The Seduction of Water (2003)
“It should not have made me angry. I was used to the carelessness of these women—the way they dropped their clothes where they stood, like a skin they had shed and had no more use for. Their jewels they left in heaps too, earrings placed on bedside tables where a careless hand in the night brushed them to the floor, diamond rings resting in soap dishes and pearls draping the mirror frames. Let them lose any one of these precious baubles, though, and they knew who to blame: the selkie women who c...leaned their rooms.
The net of tears was just another glittering bauble to her—something to match a new green gown, to draw the men’s eyes to her breasts, and, at the end of the night, a handful of stones strewn across her dressing table among coins and soiled handkerchiefs. I could have gathered it up in my dustcloth and stuck it in my pocket—the diamonds and pearls so lightly woven they weighed hardly more than a handful of sand. I should have taken it then and run—gone to the river and thrown the stones in the deepest water—but instead I told Naoise what I had seen.MoreLess
The net of tears was just another glittering bauble to her—something to match a new green gown, to draw the men’s eyes to her breasts, and, at the end of the night, a handful of stones strewn across her dressing table among coins and soiled handkerchiefs. I could have gathered it up in my dustcloth and stuck it in my pocket—the diamonds and pearls so lightly woven they weighed hardly more than a handful of sand. I should have taken it then and run—gone to the river and thrown the stones in the deepest water—but instead I told Naoise what I had seen.MoreLess
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