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his arms and a bottle in his fist. He was hideous. Slung around his neck was a thick rope, and from the knot at its end swung an enormous white bird— an albatross, I realized, shudders running down my back.
    So this was the mariner of the poem, the presiding spirit of the house. Maybe Mom was right; had I been at all familiar with literature, I might have recognized the portrait right away and spared myself my minor coronary.
    As though the house had read my mind, a draft in the hallway caused the door next to the painting to open slightly. I pushed the knob and peeked into what looked like a smallstudy. Flicking on the light, I walked inside. There was an antique wooden writing desk with a high-backed chair, a crimson love seat, and mahogany bookshelves lining the walls. The single slice of wall not covered in books showed off another watercolor portrait, but this one did not scare me.
    It was of Isadora, resplendent in a silky green gown. She was posed on the staircase of The Mariner, her bearing regal. The portraitist had added whimsical flourishes: peach blossoms dangled above her head, and she held a fur-lined wrap in her arms that no one south of the Mason-Dixon Line would ever need. The whole look was sort of hilarious, and screamed Scarlett O’Hara. Not coincidentally, the bookshelf beneath the portrait held a copy of Gone with the Wind.
    I scanned the rest of the shelf, curious as to what else my grandmother had considered good reading material. The books weren’t arranged alphabetically, or by subject; the lack of order made my head hurt. There was Marion Brown’s Southern Cook Book beside Romeo and Juliet, which was nestled next to the Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot and a book of Andersen’s fairy tales. Nothing called to me. But when I saw the phrase Selkie Island on the lower half of a torn, dark blue spine, I pulled the book out.
    The cover nearly came off in my hands, and I did a double take when I saw it bore a reproduction of the warning sign that hung above the Selkie dock. The book’s title, A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island, was emblazoned across the top, and the author’s name, Llewellyn Thorpe, was written out in script across the bottom. Turning the book over, I wiped the film of dust off its back cover and read the paragraph that was written in gold leaf:
    Many are drawn to Selkie Island. Few know why. Selkie’s essence of mystery surrounds the isle like its famous shroud of fog. But the island’s varied legends—of beasts, of freaks, of shipwrecked sailors—have an undeniable lure. The tome you hold in your hands, gentle reader, is a compendium of these legends. Proceed with care.
    I smiled. More tall tales? Maybe Sailor Hat was Llewellyn Thorpe.
    I cracked the book’s flimsy spine, and a musty scent rose up toward me. The frontispiece was a grainy map showing Selkie’s location in the Atlantic, but the island was surrounded by drawings of winged fish, krakens, and mermaids. I turned the slippery, yellowed pages until I reached the back of the book. There, I found a pen-and-ink drawing of a reed-thin man wearing spectacles and a suit. Beneath this image it said:
    Llewellyn Thorpe was born in 1873 in Savannah, Georgia, and died in 1913, shortly before the publication of this volume. A professor of anthropology, he devoted his life to researching the folklore of Selkie Island.
    Okay. So not Sailor Hat.
    Holding the book open, I walked backward to the writing desk. I spread my towel on the high-backed chair and sat, thumbing through the book more slowly now. Why was I hooked? Why did I care?
    I flipped past chapters entitled “Side-Shows and Cabinets of Curiosity,” “The Sharp-Toothed Serpents of Siren Beach,” “Stories of the Gullah People,” and “Cryptozoology.” Finally, I came upon a chapter called “A Brief Historie of Selkie Island,” and I paused, wondering if this might offer something resembling solid fact. I set the book down on the desk, moving aside a