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Stiles stared at his mother’s hands. Watched her as she stood over the box, looking in, her fingers trembling. Small spasms. Stiles kept his eyes on those long fingers, the ones that she had so often used to untangle her mass of hair in the mornings. All the while complaining that it was like a mess of sea-weed.
He couldn’t look at her face. Couldn’t bear to see those large, limpid eyes that always reflected the ocean, even miles away. They were the color of sea-glass, she claimed. Stiles privately wondered why her eyes always carried a melancholy ache, even when she’d laughed.
Those eyes swam now, the salt water in them making them shimmer, sparkle in the summer sunlight. They were the reason he couldn’t look at her face. He felt too guilty.
He didn’t know what he’d done. He had thought she would be excited to see the chest’s contents. That it would be the beginning of an epic adventure.
She loved playing with him, after all. Seemed to particularly enjoy dress up. Trying on different coats for size, hats for a laugh. Claimed that the clothes made the man.
She’d made believe with him almost daily. Together, they would transform into different people and creatures. They’d wear knit owl caps so they could fly through the forest. Try on wire-and-gauze fairy wings during the full moon to dance in circles of mushrooms from the vegetable bin.
He’d thought they could transform with this too. Perhaps become monsters under the stairs or goblins in the woods.
He’d been so thrilled when he found it. Let his heart beat wildly when he’d opened the chest and saw its contents. He hadn’t stopped to take calming breaths. Just appreciated the silken feel of the skin inside. The electric-tingling slide between his fingers
The carved box wasn’t that big. Small enough to tug down the stairs from the attic, to let it thump harmlessly behind him as he tried to match his steps to his heartbeat.
His mother, had appeared at the thumping-sounds' summons. Her hands on her swaying hips at the bottom of the stairs, smile hidden under the ferocious frown. He could see it. He could always see under his mother’s masks. Always knew that there was more to her than met the eye. He just wasn't always sure what it meant.
Sometimes he imagined she was a princess who’d left her throne behind to marry the simple soldier. Let the gemstones fall from her grasp and the silk from her shoulders because she preferred to fill her arms with her love instead of sit on all the riches in the world.
Stiles loved the Chinese Princess and her blue rose, the Russian Frog Princess and her way with bread. Liked stories about things that were more than they seemed.
His mother had always preferred Rumpelstiltskin, told him that he too would one day spin straw into gold. She’d always seemed to side with the witches and the non-humans. Had cried over poor Undine. Had demanded to know why more people couldn’t listen to Oscar Wilde and choose to live instead of cling to some soul. “Why shouldn’t,” she’d howled, the world breaking against her words, “the man join the mermaid?”
“Humans,” She’d scoffed. “Always mess with what they do not understand.”
He wasn't thinking of those stories as he’d looked at her face, pushing the chest toward her. He was far away in a world of make-believe. He was rescuing damsels and soaring above the clouds. He'd been imagining himself swimming like an otter in the sea even as she’d pulled open that stupid box he’d found. The one that had been under the old magazines upstairs. Under those piles of old camping gear and Grandma’s weird snow globe collection. Shoved not quite in the corner under a clutter of mess.
Stiles saw her breath catch in her throat as her eyes widened. No sound for a moment in a frozen world. ‘There’s never a sound,’ Stiles’d thought nonsensically ‘when the spell breaks.’
He held his own breath, staring at her fingers, her trembling fingers. Away from her face with her watery eyes or her throat with a breath caught inside.
The world was stilled and tilting, he couldn’t move and couldn’t find his feet. His lips were gone. Perhaps he was really still in the attic, caught in one of those snowglobes. Just waiting for someone to come along and shake it. To give the world a jumpstart. To make it snow again.
His eyes flicked to the sky to check, to see if it would snow.
The flicker of his eyes broke his mother free. She was moving again, her arms shifting, her hands grasping, pulling, lifting. Her fingers clinging, shaking that electric skin. She clutched it, smelled it, rubbed it, stroked it.
Stiles felt compelled to notice (as if something took his head and required him to see) that the color became her.
In another breath, she was pressing him out the door, into the jeep, buckling him in and getting them away from the house before he could protest. Before he could ask. Before he could rewind the last moments and re-bury that skin under the piles in the attic.
On the way, she told him a story he’d never heard before. One about a fisherman who saw a woman-who-wasn’t-a-woman and loved her. Or loved the look of her. Who knew? But he believed he loved her. Believed he could make her happy. Happier than she could ever be without him. And she’d thought he was just. Wonderful really. In those days, they’d meet on the beach, they’d dance on the shore, the surf splashing their feet, sand sticking between their toes. He’d wanted to keep her, to take her home with him. She’d hesitated. Not been sure. He’d said love is all you need and then hidden her skin to make her stay. All was fair in love and war.
They were pulling up to the shore. Stiles’ un-strapped himself and threw himself out of the car, afraid she would leave the story there, leave him there, leave without saying goodbye.
But she waited for him, clutching that skin – her skin – in her hands, between her fingers. He imagined the skin was crawling up her arms, consuming her human form little by little.
They stood together on those rocky shoals where seals liked to play. Stood until his heart slowed from its frantic pace and his breath came easier. She’d taken his hands and kissed his forehead as she’d bid him her farewells. Said she loved him.
It wasn’t until after she’d put on her skin and vanished in the waves, until he’d sat dazed and the light had disappeared, until the cold slipped through his t-shirt that he climbed back in the car.
As he huddled against the seat, he realized he had no way to get home. A minute later he discovered that he wasn’t yet tall enough to reach the pedals of the jeep and see out the window at the same time.