One night, she woke with a start in the middle of the night, shivering and thinking of Murrin. They were friends. Okay, he was crashing on her sofa, and he did share her meals, but that wasn’t a commitment. It was practicality. He had nowhere to go. He couldn’t sleep on the beach. And he bought the groceries, so he wasn’t mooching. He was just. . .a good friend who was always there.
And he makes me happy.
She went into the living room. Murrin was standing in front of the window, eyes closed, face upturned. The expression on his face was one of pain. She was beside him before she’d thought twice about it.
“Murrin?”
He turned and looked at her. The longing in his eyes was heartstoppingly awful, but he blinked and it was gone. “Are you ill?”
“No.” She took his hand and led him away from the window. “Are you?”
“Of course not.” He smiled, and it would’ve been reassuring if she hadn’t seen the sadness still lingering in his eyes.
“So, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” He gestured toward her bedroom doorway. “Go ahead. I’m good.”
She thought about it, about him being away from his family, his home, everything familiar. All they talked about was what she wanted, what made her happy, how she felt. He had just as much upheaval, more even. “Talk to me. We’re trying to be friends, right?”
“Friends,” he repeated. “Is that what we are going to be?”
And she paused. Despite the weirdness, she wasn’t feeling uncomfortable anymore. She touched his cheek and let her hand linger there. He was a good person.
She said, “I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“Nor am I.” He leaned his face into the palm of her hand. “But. . .I’m trying to be careful.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and went up on her tiptoes. The touch of her hand against his skin was enough to make the world settle into that wondrous sense of completion that it always did. Over the last couple of days, she’d let her fingertips brush against his arm, bumped her shoulder into him—little touches to see if it was always so perfect. It was. Her heart was racing now though.
He didn’t move.
“No promises,” she whispered, and then she kissed him—and that feeling of bliss that she’d brushed with every touch of his skin consumed her. She couldn’t breathe, move, anything but feel.
Murrin watched Alana warily the next day. He wasn’t sure what had happened, if it meant anything or if she was just feeling sympathy. She’d been very clear in her insistences that they were friends, just friends, and that friends was all they ever could be. He waited, but she didn’t mention the kiss—and she didn’t repeat it.
Perhaps it was a fluke.
For two more days, she acted as she had before The Kiss: she was kind, friendly, and sometimes brushed against him as if it were an accident. It never was; he knew that. Still, she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.
On the third day, she flopped down next to him on the sofa. Susanne was out at a yoga class—not that it would’ve mattered. Susanne seemed inordinately pleased that Alana wanted him to stay with them; Murrin suspected Susanne wouldn’t object to him sharing Alana’s room. It was Alana who set the boundaries—the same Alana who was currently sitting very close, staring at him with a bemused smile.
“I thought you liked kissing me the other night,” she said.
“I did.”
“So. . .”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“We can pretend what we are is friends. . .but we’re dating. Right?” She toyed with the edge of her shirt.
He waited for several breaths, but she didn’t say anything else. So he asked, “What about your plan to convince me to leave?”
“I’m not sure anymore.” She looked sheepish. “I can’t promise forever, or truthfully, next month, but I think about you all the time. I’m happier around you than I’ve ever been in my life. There’s something. . .magical when we touch. I know it’s not real, but. . .”
“It’s not real?” he repeated.
“It’s a selchie thing, right? Like the urge to pick up the Other-Skin.” She paused. Her next words came out in a rush. “Does it work both ways?”
She was close enough that it would be only natural to pull her into his arms. So he did. He lifted her onto his lap and threaded his fingers through her hair. He let the tendrils tangle around his fingers.
“It’s not a selchie thing at all,” he told her, “but it does flow both ways.”
She started to pull back. “I thought it was just. . .you know. . .a magic thing.”
He cradled her head in his hand, holding her close, and said, “It is magic. Finding a mate, falling in love, seeing her love you back? That’s real magic.”
And his Alana, his mate, his perfect match didn’t move away. She leaned close enough to kiss. . .not in sympathy or misplaced emotion, but in affection.
Everything is perfect. He wrapped his arms more securely around her and knew that, despite his inability to court her before they were bound, it was all going to be fine. She hadn’t said the words, but she loved him.
My Alana, my mate. . .
The next evening, Murrin took the bag of pearls to the jeweler his family had always gone to see. Davis Jewels closed in a few minutes, but the jewel man and his wife never objected to Murrin’s visits. Mr. Davis smiled when Murrin walked in. “Let me ring Madeline, and tell her I’ll be late.”
Mr. Davis went to the door, locked it, and set the security system. If Murrin closed his eyes, he could watch the older man’s steps in his memory, and they’d not vary from what was happening in front of him.
When Mr. Davis went to call his wife, Murrin waited at the counter. He unfolded the cloth he carried for such trips and tipped the bag’s contents on to the smooth material.
Mr. Davis finished his call and opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he’d intended to say fled when he looked at the counter. He walked over, glancing only briefly at Murrin, attention fixed on the pearls. “You’ve never brought this many. . ..”
“I need to make a purchase as well this time.” Murrin gestured at the glass cases in the store. “I am. . .marrying.”
“That’s why the necklace. I wondered.” Mr. Davis smiled, his face crinkling into a maze of lines as thick as the fronds of kelp, beautiful in his aging skin. Here was a man who understood love: Mr. Davis and his wife still looked at each other with a glow in their eyes.
He went in the back of the store and brought out a case with the pearl necklace. It was strung with pearls Murrin had selected over many years.
For Alana.
Murrin opened it and ran his fingertip over them. “Perfect.”
Mr. Davis smiled again, then he took the pearls from the cloth over to his table to examine them. After years of buying pearls from Murrin’s family, the man’s examination of the pearls—studying their size, shape, color, and lustre—was cursory, but still a part of the process.
The order of the jeweler’s steps was as familiar as the currents to Murrin. Usually, he waited motionless while the man went about his routine. This time, he stared into the display cases.
When Mr. Davis came over, Murrin gestured at the rows of solitary stones on plain bands. “Help me select one of those?”
The jeweler told Murrin how much he’d pay for the pearls and added, “I don’t know how much of that you want to spend.”
Murrin shrugged. “I want my wife to be pleased. That is all that matters.”
Alana wasn’t surprised to see Dreadlocks—Vic—leaning on a wall outside the coffee shop where she’d been waiting while Murrin was off on a secret errand. She’d thought she’d seen Vic several times lately. She didn’t stop though. She wasn’t sure she knew what to say to him. When she’d seen him watching, she thought to ask Murrin about him, but she wasn’t sure what to say or ask.
Vic matched his pace to hers and walked alongside her. “Would you hear what I have to say, Alana?”
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“Why?”
“Because you are mated to my brother, and I am worried about him.”
“Murrin doesn’t seem like he’s very close to you. . .and he’s fine. Happy.” She felt a tightness in her chest, a panic. It was so unlike what she felt when she was with Murrin.
“So you haven’t seen him watching the sea? He doesn’t ache for it?” Vic’s expression was telling: he knew the answer already. “He can’t admit it. It’s part of the. . .enchantment. You trapped him here when you stole his Other-Skin. He can’t tell you he’s unhappy, but you’ll see it in time. He’ll grow miserable, hate you. One day you’ll see him staring out to sea. . .maybe not yet, but we can’t help it.”
Alana thought about it. She had seen Murrin late at night when he thought she was asleep. He’d been staring into the distance, facing the direction of the water, even though he couldn’t see it from the apartment. The look of longing on his face was heartrending.
“He’s going to resent you in time. We always do.” Vic’s mouth curled in a sardonic smile. “Just as you resent us. . ..”
“I don’t resent Murrin,” she started.
“Not now, perhaps. You did though.” Vic toyed with one long green strand of his hair. “You resented him for trapping you. It’s a cruel fate to be trapped. My mate resented me, too. Zoë. . .that was her name. My Zoë. . .”
“Was?”
“I suspect it still is.” He paused, a pensive look on his face. “But in time, we resent you. You keep us from what we deserve: our freedom. I didn’t want to be angry with my Zoë. . ..”
Alana thought about Murrin being trapped, being angry at her, resenting her for keeping him landbound. The bitterness in Vic’s eyes wasn’t something she wanted to see in Murrin’s gaze.
“So what should I do?” she whispered.
“A mortal can’t be tied to two selchies. . .just lift up my skin. Murrin will be free then.”
“Why would you do that? We’d be—” Alana tried not to shudder at the thought of being bound to Vic. “I don’t want to be your. . .anything.”
“Not your type?” He stepped closer, as predatory and beautiful as he had looked at the party when they first met. “Aaah, Alana, I feel badly that I bungled things when I met you. I want to help Murrin as my brother helped me. If not for him, Zoë and I would still be. . .trapped. I’d be kept from the sea. Murrin unbound us.”
“It’s cool that you want to help him, but I don’t want to be with you.” She repressed another shudder at that thought, but only barely.
Vic nodded. “We can work around that detail. I won’t ask what Murrin has of you. . .I don’t seek a wife. I need to fix things, though. Maybe I didn’t know the right words when we met. I can’t say I have the kind of experience that Murrin has with mortal girls, but. . .”
Alana froze. “What do you mean?”
“Come now, Alana. We aren’t exactly built for faithfulness. Look at us.” Veikko gestured at himself. That self-assured look was back. “Mortals don’t exactly tell us no. The things you feel when you see us. . .hundreds of girls. . .not that he’s been with every one of them. . .What you feel is instinct. It’s not really love; it’s just a reaction to pheromones.”
Alana struggled between jealousy and acceptance. Vic wasn’t telling her anything that she hadn’t thought. In some ways it was just an extreme version of the logic behind the Six-Week Rule.
“I owe him this,” Vic was saying. “And you don’t really think you love him, do you?”
She didn’t cry, but she wanted to. She hadn’t said those words to Murrin, not yet, but she’d thought about it. She’d felt it. Am I a fool? Is any of it real?
She’d asked Murrin, but was he telling the truth? Did it even matter? If Murrin would hate her in time, she should let him go now. She didn’t want that between them.
If Vic was telling the truth, there was no reason to keep Murrin with her, and plenty of reasons to let him go. Soon. He wasn’t hers to keep. He wasn’t really hers at all. It’s a trick. He belonged to the sea, and with that came relationships, fleeting relationships, with other girls. Is the way I feel a lie, or is Vic lying? It made more sense that Vic was telling her the truth: people didn’t fall in love this quickly; they didn’t break all of their rules so easily. It’s just the selchie thing. She forced her thoughts away from the roiling mix of emotions and took several calming breaths. “So how do we do it?”
Murrin found Alana sitting at the reef, but she wasn’t happy. She looked like she’d been weeping.
“Hey.” She glanced at him only briefly.
“Are you okay?” He didn’t want to pry too much: her acceptance of him in her life still felt tenuous.
Instead of answering, she held out a hand to him.
He sat behind her, and she leaned back into his embrace. The waves rolled over the exposed reef and up to the rocky ledge where they were sitting. He sighed at the touch of the briny water. Home. He couldn’t have imagined being this content: his Alana and his water both against his skin.
Perfection. . .except that Alana seems sad.
“I didn’t expect. . .to care, especially so soon. I want you to be happy,” she said. “Even if it’s not real—”
“It is real.” He took out the pearl necklace and draped it around Alana’s throat. “And I am happy.”
She gasped softly and ran her fingertips over the pearls. “I can’t—” She shook her head. “Do you miss it?”
“The sea? It’s right here.”
“But do you miss. . .changing and going out there? Meeting other people?” She tensed in his arms.
“I’m not going to leave you,” he consoled. His mother had often looked at the sea as if it was an enemy who’d steal away her family if she wasn’t careful. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wrapped his arms around her again. “I am right where I need to be.”
She nodded, but he could feel her tears falling on his hands.
Alana thought about it and decided that trusting Vic completely was foolish. He was right: she needed to let Murrin go before he resented her for keeping him from the sea. Murrin wasn’t thinking clearly. Whatever enchantment made him need to stay close to her was keeping him from admitting that he longed for the sea. If he went back. . .there were selchies he could meet. None of that meant that she wanted to risk being tied to Vic—so she opted to try a plan she’d come up with before, but had rejected as too dangerous.
And unnecessary because love took over.
He was sleeping when she left the apartment. She thought about kissing him goodbye, but knew that would wake him.
She let the door close behind her; then she went silently to the street and popped the trunk of the car. It was in there, his pelt. It was a part of him as surely as the seemingly human skin she’d caressed when he sat beside her late at night watching old movies with the sound down low. Gently, she gathered the pelt to her, trying not to wonder at how warm it was, and then she ran.
There weren’t tears in her eyes. Yet. She’d have time enough for that later. First she had to focus on getting to the beach before he realized what she was doing. She ran through the streets in the not-yet-light day. The sunrise wasn’t too far off, but it was early enough that the surfers hadn’t started arriving yet.
She knew he’d come soon. He had to follow the pull of his pelt when it was in her hands, but knowing didn’t make it any easier to hurry. She felt an urgency to get done with it before he arrived, but she felt a simultaneous despair.
It’s for the best.
She waded into the surf. Waves tugged at her, like strange creatures butting at her knees to pull her under the surface; kelp slid over her bare skin, slithering lengths that made her pulse race too fast.
It’s the right thing for both of us.
He was there then. She heard Murrin calling her name. “Alana! Stop!”
In the end, we’ll both be miserable if I don’t.
The pelt was heavy in her arms; her fingers clutched at it.
He was beside her. “Don’t—”
She didn’t hear the rest. She let the waves take her legs out from under her. She closed her eyes and waited. The instinct to survive outweighed any enchantment, and her arms released the pelt so she could swim.
Beside her, she felt him, his silk-soft fur brushing against her as his selchie pelt transformed his human body into a sleek-skinned seal. She slid her hand over his skin, and then she swam away from him, away from the wide open sea where he was headed.
Goodbye.
She wasn’t sure if it was the sea or her tears, but she could taste salt on her lips as she surfaced.
When she stood on the beach again, she could see him in the distance, too far away to hear her voice if she gave in and asked him to come back. She wouldn’t. A relationship based on enchantment was ill-fated from the beginning. It wasn’t what she wanted for either of them. She knew that, was certain of it, but it didn’t ease the ache she felt at his absence.
I don’t really love him. It’s just leftover magic.
She saw Vic watching her from the shore. He said something she couldn’t hear over the waves, and then he was gone, too. They were both gone, and she was left reminding herself that it was better this way, that what she’d felt hadn’t been real.
So why does it hurt so bad?
For several weeks, Murrin watched her, his Alana, his mate-no-more, on the shore that was his home-no-more. He didn’t know what to do. She’d rejected him, cast him back to the sea, but she seemed to mourn it.
If she didn’t love me, why does she weep?
Then one day, he saw that she was holding the pearls he’d given her. She sat on the sand, running the strand through her fingers, carefully, lovingly. All the while, she wept.
He came to shore there at the reef where he’d first chosen her, where he’d watched her habits to try to find the best way to woo her. It was more difficult this time, knowing that she knew so many of his secrets and found him lacking. At the edge of the reef, he slid out of his Other-Skin and tucked it in a hollow under an edge of the reef where it would be hidden from sight. Giant sea stars clung to the underside of the reef ledge, and he wondered if she’d seen them. His first thoughts were too often still of her, her interests, her laughter, her soft skin.