---

The Otter Woman’s Daughter

by Eleanor Glewwe

In the stories, when the selkie finds her skin, she always leaves her children behind. When I was little, I was terrified that would happen to me. After it didn’t, I began to wish it had. Not all the time, but in brief, shame-stricken bursts, in the darkness underwater.

---

I have a skin too, or it never would have worked. I was born with it, like a caul. The obstetrician and the nurse couldn’t have mistaken it since it was dark brown and furred, but they didn’t say anything, just set it aside for Mom to keep. They had to suspect, but what were they going to do? Human trafficking hotlines are for humans.

Mom kept my skin in a cedar box. When the two of us were home alone—which was often, since Dad traveled frequently for work—she’d take the box out and lift the lid, and I would surrender immediately to the urge to stroke that glossy pelt.

I was less enthused when she made me put it on. She wanted to make sure I could swim in otter form, but she couldn’t teach me like real mother otters do because she didn’t know where Dad had hidden her skin. I had to take two sets of swimming lessons, one with foam kickboards in the middle school pool and one in out-of-the-way marshes, under cover of night, while the red-winged blackbirds slept in the cattails.

I proved to be an excellent swimmer in human form. My middle school gym teachers urged me to join the swim team, but I declined. I had repertoire to learn and auditions to practice for.

---

Viola is the one thing I owe my father. I don’t know why he chose it for me. Most violists I know played the violin first, but not me.

Dad drove me to private lessons and made sure I practiced every day. His car radio was permanently tuned to Classical MPR, and we had season tickets to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, though Dad missed half the performances because of his business trips. He attended my recitals and school orchestra concerts when he could. He paid for me to join an auditioned youth orchestra. And when I stopped growing, he bought me Monty, my full-size viola.

I’m not sure why Dad was so invested in my musical career. Classical music wasn’t something we bonded over. It felt more like the piece of me Dad had claimed. But when he was away, I asked Mom to use the season tickets with me. She wouldn’t come when Dad was there.

I’ve always known the truth about my parents. Mom didn’t hide or sugarcoat the facts. I don’t know if Dad ever wanted to win me over to his side; maybe he didn’t try because he knew he’d already lost. Once, when I was really young, I asked him if he would give Mommy back her skin. He stalked away without a word. Later, I heard him shouting upstairs.

“Did you put Hope up to it? Did you?”

I never spoke of Mom’s skin in front of Dad again. I don’t think he ever knew I had one too.

---

Mom and I used to play a game when Dad was gone. Our home was an enchanted castle, and we were two clever adventurers seeking a hidden treasure: an otter woman’s skin. The best part was that all the house rules were suspended. I was allowed, even urged, to push open the door to Dad’s study or crawl through the evening gowns and overcoats in my parents’ bedroom closet.

We never found the treasure.

One night, I woke in my bed to the sound of raised voices. I padded down the hallway toward my parents’ room. Behind the door, Mom was sobbing.

“Do you love me?” she demanded, over and over.

“You need to calm down!” Dad’s voice struck like lightning.

Her words changed. “You said you loved me.”

“You never loved me!” I’d never heard such rawness from Dad.

“At least tell me what you’ve done with it. Just what you’ve done with it!”

Unable to bear Mom’s anguish one second more, I fled to the safety of my room.

After that, the treasure hunts stopped. I didn’t ask Mom what Dad had said. In time, I assumed she’d learned her skin wasn’t in the house. I didn’t find out I was wrong until the day we left.

---

It was a Saturday in October, and I had a rehearsal with the pianist who would accompany me in the finals recital for my community orchestra’s concerto competition. I was playing the first movement of Hindemith’s Der Schwanendreher. Right as I was heading out the door, Mom came careening down the stairs.

“He left the key.” Her voice trembled like a drumskin.

“What?”

“The key.” She dangled something in front of my face: a black plastic tab fused to a crenellated metal cylinder. “He changed sports coats just before he went to the office. This was in the pocket. Hurry! We need to find the safe.”

The full import of Mom’s discovery hit me like the bus I now knew I’d miss. If I’d left a minute earlier, I might have gone to the accompanist’s none the wiser and returned to find myself motherless. The marrow in my bones turned to ice.

I set Monty down in the foyer. “It’s in a safe? How do you—?”

“He told me!” Mom’s voice was sharper now, like a seal’s bark. “But he told me about the key too, and there was never any point if I couldn’t get ahold of it.”

We scoured the house. Luckily, Dad stayed at the office, oblivious to his mistake. I finally found the safe in a musty space behind the rotting boards of a false wall in the garage. Mom jammed the key in the lock and rattled the door until it sprang open. The skin lay inside. She snatched it out and clutched it to her chest, letting out a groan like the release of a hundred years of agony. Then she told me to fetch my skin too. That was when I knew she’d never intended to leave me behind.

I dashed up the stairs. My skin was in my possession now, buried at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I could hear Mom talking on the phone. Then she was calling up to me, telling me there was no need to pack, I didn’t need anything but my skin.

But as we rushed out the door, toward the purring car of our neighbor, Mrs. Xiong, I grabbed the handles of Monty’s case.

---

It turned out Mrs. Xiong had been waiting for Mom’s call for years. She drove us north out of the Twin Cities, scrupulously obeying the speed limit. Somewhere past Duluth, she struck out inland, following the crumpled instructions that had been stuffed in the glove compartment.

Hours later, we reached a dusty parking lot surrounded by golden-leafed trees. I stepped out of the car and shivered in the cool air. At the edge of the lot, a gap in the woods revealed a trail, and through the foliage I glimpsed a mosaic of water, light flickering on its dark surface. I’d never been up north before, much less to the Boundary Waters, which was where I suspected we were. Dad would never have taken us up here, for obvious reasons.

“What did you bring that for?” Mom was looking in astonishment at the viola case in my hand.

“I could take it back with me,” Mrs. Xiong offered. “Keep it safe for you until…”

“No.” I couldn’t give up my viola. It was sinking in that we’d left everything and everyone behind. I would miss my Sunday viola lesson and Monday night’s orchestra rehearsal. I wouldn’t be going apple picking with my string quartet. And I would never find out if I might have won the concerto competition. I felt no bitterness, not yet, just a dazed sort of shock, and a distant shame that I could care about such things when Mom was finally free.

Mrs. Xiong hugged me goodbye before climbing back into her car. Pulling me close, she murmured in my ear, “If you ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

---

Mom wanted us to put on our skins and swim off, but I refused to change shape. I hadn’t brought Monty this far to abandon him on a remote public landing.

“Can’t we go by land?” I pleaded.

As luck would have it, there was a hiking trail nearby. There weren’t many up here; as I would learn, the waterways were the chief means of human movement in the area. But there was an old path in these parts, so that was how Mom and I began our journey, she slithering over the dead leaves in otter form and I on foot, carrying Monty.

The next few days were a long, damp slog. At night, I had to put on my skin, or I would probably have died of exposure in my canvas shorts and cotton t-shirt. It was a relief and a joy to slip into my skin, to have the scents of the wilderness leap to kaleidoscopic clarity, to curl up against my mother, and best of all to eat. But each morning, I shed my skin again, picked Monty up, and trudged on.

On the third day, we reached the lake my mother had been seeking. She glided into the water, diving and surfacing exultantly like a brown-furred dragon. She called for me to don my skin, but I couldn’t abandon my viola on the shore. Suddenly, she scrambled onto the rocky coast, scampering across scabs of lichen and fallen trunks. She meant for me to follow, but I advanced so much more slowly that she kept having to double back, impatient. I was exhausted, hungry, and out of sorts. What had happened to the perfect team we’d been before? Then again, why was I so insistent on keeping Monty? Was I the one being unreasonable?

Before I could arrive at an answer, the vegetation retreated from the water’s edge, and I looked up at a clearing. Three logs formed the sides of a square, and on the fourth side rose a heap of stones topped by a fire grate. It was a campsite.

I squelched about the area in my sodden shoes. No tents, no canoes, no sign of any human activity except the existence of the campsite itself. Reassured, I ferreted around the periphery of the campsite until I found a promising spot. Beyond a bed of brown needles, a rock overhang patched with lichen created a recessed niche at ground level. The alcove was both protected from falling rain and, lying slightly uphill, unlikely to pool with water. It was just the right size to accommodate my viola case and the armfuls of dead leaves and brush I piled over it.

Turning away from Monty, I drew my skin on and darted after my mother into the lake.

---

We found an abandoned beaver lodge to adopt as our holt. In otter form, I soon familiarized myself with the whole lake. The campsite where I’d stashed my viola was the only one on our lake, and it remained unoccupied in the days and weeks that followed. I hoped that meant it was unpopular, but it was past the busy season, so it was hard to say.

I changed shape every day to play Monty. He was my last connection to everything I missed. My school orchestra. My community orchestra. My string quartet. Had they found a new violist to replace me yet?

I played Der Schwanendreher and the Bach cello suites for gray and golden birds, for chittering rust-colored squirrels, for stealthy garter snakes. It was a lonelier sound than being embraced by the orchestra, but as the days slipped by, I began to enjoy the temple of the woods, the rush of the wind in the canopy, the lapping of the water on gusty days. The wilderness furnished its own subtle symphony.

Too soon, the temperatures dipped, and I fretted over how Monty would survive the winter. I decided to bury my case near the overhang, though I didn’t know how deep the frost would penetrate. I spent long days digging a viola grave in otter form, until it was as deep as I could get it. Then I left Monty in the ground, hoping it would be enough to preserve him.

---

The winter was miserable. Only as an otter was I fit to survive the cold, but wearing my skin constantly began to feel like being perpetually stuck in a wet bathing suit.

Another otter woman lived with her children on the lake beyond the northern portage. We met once in the woods between our lakes. The strangers came tumbling down a shallow slope, the youngsters purring and chuckling as their lithe bodies rippled over the glaze of fresh snow.

“What’s this?” the other mother said, sniffing the air as she eyed me warily. “You brought back human offspring?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” my mother replied. “She’s my kin as much as her sire’s.”

Our neighbor snuffled. “Nobody brings back human pups. It’s not done.”

“Well, now it is.”

My heart swelled at this proof of my mother’s love. For a moment, it was enough to make me forget the isolation and the music deprivation.
Because that was the worst part of winter. As the months passed, I feared I was losing my calluses. I’d never gone so long without practicing. Some piece was always playing in my head, but often I couldn’t place it. Was it Buckaroo Holiday or El Salón Mexico? It was frustrating not to be able to look up the answer.

At last, the world began to thaw, but I didn’t dare unearth Monty until I was confident the cold spells were past. By then, it was probably May, though I’d lost track of the months. One sunny morning, I dug Monty out of the ground, tightened my bow, and slid my shoulder rest into place. My fingernails were caked with dirt and far too long. Maybe I could file down my otter claws. But for now, I began to tune.

---

Spring bled into summer, and I felt happy again, or at least as happy as I’d been in the fall. My mother was bewildered by my compulsion to transform every day to play music, but she didn’t mind. One day, I came to practice and saw a boy opening my case. He must have arrived only moments before me. I had approached the campsite from inland, so I hadn’t seen any canoes or tents. Without thinking, I cast off my skin and dashed barefoot the last few yards to the overhang.

“Stop! That’s mine!”

He yelped in surprise, fell backward out of his crouch, and glanced up at me with terrified eyes. Then he let out a strangled, “Ah!” and threw his hands up in front of his face. I remembered I wasn’t wearing any clothes. The one outfit I’d had had mysteriously vanished over the winter.

I retrieved my skin and draped it over my crossed arms in front of me. The boy dared look again, and at the sight of my skin, he swore under his breath.

“It’s mine,” I repeated. “Please don’t touch it.” I’d been so careless. Now I’d have to find another hiding place for Monty.

The boy’s mouth gaped like a walleye’s. “You guys play the viola?”

I was impressed he hadn’t taken Monty for a violin. “I’ll explain, if you want. But not here.”

The boy blinked, but he made up his mind quickly. I zipped my case back up and walked deeper into the underbrush, but it was uncomfortable with no shoes.

“Will you carry this?” I asked the boy, holding out Monty. “I’m going to change back.” I didn’t know why I was so trusting all of a sudden. Maybe it was because I was convinced this stranger was a musician too. Or maybe I was just desperate for a human to talk to.

In otter shape, I led the way to a slab of rock on the shoreline of an inlet that most paddlers didn’t notice. I shucked off my skin and tucked my legs under me. “I’d like my viola back, please.”

The boy obliged and plopped down himself, hugging his knees in front of him and keeping his gaze averted. I’d spread my skin over my lap like a blanket. It was strange. Back home, I hadn’t even liked changing in the locker rooms before gym class. But here on this lake, I felt at ease.

“Um, I could lend you my sweatshirt?” he said, looking resolutely at the water.

“Sure.” I’d put on his hoodie if it meant we could have a normal conversation.

He untied it from around his waist, and I stuck my head and arms through it. It was dark blue, with Macalester College plastered across the front in orange letters. At last, the boy met my eyes, grinning sheepishly. He had light brown skin and short bouncy curls.

“I’m Hope.” I rested my hand on my case. “And this is Monty.”

“I’m sorry I opened it,” the boy said. “I was just exploring, and I thought someone had lost it or left it there. Like, a long time ago.”

“It’s okay. I would’ve done the same.”

“So…” He glanced between me and my viola. “Are you all musicians?”

His question gave me an unexpected pang. Wouldn’t that have been nice?

“No.” I told him the bare bones of my story. How I had a human father, how I’d grown up like a human girl until our escape, how I’d brought Monty with me.

“Whoa,” said the boy. “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know whether he meant Dad or the loss of my old life or my current circumstances.

When I didn’t respond, he told me he was canoeing in the Boundary Waters with his stepdad and stepbrothers. They planned to stay at this campsite two nights, fishing during the day, before journeying on. He mentioned it was June. He could have told me the name of our lake, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to admit I didn’t know.

At last he said, “So why viola?”

I was loath to reveal that Dad had picked it for me, so I said, “Because it’s less common. What about you? You must play something.”

“The bagpipes,” he said.

“Wow!” He’d one-upped me, but I was delighted.

He laughed self-consciously. “Most people think it’s weird. Especially when you don’t look like your ancestors could be from Scotland. But I love classical music too.”

“Who’s your favorite composer?”

“Mozart.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, hear me out,” he said. “There’s a reason he’s so popular. The Magic Flute is legitimately not overrated. And I like his twenty-fifth symphony, the Piano Concerto No. 23—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing. I couldn’t remember when I’d last laughed in human shape.

“What about you? Who’s your favorite?”

I’d always found it hard to choose, but I had an answer. And this boy was never going to let me live it down.

“Bach,” I mumbled.

“What?” He threw up his hands in mock outrage.

I looked contrite.

He laughed. “Fine, we’re even. Plus, isn’t the real cliché answer Beethoven?”

“I think it’s Mozart.”

I loved hearing him laugh. It reminded me of having friends.

“Well,” he said awkwardly, “everyone’s probably wondering where I am. But…you live here, right? I’m coming again in August, with my girlfriend and a couple of our friends. We haven’t decided on our itinerary yet, so would it be all right if I came back to say hi? And if there’s anything you need: sheet music, new strings…”

“Oh, I can’t ask you to do that,” I said, spooked by his kindness. “I’m fine.” Was I, though? “But sure, you can come again.”

He flashed a smile as he rose.

“Wait, your sweatshirt.” I tugged it off. While my head was still encased in fleece, I added, “You didn’t tell me your name.”

He caught the sweatshirt I tossed him. “Peter.”

---

Despite my best efforts, I lost track of the days until August, so it was an exciting surprise when I spotted two green canoes cutting across the water toward the campsite one day. I recognized Peter’s bare head; he sat in the stern of one boat, with a girl in a turquoise life jacket in the bow. Immediately, I scurried to the overhang and dragged Monty away to his new secondary hiding place.

Early the next morning, I saw Peter sitting on the rock slab where we’d talked in June. I swam up and leaped ashore, water dripping off my pelt.

“Oh, wow,” Peter said. “Hey.”

I changed shape and grabbed the oversized t-shirt lying next to him without asking if it was for me. “Hi.”

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“Good. How about you?”

“Great.” He looked slightly uncomfortable though. “Listen… After we met last time, I realized I’d heard of you.”

“What?”

“In the news last year. A fifteen-year-old girl kidnapped by her—”

“I wasn’t kidnapped!” I snapped. “I hope my dad didn’t sell some sob story to the media. We were just accessories to him.”

Peter looked taken aback by my rancor. So was I. I’d never acknowledged that out loud before.

“Well, anyway, I thought you might want to know.”

“I don’t.” The silence after I spoke was brittle, and I reproached myself for wrecking this nascent friendship before it could turn into anything I could count on.

“Sorry,” Peter muttered. He eased an mp3 player out of his pocket. “I don’t normally bring this up here, but I thought you probably hadn’t listened to music for a while.”

He tucked some earbuds into my hand. Cautiously, I scrolled through his music library. There was a lot of non-classical stuff, but also pieces I hadn’t thought about in ages. The Brahms Double. Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Bachianas Brasileiras. I pressed on Sibelius’s Valse Triste, and when the first bars reached my ears, I actually shivered.

The music seemed to lift a stage curtain in my mind, one I’d been shrinking behind. Suddenly, I remembered wishes and dreams that the heady rush of our flight had swept away. I’d wanted to be a professional violist. I’d wanted to go to Oberlin, or maybe Lawrence. How would I get there now?

---

One winter night, in the nesting chamber of our den, I asked my mother, “What if I want to go back to school?”

“School?” she echoed, as though the concept was foreign to her.

“Like if I want to graduate from high school.”

She let out a dismissive bark. “We’ve left all that behind. We’ve made it home!”

But however beautiful I found the morning mist on the smooth water or the haunting laughter of the loons at night, this wasn’t home. I didn’t know if where I’d come from could be either, but I wanted to find out.

---

Peter came back the next summer with his stepdad. He brought me a secondhand wire music stand and the sheet music for the Bartók viola concerto. That was new. I stammered that he shouldn’t have.

“I wanted to!” he said.

“But I feel bad. I can’t do anything for you.”

“Not even tell me where to see a moose?”

I smiled wanly. His joking mostly put me at ease, but I did feel like our friendship—if it could even be called that—was on an uneven footing. I changed the subject.

“How come your brothers didn’t come this time?”

“They’ve got football camp.” Peter heaved a sigh. “Plus my stepdad wants to talk about my ‘future.’”

“Oh?”

“I just finished my first year of college. I’m still officially undecided, but he’s pushing me to choose a practical major.”

This felt a bit better. Peter had problems too, even if there wasn’t much I could offer him in the way of help. He surely had other confidants, like his girlfriend. He was probably just making conversation.

Even so, I asked, “What do you want to major in?”

“English.” He glanced my way. “Going to ask me who my favorite author is?”

I rolled my eyes.

After Peter and his stepfather left, I tried learning the Bartók. I quickly realized that without my old teacher’s guidance I would never master it. My progress had stalled in the wilderness. A fresh piece renewed my resolve, but it also strengthened the pull of the human world. I couldn’t stop thinking about Peter’s casual talk of college.

That winter, I spent the short days and long nights working up the nerve to ask Peter for an enormous favor.

---

It felt like he came late the next summer. When I finally caught sight of him on our rock and swam up to meet him, he told me it was the 4th of July.

“My stepdad keeps asking what’s so special about this lake,” he said, laughter running under the surface of his words. At my expression, he added, “Don’t worry! I just say I’ve got fond memories of coming here. How’s Bartók?”

“Hard.” I was relieved he hadn’t come bearing gifts this time. “I wanted to ask you…”

“There something I can do?” he asked eagerly.

“I need a ride,” I said in a small voice.

His eyebrows scrunched. “To…?”

“Minneapolis.”

“Oh! You’re going back?”

I nodded. Maybe he thought this was normal. That my mother already knew of my plans. But the hesitation in his eyes threatened to snuff out my hopes.

“The thing is, if I brought you back to camp now, my stepdad would have a lot of questions.”

“I didn’t mean now,” I said hastily. “I meant…” This was the unreasonable request. “Can you come back?”

“This summer?”

I swallowed. “It could be next year.”

“No, I bet I can swing it. I could say I want to do a solo trip, a personal challenge.” Peter brightened. “I’ll rent a one-person canoe.”

“Are you sure? If it’s too much trouble—”

“No!” His grin broadened. “I’ll meet you here in August. If—”

He broke off at the sound of a wet snort. I straightened in alarm and turned my head just in time to see a glistening brown back undulate and vanish beneath the water. It was my mother.

“Was that an otter?” Peter sounded excited, like he’d never seen one before.

“I’m an otter,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. I meant—”

“I have to go.” I was already pulling on my skin. “Can you really come again?”

“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”

---

“What were you thinking?” my mother snarled.

I’d swum after her, and she’d chased me to a tiny island on the lake, a bank of rock with a few young pines.

“I was fine!” I protested. “He’s not—”

“Your skin was lying at your feet! All he had to do was reach out and—”

“He’d never do that! He’s my friend.”

“Your friend?” My mother’s whiskers twitched, her tail whipping against the rock.

“Yes, my friend! Like how I used to have friends.” A cauldron of rage was bubbling over in me.

“He’s a man. A human! They can’t be trusted.”

I whistled in frustration. “I’m human!”

She froze. Maybe it was the incongruity of an otter on all fours declaring she was human, but it was true. I couldn’t extinguish that part of myself.

I took a ragged breath. “I’m going back.”

My mother made a shrill keening sound. “To your father?”

“No,” I said in revulsion. “Just back.”

“Why?” she yelped. “How could you leave me? I didn’t leave you.”

The truth of it pierced my heart, but my determination didn’t waver. “I’ll come back. Every year.” Like Peter did. I’d find a way. “But I want to study viola. I want to go to college. I—”

“You want, you want,” my mother growled. “Did you think I wanted to walk around on two legs and wear dead skins?”

“No,” I barked, “but you had no choice! I do.”

“You’ll lose your skin,” she warned. The wind was picking up, slapping new waves against the island. “One day, you’ll let down your guard, and you’ll be trapped too. It’s dangerous. Stay here with our people.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ll keep my skin safe. But I can’t stay.”

My mother hurtled back into the lake, and I followed. We swam far under the water, as if we were trying to outstrip something that always caught up to us. But though it was painful to be near each other, we couldn’t seem to stop swimming together.

---

True to his word, Peter returned in August. He made room for me and Monty in his solo canoe. While he paddled us to the first portage, I clutched the handles of my viola case and held the bundle of my skin to my chest.

I slept through most of the drive. When I woke up on the freeway south of downtown, the familiarity of the urban landscape shocked me. I guided Peter to the right neighborhood and then to the right block. There was a for sale sign swinging gently on the lawn of my old house.

I faced Peter in the driver’s seat. “Thank you.” I had nothing else to offer him.

“Of course,” he said with a slightly embarrassed smile.

I started to climb out and paused. “Are you an English major?”

He beamed. “Yes.”

“I’m glad,” I said. Then I hefted my viola case, walked up the path between the blooming hydrangeas, and knocked on Mrs. Xiong’s front door.