Ursilla paused. “To be free.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” said the selkie. “I may know a way of allowing you to be true to your word while ensuring your husband may never bring grief upon you again. It may mean the agony of my company, however.”

And Ursilla, thinking again of how broad the selkie’s shoulders were, how strong his hands, said:

“I can deal with that.”

This is the story they tell:

Ursilla of Stronsay went to the selkie and she went away, laden with child. The birth was easy, perhaps even easier than it should have been: the infant, they say, practically swam through the effluvium. They say too that a midwife took the baby into her arms and cried out at the webbing between the child’s fingers, the sheen of its flesh in the candle-light, so like the pelt of a grey seal.

They say Ursilla of Stronsay gave birth to many such children, all of whom grew into prodigious swimmers. They say nothing about why her husband made no remark on this. They say nothing about the husband, in fact, save for that he did not love Ursilla and was forced into marriage with her, chased into matrimonial bondage by the force of Ursilla’s will.

This is the story they don’t tell:

Seven years after her marriage to a loutish oaf, Ursilla of Stronsay walked to the sea and she did not come back. Some say she drowned herself, some others said her husband was the one to push her head under the water and hold her there until she went still.

Only a few talk about how they see a thing like Ursilla sometimes, knifing through the dark of the ocean, and how they sometimes hear her laughter, a sound feral and bright and free.

a secret of devils

The devil came to Georgia on a Saturday night. Atlanta, specifically. His arrival was heralded by no omens; he took a bumblebee-black cab to the city’s heart, a little suitcase in tow. His attire was sharp enough to kill, of course, but you expect that sort of thing with the devil.

“Where we going?” asked the driver.

“Where we’re needed,” came the reply.

So they drove until they met a woman who’d been bleached of all her sweet. Single mom, two kids, a bag full of grief. Her children were home in a no-bedroom apartment, doing their homework by the light of a sitcom rerun. She was on her way back from the second shift of a second job, eyes bruised by the punches life had thrown.

The devil rolled down his window and grinned. “I’m Lucifer and I’m here to give you what you want.”

“That’s nice,” she said, not slowing. Hell didn’t scare her one bit, not after thirty-seven years in a country with worse. “But I don’t need to bear anyone else’s sins.”