The SealskinMadi Haab
1200 words The sealskin slid off his lap, startling him awake. Finlay tugged it free from his granddaughter’s hold with a strength that surprised them both. “Sorry, I thought you might be too warm,” Louise said, ever the sweet girl. “It’s so hot today.” Was it? He supposed it was: the open windows failed to tempt the slightest breeze, and sunlight shone into the apartment in bright, hard slants. Finlay smiled up at her to soften his reaction. “At my age, lassie, you’re always cold.” Louise smoothed the hide back into his lap, watching the gray fur ripple under her hands. “What animal is that? It’s beautiful.” The mere question swept him back into the past. Sharp scent of brine, the pier groaning under his feet, his reflection breaking into shards then gathering again. A pale smear, swift under the surface. He leans in for a closer look, but a dizzy spell sends him stumbling off the pier. He’s eighteen, one of thousands waiting for a ship to escape the potato famine that struck the Highlands, and he’s so malnourished he can’t swim back to the surface. When he comes to on the pebbled shore, the hide of short, dappled fur is wrapped around him. A woman stands there, her naked body limned with the thin gray light that filters through the clouds. She drops to one knee and shoves bits of raw fish into his mouth. He gags at first, but after a brief battle the desperation wins over the nausea, and he swallows greedily. Her fingers taste of salt and blood, and something sweet-- Louise’s soft voice brought him back to the present. “Sorry, grampa,” she said. “You know I don’t speak Gaelic.” Wrong language again. It wasn’t only his body that regressed to infant-like helplessness: so did his mind. More and more often it came unmoored and drifted back to the familiar, musical shapes of his native Gàidhlig, reaching back across the ocean and the better part of a century. Finlay cleared his throat. “A seal,” he answered, running one palm over the fur. “It’s sealskin.” The only thing he brought with him across the Atlantic. He’d desperately looked for the woman before the ship weighed anchor, unable to bring himself to abandon the skin on the shore. Then he’d stared out at the slate-coloured expanse from the deck, hoping for a glimpse of that pale face among the slick dark heads of the seals, but the heather moorlands and snowy peaks slipped beneath the horizon without sight of her. With a soft squeeze of his hand, his granddaughter helps him into his wheelchair. Then they stroll along the glimmering ribbon of the Lachine Canal, where he’d earned his livelihood. He stroked the sealskin still draped over his lap despite the heat, looking over the smokestacks and red brick of the factories. Finlay lived well and loved well: his crofter’s hands helped erect Montreal’s buildings and bridges, and he watched it grow from a small port town to a bustling industrial centre. The hide kept him warm in winter and swaddled his children, never wearing thin. Louise sat down next to him in the shade of a maple, stippled with needles of sunlight. Finlay watched his granddaughter stare at the bright length of the canal, kicking her socked feet in the air. A beautiful girl, Louise. A smattering of freckles adorned her face, and the sun teased the copper out of her hair. That she got from him, but everything else was from her grandmother: her brown eyes, round cheeks, that little button of a nose. For a split second Charlotte was there again by his side, the image of his young bride superimposed to the downy-haired woman she became, equally beautiful. “Lottie,” Finlay whispered, and caught Louise’s wince. “I’m Louise, grampa,” she said, as kindly as she could. “Do you need anything?” Poor girl. He knew she’d rather be off with her friends than looking after an old man, so he gave her a quarter to buy some taffy at the nearby store. Her hand was small and smooth against his sallow, papery skin, marbled with blue veins; her reddish ponytail bounced with her steps, and he watched her skip along the canal before letting himself sink into memory again. Sure as the tide, she rises up from the sea. Saltwater spikes her lashes, and she holds another fish in her hands. All the memories he lost to old age only brought hers into sharper focus. In his mind, her face is ageless, her eyes the same inky black as the hair falling down her back in kelp-like strands. She cuts the fish open with one sharp fingernail, and he ignores the texture of uncooked flesh as he devours it, regaining his strength with each swallow. Finlay hauled himself to his feet and took a few feeble steps towards the edge of the canal, clutching the sealskin to his chest. Foam seething around him, seawater dripping from her hair into his mouth, webbed fingers splayed on his chest. Her body moving atop his to the rhythm of the waves. Sometimes he dreamed of making the long voyage back to Scotland, back to the shores of his youth, but then he’d married, sired a child, then another, then another, and by the time they were grown and he was widowed, it had seemed too late. How could she know him again, when the last vestiges of his youth have turned to deep crags on his face, and the flame of his hair burned out to white smoke? And yet. Beyond the ancient visage staring back at him on the surface of the water, he can still make out the lad he used to be. Time has eroded the sediments striating his memory to reveal the both of them again, fossilized in amber just as they once were, on that faraway shore. His old joints crack and pop as he kneels. “I’m here,” he whispers to the water, holding the sealskin to his heart. The wind blows through the maples, ruffling the thick fur and parting the waves of the canal. There. A white face rises, and she emerges, just as he remembers her: the slick fall of her hair clinging to her breasts, the almost sickly pallor of the depths, the wet lashes ringing her inhumanly black eyes. Behind her, the waters of the canal, gilded with sunlight; off to his side, Louise, hands pressed to her mouth in a soundless scream, Tootsie Rolls scattering at her feet. “Look, I still have it,” Finlay says, holding up the sealskin in his gnarled hands. The youthful timber of his own voice surprises him, like the past seventy years never were. “That’s what you came back for, isn’t it?” It’s yours, love, she answers, in this language born of no land. As yours is mine. Saltwater streams down his face. Relief, maybe, that she found him again, that she exists at all. She reaches up for him and pulls him down to herself, easy as a child. As they slip beneath the gold-tipped waves of the St. Lawrence, he wraps the hide around their bodies. Her smooth skin turns to short spotted fur under his fingers, her limbs to fins, and her face stretches into a whiskered snout. Her eyes remain unchanged, though, deep black pools soft with long lashes. Finlay wraps his arms around her neck while she swims deeper and deeper, where river turns to sea. |
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Madi Haab
Madi Haab (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent writer of Moroccan descent from Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. She draws inspiration from her mixed cultural heritage and identities to explore the liminal and interstitial through speculative fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in Augur Magazine, Haven Speculative, Brins d’éternité and more. When not writing, she dabbles in art and singing, and likes videogames and afternoon naps a little too much. Find her at madihaab.com or on Bluesky @madihaab
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