Bewere the Night

for walruses and humans than using anaesthetic to tag them. He still wandered much closer between the sunning beasts than Peter would have felt comfortable, even without the warning. Jens always seemed to know which way the walruses would shift and when to leap clear. Some of Peter’s pictures were of just walruses, but others showed the parka-swaddled form of the man who studied them, moving with sure-footed wariness among them. He looked forward to more shots over the next few days.

But Jens was shaking his head the whole way back to the research station, and when they got in, he cornered Lotte immediately.

“The herds were mixing,” he told her.

“What?”

“That’s incredible!” said Lotte, and she switched to Danish, where she could more rapidly question him about the walruses’ behavior.

The next morning, they told him with some regret that this unusual occurrence needed Lotte’s attention, and he would have to stay behind.

“Sorry, Peter,” said Jens. “The sled will only take two, and it’s important to Lotte’s work.”

“Of course. I understand. I’ll just fix up my notes, putter around here. I can take your noon ocean readings, if you like.”

Jens glowed. “That would be most helpful, thank you.”

So Peter watched Jens and Lotte speed off with the dogs. He got a raised eyebrow from Anna when he went back into the house, but when she saw he was going to leave her alone, she relaxed into the day’s duties.

Peter wandered restlessly as soon as the readings were finished. He wished he hadn’t taken so many landscape shots in his first days there—the column was already half-written, and there wasn’t much else for him to do.

On a whim, he started poking around the boxes and cabinets in the lab. Some held instruments he’d seen in use all over the world. Others were unique to the Arctic, and still others appeared to be overflow for the pantry— tins of peaches and boxes of crackers in neat rows.

One huge box in the corner contained a deflated Zodiac raft, neatly folded. Peter saw something whitish in the corner, where the raft had curled upwards. He pushed it aside in idle curiosity, then stopped short.

It was a walrus tusk.

Pulling the folded raft out, he unearthed the other tusk, perfect gleaming ivory. They nestled on a bristled, dark brown surface. It smelled musky and pungent. He pulled that out, too, gasping: the skin of an adult walrus, whole.

Surely Jens and Lotte couldn’t be poachers, ivory-smugglers! Peter thought. But what else could it be? There would be no scientific reason to keep a carefully intact walrus skin in a box under a raft. And what had they treated it with? It smelled fresh and had hardly dried around the edges.

Footsteps in the doorway made him look up. Anna was staring down at him where he crouched on the floor, her expression blank.

“Do you know anything about this?” he demanded.

“Yes,” said Anna. She stooped to gather up the skin. She draped it around her shoulders, a tusk in each hand. “It’s mine. Thank you for finding it.”

She turned and walked away. Peter, biting his lip, followed her. “Look, I want to respect your culture and all that, but you can’t go around killing walruses! It’s not permitted. Jens took it from you for a reason.”

Anna paused at the front door, walrus skin flapping heavily around her. She did not look at him. “He took it to make me his slave. Now I am free.”

“What?” Peter stepped outside, shivering against the Arctic wind. Anna headed down the hill at a half-run, and as she ran, the cold made him tear up, and his vision blurred. Peter blinked and squinted. The walrus skin flapped—the tusks shifted—

Anna slid into the water, a walrus.

Peter watched her swim off. When he could no longer make her out among the waves, he went back inside and closed the door. He sat at the kitchen table drinking cold tea and hoping that Anna would return and explain everything before Jens and Lotte got back.

He had no such luck.

Lotte came in first, shining with triumph. Jens followed on her heels, but he was the first to notice Peter’s expression. He stopped, a questioning quirk to his eyebrows.

“I found a walrus skin and tusks,” said Peter flatly. “Anna took them and disappeared into the water. It looked—it looked like she turned into a walrus.”

Lotte thumped into the chair beside him, collapsing into it as though she could go no further. Jens seated himself more slowly, moving like an old man. “She got free?”

“Yes. Out into the water. You don’t sound surprised.”

“We took her walrus skin,” said Jens, rubbing his eyes. “Of course we knew.”

“Is it—some spell? Some shamanic trick?”

“It’s how she was born,” said Lotte. “There aren’t many left with two skins.”

“You know others?” said Peter.

“Not personally. Just rumors. Anna wouldn’t say if she knew where her relatives were.”

“I wish she wasn’t out there,” said Jens. “Damn! We try to protect the walrus population from human interference, and now this! It’s an appalling level of human contamination!”

“But she’s not a human,” said Peter dazedly. “She’s a—like a walrus selkie. A walkie.”

“She’s human enough,” said Jens. “We’ve lived with her these years. Walruses don’t scrub floors, no matter what happens to their tusks.”

“Humans don’t survive a plunge in the North Atlantic without gear, no matter what they do with a walrus skin.”

“Whatever she is, she doesn’t think like a normal walrus,” said Lotte. “The contamination in their behavior patterns is inevitable if she stays. How will we know if the herd mixing would stay or break up if she hadn’t come? What if she teaches them behaviors that ruin their chances of survival because they don’t have the options she has? It’s really quite impossible. Surely you must see that.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Jens sighed, rolling his shoulders. “Attempt to find her and talk her into leaving, I suppose. If we can’t find her in human form and take her skin again.”

Peter’s stomach roiled. “That’s how you did it last time? You stole her skin to trap her?”

“We had to keep her away from the walruses, once we knew what she was,” said Jens.

Peter found himself at the center of a storm of activity he had no idea how to stop. Whenever he tried to object, Jens and Lotte assured him that they knew more about protecting the walruses than he ever could. That Anna could not be allowed to contaminate them.

“How will you know when you’ve found her?” he asked them desperately. “What if you mistake another walrus for her?”

“You must not have had the skin long enough to see the markings,” Jens explained. “There are white streaks on her back. No walrus has them.”

“What if you can’t get her to come with you voluntarily?”

“Walruses are very susceptible to anaesthetic,” said Lotte, loading her crossbow. “We will do what we need to do.”

Peter shuddered. “How do you know that the walrus herd isn’t full of others like her?”

Jens smiled patronizingly. “Peter, Peter. Surely you aren’t suggesting that all walruses have human forms.”

“Well, no … .”

“I’m sorry you stumbled upon this,” said Lotte. “But we’ll handle it. Wait here until we get back. Then we’ll take you for some more photos on the other side of the bay. Photos of real walruses, not humans!”

Peter didn’t want to stay in the station by himself, nor to leave Anna without aid, whether she was in her human or her walrus form. He bundled up as heavily as he could and set out after the dogsled on foot.

By the time he reached the bay where the walruses had congregated the day before, he was sure he’d