The Lowing

Matt’s dad was very, very tall and very, very strong and Peter felt kind of awed just looking at him. He looked like a hero was supposed to look, Peter decided, and even more so because he didn’t seem to like Peter looking at him for too long.

He was shy. He kept ducking behind the Sister before flailing around for a second and grabbing the back of Matt’s shirt and pulling him away from things, which they then proceeded to argue and flail over as a father-son team.

Wild.

“I know where I am, Dad,” Matt accused Mr. Murdock.

“Then where are we? Go on, full picture for me,” Mr. Murdock demanded.

“In a cave,” Matt said.

“Next to deep water,” Mr. Murdock tacked on. “And rocks—rocks shaped like teeth, Matthew—”

“They ain’t shaped like teeth,” Matt justified, sounding more like his dad now than the Sister and Foggy.

“How the hell do you know what they’re shaped like?—I’m sayin’ they’re shaped like teeth and some of us here only got one life at the moment, including certain secret carrot-tops so—”

The light from the cave’s entrance lit up a few spots in the deep water ahead of them and gave a Peter a dim impression of Matt’s complete and total readiness to throw himself in that dark abyss at any moment now.

Wade appeared seconds from following him out of delight.

“Dad,” Matt said definitively. “I’m going to leave you with him if you keep this up.”

Mr. Murdock went stiff all over.

“Rude,” he said.

“Mum,” Matt said. “Can we just leave him here?”

“I don’t mind,” Sister Maggie said from somewhere ahead in the dark.

Mr. Murdock got a little brighter in his aggravation. Matt made a sound somewhere between a laugh and hum.

“I should have gone straight into the navy,” Mr. Murdock announced.

“Whatever you say, pops,” Matt said.

“Shoulda joined it and just drowned from the get-go,” Mr. Murdock carried on. “No selkies. No lighthouses. No pups.”

“I’m your son,” Matt corrected over his shoulder, picking his way carefully ahead into the dark by trailing a hand across the faces of the rocks that bracketed the small trail along the side of the cave’s central pool.

“Pup,” Mr. Murdock huffed. “God knows my son knows better than to give such cheek.”

“Jonathan,” Sister Maggie’s voice up ahead said lightly. “If you carry on insulting my pup, then I really am going to trade you for a new flute from the seanchaidhe.”

Peter and Johnny looked back to Mr. Murdock’s increasingly bright outline at the same time.

He scowled.

“He’s only your pup when he’s arguing with me,” he pointed out.

Sister Maggie finally, finally appeared up ahead on the edge of a towering rock formation that looked a little like a bridge. Peter could barely see her moving skirts, but she seemed dangerously close to the edge of the bridge’s short walls there.

“Settle,” she said simply.

“Get off of there,” Mr. Murdock said back.

The sister remained where she was. Listening. Her face was tinted slightly orange on one side from Johnny’s internal lantern and blue on the other from the cave’s water’s reflections.

Matt stopped where he was and listened, too.

He made a soft, quizzical noise which Sister Maggie up ahead echoed. Mr. Murdock crossed the bridge to its center and neatly lifted the Sister off of the edge of its wall. He put her down safely on its central path. Matt surged forward, clipped his hip on a rock and swore, and ducked around Mr. Murdock to the other side of Sister Maggie, who had stepped back up onto the bridge’s wall the second Mr. Murdock looked away.

They both listened.

Mr. Murdock removed one and then the other from the wall.

Wade made a choked off noise behind the hands on his face.

“What’s that?” Matt asked.

One second, they were all in a line, and the next, Peter found himself sandwiched between Wade and Johnny, looking ahead at an arrow-formation of Murdocks, all of whom seemed to be competing to protect the others from the dark nothingness on the other side of the bridge. Matt’s shoulders were up and his fingers had started to curl in that familiar, Daredevil flex. Sister Maggie had a hand clutched as far as it would go around Mr. Murdock’s wrist, and Mr. Murdock, to Peter’s surprise, had moved out in front of both of those two and planted his feet a shoulder’s width apart. All three remained dead still.

“He wears a bell,” Sister Maggie said cautiously.

“It’s a different bell,” Matt countered.

“What is it, then?” Mr. Murdock asked without moving his face.

Sister Maggie shushed him.

Johnny jostled Peter’s arm and reached over to get a palm over the mark on his wrist.

“I’m gonna put out the light,” he whispered.

Oh, fun.

“Copy that, kiddo,” Wade said.

Johnny breathed out and the lantern shadows around them dimmed until they were no more. The dark swept in and Peter’s eyes made colorful circles in its wake before they settled into the nothingness. He blinked and tried to stay even. Slowly, his vision started to make shapes again. Up ahead, he could just barely see the outline of Mr. Murdock’s faint glow.

But now, more importantly, he could hear the scrape of something metal.

It rose and fell. Like it was being tapped against the ground every other beat.

“Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach,” a hoarse, stuttering tenor sang. “Dúlamán na farraige, be'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn.”

Silence followed. There wasn’t even an echo, only the distant drip of water droplets into the pools below.

“Selkie-child,” that hoarse voice said ahead of them. “You’ve come home. I’ve been waiting for you.”

There was a long pause. Peter didn’t know what was happening up ahead. It was too dark to see. He glanced down towards the ground and froze.

Johnny’s fingers were glowing ever so slightly around his name on Peter’s arm. Peter had never seen the mark light up before.

Johnny seemed to sense him looking at it and closed his fingers to better hide it.

“Selkie-child?”

Peter lifted his head back in the Murdocks’ direction.

“Why don’t you answer?”

That dripping noise seemed louder than ever.

“Well, pal,” Mr. Murdock’s voice said, “Ya might start with the fact that you’re feelin’ up the wrong guy.”

There was a violent rustle of someone rearing back.

“Fetch,” Sister Maggie’s voice hissed. “What have you done with the seanchaidhe?”

There was a strange, rumbling noise in the dark ahead.

“Insolent,” the voice said, echoing off the walls now. “I am the seanchaidhe.”

“Where is he?” Matt growled low and deep and familiar.

“Selkie-child,” the voice gasped. “There you are. Come here, boy.”

“What have you done with him?” Matt demanded.

“You owe me an offering,” the voice said, softer now and only getting more so. “Do you remember what I asked you to bring to me?”

Matt said nothing.

“Do you remember, selkie?” the voice insisted.

“Jack,” Sister Maggie cautioned. “Leave it. Let him answer.”

The grit and crunch of steps being taken sounded out on the bridge.

“I remember,” Matt said.

“Tell me,” the voice said, almost desperately. “Tell me what you remember.”

“I remember,” Matt said, softer now. “That the water here was cold.”

“The offering, selkie,” the voice encouraged.

“I remember being so alone,” Matt told it. “And so afraid. And I remember asking if I could come back to this place.”

“The offering,” the voice whispered. “Do you remember?”

“The great seanchaidhe of this place held me as a child,” Matt told it. “And guided me out of this cave.”

“In return for what?” the voice breathed.

Matt said nothing.

“In return for what, selkie?” the voice demanded.

“My coat,” Matt said.

There was a sharp sound like a gasp.

“Lies,” the voice suddenly creaked. “Lies. Lies. LIES.”

The volume roared through the cave and echoed off a stone ceiling that seemed too high and too wide for a cave that barely peeked out from the side of a cliff in the countryside.

“I’m not lying,” Matt said.

“You lie, selkie,” the voice roared. “And for your lies, you will be punished.”

Rock shuddered and grated against itself all around. The bridge shook. Johnny’s hand tightened around Peter’s wrist.

“Where is the Great Seanchaidhe,” Matt shouted through the roar. “What have you done with him?”

“I am the Great Seanchaidhe,” The voice thundered.

“You’re not,” Matt thundered back. “This isn’t his cave. That isn’t his bell. And you do not deserve his offering. You can’t even tell that you’re talking to a blind selkie.”

The rumbling seemed to break all of the sudden.

“Blind?” the voice repeated.

“Blind,” Matt confirmed. “Or did you forget, O’ Wise Waterman?”

“What use is a blind selkie?” the voice snarled.

“You tell me,” Matt said. His voice sounded different now, somehow. “How far did you travel to get your hands on a selkie pup, huh?”

The tinkle of metal started to move away from them.

“HEY,” Matt barked.

The metal sound stopped.

“You are of no use to me,” its owner whispered.

“That’s too bad,” Matt said back. “Because it turns out that my superpower is that I can see in the dark.”

Peter jumped at the crack-slap of Matt’s fist connecting with flesh and bone.

A thud followed and a beat after it brought silence.

But something was wrong. Something was different. It was dark all around them, but the world started to tilt and twist and swirl.

Peter felt like he was reeling.

And then he was freezing. Absolutely freezing. A shock to the system followed by the realization that he couldn’t breathe and everything was closing in on him.

He was underwater.

It was too dark to see. Even underwater. Flailing his hands only brought them into contact with cold and colder currents. He couldn’t breathe. He had to go up.

He crashed through the surface and shook his head and called out for help. When there was no answer, he called out for the others by name.

Still nothing.

He ducked back down and felt around with his arms splayed as wide as he could in case someone was stuck under the surface.

It was so cold. His wrists and fingers ached with it.

He had to go back up.

He surfaced again and gasped in air that was multitudes warmer than his body.

“Wade?” He called.

The sound echoed, but, he realized, the sloshing sound was settling.

There was no other splashing or gasping or struggling around him. It was just him in this pool.

“Johnny?” he asked, treading water around in a circle. It was too dark. He couldn’t see anything.

“Matt?” He called.

His own voice ricocheted off the rocks hoarding the pool as their own.

Frigid water lapped at his neck, burning new lines into his throat with every miniscule wave. His breath came shakily.

He needed to get out of the water.

Getting out was easier said than done. Swimming blindly in a random direction until he couldn’t anymore brought Peter a sharp rock with lots of pieces jutting out of it.

They bit at his skin and Peter was sure that his fingers were bleeding. But he had no choice but to let them bleed. He had to trace them across the rock faces just as Matt had done earlier, feeling for a step or a gap or something—anything—to grab onto to pull himself up.

He kept going. The rock shore seemed to curve. It curved and it curved and Peter realized that the pool was circular.

It had no shores or steps up or down.

He tried not to panic. He had a healing factor which would buy him some extra time from hypothermia.

Johnny didn’t, though.

Johnny needed time to shield himself from the water. Johnny couldn’t stay in water for very long.

Johnny—

Wait.

Johnny.

Peter ripped his wrist out of the water and stared at it.

Johnny was still alive. His name shimmered on Peter’s wrist, emanating a candle-like light around the edges of the lines. It was dark enough in the cave that that was enough to show Peter the outlines of the rocks nearest him. If he went as still as he could, he could almost see the reflections of the water.

He tried to hold still with his arm held aloft.

The light was dim and the ceiling was high—Johnny’s name wasn’t strong enough to bring it out of the dark. The rocks all around the pool threw shadows in layers upon layers, like shark’s teeth, up to what looked like a gap between them and the hazy shape of another set of teeth climbing out from the wall of solid darkness on the other side of the gap.

Peter stared at it.

Maybe a path?

He could probably get up there.

And if it wasn’t a path, then anywhere that was out of this water was better than being in it.

Okay.

Plan made.

He sunk his arm back into the freezing, aching pool and took a breath to calm himself. Then he started swimming.

The rocks were sharp and his shoes were wet and squeaky and clumsy and May was going to freak once she found out about this, but eventually, Peter slogged his way up to the top row of teeth. And lo and behold—certainly not by luck or fortune—there was indeed a path.

Now it was a matter of picking which way to follow it.

He shouted in both directions—called the names of his friends and waited.

Waited.

There was nothing.

Welp. Beggars can’t be choosers.

He went right.

Going right lead him to a bunch of winding, sandy paths that wove around huge towers of stalagmites. He slipped a few times and tripped loads with Johnny’s name not quite bright enough to help him discern between puddles and stones’ shadows.

Soon he found himself climbing upwards.

Swearing stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Wade?” he called.

“What?” Wade snapped back nastily.

Oh, thank god.

“PETER.”

Oh, shit. Not just Wade.

Peter’s back met hard pebbles and rock and he groaned out loud from the impact.

Johnny didn’t care.

Johnny was freezing cold and drenching Peter’s previously slowly drying clothes. He pressed his cold cheek against Peter’s neck and made a sound like a sob.

“I’m okay,” Peter promised him.

He realized Johnny’s fist was pressed hard to the center of his chest. He winced as he worked out an arm to lay his own hand on top of it.

It took him a moment to realize that Johnny was holding something hard.

It was a familiar shape.

Johnny pulled himself off of him and dragged Peter up with.

“Give me—No, give me—no—” he said, scrabbling hands across Peter’s soaked coat and then his own.

Peter stared at the amulet in his hand.

He’d never taken it off in his life.

Ever.

Ever.

“Don’t move,” Johnny told him.

He ripped the cord in his hood out of its eyelet and pulled hard enough that it also slipped out of the opposite one. He threaded it with shaking hands through the amulet before wrapping it over and over around Peter’s wrist. When it was done, the makeshift bracelet felt thick. Heavy. A little like the ropes that Matt sometimes wore when he went out with near-deadly intent.

Only when the ends were securely knotted did Johnny sit back on his heels and look Peter in the face. He was putting off light again. His face flickered with it.

“You scared me,” he accused.

“You scared me,” Peter told him.

Johnny grimaced at him like this was somehow his fault anyways.

“Kids, I’m happy for your friendship bracelet exchange, but we got shit to do,” Wade’s voice interrupted.

Peter jerked his face up and found Wade’s shadow stood irritably on the edge of one of the giant rocks that stretched over the bay of stones that he and Johnny had apparently struggled their way out of.  

“We got separated,” Peter said.

“Yeah,” Wade sniffed. “Or we were never together in the first place and that fetch-thing fooled us into thinking we were.”

Man.

Talk about shit luck.

“Should we go find Matt?” Peter asked.

“Mm. I think seal-boy’s fine,” Wade said. “He’s got seal-mom and the Champ with him. I think our best bet right now is finding our way out. Then we can regroup and go get a barrel of fish or whatever to Hansel-and-Gretel them others out.”

Right.

Out.

Okay, out, Peter could do.

Out should have been easier than in, but Peter was looking at what was very clearly the top of a waterfall.

Wade contemplated this.

The trail between the tooth-rocks had lead them right into another pool of water which A) sucked and B) dipped down from that pool into another one which seemed to have once been an ancient forest. Huge columns of old tree trunks laid on top of each other across the water. Between them flashes of bright outside light shone through.

They’d have to navigate their way through the trees to get out, but the current was pretty strong and they didn’t know what was immediately beyond the trees.

If it was a sheer cliff, they were fucked.

If it was rapids, they were fucked.

Best case scenario, it was another pond-like thing where water collected before it tumbled off the cliff, and if that was the case, thn they’d have to be quick about get the hell across it and to land.

“I hate nature,” Wade declared.

Peter sighed.

“Hey, fire demon,” Wade asked over his shoulder. “Whaddya say we burn this here underground forest, eh? In the way of your people?”

Johnny stared at him.

“It’s wet wood,” he said flatly.

“So’s we’ve got a bit of a challenge,” Wade said with a shrug. “Nothin’ Baby Fantastic Fourth can’t handle, right?”

Johnny deadeyed him and then Peter.

This was a silent demand for clarification as to why they were not presently drowning this man. Peter decided to ignore it for now.

They’d been thinking for about fifteen minutes, battering around options and scenarios when a splash brought their attention back behind them.

Peter leapt up. Wade followed.

Mr. Murdock and his square jaw and giant shoulders shoved himself up for the second time and swore spectacularly.

He had some opinions about the cave.

They were not kind.

He had more opinions about selkies.

Peter thought that maybe he shouldn’t voice those for his own personal well-being.

It took him a second to notice Wade watching him with maximum fascination and then his complaints against God, the Island, and the universe died off a bit.

“Oh, hi,” he said. “Wrong turn.”

As if that explained anything whatsoever.

“Come,” Wade said with a welcoming arm, “Join us and tell us your woes, Father-boxer.”

Mr. Murdock stared at him with eyes that were the exact same color as Matt’s.

“I think Imma pass,” he said.

Matt’s dad seemed to have gotten separated from his selkies just like Peter had from Wade and Johnny. Was he concerned, though? Apparently not. He seemed more irritated than concerned, which Peter was going to take as a good thing.

“I spent ages avoidin’ goin’ spelunkin’,” Mr. Murdock lamented. “Did it once with my asshole brother upstate when I was fifteen and swore off it for life, but since I ain’t meant to catch a break in the next fourteen millennia, Matty took a likin’ to diggin’ goddamn holes from the start, and ever since he figured that out, my life’s been nothin’ but tunnels and trails, I swear to God.”

“But you’ve been in this cave before?” Wade asked.

“What this thing? Yeah, I’ve done this thing,” Mr. Murdock huffed. “Only once, though. It ain’t great, honestly. The ones underwater at least got a kinda fantasy element to them—you know, like that Little Mermaid shit?—this one’s full of nothin’ but rocks and an old guy in real need of a barber.”

Wade was charmed right out of his mind.

Peter couldn’t help but be too.

“Do you know where Matt is?” he asked.

Mr. Murdock glared back at the darkness behind them.

“Maybe,” he said with a slightly sour expression.

“Does he need help?” Peter asked, scooting over to the edge of his rock to settle in next to Johnny, who was dozing on his knees.

Mr. Murdock rubbed at the bottom half of his face in thought for a moment.

“Almost positively,” he said. “But not from us right at this minute.”

No?

“Nah,” Mr. Murdock hummed, slogging through the water and squinting between the logs at the light. “He needs his lute.”

Mr. Murdock wasn’t worried about his wife and kid because he was on a mission, it turned out. A mission to find Foggy.

He’d found the wrong exit. He was looking for another one. One he thought he remembered the way to, but apparently didn’t because last time he was here, Sister Maggie had dragged him through the cave maze at what he described as ‘breakneck speed for a mouse.’

Peter wondered how he’d lived as long as he had with that kind of mouth on him in Sister Maggie’s presence.

Mr. Murdock didn’t bother with that, though, he had backtracking to do, which was fun and much more doable with him in the lead. It became even more fun and doable when he over-back-tracked and they finally found Matt and Sister Maggie arguing lightly in the hollow of an enormous stalagmite that had little flickering blue and white orbs floating around it like fireflies.

Both of them looked shocked and absolutely drenched when Mr. Murdock attempted to turn back to avoid certain embarrassment.

He was not successful.

Once the ritual shouting and defensiveness was gotten though, Mr. Murdock asked, “So did y’all find him yet or no?” and received grumpy expressions and an even louder reminder that he had his job and they had theirs.

Matt told him that he was on the seanchaidhe’s trail, but he kept losing the hair he was following back to him, which was a statement that Peter’s brain refused to process.

Once Mr. Murdock had been satisfactorily banished by his family and they were set on a different route, one pointed out firmly by Sister Maggie with directions to ‘just walk, Jonathan, don’t overthink this,’ he explained that a seanchaidhe was a storyteller.

“The one who lives in this cave is a really old one—a faeseanchaidhe,” Mr. Murdock explained. “No one knows how old he is, but his head is so full of stories and memories that he grew them out into hair, which is great for him because—you know, loads of free melon space. But it’s also shit for him because he forgot how to remember things. He’s also lonely, bless ‘im. Just wants to chat.”

Aw.

“He likes Matt, though?” Peter asked.

Mr. Murdock paused and drummed fingers against his heart once.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he likes Matt. Come on, I remember where we are now.”

There was a turquoise circle in one of the cave’s many dips that was surrounded by the sound of rushing water. Mr. Murdock considered this with what Peter could only describe as maximum restlessness.

He seemed wary to get into the water there for some reason.

“It goes down pretty far and then back up,” he explained.

“Okay?” Peter said. “So we go in?”

“I dunno,” Mr. Murdock said. “I dunno if that’s a good idea. I’m wondering if maybe we should wait until Matty and Grace have found the seanchaidhe.”

Uh, why?

“I dunno, it’s just a feeling—I got loads of feelings,” Mr. Murdock rattled.

Wade watched this with a single arching brow.

“Hero Feelings, with a capital ‘h’ or just feelings-feelings?” he asked.

“I dunno,” Mr. Murdock sighed, “Maybe it’s fine. But there’s like, timing with these kinds of things and I ain’t never gotten it right and obviously, I don’t wanna fuck this up since we’ve come all this way and—”

Ah.

Overthinking.

This was what Sister Maggie was talking about.

“Johnny do you wanna go first?” Peter asked him.

“Can I stay on the other side?” Johnny asked him. “It’s really wet in here. It’s making me sleepy.”

Yeah, that was cool. Johnny had already done his part in keeping Peter safe so far.

“Yeah, do you think maybe you can send Foggy to replace you?” he asked.

Johnny saluted his affirmative.

Johnny slipped into the water and took one big breath before ducking down into the turquoise. His shadow went lower and lower and then went out of sight.

It was about two minutes before a new shadow appeared, but instead of getting darker, it got brighter as it came to the surface and in no time, Foggy was breaking the surface and throwing his long hair over his shoulder with a wet slap.

“For the record,” he spat, climbing out of the water. “I hate this idea and don’t want to be here.”

“Duly noted,” Mr. Murdock said.

“I want it in writing,” Foggy told him. He wrung out his hair and shook out his tambourine and then the long, guitar-like thing that he’d had through over his shoulder.

Matt’s lute.

Mr. Murdock was much less anxious with another selkie around. Foggy asked him why he put up with all the bullying from Sister Maggie and Matt and he just shrugged.

Foggy told him that once he was done with his spirit-form-phase, he should seek therapy, and Mr. Murdock visibly recoiled at the thought. Foggy did not let him escape the discussion. He started listing out Mr. Murdock’s many, many traumas while gamely leading the way back towards Sister Maggie and Matt.

Peter figured that he had rights as Mr. Murdock’s fae son-in-law to nag him, so he kept mum. He was cold and was getting tired. It was late (or early, rather). He wondered how long it would take to find the Great Seanchaidhe, or, as Foggy called him ‘the Memory Man.’

Wade noticed this and offered him a piggy back ride, which he refused.

He was tired, not four.

Wade told him that if someone offered him a piggy back ride, he’d take it in a fucking heartbeat.

Peter didn’t get it.

Wade put hands on his shoulders and steered him so that he was walking in front of him.

Matt and Sister Maggie were really in the sticks when Foggy sniffed them out. Forget the stalagmite. They were waist deep in water, sticking hands in a hole and making a whole lot of sounds that implied a whole lot of effort.

Foggy dropped a hand onto his hip.

“He’s stuck,” he said flatly.

Matt jerked his face up his way.

“Fogs!” he said in delight. “My prayers have been answered.”

“Fuck your prayers,” Foggy said immediately. “You can’t pay me to touch ‘im.”

Matt’s face fell. Peter realized that there was a pale, bony hand wrapped around one of his and one of the Sister’s.

“Dad?” Matt tried instead.

“I think not,” Sister Maggie said from the other side of the hole. “My human—you hear that?” she called into it, “My human.”

Um?

Okay?

There was a story there.

Mr. Murdock deferred to Foggy who rolled his whole head in exhaustion.

“Five of youse and four braincells altogether,” he groaned. “Peter has super strength, Matthew.”

Matt froze and dropped the hand he’d been holding onto.

“Oh, right,” he said.

It took one pull and Peter was covered with hair.

So.

Much.

Hair.

And somewhere in all of that hair was a bag of bones who was whooping and hollering, having the time of his life.

Peter scrambled out from under the hair as best as he could and was dragged out of that which he couldn’t escape by Wade’s friendly hands. The hair followed him. It spilled out everywhere. It rolled out over the rocks and down into the water around them. It swept up dirt and mud and rocks and it stuck to fabric and hands and lips—Peter was in shock.

Tiredness forgotten.

“Well! Now, that was a bind, wasn’t it, selkie?” The Great Seanchaidhe cheered as he popped up. He looked like a broom with wrinkles and eyebrows and bare feet that were accompanied every so often by the tinkle of a tiny bell.

The Great Seanchaidhe swept himself off and puffed himself up and squinted around in a huge circle at their group.

He stopped and squinted extra hard at Matt, then lurched back.

“A human-child!” he exclaimed.

Matt’s lip flickered.

“Close,”  he said. “But not quite. That one that pulled you out is a human-child.”

The Great Seanchaidhe whipped his face in Peter’s direction. He was surprisingly tall. Peter blinked up at him.

“A human child!” the Great Seanchaidhe exclaimed again, exactly as he had the first time. “Wait—no! A witch! A Witch!! Quick! Selkie! Come here, come here!”

Sister Maggie clearly did not expect to be the selkie the man was referring too. Her eyes went nearly black when he hid behind her as best as he could fit.

“Attack, selkie!” the Great Seanchaidhe encouraged from back there.

Sister Maggie slid out from in front of him in supreme offense. The Great Seanchaidhe watched her go in mild surprise. He wasn’t too bothered, though. He went on to do the same thing to Matt.

Matt laughed at the gesture, though, even as Foggy said, “oh, fuck no, I don’t think so, old man,” and dragged the guy away from Matt. He clung to Matt anyways.

Then perked up.

“Oh, hello,” he said, peering right into Matt’s face. “Do I know you, selkie?”

Matt laughed again.

“You do,” he said.

“Do I?” The Great Seanchaidhe repeated. “What is your name, Selkie?”

“You don’t know it,” Matt told him. “I never gave it to you.”

The Great Seanchaidhe released his grip on Matt’s shoulder and examined him curiously. And Peter finally realized that he could actually see all this. It wasn’t dark anymore. The tendrils of hair that had settled down into the water and the mass that the old man carried around with him lit up the space around him like a beacon.

“Aha!,” the Great Seanchaidhe cried. “You! I know you! The blind selkie-child! Oh, it has been a while, or maybe just a moment? Look how big you’ve grown! Still so skinny, where is your blubber? Skin and bones, you are. Oh! You’re here for a reason, selkie-child. What is the reason? What do you need of these caves? Another guide perhaps? And who are you?”

The guy had an attention span shorter than Johnny’s around wrapping paper. He eyed up Foggy like he was a specimen. Foggy showed him his unnaturally white teeth.

The Great Seanchaidhe recoiled.

“A village selkie,” he gasped. “Shoo! Shoo, shoo! I’ll not have the likes of you in these waters! I have no kelp or shells here for you or your kind to steal.”

Foggy bared his teeth harder.

Matt felt for him and got a hand on his shoulder to make him ease off.

“I’m here to make good on our deal,” he explained.

The Great Seanchaidhe spun around in his hair and cocked wide, owlish eyes at Matt.

“I made a deal with you?” he asked.

“You did,” Matt told him. “You told me twenty years ago to bring you something when I came back to this cave.”

“Oh?” The old man asked. “What was it—no wait, don’t tell me. I know this. Selkie-child….selkie-child…hm…oh, yes. I remember now.”

The man did a dance to untangle himself from all his hair and swept it dramatically aside to reveal a thin, monk-like robe hanging upon his bony frame. He drew back his shoulders and stood at a full height of what had to have been six feet or more.

“Did you bring it to me?” he asked Matt with a knowing smile.

“I gave away my coat,” Matt told him.

The old man hummed and nodded understandingly.

“A poor decision to make, young one,” he said.

“I know that now,” Matt told him.

“Fulfilling this deal is the last leg of your arrangement to get it back?” the Great Seanchaidhe asked him, clearly already knowing the answer.

“It is,” Matt told him anyways.

“You’ve become a hair in this head of mine, young one,” the old man told him, tapping his skull. “As has your young father here—no I haven’t forgotten you either,” he smiled wide at Mr. Murdock who edged away uncomfortably. “Very polite. You’re very polite—but you, selkie-child. Are you sure that you want your coat back? A hair in this head is a hero’s tale, you know. You’re well on your way.”

Matt’s lips twitched into a gentle smile. The kind that made Peter forget sometimes that he was a devil in disguise.

“I’m sure,” he said.

The Great Seanchaidhe grinned wide.

“Then what have you brought me?” he asked.

Matt gestured around at everyone stood in a circle around him and the old man.

“These are my friends,” he said. “This is my family. They bring with them joy. Or at least, they bring me joy. Which I have now brought to you. And so, O’ Great Seanchaidhe, our deal is complete.”

Matt held out his hand and the old man looked at it, and then up at him, beaming.

“And so it is, selkie-child,” he said, clasping Matt’s palm and giving it a single shake. “Welcome home.”

Peter had never seen Matt play his lute. It was surreal. Matt picked a few chords and sent the whole cave humming. Vibrating. Yearning for more. And Foggy, despite his obvious misgivings, gave it what it wanted. Their combined song made the mark on Peter’s arm quiver. It made Mr. Murdock close his eyes and the memory man’s hair burned brighter and whiter than before.

The song sent shivers through Peter’s spine. Different ones from the Spidey Sense.

The unexpected addition of a flute, which Peter looked up to find in Sister Maggie’s hands, did something that made his breathe catch.

Little lights exploded into space and hung in the air like dust motes. The roof of the cave lit up in its cracks upon cracks and revealed a mural up there. Stories of heroes were painted on the stone. They moved, telling their tales with the beat of the music.

The Great Seanchaidhe splayed his hands wide up to them and the dust motes scurried up around his hands as the song reached a crescendo.

With a great heave from him, they lurched up and scattered like stars up among the heroes.

They danced along up there, brightening scenes of animals and hunters and rolling hills and creeping forests.

Peter didn’t realize that he wasn’t breathing right until the song fell to its end. Foggy held his tambourine still at his side and Matt dropped his playing hand. Sister Maggie held the last note on her flute for a long moment, letting it slowly taper off.

The cave fell back into a quiet slumber, punctuated by dripping water.

The dark returned and the heroes above disappeared once again into it.

The Great Seanchaidhe, held out a hand to Matt, which he took after a moment of grasping.

“Your coat waits for you by the ancient fairy thorn,” he said. “What is your name, selkie?”

“Maidiú,” Matt told him.

“Honor to Maidiú,” The Great Seanchaidhe said. “You’re finished here, young one.”

Matt bowed his head against the bony, old hand.

“Thank God,” he breathed.