"If worried is all you remain, we'll be well." Fur gathered in his arms, he went to the water's edge. Róisín stood again as he took his distance from her, and this time he didn't ask her to sit, only said, "Your people have seen us often enough to have stories of us, Róisín. You'll know what I am in the moment of change."

  She began, "Change?" and he slipped his secret over his shoulders.

  Rough fur slithered and wriggled against his skin, fitting into place, changing the body that lay beneath from man to beast. It was painless, instantaneous, extraordinary: colors changed, dimming until what human eyes knew as blue and green were dominant, all-important water shades that they were. His eyes were adapted for low-light hunting beneath the sea; it was easy for him to see Róisín's shock in the island twilight. Her hands were pushed against her mouth, eyes large and dark above them, and acute hearing caught the high soft sound of alarm stifled behind her hands. She took quick steps backward, and he did not follow. Couldn't, not easily: seals were not meant to travel on land, though they were all but unchallenged in water. At least in Irish waters, where the toothed whales rarely swam.

  She stopped when sand turned to rock beneath her feet. Stopped, and that was a good sign. Eoin remained still, animal heart chasing at too fast a pace, and when Róisín took a single step forward again, he nearly dropped in relief.

  A single step, then half a dozen more, though she stopped a good ten feet away. He was tall in human form, as tall as his seal body was long, but his mass was considerably greater in the shape he'd been born to: twenty stone as a seal, to perhaps fourteen as a man. No one knew where the size went, when the change came on them; that was part of their magic, the magic of all the Old Races. His people were the least of it: dragons of impossible size were no larger than men, in their mortal forms. Still, a full-grown seal could kill a man with little effort, and Róisín was wise to keep her distance.

  She knelt in the sand, slow incremental drop, and finally took her hands from her mouth and whispered, "Selkie."

  Then, only then, did Eoin dare transform back. Inside an instant, from seal to man huddled within a seal's skin, and rue bubbling up within him. "Aye, selkie. It's not from Galway I've come."

  To his astonishment, Róisín laughed, then knotted her fingers against her mouth again. "My clan lives on the islands," he said into her silence. "Dozens of us, as large a clan of Old Races as might be found."

  "How can we not know?" The question burst out from behind her hands and was silenced again. Her knuckles would be raw from the chewing, if he couldn't answer everything quickly enough.

  "You do know. Enough to name me," and there was a truth his people didn't like to consider: that they had taken on the name humans had given them. Even amongst themselves, they were the selkie, just as their desert enemies were human-named djinn. "Enough to tell tales, even if they're at most half-believed. It's against our laws to tell you about ourselves, Róisín. We are few, and you are so many."

  "What happens? What happens if you tell?"

  Eoin shrugged within his seal skin. "Exile. It's not our way to kill our own."

  "Then you could come to me. Live with me and the babe—" Róisín went white and put her hands over her belly, another question in the action.

  "I don't know," Eoin answered softly. "It happens from time to time that one of us loves one of you, and leaves the clan, but children...children are forbidden, too."

  "What would they do? What will it be?"

  Eoin shook his head once, not liking the answer to the first. Their laws were against killing one of their own. They had no edicts about the lives of humans. As for the second, he murmured, "Half of us, half of you. Perhaps the blood would run true. I don't know."

  Róisín dropped her hands from her mouth and stared at him a long while before speaking so quietly he knew instantly it hid rage. "So I've nowhere to go, then. I cannot come to your home, nor can I go back to mine. What would I tell me ma when I birthed a seal?"

  "You'll birth a human babe," Eoin said. "This, at least, I'm sure of. We have to leave the water sometimes, and our women have given birth on land in mortal form. They've a harder time of it than they would in the water, but it's happened."

  Blank curiosity filled Róisín's round features. "What happens to the children?"

  A smile quirked Eoin's mouth. "They turn seal the first time they're washed. Not just wiped clean of the birthing fluids, but submerged. From then they can peel their skins away," he said, shrugging his, "and change at will. We grow up faster than your kind do."

  "And die younger," Róisín said, but Eoin shook his head.

  "No. We live...a long time. Sickness takes us sometimes, but more often violence. The Old Races are hard to kill."

  Her gaze was hard again, hard and dangerous, though there was little an unarmed human might do to damage him. Little save break his heart, at least, but that had always been a risk, and was not, in the moment, Róisín's concern: "How long?"

  He shrugged a second time, resigned. "Forever. We don't age, and we breed rarely." He held his breath, let it go, and whispered "I am the third youngest of my clan, and I've seen some hundred thousand tides."

  The number was too large, meaningless to her, and she only waited until he had made sense of the tides and years himself and offered, "A hundred and thirty turns of the season, perhaps?"

  Even that was too much, though it was easier than the count of tides. Róisín looked at him wordlessly, taking it in, and finally said, "My grandfather died an old man with seventy winters, Eoin. An old man."

  "I know."

  To his surprise, she nodded. Then she stepped back, leaving the mark of her weight in the sand, and pointed at the sea. "I'd see you go, and I'd ask that you don't come back to my home."

  "Will I look for you here?" he asked softly.

  Róisín's mouth twisted. "In sixty tides," she said, and pointed again at the sea.

  Eoin slipped his skin back on, and if a seal stopped in the low choppy waves to watch her go, she did not see it, for her back was turned and her stride home certain.

  "Is she worth it, Eoin?" A dark seal shape broke surface and became a girl, her hair slicked back with water. "You've been here every night for thirty. How can she be worth it?"

  He lay on a flat rock just at the water's surface, moving only when surging tide lifted him. Megan folded her arms on the stone, holding herself in place. From shore she would seem a seal's head, poked above the water, and Eoin little more than that, though he transformed to mortal form as well. They had language as selkies, but the clicks and chatters carried better under water. In the open air it was as easy to talk as humans, though a good deal colder. Still, they could stay in the water far longer than any human might survive. His child, if Róisín had kept it, would have that gift as well, even if the transformation was beyond its reach.

  "Yes," he said to the seal girl, but without looking at her. "Come out of the water, Megan, if you're going to scold me. She's worth it, yes. She's worth everything. She carries my child."

  Megan came out of the water, seal-dark eyes were black with worry. Her hair was a pelt in itself, shining and sticking to her shoulders and spine, and she had the fine lithe body of a woman born to swim. They were age-mates, she and Eoin, and she the daughter of a clan lord, which she reminded him of, as if he could forget: "You watch your tongue, Eoin. That's near to treason, and me da—"

  "Would be well pleased to send me away," Eoin said dryly. It was only half truth: no tribe of the Old Races was eager to lose its young, but Eoin spent too much time with humans to make any of his clan comfortable. "It's happened before, you know. We leave the clan for them, from time to time."

  "Tsha!" Megan silenced him with a gesture, glancing around as if someone might have overheard the words. "It's nothing to be proud of."

  Eoin shrugged. "We live alongside them. We fish the same waters, till the same earth, sleep beneath the same stars and sing the same songs. Why should we not love them when love comes along?"

  "We are Old Races, Eoin."

  "And we're dying."

  Megan's teeth snapped together, sharp as a seal claiming a catch. "How dare you say such things."

  "Because you and I and Amber, are the youngest in the clan, and even Amber's seen a hundred turns of the seasons. We may not die easily, Megan, but we'll still die out if no young are born."

  "They'll be born again." She flattened her hands over her belly, though, and glanced away.

  Eoin's heart twisted. They'd lain together—and both of them with others, as well—often enough that kits should have come of it. Others, older, had left their clan to join new ones, and sent others back to join theirs, all in hopes of waking the spark of life that would bring children to the tribes. Megan should have caught, and Eoin should have been a father half a dozen times over, but almost the only children they'd ever seen had been human.

  "If she's kept it," Eoin whispered, "I'll break every law we hold dear, and bring her and the baby among us. It's idiocy to do otherwise, when we know we can breed with them."

  "They'll kill her, Eoin."

  "Me first."

  Megan fell into shocked silence and lapping waves filled it up, ceaseless, comforting, uncaring. "Then why bring her to us," she finally said. "Why not go to her people, and risk less?"

  "Because her people aren't dying. If she'd come to us, Megan, if the others saw a child, a child of our blood—"

  "Half our blood."

  "A child who could make the change—"

  "They'd kill it."

  "Would they?" Eoin lifted his head, not caring if from shore he might be seen as a man. "Would they, Megan? Would you?"

  He saw it in her face, in the naked sorrow illuminated by a falling sun. She tried to hide it, tried to offer some hesitation, but couldn't even make herself speak the lie. She only shook her head no after a moment, then clenched her fist as though trying to take back a confession. "But others would," she said without certainty. "My father."

  "Would he, if you brought him a grandchild and wouldn't say who the father was?"

  Pure astonishment wiped all other expression from Megan's face. Astonishment, then hope, then hope betrayed. "If the child couldn't make the change..."

  "We don't know, though." Eoin looked again toward shore, then back at Megan. "We know what happens when one of us breeds with another of the Old Races, but if we mate with humans, who knows?"

  "Stay away," Megan whispered suddenly, sharp and full of desperation. "Stay away with your human, Eoin. Stay away until the baby's born and learn. Find out if the blood breeds true. Then tell me, and if it does..."

  Anticipation seized Eoin's breath, but Megan said, "She's here," and slipped back into the water. Eoin turned away, knowing she wouldn't surface within eyesight, and saw Róisín's slim figure at the break between stone and sand. Waiting, hands tense by her sides, and did not relax until Eoin strode out of the sea a man. Then her shoulders fell. "You came."

  "I thought it less likely you would than I. I've—" He broke off, but Róisín's mouth curved.

  "You've been here every night, haven't ye? The fishermen have spoken of it, a seal waiting on the sea like a lover forlorn. I said a month, Eoin."

  "I didn't want to miss you."

  Her smile broadened and she took a step forward. "It's glad of it I am. Hearing the story of the seal helped me to decide."

  He didn't move. Couldn't, he thought, not unless his life—or Róisín's—depended on it. "And what did you decide?"

  "That there are no houses on the selkie islands," Róisín said pragmatically, "and I can't be living in the sea."

  Eoin's jaw clicked shut, then opened again to release a startled laugh. "So you can't. I hadn't thought of it, Róisín. I hadn't thought of—"

  Hadn't thought, he saw now, of what it might truly mean to pair his life with hers, or to pair his people with hers. They were wild, the selkie, wild in a way that others of the Old Races were not. The other sea creatures, the vast serpents who were cousins to dragons, lived solitary lives, and the siryns whose shapes were half-man at all times, made cities and villages beneath the waves. Not so the selkie, who lived in seal pods on the sea-broken stones of barren islands. To do less was to default to the human form, as did the otherwise-ethereal djinn, and which the selkie had long disdained them for.

  Eoin would have his people become more like the djinn, and thought that might be the worst of the sticking points, even beyond the purity of bloodlines. "I'll build you a house," he offered, "halfway between sea and sky, and in time it will become the heart of our peoples' first village."

  "Build it," she said, "and I'll come to your hearth, and my brothers will bring us grain from their fields to fill our bellies until you've the way of the land about you."

  Dismay struck so hard Eoin felt his expression go comical, even before Róisín laughed. "I'll fish for us all, your brothers and mam and da," he blurted, "but don't ask me to farm, Róisín, or we're sure to starve before the winter is out."

  "And how will a man with no skill for the land build me a house, I ask?" Róisín came to him, her hands extended, and squeezed his own when he took them. "That pelt of yours, Eoin, is it warm?"

  "Warm enough to keep the water's chill away."

  "Then share it with me, and come morning we'll find our spot of land. My brothers," she said drolly, "can teach you to build a house." And later, nestled in his arms, in the warmth of a seal skin that would never transform her, she murmured, "Your own people, Eoin, what do they say? Are you exiled forever?"

  "No," he answered, knowing it might be a lie and yet somehow certain of it, "No. Not forever."

  Seals, with their single pups and small sleek heads, had an easier time of birthing than humans did. Róisín's mother was there, thank the tides, and two aunties and half a dozen daughters and Eoin himself, stuck into the corner of the small house he'd learned to build. They chattered and laughed among themselves, breaking only when Róisín's bellows drowned them out, then began again, while Eoin sat agog in the corner and was as glad to not be much needed. The cursing and sweating and hobbling about with pain, crouching into a birthing squat and swearing and standing up again, had been going on for hours, for most of a day, and the best any of the aunties and daughters could offer was, "The first is usually hardest," until Eoin himself could take it no more. He elbowed through the women to reach Róisín's side, there to murmur, "Do you want them all here, Róisín? My people birth more...privately." It was the wrong word; seals had little concept of privacy. But they would and did retreat to give birth, not relying on a dozen others to help them.

  Róisín, who was human, managed a short laugh and blew a strand of sweat-damp red hair away with a puff of breath. "Me ma and aunties would be enough, but you know what it is I want, Eoin? Water," she said, mystified, before he could ask. "A bath of warm water to dunk myself in and push until the baby comes, but that would drown the babe, would it not?"

  "They're born in a sack of water already," Eoin said. "I don't know why two minutes longer would drown them when their birthing sac didn't. But the water, Róisín, if the blood breeds true..." His voice dropped with the warning, and his wife gasped another laugh around a ripple of pain.

  "It's bred true, I'm sure of it, and that's why I want the water so."

  "I'll get it for you," Eoin said with determination, "if you can tell me how to get all these women away."

  "Out, so!" Róisín's bellow bounced off the little house's stone walls. "Out, all of ye's! The air's too thick to breathe and it's dying for a breath I am! Out, and come back when the birthing's done!"

  In two minutes they were gone, all of them save Mairéad, Róisín's mother, and she herself stood arms akimbo and gave them both a withering glare. "I've never heard such madness as a bath for a birthing woman. Don't look at me so, I heard ye's clear enough."

  "My people do it all the time," Eoin said, which was not untrue. They would take shallow water or shore, whichever seemed safer in the moment, and the pups were no worse the wear for either birthing spot. Surely a human infant would be safe as well. "Have we anything deep enough for Róisín to squat in?"

  "A cow's trough at home," Mairéad said dourly, and spluttered outrage when Róisín said, "Get it." But she went, and Róisín sagged into Eoin's arms a moment before sighing and whispering, "Get me to the sea, then, I'll freeze me arse but I'm not waiting for her to go to the village and back again. The aunties and all will have gone with her, it'll be only the two of us and the babe."

  Her shout had cleared the room. Eoin thought it wisest not to argue with a woman who could do that, and scooped her into his arms to bring her to the shore.

  Seals awaited them. Half a dozen or more, barely in the water when they approached, though all but one scampered into the bay's safety. Megan remained, her pattern of faint spots distinctive to Eoin's eye, and he kissed Róisín's hair reassuringly as he waded into the water and toward Megan. "A friend," he murmured. "As good a midwife as you could ask for."

  Róisín huffed acceptance, then shrieked as Eoin lowered her into the water. "Brigid's tits but it's cold! Oh holy mistress but I'll be frozen through and through!" Complaints turned to a growl that rose from her depths, and Eoin caught her beneath her breasts, offering support as she crouched and shouted at the world.

  Megan shed her skin mere feet away and came forward in time to lift a startled, soaking seal pup from the water. Róisín went limp with shock as Megan, eyes shining, ran a fingernail down the pup's belly and split its skin to reveal a squalling, outraged human boy.

  Róisín's shock fell away. She took the babe, curled him close even as Eoin lifted them both and carried them from the water. Megan followed a few steps behind, the baby's seal skin clutched safely against her chest. "Glendyr," Róisín whispered. "His name is Glendyr."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29