“I need to check on the kids,” I said, distracted by him fidgeting with the pockets of his fitted vest. “Maybe you could see if there’s anything Wes and Kaz need. Last I knew, they were going to reinforce the protective wards around the house.”
Christoph exhaled, and when he did, his shoulders lowered. He let his arms hang at his sides. His hand fisted, and his knuckles paled.
“I have something for you.” He extended his arm, his fingers curled around an offering. “Calliope,” he began.
I pulled my gaze off what he was holding and stumbled into the wall behind me. “Your eyes…”
His eyes, onyx circled with a corona of yellow, had no pupils.
“I am a gyrfalcon, granddaughter. And I have a gift for you. Please,” he continued, unfurling his fingers and blinking. “Take them. And wear them.”
Two rings, carved from pieces of a star-filled arctic sky, made a figure-eight in the middle of his palm. They were too big around for any of my fingers.
“What are these?” I asked, knowing full well they had to be more than simple jewelry.
“You wear them on your thumbs.” He lifted one and gestured. “They belonged to your father.”
My father. My father had worn these rings. I had never been offered anything of his. I extended my arms, gave Christoph my thumbs, and gasped when the bands tightened onto the middle joint. He cradled my hands in his and cleared his throat. “I found them on the shore, in the pockets of his folded pants, the day Benôit disappeared.”
Chapter 2
Benoît. My father had a name. Miniscule flecks of ore twinkled throughout the matte black metal of the rings. My father had worn these same rings, and the metal responded to my touch. Now was not the time to open the door labelled Dad, but I couldn’t catch the tear before it landed on one thumb. Little Calliope had stopped longing for her father ages ago, and Big Calliope was about to collapse.
“Your father, like me, was born with the gift of flight, Calliope, but he was less attracted to reaching the clouds than he was to bodies of water, especially the sea.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, wiping my nose with the back of my wrist. The magical metal called to me. I couldn’t bear to take my gaze off its changing surface, and its tensile strength buttressed my shaky knees.
“Do you remember anything from when you and your mother lived with her parents in Maine?”
“I have bits of memories,” I admitted, glancing at Christoph. His head was bowed, staring at the rings’ alchemical reaction to my skin. “I’m underwater in the most vivid ones.”
“Do you remember your mother being in the water with you?”
“Yes. And we were happy.”
“And what about your father?”
I shook my head. There were no photographs of my father amongst my mother’s things, at least not that I had knowingly come across. I rotated my hands so the palms faced down and almost did a face plant against my grandfather’s chest. “The only other thing in the water with us had flippers.”
Christoph took that as an invitation to make a physical connection and squeeze my fingers. The rings on his thumbs pressed against mine. “Calliope, that’s your father.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, unable to stop the image of my mother, happy, swimming, and next to her, flippers. Little Calliope had known the flippers weren’t rubber accessories attached to human legs. Big Calliope was slow to catch on.
He released my hands, reached behind either side of his hips, and brought his lower feathers forward enough he could perch himself on my kitchen’s lone stool. “Benoît had the ability to grow wings and fly. Like me. It’s a rare trait, but for those endowed with such a gift, the need to fly usually dominates. My son preferred the sea to the sky, and his wings were useless in the water.” He bounced the toe of his sandal against the side of the island. “He loved you and your mother. He also loved other women, including a selkie. Genevieve understood this about him.”
“Selkie?”
“Seal Folk, Calliope. Magical beings that wear their mammal skins in the water and shed them to walk as humans on land.” He crossed his arms and tucked his fingers under his armpits. “Benoît had an affair with a selkie and would borrow her skin.”
The dim bulb in my head flared as I made the connection.
“Were my parents even married?” I asked. Curiosity gave me enough of a mental boost to see what else this conversation might reveal.
“Yes,” Christoph assured me, “they were married in Maine. I was at the ceremony, along with your mother’s parents, the grandparents you said you remembered from the cottage. There’s more,” he continued, “much more. Would you like to hear about your parents now or later?”
What I wanted was to hear everything, now. What I needed was to check in with my sons, Leilani, and Sallie and go to sleep. I was down to one cylinder, and that cylinder wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Tomorrow,” I said, filing away seal skin, flippers, and my father’s amorous proclivities.
I took the stairs. My thumbs throbbed under the snug metal bands, and my legs were leaden. Sleep tried its best to catch me by the ankles and hustle me off to bed. Any bed. Under the steeply pitched walls of the second floor, low voices sounded behind the door to Harper’s room. I knocked.
“Mom? Is that you?”
Chamomile and other herbs greeted my nose when I turned the knob. The lone ceramic lamp shone softly from the floor, next to a tray of emptied mugs. Harper and Leilani spooned together on his single bed, and Rowan sat cross-legged on the braided oval rug. Next
