Free The Selkie by Melanie Jackson Page A

glared. “I was just lookin’ at that odd man what—”
    “Ain’t I told ya that lookin’ backward durint the parade is bad luck? Leave that odd man to hisself and mind yer marchin’.”
    Hexy, not wanting to be cuffed or draw attention to Rory’s strange behavior, also refrained from looking back at her now missing companion, though she was horribly curious about what he was doing. She had just noticedthat above the Grand Caravan Circus sign there was another banner. This one said FREAKS AND ODDITIES.
    “My goodness!” Hexy gestured at the sign. “What sorts of things do you have here? I once saw a chicken egg that had three yolks and a lamb with two tails.”
    Since it had been her brother’s field of interest, and Rory Patrick had never given up his search for a reasonable explanation regarding the creatures of legend their grandfather had talked about, she had also seen some revolting sirenoform fetuses both pickled and waxed while accompanying him on his investigation. Phocomelus was the term her brother had used for the poor souls born with foreshortened and sometimes fused limbs. He’d seen some of the crippled wretches in medical school and admitted that short of making a living in a circus, there was very little that many of them could do to earn their keep.
    And there had also once been a Frankenstein horror of fish and monkey parts sewn together and passed off as a mermaid. Hexy had been appalled at the display of withered remains, but Rory Patrick had snorted with derision at that one— see the pelvic fin. It’s the same as you would see in a quadruped, but the actual pelvic ratio of transverse dorsoventral diameter is all wrong. It’s anobvious fake. Who would be taken in by something so poorly made?
    “Are there a lot of freaks and oddities like those here? I’d love to see a horse with two tails,” Hexy lied.
    Both tumblers snickered at what they thought was her bucolic naïveté, the younger one going so far as to sniff with disdain that they would have anything so mundane in their sideshow.
    “Missus, that’s all very well for a small, countrylike fair. But we are pro-fe-shun-els and we have us some world-class wonders in there.” He leaned toward her and said significantly, “For tuppance ye can see the taxidermied remains of a two-headed, four-tongued snake from Arabia and the skeleton of the great mythical beast, the merman of Sule Skerry!”
    “A merman!” But it wasn’t that fantastical word that sent shivers down her spine. Mermen she had seen, and thanks to her brother, she understood the trickery that made them. It was the mention of Sule Skerry that disquieted her. She had an unpleasant premonition that it was this that was attracting Rory’s attention and would probably get them both in trouble.
    It was a moment’s work to force the flimsy lock on the old door and boost himself into the wagon. In the shadowy recesses of the rockingcaravan, Ruairidh lifted the cover off the glass-topped display case nearest the door and looked down without surprise.
    He’d known what to expect after his brother’s warning, but still the sight filled him with rage. He did not know for certain which of the People had been the unwilling doner of these stolen bones, but that they were one of his kin he did not doubt. And some foul magic had been worked upon them.
    But how? How had the humans come to possess such a skeleton? Only a selkie or some other sea creature could have journeyed into the deep caves where his ancestors’ remains were kept and taken one of them away.
    Sickened at the desecration, Ruairidh closed the box and then drew the tarp back over the case. Taking a quick look through the open door, he dropped lightly back onto the road and wedged the door more or less into place. There was nothing he could do about this now, not with Hexy there and so many people about. But he would be back later to retrieve his ancestor’s bones and return them to the sea, where they would be