Faery Tales & Nightmares

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 into 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 luster—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?”

“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.” Vic 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 her. 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.”