Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

grain and apples chased around the rim.
    Shimmying out of her robe, she threw back the lid.
     
    Her pelt lay inside, silver brown and brindled in a pattern of fine dark spots, uniquely hers. She scooped it up, cradling the fur skin against her bare breasts with one arm as she bundled the velvet robe away.
     
    A fresh breeze teased her hair and ruffled the pelt in her arms. She raised her head to sniff the wind, shivering delicately.
     
    Dropping the lid of the chest, she followed the air current to the mouth of the cave. Light bounced from the sea and glittered on the rocks.
    The sea cliffs towered at her back. Waves hissed and rushed at her pale, thin, human feet. She stood with the water foaming around her ankles as birds wheeled and cried over the ocean.
     
    She raised the heavy pelt over her head. Its weight caressed her back and settled over her shoulders. She felt it wrap to embrace her as the Change took her, as her neck and forearms shortened, as her torso thickened, as her thighs fused and shrank. Color and sound dimmed.
    Brightness assaulted her expanding pupils. The cry of the birds sounded thin and far away. And oh, the smells! They poured over her, a thick, rich sea brew of kelp, cod, mussels, and plankton, carried to her on the breeze.
     
    She inhaled deeply, lifting her sleek, bullet-shaped head to the wind.
    Her whiskers quivered. She humped her body forward over the rocks, propelling herself awkwardly with her stubby flippers and strong abdominal muscles. A wave surged to greet her. She let it lift and roll her,
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    let it seize and take her, let herself glide, surrounded and immersed in pure sensation.
     
    Sunlight struck through the darkening waves, through swaying forests of kelp and rocks teeming with life, with barnacles and limpets, seaweed and anemones. Here was grace. Here was freedom.
     
    Here was home.
     
    She plunged through the cool, dark water, leaving thought behind.
    Her worries streamed up and away like a chain of silver bubbles.
     

     
    She could do this, first-year teacher Lucy Hunter assured herself at the end-of-year assembly. She could survive another summer on the island. She had before. Twenty-two of them, for God’s sake.
     
    She smiled encouragement at Hannah Bly, fidgeting with the rest of the island school chorus on a platform stage under the basketball goal.
    Students and parents packed the community center. Folding chairs squeaked on the wooden floor. The scent of coffee brewing in the lobby overlaid the gym smells of dust and sweat.
     
    The important thing was to keep busy. She could run every morning and do lesson plans in the afternoon. The garden project she supervised met twice a week. She volunteered at the church and the library. With a little juggling, a little luck, she could stay out of the house and avoid the beach entirely until school began again.
     
    “Takes you back, doesn’t it?” her brother Caleb murmured low behind her.
     
    Startled, Lucy turned her head. She had glimpsed him before the program started, surrounded by men eager to shake the hand of the island’s returning war hero. But as soon as the children launched into their closing song, she figured Caleb would slip out to the parking lot to direct traffic.
     
    She felt a glow of pleasure he would seek her out instead.
     
    “It’s nice to have you here.”
     
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    “For a change.”
     
    Caleb had raised her since . . . well, since she was in diapers. After their mother disappeared, taking their thirteen-year -old brother with her, there hadn’t been anyone else to do the job. Certainly not their father, who had responded to his wife’s desertion by retreating to his boat and the bottle.
     
    Caleb had left for college the year Lucy started third grade. But she remembered him standing at the back of the room for her end-of-year assemblies—her tall, kind, impossibly cool, remarkably tolerant older brother.
     
    “You came as often as you could.”
     
    “Not often enough.” Caleb stared out at the rows of folding chairs filled with parents and grandparents. The entire Hopkins family had turned out to recognize son Matt’s graduation from the high school on the mainland. Regina Barone, in black pencil jeans and a chic white blouse, sat beside her mother, Antonia, in a purple velour track suit to see Nick advance a grade. “I missed your college graduation. ”
     
    “You were busy.”
     
    He was in Iraq. Something else they never talked about.
     
    Lucy tried