The Selkie's Coat

Every fisherman on the island knew the old stories. If you found a sealskin on the rocks, the stories said, you hid it, and the selkie who owned it would be bound to you forever.

Ewan had always thought those stories were cruel.

So when he found the coat one moonlit night, draped over a rock at the far end of the bay, sleek and silver-grey and still warm, he did not hide it. He folded it carefully, sat down on the shingle beside it, and waited.

She came out of the sea an hour later, dark hair streaming, and stopped dead when she saw him.

'You've found it,' she said. Her voice sounded like waves running over stones.

'It's yours,' he said, and held it out.

She stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed, a startled, delighted sound, and sat down next to him on the cold shingle, ignoring the coat entirely.

'Do you know how long it has been,' she said, 'since one of you simply gave it back?'

Her name could not be said in any human language, so she told him to call her Mara. They talked until the moon was high. She asked about his boat and his cottage and the lights of the mainland. He asked about the deep places and the songs of whales.

When the cold grew sharp, she followed him up the path to his cottage by her own choice, carrying her coat over her arm. She stayed until the first grey light of dawn.

At the water's edge she pulled on the sealskin and turned back to him.

'Leave the door unlatched on full moons,' she said, and was gone.