The Seal Queen

by Sandra Saidak

  She found him lurking just outside the chamber Briah shared with Kamin; the place, she realized she and Taran had first met. Officially, at least. He sat, nearly invisible, behind a coral pillar, staring into the empty chamber with such intensity that he did not, at first see her. Was he working up the courage to come in and speak with her? But no; he knew the chamber was empty.

  “It’s more comfortable inside,” Briah said cheerily, trying to act like nothing was wrong between them. She grimaced at how hollow it sounded.

  Taran turned suddenly at the sound of her voice. He seemed to be about to flee again. “Please don’t go,” Briah said softly.

  “I was just going to leave you this,” the sea creature said. He held a beautiful work of sea glass and shells. Looking closer, Briah saw that it was a mirror, decorated with circle within circle of shells. “This is exquisite!” she cried, taking it from his hands, and almost afraid to look into it. Such a thing was likely magical, and Briah wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it might show her. “Won’t you come in?”

  Taran shook his head. “I must leave this place. I only came here to say goodbye.”

  “You were alone when I arrived,” Briah said reasonably, trying not to show how afraid she was that he might actually leave. “There was no one to say goodbye to.”

  “It was the place that I came to bid farewell. A place that I felt—for however briefly—that I was happy.” He finally looked at her. “I was too ashamed to speak to you.”

  Briah let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Good, that makes two of us. Come.” She gestured to the chamber and went inside, praying he would follow. “We have much to discuss.”

  When Briah reached the sponge-covered outcrop of rock that served as a bench she sat down and looked back. To her immense relief, Taran was slowly approaching, though he looked like he might swim away at any moment.

  “What have you to be ashamed of, Briah?” He would not sit, but at least he was talking.

  “For making you uncomfortable. For making a fool out of myself—”

  “You? It was I who promised to show you the wonders of my world—and then left you! It was I who promised you laughter, and gave you tears instead.”

  Briah wondered if he could see across distances with faerie magic. Perhaps the mirror he had brought her… Never mind. They were talking; that was the important thing. “You have done so much for me and my son already. I won’t hold one bad day against you, if we could just go back to the way things were.”

  The merrow finally sat down beside her, but still looked sad. “I would like that, too. It might even be possible.”

  “Then why are you still troubled?”

  The sea creature lifted his green face to Briah. “Because I love you. And now that I know it, and now that you know it, it cannot be hidden. It will color everything we do.”

  Speaking of color, Briah thought, I’m probably quite a nice shade of red myself. “I… Taran, I…”

  “You don’t need to speak. I know that one as beautiful as you could never love one…”

  “Will you stop interrupting so I can tell you I love you too!” cried Briah. Oh, that was nicely done, she chided herself.

  Then Taran stared at her, and Briah was even more embarrassed than before, but after that, things started to get better.

  “Truly?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she replied, equally softly.

  “Then I am doubly sorry for my words at our parting above the waves. I… ah, lass, I don’t know what to say…”

  “I won’t be easy to love,” she said. “I have never lain with a man willingly, and I have never wanted to. And I don’t know if I ever will.”

  “I can wait,” said Taran softly. “While I can surely claim to know little of the ways of love, I know that it is more than the physical joining of any two… beings.”

  Briah felt a strange rush of hope—and pride. “There will be much more to us—if there can ever be an us—than most couples.”

  The green-toothed smile that greeted those words told her that Taran could happily spend many lifetimes just contemplating the possibilities. Then Briah smiled, too, and for a while, they just sat that way together. Then they began to speak of simple things; safer things. Finally, Taran said, “I forget how much has happened to you in such a short span of time, Briah. If you need time to think, or simply miss your old home, you could go back there for a time. We of the waters find contemplation an important part of life and health.”

  “I could never leave Kamin,” Briah said at once. “Not even for a few days.”

  “He would lack for nothing while you were away.”

  And that, Briah realized, as suddenly as she had realized she loved Taran, was precisely what troubled her the most.

  “He doesn’t need me anymore!” she said, voicing the words that had been gnawing at her since she arrived in this place.

  “Of course he still needs you!” cried the merrow, looking as abashed as Briah must have when Taran had accused her of teasing him. “You are his mother! It is to you he goes when he is hurt or frightened. And I’ve seen how he wants to share every new thing he discovers here with you. The roane see it too; they would never try to separate you two now, regardless of what foolish schemes certain of their numbers may have once suggested.”

  “But Kamin is home in this place. I’m not. These folk are his kin; they lavish attention on him that I never could, simply because there was only one of me. He has friends his own age; something I could never give him—”

  “No one blames you for that, lass, least of all Kamin.”

  Briah stood and began to pace as far as the tiny pocket of air in this chamber allowed. “I know that, and I love seeing him happy. But I feel so useless here. From the day I was taken from my home until the day I came here, everything has been a battle.”

  Taran cocked his head quizzically. “Even on your beautiful beach?”

  Briah smiled ruefully. “Yes. The only difference there was that, on that beach, I was the winner.”

  “An important difference.”

  “Oh, yes. But, don’t you see? What I did up there mattered. Every night, I lay down beside Kamin with a feeling of accomplishment. Here, that’s all gone. If the roane were evil monsters, I could do something! I would fight, or scheme and plan until I had us both free, and home where we belong. But everything about the roane is good! They’re gentle and patient and make everyone welcome. How can I rescue Kamin from that?”

  “Why should you want to?” asked Taran.

  “That’s just it: I shouldn’t. But I do. This place is beautiful—but I don’t belong here. I can live here only because of an enchantment that lets me live in the water and because the roane feed me. I can’t fish or forage with them because my body isn’t designed to do it. I can’t cook or sew for them because they don’t use fire or wear clothes. I could spend years learning to make the tools they use, and never be as skilled as they—but they would teach me if I asked, just to keep me happy. I’m useless here! And I don’t belong.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “How did we get from confessing our love for each other to this?” Briah asked, suddenly near tears.

  “Because this is what has been bothering you all along, my darlin’ lass. Our feelings for each other just added to your difficulties.”

  “You’re not going to blame yourself for that, are you?”

  Taran smiled. “No, this time I think I’ll see if I can help, instead o’ drownin’ in self-pity.”

  “Oh, I like that much better,” Briah said lightly, but her laughter was hollow and the cavern felt like a prison.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Briah found she could not look at him. “How much I miss the sunshine. And sitting on warm sand, staring at the waves and wondering what’s out there. Somehow, knowing is a disappointment. I miss climbing the cliffs for eggs, and the excitement of catching the first fish of the day, or spying
a clam that someone less skilled would have missed. I miss having a warm fire at night and bed of rabbit skins and a blanket of feathers.”

  Taran sighed again. “You are homesick.”

  And Briah saw his words were true. “But my home is with Kamin,” she said. “And now, with you… you and I… and…”

  “You will always have a home here. But you are unhappy. And if you take Kamin away, he will be unhappy—and so will all the roane. And if you stay just for me, you will grow resentful—and as alike as we two are, probably come to blame yourself. So return above for a time, and come back when you’re ready. Kamin will be fine, and now that you know that, you should be able to leave him for a few days.”

  “But what about us, Taran?”

  “I think you and I need some time to think on that as well. And whatever happens, you are not asking me to give up as much as I am asking you.” He smiled. “At least, not yet.”

  All at once, Briah was exhausted. “I do indeed have a lot to think about.”

  “Then I will leave you to it.”

  “Thank you. Will you…?”

  “I will bring Kamin to you after the evening meal—with food for you as well, so you may meditate undisturbed until then.” He leaned forward slowly, as toward a frightened creature he feared to startle, then gently kissed her on the forehead. Then he vanished from the chamber before she could respond.

  In the depth of her confusion, Briah had a sudden, irrational thought that everything was going to work out, for all of them. And that she had never felt as loved and cared for by anyone in her life as by this strange creature with the green scales and the red eyes.

  ****

  The next morning, she took Kamin swimming in one of the coral pools and asked him, “Do you remember our home on the shore? The little cave we used to sleep in, with the fire burning?”

  Kamin thought a moment, then nodded.

  “I’m going to go back there for a few days. I’ll be back very soon, and I’ll bring the beads you used to play with. Until then, the Roane will take care of you, and Taran will sing to you at night.”

  If he had cried, she would have stayed. If he had begged her to take him along, she would have—no matter what the roane did or said. But Kamin only nodded, then went to go find Pup—tugging his mother behind like a float.

  Briah left the next morning.

  CHAPTER 21

  Back on the shore, a winter sun shone through heavy gray clouds. As Briah climbed from the water, she felt cold pierce her through her wet clothes and chill her to the bone. Apparently, the same magic that let her pass through the water had kept her warm as well.

  Shivering, she hurried over the sand to her cave.

  Everything was as she left it, with only a film of grit to mark the passage of time. She changed into dry clothes, and then discovered she was hungry. She climbed the cliff to set her snares, raiding nests for eggs along the way. The raw eggs were warm and nourishing, and Briah was grateful for the taste of land food, after only fish for so long.

  Next, she gathered clams and oysters. After an absence of more than a moon, the beds were full, and before noon, Briah found she had enough food to last through today and tomorrow, and no real work to do, other than cooking and checking her snares.

  Strange, she thought. I don’t remember having so much free time before, but it must have been so. Kamin kept me busy, but not enough to fill the rest of a winter’s day.

  So she sat down on her favorite rock and did the work that she really came here for: she stared into the waves, and tried to find a solution to the problems that filled her life.

  “What do I do?” she asked the waves and the wind. “How do I save my son from the destiny the roane have chosen for him? And if I cannot, should I spend the rest of my days in that alien world below, or leave him there?”

  Even as she asked the question, Briah felt her chest tighten in pain at the thought of living without Kamin. Yet, even as she knew she loved Taran, she was equally sure she didn’t want to spend her life below the sea with the roane. Should she defy the roane and take Kamin back to the shore? Could she stand against the power of Faerie? And how much time would Taran be willing to spend on the surface with her? How much could he spend safely? And if she didn’t even know that much about him, how could she possibly be considering spending the rest of her life with him?

  “If you take Kamin from his kin, you will rob him of much joy.” The words, whispered in the wind, brought her back to her original problem. “They can give him the friends and family you never could.”

  “But they will make him into a killer,” said Briah. “They will send him against his own father; a thing that will bring death if he fails, and terrible punishment if he succeeds.”

  The waves were silent. Briah waited for a reply, her furs and feathers protection against the cold. She did not realize how long she stayed until the sun began to set. Shaking herself awake, she returned to her cave and made supper.

  “Did I always spend this much time staring into the waves?” she asked the stars. Then she realized it was true. For all the hardship and difficulty of her time alone here, and later with Kamin, a day never passed that Briah did not stare into the sea, taking healing and comfort and wisdom from its endless depths. And now, she knew, she would find her answers there. She only had to be patient.

  ****

  Patience, Briah learned, was not an easy thing, with her heart aching every day for her son, and longing for something else she did not even understand, but that Taran was somehow a part of. Night was the worst, when she lay down alone, without anyone to sing to or kiss good night, or when she awoke to silence, with a dying fire the only sound in the cave. Even gathering food for herself seemed pointless. She did it mechanically, to keep herself alive, but without the playfulness or excitement she had known before.

  Still, the days passed and she did not return to the roane kingdom. The winter was drier than usual, in that in rained every day, but only in short bursts. So Briah had plenty of opportunities to meditate by the shore in relative comfort. Even the rain did not keep her inside, for her cave was too confining without the constant battle to keep Kamin within.

  “How can I save Kamin from the fate the roane plan for him?” she asked the gray-green waves one misty morning. Her hands worked at repairing a rabbit skin blanket, but her eyes were fixed on the sea.

  “I’ve lost enough,” she continued, when no answer came. “If Kamin challenges his father, I’ll lose him too.”

  “How do you know?” asked the wind.

  “He’ll die or he’ll be cursed forever.”

  “The roane do not think so.”

  “They know their own ways, but Kamin is half human. If he sheds his father’s blood he’ll be cursed. The roane can’t change that.”

  “Your people taught you many falsehoods,” sang the waves. “They told you a woman alone was helpless. They told you a woman raped was worthless. Do you still believe these things?”

  Briah stared, her hands idle in her lap. She suddenly realized how much of her future hinged on an honest answer. “No. I no longer believe those things. But the shedding of a kinsman’s blood—that is different.”

  “How? Lir is an evil man.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that!” cried Briah. For a moment, she was just a young woman alone on a beach, and she nearly laughed at herself for arguing with voices that weren’t really there.

  But whatever presence her need had conjured was not so easily dismissed. The gray fog surrounding her had become like a bubble, blocking out everything but the waves, the sand and the nearest cliffs. Magic was palpable in the air.

  “Lir hurt me,” she said quietly. “Don’t think for a moment I don’t want him dead. But killing his father is a burden Kamin does not deserve.”

  “What of justice?” asked the sea.

  Briah sighed. “My people spoke of justice; of times when killing was allowed. For what Lir did to me, any of my brothers would kill him
. For that matter, any kin of any of his victims could kill him without displeasing the gods.” Then, as she thought back to the earlier questions about tradition, she added, “I suppose, that means I could kill him myself. If a man is allowed to kill a man who wrongs him, should not a woman also?”

  Now there was only silence. A thin ray of sun pierced the fog, and as the mist dispersed, so did the magic.

  But Briah found she had a lot to think about.

  ****

  The next morning dawned clear and blue, and a fresh, clean breeze tickled Briah—and her appetite—awake. Her practiced eye found dozens of succulent cockles on the beach. Despite the time and effort of gathering the tiny things, they were Briah’s favorite. She enjoyed them raw on the warming sand.

  Just as the somber gray mist of the day before had turned her thoughts to weighty matters, so the bright sunshine, playful breezes and scolding gulls sent Briah to shedding her clothes and wading into the water, playing tag with the waves, her problems forgotten.

  Briah stood in water up to her ankles. A huge wave crashed in front of her, sending foamy water up to her thighs. The water receded, tugging at her feet so hard Briah felt she was falling, but remained on her feet. Again and again the waves crashed around her, until Briah lost herself in their endless rhythms.

  Sensing it was time to search for more answers, Briah backed away from the water, and sat in the dry sand. It was warm, and felt good against her skin.

  “Lir should die,” she said. “I don’t disagree with that. But there must be someone else besides Kamin who can rid the world of him.”

  “Who?” cried the gulls.

  Briah thought hard, trying to remember exactly what was said about the bargain Lir had made with the Dark Powers. Something about Lir’s own seed being his death? No, that wasn’t quite it. But anyway, Kamin was just a baby. It seemed ridiculous to wait until he was grown to save his seal kin from extinction. It would mean more death at the hands of seal hunters, and for what?

  Among Briah’s people, a boy reached manhood at fourteen. The roane had told Briah that his seal half might cause him to mature more quickly. He could be ready to fight his father in ten years.