The Sky Beneath Her

Prologue

Vienna, Austria

This wasn’t the first time I’d run for my life. But if this escape failed, it’d be my last.

The calm waters of the Danube River flowed gently past as I ran along its banks. It was a peaceful night. The skies were overcast. Encouraged, I hurried and ignored my body’s pleas to stop. But there was no sign of the promised vessel that would carry me to safety. I was alone.

A dog barked. Soldiers’ distant shouts echoed off the water. A gunshot rang out. Vienna had become a city of treachery, filled with neighbors who betrayed neighbors for honor, prestige, or fear.

No need to see my face to know it was red, my right eye swollen. Breathless, I ran and clutched my bundle tighter. I had hours before my absence would be noticed.

“Please be here,” I whispered.

Finally, I reached a bend in the river, and my stomach cramped. I stopped and caught my breath.

Had I been deceived by the woman who’d floated in and out of my life over the years and promised me a chance to escape? Had she sent the boat she’d sworn to deliver?

The waters licked against the shore, splashing soft waves over pebbles. My mother used to say the Danube River dreamed in currents and hid mythical shape-shifting sea and river creatures.

My mother, Elke, had always sworn she’d found me on the banks of the Danube on a clear, cold spring day.

Elke maintained she’d been strolling along the river, as she often did during her midday break from the bookshop.

She said blistering winds had carried my wails as if I’d railed against the river gods who’d abandoned me to the land.

At first my howls frightened her. But she kept walking and searched the river’s muddy edge. She said she’d found me lying in the grime, naked, dressed only in green algae and river silt. My pink face was scrunched, and my fists clenched as I cried.

Mama said she’d immediately scooped me up, wrapped me in her wool coat, and carried me back to the bookshop where she lived with her Uncle Eric.

My great-uncle was shocked to see me, and he immediately closed the store early, something he never did.

After some discussion, the duo decided to keep me.

Uncle Eric suggested they call me Naida, a nod to his love of Greek studies and the river gods.

We three, along with the shop’s petulant cat, Grimm, became an unconventional family. Grimm, who had no use for humans, took to cuddling next to me in my crib. Uncle Eric joked that Grimm was attracted to the lingering scents of sturgeon and carp clinging to my skin.

Most in the small Viennese neighborhood, filled with cramped town houses, were amused by the story, but none believed it.

They suspected Elke had secretly married a young Roma man who’d left her to travel the river with his people.

My father had promised to return, but never did.

Elke, like many other young women who’d lost their husbands and lovers in the Great War, was left to carry on. I was seven when my mother died.

From that moment onward, I worked with Uncle Eric in the corner bookshop, just as my mother had.

I grew up playing soccer with the other children until my dark Roma eyes and hair eventually became troublesome for some.

I slowly retreated to the bookstore, devouring the classics and learning the literary likes and dislikes of all our neighbors.

When I was seventeen, the winds of war blew again, and the city filled with soldiers and strangers. Desperate neighborhood friends fled. Many who couldn’t run, or who refused to leave their homes, simply vanished.

A few years before that, a young woman entered our shop.

She was tall and lean, and her ink black hair set off vivid blue eyes.

She somehow knew that Eric purchased the rare, special books many escaping citizens were forced to sell.

He’d always become anxious whenever the woman arrived and was relieved whenever she left.

Grimm, ancient and half blind by now, hissed and hid when she’d enter the shop.

“Stay away from that one,” Uncle Eric had said one day. “She’s a selkie. Trouble.”

My mother had told me stories of the selkies.

The creatures lived in the waterways and often spied on humans.

Some of these fabled beings, tricksters by nature, shed their skins and walked among people.

If their skins remained hidden, they were free to return to the water.

However, if a human found their casings, they were bound to that person.

As I was tucking newly purchased dusty tomes under the counter, I asked, “Then why do you buy from her?”

His stooped shoulders lifted in a shrug. “She knows sellers who need money. I know buyers. I help when I can.”

“It’s dangerous. And it must be illegal,” I said. “Soldiers and police watch the store.”

He shrugged. “So be it.”

Now as the Danube’s meandering waters rolled past, I prayed the selkie hadn’t betrayed me.