The Little Selkie (retail) (2 page)

Chapter 2

The Capture

The sea witch fled north. Dylan could feel her traveling in their direction—whatever bit of ocean the foul creature touched seemed to grow tainted, a feeling that spread quite a distance from the sea witch’s presence.

Finally. The witch would pay!

Dylan. Dylan!

Dylan would have ignored her oldest sister Maureen’s distinctive call if she could have, but Maureen’s seal body crashed into her. While Dylan’s sea lion body was the same length as Maureen’s
seal
body, Maureen’s form was much thicker and had a lot more heft to it, so she bounced Dylan off her body like a minnow.

What?
Dylan barked, anxious to chase after their target.

Maureen floated in front of her, tilting her seal head as she listened to other seal voices.

Dylan settled in with ill-disguised impatience as she felt the sea witch draw closer. Most days, Dylan was perfectly happy with her sea lion form, even if it was a bit of a disgrace. (Bad selkie blood in her mother’s side.) Even if she was the only one of her kind in her father’s kingdom, she could swim twice as fast as anyone else, was far more flexible, and could shuffle-walk on shore in her sea lion body instead of inching along like the rest of the selkies.

The inability to stay underwater as long as her kinsmen was a definite downside. Dylan’s record was nine minutes, but most selkies could stay underwater up to forty minutes. Most irritatingly, though, all other selkies could go twice as deep as she.

It was also a little harder to understand her clan when in seal form. As a sea lion, Dylan communicated with barks and chirps. Her kinsmen, however, communicated with croons and clicks. Some vocal noises were distinctive—she had been yelled at by enough selkies in their seal bodies to recognize when they said her name—but complex ideas were difficult to interpret.

Her father’s long-winded speech was a perfect example. While Maureen listened to the seal croons, Dylan was stuck ignorant and waiting. She fidgeted—twisting and twirling in the water under Maureen’s baleful eye.

Dylan
thought
the croon meant Dylan was supposed to hang back with her sisters, Muriel and Maureen. She had long ago lost interest in learning what her father had to say as a seal, because it was typically an idea or order she didn’t care for.

Whenever possible, Dylan confessed her worst sins to her father, King Murron, when he was in his seal body. That way, she could skip off, claiming she didn’t understand him. That was how she’d gotten around a severe punishment for swimming in a storm near a shipwreck two years prior.

Dylan started swimming again before her father finished crooning, twisting around her sister and leaving her in her wake—her streamlined body pulling ahead of the other seal selkies in their company.

Dylan
! Maureen clicked. Maureen was not above half-drowning Dylan to keep her in check.

Dylan ignored the call and dove behind a line of her father’s best fighters, waiting for them to move forward and capture the sea witch in their trap.
Come out, come out witch-y
.
It’s time you pay the price of your deeds.

For approximately two years, the witch had wandered and troubled the ocean surrounding Ringsted. It started with unnatural storms up and down the coast. That hadn’t bothered the selkies too much—although all the ship wreckage wasn’t good—until they realized the sea witch was supplementing her magic with the blood of ocean creatures: sharks, sea lions, whales, anything she could get her hands on. Dylan winced, remembering the last creature she had found drained of blood—a small, lifeless dolphin.

As guardians of the sea, the act enraged the selkies.
All
selkies.

You’re going to regret every drop of blood you spilled
, Dylan thought as she peered between the hefty selkie warriors in their seal bodies.

Maureen and Muriel caught up to Dylan. Maureen bumped her with more force than necessary, but Muriel fretfully nosed her cheek.

Wait
, Muriel clicked as she moved in front of her.

Dylan twitched her whiskers at her sister and swam for the surface to get a breath of air.

Her sisters weren’t merely trying to coddle her. This time, it was crucial that she follow orders. If the sea witch dodged the trap, Dylan would have to take the risk of changing forms in the ocean to sing as a human. Her voice was the key to their plan.

It was almost as if the ocean felt sorry for giving her the near disgrace of a sea lion body by gifting her with the strongest, best voice of all the selkies in her father’s clan. It wasn’t just an honor; it was a weapon. As the best singer, Dylan was also the most infused with water-wielding magic.

When Dylan returned to her sisters, the pair squeezed her between them, as if they could shelter her.

Danger
! Murphy, another one of Dylan’s sisters, crooned as she swam towards them. She just made it behind the line of fighter selkies when the sea witch appeared.

The sea witch was human, of course, though her stark white skin made her look fearsome in the water. Her tattered, black dress spread around her, moving like octopus tentacles in the underwater currents. A steel bar was tied to her back, and her eyes glazed hot with anger when she saw the selkies waiting for her.

She tried to hurl a wave of water magic at Dylan, her sisters, and the fighters, but the water passed them without disturbing so much as a whisker.

The selkies chose to sacrifice the use of their own water magic to capture the witch in their seal form because of its one great advantage: they were immune to all kinds of water magic.

The witch swam for the ocean surface—moving as if riding a rolling wave—and turned her body towards land.

Dylan swam after her, and her sisters hurried to keep up.

The line of selkies waiting near the shore advanced, cutting off her escape route. Snarling, the sea witch dove back under water and slid the metal bar off her shoulder; she shook it, and Dylan could see the edge gleam. It was an edged weapon of some sort—some kind of hiltless sword.

No!
Dylan barked, bursting forward.

Powerless under the threat of a steel blade, the selkies dodged the weapon, leaving a gaping hole through which the sea witch could escape.

The witch dove through it and swam for shore, the selkies on her heels.

Dylan burst forward with the speed of the sea lion, passing the pursuing selkies. The witch still beat her and clambered onto dry land, swiping her sword behind her to dissuade any followers.

You want to play rough? Fine!
Dylan thought, as magic fizzed and flowed in her veins.

Dylan
! One of her sisters clicked.

Dylan burst from her sea lion body and expertly wrapped her pelt around her. She took in a great gasp of air before singing—her voice heavy with rage.

Dylan’s two water serpents surged from the ocean, screaming with rage as the water of their bodies cast dazzling patterns on the sand. They glided towards the sea witch, who was clawing her way up past the sandy dunes and toward the forest.

Dylan and her serpents chased after her, ignoring the distressed calls from her kinsmen as she slipped into the trees. She sang occasional notes to keep her water creations moving but spent most of her air running, closing in on the pale sea witch.

The sea witch shouted and cursed when one of Dylan’s serpents almost caught her, teasing a dark grin from Dylan.

“I’ve got you,” Dylan said. She jumped a fallen log and slithered into a meadow, inhaling to start a new song as the witch turned to face her.

The sea witch’s face tightened with terror.

Dylan extended a finger at the witch, her voice piercing the sky as she sang. Her water serpents rose higher and higher until they towered above the trees and stared down at the sea witch, mouths open and posed to strike.

“Don’t just stand there—knock her out! She’ll kill us all, you idiots!” the sea witch shouted.

Dylan noticed something out of the corner of her eye and turned to look. Something hit the back of her head, and she fell face first to the forest floor.

“No,” Dylan groaned. Darkness rushed her vision and stole her consciousness, cradling her in blackness.

When Dylan woke up, the first thing she realized was that she was missing her pelt. The fabric wrapped around her was not her soft, salt-crusted pelt. Instead, she wore a long, knee-length cotton shirt tucked into a belt. Dylan rocketed upright, her head screaming in pain. Her breath came in panicked gasps, and her heart pounded. She didn’t see her pelt anywhere.

There were human men aplenty. They were gathered around a campfire and walking in and out of tents. They were a greasy bunch, armed to the teeth and smelling of sweat and blood.

But Dylan didn’t care who the men were; she
needed
her pelt. She threw herself to her feet and was almost yanked back to the ground by a rope attached to one of her wrists.

“Oi, she’s ’wake,” one of the greasy men shouted. He spat and folded his arms across his bare, tanned chest. “Aren’t you a strange thing,” he said, approaching Dylan with glittering eyes as some of his companions joined him.

“Where is my pelt?” Dylan demanded, her heart squeezing in her chest.

“Pretty, if you go for them kind of looks. Whaddya say, want to play?” the man asked, offering Dylan a smile peppered with missing teeth.

“Where is my pelt?” Dylan said, her voice growing tighter.

“Jus’ take it easy. We ain’t gonna hurt you none,” another man said, reaching for her.

“Where’s my
pelt
!” Dylan screamed. Instead of cutting the note off she carried it—like a shrieking sea hawk. The noise sent some men to their knees, but it also brought every bit of water in the camp ricocheting into the air.

Water exploded out of canteens, and a pot set to boil over a fire shot vapor into the air as its water fled to hang over the camp. Water for horses, any filled buckets, and every drop of water swirled at the sound of Dylan’s voice.

“Where
is
it,” she demanded as men cowered.

No one responded. They were all stunned, staring at the water hanging above their heads.

Her breath came faster. Even though air was entering her lungs, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her head rang and her world spun. Worry and fear nauseated her.

“Where!” Dylan shouted. She sang a disconcerting note that made the water form into a sphere and hit the ground so hard it sent dirt spraying everywhere.

“We don’t know!” one man shouted, diving behind a tent.

“
Yes, you do
!” Dylan directed her ball of water to blast the tent, destroying it like a tidal wave.

“The lord has it!” another man shouted. “ ’e took it with ’im when he went off with the mage!”

The blood in Dylan’s body turned into ice, and her heart faltered. “W-what?”

“She said ’e needed to keep it close and destroy it if you acted out.”

Dylan yanked on the rope—which had been attached to the demolished tent—and pulled herself free. She dropped her hold on the water, making it collapse in the middle of the camp, and ran into the forest.

Tree branches grabbed at her. Thorny bushes snagged the tender skin of her legs and cut her. Twice, she fell, terror making her clumsy.

A human had her pelt.
A human had her pelt
! What should she do? What
could
she do? She had chased after the sea witch and gotten herself caught! Worse, if the man who had her pelt wasn’t twenty different kinds of idiotic, he would know that without her pelt, she couldn’t change back into a sea lion. If he poked even the smallest hole in it, she wouldn’t be able to reclaim her secondary form every again. She would be at his mercy. She! Her clan’s best singer! All because she was too brash and—

“They said he was with the mage—the sea witch,” Dylan said aloud, the men’s terrified shouts coming back to her. The sea witch
knew
. She knew all about them—she knew about their magic! Shock and horror froze her in place, like a glacier. “And I am my clan’s best singer,” Dylan whispered, her eyes tearing up.