Drown the Lamenting
Seanan McGuire
Selkie and Roane backstory
Drown the Lamenting is Seanan McGuire's September 2023 Patyreon reward. She introduces it as follows,
(Image: Thomas, an adult male Maine Coon with a haircut and a shirt, has melted into the blankets in a tangle of limbs and blissful sleep.)
Let's return to the Duchy of Ships, for a little, lengthy (novella-length this month) excursion with Elizabeth Ryan. Featuring Captain Pete, lots of cakes, and the untold story of how Diva came to be.
To fully understand Drown the Lamenting you need to understand a lot of history from the October Daye series, which I will now try to briefly summarize. It is all tied up with the history of the sea-witch, the Luidaeg, and the Roane. The Luidaeg, before she took that name, was called Antigone of Albany. She was the first daughter of the progenitors Oberon and his Unseelie Queen Maeve, and was the first of the firstborn. Like all the firstborn, she was the ancestor of a Fae lineage, the Roane. The Roane were shapeshifters -- they could take the form of seals -- and also prophets. Hundreds of years ago, at the instigation of Eira Rosynhwyr, the Roane were slaughtered by merlins -- people who were mostly human but had a tiny bit of fae blood. The slaughter of the Roane was almost complete, but a few Roane who were with Antigone at the time survived. Eira, daughter of Oberon and the Seelie Queen Titania, is the second of the first born. She and Titania always feared prophecy and, to get rid of the Roane, tricked the merlins into believing that the Roane were a danger to them.
The children of the merlins, having learned from Eira to expect the firstborn to exact terrible vengeance, slaughtered their parents in order to avenge the Roane and, they hoped, forestall the Luidaeg's revenge on themselves. The Luidaeg responded by making a bargain with them. She retrieved the skins of her slaughtered Roane children, and gave them to the mortal merlin children. A mortal wearing one of these skins, a Selkie, became fae -- they could take the form of a seal, do fae magic, and enjoy eternal youth. The hitch was, one day there would come a person who could use the skins to bring the Roane back. And on that day, the Selkies would give up the skins and die. That person, who could bring the Roane back, was October Daye, and the story of the Luidaeg calling the Selkie's debt is told in The Unkindest Tide.
Since the slaughter of the Roane the Luidaeg has hated the Selkies, because they are the children of those who slew her children, and because they wear the skin of her children. But the Luidaeg, who is by nature kind and just within the bounds of her geasa, falls in love with Elizabeth (Liz) Ryan, the daughter of Selkies, after she is denied a skin. That story is told in In Sea-Salt Tears, a story published free on McGuire's web site, that is the immediate precursor to this one. It ends with Liz receiving a skin after all and Annie (the name the Luidaeg gave Liz) leaving her.
That is where Drown the Lamenting begins, with Liz, now a Selkie, in despair at losing her love Annie, whom she doesn't yet know to be the Sea-Witch. And then it tells of of what she does and how she came to have a daughter, Diva.
It's a good story, and one you will certainly want to read if you're a fan of the October Daye series.