He spent all his time at the shore as his mother had before him
and the seal maiden would look out at him from the cottage
and be afraid that something beyond her power was going to take him from her.
And something did.
It was on a hot afternoon and the seal maiden lay asleep.
The boy played on the floor beside her for a while
and then, growing bored, began to search under the seal maiden's bed
for some new thing to entertain him.
First, he only found seashells and an old fishing net.
He played with these for a while,
pretending he was some beautiful fish trapped in a web at the bottom of the sea.
He wriggled and rolled in the net right under his mother's bed
until a sack fell out from the boards of the bed.
Of course he opened it
and found a white skin of the softest thread and skin.
He wasn't surprised at finding it. It seemed familiar.
And when he put it on, it fitted perfectly.
And when he looked at himself in his mother's looking glass,
for the first time he recognised himself.
"So this is who I really am!" the boy said,
smiling at the white seal who smiled back at him.
And as every creature will sooner or later obey its nature,
the seal boy obeyed his and ran for the waves.
The seal maiden woke with a cry on her lips, saw the empty sack on the bed beside her,
and raced to the shore
just in time to see the sleek, white neck of her son
dive beneath a high, grey wave.
When Red Brian came in from the sea that evening,
and the seal maiden told him the boy had disappeared into the waves,
Red Brian keeled over in a faint.
He woke sobbing three hours later.
The seal maiden tried to comfort him,
told him the boy wasn't lost, had only discovered his sealskin,
and made away with it into the wide, cold sea.
Red Brian told her to stop raving. The boy was lost, drowned.
A seven year old child could not fight those Atlantic breakers.
They both walked out to the shore, Red Brian looking for the body of his son,
the seal maiden straining for a glimpse of wet, white fur.
Neither saw any sign of him.
Things were quiet in that house for a long time.
Then, something marvelous happened.
It was one of those nights where the moon has the sky to herself
and she highsteps across it to some inaudible moon music.