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.