Harren was located on the northern shores of the kingdom. With grey beaches and black cliffs as well as the cold winds and the icy waters, it wasn’t a place many people wanted to travel to. The few visitors to the village only stayed for the night or during the regular occurring storms and left for their real destinations, usually days of travel away. This in turn meant there wasn’t much care invested in the streets to and from the village, making fast travel nearly impossible.

  Much to the displeasure of the priests, between the letter to and the answer of the bishop, almost a month passed. During this time, a tense calm had fallen over the village. The calm broke when another corpse was found.

  A girl again.

  Again, with the same wounds.

  Alistair started to feel apprehensive when he walked to the moorings during the early hours of the day to go fish. The thought that Aila could be the next one became a low, constant murmur in his mind. One he could still tone out if he wanted, but not get rid of. Another nagging thought, much older yet equally insistent, reared its head.

  If only I had my mother’s sealskin.

  Only once Aila poked her head out from the water at the mooring, and he could be sure she was fine, those thoughts grew silent. It also seemed them being together at sea was a source of calm for her as well. They needed each other as much as the air to breathe.

  The day after the last victim had been found, they set out as usual. Aila in her seal-form right next to him in his boat. Once they brought some distance between themselves and the shore, she jumped into the boat. At first, this had been their only way of meeting, but for about a year it had just become a pleasant thing to do.

  “I’ve come to wonder about a few things”, said Aila after he had thrown out the last of his baits.

  “Do go on”, he encouraged her, as she didn’t continue.

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  “Maude had told me about a month before she was… you know… that she had seen something odd in the water while hunting”, she continued tense.

  “Odd? To what extent?”

  “She spoke about a devil lurking in the deep. Something like a seal but much more monstrous. Like… like a werewolf is to a human.”

  “Can Selkies become werewolves?”, Alistair asked after thinking about it for a few moments.

  “I don’t know…”, Aila replied and slumped down a bit.

  “Did she tell your aunt and uncle?”

  “Yes, but they put it up to diving sickness. After all, Maude liked to dive deeper than anyone.”

  “I mean… We don’t really know what lives down here”, he said and looked over the side of his boat, which now appeared much smaller to him than it already was. “Perhaps there are were-selkies or the like.”

  “No, I don’t think so”, Aila replied thoughtful and shook her head. “Perhaps it was just diving sickness.”

  “But aren’t there different tribes of Selkies?”, he asked, as he remembered to have heard something like this some time ago.

  “There are as many Selkie tribes as there are seals”, she said, somewhat taken aback by his uncertainty. “My gran told me about a tribe high up in the north, who look in their seal-form like a walrus. The men are supposed to have quite the remarkable beards…”

  “Should I grow out my beard?”

  “Oh no! You would look too much like one of those grimy sailors who sometimes accidentally wash ashore around here!”

  “Alright, alright, love! I promise I won’t. But back to our topic: Couldn’t a Selkie of a different tribe be here and committing those… murders?”

  “While plausible, I don’t think so. It’s quite difficult for a member of a different tribe to hide from another. We would smell a stranger within a mile.”

  Alistair let that sink in for a while. Looking at the calm sea, he still wondered about what was hidden below it. There had been tales of giant sea monsters from some of those sailors Aila had just mentioned. And there were the old legends well known around the region. Not just about Selkies, but also about mermaids, and the spirits of those who sought their end at the cliffs just a few miles west of the village.

  Suddenly, this old unbidden thought crossed again his mind.

  If I had my mother’s sealskin…

  For a long time, he had dreamed to roam the sea as a seal. Even before he had met Aila, he had longed for a sealskin. But there was nothing he could do. There was no way for him to get one.

  Before his glum thoughts could truly manifest, one of the fishing lines connecting the nets to his boat was pulled taut. Alistair reacted without thinking and began to hall the catch in with Aila’s help. Once the haul was in the boat, he started to sort it while Aila ate a few of the more sizable fish. At first, it had been odd to see such a petit girl eat like this, but he soon had found it quite adorable — much to her playful dismay.