The Seal Queen

by Sandra Saidak

  “Too long for them, but too soon for me. He’s just a baby. To be a man at twelve—just ten years from now? They can’t do it. They can’t rob Kamin of his both his childhood and the rest of his life. And they can’t rob me of my baby.”

  “Ten years or twelve,” said the waves. “Here or there. Kamin will grow up someday.”

  “But not tonight. Not tomorrow. And not in some alien land. I want him to grow up with me.”

  “Even if the roane had never claimed him, Kamin would still go his own way eventually. What will you do then, Briah?”

  Briah trembled, though the wind that caressed her was as warm and soothing as ever. But for the first time, the voice had called her by name—and, more importantly, asked a question she had carefully avoided for over two years.

  What would she do when Kamin grew up? Was the appearance of the roane—and the merrow—perhaps an opportunity for Briah as well as Kamin? A chance to consider, for the first time, what life might hold for her beyond just being a mother to her son.

  “But I have no life beyond Kamin. Living here with him, safe on this shore, with no one to bother us—it’s all I want.”

  The voice repeated, “Someday Kamin will leave, and seek his own path, as all sons do. What about you, Briah?”

  Briah lay back in the warm sand, feeling it conform to her body, supporting her, as it always had. She shaded her eyes from the sun, and looked into the blue sky to the west, seeking answers there. It felt good, letting her body sink into the sand, while her mind tried to look ahead, for the first time, many years into the future.

  “I’ve lived on my own for more than two years. I could probably do so for the rest of my life. But I’ve never imagined taking care of just me. I guess I always assumed that when Kamin was ready to leave, I’d just go with him. Find a village or town to live in. Men wouldn’t be a threat to an old woman with a grown son, as they are now to a young woman with a baby. I could keep house for him when he marries. Help raise my grandchildren if I live that long. It’s what old women do.”

  “But is that what you want?”

  A whisper of Taran’s music flashed across her vision, pulling a dreamy smile from her lips. “I’ll admit, there’s a new path that I never imagined before. But could it really work?”

  Silence, but Briah didn’t expect an answer that time. She’d seen enough of the impossible of late to know that if they both wanted it badly enough, things could work out between her and the strange and beautiful sea creature. But she knew at the same moment that romance would have to wait until she had solved the problem of her son and his gentle, vulnerable kin.

  “What else do you want?” The voice in the waves surprised Briah.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Is it?”

  Then Briah sat upright, for suddenly, despite the urgency of her problem with the roane, her feelings for Taran had unleashed a whole new range of possible futures. And these were for her alone.

  “I want to be a healer,” she said. “I want to do for other people what this place has done for me.” Excited, Briah wanted to move, but was afraid that if she left this place, the answers might stay behind as well. She began to rub one hand in the soft golden sand beside her.

  “This place healed me; it taught me how to live, when I thought I’d never really live again. If I could learn how to do that for others...” Like the sand between her fingers, Briah felt her newfound understanding slipping away. She was not the sea. How could she bring what happened to her to anyone else? She didn’t understand it herself.

  “If I stayed in my village, I might have become a healer like my grandmother. She said I had the gift for it; she said I had a knack for herbs. But this is a different kind of healing.” Briah thought of Taran and what she had learned from him. “When people hurt in their soul; when they stop caring if they live or not...” She thought about the other children Lir had used. “If he’s as old as they say, there must have been hundreds of them—and hundreds more to come. Those that reached adulthood could not be said to truly live.

  “And the women, forced to work at Donal’s House of Pleasure. They all carry scars on their souls as well as their bodies.”

  “As do the men who come there,” said the wind.

  Briah’s hand stopped moving in the sand. She found she had made a deep circle, her hand now resting in the center. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Pain lives in all of us, in one form or another. But even if I learned just what this shore did for me, could I take it with me to the people who need it?” Do I want to, she asked herself, as the thought of leaving brought a tightening in her chest.

  “Who says you have to leave?” asked the wind.

  “What does that mean?” asked Briah, but no answer came. She looked down at the circle she had made in the sand. For a moment, something seemed to move inside it, as within a scrying bowl. She saw herself as an old woman, on this same beach—and people coming to her, bringing their problems with them—her lover waiting patiently in the shallows, in this magical place where the land and the sea met.

  The image was gone in an instant. It might have been just the dazzle of sunlight on a thousand grains of sand, making Briah see what she wanted to see. But that didn’t matter. For the first time, she felt her future pulling and surging, like the tides before her.

  She looked again at the circle in the sand. Another image appeared, a group of roane, crying out in fear. Before it was fully formed, the scene vanished, to be replaced by Kamin’s face, crying for his mother. Then there was only sand.

  Briah was on her feet in a moment. She threw her feather cloak into the sand and ran into the sea. She still didn’t know what she was going to tell Kamin, or Taran, but that didn’t matter. It was time to go back.

  She was up to her waist in rising tide. At the next big wave she dove, wondering at the last minute if she could reach the roane lands without a guide.

  CHAPTER 22

  After a moment’s panic, something like instinct arose in Briah, and she found she knew the way. Breathing wasn’t a problem, so she didn’t worry about it. After a time, she found the familiar markers that led her to the large cavern where she first met the roane court. This was good, because by then she desperately needed air.

  After gasping her lungs full a few times, Briah looked around the huge cave, puzzled to find it empty. She wandered for a while, then finally returned to the water. She tried several places she knew the roane to frequent during her stay, apprehension growing with every moment.

  Finally, she came to the cave that the roane used as a shrine. Normally a place individuals and small groups went to worship, today the entire roane population seemed to be there. Stranger still, many were in human form. Briah slipped in the back of the crowd, more concerned with finding her son than finding out what was going on.

  She spied one of the Roane women who had cared for Kamin. “What is it?” she whispered. “Where is....”

  The seal woman turned to Briah, tears in her liquid brown eyes. “The king,” she said, nodding toward the center of the shrine. Briah peered through the crowd and her breath caught in her throat. The roane king lay on a slab of black rock. Dark blood seeped from a wound in his belly. The queen, looking old and shrunken, was applying an herbal poultice. Other seals hovered about, ready to provide any service the queen might ask, but looking helpless.

  “What happened?” asked Briah.

  “A seal hunter attacked while the king was fishing. He escaped—the knife still in him.” Briah noticed an ivory handled flint knife, beautifully worked and wickedly sharp, resting on a stone block beside the king.

  “Can anything be done?” she asked.

  “The king’s son has gone to get the one person who might be able to help. Until then, we wait.”

  “Where is Kamin?” Briah asked.

  “Most of the children are over there.” The roane pointed to a group of pups, gathered at the far end of the cave. Many looked as somber as the adults, and all were strangel
y quiet. Kamin was among them, easy to recognize.

  Briah began to push her way through the crowd to get him, when a sudden commotion pinned her between several large roane and the cave wall.

  The king’s son entered the chamber, dragging a terrified man behind him. The crowd parted for them, and the roane brought the human to where the king lay.

  Briah shook with disgust and shame. For so long she had been the only human down here. Now, for the first time, she set eyes on one of her own kind—and she had no doubt whatsoever what his role in all this was. Briah pressed herself against the cave wall, wishing she could melt into it.

  “He found him!” said a roane near her.

  “The hunter who wounded the king?” Briah whispered.

  “Yes,” said another. “The only one who can save him!”

  Briah stared. “What?”

  “Silence!” hissed a gray whiskered old roane.

  “Watch,” said Kamin’s nurse. “Watch and learn.”

  In awed silence, Briah did.

  Reverently, the king’s son picked up the ivory handled knife. “Do you know this weapon?” he asked the man.

  The seal hunter, a large man with thick black hair, burst into tears. “Yes,” he wailed, clearly expecting the knife to be plunged into his chest.

  “Is it yours?”

  The man fell to his knees. “Oh, please, have mercy upon me! I didn’t know you were... I had a family to feed... Oh, gods, I still have a family! If I could just see them one more time!”

  The roane pulled the man to his feet. “Is the knife yours? Please! You must answer.”

  Perhaps it was the “please” that brought him around, but whatever the case, the man nodded. He began to look around him, as if realizing where he was for the first time. Briah ducked behind the seal folk, fearing that if the man saw her, he would seek her help.

  “It was with this knife you wounded my father,” said the roane. “And only you can save him.”

  The shock on the seal hunter’s face was no greater than the shock on Briah’s. The roane, however, only watched in silence.

  “H-how?” asked the man.

  The king’s son gave the hunter his knife—which he nearly dropped—and led him to the king. The king looked into the face of his attacker with pain-glazed eyes, but said nothing.

  “With the back of the knife, draw a circle around the wound. Then smooth his fur across it, and wish with all your heart it might be healed. Can you do that?”

  “Yes! I mean, I can wish him healed—I do wish him healed... but I’m afraid it... I have no magical powers...”

  “Just do it. Banish all thoughts from you mind except a prayer for his life, and complete the ritual I described.”

  Shaking, the hunter did so.

  Briah shared his doubts, although she tried to rid herself of them. Who knew what a human’s doubt might do to a ceremony such as this? Still, how could anyone from her world believe that what the king’s son described could really happen?

  After the hunter’s trembling hand had drawn the circle in the king’s fur, he smoothed his hand across it with a gentleness that surprised Briah. His eyes were closed, his pale lips moving in prayer.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the wound began to close. A moment later, it vanished from his body as if it had never been. The king sat up, as well as he had ever been. The queen pushed the bloody bandages into the flipper’s of an attendant, who scurried away. From the assembled roane came pulsing sighs of relief and gratitude.

  The king looked around the room slowly. Not with confusion or even wonder, Briah thought, but with a kind of reverent appreciation. “Thank you,” he said, looking first at his son, then at his mate, and finally at the seal hunter. “Thank you,” he said again, this time to the seal hunter.

  The seal hunter clutched the knife and looked around him, saying nothing. Finally, he forced his white knuckles from the knife, and set it back on the stone block.

  Just slightly, the king’s son nodded.

  Briah felt that she would scream if the silence continued any longer, but then the man spoke. “Will you kill me now?” he asked.

  “Why should we?” asked the queen. “You saved my husband’s life.”

  “But I tried to kill him. And... I’ve killed many of your kind.”

  “Why do you hunt seals?” asked the king.

  “Only to feed my family, I swear...” Then, as the king’s gaze bored into the man, he looked away. “Merchants from the east pay well for seal fur. I could never live this well doing anything else. My clan has more farmers than land; more fishermen than fish. What else could I do?”

  “If you had gold enough to feed your family for the rest of your life, would you agree to give up seal hunting forever?”

  “I think right now,” said the man, “I would say anything you wanted me to.”

  The king’s eyes lit briefly with amusement. “Thank you for your honesty, at least. We shall give you gold, and safe passage to the surface. The rest is up to you.”

  The king’s gray-whiskered advisor swam up, pushing a basket with his nose. The queen, the only of the three in human form, lifted the basket and gave it to the hunter. He opened it and gasped.

  Briah leaned forward to see, heedless of being seen herself. Within the basket were gold pieces of all sizes, clearly forged in many lands. Still, the man would have no trouble bartering with them, wherever he lived.

  Ships, Briah realized. They didn’t just salvage toys and oddities from wrecked or sunken ships. They kept gold and silver as well.

  “You never know when it will come in handy,” said a voice.

  Briah turned to see Taran behind her. Only then did she realize she spoke aloud. She turned back for one more look at the miracle behind her: the king hale and strong again, the reformed seal hunter being led out by the king’s advisor, and the roane court, swimming away happily, as if this sort of thing were normal.

  She turned to the merrow. “Can we talk?” she asked. “In private?”

  His red eyes widened. “Of course.” Briah followed him out of the cave, but didn’t really see him. She finally had her answers. Now all she needed was the courage to put them in motion.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think you’re mad, lass,” Taran said.

  “That’s beside the point,” said Briah. “Will you help me or not?”

  Anger flashed in the gentle creature’s eyes, but was quickly contained. “How can I answer that? I do not see you for days—which well I know was at my suggestion—then you return and tell me you think you want to build a life with me—but first you have to kill Lir!” Taran shuddered at the name. “‘Tis suicide!”

  The merrow began to swim in circles through the shallow waters of the undersea garden. Briah sat on a large rock, watching him. She wrapped her arms around her upraised knees, and for the first time since arriving in this place, was perfectly calm, and as unmovable as the rock on which she sat.

  “My love, I want to live now more than I ever have. But everything and everyone that matters to both of us will remain in danger for as long as Lir remains alive. Now, I’m going to go and change that so that all of us can have the lives we deserve.” The words felt strange on Briah’s tongue. Even on her magical beach, she had never quite believed she deserved to be happy. The roane, the merrow, and Kamin did, but not Briah. The feeling she held to her now was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Worth dying for, yes, but even more, worth living for.

  “I’ll do it with or without your help,” she continued. “Although if you help me, there’s a much better chance I’ll come back alive. Either way, the roane will have their freedom, and my son will have his birthright.”

  Taran whirled to face her. “Make sense Briah! What is this birthright ya’ keep talking about?”

  “What happened in that shrine just now—that’s Kamin’s birthright! It’s been in front of me the whole time—I just finally
saw it! Do you understand how wonderful that was? How different from anything in my world?”

  “I’ve seen such things before.”

  “Exactly!” Briah leaned toward him. “You have. Everyone down here has. But where I come from... Humans aren’t like the roane. I don’t think I could ever be like the roane.

  “But Kamin has a chance. He could grow up in a world filled with compassion and mercy and kindness. A place where a tragedy becomes an opportunity for redemption! Where healing is... is... a normal part of life. He could grow up gentle.

  “In all my dreams for him, that was one that never even occurred to me.”

  “All provided you kill Lir before he does,” said Taran quietly.

  “Can you honestly say you want to wait through another ten years of seal killing before it stops? What if the next hunter doesn’t leave his job unfinished and his knife in the seal? What if he can’t be found in time, or persuaded to help?”

  “Of course I don’t want that! What I want to know is how you think you can stop it.”

  “It all comes back to the deal that Lir made when he left the sea. I’ve heard it said that a bargain with the faeries is always most dangerous to the one who makes it. That there is always a way to twist it that the buyer didn’t count on.”

  “‘Tis true. But how do you know you can find it?”

  “Because I have to! I’m not willing to watch these people die because they’re too gentle to fight back. And I’m not willing to let my son’s reward for saving them be to lose his place among them!”

  “You still believe in that curse.”

  “No. Yes.” Briah took a deep breath. “I don’t believe what I did before, that the gods would punish him for spilling his father’s blood. But something would happen. Not because Lir is his father, but because, in killing him, Kamin would somehow, become Lir.”

  Taran considered her words. “You think that Lir’s soul might possess Kamin at the moment of his death?”