They found her wandering in the city. She was dressed in filthy rags, but her skin was a luminescent milky-white. She blew in with the North wind, the silky black waves of her hair fluttering about her face in a silent cacophony. Seashells and seaweed of all sorts lay tangled in the thick black locks, clinging obstinately to their refuge. Not one word ever escaped those salt-puckered, sea-chapped lips, and she spent her days staring into space with the endless, dark pools that were her eyes. Some whispered about her, calling her a seal-maiden, come right out of the icy sea to look for her stolen seal-skin. They were small people, generally, and well-tanned, with beady blue eyes that squinted into harsh sea winds and sandy, sun-bleached hair. None had seen the likes of her before. Her tall, slim shadow was cast wherever a healer was needed, and the people had no real reason to fear her. She possessed skills lost long ago; ancient remedies, and herb lore that had once been passed from generation to generation, but had been forgotten over time.

They took her in, giving her a little cottage by the shore that had been hastily fixed up from the decrepit state it was left in when an old sailor left it for the sea and never returned. It was small and damp, lit only by a flickering amber flame in one corner. The air was laden with sea salt and must, pushing into her whenever she entered. It was surely a womb of a home, made only for one; this may have comforted another person, but it suffocated her. But outside was too cold this time of year, even for one who yearned for it so.

She wore old garments mended with course threads passed on to her by the kind-hearted villagers. Everything was accepted with a silent nod, and returned with the teaching of one of her skills. She was taught how to make and use nets for fishing; her long fingers, nimble and graceful, found some trouble with the tangles on string. And in exchange she taught them how to catch fish with their bare hands; their fingers were too meaty to clutch the fish, but they did succeed on occasion. They taught her to cook their foods, and, in return, she taught them how to make stews out of seaweed and sea snails. She would touch no meat save fish, and wear no animal skins, but in all else she was the same as them, or so one would’ve thought. In that case, one would’ve been wrong.

The girl, Fiona they called her, after her fair skin. She was haunted. Always was there a far-away look to her great, dark eyes; she never spoke a word to anyone, never smiled nor frowned. Her long fingers were deft and quick, but her steps were clumsy on land, as if her feet knew that they didn’t belong there. Every morn without fail, someone or another would find her staring at the sea, looking at it with that sad, longing, distant gaze. When her eyes met the sea, the bottoms of those depths seemed to rise up to the surface, making them glassy and flat, as if something was hiding behind them. The old wise woman warned the people against becoming attached to her, for she was surely of the sea, and the sea’s love was a terrible, icy love not meant for creatures of the land.

The villagers heeded the wise-woman, knowing she always spoke with truth and wisdom. They cared for Fiona, but never got too close. Any visitors were warned against going near her, partly for her sake, partly for theirs. All listened to the old wise woman, save one.

The king’s son visited the little village often, for it was but half a morning’s ride from the palace. He was kind and fair, although somewhat naive, and generally loved by all his subjects. When poisoning found its way into the Prince’s food, none could fathom who it was that put it there. Oddly, for such was the nature of most, none pointed fingers at Fiona, foreign though she was, for they could not see this odd, ghostly girl harming anyone. She was a spirit meant for wisps and shrouds; malice would be too solid a thing for her to carry.

The villagers carried the prince not back to his castle, but instead to the hut of Fiona, insisting that she would be better than any palace doctor with his greedy leeches and blood-thirsty needles. And so it was that her cool hands brushed the feverish Prince’s burning face, her lips murmured silent spells to heal and protect. When none were present, her voice would rise in an unearthly hum, vibrating the air around her. Slim fingers gently, detachedly smoothed water and soup suds over the nearly hairless body when he needed to be cleaned, but no other touches were given. Eventually, her patient treatment nurtured the beloved Prince back to health.

During this all, the prince dreamed. He dreamed in shadows and dust motes, intangible things that his mind couldn’t grasp. Sometimes they would be interrupted by an ooze of honey trickling down the back wall of his mind, soothing the frustration of untouchable things.

But when the Prince showed the signs of recovering from his delusional state, she slipped from the room where he had been sleeping; he would be well without her help in only a matter of days. She silently gathered her belongings, leaving behind only a pile of seashells and slipped into the night, her bare feet trekking softly along the shoreline.

In the morning, the Prince woke mostly-recovered. The people rejoiced at this, relieved that their precious Prince would indeed live.

Immediately after his first real awakening, the Prince requested that the girl who had healed him be brought forth to receive his thanks. All they found of her was the tide washing away the last of her footprints. The Prince went into despair, for, in truth, he could remember bits and pieces of his sickness, times of the barest lucidity, and they were all of her. He remembered thinking he was drowning in deep, dark pools of utter night; he could recall a lock of ebon hair brushing his cheek; in his mind’s eye, he saw her lips, the color of watered wine, whispering silently to him; he felt her slim, icy fingers stroking his forehead, cooling his fever. His nights were haunted by her; his days were occupied by her. He had heard the stories, but he heeded them not; all he wanted was her, and he would stop at nothing to get it. Her bony fingers, unheeding and careless in the face of sickness, had grasped his heart and she snatched up the fish, flinging it into air and leaving it gasping for her, for the sweet, cool water of her presence.

Perhaps this Prince’s peculiar behavior can be attributed to his lack of mother; she had been a compact, feisty woman who succumbed to a grave illness when he was young. In her death, she had taken with her a portion of his love; without it, his heart ached mournfully. Fiona had hushed the ache, soothed it and filled it with her otherworldly humming. He wanted desperately to hold her, to make her real, to make her come back.

As soon as the Prince was well enough to walk, he went off in search of her like a man possessed. At first, his loyal guards refused to leave his side, but they soon grew weary of chasing a ghost amidst a crowd of greedy tangibles. Their handsome young Prince was truly haunted; his tanned skin was becoming pale and gaunt, his curly thatch of sandy hair was limp and unwashed, and his bottle-green eyes took on the same faraway look that had lingered in Fiona’s own dark pools.

When none of his searches in the nearby woods produced anything, the villagers reluctantly told their Prince of the footprints in the sand. The Prince, feverish now in his search for her, left immediately, following the shoreline on foot. For one year, he searched for the girl, walking the line between land and sea, stopping at every village he came upon, asking for a girl with hair long and black as night, and sealskin eyes. For one year, villagers shook their heads sadly at his question, saying they hadn’t heard of or seen the girl before, but they could offer a place to stay at night. Each time, the Prince turned them down, insisting that he plod on, to the next village, taking with him only enough rations to last until the next hint. Forever in search of the girl.

His father, the king, worried relentlessly about his youngest son. He had always been a grounded child, made of good, solid earth; this behavior was unlike him. He let it go on only because he had four older sons capable of filling their brother’s duties

Exactly one year after he had started, the Prince, now nineteen, found himself walking along a deserted beach. He stopped to look out at the sea, sighing. It was sunset, and the sky and sea together were emitting every hue imaginable, from the dark purple-blue of the waves, to the fiery red surrounding the golden sun. The Prince sighed again. He continued walking, but his eyes remained fast on the sunset. For a while, he walked slowly, watching the horizon as it swallowed up the blue sky of daylight, leaving only twilight to linger before fading into black. When he had walked halfway down the beach, he stumbled over a large clump of seaweed. Looking down, he saw a trail of footprints leading from the pile of slimy green and brown kelp. Suddenly sensing a presence near him, the Prince whirled around, sword unsheathed. He came full circle before spotting it.

There, a head bobbed amidst the waves.

The sea tugged at her hair, her fingertips, her heart. A second head joined hers; a smooth, wet, brown head. And then a third. He drew closer.

Her hands reached out of their own accord, her mind too awed to see the danger in reaching towards hope. They were so close, the fingertips just brushing something, when it pulled back, dancing just out of reach.

An anguished cry escaped her lips, sailing on the wind like a lost bird.

At that, the Prince stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water. It was frigid, coldly trying to defer him back to shore. He reached her with much struggling, arriving just as the heads bobbed back beneath the surface.

Her limbs moved of their own accord, flinging out in desperation.

He closed his arms about her, drawing her naked body back into his.

She whipped around wildly. Seeing that he meant to draw her away from the ominous depths, she struggled. He moved anyways, determined to get her at least closer to land, safer, further away from the recklessness that the sea proffered.

“O sweet oceans, no! Please no! Don’t make me leave the sea. I can’t.” Her voice was hoarse and achy from disuse.

The prince paused in his steady trek towards shore. “We can’t stay in the water. It’s too cold. You’re too cold. We need to get you warm.” It was a sensible reply. The thought of it made her struggle in panic.

She grappled with him, pulling to his pushing, but he slowly won, gently and effectively tugging her closer. She paused only when she was hugged flush against him, belly to belly.

She looked up, up into his eyes, eyes of green sea glass; eyes of light that could penetrate clear through the depths of her eyes.

“I can’t. I’m not of land. I can’t live there any more. I can’t! I have none of it in my blood, no way to put down roots! I can’t watch the sea and not touch it, not plunge into it. I’d rather drown with the salty tears of the Great Mother filling my lungs.”

His lips uttered not a sound. His eyes fluttered only once against a breeze, then stilled. It was his heart, beating furiously inside his chest, that was screaming—kicking its heels and pounding its fists against the floor in an eruption of utter despair. It beat faster, wailed louder until it was a hum, vibrating against the walls of his chest, threatening to explode if it didn’t have its way.

She felt it. He didn’t know, but she could feel it in her own heart, pressed as close to him as she was.

The waves beat against them, rocking them closer to shore, unbeknownst to them.

Those sealskin eyes. They focused, for once, for the first time, locking with his and seeing him for the first time.

He wasn’t broad, but solid. It was the solidity that drew her in; it was everywhere, in everything about him. His complexion was ruddy, flushed even in the seeping cold of the ocean. His ears were delicately shelled, contrasting with the masculine slash of his cheekbones and the straight line of his nose; but they served to add to his beauty rather than effeminate it.

Awareness of him suddenly impinged upon her senses. She felt real, standing in his arms—substantial. The love in his gaze, the affection that he couldn’t hide, wrapped her up and kept her warm in the snuggling folds that carefully eased about her.

It was peace that she saw in his eyes. Peace, and comfort, and rest, and release, and a soft sigh of contentment that caught at the corners of her soul and drew her in like a sheet into the wind, fluttering and flapping in only the mildest of resistances.

Her body sighed with relief. It was about time. She had been drifting for too long. She was heavy with exhaustion now—before, with nowhere to land if she fell. And now there he was. Ready to catch her.

“I’ll be your roots.”

The words tumbled unbidden from his lips before he could stop them. His heart seemed to be throwing in its final effort.

“I’ll be the earth in your blood, the thing that lets you stay. I’ll be your weight, your realness. I’ll hold your hand to keep you from floating away. I’ll plunge into the ocean with you. I’ll-”

Her face was suddenly buried at the crook between his neck and shoulder, cold nose tucked into a warm neck, hot breath striking his throat.

Sinewy arms tightened about her, broad hands clutching at her in various places as if he were trying to merge them, make them one soul. It was glorious. It was real. He was there, already drawing out her roots and settling them in himself.

Salt water rolled off her cheeks. But it was not ocean salt. It was warm and bitter, a sweet release and a soothing remedy.

“Don’t be a dream,” she whispered brokenly, even though he couldn’t hear it over the dull roar of the ocean. She moved her head up, sliding along his neck until her cheek was pressed to his jaw. “Please, please don’t go anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Not now. Not ever again, sweeting. I’ll be here. I’m your roots, remember? I’m in your blood.”

They reached the beach rather swiftly now that she was clinging to him and not fighting him. As his feet finally left the water, he set her away from him to get a blanket.

She stood obediently, unashamed of her nudity. As slim as she had seemed before, her hips were wider than one would have expected, streamlining out from her waist in a neat curve. He returned to her, clothed, with a blanket from his sack, carefully enveloping her in it. Before returning to her, he drew a flint from the sack, meticulously setting up a small fire with dried driftwood and bleached grasses.

They sat down next to it awkwardly, his arms never leaving their position around her. When they were seated on the wet sand, she leaned her head into him. Moments passed, unheeding of time, before he spoke.

“You’re not entirely human.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, not entirely. At least, I wasn’t. Only a little of the non-humanness is left.”

He waited patiently, toying with a drying lock of her salt-coated hair.

“We’re called selkies in this world. Seal-people.”

Another pause. Still he waited silently.

“A seal woman came ashore one night with her blood sisters to dance under the moon. It was their tradition. A fisherman coming in from a visit to another island saw her, became entranced with her. He slithered on his stomach, making his way to where my mother had left her hide. Just as she turned around, he reached out with his long arm and took it, snatched it from the sand as a starving child will snatch your purse when your back is turned. She begged and pleaded with him, anything to have her precious sealskin back. But his lust was too great; within a week they were married, and in a year’s time, she had borne him two children, twin sisters. The sisters were alike in every way, and some whispered that they were indeed of one person, split in two by their mother’s sea-washed womb.

“Each day, the mother would wade out into the surf, carrying both infants on her back. She would stand there for hours, just watching the waves come in and out with the tide. Soon, the girls were old enough to stand by their mother, watching the sea. One day, not long after the girls had reached their seventh birthday, a seal came out of the water, and into their mother’s ear, it whispered secrets, especially of where to find her long-lost skin.

“For two weeks after that, the mother waded deep into the ocean, slipping back into its pounding currents and precocious temper. One night, when the fisherman was late in coming home, the mother took the girls with her to a place in the dunes they had never been before. They dug for an hour straight, when at last they reached a small, worn, wooden chest. The mother threw the chest against a rock until it broke open, its precious, dried, once-silky treasure spilling into the sand. Along with it came two smaller skins. The mother, who knew the ways of the sea, did not question their existence. Instead, she laid them out on the sand near the surf. She showed the first sister how to slip into her skin, then slipped partway into her own. Suddenly, a mischievous wind blew in from the sea, snatching away the second small hide. The other little girl ran after it, chasing it across the entire beach, and when she returned without it to the place that she had left her mother and sister, she found them gone. Nary a trace was left of them, save for two long marks in the sand and an roughly-made pearl necklace. They had relented to the call of the sea.

“The girl returned to the empty little hut, packed her belongings, and left with a vow never to speak a word to any of the greedy fisherman’s kind.

“It is said that on his way from fishing, the fisherman saw two seals, a mother and her pup, swimming close to the boat. The eyes of the seals shook him, for they seemed familiar, though he didn’t realize why until he reached his empty home, a line of footsteps leading the way back to the sea.

“The second daughter wandered for ten years, searching. Young though she was, she was of the immortal, clever, ever-knowing sea, and knew how to make her way in the world. She would stop at whichever villages pleased her, offering her skills in exchange for food, clothes, and time to wait for any bit of gossip that might tell of a discovered sealskin devoid of any flesh, or a mournful seal maiden. When she was sure that none in the village could answer her unspoken question, she would move on to the next place. It was thus for many years, wandering, searching. It all slipped into a pattern, one followed numbly and ceaselessly, until one little village changed it all.

“It appeared like any other she had been to, but that just showed how much being on land was disconnecting her from the sea. When she started to care for a man who was ill, it proved itself even more so, because the sea has never loved land, nor sea-maiden ever loved a man, in spite of the many times they had been captured by one. So she ran away as soon as she was well, putting as much distance between her and the man as she could, for surely he would only complicate things, and he knew not where her sealskin would be. Little did she know then of the determination of men.

“I grew attached to you when I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

“Why sorry?”

“Without my skin, I don’t know how to be whole. I don’t know if I can be what you need.”

He looked down at her solemnly.

“You are what I need. You’re my water, my life source.”

“You can’t drink sea water.”

“Who said anything about drinking?”

She eyed him mournfully, but a grin still managed to tug gently at the corners of her mouth.

“Perhaps.”

Hers’ was a soft whisper of a snore in sleep.

It was endearing, human. It made her that much easier to touch.

A sigh, a nuzzle of noses into necks, a delicate caress. And the world was quiet again.

The night air weighed with heavy security on his limbs, a mother urging her child to sleep. His eyelids were just drooping closed when he felt a flutter of butterfly wings against his chest. He tilted his head, peering into her open eyes over the curve of his cheekbones. He waited patiently as her sleep-clouded eyes cleared. And then her voice rasped quietly through the dark, hushed and lovely.

“Is this…Will this be…” She couldn’t think of how to finish.

Is this enough? Will this be forever? Can it be?

But he understood.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

The words didn’t set her mind at ease. It was the glint of a dimple in his cheek, a charming trait. Such a simple thing. But it meant the world to her.

A deep-felt sigh of release, and she snuggled back down into him. He was heat and earth and compassion and love and vivacity. They would be fine.

Outside, the ocean relaxed with a whoosh and a splash. The world would be left with its peace. For now, at least.

Fin