Tales Before Slumber: Bridget & Mary

Chapter 3

Bridget & Mary

The twins had always been close. From the time cells divided they clung to each other and nothing would part them. They slept in one cradle, ate from one plate, and if punished they would sit facing the wall leaning head to shoulder no matter who had been the wrong doer. They had siblings. Ones who looked more or less like the girls. They would play alongside the younger ones and would give the elders a wary reverence especially after one of the boys took to braiding their hair together at night blaming the house pixies.

The brothers and sisters knew they were apart from the girls. For one glaring difference, the twins had never spoken. Aside from a few hurried words from a doctor who took the families weekly meat rations nothing was said about it. The girls were without physical fault and a silent girl was not such a bad thing, was it? The doctor patted their mother’s hand with that statement. The mother had never liked the doctor before and her opinion did not improve. There was nothing to be done but to wait and see. The twins played and tumbled but no sound came from them. As with quiet things they were loved but easily overlooked. The siblings accepted the girls in the way one loves a family bible. Distantly in fact and distractedly in practice.

They were not the poorest family in the village. Most of the children had not the first inclination that were even poor. A careful eye when visiting neighbors would show their home short on little luxuries. The wealthy neighbors closer to the town even had indoor bathing. This seemed a shame to the eldest girl of the family was in service to the big house. To lock the family's children away in a room to clean was such a waste. Her family with the exceptions of the twins bathed in the river behind the cottage.

Unlike the wealthy children who howled like death had come for them, the girl’s family was never in need of cajoling or threats to bathe. In fact they raced to the water with cloth and hair streaming from them. Hip deep of clear melted snow to be splashed, to swim, and frolic was a far more entertaining way to clean oneself. The lore of the town was the clear waters brought clear thoughts and luminescent skin of the fair ones who held their castles in the high mountains. Their snow, when melted gifted those mortals who gave their gifts on new moons and said their names to brights stars.

The twins were not immune to the charms of the river. They got dirty enough to need a good scrubbing. They did not bathe with their siblings. They did not even bathe with their mother who would go at the height of the moon to clean herself in the river with a single white candle. As with many families there were things a stranger would ask, but a family would accept without question. The twins did not bathe with others. They were never invited and never were asked. They would wax and wane in dirt and cleanliness. Yet another mystery in a house full of curiosities and rampaging children.

When the girls decided it was time to clean their skins, they would separate from the rest. Searching behind themselves listening for cracks of twigs and feeling for the eyes of others, they would descend into the brush to the banks of the river. The twins would shrug off their skins, place them on the rock and dive in. They would float hands intertwined to keep the other from drifting far. The girls were always careful and their mother only caught them the once.

They discussed it in the quiet hours of the morning when they lived across the world, when they had at last discovered their voices. Neither could figure how their mother had managed to appear in their clearing without a snap of a twig or setting off one of the many traps they had made using twine from their mother’s herb kit.

On that particular day when the air changed and their hightened otter senses felt a new presence, they scrambled from the water and ducked behind the largest of the rocks and trees. The twins would usually put their human skins on, covering brown fur with smooth flesh. On better freer days the girls would braid their sister’s hair until all was neat and as it should be. On better days, not this day with an interloper in the shape of their mother.

That day they had scurried back and to their mother’s feet. Two suits of skin held in both of their mother’s hands

“I worried thinking you were fairy taken but this, this is harder. There were never supposed selkies this far south, and it was their animal skins they left behind. The two of you could not be expected to do as others do.” The otters looked at each other until one held out its paw. “You will need these back won’t you?”

She waited until her daughters came back to her sitting at her heels as they did when they were babes. Two heads in one lap. Their mother braided and brushed their hair. “My mother, she used to tell me stories of my great grandmother. I had a mind she was only teasing. No, that would be a lie. There had been a truth in it. Even being a fairy story but the truth in it was honest. How could it be real? I must learn to do without you girls now.”

The girls startled, jumping back searching the other’s face for knowledge. Comforted by the other’s blank face. They kept secrets from outsiders, that was the rule. “I found these in your room. Open them.” Two river rocks that had a marking that varied only in ways the twins could see. “I do not understand how but you need to open them.” The girls traded their stones and ran their fingers three times over the swirls of the carving and the stone gave way. Two rings nestled inside. “When I saw them I knew what they were. You do not live so close to the mountains and not hear things. That is why I came. I could

not bare to find you gone. Now, you will be with others like you. You will be safe together. Oh my quiet girls think of us from time to time. Remember me. I have seen you as you are. I know you. I love you.”

As she kissed their heads and nuzzled their noses, the girls stood holding hands and walking into the river. They began to pick at the skin of their fingers loosening their flesh. “No, my girls you might need those to keep the warmth in.” Her fist was at her mouth as the girls waded further, the water swirling around their trembling knees. The one to the right waved her hand while the other leaned her head on her sister’s shoulder.

It was as simple as that. There were no instructions, but there had been no instructions on how to shed human skin and become an otter. They found their skin loose occasionally and like worrying a tooth or picking at a hangnail they peeled themselves clean at an age where everything seemed improbable and fantastic. If their skeletons could grow and change why would becoming an otter be any different?

They stood in a river and in the next moment they stood in a great hall with a proper miss standing before of them. “May I see your rings?” The girls held out their hands still joined. Polished river rock. Diamond chips studded into the gray with silver bands embedded at horizon lines. “Those are the exact marking where the stars will be. That will not mean much to you now but keep it deep. You will need it one day. I had the acquaintance of your great grandmother. She was student here at one time. Though I suppose you must have known that. The two of you will need our river as she did.” The girls nodded. “She loved it there as you will. Take care of your skins. They are hard to repair and replace here. Shall I show you to your rooms? Classes will not begin until everyone arrives and you are the first. I hope you will make the other girls welcome. They will be quite alone as I have duties that will keep me from greeting every student personally. I made you a priority as your great grandmother was who she was. I am Lady Constantine.”

She did not reach out her hand, as the twins expected, but turned away. They looked towards the photographs that gave way to paintings of smaller and smaller groups of girls. “Ladies, while you had certain handicaps in your home you will find all will be well here.” The girls looked at each other. What was a handicap when one can do what they did? “Your voices. You will find yourselves perfectly capable of speech here.” They began to open and close their mouths experimenting with breath, sounds, and tongue placement. “It will all go easier and less loudly if you give it less thought.”

They did. Short words at first. Some that pigeoned from the old language still alive in their cells and within minutes all of it tumbled, every word. Lady Constantine left the noise with a closed door on the sister’s rooms and steadied her nerves with her tea and a splash of something extra to lessen the ache in her head.