The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

from the chimneys of a few of the homes, the last blocks of peat warming the hearths for the night.  It had been a long day.  That was all.  It was late and her eyes were playing tricks on her. The wind cut through her thin shirt and she shivered, pushing to her feet.
    Whatever she’d just seen—it wasn’t real. She would go inside. She would lie down. And tomorrow she would forget all about the woman she’d just seen step off the cliff.
    She walked around to the front of the house and let herself in.  Closing the door behind her, she locked it.  Just to be sure.
     
    ***
     
    Outside, in a garden dead for centuries, in ground still frozen with winter’s kiss, a rose bloomed in the moonlight.
    Blood red and out of season.
    It climbed and twisted, its thorns like knives piercing the whitewashed walls of the cottage, cracking paint as it coiled around the doorway.
    Someone was coming.

Chapter 3
     
    He planted roses the color of murder, the color of blood.
    They grew like weeds, like wild-fire.  Their black stems coiling around the doorway, creeping up the sides of the walls.  Their roots ground deep into the earth, twisting, tangling with the knotted soil as their thorns sunk into the pale walls of the cottage, tore at the thatch of the roof.
    Their scent was drugging; their odor sickening.  Their smell seeped in through the cracks in the door, filling the house with their scent.  Sweet madness.  Sweet insanity.  There was no escape from it.
    She clawed at the bushes, stabbed at their roots, hauling armfuls of the fat, fragrant blooms to the cliff edge.  But no matter how many times she tossed them, watching their long stems fall end over end until the surging ocean swallowed them, no matter how fast she hacked at the thick stems, they grew like snakes.
    Their thorns were like knives, piercing her flesh as she dug in the dirt for her seal-skin, for her freedom, for her link to the sea.  Digging, always digging.  Always searching for her pelt.
    She would never stop.
    In her madness, she tore at the bushes, slicing her hands on the thorns, on the petals, sharp as ice.  She clawed at them until her palms were raw and bleeding, until her arms and wrists were lacerated.
    In her desperation, she scratched at the floorboards, hacked at the walls, tore at the thatch of the roof.  But the roses pushed their way in through the windows, breaking the glass, forming a wall around the house.  Until she was caught.  Like prey.  Trapped in a web.  Bound by their scent.
    Sweet sickening madness.
    Her mind grew weaker, her thoughts more and more desperate.  She slipped from the cottage at midnight, sinking to her knees before the bush, fingering the scarlet petals, begging to be set free.  In the moonlight, when the smell of the roses left her weak and powerless, dew dripped from the petals like cold red tears.
    And as she picked the petals, one by one from the giant bush, they curled and turned black in her hand.  No more than ashes.  No more than dust.  The wind tore what was left of the petals from her fingers, the crumbles swirling into the cold black night.  Fading into nothingness.
    And as she stared at her palms, where the petals had been, there was only gray ash, and the thin webbing between her fingers that was slowly fading.
    And as the nights passed, then the months, then the years, she lost all hope, all belief that she’d ever return.
    This was all there was now.
    This was all there would ever be.
     
    ***
     
    Caitlin heard the buzz of the alarm and slapped at the clock, burying her head in the pillow.  What was she thinking, offering to meet Tara in the kitchen and hold their first cooking lesson first thing on a Sunday morning?  She glared at the clock, grumbled a few curses and kicked her way out of the tangle of sheets.
    She’d walk over to the pub and tell Tara she needed another hour of sleep.  A woman needed an extra hour of sleep on a Sunday.  Something about that beauty rest thing.