The Seal Queen

by Sandra Saidak

  Briah backed away and was soon loping down the shore toward her home. Kamin woke up and fussed to get down and play, but Briah ignored him. The sky grew dark, but the night was clear and the moon and stars showed her way well enough. It was only after she was safe in her own cave, with Kamin clutched tightly in her arms, that Briah gave a thought to her behavior.

  Why had she run?

  “Because they might have seen me,” she answered herself.

  And what would they have done? She had fled Finool in fear for her life, but this village was a world away. It was similar to her own village, if somewhat coarser and dirtier. What would the people have done had they seen her?

  “Treated me as a gift from their gods!” Briah said bitterly. “A strong, fertile, young woman—with a healthy son, no less! And no kith nor kin anywhere on this side of the world! I’d become the woman of any man who wanted me, or whoever their chief decided to give me to. Maybe as a wife; maybe as a slave. Maybe there’s really no difference.” Briah stopped, struck by the strange notion.

  Still, a voice inside her nagged, what’s wrong with that? A home, a family? Isn’t that what you want? A woman needs a man to protect her; to give her children and a place in the tribe. And what about Kamin? A boy can’t learn to be a man without a father. What about the rest of your life? What about Kamin’s? A woman can’t just live alone on a beach her entire life!

  “Why not?” asked Briah, suddenly.

  A memory from her earliest years burst into her mind. Briah knew her people kept no slaves; she reminded those she met of that often enough. But when Briah was about five winters, a stranger had come to live with them. Sarla was Danlav’s woman, and she couldn’t speak. Well, not exactly couldn’t speak—just not in the language of Briah’s people. Sarla had come from far away, that was clear. All Briah had been told was that Danlav and his brothers had been out hunting and found her alone in the woods.

  Briah had always assumed that her people had been killed by disease or warfare. Perhaps she had been traveling with just her husband or parents and they met with some accident. Now she realized she wasn’t sure. No one ever really got to know Sarla. She never learned their language, and besides, Danlav never let her visit much with the other women.

  For the first time, Briah wondered if Danlav had taken Sarla against her will. She knew he had not, by the laws of her people—by any people’s laws, she imagined. To steal a woman from her family was a terrible crime, and usually meant war. But a woman without a family, alone and in the forest, was clearly someone in need of help. It had been perfectly natural of Danlav to take her; noble of him to give her a home and children. After all, she would have surely died soon otherwise.

  “But I live alone,” said Briah. “I am raising a child alone. We haven’t gone hungry in longer than I can remember. Could Sarla have been like that? And if not, even if her people had died, might she not have had some other place to go? Distant relatives who she had been trying to reach when Danlav found her?”

  Briah suddenly decided that even if none of those things had happened; even if Sarla was grateful for the life she had with Danlav, that Briah wanted none of it. She wanted nothing to do with people foolish enough to live in a dank bog, when there was fresh clean shore nearby. People who lived in dirty hovels rather than a cozy, tidy cave. People who might take from her a freedom she had never known before—and expect her to be grateful for the favor!

  “No,” said Briah. “I’ve had quite enough men already. The thought of having one of my own doesn’t please me. And I’ve seen enough boys turned into men like Lir and Agor to think Kamin might just turn out better if he never met one. This is where we belong. This is where we can be happy.

  “Perhaps when Kamin is grown, we’ll venture out together into the world of men. And if we find I’ve robbed him of something by keeping him away from people, well then, I’ll have to make sure I give him enough other things to make up for it!”

  She wondered briefly if she would be lonely; if she had, in fact, already gone mad from isolation to believe such a thing. Yawning, she decided it didn’t matter. It was late, and she had plenty to do tomorrow, without leaving her snug, protected home.

  CHAPTER 11

  Summer wore on. Briah found that the discovery of other people near her shore and the revelations it brought changed her life very little. Like the tide, her life ebbed and flowed, now busy diving for fish or scaling the cliffs, now quietly weaving a basket or sewing rabbit hides into a blanket. And always, there was Kamin.

  Briah watched her son grow every day; every moment etched into her mind like the patterns of the surf etched the cliffs they carved. Kamin was interested in everything. First, Briah brought him shells and flowers to touch and play with. She told him their names, and delighted in hearing his attempts to say the words. When he began to crawl, she worried he would get to the water or the high cliffs when she wasn’t looking. Instead, he learned to swim—earlier than Briah would have dared to teach him.

  It happened one morning when Briah swam out to net fish. She left Kamin on the shore, building strongholds in the sand. He was growing too big to cling to her hair while she fished, and besides, she needed to dive to get the really tasty ones. When she returned, well pleased with her catch, Kamin was nowhere in sight. Her stomach twisted as she called his name, trying not to panic.

  She looked desperately out to sea, fearing to see his body floating in the tide, when she saw a group of seals sunning themselves on a favorite rock about twenty paces from the shore. In the middle was Kamin, laughing as he slid from the rock, clutching a handful of seal fur in each of his chubby fists. The seal—about Kamin’s age, but twice his size—floated the boy through the water, seeming to understand that his passenger’s oddly shaped nose needed to stay above the water. Other seals swam and bobbed around them playfully.

  Briah flung herself into the water and swam to the rock. She grabbed Kamin to her, not willing to believe he was all right until she touched his skin and felt his breath. She barely had time to sigh with relief before Kamin began to wail, and the seals began scolding her loudly for interrupting their game.

  Reluctant to leave him for a while after that, Briah gradually came to see the many new possibilities. She began to swim out farther and worry less, thus making her forays more productive. Once she even took Kamin fishing with her, hoping to show him how. After he scared away the fish for the second time, however, she decided it could wait. But best of all was the way he taught his mother how to play.

  Years of captivity and abuse had deadened Briah’s capacity to laugh and play—or so she thought. The seals brought back her laughter, but Kamin brought something more. Together, Briah and her son splashed and dived, squirted water at each other and rode the waves. When the seals joined them, Briah began to think that even as a child she hadn’t had this much fun. Once they even met a school of dolphins and rode for a moment on the silvery smooth back of one.

  Gradually, summer drew to a close. Cooler weather convinced Briah to make a second feather blanket, and a warmer shirt of rabbit hide. Kamin, however, seemed unaffected by the cold. He enjoyed the new warm blanket his mother made, but resisted her attempts to dress him. Briah only shrugged; he was, after all, still a baby. Clothes could come later.

  The sun and stars said that autumn was not quite here, when a huge storm blew out of the north. Briah and Kamin were confined to their cave for a day and a night. For the first time since he was old enough to understand, Kamin had to stay inside longer than he wanted. Briah wasn’t sure which was louder: the storm howling outside, or Kamin howling inside. She sang every song she knew, tempted her baby with every treat in the cave, and still he continued to fuss.

  Finally, as much to keep herself sane as to entertain her son, Briah began to tell stories. To her surprise, Kamin actually settled down to listen. While perhaps too young to understand the words, the cadence of the chanted legends soothed the little boy, and gradually, he fell asleep to the tragic tale of Man
on.

  “So after ten years of wandering, Manon decided to journey homeward,” Briah said while Kamin lay in her arms sucking on one breast while patting the other, and gazing at his mother with dark, sleepy eyes. “He was near the border of his tribe’s hunting runs, when a huge, ugly bandit leapt at him from behind a tree, knocking Manon to the ground.

  “Manon fought bravely. And of course, being the greatest fighter in the land, he soon overcame the older, though fiercer, man. Leaving the thief’s dead body in the woods, Manon continued toward his home.

  “There was great rejoicing as the village celebrated the return of their beloved hero. Manon’s brothers were all there, and one of his sisters, the other having married a chief from a distant clan. When Manon saw neither of his parents, he was saddened, though not surprised, for they were old when he left. Still, no one, not even his brothers, offered to take him to their graves, saying only that their mother had been swept away by the river last spring.

  “After the feasting, Manon told of his many adventures, ending with the attack in the forest that very day. Suddenly, there was a terrible silence.

  “‘What is it?’ asked Manon. ‘Surely this brute has been terrorizing the local people for some time. Do you not rejoice to learn you are safe?’

  “At last, Manon’s youngest brother, not daring to meet his eye, said, ‘that was father, Manon.’ It was then he learned the terrible story of how his father had fought with another man, and killing him, had been banished from the village. He had lived the life of an outlaw, until that morning, he was killed by his own son.

  “Now, if it had been anyone else who had slain the criminal,” Briah explained to her now sleeping son, “There would indeed have been cause for rejoicing. But Manon had spilt the blood of a kinsmen—-worse, his own father! There can be no greater crime than for a son to kill his father. It mattered not that the father was an outlaw. It mattered not that Manon did not know him. It mattered not that Manon fought only to save himself. All that mattered was that Manon had been tainted with a blood-guilt he could never wash clean.

  “Manon left home that night, searching for a way to redeem himself, but his life was cursed from that day forward. He did have more adventures, and a glorious death that at last wiped clean his shame, but those are stories for another time.”

  Gently, Briah set her sleeping child in his cradle, and tucked his blanket around him. The storm was at last blowing itself out. Briah fell asleep soon after, and dreamed of gods and heroes and adventures far away.

  ****

  A few days after the storm, Briah decided to make one more expedition before autumn rains kept them confined. She had avoided exploring the shore east of her cove both because of the risk that she might venture too close to Finool and because of the cliff that jutted into the water, making the beach impassible.

  Now that she felt safe with Kamin in the water, Briah decided simply to swim around the barrier and walk a short distance along the coast. She was surprised at how good being someplace new felt. Everything smelled clean, as if the storm had scrubbed away everything old and dirty.

  Kamin, who was beginning to take his first steps, was delighted with the adventure. Briah found that she had plenty of time to gather food, as she waited for Kamin to conquer a small distance on his two feet. Sometimes, as they approached a bend or rise that would give them a view of what lay beyond, Briah grew impatient and simply picked him up and carried him. Soon, however, Kamin would wiggle to get down, and explore the world on his own terms.

  Towards noon, Kamin grew tired enough to ride without complaint on his mother’s shoulders. Briah took advantage of the moment, and walked briskly over the rock-strewn shore. She planned to walk about another half a league, when she came upon an amazing sight.

  The wreck of a large ship lay scattered up and down the beach. It was a trading vessel, similar to the one that had brought Briah to this coast. It was low tide, and Briah realized that much of what she now saw would be submerged or washed out to sea in the afternoon.

  Pieces of the ship were wedged into rocks or rotting in the shallows. All kinds of intriguing things were scattered all about. Setting Kamin down on a warm stretch of sand, Briah began to explore. She found casks and jars of all sizes and materials. Most were broken but a few had survived. One entire row of tall clay jars sat in the water, nearly undisturbed. They were empty; apparently the jars themselves were the merchandise. Another set of jars, mostly broken, had apparently contained wine and oil—Briah found traces in the shards, and the aroma lingered.

  Bundles of rotting cloth which had once been dyed blue and crimson and a stunning shade of purple blew like tattered flags from the jagged rocks. In a clear tide pool, Briah found the ship’s greatest treasure: ingots of copper and pure gold shone dully from the bottom.

  “This ship must have come from the south,” said Briah as she surveyed the treasures. “Oil, wine, gold and fine pottery, all headed for Finool. The merchants would have traded it all for furs and wool and maybe the finished work of the local smiths. And maybe slaves.”

  Briah picked her way down the beach and stopped at the sight of a dead body. The man was intact, but flies had already found him, obscuring his features. All Briah could tell was that he was fairly young, with black hair, and a tunic of green cloth. She backed away from the sight and its accompanying smell, wondering if anyone had survived. She found no other bodies.

  Kamin was where she had left him, but in trouble. He had discovered a small crab, and in attempting to learn more about it, was now wearing it on his nose. Kamin shrieked, while his mother calmly pried the claw loose, and added it to their basket of food. The boy recovered with the help of a few kisses, which was good, since Briah had not brought any of her healing salves along.

  “Something I’ll have to remember next time,” she thought. Meanwhile, she was grateful not to have the trip cut short. There was wealth here beyond any imagining. After careful consideration of the unbroken jars, Briah chose a tall, well-balanced clay vessel. It was glazed a dark golden brown, and had tiny figures painted in black around its wide middle. The mouth had a spout for pouring and even a stopper made of cork.

  None of the cloth was salvageable, but Briah forgot her disappointment when she found a copper cooking pot under the nearby rocks. It was dented and battered, but would still make a better stew pot than the tortoise shell she now used. Briah grinned at the thought of owning something her family back home would never have had the wealth to buy.

  Even more exciting than the pot was a wooden box banded with copper with a lock built into it. The box was built to withstand a great deal of force, but three days in salt water had opened it. It was wedged between two rocks, and within it, Briah found beautiful small treasures. Gold and jet and lapis beads, which had once formed necklaces or bracelets were there, as well as tortoise shell combs and three silver broaches.

  Briah took some of the beads for Kamin, then chose a comb for herself. It was nearly whole, with only the tip broken off, and Briah marveled at the workmanship. She tried it on her thick brown hair, which now reached her waist. Despite its delicate appearance, the comb was strong, and Briah knew it would be better than the shells and fish bones she used now. She lingered over the gold broaches, and finally chose one to hold her new shirt closed. It was shaped like a crescent moon, with tiny swirls etched into it. Never had Briah owned anything so extravagant.

  The trip home was slow. Briah carried Kamin on her back, then fit the jar into the pot, then the pot into her basket—half full of food though it was. The comb and broach she wore, and carried Kamin’s beads in her pouch of throwing stones. Trudging along the beach with the setting sun in her eyes, Briah had a fleeting thought of the fortune in gold and copper bars she had left in the tide. Perhaps she should have taken some. If she ever decided to leave this shore, they would be helpful.

  But that time was very far away. Today she had a real water jar that didn’t leak, and a cooking pot of copper. Maybe later she wou
ld go back for a few gold ingots. For now, her mind was filled with the delicious stew they would eat for supper, and the ease with which water could be stored from now on.

  CHAPTER 12

  Briah had lived on the shore for nearly a full year when her luck finally ran out.

  It didn’t seem bad at first. It was, she told herself, only natural that the beds of shellfish would run low after feeding her for so long. Fishing too, was bound to have its bad days. She would just have to wait until they replenished themselves and manage as best she could.

  But after three days of nothing but kelp and a single rabbit in the stewpot, Briah grew worried. Even a farmer knows when the land is spent—and that means it’s time to move on. But the thought of moving terrified Briah. This was her home; the only safe place she could remember since her childhood. To relocate would be to risk another encounter with dangerous men. And what if there weren’t any other secluded coves with water and shelter?

  So she decided to wait a little longer, even if it meant losing some weight; after all, she had plenty to spare.

  But Kamin didn’t.

  Both mother and son had been so healthy during his first year that Briah had nearly forgotten what illness was. Kamin had had an occasional fever or case of sniffles; nothing that failed to respond to simple treatment, or disappear on its own in a day or two. So when he woke up fussy, his skin hot to the touch, Briah cursed the bad timing, but set about treating it as she always had. At least the medicinal plants still grew well.

  But the fever didn’t go down; it got worse. Kamin refused to nurse, and began to waste away before her eyes. And there was nothing she could do; nowhere to go for help. Briah tried everything she could think of, and refused to leave his side to look for food—not that there was any to find. But if she didn’t eat, she’d lose her milk and Kamin would need it when he recovered. And he would recover—Briah refused to think of anything else.