Well, this is it. The last chapter of Selkie Queen. Maybe I'll go back and revise it some day, maybe it'll even get published. Then again, maybe not. There're plenty of other Garen stories out there though, just waiting to be read. I've got some of them written down, but not all. If you have an idea, feel free to either send it to me, or write it yourself.

Chapter 7: Dreams and Waking

“What’s this one?” I ask, picking up the wafer-thin bit of glazed clay.

“It’s a pendant,” she tells me. “See the hole? You can put a piece of string or something through it.”

We are standing in the workshop, surrounded by finished and half-finished pottery pieces. In my hand is a green teardrop-shaped pendant.

“It’s for you,” she says. “I made it special, since you gave me the spell amulet.”

“You didn’t have to.”

She smiles. “Yes I did.” She takes the leather thong out of my hair and threads it through the hole in the pendant. Then she carefully ties it in a knot at the back of my neck.

“I don’t have anything else to give you in return,” I tell her. “I can’t accept this.”

“You can give me yourself,” she says simply. “As long as you promise not to forget to take it back.”

“That’s fair,” I begin to say, but she’s already begun to fade.

I woke with a start. For the past nine months I had been living in my memories of Maggie, trying to pretend that she wasn’t dead, and even more so that I wasn’t alive. She had forbidden me to follow her, but she didn’t say I couldn’t pretend.

So pretend I did.

In the rare lucid moments, I recalled Jeremy force-feeding me broth and some foul-smelling liquid that burned as it went down. He spoke to me sometimes, but for some reason I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

After nine months, I ran out of memories. I woke up fully for the first time since I’d collapsed on Jeremy’s doorstep and felt for the pendant around my neck. It was still there, innocently lying against the rough material of my shirt, a small green tear drop with a hole through the wide end.

“So you’re up, eh?” Jeremy said, bustling over. He still wore the nightshirt, shawl, and cap that he’d worn when I’d first met him. I wondered if he ever got dressed.

“I suggest you eat something, and then get yourself put together. You’ve been out for quite a while, you know.”

I nodded. I was well aware that it had been a while, since it was bitterly cold in the cottage and I could see some snow lying on the ground outside the window.

“What day is it?” My voice sounded strange after not being used for so long.

“Second of February, 1462.”

“Reckon it’s time to move on,” I said.

“Do you need anything?” Jeremy asked.

I thought. Nothing came to mind, other than the obvious—Maggie. I shook my head.

“Good,” Jeremy said.

That evening, I crossed out of Argyll into Perth. Perhaps I’d return in time, perhaps not. For now, I was content to wander.