Tides by Betsy Cornwell Page A

shoulders, a soft and flexible torso. She rested a moment, the sealskin slipping around her hips. Then, with a flick of her tail, the rest pulled away. Her legs gleamed.
    Noah’s palms began to sweat. His life rewound to when he was six and Dad told him Santa Claus wasn’t real, and that moment was reversed—not erased, but made into a lie. These things were real; they were possible. A heady feeling of infinite magic washed over him. He was the little boy Noah again, the child who believed every star was a UFO coming to take him away.
    Selkie.
He couldn’t stop repeating the word, turning it over and over in his mind like a smooth stone,
selkie, selkie.
Mara was a selkie—what else could she ever have been? No human girl had ever acted as she had with him. It was all part of her supernatural spell, no doubt. He was onto her now.
    “Mara!” he yelled.
    She jerked around, covering herself with her empty sealskin. She squinted up at him. “Hello,” she called back. “Stay there!”
    Noah dropped his head between his arms. Too much was happening. He couldn’t take it all in.
    Before long he heard Mara’s soft footsteps behind him. She sat down, dressed in another oversize men’s shirt—white this time, with no belt. She wasn’t carrying her skin.
    “Hello,” she repeated.
    Noah stared at her.
    She sat down beside him. “I’m sorry you found out like that,” she mumbled, almost shyly.
    Noah snorted. “As if you didn’t mean for me to.”
    “What?” Mara frowned. “I saw you head toward the cottage, so I came here to change. I was going to knock on your door.” She looked down at her toes, which, Noah noticed for the first time, were slightly webbed. “I wanted to talk to you.”
    “Christ, Mara—” He stopped. “That is your name, isn’t it?”
    She looked wounded. “Of course,” she said. “Maelinn Mara, sworn as daughter to Terlinn Maebh.” She stuck out her arm in a stiff imitation of human handshakes.
    Noah didn’t move. “And you are a selkie.” He wanted to hear her say it.
    “We have many names,” she said, “but, yes, that is one.”
    They sat close together, their legs almost touching. Noah scooted away a little.
    “Wait.” He remembered Maebh’s reaction when Mara had walked into the cottage. “Maebh is your mother?”
    “Yes,” said Mara. “She is also the leader of our family, our pod. She is the Elder.”
    “Yeah, well, she doesn’t look it.” Noah recalled Maebh’s smooth, youthful face. “I figured she was your older sister, or your cousin or something.”
    Mara shrugged. “We age differently than you do.”
    “Okay, fine,” said Noah. “That’s not really what I’m having trouble with here.” The wind blew too harshly across his hair. He shivered.
    He forced himself to look at Mara, to pretend she was only the young woman he’d met a week ago, not some fairy-tale monster who had just shed her skin before his eyes.
    Her feet were long and angular, and they turned out from her legs like dancers’ feet. Like a tail. Her legs were strong and toned, but smoothed over with the layer of softness he’d felt when he’d first caught her in his arms. Her thighs and torso were hidden under the loose, thin shirt she wore, but his hands recalled the softness there all too well, too.
    Mara wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. Even the translucent webbing between her fingers dimpled into tiny bumps.
    Noah realized she was cold. He unzipped his sweatshirt and, leaning over until he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek, he draped it around her shoulders.
    Tentatively, she smiled at him.
    She was still the girl he’d met before. He couldn’t deny it, much as his brain balked at the idea. Part of him owned that truth and saw how human she was—even if she didn’t fit the technical definition.
    “Thank you,” she said. “It’s always colder this way. No blubber.” She patted her stomach. “Well, not as much, anyway.” She laughed, and Noah