Brighid considered herself a widow. There was no news for certain, but then, there probably never would be. That was just the way of things. Her husband Calum had taken a berth aboard a whaler two years ago, and hadn’t returned. Nor had he sent any letters—which wasn’t all that surprising given that Calum could barely write his own name—but on the voyages before this one he’d at least sent money, and sometimes a note in the hand of someone to whom he’d dictated his thoughts. Perhaps even a parcel containing a bolt of calico or lace as a token of his regards.

Two years, now, and not a word. Ships came and went month by month, some with news from other men in the village: Michael O’Halloran had taken ill with malaria, and was stranded in Barbados until he’d healed; Sean Moran had lost his leg and was bound for home on a company ship; Tommy Dooley had been lost at sea and was thought dead. No news of Calum, however.

So Brighid carried on as best she could, alone. Herded the sheep and goats from pasture to pasture, fed the chickens and collected and sold the eggs at market, sheared wool at the appropriate season, milked the goats and made cheese, mended fences.

And watched the sea.

She had a ritual, performed daily. Once the day’s work was done, she would follow the narrow path from the field behind her little home and over the dunes and through the tall dune grass waving in the ever-blowing wind and down to the sea. She would kick off her shoes when the trail ended at the sand, and she’d pause there, digging her bare toes into the cool sand, wiggle her heels, fill her lungs, and let her hair down. The wind would play with her hair, blowing the long red locks this way and that, draping a strand across her eye. The wind would play with her skirt, too, flirty and presumptuous, tugging at it, pressing the linen against her thighs. It would pry at the edges of her sweater and mould the sweat-damp cotton against the mounds of her breasts. Then Brighid would gather the hem of her skirt up to her knees and knot it there to leave her legs bare; there was no one to see, after all, since Calum had built their home miles from the village, right up against the sea on the west, in a green sward boxed in by hills to the east and south, accessible only by a narrow, rocky path to the north. It was a place of solitude and solace, their little farm. Far from any prying eyes. And so Brighid would tie her skirt up indecently high, because only the gulls were there to see the white flash of her thighs and calves.

She would traipse down to the water’s edge, and let it tickle her toes. Her eyes would scan the horizon, east to west, watching for sails, praying that the next she saw would have word of Calum, but knowing in her breast that no ship would come, not with word of Calum. But still she spent her evenings at the sea’s edge, hoping. Letting the sea foam drag at her ankles, biting achingly cold on her bones. If she went too deep, calf-deep, as she sometimes did, on warm days, her ankle would throb, a reminder of the time she broke it as a girl, chasing a sheep away from a cliff’s edge.

She liked the ache, secretly. The cold was bracing. Sometimes, in the depths of her heart, she wished she had the courage to strip all of her clothes off and delve beneath the waves and let that delicious icy ache spread through her whole body. She never did, though. She’d gone thigh-deep, once. She’d had to hike her skirts up to her waist, and had stopped when the water began to lap and lick in an indecently intimate way. She’d splashed ashore trembling, and had made her cook fire in the hearth that evening especially hot.

Day after day, Brighid went down to the sea, waded in the cold brine, and watched the horizon.

And then, one evening, after a day of particularly brutal rain, Brighid as usual followed her path down to the sea, kicked off her shoes, and waded ankle-deep in the icy water. She followed the shoreline a ways, kicking at the waves, her hair let down to flutter behind her like a copper banner. The wind was sharp and strong, pressing her clothes hard against her body, tossing her hair this way and that, more aggressive than flirtatious. And the sea was full of ire, still, sending an occasional wave crashing against the shore in a spray of cold white foam to surge calf-deep. So Brighid tied her skirt up around her thighs to keep the hem dry, and followed the shoreline. She whispered a prayer to Brendan moccu Altae, saint of the seas and mariners, more as an idle pastime and a vaguely remembered habit than real faith in the saint to bring her husband back.

Hear my prayer, Saint Brendan, she prayed. Assuage my loneliness. Return him to me. Show mercy to me.

The whispered words upon her lips, she felt the wind scraping in from the sea, harsh and cold, sending shivers down her spine, and the sea roared and crashed, and waves licked at her calves like a cold tongue. She continued along the shore, mindless of distance, heedless of time.

Her eyes cast down, following only the restless advance and retreat of the surf, she was thus startled when she heard a footstep in the wet sand. She looked up just in time to see the nude form of a man, turning from her and leaping into the sea, a bounding splashing step, a second, a third, knees driving high, taut dark buttocks driving him powerfully into the surf, and then he dove, a graceful shallow plunge headfirst into the waves. Her vision of him was brief, but his form was immediately imprinted upon her mind. He was tall, taller than Calum even, who stood head and shoulders taller than most men in the village. His back had been muscled and firm, his shoulders broad and his waist narrow, with the powerful legs and buttocks of an athlete or warrior. His hair had been long, unkempt, wild, wet and dark black and pasted to his spine and shoulder blades.

Brighid stared after him, waiting for him to surface, to rise up and gasp and splutter at the cold, to poke his head up over the waves and glance back at her. For long, long minutes Brighid stood and stared, with the cold brine pooling around her ankles with the inrush of the evening tide. Longer than anyone could hold a single breath. Had he drowned? Brighid moved deeper into the water, sucking in a deep breath at the icy ache at her knees.

And then, far, far in the distance, she saw a shape breasting the water, leaving a V-shaped wake in the white-capped waves; a head, perhaps, ducking and rising back above the surface. Too far to tell for sure, but it could have been him. Or perhaps it was just a seal, startled away by his presence—they liked this stretch of beach, Brighid knew, because it was remote and rocky and contained tide pools where fish became trapped, and fishermen rarely ventured here, preferring other easier places to ply their trade. It suited Brighid, and it suited the seals as well, and she often saw them sunning their bellies in the distance, and as she approached they would bark and splash into the waves and surface only when they’d put a healthy distance behind them.

A seal, or a man? From this distance, there was no way to know.

Brighid was cold, now. The wind still blew damp with the day’s rain, and the surf was rough and angry, dampening her skirts even bound up as they were, and now her legs ached with the dull insistent throb of the sea’s icy teeth. She trudged through the encroaching tide into the damp hard-packed dark brown sand and then up to the dry tan sand, where her feet sank in and were engulfed by the relatively warm grit. She looked back, but the sea was empty again, except for the omnipresent gulls, hawing and wheeling, skreeing and floating head-on in the wind, riding the currents and crying their discordant discourse.

She went home and stirred the fire into blazing heat to warm the ache from her bones, and ate the last of the mutton stew; she’d have to make more for dinner the next few days, which meant slaughtering another sheep, a chore she loathed. Her mind wandered, that night, as she drifted off to sleep.

Calum was floating beside her. She was lost in the waves, drowning. She could feel her hair billowing in the sea currents, but she could breathe and he couldn’t. He was sinking out of reach, and she was weeping, soundless under the surface of the waves. Above, a storm raged; she saw the lightning flash, saw the vengeful churn of the sea. Calum reached for her, his fine blond hair a yellow cloud, his eyes all black, no white, no pupil, no life, and his mouth worked, closed and opened, speaking, pleading, and his hand reached, reached, reached for her but never could she grasp his hand and pull him to safety. Brighid woke as Calum drifted down into the inky depths, woke screaming his name, gasping in the dark silence of predawn.

There would be no more sleep, she knew; she would meet him in the waves again if she tried to sleep. Instead, she lit her lamp and mended rends in dresses and darned the holes in her stockings and bided her time until it was light enough to milk the goats and put them and the sheep out to pasture. All the while, her mind was on the dream she’d had. Calum, reaching for her, sinking into the depths. As much a confirmation of his demise as she was likely to get, although she would never have admitted to such superstition out loud.

Her nearest neighbor, taciturn old Mr. Malloy, had traded her some lobster traps for a few pails of milk, and had shown her where and how to place them, so she brought a large pail down to the shoals with her skirts tied high and her hair braided tightly to prevent tangles in the mischievous wind of the morning. Scrambling across the rocks and down into the thigh-deep pools, she hauled up the first trap, and found a trio of angry, tentacle-waving crustaceans therein; the next few traps were empty, and the last pair held four more each, which made for a tidy enough haul that Brighid made a mental note to bring Mr. Malloy some of her goat cheese, which was nearly done aging.

With her lobsters ticking and clacking and climbing claw-upon-eyestalk in the bucket, Brighid picked her way carefully back across the spit of surf-slick rocks and then slid down a sandy embankment to the beach proper, and there pulled up short, breathless in fright and shock.

A monstrous harbour seal was beached not half a dozen paces away, dark eyes wet and fixed on her, whiskers twitching. It was on its side, its tail in the surf, a flipper in the air waving listlessly. She set down her pail of lobsters and inched toward the seal; he—the mighty beast was a he, she was somehow certain—was staring at her. She could feel his gaze.

Urrrr—Ur-ur-ur-urrrrrr. He sounded…weak. Troubled. In pain.

Brighid—fearful of the size of the beast, which was well over six feet in length and weighed several hundred pounds, easily—inched incrementally closer, keeping her eyes on his. His wet skin was mottled dark gray, speckled with a spray of white spots around the base of his tail.

A few inches closer, and Brighid was nearly close enough to touch him, should she reach out her hand. He growled again, a throaty rumbling that was somehow non-threatening. His eyes were round limpid pools of ink, shining and glimmering with emotion and intelligence. Closer and closer yet, and the seal did not move. Brighid knew she was being foolish. Seals were ungentle creatures, despite their playful reputation. Males could be territorial, and downright dangerous if threatened, and this close, Brighid was at his mercy. But his bark as she laid a trembling palm on the top of his neck was pained, a beseeching murmur. His flipper waved again, flopping listlessly back and forth.

Brighid, shaking all over, moving slowly and keeping a wary, cautious eye on the beast, shuffled toward the wavering flipper. The seal shifted abruptly, rolling away from her, causing Brighid to yelp in fright and stumble away. But he made no other move so she crouched beside him, one hand on his slick, soft wet skin, trailing across his body as she examined him. There, underneath his flipper, was a huge, wicked, curved fishhook, all of a foot long, speared directly through his flipper and skin near his body. A nasty barb at the tip prevented the horrible hook from sliding out.

“Oh my, you poor creature,” Brighid crooned. “You’ve been hooked, haven’t you?”

Urrrrr…urr-ur-urk.

“You just wait here, won’t you? I have just the thing.” She patted his thick neck. “I swear you can understand me, can’t you? I’ll be right back. Don’t you move, all right? I’ll help you.”

Urrrrrrk-ur-ur-ur.

Once again, his bark felt eerily and even preternaturally like an intentional response. Brighid shrugged off the shiver that shuddered down her spine. She snatched a lobster from the pail and tossed it toward the seal, who barked again, excitedly, and flopped toward the snapping, clicking crustacean, and then fierce canine teeth crunched and the lobster became a meal for the seal.

Brighid shuddered at the sudden violence, but then turned away and ran as fast as she could up the shore toward her home. Up the dunes she scrambled, dune grass slicing and prickling and stabbing at her calves. At the back of her little house—a small, snug, squat structure of piled stones and hand-hewn timbers and jagged, overlapping, mortared hunks of slate for the roof, built with love and skill by Calum and his eight brothers, most of whom lived several counties over, now, and couldn’t spare a month’s journey to help her—sat a huge old wooden chest, the wood rotting and the metal straps rusting. Within were Calum’s old tools: a hammer, an adze, a saw, a handful of nails…and a pair of thick-handled, blunt-jawed pliers, with enough of a blade to the jaw that it should probably snip through the barbed tip of the hook, if she could summon the strength.

Along with the pliers, she fetched a strip of cloth and a jar of salve, and then jogged back down to the beach where the seal had been. Upon her return, she discovered that the seal had, in her absence, knocked over her pail of lobsters and devoured them all.

“Oh, you naughty beast!” She scolded, with an amused huff. “You’ve eaten all my lobsters! That was meant to be my dinner, you know. Not very nice of you, was it?”

Ur-ur-ur-ur. If a seal’s bark could be said to be almost apologetic, that one was.

“Well, no matter. I’ll rebait them later, and catch more. I suppose you need them more than me, anyway.” She knelt beside him once more, set the cloth and salve to one side, and grasped the pliers in both hands, pinching the tip of the hook just beneath the barb in the heavy, bladed jaws. “Now, hold still, yeah? I don’t want to hurt you further. I may not be strong enough to cut through this.”

She applied all the pressure she was capable of, but the pliers only bit in the slightest amount. Letting go, Brighid sank back into the sand with a huff. A moment’s rest, and then she bore down once more, grunting with exertion, feeling the hook give just a touch, this time. Unclenching the pliers, she examined her progress: she’d managed a pair of fairly deep divots on either side, but wasn’t even halfway through, yet. She rotated the pliers so the blades would sink into new spots, and bore down again. And again. Rotate back to the original location, and she squeezed the handle with all her might, sweat dripping from her nose, hands aching, the seal watching, breathing, not making a sound or moving a muscle.

“Good boy,” Brighid murmured to him. “Nearly there, now. A bit more and we’ll have it, won’t we? Keep still a moment more, and I’ll have you patched up good as new.”

It was more than a moment or two, but eventually and with much groaning exertion, Brighid managed to snap the ugly barbed tip of the hook away, and then carefully slid the hook back through the seal’s flipper. When the hook left him, the seal barked in pain, flinching away, rolling onto Brighid’s foot, throwing her to the wet sand, her ankle twisted.

Immediately, he rolled away, flipper waving, whiskers twitching, barking in a low growl.

“Oh it’s fine. I’m fine,” she said, pulling herself to her feet and brushing her shins and thighs clean of the sand. “A little twinge, is all.”

Urrrrr-ur…ur-ur-ur. The seal flapped his flipper, and lurched toward her.

He was bleeding profusely, she saw. She crouched and let him wiggle closer to her side. “That’s it, a little closer. You need to have that patched up or you’ll be a meal for someone else, with more teeth than you have, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? No, indeed.”

She had a moment of self-consciousness, realizing she was talking to a seal as if expecting him to understand her and respond, but…it felt as if he could. And it wasn’t like she had anyone else to speak to, anyway, was it? Nor was there anyone to see or hear her folly.

She scooped a generous palmful of her homemade healing salve and gingerly spread it over the jagged hole in the seal’s injured flipper, topside and bottom, and then wrapped the strip of cloth around several times, tying it tight.

“There. It’s the best I can do, as I’m no nurse, nor a doctor for animals—a what would you call it? A veterinarian, isn’t it?” She stroked his wet fur from the top of his head down his back, and he growled in his throat, a pleased sound, it seemed to her.

“If you want to thank me, bring me fish,” Brighid said, standing up and backing away. “With my husband lost, I have no one to catch fish for me, and I’m dead tired of mutton.”

Urrrrrr! Ur-ur-ur. Urrrk ur. Flopping backward a foot or two, the seal then wiggled around to face the sea, tail flapping, flippers slapping at the damp sand. Brighid watched, feeling an odd kinship to the seal. A sense of…recognition, even. Familiarity, perhaps, although that was the most foolish notion she’d ever had, and well Brighid knew it. Yet the feeling persisted, and she couldn’t quite banish it.

Splashing into the water, the seal dove and shot away, then leapt and splashed down, and then poked his head out of the water, eyeing her from a distance of a dozen or so feet out. She waved, a hand lifted, her copper hair fluttering in the breeze. An eyeblink only, but when Brighid saw him again, she would have sworn instead of a seal, she saw a man, treading water, just his eyes above the surface, long black hair spread out on the waves like spilled ink. Those eyes, staring at her, they were limpid and dark and intelligent, and familiar. Another eyeblink, and there was a seal’s tail spraying the sky with diamond-bright droplets, and then the sea was empty again.

Taking her empty pail, Brighid returned home, built up her banked fire, and stirred the stew she’d made that morning.

That night, she dreamed again.

But not of Calum.

Of him, that man she’d seen the day prior. His lean, hard, powerful body. The long black hair, the taut muscles. She hadn’t seen his face, but she knew he’d be as handsome as his body had been beautiful.

Not that it mattered. It was all conjecture. But where had the man come from? Where had he gone? He’d swum away and hadn’t surfaced. A seal had, but…

Stories her mother had told around the fire when Brighid had been a little girl bubbled up from deep in her memory.

Selkies are real, Brighid, her mother had said, her dark eyes wide, firelight playing on her features. Of that I’m absolutely sure. I’ve seen one. I came across a woman on the beach, and when she saw me, she dove into the water and swam away and only a seal appeared. I saw her again another time, too. They’re real, Brighid. Don’t you let anyone tell you any different. You find one, you find the skin of a selkie left behind when they change, they’ll be trapped on the land and beholden to you for as long as you have it.

She’d never really believed her mother’s stories, though. Fireside tales, a mother entertaining her daughter during the long lonely evenings. Not real, not true.

But she’d seen it herself, a man vanishing into the waves, and only a seal appearing out in the surf. Could it be real?

She woke restless, irritable. Hungry, and sick of mutton stew. Missing Calum. Hating the endless days alone, knowing Calum wouldn’t be returning, knowing she had a life in front of her that would be the same as the years since Calum shipped out: Alone, herding goats and sheep, fixing fences, doing everything alone, making her way as best she could, one day at a time, until she grew too old to do it all.

She had fences to mend, sheep that needed shearing, wool that needed carding, and the garden needed weeding, but Brighid found herself instead wandering down between the dunes to the edge of the sea. It was another gray day, the sky heavy and leaden, the sea churning and wild and angry, petrichor thick in the air. Gulls surfed the wind currents, and sandpipers skittered toward the retreating waves, pecking at the slick wet sand and then darting away from the onrushing waves. Way out, far in the distance, a fluke tipped up out of the water and then dipped back down beneath the surly gray water, and then a plume spouted white skyward. The cry of the gulls was mournful, it seemed to Brighid, their harsh discordant caws striking her nerves. She wandered the shoreline, carrying her shoes, letting the bitter cold water lap at her feet.

Yet, even after she’d wandered nearly half a mile away from her section of the shoreline, the water remained empty, the shore barren. Eventually she had to return home and attend to chores. Yet as she hammered nails into a fence post and carded wool and yanked weeds, she continued to feel at loose ends, vaguely unsatisfied for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint. She felt her loneliness more acutely than ever.

Again that night, she dreamed of the man she’d seen. Wondered what his name was, where home was for him, what his voice sounded like. What his hands would feel like on her skin. She dreamed he was in her home, crouched before the fire, a blanket around his shoulders. She dreamed of his eyes, dark as the night sky, intelligent and still somehow animal, watching her as she fluttered around the house, cooking, cleaning.

The next day, and the next, and every day for the following month, she wandered the shoreline just past dawn. She trapped lobsters, and thought of the seal who had knocked over her pail.

And then, when she’d begun to give up hope of seeing the man or the seal again, she wandered down to the shore in the minutes just before sundown, when the sun was just barely peeking up over the horizon, and the air was still warm but swiftly cooling and the light golden-scarlet and the wind gentle in her hair. And there he was, the seal. Breasted upon the sand, his tail flicking at the waves as they skirled around him. She knew it was him. Even if the strip of cloth hadn’t still been tied around his flipper, she’d have known him. The preternatural way he stared at her with those limpid eyes. The way he remained still as she approached, just watching her, unafraid. Knowing, somehow. Welcoming, greeting.

Brighid knelt in the wet sand a few feet away from him. “Hello again. Are you well? How’s your flipper doing?”

The seal flapped the flipper in question, splatting sand, barking.

She shuffled closer to him, reaching slowly and carefully. “I’m just going to slip this off you, now, okay?”

Another bark and a flap, tail slapping. He was massive, this seal. It hit her all over again as she crouched beside him. Huge, long, heavy, powerful. Those teeth, when he barked—they flashed white and sharp. Predator’s teeth. He was still, however, as she unknotted the wet strip of cloth and tugged it off of him. He’d healed completely, with only a puckered scar remaining.

“There now, good as new.” She shuffled back away from him, the makeshift bandage in hand.

Ur-ur-ur-ur.

“Oh, ’twas nothing. A bit of help for another of God’s creatures. I still wouldn’t mind if you brought me a fish or two, though.”

Urk! Ur-ur.

He twisted around and carved under the waves, as graceful in the water as he was ungainly on land. She watched his dark form slice through water and vanish, and she found herself sitting in the sand, thinking of all the work that awaited her, and wishing she could dive into the ocean after him and swim with him beneath the waves and splash and catch fish and sun herself on a rock somewhere off shore.

She daydreamed, sea foam and icy water licking at her heels, the sun now past the horizon, the light hazy and red and golden.

Exhaustion snuck over her; the evening was warm now, and she wore a thick wool sweater of Calum’s, and she was just so tired. She felt herself sinking down to the sand, pillowing her head on her arms, slipping into drowsy peacefulness as if in a dream, a return to girlhood when she could lay in the grass in the summer sun and let the warmth soak into her skin and bathe her closed eyes with a gentle yellow heat and drowse and feel time skip and hop and slip as she napped like a cat in a window.

There was movement. She was dreaming, though. Dreaming of Calum, returned. Scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to bed. Tucking a blanket around her shoulders. Watching her with large dark mysterious eyes.

Calum’s eyes were gray, though, weren’t they?

She fluttered her eyes, and saw craggy, swarthy features, a jaw like a cliffside, deep-set eyes like chips of blackest night, scars criss-crossing his cheeks, a thick black beard braided with strands of seaweed, long black hair around burly shoulders. Bare skin, a hint of a stomach, and then her eyes slid closed and when she opened them again, she was in her own bed and the house was empty.

Her door was open, though. Banging in the wind, the light of a full moon shining bright on the wood planks, staining a line of wet footprints into silver pools.

“I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.” She rose from her bed, traipsed across the room to the nearest footprint.

There were grains of sand in the print. And her arms, her shoulders, her cheek were gritty with sand. It was in her hair. In her clothes. She followed the footprints outside into the night—there were flattened patches of grass, blades twitching upright still. It was a considerable distance to the next print, and the next, and then she was following impressions in the sand, where the edges of the impressions still slid in on themselves. Running, now, Brighid tripped and slid down the dune path to the sea and there he was, standing in the waves, hip-deep.

Watching her.

“Wait!” Brighid called, splashing knee-deep into the water toward him, uncaring that her skirt was getting soaked.

He hesitated, his posture that of a man about to dive into the water. He said nothing, waiting. She approached, the water at her thighs and then her belly, her clothing wet and sticking to her skin, the water icy cold. She was close enough that she could have touched him. The water did nothing, this close, to hide his manhood, although he was utterly unashamed of his nakedness.

Now that she was mere inches away, she had no idea what to say to him. She met his eyes, and he didn’t look away, but his gaze was…alien. Animal. Other than human. An animal soul in a human body.

A momentary tableau, two pairs of eyes meeting, and then he twisted in a flash of dark skin and splashed into the sea, feet kicking the surface, and then he was gone. Brighid remained belly-deep in the frigid water, waiting, watching. Long minutes passed, and then, far, far, far out, a head surfaced. Too distant to make out anything but a vague shape, but she felt his gaze. And then another splash, a flash of a tail, and then the sea was just the sea, calm and tranquil once more.

Days passed, and Brighid continued to walk the shoreline in the mornings, and sometimes in the evenings as well.

One day she went to check her lobster traps, and her pail was gone.

The next day, it was back, sitting in front of her back door, full of fish. Cod, mackerel, tuna. Massive, fat, freshly caught.

The next morning, she left her pail on the sand near the rocks, where she’d first tended to the seal, where she’d first seen the naked man. By evening, it was gone; the next day, it was returned once more full of enormous fish.

For months, through the bitter winter and into spring, she would leave the pail on the beach in the morning and find it by her back door, full of fish, by evening. Those fish would sustain her for days, keep her fed, and prevent her from having to slaughter any more sheep.

And then, one night there was an awful storm, the kind where the wind blew so hard the windows rattled in their lead panes, and the thunder shook the foundations, and the rain clattered on the roof and walls and windows, and she could hear the sea roaring and churning. It blew angrily well past dawn, and then the sun rose and burned away the clouds, and trees had been downed across fences and sheep were missing and the goats were huddled together under a cluster of trees, bleating piteously.

It took Brighid hours to right everything, using Shem, her horse, to haul away the trees and then replace fence boards and find her sheep and herd the goats to a different pasture. It was evening before she found time to trudge exhaustedly down to the sea, which was still crashing loudly, whitecaps smashing onto the sand. Seaweed and driftwood littered the beach, enormous shells washed up from the depths, the corpse of something long dead water-bloated, bones showing through partially-eaten flesh. Farther down, near the rocks, a dark shape.

Something alive, moaning low, writhing. A seal. Her seal, as she thought of him. She recognized his mottled coloring and the spray of whitish dots near his tail, and the scar on one flipper. He was injured again, this time grievously, a huge jagged spar of driftwood speared through his tail, high up, oozing blood.

As Brighid approached, the seal growled, wobbled toward her.

“I know, I know. I’m not sure I can fix that here. You need proper care, I think.”

Another low rowling murmur, weak, piteous. Brighid knelt beside him, examining the injury. “This is bad, I’m afraid. It’s not something I can just put salve and a bandage on.” She moved toward his head, petting him carefully. “You know, I have a belief that you’re a selkie. If you are, you could change, and I can help you to my house and care for you there.”

Silence, and a profoundly intense stare from the seal, his eyes searching hers, looking for…she didn’t know what, but she met his gaze steadily, not looking away.

And then he shimmied awkwardly, with difficulty and grunts of pain, into the water. Flapping, splashing, and disappearing beneath the waves. Not very far, not very deep; she could make out his form, but only a darker shape in the gray-green waves. There was…was it a flash of light, or her imagination? And then a roiling in the waves, and the dark shape slowly became lighter, thinner, smaller, legs flashing, kicking, an arm, long hair and that beard, and those eyes as he clawed back toward land, gasping, growling in pain. The spar was now lanced through his left thigh, high up, the jagged tip protruding out of the front of his thigh, the end dragging in the sand behind him. He was on his side, trying to keep the spar from dragging in the sand, clawing with both hands.

In one of his fists was…something dark, and familiar. Fur? A hide, or a loose skin. Dripping wet, mottled and speckled. She crouched near him, propped her shoulder under his arm, and heaved him to his feet.

“It’s not far,” she said, “but you know the way, don’t you, then?”

He didn’t answer, just hobbled gingerly in the direction of her home. His injured leg dragged in the sand, and his weight pulled her down, slowed her, weakened her. She stiffened her spine and bore up under his massive weight. Calum was no small man, and she’d hauled him home drunk from the pub more than once before they’d moved to this farm on the coast, but the remembered weight of Calum seemed much, much less than this man. He just felt…dense, as if every pound of weight the seal carried, this man did as well. He was so heavily muscled as to defy belief, a massive, compact, hard, powerful man. And he was nearly limp, barely able to keep on his feet, even with her assistance.

They had to pause to breathe at the foot of the dunes, and Brighid looked back at their progress here and realized he’d left a trail of blood in the sand, a thick dark reddish-brown stain in the sand, blood sluicing down his thigh and off his foot and into the sand. After a few minutes of rest, Brighid worked herself to her feet, snugged her shoulder under his once more, and they painfully, slowly, laboriously dragged their way up the dune path. By the time they reached her back door, Brighid was sweating profusely and gasping for breath, every muscle screaming in protest.

He was barely conscious, now, deadweight crushing her into the ground. The spar—a hunk of wood cast off from some long ago shipwreck—was easily three feet in length and nearly a foot thick. It was smooth from being tossed in the briny waves for so long, but the pointed tip was jagged and razor-sharp. She got him inside, and to her bed, where he collapsed, his breath a pained whistle, groans emerging from his lips every few moments. He was bleeding everywhere, laying on his side, facing the wall, away from the doorway, the spar trailing down to the floor.

“I have to pull this out of you and stop the bleeding before you die from blood loss,” Brighid said. “I need a few things first, though.”

She hung a cook pot full of water on the hook in the fireplace to boil, and then cut up an old bedsheet into strips and set them in the water to sterilize. She gathered all the rags she had, and another sheet, and brought all of this, along with the freshly boiled bandages, into the bedroom.

After examining the wound, she leaned close to the man’s ear. “I’m going to pull this out now. It will hurt quite a lot, I’m afraid.” She shoved an old leather belt of Calum’s between his teeth. “Bite down, and do not be afraid to scream. There’s no one to hear but me.”

Gritting her own teeth, Brighid took hold of the spar at the back of his thigh, a handful of rags close by. She braced her hand on his buttock, sucked in a steadying breath. “Ready? On three, then. One—two—three.”

On the last count, she drew the spar out swiftly but carefully, and he screamed, an animal roar of agony as blood squirted out of the wound. He stiffened, and his hand clawed around his thigh, his fingers trembling. She gingerly moved his hand away and wadded a rag against the hole in the back of his thigh, and then another against the front side wound, and then swiftly wound a strip of bandage around the rags to bind them in place, tying it so tightly he snarled in protest.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she murmured to him, crooning. “It’s got to be tight to slow the blood flow.”

He was groaning and growling and snarling, the sounds utterly inhuman, totally animal. When the bandages were tied, she settled a blanket over him, as much to hide his nakedness as to keep him warm—although he was now shivering and shaking. He moaned low, a guttural sound, weak, pained.

Brighid left the rags on the bed and tossed the bloodstained hunk of wood outside, and then sank down into the grass, cross-legged, exhausted, breathing raggedly, night having fallen to bathe everything in darkness. Allowing herself to rest only for a few moments, Brighid forced herself back to her feet and inside, to check on her patient. He was asleep on the very edge of the bed, his back to the room, the blanket draped over his mammoth form. Her heart caught; a man hadn’t been in her bed in over two years, nearly two and half years now and the sight put her heart in her throat and fear in her belly.

Calum she’d known. She’d grown up with him, born and raised in the same village, courted and married in that village and then moved to Dublin together, and then here. Calum had been familiar. Marrying him, going to bed with him had been…home from the very beginning.

This man, this nameless selkie, this creature from the ocean, part beast, part human…he was utterly unfamiliar.

Brighid was beyond exhaustion, having put in a full day’s brutal work before finding him on the beach. Now she was…just done in, completely. And there was only the one bed, nowhere else to sleep save the grass outside or the hard floor.

Cursing under her breath, Brighid resigned herself to sharing the bed, because she desperately needed the rest. Her dress was sodden, however. She dug a nightgown out, checked to see if he was sleeping, and then quickly stripped out of her wet clothes, down to skin. She felt a shudder run down her spine as she tugged the nightgown on, and when she emerged from the neck hole, discovered that he was awake now, and watching her carefully, the fur clutched in both hands now, like a child with a favorite blanket.

“What am I going to do with you?” She asked, meaning it rhetorically. “You probably don’t even think of nakedness as anything much, though, do you? You’re certainly unbothered by it.”

He didn’t answer, only stared at her, and his eyes roamed her form, flicking from head to toe several times, scrutinizing her openly. He’d seen her before the gown was on, she was sure.

“I have to sleep,” she said. “I can’t very well kick you out now, but I also can’t manage sleeping on the floor either. So I’m sharing. Do you understand me?”

Another long, curious, blank stare.

Brighid sat on the edge of the bed opposite him, meeting his gaze. “Do you speak English? Do you speak at all? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

He nodded, once.

Brighid laughed. “Well hell, man, I asked you three different questions, and I get a single nod in response?”

The intense, piercing, animal stare once more.

“Well, you nodded, so you understand English just fine, clearly. Can you speak though, or no?”

A long stare, and Brighid thought she was going to get more silence.

“I…speak.” His voice was hoarse, gravelly, rough from extreme disuse. “Not well.”

“Sounds fine to me.” She slid a little further onto the bed. “What’s your name?”

Another of those silent, intense stares that seemed to be a primary form of communication for him.

“Your name?” She touched her chest. “I’m Brighid.”

He only shrugged, and shook his head.

“You don’t have a name?”

He glanced at the ceiling briefly, a gesture of thought; he made a hoarse two-tone barking noise in his throat, and then shrugged again.

“Your name is…that noise?”

He shrugged, and then nodded again.

“Well, that’s not going to work. I can’t make that noise now can I?” She thought for a while, tapping her chin with a forefinger; all the while he stared at her, unblinking, a steady, intense gaze that no human could sustain. “How about Murtagh? Means skilled in the ways of the sea, which I feel is somewhat…erm, appropriate, given who or, um, what you are.”

This got her the tiniest of smiles, a ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

“Right. Well. I’m going to lay down, and you’re going to stay there on that side, and you’re going to keep your hands and your feet and your—” she glanced downward, an embarrassed suggestion, “—everything else, to yourself, you understand, Murtagh?”

“Yes.” He murmured the word, a single syllable that felt heavy, thick, deliberate.

His voice wasn’t accented in any way that she recognized, but merely as if words at all were a foreign concept to him.

She laid down then, under the blankets, whereas he was on top of them with a different blanket covering him. Layers between them. And still, she didn’t fall asleep for a very long time, feeling him beside her, sensing him, smelling him. He smelled of man and of the sea, brine and musk. His breathing was steady but not sleep-slow, and she felt his stare.

“You’re staring at me, Murtagh.” She didn’t look at him.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

A silence. And then: “You…save me.” Another silence. “You appear much good.”

Brighid laughed. “I’m not sure what the means.”

He was silent awhile, again. “To look upon you. It is good.”

Brighid felt heat burn in her cheeks, and her pulse flutter. “Oh. I…thank you.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen many women? Have you ever spoken to a woman? Like this?”

He grunted, a noncommittal or unsure sound. “Not as this. I see them. They swim from land, and I see them. Some with the coverings, and other times without the coverings. I like to see them better without the coverings. More of the skin. The body. It is good.”

“I suppose you would.” Brighid laughed. “Still a man, I see.”

“Always am I man.”

“Are you…a man, or a seal, or both?”

Another grunt. “This, that, all. I do not know. I am in the sea, the sea is in me. Her voice, her salt, her magic. She is everything.”

“Have you ever been…” Brighid paused, realizing her question might be rude. But then, he wasn’t human in the sense of understanding social mores, was he? “…with a woman?”

“To mate?” There was a hint of a smile. “Yes. She does not know I am this. A selkie, as you call me. Only that I am a man, coming from the sea, and she likes to look upon me, and touch me, and we…do this. In the sea. I show her my way. The currents, the waves, my breath. Not like upon the land. Not very good, like that.”

“Isn’t it cold?”

“Not with me.”

“I—she couldn’t hold her breath as long as you can.”

“I swim deep, very deep. To swim so deep, I do not breathe for a long, long time. As man, as seal—it is the same. I breathe for her.” He paused. “For you.”

He’d caught her slip up, then.

“She never knew you were a selkie?”

“No. She teach me this words. To speak as you. Before, I only—” he growled and barked, exactly like a seal, as if the sounds still lived inside him. “As this.”

“So it was something you did, with her, over time?”

“She live as you, near the sea. She see me, we do the mating. I come back, swim to shore as a man. Many times. Until she does not come down to the sea again.”

Brighid shivered. “How old are you?”

He was silent, and she realized he didn’t know what this meant.

“How many seasons have you lived?”

“I swim to the winter hunting sea…many times. Too many for the counting. More than the changeless ones. Many, many more. The sea, she lives in me, and I live in her. Long time. Long, long, long time. Before you, after you.”

A vague answer that somehow left her feeling as if he was possibly ancient. His presence felt…old.

“Your man. He who lived here with you, before.”

Brighid’s heart caught. “Yes?”

“You wait for him.” It was a question, but not a question. “To return to you from the far place.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“No more waiting. He sinks down to the deepness, and he does not rise up again. No more breath.”

“You know this?”

“The sea, she whispers her secrets, if you can hear her voice.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Your words, this human speaking. It does not speak all the trueness of the sea, of the living of her, the feeling inside her. You do not know, for you are not of her, as I am.”

Frustration boiled through her, because it felt like he was sharing something monumental, but she couldn’t understand his convoluted usage of language. “I’m sorry, Murtagh, but I’m not following you.”

“Follow? I am here.”

“No, I mean…I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Oh. I mean—” he exhaled sharply, as if frustrated himself. “I ask the sea, and she tells me. I see you much with him, your man, and then he leaves on this shell upon the sea, and you are much alone. Much sad. Waiting for him to come back in his shell upon the sea. He will not. The sea knows him, now. She has swallowed him. He joins the many who breathe only the darkness of the deeps, now.”

“He’s dead, you mean.”

“Dead is not living, not breathing?”

“Yes.”

“Then he is dead.”

A sob ripped out of her, the first she’d allowed herself since he’d left. Until that moment, she had refused to weep for him, to mourn him, for fear that to mourn him too soon would somehow mean she was being unfaithful to him. Giving up too soon.

But then…how did she know Murtagh was telling the truth? How could she believe him? He was a stranger from the sea, a real live selkie, if what she’d seen could be believed. Yet…if she believed he was a selkie—which the evidence of her eyes demanded—then it wasn’t so great a stretch to believe that he could somehow communicate with the sea herself, that he might somehow have inside knowledge, so to speak, of Calum’s death.

Tears were dripping down her cheek. She could still just barely make out Murtagh’s form in the darkness, the shape of him dimly lit by the starlight from the window behind her. Murtagh reached out a hand, extending a thumb toward her cheek. She shied away, but then allowed him to smear her tear onto the pad of his thumb. Another tear slid down her cheek, and his thumb traced its path. Another tear fell, and his thumb pressed delicately against her tear duct.

And then he pressed his thumb to his lips, tasting her tears. “You make the sea from your eyes.”

She sniffled. “It’s called crying.”

“Crying. Why do you do the crying?”

“It means I’m sad. For Calum. My man. My husband.”

“Husband?”

“Mate…my mate.”

Silence, and the shine and shimmer of his eyes fixed on her. “You are crying because you are sad your mate is dead.”

“Yes.”

“I felt sadness when this woman no longer came down to the sea to mate with me. I felt much pleased when she came down to the sea.”

“We…Calum and I were mated for life.”

“Always him, only him?”

Brighid nodded against the pillow. “Yes. Always him, only him.”

“And now he is dead. Will you choose a new mate?”

“I…don’t know.”

“I could be your mate. Not for always, but for some of the seasons. I must swim to the winter hunting seas, but when I return with the warm currents, I will be your mate again.”

Brighid laughed. “Such a male. No, Murtagh. That’s not how human mates work.” She frowned. “Well, not for me. For some, it is.”

“My hurt is strong. No more of this talking.”

Brighid let out a slow breath, and turned away to face the window, watching gray-white shreds of cloud skirl across the moon, obscuring and then revealing, occluding stars here and there. Behind her, she heard Murtagh’s breathing even out and slow, and she knew he was asleep.

Soon, so was she.

When she awoke, he was watching her.

He watched her as she prepared breakfast, and he watched her as she changed into a clean dress, and he watched her as she changed his dressing.

He watched her, and watched her, and watched her. She went about her chores, and he rested. She helped him to the outhouse, which he found detestable. She read to him from a book, which he found fascinating. When she stirred the fire to life in the fireplace, he was fearful but fascinated, his animal instinct warring with his human nature.

Another day passed thus, and another. He healed faster than a normal man might, Brighid reckoned. He was still unable to be on his feet for more than a couple of seconds, but that was more than she’d have expected for anyone else after so short a time.

A few days became a week, and a week became a month, and then two. His command of the structure of English never really improved, but he learned new words all the time, and he became ever more articulate.

At no point did he ever let go of the fur pelt; it was always, always clutched in one hand, or tucked under his arm, cradled against his ribcage. He was fiercely protective of it.

One night, as they lay in bed, him above and she under the covers, Brighid found herself staring at the pelt curiously. She reached out a hand, tentative and cautious; Murtagh’s warning snarl was pure animal.

“I’m sorry. I’m just curious.” She withdrew her hand, watching him.

He tucked the fur deeper underneath him, out of sight. “It is not for you.”

“I know.” She kept her distance, but let the question she’d been harboring bubble out. “The legends about selkies…they say if you don’t have your pelt, you can’t change back, that you won’t be able to return to the sea.”

He snarled again. “Not a pelt. That is the skin your human hunters take from my changeless brothers. This—” he clutched the fur tightly, squeezing it in gesture. “It is…it is me.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t touch it, I’m just…I’m curious, I guess.”

“What you say is true. Without it, I am only a man, and I cannot speak to the sea, and she cannot speak to me. I can hear her, but I cannot speak to her. She speaks, but I hear only the waves, not her voice. If I do not speak to her, I cannot change back, and I will be like your man, but on land. What is your word for sinking under the waves?”

“Drowning.”

“Drowning. I will drowning here on the land. Already, the beast craves the sea. The drowning is soon. I must touch the water, see her, feel her. Hear her.”

“You can still barely move, Murtagh. I don’t know how it works when you change back, but you’re not healed enough yet to swim. You’d barely make it down to the water as you are now.”

He rumbled, a seal’s growl of unhappiness. “I cannot change back yet. But I must touch the sea.” There was a pained note of desperation in his deep, guttural voice. “I must. She calls me.”

Brighid fashioned a crude crutch, the next day. Wrapped his leg tightly, and tried to convince him to don a pair of Calum’s old trousers, but Murtagh refused.

“I am not a man, to wear a man’s clothing.”

It was growing ever more difficult for Brighid, having him around naked all the time. She found her gaze wandering to him throughout the day, whether he was covered by the blanket or not. And now, upright, her shoulder under his arm, her crude crutch under his other, assisting him slowly down toward the beach, his skin was warm against her, smooth and firm. His manhood swung between his legs, and she tried to not stare, but the battle was a losing one, for her.

If he noticed her gaze, or felt it, he gave no indication.

When they finally, after a long, exhausting trek, reached the water’s edge, Murtagh tossed the crutch aside, gingerly unwrapped the dressing and handed the bundle of cloth to Brighid, and then hopped on one leg into the waves, and then when he was too deep to hop any longer, he sat down in the water and used his hands to push himself deeper, until the waves lapped at his throat and chin.

She was grateful to be away from him, because his proximity, the feel of his muscles and his flesh created a dark, dangerous fluttering in her belly, made her thighs clench and her breasts ache, in a way she hadn’t felt in so, so long. It felt like a betrayal to Calum to feel such things, and she attempted to push it away. Yet the longer Murtagh remained in her home, the longer he slept in her bed—even separated by layers of blankets, and even though he had made no move to touch her in any way—the harder it became to ignore the feelings.

“Come.” Murtagh’s voice called out to her. “Come feel the sea with me.”

It was a warm day, the sun bright, the sky clear blue, the wind a gentle breeze. She let out a breath, gathered her skirts up around her knees, and waded in to her calves.

Murtagh watched, and frowned. “No. You cannot feel her with the clothing over your skin. You cannot breathe her breath, you cannot feel her.”

“I’m not taking off my clothes in front of you, Murtagh.”

“Why?”

She had no answer for that. Modesty was not an idea he would understand. She’d tried, and he’d only given her the blank, uncomprehending stare.

“Just…because.”

Murtagh stared. “You fear me.” His lifted his head, his nostrils flaring. “I smell your fear.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Murtagh.”

“Your words do not agree with the scent of fear.” He remained where he was, watching her. “What do you fear?”

“It’s not fear, exactly.”

“I do not understand, then. I smell fear.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

He shook his head. “She said that. When she did not wish for me to understand.”

“What wouldn’t she want you to understand?”

“Why she couldn’t come with me, out into the deeps. Down deep, away, to the winter hunting sea. I could breathe for her. I could teach her to hear the sea. But she would not, and I did not understand why. She only would tell me that it was hard to explain.”

“Some things are hard to explain, Murtagh.”

“No. You do not want to. This is not the same as cannot. Not as I am understanding your words to mean.”

He was cunning. She couldn’t argue with his logic. “Fine. I don’t want to explain some things to you.”

“Why?”

“Because it is painful and confusing. Because I don’t understand them myself.”

“Try.”

“I’m not afraid of you, not like a…like prey fears the predator. You are a man, and I am a woman. I had a husband, a mate. Now I don’t, and I’m lonely.”

“I am here. You are not lonely anymore.”

She laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”

“I am a male, not a man.” He lifted the fur. “I am this.” He tapped his chest. “And this. I am both.”

“It’s just…you say the sea told you Calum is dead.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t just…forget him.”

Murtagh sighed, and lay back in the waves so he was submerged completely and then rose up again, a peaceful, contented expression on his rugged features, water sluicing down from his beard, his hair pasted to his shoulders. “No forgetting. I do not forget her, the woman from beyond the dunes. Never, never will I forget her. She was sad, and much alone, and her body was not strong. I think she became dead, and so no longer came down the sea to mate with me. This is sad, inside me, that she is dead. But I do not forget. Also I do not cease to be alive. She has become dead, not me. Must I remember her and only her, for always? What if I choose also to remember you?” He gazed at her steadily, and his dark, sharp predator eyes were fierce and intense and wise. “Remember your man, your Calum. But also be alive. Breathe the sea. Breathe your land. Touch the wind. Touch the sea. Feel the life in all things.”

“Murtagh—”

He did not look away, did not stop to hear her protest. “Feel the life in me. I am here. I am alive. I am a male, and a man, and I am here. He is not. He is in the deepness of the sea, breathing only darkness. I breathe life. Remember him, but also be alive.”

“What if it’s not that simple for me?”

“Life is life. It flows like the currents—always, always, always. A death does not slow the currents. We must swim, or the darkness will be our only breath.”

Wisdom of the wild. Simple, practical.

She’d mourned and waited for three years. She knew in her heart and soul that Murtagh was telling the truth, that Calum was gone. So why could she not…be alive?

Slowly, hesitantly, Brighid reached up and unbuttoned her dress, baring more and more flesh with each button undone. Murtagh’s gaze was steady and as mysterious as ever, unreadable. When the buttons were all undone, she lifted the garment off and set it with Murtagh’s dressings, the whole weighed down by the crutch. And then she was naked, standing in the breeze and the sunlight, with Murtagh’s gaze openly perusing her.

She waded deeper, and even on such a warm day the water was icy cold, making her bones ache. Deeper and deeper…closer and closer to Murtagh. Who watched, never looking away, not moving a single muscle as she waded up to her thighs. And then she was standing beside him, the water at her thighs, all of her bared. He’d watched her change more than once, despite her attempts to change when he wasn’t watching, but this was different. There was no privacy in that small home, being only one room. Here, it was the open sea, the beach, the sunlight, and her own choice to strip naked so he could look at her.

“Go under. Feel her.” Murtagh’s voice was low, the words nearly inaudible.

Brighid waded deeper, and then, with a deep sharp breath, dove under, feeling the icy waves close around her, and she heard then only the silent roar of the undersea world, muted and muffled and so loud, somehow. He was there. Beside her. Toeing off the seafloor with one foot, the other leg trailing behind, his hands pulling at the water.

He reached out, and took her hand. His eyes were wide and round and not quite human, so dark, a seal’s eyes in a man’s face. “Listen.”

“For what?”

He shook his head. “Not hear, as to hear the birds or the waves or my words.” He tapped her chest, a brief but heart-palpitating contact of his finger just above her breasts. “Listen.”

She held onto his hand and closed her eyes, and tried to listen, but she only heard the waves, the gulls. She felt him, though. So close. His hip touched hers, and his hand was huge and strong. She heard him, felt him. Only him.

“Do you hear her?” He asked, after a while.

She opened her eyes and met his gaze. Shook her head. “No. All I hear is you.”

“I was silent.”

“No…” She tapped his chest as he had hers. “All I heard was you.”

A ghost of a smile, then. He drifted closer. She could just barely touch the seafloor with her toes, enough to keep her chin above the waves, which sometimes lapped against her nose and mouth so the taste of the sea was on her lips. And then all she could taste was him, his mouth, the brine on his lips and the heat of his breath, and his hands were closing around her, carving a hot wild path from her shoulder blades to the small of her back and paused there, as if to give her time to absorb the reality of his touch. She couldn’t breathe and didn’t want to, because this was like coming alive all at once, after so long being…something in between alive and dead.

God, the ache. Her thighs quaked and clenched and she nuzzled closer, deepening the kiss, telling him with her body and her mouth and her hands burying in his beard that this was okay, more than okay, that she needed it. And then his hands slid down to cradle her buttocks, and she was gripping his arms and his shoulders and tracing the mighty muscles of his back and clutching his backside and she felt him nudging against her, his manhood pressing hot and hard against her womanhood.

Brighid gasped at the feel of him, whimpered.

Murtagh broke the kiss. “Breathe me. Trust in me.”

“What?”

He swelled his lungs to capacity, blew the breath out and sucked in an even greater inhalation, and then locked his mouth against hers and tumbled them backward together under the waves. Fully immersed, the cold burned, and then she felt nothing but Murtagh, his hands scouring her skin and his tongue on her teeth and his legs propelling them powerfully out into the currents. Where was his hide? His hands were all over her, so he wasn’t clutching it. Had he set it aside? Hidden it? She didn’t know, and the ability to think about it eroded as his kiss pressed breath into her lungs, as his hands ignited fiery desire inside her. Even injured he could swim with strength and grace and power that was very truly inhuman; he was carrying them together out into the depths, twisting them together beneath the waves, farther and farther from shore.

Brighid clung to him and kissed him back and kicked her legs with his. The waves rolled above them and Murtagh’s powerful strokes carried them effortlessly. And then he was pressing against her entrance, and she moaned into his mouth and took him within her, and then she could hear the sea.

Her song was deep and sorrowful and wild and joyful and exuberant and melancholy, a complex and multilayered creation of the many miles and leagues which makes up the sea, from the shores of Africa to China, from America to Ireland, and everything in between, as Murtagh moved with her, breathing for her, breathing through her, as his hands and lips and manhood fused with her skin and her mouth and private aching heat, she heard the sea in his movements, she heard the sea in his voice, she heard the sea in his movements. He was the sea, a creature of her, in her, from her. A being coalesced of pure oceanic power, distilled essence of the brine.

Brighid wept at the voice of the sea. Her words were in a language Brighid did not know but somehow still understood, but as if hearing Gaelic spoken by a Scot, or through a translator. Unclear, but recognizable. The sea was inside Brighid, in her soul, in her blood, in her brain. In her bones and muscles and sliding through her most tender flesh. The sea was loving her.

As their bodies merged and collided and slid and moved, Murtagh took them deeper and deeper until pressure weighed upon her ears and eyes and bones, and he twisted and rose up once more, gliding through the water with Brighid clutched in his arms, swimming with her in a graceful ballet, a mating dance at once animal and human.

Breathe me feel me touch me hear me

That was the song of the sea.

Swim play eat drink live love laugh cry dive drown breathe breathe breathe me know me

The sea whispered to her. Sang to her. The crash of surf on a distant shore was the melody, the rolling waves in the far wild depths was the rhythm, the tides a counterpoint, the song of the whales and dolphins and the chatter of seals and otters and the cry of gulls and albatross and the shimmering flash of schools of fish, these were the chorus. And Brighid heard it all. She could sing this song; her voice longed to join in, her body knew the dance, her soul knew the ageless tune.

And then they broke the surface and the sand was under her feet and the surf was crashing around them and their joining was lost, and the song was lost.

Murtagh was gasping for breath and his man/seal inky black eyes were fierce and intense. “Did you hear her?”

She couldn’t speak. Only nod, whimpering. “Yes,” she managed to choke out the word. “I heard, Murtagh. I heard her.”

His smile was predatory and playful and happy. “You heard. The sea, she speaks to you. This is good.”

And so it began.

As he grew in strength, he helped her with chores, and they made their way down to the sea and swam and joined together and Brighid listened eagerly to the song of the sea, which she could only hear when tumbling in the waves with Murtagh inside her.

Days, weeks, months…and then Murtagh was as healed as he was going to be, a limp forever in his step, but his strokes under the sea were as effortless and powerful as ever.

And then, one day, Murtagh was out checking lobster traps, and Brighid was cleaning her little home. And she found, tucked inside an old pot that had been shoved behind the stove, Murtagh’s sealskin.

It was silky, still damp, somehow. Thick, soft, and velvety. She didn’t remove it from the pot, only stroked it gently.

A thought occurred to her. She could hide it again, and Murtagh would stay with her.

She felt him needing the sea. Needing his freedom. He was restless. He would wake in the middle of the night and stand on the dune, staring out at the moon on the sea.

Her hand in the pot, fingers buried in the fur, Brighid heard a step behind her.

Murtagh’s eyes were wild and angry and fearful. He was utterly still, tensed. “Brighid.” His voice was a deep, dark rumble. “That is mine.”

“I know, Murtagh. I found it by accident.” She didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want to lose the song of the sea, or the way he felt, the beauty of their song together beneath the waves.

“Would you hide it from me?” He took a step toward her. “Trap me here on this shore, with you?”

She shook her head, feeling a tear trickle down her cheek. “No, Murtagh.” She forced herself to stand up, to turn away, showing him her empty hands. “No. I wouldn’t ever do that.”

Brighid left the house, and walked down the path with the dune grass tickling her calves and the sand skritching underfoot and the breeze in her hair and the sea in her nostrils and the gulls overhead.

He was going to leave.

She felt it.

His step was silent on the sand, but she sensed him behind her. “She calls me. Cries out to me.”

“I know.”

“Swim with me.”

She held back a sob. “No, Murtagh. I can’t handle that kind of goodbye.”

“I meant…swim away.” He pointed, away out to sea, south. “Far. Down deep, to the winter shores.”

“I can’t.”

“I can breathe for you, Brighid.”

She shook her head. “No, Murtagh, it’s not that. I know you can. But…you belong out there. I belong here.”

“Our song together is beautiful music.”

“It is.”

“I would sing that song with you for always.”

“I cannot live in the sea, and you cannot live on the shore.”

He breathed into her hair. “Never before have I cursed my nature. Now I do.”

“No, Murtagh. Your nature is…beautiful. You are of the sea, and she is of you.”

“You are of me, and I am of you.”

She shook her head again. “It can’t work.”

He growled, an animal sound of displeasure. “I will return, then. When the summer currents call us back, I will return here. This will be my summer shore. You will come down to the sea, and we will swim together and sing the song of the sea.”

She nodded, her breath catching. “Okay.”

He strode past her, his sealskin clutched in one hand. Waded into the waves, naked, as the first time she saw him. As he always was. Nude and beautiful, masculine perfection. Deeper, until he was waist deep, and then he paused and turned around. Stared at her, and now she saw a world of emotion and intelligence and personality in that animal stare. No goodbye, no one last kiss, no sentiment. Just that silent stare, and then he dove into the waves and there was a gentle flash of greenish light under the waves and the surface roiled, and then the pale form of his naked body darkened and then there was only a seal, twisting in the waves, head poking up over the surface, dark eyes staring at her. And then another a splash and a flip of his tail and he was gone, streaking away out into the sea.

Brighid let herself sob, then.

But only for a little while.

The surf lapped at her feet, as if to comfort her, and perhaps it was her imagination, but the icy water didn’t make her bones ache like it used to. She waded a little deeper, hiking her skirts up around her waist, and she felt the tug of the currents. A split second decision had her stripping the dress off and diving naked into the water and she felt the sea around her, heard, perhaps, a distant note of a song, as of the strains of a violin from a window across the city.

She swam, and the sea welcomed her.

Her tears mingled with salt of the brine.

She could almost hear his voice, the bark and growl of a seal joining his brothers and sisters on a long southward journey.

Eventually the shore called out to her, the bleat of goats and sheep, the waving grasses and the warmth of the sun and the crimson glow of sunset on the horizon and the crackle of a fire on a cold winter night.

He would return. The tides would bring him to her, and she would swim with him. And until then, she could dive down beneath the waves and hear his voice in the song of the sea.