Read Chapter 16: The Trial Begins

The fire in the hearth had burned low, orange embers pulsing like a dying heartbeat. Isla stood at the window of the research station, watching the last of the villagers file down the hill from the meeting hall. The vote had gone Morag's way—the Call was accepted. One lunar month. Tam would stay on land, observed, tested. If he failed—if the sea called too loudly, if his selkie nature broke through—he would return to the water, and no one would speak his name again.

Tam sat by the fire, turning the brass whistle over in his fingers. Mrs. Kincaid's whistle. Ewan's whistle. He pressed it to his lips, but no sound came out.

"You don't have to blow it," Isla said, turning from the window. "Not yet."

"I remember the weight of it." His voice was quiet, roughened by the sea air. "But not who gave it to me."

Isla crossed the room and crouched beside him. The firelight carved shadows into his face, and for a moment she saw the boy from Mrs. Kincaid's photograph—the same wide brow, the same stubborn set of the jaw. But that boy had been human. This man sitting before her had walked out of the waves and thrown away his own skin for her.

"You should sleep," she said. "Tomorrow the watching begins."

He caught her hand before she could stand. His grip was warm, calloused from ropes and oars. "When I put on the coat—when I was walking into the water—I felt something pull me back. Not the shore. Not you." He paused. "It was like a voice, telling me I had unfinished business."

"Your memories."

"Maybe." He released her hand. "Or maybe it's just the spell, wearing thin."

A knock at the door made them both turn. Isla checked the clock—past midnight. The village would be asleep by now, save for the watch Morag had promised to appoint.

She opened the door to find no one there. Just wind, carrying the smell of rain and peat smoke. She stepped out onto the stoop, peering into the dark.

The back door of the station banged against its frame.

Isla's blood went cold. She spun, running through the main room to the small storage annex where she had locked the sealskin coat in a metal cabinet. The door was ajar. Weak light spilled from the hallway, and she saw a figure hunched over the cabinet, tearing at the locks with a crowbar—not breaking them, but wedging the metal open with furious, practiced jerks.

"Angus."

He turned. His face was twisted, wild in the dim light. The crowbar came up like a weapon.

"You've doomed us all," he hissed. "You and your creature. Morag's trial is a fool's mercy. The skin must be destroyed—cut the tie—send him back where he belongs."

"The trial was agreed. The whole village—"

"The whole village is afraid, and fear makes sheep of men." He wrenched the cabinet open. The sealskin coat lay inside, folded, gleaming faintly like wet stone. Angus snatched it up.

Isla lunged. She caught his arm, and he stumbled backward into the main room, dragging her with him. The sealskin slipped from his grip, fluttering between them, and Angus swung the crowbar blindly. Isla ducked, felt the iron whistle past her hair, and then she threw herself at him with all the weight she had.

They crashed into the hearth.

The fire exploded. Embers scattered across the floor like angry stars. The sealskin twisted in the air, caught by the draft, and fell—straight into the flames.

Isla screamed.

The coat hit the fire and it roared, the oil-rich fur igniting like kindling. Angus shouted and scrambled back, shielding his face. Isla plunged her hands into the blaze, pulled the burning coat free, and beat at the flames with her palms until they guttered out.

The damage was done. A third of the pelt was charred black, the fur curled and smoking, the edges of the skin blistered like a burn.

A sound came from the other room. Not a shout—a wail. Low, animal, terrible.

Isla ran.

Tam was on the floor, clutching his back, his face white with agony. His shirt was torn, and beneath it, across his shoulder blades and down his spine, his skin was red and raw—not burned cleanly, but mottled with old scar tissue, as if he'd been seared long ago and healed badly. For a moment Isla thought the fire had somehow reached through the coat and marked him in the present. But no—these scars were old, pale at the edges, cratered like the surface of the moon.

She dropped to her knees beside him. "Tam—Tam, what happened?"

He gasped, rolling onto his side. His eyes were wild, unfocused. "The fire. I felt the fire. In my skin, in my bones." He looked up at her, and she saw something new in his face—not confusion, but terror. "It's not the first time."

Isla's hands trembled. She reached for his shirt, pulled it down from his shoulders, and looked at the scars laid bare in the firelight. They formed a pattern—not random, but deliberate. Whorls and lines, like a fingerprint pressed into his flesh. Like a mark.

Angus appeared in the doorway, breathing hard. When he saw Tam's back, all the fight went out of him. He stared, mouth open, and took a step back.

"That's not the burn from tonight," he said, his voice hollow. "That's years old."

"Isla." Mrs. Kincaid's voice cut through the chaos.

Isla looked up. The old woman stood in the open front door, wrapped in a shawl, her face pale in the moonlight. She must have heard the commotion from her cottage down the lane.

Mrs. Kincaid walked slowly across the room, never taking her eyes off Tam's back. She knelt beside him, her weathered fingers hovering over the scars—over the pattern that covered his shoulder blades like wings folded tight.

"I gave Ewan a seashell necklace when he was five," she said softly. "He was so proud of it. He wore it every day. It had a clasp of silver, and he burned himself once—the metal got hot in the sun, and it branded him." Her voice cracked. "Right there. Two lines, curving, like a wave. I remember the scar. I've seen it in my dreams for ten years."

She touched the largest mark on Tam's back. Her hand shook.

Tam went still. His breathing slowed. He turned his head to look at her, and something flickered in his eyes—recognition, or the ghost of it.

"In the water," he said slowly, "there were voices. Always voices. They told me I didn't belong. They told me to forget." He swallowed. "But I kept reaching for something. A shore. A face."

Mrs. Kincaid's tears fell onto the scarred skin. "Ewan."

Tam flinched as if she'd struck him. "No. I'm not—I can't be—"

"You knew the whistle," Isla said, her voice barely above a whisper. "You weighed it in your hand like an old friend."

"I told you." Tam's voice was raw, cracking. "I'm selkie. I'm immortal. Ewan was a human boy who vanished. I'm not him."

Mrs. Kincaid looked at Isla, and in her eyes there was a terrible hope. "The pendant your father left. You said it held a lock of hair. Ewan's hair."

Isla's hand went to her throat. The pendant hung cold against her skin.

Angus stirred in the doorway. His voice was low, shaking. "If he's Ewan MacIver, then Morag—she didn't just take a selkie's skin. She took a child." He stared at the smoking coat on the floor, the charred edges curling like dead leaves. "And if the seal-wife's trial isn't enough to break the spell, then the fire will do what the village couldn't."

Isla rose to her feet. The smoke was clearing, but her lungs burned. She looked at Angus, at the hatred still smoldering in his eyes, and she knew this was not over. He would find another way.

But worse than Angus was the look on Tam's face. He was staring at his own hands, turning them over, as if seeing them for the first time. Checking for scars that matched the ones on his back.

The seal-wife's tide was turning.