Learning to Swim by Annie Cosby Page B

love, the one between a human male and a female selkie. True love? I don’t know. How are we to know that what humans experience is real love?” She paused. “But, Cora, you do remember what I’ve told you about nature?”
    She didn’t wait for my answer.
    “For all the love in the world, nature abounds tenfold.”
    Like the Merrow, and her everlasting will to return to the water.
    “The selkie will return to the ocean. No matter how strong her love for her human man. No matter how many children she bore him. She needs her sealskin to do so, but when she finds it, she will return to the ocean.”
    I couldn’t shake the feeling that telling me these things was making Mrs. O’Leary nervous. I wished I could relieve her apprehension, but I didn’t know what was causing it.
    “You know, selkies live much longer than seals or humans,” she went on. “And the ones born of a Selkie and her human lover, they age strangely. It is very rare, very, very rare,” here, she closed her eyes for what appeared to be a painful moment before continuing, “for a half-selkie offspring to change back to human form after already having returned to nature. But when he takes off the sealskin a second time, the human body is as young as the day he left it.”
    I was quite at a loss for words, but didn’t get the feeling that she was expecting any.
    “It is a magical thing, and the seal of the half-selkie will not age again until he is back in the water, just like the human part of him will not age until he walks again on two legs. In seal form, a selkie and her human-born children will age and eventually die, but not for many, many years longer than most things in the ocean. In human form, they would age and die, too, but very few can resist the yearning for the water and live a complete life in human form.”
    Mrs. O’Leary pressed a hand to her eyes. “Even I don’t see like I used to. I was always blind to colors, but now, I need you children to find things. My eyes …”
    I didn’t know how to console her, but she seemed to snap to rather quickly, and went on unaided.
    “Left on land for too long—oh, the selkie will age. Age dreadfully. Eyes that are meant for water, left in the air too long.” For some reason this brought the image of the pale, bloated body back to me. Human eyes, left in water too long. For days, weeks.
    Mrs. O’Leary finally said, softly, as if defeated, “Thank you for listening.”
    “I love to listen to your tales,” I said. Belatedly, I wondered if she would take offence at the fiction that the word tale implied.
    “It is nice to speak of this, as I don’t tell Ronan this. But everything has a place, even a child knows this.”
    She doesn’t tell Ronan these things? I had heard her on countless occasions speaking of myths and legends to Rory, so I could only wonder if the “Ronan” she was speaking of now was her son, her baby, the dead Ronan O’Leary—or her handyman Rory. Or maybe she did think her son and her handyman were one and the same.
    “Nature always wins,” the old woman murmured as her rocking chair slowed. Her eyes were drooping, and after a few moments I wondered if she had fallen asleep.
    I left her in silence until the sound of a seagull roused her and she was herself again. She launched into a story about Doolin, the town in Ireland where her husband Seamus was born.
     

     
    Rory appeared at lunchtime. As he climbed the steps with a friendly smile, I could feel my cheeks reacting. I was embarrassed and mad at myself that his mere presence made me have a physical reaction. But the thought of his leggy blonde only made me feel worse, so I sat up straight and willed myself to speak, calmly and as though his presence didn’t bother me.
    He plopped down on the steps, setting a sandwich on his knee.
    “I was just talking to Cora about Ireland,” Mrs. O’Leary said. “Have you been abroad, dear?” she asked me.
    I nodded. “My parents go a lot, and sometimes they take