Red Brian took the seal maiden
to his house further along the shore.
They drank wine from seashells
and slept wrapped in fishing nets
and before long, she was his wife
and in her happiness forgot even
her first home, the waves, for a time.
The following spring they had a son.
He was born with a sealskin
wrapped lightly around him like a coat.
Apart from that, he looked
like any other human child.
The seal maiden hid the sealskin
before anybody could see it.
"I'm surely tied to the earth now," the seal maiden
whispered as she looked at the baby boy.
She wondered how much
seal blood was in the baby.
She held her ear to the small chest
to listen for the ocean in his heartbeat.
There it was, a whoosh from the depth.
No one else would hear it,
only her, and the baby himself.
The seal maiden rarely went
along the shore at night now.
All her time was spent with the baby,
feeding and washing and singing to him.