One (One Universe)

gently, possessively. My whole freedom was tied up in this thing. It killed me to part from it, stow it in one of a dozen hiding places we’d found in the area, but we couldn’t take our sealskins back to the house. It wasn’t safe.
    Slipping my sealskin into my backpack, I shouldered it and returned to the riverbank. Was Brennan getting dressed? But I heard nothing from behind the holly bush where he’d hidden his backpack of clothes, and when I glanced at the dirt beside the water, it was dry except for my damp footprints.
    I peered into the depths just beyond the ledge.
    “Come on, Brennan,” I called. My voice would be distorted by the water, but Brennan would hear me. How long did a catfish take to devour, anyway?
    I inhaled, but my nose now caught only the overwhelming scent of pine. My senses were always sharper in seal form, except perhaps for touch. My human skin, without the guard hairs that covered my other self, was definitely more sensitive. And delicate—I’d nicked myself on a thorny bramble earlier, and I stretched out my hand to inspect it. The pad of my thumb, which had sported the wound, was pristine again. Changing healed little injuries, though it didn’t, sadly, maintain things like manicures. I hadn’t bothered to paint my nails in over a year.
    A shadow in the river caught my eye. Finally. Brennan was … coming up too fast. “Wait,” I yelped, but before I could move Brennan exploded out of the river, leaping into the air right beside the ledge and flopping down again. The wave of wet hit me nearly full-on.
    Sputtering, I shrieked a curse as Brennan disappeared underwater. Surprise cannonballs had been my brother’s signature move at the public pool when we were younger—his and every other boy’s.
    My twin surfaced ten feet offshore for my reaction. My jeans were drenched, my sweater half-soaked. Not that it really mattered—my long dark hair dripped down my back anyways—but getting mad was part of the fun. I stamped my foot and cupped my hands around my mouth.
    “That’s it—I’m making turtle soup out of Nicky’s cousins!”
    Brennan blew out his breath in what amounted to a seal laugh, then submerged. I hastily backed up, but when Brennan reappeared he simply pulled himself onto the ledge. I sat down on a tree stump to wring out my hair, averting my eyes while Brennan shifted forms and wrapped his sealskin around him.
    “You wouldn’t dare,” Brennan said, a little breathless from the change . It had only taken him four seconds; I wasn’t sure why he was faster than me. I rolled my eyes as he pushed himself upright. In human form my brother stood two inches taller than my five-foot-eight frame, his driftwood-colored hair lighter than my dark brown waves. But we shared the same blue eyes, and our mother’s narrow nose. And, of course, our selkie genes.
    Still grinning about his prank, Brennan jumped up onto the bank and headed for his holly bush to swap his sealskin for his clothes.
    As I finished wringing out my hair, my thoughts returned to our trapped family. They were admittedly never far from my mind, but swimming, although it cleared my head and calmed my nerves, always brought home exactly what our parents and older brother were being denied. We’d been trying for two years to get their sealskins back, but so far we’d failed. Sometimes it felt hopeless.
    “What are we going to do, Brennan?” I said quietly, my humor gone.
    “About what?” he called.
    “About our parents.” As if I could mean anything else.
    “We’re doing everything we can.” His muffled voice was not nearly as urgent as I’d have liked.
    “It’s not enough.”
    I heard a sigh. “Give it a rest, will you?”
    My mouth went flat. A rest. That’s all Brennan said lately. Remembering his possibly-private thought, I wondered if he’d given up entirely, if he was just biding his time until I gave up too. Anger twined itself through my voice.
    “They’ll die here if we don’t free them.”
    Brennan stepped out of the shadows and shouldered his backpack.
    “Melodrama alert.” Seeing my face, he hesitated. “Let’s sleep on it, okay?”
    I wanted to tear into him, but getting into an argument now wouldn’t do any good. Taking a deep breath, I stood and twisted my hair into a bun, securing it with what looked like innocent hair sticks—knives, after all, weren’t allowed in school.
    “Okay.” I jerked my lips into a smile and picked up my backpack. “There are