Fell Beasts and Fair

by C. J. Brightley

  “I am very good at finding shells.” I smiled, but stopped short of showing teeth. No need to scare him off.

  It was enjoyable, mucking around in the sand, skipping past waves as they came pounding down around us, hauling the tide in as time passed. Dylan relaxed a bit as we worked. I took credit for that, as I am more than a fair singer and added my own tune to the symphony of wind and wave and gull as his shell collection grew.

  The tide was fully in when Dylan drew back from the water, let his pants down in relatively dry safety, and tilted his head as he regarded me. His eyes were very green, like the eel grass that danced sinuously with the current. “I am going to go home now.”

  “I should as well.”

  I will never tire of it, the way shock twists and tickles through human expressions. I took far too much delight in the way Dylan gasped, almost dropping his shells, as I retrieved my sealskin, wrapped it about myself, and slipped back into the sea. Dylan took a few steps towards the surf, curiosity blooming where surprise had been only heartbeats earlier. It had been a fun game, playing at being a human girl, learning the nuances of excited and interested, enjoying the company of someone too young to worry about strangers on the shore and the dangers they could present. I was dangerous—all selkies were—and he had caught my attention with his smile.

  I did not expect to see him again the following day, walking that same bit of shoreline as if the tide had left him there, gathering shells as before but this time casting regular glances out towards the sea, his forehead furrowed with what might have been consternation, might have been determination. He returned again the day after, his game of gathering shells obviously disrupted by wondering whether I was there, watching from just beyond the breaking waves. It was one thing to tease and taunt a human, quite another to appear after revealing my nature. I have seen too many of my sisters taken as seal wives—their skins snatched and hidden, binding them to the shore as they slowly pined. I had no desire to suffer that unsavory fate.

  “Coira?”

  He called my name every now and then, inquiry pulling the vowels long and high. It was unsettling, his persistence, and I dove down deep in response, where the wind and his voice could not reach me.

  But I always came back. Drawn to the shoreline and the boy, and then young man, who walked along it. I don’t know how long we played this game of staying just out of reach, he and I—time is strange to those of us who have no use for aging. One day I noticed he was taller, broader in the chest, face darkened with a splotchy start of a beard, voice deeper and stronger—no longer my little shell-waif, and lovely.

  And not alone. I did not like the fact he brought another male to our beach. It felt like a breach of some unspoken contract. It was a danger for a selkie maid, being outnumbered by human males. He should have known that. He must have known that.

  I suppose I should not have chosen to ignore him for as long as I had, granting only a flash of my spotted skin or splash of my departure. I could not blame him, but I did.

  I came out of the surf and arranged myself atop the rocks where I liked to set my sealskin, sprawled so that the sun caught the pale skin of my long legs, of back and breast. I smiled the way seal maidens do when they want to lure a lover into the surf. A smile filled with the knowledge only one of us would return to the surface. I wanted this strange male gone, wanted his hair to tangle with the plants on the deep sea bed as they danced. He saw me. How could he not? And he started to come to me. It was how this scene always played out. I raised a hand, beckoning, fixed him with the full power of my attention.

  “Coira?” Dylan’s voice ruined it, the abrasive curl of betrayal in each syllable urged my shoulders to hunch defensively. I bared my teeth, showing every sharp edge my enticing smile had concealed. They cut through glamour as well as flesh and the stranger stumbled back, face a tangle of confusion and fear.

  I just wanted them off my shore, if it was no longer to be a thing Dylan and I shared between us, if Dylan wasn’t mine.

  “Coira… please. This is my brother Benneit. I wanted him to see you, to meet you.” Dylan’s voice grew quiet. “To see why I come here day after day.”

  “Why do you?” My voice was hard as old, dead coral, tone just as sharp. I had my sealskin secure in one fist, should I need—no, want—to leave.

  “To see you. I keep hoping you will come ashore to look for shells with me. To walk with me.” His voice was quiet, uncertain, nothing like the blunt child I had been so enamored of. But it slipped through my fury, warming my desire to remain hard and cold.

  “We are fickle, those who are fey. You should not wait on us.”

  “But he did.” Benneit interrupted, with a voice rough as the tides, but so quiet.

  My hand convulsed around my sealskin, reflexively making sure it was still there. Human male. Thief. Prey. Dylan’s kin. I flashed my teeth again, covering my confusion with ferocity. “I did not ask him to.”

  “You did not send him away.”

  Introspection does not come naturally to a selkie. I did not like this, did not like Benneit. He stirred up the waters until they were too murky to make sense of. Of course I did not send Dylan away. The quiet song of his voice when he thought no one was listening, the way he stepped just so as he moved across the beach, the wind-teased mess of his hair brushing a muscular back—these things caught my attention. Held it. I did not want him to go away, to turn his bright eyes elsewhere. “I want him here.” It was an unwelcome admission, one that made me vulnerable. I did not want to be vulnerable, especially in front of Benneit, a stranger. I started to pull my sealskin over me, covering as if I were cold.

  “I do not want your skin, selkie. I wanted to meet the seal maiden my stubborn brother has been so excited about.” Benneit stood very close to Dylan a moment, speaking quietly, and then slowly began to walk away.

  “Coira, may I come sit with you?”

  This was all backwards. I should not be the one nodding slowly, as if enthralled, and watching every step he took to get to my side. I should not notice how the muscles in his calves worked with every step though wet sand, the way his toes flattened and grasped for purchase. I should not be dreaming of the touch of his skin, the patches that promised to be warm as they were a sun-touched red.

  He should be dreaming of me.

  Perhaps he had been. He lowered himself to sit with a caution that spoke of discomfort, a bit of nervousness. I could clearly see the way his pulse pressed against the skin of his throat now that he was beside me, the way his jaw clenched and worked with nerves. He was brave, my shell-waif. Brave and perhaps just as stubborn as me. I wanted to run sharp teeth along that stretch of skin at his throat, feel his pulse quicken.

  Instinct can be hard to manage, especially when the warm human smells of sweat, grass and dirt tickled at me with every breath. He gasped slightly, delightfully, as I nipped at his neck, ran my cheek along the curve of his chin. He tasted of things I had no name for—I only knew they fascinated and excited me. So different from the sea.

  “Coira?” His voice was a rumbling vibration against my cheek as I pressed it against his. There was a note, the way he turned my name up at the end with inquiry, which pleased me.

  “Hello,” I murmured, greeting him as I had not before. “Hello, Dylan.”

  I wanted to touch him, taste him, keep him. But I did not want to drag him into the depths, wrapped in my embrace, did not want to steal his last breath or dine on his flesh. Possessive, yes, but not in a way I had wanted to possess a human before. I rolled the realization around in my mouth, getting a sense of the sandy grit of it, trying to get the taste of it, the taste of him. I pulled back from him. “What do you want?”

  “What?” He seemed startled, awkwardly unfamiliar with the question.

  “What do you want? Why do you come here, reliably as the tides? Why do you risk bringing your kin to me?”

  “I wanted to see you again. I want to see you again.” He was not struggling against me, even with m
y sharp angles and sharp teeth visible, so close. “I wanted to talk with you, get to know you.”

  “I am here.” He did not fear me. It pulled my mouth into a wide smile. “I gathered treasure for you.” I pulled him to his feet, my sealskin falling forgotten from my lap to lay atop the rocks we had been sitting on. “Come. Come with me.”

  Those were not words uttered by a selkie that humans generally survive. But he came with me without hesitation, curiosity instead of trepidation in his eyes.

  I set a fierce pace and we ran down the beach, leaving behind widely spaced tracks for the waves to sweep out of existence. We startled some gulls as I pulled him up to the small cave I had found years ago, splashing in and out during high tide, slipping in dry during low. The tide was coming high now and there was no avoiding dampening his pants as I coaxed him to duck through the low entrance.

  The rocky shoreline held many such secret places close—this was the first I had shared. It was not a large cave, but we could stand without brushing against the ceiling. It was not deep enough to swallow its contents in gloom, and I could step back enough to watch Dylan take it in. He brushed a finger against the ancient barnacle shells on his left, wriggled his toes in a patch of optimistic sea vegetation, and then drop both hands to hang limp at his sides in surprise as he finally looked forward.

  Shells. I had been gathering them for him through the years, pulled from the deep places where they rested quietly. I had polished fan mussels until they gleamed, piled periwinkles, constructed a collection of whelks beside a stack of cockles. All for the boy who had been collecting what the sea left behind.

  Dylan turned towards me, eyes wide. "Coira...?"

  "For you."

  His lips were rough as he leaned in, textured in a way that was new to me—dried out by sun and wind. They tasted ever so slightly of salt, just before they parted and his tongue touched mine. Then he tasted like nothing I had ever experienced before. And was warm, so very warm. Everything about this human was warm. He had pulled the chill from my bones, from my magic, years ago. And I was just now noticing.

  I had expected Dylan to take shells home with him, and he did—but it was such a select few. I could not understand his fascination with leaving the bulk of them in the cave, but I was pleased as he puttered about in the salty dimness, holding a shielded lantern up to this and that, to examine them better without moving them out into the sun. I offered to help him carry them, as I assumed there were simply too many for him to move alone.

  He rounded on me, fierce as I had never seen him before, and I took a breath to appreciate the adult my shell-waif had grown into. There were lines to his face that had been previously obscured by smiles and wanting, a tightening of the lips that pulled them thin and stern. There were new angles to his cheekbones and chin to be enthralled by, a sharpness to his beautiful eyes that caught my attention. “No. These are ours. They stay here.” And so they did. Who was I to try and combat Dylan’s ferocity? Shells were settled and rearranged to meet Dylan’s mysterious standards. Not since I had been a pup drifting and playing in the tides had I taken orders from anyone, but I was developing a taste for the steel in Dylan’s voice and face as he directed me to and fro, arms full of oceanic treasures.

  He kissed me before he left that evening, eyes warm with something not quite gratitude. Something far more tangled, entangling. He nipped lightly at my lower lip, wanting to make a mark, make a point, to claim. There was definitely a bit of bite to my mortal. I brushed a hand through his tangled hair, breathing deeply to catch as much of him as I could before he was gone. I was not content with our parting, wanting him to come with me. Wanting to follow him. But his death lay in my embrace in the sea, and mine would follow me up that shoreline unless I surrendered my sealskin.

  My sealskin.

  I raced back to the rocks by the surf where my skin lay crumpled but unfound. My magic and my freedom. I could not give it to him. I would make a feral, terrible seal wife.

  I wrapped it tight around me, slipped back into the sea and down deep. To chase tiny silver fish through long branching vegetation and skeletal coral. To clear my mind.

  My family waited, flashes of speckled sealskin through the forest of lazily waving sea vegetation. I tried not to meet their eyes, eyes that had gone hard with disgust and distrust. My brothers bumped against me, accusing. My sisters slid across my skin, trying to wipe the scent of the shore and of Dylan off of me. Humans were for liaisons, languid slips into the deep. They were not to be returned to.

  Accusations are thick to swim through, so I turned from my family and slipped off into the dark waters.

  I was already remembering how Dylan tasted. The scent of him.

  His voice called me up each day, summoning me from wherever the sea had taken me the night before. I always came ashore a woman, and slipped my sealskin some place safe when I felt he was not looking. It was not that I was afraid he would steal it, bind me. Not Dylan. Each day I hid it to fend off a twisty desire to hand it to him and let him pull me to his home.

  I learned the curve of his neck, the feel of his pulse, the little sounds he made when surprised and especially pleased. I traced the back of his knees, learning that he was ticklish and enjoying how he twisted like a caught fish when I touched him there. I learned the strength of his arms when he tired of tickles and moved to gain the upper hand. I learned that he was warm in every way I could make the word be. His eyes were deep with it, his voice rich with it, his body infused with it. And I craved it. Craved him. They said selkies were the dangerous ones—Dylan's warmth was far more treacherous.

  I learned that Benneit had a quick sense of humor, visible even as it took his eyes some time to soften to me, to trust me. I cannot blame him—selkies are not known for being safe and staid. The ocean is a lively mistress, and her children are adept at shifting to meet the demands of her tides. He was a sailor, one of the men who clambered and shouted as they rode the waves, and they knew the dangers of the watery fey. But he was kind, and he loved his brother very much. Their affection danced through their smiles as they chattered, in the jokes and verbal jabs they launched at each other with a warrior’s precision. Slowly, that affection extended like a warm blanket to engulf me as well.

  I ignored my family where they floated just past the break of the waves, as they sunned on quiet beaches or dove to hunt and play. I was not interested in sitting with my sisters and brushing my hair out in the moonlight. I pulled no mortal victims down with me, beneath the waves. I was a selkie tamed, and I was doing my best to ignore that fact.

  "Benneit is off to sea."

  We were laying on our backs on the beach, letting the morning sun dry the sweat from our skin.

  "Oh?" I rolled over, pillowed my head on his chest to better listen to the beat of his heart, noting it was quick, unsteady, and not from my attentions.

  "He left with some other men from the village. They are going to work the fish run." His hand raised to draw fingers through my hair, rub against my scalp. "I always worry when he is at sea."

  "I am of the sea—and I would not harm him. He will return to you, safe and smiling." His fingers were brushing across my forehead, soothing and distracting. Beneath my ear his heart had slowed a bit, but I could still taste his unease in the air. I wanted him happy, my warm human.

  I pulled myself up and over Dylan, pressed my nose to his before nipping at it lightly. "I will watch over him." I kissed him, all tooth and tongue and pressure. I set my promise deep into Dylan, marking him to show my sincerity, caressing him to express affection and something uncomfortably close to love. We broke patterns and rules, my Dylan and I. We disrupted the established order of things just as soundly as we disturbed the sand beneath us.

  He gave me a necklace before he left, as the sun was creeping towards the horizon. Carefully strung together, bits of shell and stone. This is what he did with the treasures he gathered, had been gathering since he was small and wandered onto my beach. Dylan slipped it over my head
and I smiled before curling my sealskin close. I stayed for a moment, not slipping back into the sea as swiftly as I had in the past. Dylan knelt down close and ran a hand across my head, brushed against the jewelry still secure around my seal-form's neck. Nothing was said, but I could taste goodbye, harsh as I inhaled.

  I nudged against him, once, and then slipped into the surf, following the sloping sand out until I could dive deep.

  I knew next to nothing about ships and sailing, but fish runs were familiar. I followed warm currents and flashes of scale until I met up with sprawling schools of fish darting and feeding. Breaking the surface with a huff I glanced about.

  There, past a pair of resting pelicans, a small group of boats bobbed atop the water. I could just make out bits of speech, the splashes of their work. There I would find Benneit. I startled the pelicans with a happy little bark before starting to swim.

  The sea was thick with my family as I grew close to the working ships. They filled the sea with their displeasure, disgust, until even the fish sensed it and started to flee. An elder brother hit me as I swam, the impact of his larger body against mine knocking me to the side.

  Why? Pleading, confused.

  You are of the sea. It was a snarl, a shout, and my family battered me with their bodies and their magic, keeping me from my beloved Dylan’s kin.

  I felt it rising, the storm that was my brothers' fury. I felt the magic seethe up from the depths, pulling unpredictable currents and impossible waves in its wake. I could sense it spiraling through the sky, stringing together clouds. I struggled against my family as I felt the storm break all around me.

  The creak and moan of ships breaking apart filled my ears, and I was not sure who my family was punishing—their errant daughter or the human that had tamed me.

  They left me to flounder and recover in the storm—humans had been thrown to the sea, their point had been made. Not a sympathetic eye was to be found amidst my siblings and cousins, not a friendly brush of fin or head. I was left to pull myself together as best I could, and to follow like a good daughter. A good selkie.