Selkie

by Nataly Gruender

Genres: Coming of Age

Synopsis

From the author of Medusa comes another beautiful and emotional story, this one featuring a selkie, a mythological creature who can turn from a seal into a human.

Seven years ago, Quinn finally dared to transform from a seal into a human and took her first steps on land. As a selkie, she is both a daughter of land and sea. But when a human stole her pelt, he stole her freedom as well, forcing Quinn to become his wife and bear his children. As legend tells, capturing a selkie will bring you luck, and she became a coveted prize.
 
Constrained to a life that was no longer her own, Quinn longed for nothing more than to find her pelt and seize her freedom. Then one day, her eldest daughter hands Quinn her pelt and without a second thought, Quinn snatches it and escapes to the sea. But she's no longer used to swimming and doesn't know where her herd has gone. And after an almost disastrous encounter with her former husband, leaving her severely injured, Quinn doesn't even have the strength to go searching.
 
Instead, she finds herself taking shelter on a nearby island with a lighthouse and three lighthouse keepers. Quinn doesn't trust humans anymore and wants to stay hidden from the keepers. But she can't survive on her own either. Can she learn to trust these humans and shed her hatred of all humankind? Or will she give into her fears and accept the monstrous fate that others have bestowed upon her?

Release date: August 12, 2025

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 432

Sample

NOW

QUINN COULD SEE A jagged piece of the ocean from the kitchen window, glinting a gunmetal blue like the pearlescent inside of an oyster. She would come to the window to gaze at this piece of sea when she wanted to remember her anger. Partially concealed by their neighbors’ roofs, the water taunted and called to her. She longed to run to it, to feel the bracingly cold waves pull at her, and let the currents take her away. But it was the one place she could not go.

Quinn had been born a selkie, a shapeshifter, taking the form of a gray seal and living in the open waters of the sea off the coast of Scotland with her family and herd. Her mother had taught her how to peel away her pelt to reveal thin, uncoordinated limbs, and she had learned to prefer the safety and warmth of her fur. Wrapped in her pelt with the strength of her tail and her herd around her, the endlessness of the ocean stretching ahead, Quinn had felt invincible.

Now, in the kitchen with its creaking floorboards and taunting window, her pelt stolen and hidden from her by the man she was forced to call husband, Quinn felt empty.

Her memories of the water had faded, despite her desperate attempts to grasp at the feelings and the images that became blurrier every year. She remembered the cold. She remembered the darkness, broken only by the weak light of the sun far above the surface. She remembered her family, though their faces were long lost.

She remembered the feeling of her pelt, pulled tight across her skin until she became a part of the ocean itself.

Gripping her elbows with opposite hands, Quinn dug her fingers into her arms. Nothing could make her forget her pelt. She had spent seven years on land thinking about her pelt every moment she was awake, and even while she slept.

Quinn was trapped in a human body. She resented her arms and legs, the nimble dexterity of her fingers, the fragility of her skin. Even after years of living on land, every step was a reminder of what she had lost. Of the life that had been taken from her.

Releasing her grip on her arms, Quinn turned from the view and began to clear the table of the dishes from her children’s breakfast. Her two daughters had left for school a while ago, and their father long before that to his boat and the dawn catch. The house was quiet, barring the faint creaks and groans as the wood protested the wind.

After she put the dishes away, Quinn wiped her hands on the apron tied around her waist and went searching for her youngest child. Oliver, already four years old, could have started school and joined his sisters a few months ago. But his father worried about Oliver’s lacking speech, as the boy barely spoke more than a few words each week. Quinn didn’t think Oliver’s quiet tendencies would have affected his ability to go to school, but she hadn’t protested when his father decided he would start next year. She didn’t protest much when it came to her children.

Quinn’s husband and captor, Owen, believed in his grandfather’s stories that selkies would bring good luck and fortune to any man able to make one his wife. He also believed the stories that warned of the dangers of a selkie’s fury. But when Owen had had the chance to steal Quinn’s pelt, he’d taken it, his eyes shining with the prospect of fortune and a family of his own. She was a perfect tool to help him achieve his dreams.

The issue was, Owen’s grandfather had been a farmer, living far inland, where stories of the sea became diluted and clouded like muddied water. Quinn brought Owen everything but luck and fortune. He’d created the family he desired by force. Quinn had hoped that once Owen had his children he would let her go, but the stories of a selkie’s rage and revenge were too ingrained in his mind.

“If I released you,” he argued one night, standing firm as a dropped anchor against Quinn’s raging currents, “I could never go to sea again without thinking you’d be waiting for the chance to pull me under.”

His fear of her was a double-edged sword. It made Quinn glad to know he was frightened of her, but it also meant he would never willingly let her go.

She found Oliver in the small bedroom that the children shared. He stood on a chair that he had pushed up against the wall so that he could look out the window, his nose pressed against the glass. The view from here showed the road leading toward town and the docks. His sisters would have walked down the road to the schoolhouse.

“Oliver,” she called, and he turned to look at her. All of her children had inherited her dark brown hair and fine features. But instead of eyes so brown they were almost black, which Quinn had passed down to her first two children, Oliver’s eyes were a pale gray, like his father’s. He was too young to have his father’s cold, calculating look, which made Quinn’s skin prickle, but seeing her features alongside Owen’s was a constant, painful reminder of what Owen had taken from her. Oliver’s nose had a small pink mark at the tip from where it had been pushed against the cold glass. “Come help me with the laundry.”

He jumped down from the chair. They went back to the kitchen together so Quinn could take up the basket of freshly washed clothes she’d been working on before the children woke up. Oliver quietly raced ahead of her to hold open the kitchen door that led into the side yard.

Their home was high on a hill, which gave them the view of the ocean, but they were also surrounded by other houses that had crept up the hill as the town grew. Up here, the wind pushed off the lingering smell of salt brine and fish that lay over the town like a blanket.

Tramping through the thick grass, still green despite the fact that they were far into October, Quinn set the laundry basket beside one of the poles with the hanging line strung between them. Oliver bent over the basket and pulled out one of his father’s shirts, holding it up for Quinn.

She dug through the pockets of her apron until she found the one filled with wooden clips. Taking the shirt, she hung it over the line, where it immediately began flapping in the wind. It was a clear day, the sky a reluctant blue, but the wind was as strong as ever. It pulled at her hair, which was braided roughly and fell down her back in a thick rope.

They worked silently, which was fine with Quinn. While Oliver’s father worried about his reluctance to speak, Quinn knew it had nothing to do with any failing or delayed learning on Oliver’s part. He could speak just fine. He simply chose not to.

When they had nearly finished hanging up all the laundry, with Oliver now racing back and forth between where Quinn stood beneath the line and the emptying basket, their neighbor came outside from her own kitchen door.

Quinn would have been more than happy to ignore her neighbors, and everyone in town for that matter, but they kept inserting themselves into her day anyway, particularly Mrs. Martin.

Mrs. Martin could hardly find fault in Quinn for doing her laundry, but Quinn hurried through hanging the final few pieces to try to get back inside quickly as her neighbor began to hang up her own linens a few meters away. Oliver had planted himself in front of one of the large, pale-yellow bedsheets hung up to dry and was making shadow puppets play over the fabric with the help of the weak sun. Fitting his fingers together in a way that made sense to him, Oliver produced a passable bird on the sheet, its stubby wings flapping against the breeze.

“Your boy,” Mrs. Martin muttered suddenly from her yard, “ain’t he old enough to be in school?”

Quinn clipped the last sock to the line. She met Mrs. Martin’s gaze, unimpressed by the woman’s hard stare and judgment. Her neighbor found something new to gripe about every time Quinn stepped outside, and Quinn had lost the desire to snip back years ago. Mrs. Martin’s apron was crisply white and tied neatly around her generous waist over a dress that fell to her ankles. Quinn’s own apron had multiple stains, and she had tucked part of her skirt into the waistband, impolitely revealing her boots and some of her calf. She found it easier to move around with her skirt hitched up, but it was a scandalous breach of what the town wives considered proper. The sight always brought a furrow to Mrs. Martin’s already wrinkled forehead.

Mrs. Martin continued, “Boys should be in school. Especially that one. No way he’ll start talking more if he’s stuck with you all day. He needs a proper education.”

Oliver, who didn’t speak but could always understand when he was being spoken about, dropped his shadow bird. With his wide, gray eyes focused on her, Mrs. Martin stiffened. Quinn knew her son was a little unnerving. Pale-eyed and silent, he made people like Mrs. Martin nervous. Quinn did little to prevent this. She knew it bothered Owen a great deal.

The small victory of seeing Mrs. Martin uncomfortable was instantly quashed when her neighbor sneered, bearing her yellowing teeth, and said, “With a mother like you, of course he’d be odd. I pity your husband. A woman should make child raising easier on the father, but your brood is fated to be just as outlandish as you were when you first came here.”

Mimicking Oliver’s silent stare, Quinn gritted her teeth against a waspish retort. Nothing good would come of bickering with Mrs. Martin. Besides, she had heard this all before. The townspeople didn’t know Quinn was a selkie, but when Quinn had first arrived trailing after Owen’s heels, she hadn’t known how to act like a human. She’d made mistakes, bulled through conversations, and made her resentment toward humans widely known. It was hard to recover from that initial impression in a small town with a long memory. They knew she was strange, and they quickly returned her anger with cruelty. Much to Owen’s heartache, that treatment extended to their children.

“Oliver,” she said, instead of snapping at Mrs. Martin like a feral dog. She waited for him to turn to her before holding out her hand. Oliver wound his way through the laundry lines and put his little palm in hers. Quinn led him back to the house, picking up the empty laundry basket on the way and balancing it on her hip.

Behind them, Mrs. Martin let out a dissatisfied snort. It was a sound Quinn was very familiar with.

She had settled into an uneasy life in the past seven years. She wore the clothes her husband gave her, but she wore them strangely. She went to town for groceries and supplies, but she never joined anyone for a conversation or gossiped about the neighbors, like they gossiped about her. She had brought three children into the world, but they were growing up to be unusual.

Quinn had considered what it would take for the town to accept her. Years and years ago, when she had given birth to her first daughter, she wondered if she should try to amend her disastrous reputation, just to make her life fractionally easier. Could she try to dress like the other women in the town, speak like them, act like them, long enough to make them believe she belonged there? Would it be easier than living at the edge of their lives like a mangy wolf, endlessly circling a herd of sheep?

No, she had decided. She would not change herself any more for these people. She was changed enough. And at this point, the town’s opinion of her could not be changed either.

With the laundry hung out to dry, Quinn relieved Oliver of helping her with the other chores once they were back inside. He returned to the children’s room, presumably to press his nose up against the window again.

Quinn pulled two fish out of the icebox and started removing the scales over the sink to prepare them for dinner. As she scraped her short knife against the fish’s side, the translucent scales flecked her hands and forearms. The rasping noise and motion lulled her into a thoughtless trance. Her eyes swam in and out of focus, and the glittering scales seemed to become a part of her body.

A small noise made her look up. Oliver had come into the living room and was sitting on the rough wool rug, in view of the door to the kitchen. He had brought a little wooden toy boat and was making it sail across the uneven surface of the rug. Every so often, he would glance up at Quinn, as if checking she was still there.

This was how her days progressed. Her two oldest children and husband would leave early, and Quinn would be left on her own with her son tailing close behind. As Quinn moved through the house, putting the dry laundry away or sweeping around the front door, Oliver found somewhere to play that also gave him a good view of his mother. When she gave him lunch, they sat at the table together, and she watched as he ate.

While her children had all taken after her looks, Quinn had always kept a sharp eye out for anything else they could have inherited from her. She dragged a slow, assessing gaze over Oliver’s head, his narrow shoulders and small hands. Nothing about him would make anyone think that he was a selkie’s son.

Quinn looked after her daughters in the same way, but as her oldest was almost seven years old and had never shown any sign of selkie traits, Quinn was resigned to think that they were simply normal human children. Well, as normal as they could be with her as their mother.

Every so often, as if the thought was revealed by a tide washing out over the sand of her memories, Quinn would wonder how her own mother was doing. The pain of thinking about her herd had lost its sharpness as the years passed, but it was a deep hurt. She did not think it would ever disappear. She wondered if her mother had given birth to another selkie, one who listened to her warnings. Had she already forgotten Quinn? Or was she simply another story the herd whispered to one another?

In the early afternoon, her daughters came home. Oliver, knowing their schedule, had run back to his chair in the children’s room to watch the road. Quinn joined him, and together they watched his sisters appear on the hilly street. Flora, her oldest, was tugging her younger sister, Evie, by the hand. The two walked quickly, and Quinn realized why when a group of children appeared on the hill behind her daughters. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could guess. Flora’s mouth was set in a hard line as she dragged Evie up the road. Evie, shorter and a year younger, was struggling to keep up.

The moment he saw them, Oliver hopped off the chair and ran toward the front door. Quinn stayed in the bedroom, watching the group of children spitting and hissing at her daughters. They stopped at the edge of the yard but kept up their yelling. Quinn heard the door open and slam shut.

Her children came into their bedroom in a tight knot. The girls had on matching dresses, brown and plain against their fine features. Flora’s hair was tightly braided in two plaits while Evie’s hung loose over her shoulders. When Evie saw her, she immediately wiggled her hand out of Flora’s and ran to hug Quinn around her waist, burying her face in Quinn’s skirts. Quinn smoothed her daughter’s wind-tousled hair.

Flora dropped their school things on the girls’ shared bed and didn’t look at Quinn. Her lovely face was pinched with anger. Of course, Quinn knew that the other children in town treated her daughters this way because of who their mother was. Flora was old enough to realize that, too. She found it difficult to seek comfort in Quinn like Evie did, knowing that Quinn was the source of the town’s ire.

“Have you eaten?” Quinn asked her daughters. Still half buried in her skirts, Evie shook her head.

Flora led them to the kitchen and sat at the table with Evie while Quinn pulled out the remaining loaf of bread from Oliver’s lunch, hard cheese, and some tart apples. Oliver pulled his chair around the table and pushed it up against Flora’s, sandwiching her in between her two younger siblings.

Once the girls were eating, Quinn started peeling and dicing the potatoes that would go with the fish for dinner. She kept her gaze down to avoid the view from the window.

“Mama,” Evie said, a piece of apple clutched in her hand. “Do we have to go to school? Can’t we just stay home with you and Oliver?”

Quinn put down her knife. Evie’s dark eyes were wide and honest, like a mirror.

“Your father wants you in school,” Quinn told her. Away from me, she didn’t add.

Flora tore her piece of bread into small pieces, frowning.

“Father may,” Evie said quietly, “but no one else wants us there.”

Oliver stole one of the mangled pieces of bread from Flora’s plate. His sister didn’t notice, with her gaze trained on her mother like an accusation.

Once Quinn had decided she wasn’t going to change herself to fit into this town, she had questioned that choice only a few times. The first had been when she took Flora out into the market once she began walking, and people had avoided her toddling daughter like she was a wild animal. Couldn’t she have put up with the charade of her human life just enough to make her daughter’s life easier? Or would it have been worse for her children if their mother lived a lie?

The second time she questioned her decision was when Oliver was born. Her husband, satisfied that she had finally given him a son, had run out to tell his fisherman friends and whoever else was in the pub the news. Left exhausted and alone with a still damp, blinking baby in her arms, Quinn held the image of her husband’s pride and happiness in her mind. It was not a look she had ever seen on his face. Later, when the painful haze of childbirth had cleared, Quinn had realized Owen’s pride was in reaction to seeing his desires come to fruition. He’d never questioned whether he could use Quinn to get what he wanted. He’d simply taken it. If she made herself smaller, fit herself into the box he’d designed, would she have less space to feel how much it hurt?

Every time, Quinn came back to the same answer. She would not change for them. Even as Flora’s eyes turned hard when she looked at Quinn, she could not be any different than the way she was.

Quinn had no choice in the birth of her children. She cared for them once they came into the world, feeding them, cleaning them, and clothing them, but she could tell they needed more from her. If she could have loved them more, maybe she would have changed.

“Your father wants you in school,” she repeated, but she came up and crouched by Evie’s chair. Her daughter shoved the piece of apple in her mouth. “But it won’t be for always.”

Evie nodded, still chewing. Quinn glanced up at Flora and found her oldest already watching her. Something flickered in Quinn’s chest, a brief wish that she could give her children the mother they deserved, even if it was someone other than her. But she was as much a part of them as they were a part of her. Nothing that the neighbors could say would change that.

OWEN RETURNED HOME JUST before the light completely faded from the sky. Quinn didn’t move from her spot in front of the stove when she heard his heavy boots on the stairs leading to the front door. She recognized the sounds as he removed his oilskin coat, likely still dripping seawater onto the warping wooden floor, and shed his other layers before seeking her out in the kitchen.

She turned when he rounded the table.

Owen Melville was the son of farmers and had inherited the broad shoulders and hands of his fathers, along with their pale, dirty-blond hair, a straight nose, and wide mouth. Unlike his family, Owen had left the fields to seek work on the water. He had a boat and a small crew of fishermen who spent their days sailing up and down the coast following the shoals. Most days, his work ended in the afternoon, but then he would spend a few hours in the town pub with the other fishermen.

Quinn didn’t mind Owen’s delayed commute home. She would have preferred if he remained at the pub all evening and well into the night. But Owen always came home before the light was gone.

As he stepped around the table, Owen peered into the living room where the children were huddled on the rug. Flora had one of Evie’s dolls in her lap and was sewing up one of her arms, which had begun to fray. Evie and Oliver were watching her deft fingers and the flashing needle intently.

“Heard the girls had some trouble on the way home,” was how he greeted Quinn. It was an accusation as much as an observation, needling at Quinn, but she’d spent years dulling herself to the pain. She flicked a look at him and then back down at the skillet. Her silence was accompanied by the sizzling and popping of the fish skin as it fried in the pan.

Owen’s hand darted out and gripped her wrist, squeezing hard enough that she could almost hear her bones creak.

She swallowed a gasp of pain and looked at him fully.

His eyes were hard and demanded an answer. Not trusting her voice, Quinn jerked her chin in a nod. Owen’s frown deepened even as he released her arm. Quinn’s fingers trembled as she reached for the skillet again, but it was not only fear that coursed through her blood at that moment; there was also rage. She wished she had claws to tear into her husband for grabbing her like that.

But killing Owen would mean she would lose her last connection to her pelt. Quinn settled for baring her teeth at him, eyes flashing, and felt a savage spike of pleasure when he took a hurried step back. His gaze flicked to the window, but there was nothing on the horizon save for a few small clouds. Quinn swallowed the rest of her rage and turned back to their dinner.

When Evie finally looked up from her sister’s surgery on the doll and spotted her father, she scrambled to her feet and clung to his leg like she had done to Quinn. Oliver followed her and grasped Owen’s other pant leg.

“How’re my little ones?” Owen asked, and Quinn could hear the smile in his voice, any trace of his anger erased. Evie started rambling about what she and Flora had done at school, though she circled around their trip home. Owen nodded along as she spoke. When Evie finally released his leg, though she kept talking, Owen leaned down and picked up Oliver, one of his hands nearly spanning the whole width of Oliver’s back. He followed Evie back to where Flora was sitting and dropped himself and Oliver into a chair. His face was angled toward his daughters, but Quinn could make out the grin pulling at his cheek and the light in his eye.

A strange, pinching feeling plucked at her whenever she saw Owen with the children like this. It was like they were inside a bubble, with a shimmering, transparent boundary encircling their joy, and if Quinn got too close, she would burst it.

Quinn was here because of Owen, trapped in her human body because of Owen, but he was also her only lifeline. She did not turn out to be the wife or mother he wanted, like the selkie wife in the old tales who had brought luck and fortune to her husband and his town, or the quiet, obliging mothers he’d known who bent to their husband’s every whim. Quinn had turned out to be neither of those things. But Owen loved their children.

Owen was the only one who knew who Quinn truly was. The townspeople couldn’t know she was a selkie, he had told her, or else they would all be demanding their part in the fortune she could bring. She must keep it a secret. That had been an easy order for Quinn to swallow. She didn’t want anyone else to know about the selkies that lived on this part of the coast, lest they be dragged ashore and stripped of their pelts like she was. But with no other story to tell, her mysterious background and rough manner were left up to the town’s gossip mill and quickly unfolded beyond Owen’s control. His strange, dark-eyed wife who had appeared as if out of thin air one day, and the stories devolved from there.

Quinn knew that Owen had not kept her secret to protect her. He had kept quiet about his selkie wife because of his own selfishness, greedily hoping to keep all the fortune and luck to himself.

Resigned to let the townspeople talk all they wanted, Owen had only begun to worry when Flora arrived after months of forcing himself on Quinn. Now, with two daughters and a son, Owen was determined to make his children as much a part of the town as he was. His wife was a lost cause, but his children had time. Putting the girls in school had been the first step.

Evie eventually ran out of steam, her voice trailing off as she finished telling Owen about the end of the school day. He already knew what had happened when the girls walked home.

Flora pulled her final stitch tight and tied off the end. She handed Evie the doll, which Evie hugged tightly to her chest.

“They think we’re strange,” Flora said bluntly. “And they said their parents tell them not to get too close to us.”

Quinn moved the skillet off the heat, wrapping the fabric of her apron around the handle so she wouldn’t burn herself on the metal. She had done that many times when she was first learning to cook. The heat of the iron still leeched into her palm through the fabric until she pried her fingers away, stiff with shame.

Bracing her hands on the counter, Quinn finally looked out the kitchen window. The sun had set, but the orange glow of the town cast enough light for her to see the flat expanse of the ocean in the distance.

Behind her, Owen sighed.

“It’s not your fault,” he told Flora.

It’s mine, Quinn thought, years-old anger bitter at the back of her mouth. She knew Owen thought the same.

“They’ll come around,” he said instead. “Once they get to know you, they won’t be so mean. And one day you’ll both make very fine wives for those boys.”

Flora, with all the distinction of a six-year-old girl, made a noise of disbelief. Owen laughed, but the sound was clipped at the edges.

“Come,” he said to Evie, diverting the conversation, “tell me more about this terrible lesson you’ve been subjected to.”

With the dark shadows of the sea still swimming in her eyes, Quinn glanced over her shoulder. Oliver and Flora were looking at Evie as she mimicked her teacher’s droning voice, but Owen had set his gaze on Quinn. She met it unflinchingly. They were stuck at an impasse, as Quinn would do nothing to change the town’s opinion of her, and Owen could not cut her loose to free the children of her looming reputation. As long as Quinn was under his roof, he could keep her under his thumb, but she was like a barbed thorn, cutting deep and threatening even more pain should she be ripped out.

Turning her back on Owen’s hard gaze, Quinn picked up the skillet with her apron and set it on the table.

“Dinner,” she announced.

IT WAS MIDDAY, AND the girls had no school. After Quinn fed them their usual breakfast of cooked oats and honey, she waved them away from chores. Evie’s laughter was bright and loud as they played a version of hide-and-seek where only Flora hid, while her younger siblings attempted to track her down in the small house. Oliver’s quick, light footsteps went up and down the hall as he checked each room.

It was a bright, sunny day, the rare kind in autumn where she couldn’t even see one cloud on the horizon. The ocean winked at her.

Pattering feet made her look around, and she watched as Oliver made a circuit of the kitchen, checking under the table and chairs. He stopped by Quinn and pointed at her skirts.

Shaking her head, Quinn told him, “She’s not here.”

Oliver accepted this easily and set off toward the living room.

Quinn knew that she should have felt content in this moment, with her children happy and playing, but there was nothing there. She was glad that they acted like children, in spite of everything she brought down on them. She wondered if that would change as they got older. Flora had already begun to think along those lines, Quinn knew, but she was still young enough not to understand why.

Her children trampled through the house. Evie’s teasing voice rose and fell, until she suddenly yelled from the hallway, “Ha!”

A pause, and then she asked, “Flora?”

With slow, careful footsteps, Quinn heard her oldest come into the kitchen. The old wood of the floorboards creaked as her siblings followed her.

“Mama.”

Quinn tilted her head, not lifting her eyes from the dishes she was washing. “Yes?”

Evie whispered something too quiet for Quinn to hear, and Flora whispered back. Then, Oliver spoke.

“Mama, is this yours?”

This made Quinn finally look up. She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but when she saw what Flora held in her hands, the words died on her tongue. The plate clattered in the sink where she dropped it, her fingers losing their grip.

Flora held Quinn’s pelt in her hands. It was as sleek and shiny as the last time she’d seen it, seven years prior. Not a speck of dust on it. Flora held it cautiously, like it could come alive at any moment. Oliver stood next to her with one small hand on the pelt. But his eyes were trained on her, as if he were seeing right through her. Evie was tucked slightly out of sight behind the doorway.

Quinn was speechless. She gaped at her children, and a rushing sound filled her ears, like the rumble of a wave crashing itself against a pebbled shore.

Through her daze, she heard Flora say, “I found it between the eaves of the roof, in your room. In yours and Father’s room. I was trying to hide.”

All this time, Quinn had been sleeping beneath her pelt. All this time, Owen had kept it right over her head. How had she never looked there? In the stories her mother had told her, the humans kept the pelts locked in