1.
You call me your little land friend, but my job is to deceive you. “You’re it!” my father cries on the day I open your hope chest to find a silvery gray skin still smelling of the sea. From that moment forward I have a job: hide the skin so that you can’t find it. Your sea children cling to wet rocks and stare at me with big black eyes, never letting me get too close. I must keep you from returning to them. I must keep my promise to your husband, my father, the one who fell in love with you.
What you don’t know is how I try on your skin when I am supposed to be hiding it. I take off all my clothes, no matter the weather, and drape the fur around my body. Then I lie down and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to transform into someone you will not reject. It is no use. The seal skin was never mine, and you aren’t meant to stay.
One night I see you, the real you, disappear into the frozen sea.
My heart breaks open onto a new life for both of us.
2.
You are the quietest girl at school. Sometime after our periods start, our eyes lock. You never stop staring at me. You need my help with the plan that will save you.
The sleepover at your house feels like doom, but the tragedy has already happened. Even the smell is off, like the inside of a barn. Is it neglect? We are the only two motherless daughters at school. The problem, however, is your father, who wants something you cannot give him. He buys you pretty clothes, all the colorful dresses you want, and waits.
There is no prince spying on you through the keyhole. Nobody is coming to save you. It’s all on me. We sleep together under the heavy donkeyskin. Your eyes are those of a woman who is not allowed to have anything. You do not exist outside a certain unspeakable desire hidden in the remains of your broken family.
Before sunrise I ask you if you’re sure, but you’ve already abandoned human language. I press the donkeyskin against your fairness, fitting the long head over your small one. You’re already rising from the bed, braying, when I kiss you goodbye.
3.
You’re so popular I’m surprised you even know my name. When you ask me to be a bridesmaid, at first I do not understand. Your groom takes me aside during the rehearsal dinner, tosses a green gift bag at me, and says, “Take care of this.”
Your skin is one I have not seen before, so strange and smooth.
“I can’t quit my enchanted life,” you confess over champagne. “I’ve been amphibious for too long.”
I’m not sure I can help, but I look down at your lace gown and nod. After the ceremony I stash your frogskin in my closet the way some women preserve their wedding dresses in dry cleaning boxes. A nightly croaking disturbs my sleep.
I know by now who cursed you, or blessed you. We get these things from our mothers. Yours is dead, and thus forever powerful. I think of you discovering your frogness at your family pond, encouraged by cattails and lily pads.
After three months you come to me in a cold sweat. You are dying and cannot pretend any longer. I promise to take you to the water. I can already see the magnificent leap as I help you step back into the frogskin. I feel the gaze of your bulging eyes. Your webbed fingers cling to my shaking hands, and your mouth grows wide enough to hold every forced vow.
4.
How was I to know you existed? You come to me while I am swimming, but you are of the land. The forest. Unlike all the others, you don’t have a task for me. You’ve settled into your bearskin, your bear self, smelling of dirt and musk. I know there is another you deep inside of it.
Has the crisis passed or do you live in it? Weren’t there other girls?
Your eyes tell me everything. I know that look well. The thrill, the power, of living two lives.
I am grateful you are not in human form, which I have come to know as a lying form. Still, you frighten me. You want me to risk my life but you promise me a new one.
Can’t we find a little cottage somewhere? I want the fireplace, the jewels, the gold. The red and white roses. An unafraid mother nearby, who worries for your coat. I want the domestic laced with danger. We can roll on the floor like animals while I stroke your black fur. We can enter the fire of love while pledging the impossible.
You want me to follow you into the darkness of the forest.
I want you to stay with me.
________
Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Verushka (JournalStone), The Kelping (Unnerving), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, Maudlin House and Gamut Magazine, among other places. A Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and Best Small Fictions 2018 & 2021. She lives in California with her family and is an associate fiction editor for Atticus Review. Find her at janstinchcomb.com; Twitter & Bluesky: @janstinchcomb; Instagram: @jan_stinchcomb