“You know how gossip spreads.”

She did indeed. All of the fathers whose sons she had spurned sent her polite letters congratulating her on her charity, wishing her well, the message knotted through their courtesies as anything: they knew who she was to marry and they were embarrassed for her, and thankful too that their sons hadn’t taken an idiot to wed.

“I do.”

“But she came back, when she was old, and we were friends again then. Nothing more, for all that others might have claimed.” He paused. “Your grandmother was a comely woman, you know?”

Ursilla nodded. She had been told this many times, had seen proof of the resemblance too in the portrait that hung above the fireplace in her father’s study. She and her grandmother possessed the same shade of red in their hair, the same smirk, and the same wealth of cleavage, though the last Ursilla often kept bound for ease of movement.

“As am I.”

The man laughed again. “You have her spirit.”

He emerged then from around a boulder, almost exactly as Ursilla had pictured. He was somehow taller than her father, who was, before this, the tallest man she had ever known. His hair was black and long and dripped with sea water, and what Ursilla could see of his eyes under his fringe were as chips of polished obsidian. A sealskin cape draped over his gleaming frame, its worn clasp the chewed-on tooth of a megalodon.

“Ah,” said Ursilla. “You’re a selkie.”

There was an accusation in the careful pronouncement of his nature that did not go unnoticed by the selkie, who grinned under her wary scrutiny.

“In the flesh as it were.”

“Your kind drown women.” Ursilla brandished her knife, hoping the iron would cow him.

“Hearsay,” said the selkie. “Lies told by angry husbands. What we do is give neglected wives respite from their cold marriage beds.”

“You eat people.”

The smile he bared was a carnivore’s grin.

“Only if they ask us nicely.”

Ursilla snorted. She knew what he meant.

“What do you want from me?” she said.

The selkie spread his hands. Ursilla saw thick webbing between each of his fingers, which in turn were callused but graceful. This made sense. Seals were limber creatures, for all of their roundness.

“Whatever that you desire.”

“I have everything I want,” said Ursilla, cold as the sea. “And no desire for bargaining with the fae. I know your stories. I know not to trust your kind.”

“Really?” said the selkie. “When it is your kind who steal the skins from our women, your kind who force your girls into unwanted marriages.”