Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan Page B

to watch it hold. Several ways I had begun to spend that money in Able’s coat, that the wind was bouncing against his belly. New boots I would have first, not Hardbellow’s clumpers that all of Rollrock wore, but something Cordlin-crafted, of softer leather and sweeter style.
    ‘Come, then,’ I said. Now that we were on the point of this, I did not want him turning to straw on me, or bringing to mind some nuisance pronouncement of the parson’s. I waved him to the head of the path. ‘Lead me the way.’ If he decided at the last chance to run, I wanted to be behind him to block him, slap him, maybe, bring him to his senses — or rather, keep him from coming to his senses, for this was not a sensible enterprise. I wanted to keep him dreaming, then, and dazzled. I wanted him foolish and greedy and fixed ahead on his magical wife.
    ‘Which, then?’ he said as I ran into the back of him, stepping down onto the sand. ‘Near or far? Or middle?’
    ‘I’m not to know — whatever takes your eye. Pick a healthy one, a nice specimen, a model of its kind. There. Or what about that one?’
    ‘Gad, they stink, don’t they? Will I have to train her to the toilet?’
    ‘Have I ever trained one?’
    ‘You might have, for all I know.’
    ‘Did you ask Fishers, whether they had to clean up any mess of her?’
    He made a face. I slapped his arm. ‘Dolt. As if you’ll care, once she rises up naked from her trammellings. Come along now, Able, make your pick. Let’s get on.’
    At last my expecting and gesturing brought him to heel, and he concentrated, walking where he could among the slumped bodies, some of which cared as he passed them, nosing after his smell, fixing him with their dark-wet eyes, others who lay only stunned, sacks of sun-warmth, barely more alive than the rocks they lounged on. Off away among the crowd of them, the bull heaved himself up, but it was not our intrusion that bothered him, but another bull, rearing from a little gang of them that sulked in the shallows. They closed to duel, clumsy lumps of rage that they were; how could my springtime lover have emerged from such a beast? And little Ean, son of that spring moon, where was he now? Could I have dreamed it all, the birthing and the nursing of him, the knotting-up of his weed-blankets? I wished I had, but I ached all through me at the thought of him, at the sight of his father’s ignoring me, busy about his beast-life. I knew all too well it was true.
    ‘This one. This will do.’ He had chosen one slightly more brown than grey. He put his hand on her to claim her.
    ‘Let me look at her. All of a piece, is she? Neat as new-made, this one. She’s a fine choice. Now stay by. I should not want her bonding with me like a new-hatched duckling, if you are not in her waking sights.’
    I undid the bands. The seals’ attention veered towards me like a change in the wind.
    ‘What’s all that?’ said Able fearfully, eyeing the crowd of them.
    ‘Nothing to worry about.’ I tangled the seal’s gaze with mine. How much surer of myself I felt, this time! A hugeness of mind and a benevolence came upon me, as I looked for the girl within the beast, and brought the grains or runnels or sparks of her inward. She began to form pale at the centre like an almond in its fruit, and the seal-ness shrank outward to become fruit-flesh, to become coat. I went very carefully, and sought and sought for lights I might have missed in her. Then I raised my two hands into a point, summoned my resources, cleared my throat and clove the seal-skin top to bottom.
    ‘Come and stand here,’ I told Able, and I put him where I was. I went to the head, propped it up with my knee and pulled apart the seal-skin there.
    Able’s face blossomed. ‘Ivy!’ he said joyfully, and put his hands out to her. And up she sat, her black hair tumbling, then spreading on the long shaped back of her and into the wind, her bottom as neat as a boy’s. She put her long white hands into his