Eelgrass by Tori Curtis

Author:Tori Curtis [Curtis, Tori]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

They met an hour after the sun set at the edge of town and crowded into a little rowboat. Nellie greeted Efa with a nod and introduced her quietly to the rest. Clara was a small girl with a high voice who was younger than all the rest of them. Louise dressed like a fisherman, in pants, and with her hair pinned up tight to her head. Efa mistook her for a boy at first, and spent the first twenty minutes apologizing over and over again. And then there was Jesse, who really was a boy.

"I thought you were called 'Daughters of the Sea,'" Efa said once they had gotten far enough out that they didn't need to worry about being overheard. It was a dark, foggy night, perfect for sneaking around in.

Jesse, who was helping Louise row, smiled. He was tall and dark-skinned and had a very nice smile. "I joined after they'd already given it a name," he said.

"And they couldn't change it?"

"'Children of the Sea' sounds terrible," Clara said, balancing their lantern on her lap.

"And I'm willing to be a daughter for a good cause," Jesse joked.

"You have no idea how much trouble it was after he joined," Nellie said.

"Hmm?"

Clara nodded along. "We'd had this nice sewing circle going for almost a year, and all our families thought it was great that we finally had some nice young ladies for friends."

"My family didn't," Louise said.

"Your family gave up on you when you started climbing on the fishing boats and going out with the men," said Nellie. "They said to themselves, 'Oh, well, that's it for Louise.'"

This seemed a little harsh to Efa, but Louise grinned along like it was an old joke. Then Nellie's words hit her. "Wait, you fish?" That was perfectly normal for selkie women, who mostly caught their own food, but human women didn't usually work outside the home unless it was absolutely necessary. Even Mary was an aberration in that way.

"What are they gonna do, try and stop me?" Louise said. "I'm good at it. A woman's got to make a living somehow."

"Anyway," Nellie said with a pointed look, "no one wanted us spending time with a strange man, especially when none of us are married and there wasn't anyone to chaperone."

"Is it required that you hold off marriage?" Efa asked. All of them except Clara were getting old to still be single, and even Clara was of an age, Efa guessed, to have a husband and baby. "To be a Daughter, I mean. That's very romantic, pledging yourself to a cause instead of a person."

They all looked uncomfortable. No one looked at her until finally Louise burst out laughing. "No, honey, it's not like that. They just leave when they get married. No girl's husband wants her sneaking off to secret meetings when she could be cooking him a good meal."

"It's hard," Nellie said. "Mostly they're still devoted to our cause, but they can't do anything about it."

"That's why we're such a small group right now," said Jesse.

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