It’s a girl, he thinks.  But her eyes are black and very wide and she’s snapping at the birds and him with a mouth full of sharp teeth.  He yelps and she rears back and vanishes into the water again, leaving Will stunned into a long silence.  The gulls have fled and he’s certain he should do the same, but he can’t seem to make his legs move.  He wonders if he’s dreaming when something else pokes half its head from the water.  It’s a seal, blinking wide black eyes at him.  For lack of a better idea, Will smiles at it.

  He’ll never quite understand what happens next.  The wet skin of the seal seems to loosen from the back.  Its face flops forward to reveal the girl, whose teeth are now bared in a grin.  When Will manages to find his voice, he chokes out, “‘Lo.”

  The girl tilts her head, still smiling, then slips pale arms from the seal’s flippers and snatches up a shell thing.  Her delicate fingers pry it open and she shows Will the nasty little creature inside before slurping it into her mouth.  Then she’s grabbing more, splitting them between Will’s basket and a pile for herself.  She finds more fish than Will thought could fit in the crevices of the rocks.  Soon they both have a feast.

  “That’s good, that’s good,” he has to say, pulling his basket away from her quick hands.  “Thanks.”

  The girl ducks her head, smile turned shy.  She gathers her harvest and eases back into the water.

  “Wait!” Will cries, “Who- who are you?  What’s your name?”

  The girl blinks at him for a moment before rising up and leaning close.  “You might call me Mary,” she says, her voice soft and accented.

  “I’m Will.  Plunkett.”

  Mary giggles, “Sounds like dropping a stone.”  She picks up a pebble and lets it fall with a puh-lunk into the water.  “I have to go.”

  “Oh.  All right.”

  “I might see you again.”

  Will grins, “Yeah?”

  “Not for a long while, though.”  She tilts her head again, smiling, “Will you remember me?”

  He nods, “Always.”

  “Very well.  Until later.”

  “Later.”

  Then she’s gone in the flash of a black tail fin and a spray of water.  Will stumbles back to dry land, trying to force his thoughts to the mouths he needs to feed and away from his strange encounter.

  She never leaves him, however.  Years pass, and he grows big enough for proper work.  Friends go to London, but he stays.  He gets jobs in the harbor and when his muscles ache and he can barely hold his head up, looking out to sea soothes him like nothing else.  Mary’s out there.  She said they would meet again.  He must stay, can’t be gone if she comes.  Some nights when work is slow and his empty stomach makes for an irritating bedmate, their appointment is the only glimmer of light he sees in his future.

  He prepares for it as best he can.  Endures meandering chats with the crusty old sailors in the pubs, waiting for a mention of unlikely creatures seen out at sea.  Selkie, seal-woman, he knows her now.  He wonders what made her speak to him, dull as dirt Will Plunkett.  Why she would wish to a second time.  He hopes he’s not the butt of a joke, a silly human boy she enchanted and left pining for her return.  He gets enough experience with that among the harbor girls.  Not that he makes an earnest attempt with any of them.  Not when every other glance of his goes to sea.

  He’s become rather nimble on the rocks between land and water.  He eats most of his suppers somewhere along the shoreline, wondering if maybe this will be the day he won’t be alone.  Today, he rolls his eyes as he feels someone plop down behind him and hears a feminine voice say, “Puh-lunk.”

  “Go on, Colleen,” Will grumbles, praying the bar maid with the debilitating maternal streak will let him be.

  “Who’s Colleen?” his companion asks archly.

  Will turns, and sees black eyes and a sharp-toothed grin.  He gapes, voice as choked as when he was a boy, “... Mary?”

  “You remember.  It took a long time to find you.”

  Will can hardly think, has to wrap his hands around her arms just to believe she’s real.  He hardly recognizes her like this- if not for the eyes and teeth he’d mistake her for human with her loose dark hair and plain blue dress.  He wonders if he looks as grown-up to her as she does to him.  “I’ve been here.  Waiting.  Looking for you.”

  “And I went to town looking for you.  We were too clever for each other.”

  They laugh together, and Will feels a weight he didn’t know he was carrying lighten.  “Where’s your skin?  The other one?”

  She tilts her head the way she’s done in his dreams.  “That’s for me to know.  A girl must keep some mysteries about her.”

  Will feels his cheeks heat, “Right, yeah, sorry.”

  She leans close until their foreheads touch.  “I’ll stay a while, though.  If you don’t mind.”

  Will dares to run his thumb along her cheek.  “Stay as long as you like, Mary.”

  He breathes easier with her here.  The town that’s felt like a trap at times is now filled with wonders to be shared with Mary.  And she shares wonders of her own.  His Mary is a learned woman, packed with knowledge of the sea and of other lands and even medicine.  Will mourns the fact that they can only spend a few hours each day together, between his work and her flitting off elsewhere at sunset.

  One such evening, Mary turns to leave and Will’s heart aches like it’s trying to follow her without the rest of him.  He snags her wrist loosely, saying, “Please, d’you have to go?”

  Mary lets him draw her back, a few teeth pressing into her lower lip as she gazes at him, the black in her eyes bottomless.  “Come with me?”

  Will feels like he could float off the ground, “Yeah- yes!”

  She leads him away along the shore until they reach a flooded cave.  They climb inside through a hole in the top and stand on a small shelf of rock.  Will nods to himself when Mary reaches into a crack in the wall and pulls out her seal skin.

  “That’s where you go,” he says, “Back to sea.”

  “Seals live cheaper,” she replies with a shrug.  Then she studies him again.  “I’ve no mysteries now.”

  Will grins and loops his arms around her waist, “That’s definitely not true.”  He presses a careful kiss to her lips, and valiantly holds in most of a yelp when her hands grip his head and she returns it tenfold.

  Blood is pounding in his ears so hard it’s difficult to hear when she separates their mouths and speaks.  “I don’t want to go, Will.  I never do.  I want to stay with you.  We could have a life together.”

  “You- y’mean,” he stammers, heart pounding just as hard now, “You’d marry me?  Would you- will you, Mary?”

  He can hardly imagine a clumsier proposal, but she throws her arms around him and kisses messily at his cheek and neck, all while giggling and saying, “Yes, yes!  I, Mary, will marry you, Will.”

  They hardly need a priest to do the deed.  She gives him her seal skin, and Will can feel something shiver in the air between them.

  “I’ll need that back, every now and then,” Mary murmurs, eyes on the dark bundle in Will’s hands, “Just for the odd visit.  I will return.”

  Will nods, “Yeah.  I believe you.  I trust you.”

  She steps close, brings their foreheads together.  “I love you.”

  Will smiles, “That too.”

  It’s not long before Mary shares her dream with Will.  “An apothecary shop,” she says, “My people have forgotten more than yours have ever known about healing illnesses and injuries.  I think it’s time that knowledge was shared.  I just need the right person to help me.”  At first, Will would call himself the last man suited for the job, but strangely he takes to the planning as time goes by.  He becomes the public face of the operation while Mary stands nearby, strange eyes downcast and mouth closed around pointed teeth.  He follows her every word.  Not only does she have knowledge of medicine that exceeds any blood-letter he’s seen, she has loot- old coins from a shipwreck.  Plus his own meager savings, it’s just enough to get them off the ground.

  And it’s good.  Will is happier than he can ever remember being.  He loves his strange, brilliant wife, and it only takes a few months for him to believe with his head as well as his heart that she’ll come back when she goes to sea.  The shop has a host of regular customers as word of the Plunketts’ efficacious remedies spreads.  Mary kindly shares some of her learning with Will so he can help prepare each powder and salve and pill.

  One day a carriage rolls up to their door.  The coachman hops down and lets out a gentleman, heavily cloaked with a hat perched on his head and a silver-handled walking stick in his grasp.  However, all the pomp in the world can’t hide the man’s careful limp from the Plunketts’ trained eyes.  Normally Will takes the cure for this particular problem to the brothel himself, where it’s sold at a discount per Mary’s instructions.

  He exchanges a glance with his wife.  She smirks, “I’ll prepare the saltpeter.”

   “Af’noon, sir,” Will announces as the shop door opens and Mary ducks into the storage room, “How can I help?”

  The man swallows and approaches, wincing with each step.  “I am given to believe this is where one might find... a certain item, if one has a need for such things.”  Every word is clipped, and he seems to be very interested in the state of the shop’s ceiling.

  “One might find certain items for all sorts of needs here, milord,” Will responds mildly.

  The man rolls his eyes impressively and shifts on his feet awkwardly.  “The pox cure, you dolt, where is it?” he bites out.

  Will forces down the urge to kick the diseased peacock out of the shop then and there.  “None ready at the moment, I’m afraid.  It takes time.  Money, too.”

  The man growls and claws at his purse until he can slam a few coins down on the table.  “There.  Get to work.”

  Will surveys the coins while Mary slips back into the room.  “A shilling and sixpence?  That meant to be a joke?”

  “What are you talking about?  Get on with it.”

  Will gives him a baffled frown, “See, though, if curing the pox were easy, or cheap, anyone’d do it.  But they don’t.  We do.  For about ten times this amount.”

  The man lets out a harsh laugh, “Nonsense.  Parking my carriage outside is worth more in public opinion than what you make in a year.  I’m practically a business partner just by setting foot in this sty.  If you’ve any brains at all, you’ll take what I give you and make what I tell you, understand?”

  Will folds his arms, “Sorry, mate, my price is my price.”  He strikes a thoughtful pose, then snaps his fingers, “Hey!  You might could get the whores’ discount.  Would that apply, sir?”

  Pain blooms in his cheek and he falls to one knee.  Mary appears at his side while he glares up at the man, who sets the tip of his walking stick back on the floor.  Will feels his wife trembling as she holds him.  Glancing at her face hidden by a curtain of hair, he doesn’t find fear but rage so ferocious she’s bitten six points of blood into her lip.  Will ponders how severe the consequences might be if Mary used her teeth on a worthier target, but then the man is talking, “I tried to be civil, but clearly that’s not a concept you understand.  Pity.”

  He marches from the shop with his cloak flapping behind like stork wings and his contaminated privates making him waddle like a duck.

  Will and Mary sigh.  He wipes a thumb through the blood dripping down his wife’s chin while she gently inspects her husband’s swelling cheek.  “You’ll need honey for those punctures,” he says.

  “You’ll need arnica for that bruise.”

  He manages to smile, “Well let’s get to it, then.”

  They try to push the incident from their minds and carry on with business.  Success is limited, Will knows a commoner doesn’t get to call a gentleman a whore for free, indirectly or not, and Mary picks up on his tension as he waits for the other shoe to drop.

  Though he’s been looking over his shoulder for what feels like years, Will’s still startled from sleep by bangs and crashes in the shop below his and Mary’s living quarters.  Then he smells smoke.  “Christ, Mary, wake up!”

  Orange light is already glinting in her black eyes.  “Will, the saltpeter, we have to move!”

  Pure panic takes them both as they run from the building as fast as their legs can carry them, hardly seeing the flames licking up the walls of the shop and eating at the broken furniture and containers.  They stagger into the cold autumn night and watch, clinging to each other while their home and shop burn from the inside out.

  Suddenly Mary goes stiff, “My skin... my skin!”

  She tries to bolt back in, but Will grabs her around the waist and hauls her to him just as an explosion from the storage room makes the ground shudder beneath their feet.  Mary wails and collapses and Will can only pray she won’t die on the spot.

  The fire burns through the night.  A bucket chain is formed mostly to keep it contained in one building.  It’s a blackened shell by morning.  Will and Mary have nothing but the clothes they slept in.  For a few days, they find charity from people healed by their remedies.  They get clothes and suppers, and floors to sleep on.  But eventually offers of help start drying up, and men in the harbor turn Will away when he asks about work.  Their pox-riddled would-be customer has poisoned Will’s name as well as destroyed his home and livelihood, and has walked away without a speck on him.  As for Mary, her oddities were easily disregarded when she was spending money and curing ills, but now suspicion infects every look cast at her.  She carries on, but each day seems to weigh on her like three.  The flesh evaporates from her bones, and Will sees deep fear in her eyes when she thinks he’s not looking.

  With nowhere else to go, he takes her under the bridge, the closest thing he had to a safe haven as a child.  It’s a tiny space for two adults, but it puts a thin boundary between them and the biting cold outside.  When they wake one morning, Mary is too weak to stand.  Will spends the day on the shoreline, battling the gulls to catch enough fish to feed her.

  “I was never as good at this as you are, but I got what I could,” he says as he crawls close to her, forcing away the fear that he’ll find her still and cold.

  His heart stops when he sees her eyes- half-open, blank, and dull.  It starts again when she draws in a reedy breath to say, “Will...”

  “Yes, love?”

  “I have to go back.  To the sea.”  Tears fill her eyes.  “I don’t want to leave you.  But I don’t want to die.  I’m so sorry.”

  Will’s throat aches with grief as he cradles her head in his hand and presses his own against her sternum.  “No, no.  You’ll live.  Right?  Even without your skin?  If you go back, you’ll live?”

  She waits too long before saying, “Yes.”

  Will feels like he’s being torn apart.  “You don’t know.  Mary, I can’t...”

  “I will die if I stay here.  But the sea may take me back.  Please.”

  Misery fills Will’s chest with stone, but he lifts his head and nods.  “I might see you again.  Will you remember me?”

  Her bloodless lips twitch into a smile.  “I will try.”

  He steals a horse, much too far gone to care about consequences anymore.  He rides it as hard as he dares back to the bridge, and helps Mary use the last of her strength to get on with him.  From there they ride to the flooded cave.  The tide is rising and the sun is sinking as Will lays Mary on the ground by the small hole where black water laps.  He holds her hand like crystal and presses her cold palm to his cheek.

  “Goodbye, love,” she says, voice almost stolen by the wind.

  Will shakes his head, eyes burning though he will not blink.  “Until later.”

  For all his desperate hope, Will still feels like a murderer as he pushes Mary into the water.  She sinks and vanishes in an instant and Will clings to the look of peace she wore just before the black closed in.  He waits for a time, but sees nothing- not a seal or a corpse in the surf.  He sheds a few miserable tears before rising to his feet and climbing on the horse.

  He rides for London, knowing the horse will be missed more than him.  He’ll lose himself in the city.  And maybe, eventually, he’ll find a way to make things right.

  ---

  Will drains the last of the hot, bitter coffee and keeps his hands curled around the tin until all the warmth seeps away.  The light’s fading.  He won’t be able to see much longer, but for now, he’ll stay.

  He hears the clomp of familiar boots and wonders at how Macleane can swagger only days after dancing the Tyburn jig.  If nothing else, the man is resilient.  “Come below, Plunkett.  Can’t imagine what you’re about sitting out here all hours.  What are you even looking at?  It won’t be America for a while yet.”

  “‘M fine, Macleane.  Go back to Rebecca.”

  “All right, suit yourself.”  The boots clomp away.