boy's shoulders, nudging him a few steps forward.

The Chief spoke in a foreign language to a shadow at the back of the chamber which slowly began to take shape as Aidan's eyes adjusted. It was a large, dark sealskin, split half open and propped against the wall.

A man sat within it, his muscular arms crossed over his chest like a pharaoh in a sarcophagus. His skin was a deep brown, darker in hue than Amaruq's. As if resurrected from the dead, the man abruptly opened his eyes. They were the bluest Aidan had ever seen, azure like the spotless summer sky, like the infinity of the ocean, like sapphires on a king's crown...

His knees buckling, Aidan became acutely aware of Amaruq's arm anchoring him to reality. The piercing weight of the intense blue gaze had his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

"Aidan," Amaruq whispered, "I am honoured to present you to our great Elder, Mansa Abubakri."