Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

for the coverage of his pelt, craving the rush and freedom of the sea.
     
    His hands flexed and fisted. He had dallied in human form before, sometimes for sex, most often alone on the island his mother had bequeathed to him. But never for so long. Never surrounded by other beings who claimed a share of his space, a portion of his attention. He felt assaulted, abraded, by the constant human contact.
     
    No wonder the old king, Llyr, had gone “beneath the wave,” the polite selkie term for those who had withdrawn so deeply into themselves and the sea that they lost the desire and ability to assume human shape.
     
    The smell of diesel and oil, the tang of coffee, sweat, and cigarettes, rose from the saturated planks, overlaying the rich brine of the ocean.
    Fishermen came into the low wooden building to sell their catch, to buy bait and fuel and rubber bands, to share complaints or gossip. Dylan felt their glances light like flies against his skin, but no one questioned his presence. He was accepted— not one of them, but still of the island.
     
    He listened to their conversations, trying to fathom from their talk of weather, traps, and prices what the demons could possibly want from World’s End.
     
    “He’s got no right to set traps on that ledge,” one man told another.
    “So I cut his line and retied it with a big knot up by the buoy.”
     
    His companion nodded. “That’ll teach him.”
     
    “It better.” The rumble of an incoming boat underscored the threat.
    “Or next time I’ll cut his line for good.”
     
    Dylan smiled to himself. Apparently humans could be as territorial as selkies.
     
    58
     
    The engine behind him throttled down. Another fisherman, Dylan thought. He turned. And froze, his casual greeting stuck in his throat.
     
    The boat was the Pretty Saro. He recognized her lines even before he registered the name painted on her side. And the fisherman was Bart Hunter.
     
    His father.
     
    He was old. Dylan had seen his father before, of course, at the wedding. But out of a suit, out in the sunlight, the realization struck with fresh force.
     
    Bart Hunter had always been a big man. Dylan had his height; Caleb, his shoulders and large, square, workingman’s hands. But the years or the drinking had whittled the flesh from his bones, weathered his face, bleached his hair, until he stood like an old spar, stark and gray. Human.
    Old.
     
    How had Dylan ever been afraid of him?
     
    They stared at each other across the narrowing strip of water.
     
    They had barely spoken at the wedding. Dylan had nothing to say to the man who had held his mother captive for fourteen years.
     
    But before he could clear out, Bart tossed him a rope.
     
    Dylan caught it automatically. Old habits died hard. He was eight or nine when he started sterning for his father, hard, wet, dirty work in oversized boots and rubber gloves.
     
    Dylan tied the line, cursing the memories that dragged at him as hard as any rope.
     
    And then he turned and walked away without a word. “Don’t judge me, boy,” Bart called after him. The words thumped like stones between his shoulder blades. “You can’t judge me.”
     
    Dylan did not look back.
     
    59
    He climbed the road away from the wharf, the need to escape swelling inside him, coiling in his gut, clawing under his skin.
     
    He sucked in the cool ocean air in a vain attempt to placate the beast in his belly. He burned with need, for a woman, for the sea, the two hungers twining and combining, eating him up inside. He fought the urge to run back and plunge off the pier, to merge with the dance beneath the waves, the life lurking, darting, swaying, streaming, in the flowing moss, in the forests of kelp, in the cold, deep dark. To blot out thought with sensation. To wash the taint of humanity from his soul.
     
    How did Conn stand it?
     
    Within the confines of Sanctuary, the prince had held to his human form longer than any selkie living. But he would not leave the magic of the island. He could not risk aging.
     
    Dylan gulped another mouthful of air. He was young by selkie standards— not yet forty. He could spend weeks, years, on land and still not approach his chronological age. At least he would not die from this experience. Unless the frustration killed him.
     
    He raised his gaze from the asphalt. At the top of the winding road, the restaurant’s red awning gleamed like a sail in the sunset.
     
    The slippery knot in his gut eased. There was one