She heard Melanthos’s voice first, crying somewhere in the waves. Appalled, she stopped her wild surge toward open sea. Then she felt the odd pull on her body. The knight, still clinging to her with both hands now, weighted with sword and boots full of water, was racked like a fish out of water, trying to breathe. Melanthos could swim, but Sel didn’t like the sound of her voice: she had never before heard Melanthos afraid. She started to dive, then arched upward again at the bubbles that fled out of the knight when they went under. His fingers loosened.
She felt a moment’s panic and became herself suddenly, treading water in the middle of the sea while her skirt wrapped around her like seaweed, and her hair plastered itself over her face. The knight began to slide away from her, go without her, like Joed had, into the country beneath the waves. She caught at something as he drifted down: the silver chain around his neck. Floating on her back like an otter, she dragged him up and into her arms, turning him to face the sky.
Then she bellowed for the harbor seals.
They came at the names she called, the old, secret names that leaped out of memory straight to her tongue. They flung themselves off stones, streaked from under the docks, cutting through the water beneath the breaking waves, invisible until they came close and she saw their swift, streaming bodies beneath the green, surfacing into light. She spoke to them, remembering words now. They nudged the knight away from her, rolling him over, balancing him among their bodies. He did not move. His face, pale and still as shell, dipping and rising above the restless swells, twisted her heart. But she had no more time for him; she had to see to Melanthos.
How she got to her daughter, she was not sure. A wish brought her, it seemed, or the sheer edge of fear that cut through time and the bewildering tangle of wind and tide. She was just there, suddenly, beside Melanthos, who was at least barefoot in the water, and who had shed her clothes down to her shift. She was beating the sea with her fists, as if it were a locked door, and screaming Sel’s name. Her wet hair blinded her; when Sel caught her arm, she swung a mole’s face at Sel and gulped in a passing wave. While she choked, more seals caught up with them. Sel draped her over one and sent her, still coughing, toward land.
She saw then what she had done to the tower. It had broken like a rotten tooth, sending a small avalanche of stone and grass and raw earth down the cliff to scatter into the waves. Sel stared at it, still moving to the break of waves like something half-sea, half-human, a mermaid without a tail, a seal with hands and feet and a woman’s face.
She dove deep into the water, swam until she could hear, beneath the rushing, soughing waves, the faint, wild singing in her blood. Memories came more quickly now, things fallen deep into her mind, that had been fastened to coral or stone, and so overgrown with moss and weed they had been unrecognizable for years. The tower falling into the sea had jarred them loose.
She could do that, destroy something that old and magical with the force of her longing. She could become seal; she could become sea, or something so like it that sailors or fishers would see her only as a glint of light beneath the water. A realm existed within those glints, those half-caught glimpses that humans fashioned into tales or songs. Her father had taught her some of the songs. No doubt he wished he hadn’t, when she left him. But he had taught her to be curious, and so she was, drifting in the dusk among the seals, listening. And so she heard Joed, whistling as he spread his nets on the sand to check the knots and pick the barnacles off. She recognized the song.
A wave spun her this way and that, dragged her on her hands and knees along the sand. She rose out of the waves, streaming water, as unsteady on her feet as if she had yet to learn to walk in the world. Joed was not there to greet her with that look, startled and enchanted, as if some sea tale had taken shape under his nose. That was many years ago, and she had learned to walk in shoes, and cry true tears, and to forget. As she waded ashore, seals passed her, still carrying the knight on the raft they had made of their backs. Lurching to dry sand, flippers struggling, they parted company at the knot of staring humans. The knight hit the sand hard, and came to life abruptly, retching brine. Sel heard the long, harsh draw of his breath as she stepped out of the tide.
They all had Joed’s look in their eyes: stunned, transfixed. Gentian was there, dropping pearls out of her eyes, clinging to the baby like a spar. Anyon looked as if he had tumbled down the cliff after the tower, his clothes and skin grimy and torn. He was holding Melanthos, who was weeping endlessly, soundlessly, overflowing with water, but otherwise motionless. Someone else had come down: a stranger, who seemed to know the knight. She stood beside him as he learned how to breathe again, but her eyes were on Sel.
Sel faced them, twisting water out of her hair and skirt, as mute as she had been when she walked out of the water to Joed. A wave, washing around her ankles, carried a shadow in, left it lying on the sand. She picked it up: her selkie skin, sodden and torn, but whole. She shook it out, held it up to the sky, looked at the blue through its eyes.
Then she sighed. “I couldn’t leave you,” she said. She went to put her arms around Gentian first, because Melanthos was stronger. Gentian burst into noisy sobs; the baby wailed, startling the knight, who began coughing again.
Melanthos spoke first through the din, her voice high and unsteady. “Where exactly were you going?”
“Back home.”
“Home.” She took a step out of Anyon’s arms, her face as white as spume. “Where?”
“In the sea. Where do you think you got your eyes?”
Melanthos swallowed. “I don’t—I didn’t—” She was still streaming tears, as if she were wringing herself dry. She put her hands over her mouth and whispered, “What is it like?”
“Ancient,” Sel said slowly, remembering. “Strange, to human eyes, like the stone wood. Beautiful in ways you wouldn’t recognize at first. Like this world.” She drew a breath of its fishy, salty, mist-dank air, and was surprised how good it tasted, like Brenna’s bitter ale, or Joed’s skin.
“You came out of the sea?” Anyon said, struggling. “You were born there? Like a fish?” He touched Melanthos tentatively. “What about her? And Gentian?”
“Half-fish.” She went to Melanthos then, took her daughter’s face between her hands, and brushed at the tears with her thumbs. “Don’t cry. It unnerves me. I’m back now.”
“I unnerve you,” Melanthos said, sniffing thickly. “I unnerve you.” Her voice rose suddenly. “You turned into a seal! And look what you did to the tower! You were running away from us to die, or to live at the bottom of the sea or something—what exactly are you?”
Sel opened her mouth, closed it. They watched her, even the baby, their eyes wanting answers. The knight, quieter now, the color coming back into his face, had no suggestions; he looked as curious. “I don’t know,” Sel answered finally, helplessly. “I don’t know what I am in this world.”
The stranger’s eyes drew at her suddenly, amber and full of light. She was quite tall, with long, heavy black hair, that fell straight as anchor line past her knees. Her face was brown as earth, young-old, still beautiful, but beginning to predict its future. She smiled as Sel looked at her, and Sel felt oddly as if the wind had glanced at her, or the grass. As if she had been recognized by something wild.