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A Little Mermaid Retelling
ADELLA BLINKED HER eyes open as something hit her spotted gray skin. She’d been lounging on the edge of the water, soaking in the bright, hot sunshine of August, and was almost asleep. Her gaze landed on a bright pink piece of plastic, almost shaped like a butterfly, with a bit of rubber sticking from one side.
A pacifier?
Or, at least, that was what her sisters had called it when they brought one back home after their own visits to the human world. And she’d seen one or two since she’d come to the aquarium, a safe place for her to stay while she was here on her own visit. The only safe place, according to her parents—the leaders of the Selkie Scouts.
Her first real assignment, alone, with no one to supervise her. Even if she wasn’t allowed to actually interact with the humans beyond the aquarium workers. Even if it meant her every move was still restricted by her parents and the Scouts. It was the most freedom she’d ever had, the most she’d been allowed to think for herself and make her own choices. And though she yearned for more control over her own life, she wasn’t close to getting it. Not yet. The keys to her future freedom were in their hands, since she hadn’t yet earned the magic that would let her walk among the humans, disguised as one of them. Since she hadn’t proven to her parents that she could be trusted. That their people could be trusted to walk among the humans freely.
She looked up the rocks from the beach, trying to see where the pacifier might have come from, and only one small family stood on the boardwalk overhead. She couldn’t quite make them out from here, not with the way the sunset backlit them, but she could sense a familiarity in that small family of three: a mother, for sure, with a wheeled cart that pushed around a baby, and a young boy, the same family that visited every few days.
They turned away, and Adella glanced at the pacifier again. Were they just going to leave it? Or maybe the boy would come get it later? Adella certainly wasn’t going to touch it. Right?
Lesson one: the Selkie Scouts observe and report. Do nothing else.
But the pacifier didn’t fit in with the rocks and sand, disturbing the natural calm of the enclosure. It was too bright, too pink, so surely one of the humans would come pick it up.
But maybe not until tomorrow. Or maybe they’d never notice it, and the baby would be without the pacifier forever.
Adella turned her face up to the boardwalk again, blinking in the fading daylight and hoping for another glimpse of the family, but they didn’t seem to notice their loss. It was a warm, clear summer evening, and with the cotton candy sunset over the ocean, it wouldn’t be long before the humans started their explosions of stars in the night sky. Already the bright white bulbs on their strings and the glittering rainbow lights on the rides and at the booths were flashing, preparing for another night.
Adella slid off the rock where she’d been warming herself in the sun and let the cool saltwater of the aquarium enclosure caress her. A few other seals basked in the fading light behind her or frolicked in the water with her, but none of them were like her, not quite, not even the new, very large seal that had been added only this week. But they did provide excellent camouflage.
Lesson two: when observing humans, the best hiding place is right in the open.
She flopped up onto the sandy beach and grabbed the pacifier, a little act of defiance. She didn’t have to directly interact with the family to at least bring it to her favorite humans. And they’d be able to get it back to them. Maybe.
She shambled toward the small shelter where the humans brought dinner every day, her stomach already growling. The aquarium would be closing to the public for the night soon, which meant the lights would go out, the humans (except the security humans) would go home, and she would be free to roam as she pleased.
She reached the edge of the enclosure, just under the shelter, and dropped the pacifier as close to the gate as possible. The shelter itself was empty, and her heart sank like a stone in the ocean. No one was here.
Then a voice cut through the distant din of the boardwalk.
“Adella! I knew you’d be here.”
She flopped around in a circle to see the boy approaching from around the side. She hadn’t seen him coming, but his name badge flashed in the sunset. Will. She couldn’t read it, but she knew that was his name. Knew the name badge showed he worked here. And in his hand, just as she’d hoped, a shining silver bucket. She gave him a happy little bark.
Will laughed. “That’s my girl.”
Not far behind him was her other favorite human, the girl, Isabella. They usually worked as a team, and she could almost call them friends, even though she couldn’t directly talk with them while she was in this form.
Will set the bucket down in the shelter and unclipped the small gate, using a key only a few humans seemed to have. Then, he grabbed the bucket and stepped inside her hiding place with Isabella.
The other seals heard the click of the lock and started making their way across the beach toward Will and Isabella, ready for their own dinners.
But Adella, as hungry as she was, wasn’t only there for the glimmering fish.
Will set his bucket on the ground and settled into a seat on the steps that led from the shelter to the beach. He sighed and reached for Adella’s head, scratching her under the chin in the exact right place. Adella’s eyes drifted closed.
“I don’t know, Dell,” he said. “The test is tonight. I’m not sure I’m ready. I’d never be able to get a good internship if I failed the class.”
Adella’s eyes fluttered open. There it was again. That word, the one she didn’t quite understand. He’d been bringing it up for weeks now, maybe months, as if it was the only thing he ever thought about. Internship. She knew about classes, and she knew Will had been taking one after-hours on these long summer nights, something in a subject Isabella, the human girl, was particularly good at. But an internship?
“If I don’t get it, how will I ever get into college? I mean, I could find a smaller one. But no other school has the program they do. It wouldn’t be the same.”
More words she didn’t quite understand. But she did understand that look in his eye: Anxiety. Fear. Longing.
She knew all of those things well. The anxiety of always trying to live up to the reputation of her sisters. Her fear that she would never go anywhere as a Selkie Scout. The way she wished she could make her father see the humans the way she did, the way most of them were really good at heart, how much the world had changed since the days so many humans hunted the seals until they feared even poking their heads above the waves for a breath.
The longing to be more than an observer.
Like now, when she wished she could comfort him, speak to him. But she couldn’t create the human words in this form. So instead she pulled herself just a little closer to him, nudging his hand with her head again and tickling him with her whiskers in that way that always made him laugh.
“You hogging our favorite cuddler?” Isabella said, setting her bucket down next to them while Will still laughed. She sat down on Adella’s other side and began tracing the spots on Adella’s skin. “She’s probably hungry.”
Adella stopped tickling Will as Isabella’s soft fingers caressed her skin. She closed her eyes, just basking in the presence of her friends.
Then, the other seals began barking. They were done waiting for Adella to get her daily attention.
“Okay, okay,” Will said, still laughing as he rose to his feet. “I get it. You’re hungry.”
Will and Isabella walked toward the edge of the stairs, reached into the buckets, and began tossing the fish toward the hungry seals. Adella and the others wasted no time in demolishing their dinner, and the humans sauntered away again, gone for another day.
After the sun went down, the lights clicked off one by one, and the aquarium personnel left for the evening, leaving no one but the security guard and the aquarium inhabitants. Adella watched from the seal enclosure, occasionally diving into the salty pool to see inside the aquarium building. She touched her nose to the glass, peering through the window into the interior where vibrant tanks bubbled with every color and species of fish these humans knew about around here. She couldn’t see far into the building, but the fish greeted her as usual, bobbing their bodies on the current and bubbling at her happily, and she did a flip in the water to entertain them. The touch tank around the corner was quiet, no one venturing out of the water that evening, so she kept searching the ground for her best—and only—non-human friend here. At least the only friend she could actually talk to. Finally, she spotted a trail of water gleaming along the floor, leading directly to his rusty red skin and flopping arms.
Olly had made it out of his tank early.
She flipped a few more times in the water, waiting for him to notice her. When he finally looked toward her window, she flapped a flipper at him, and he turned toward the door separating the inside of the aquarium from the outdoor seal habitat.
Adella spun in the water one more time, then sped for the surface. If she beat him there, he’d owe her something from the boardwalk... and she hadn’t won in weeks now. Somehow, he’d found a new route that cut his time in half, even though all she had to do was swim back to the shelter where Will fed them at night.
Just as she’d feared, Olly was already at the gate when she leapt from the water onto the sand.
“Again?” she said, flopping in the sand as her sides heaved.
Olly chuckled. “Sorry, little one. You’ll have to figure out a better route if you want more treats!”
Adella huffed and shook her head. “Like that will happen. What’s the plan for tonight?”
Her heart hammered from the wild sprint and the excitement, and she held her breath to hear Olly’s response. He always had something to amuse her, whether it was a prank on the guards, leaving a confusing surprise for the morning crew, or sneaking into the far reaches of the boardwalk. It was her one chance to leave the post she’d been assigned and actually engage in some fun. Something the Scouts didn’t know about. One small thing they didn’t control and wouldn’t punish her for. After all, she wasn’t technically breaking any rules. And any pleas she did make during her regular reports, pleas to have the magic other selkies were granted already, always fell on deaf ears.
But Olly? She looked over at him again, the way his rusty, gooey body shimmered in the moonlight. He rolled one large gold eye toward her, the edges crinkling in amusement, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
Olly was always there. Always listened. Always cared. He understood, really, what it was like to be trapped somewhere doing things she wouldn’t have chosen for herself and tasting freedom only when the lights went down.
“Tonight,” he said, wiggling one tentacle at her, “we sneak into the kitchen! I’ve got a hankering for a snack, and I think we could prepare something tasty, even without the humans and their thumbs.”
Adella sighed, looking at her flippers.
Olly waved a tentacle again. “I know, I know. If you had your full magic you could have thumbs. Well, it doesn’t matter. You can still do good things, even without that.”
Adella bobbed her head at him but didn’t trust herself to respond, still trying to ignore the frustration.
Olly climbed up onto her back and reached over the gate to the latch, producing a shining silver key attached to a ring with many other jingling keys from the folds of his body. He must have swiped it from the security human earlier. He stuck the key in the lock and turned it with expert precision.
There was a reason the aquarium staff could never keep the octopus in his tank.
The gate swung open, revealing the walkway that led back up to the main building. Olly perched himself on Adella’s back, and she slid and flopped her way up the ramps and toward the back door where Will emerged with buckets of fish. The night was punctuated with the regular crash of the waves beneath them and the occasional shouts amid the boardwalk music, but out here, it was all muffled. They were practically alone in the aquarium.
As they reached the door, Adella stood up on her hind flippers to help Olly reach the lock. While she waited, she looked up at the night sky, dark over the ocean and broken by the shimmer of stars and the bright silver moonlight. The moon’s power made her feel stronger, and if she could, tonight would be a perfect night to shed her seal skin and walk among the humans.
Except, she couldn’t.
Olly slid the keys around the ring, looking for the right one, and then finally unlocked the door. They pushed it open, revealing a sparkling clean kitchen where the food prep for the aquarium residents was done. The air was scented with a mix of cleaner and the ever-present smell of fish, and they made their way into the dark room. Olly pushed the door closed behind them, then expertly climbed the wall toward the light switch. He flicked it with the tip of one arm, and the room lit up as bright as day.
“Won’t that draw the security guard?” Adella said, her voice soft.
“Nah, he already made his rounds. He won’t be back for hours.” Olly hopped back down and flopped toward the buzzing refrigerators on the far wall. “Help me with these, would you?”
Adella followed, lifting him up or grabbing handles and containers as he shoved them to her, each one ice-cold in her mouth. Before long, an assortment of jars and plastic food-storage containers littered the floor, each filled with an assortment of fruits, vegetables, and the same silvery fish that Adella particularly loved.
Olly set to work, popping open the lids and unscrewing caps. It still amazed her that he was capable of such dexterous movement... and that the humans hadn’t figured out he didn’t belong trapped in an aquarium. He belonged out there, free among the waves. But like her, freedom had been denied to him.
But if she said that, if she clued him in that he could actually leave whenever he wanted, she was afraid he might actually do it and leave her all alone here. And as much as she loved the seals in the enclosure where she hid and the fish in the tanks, none of them were as good at conversations as Olly was.
Though, after the last few days, Adella was beginning to suspect that the new seal, the large old lady that mostly kept to herself, actually had something interesting to say. That was, if she could ever get the seal to talk. But seals knew she wasn’t really one of them, and like the others, the old seal had been wary of her.
Olly slid a container of sliced fish and fruits across the floor toward Adella. “What’s with you?” he said. “You seem... distracted.”
Adella slowly chewed through a piece of cantaloupe before answering. What was with her, besides her fear of losing Olly? “I just wish... I wish I could actually talk to the humans, you know?”
“Not really.”
Adella half smiled. “I just don’t understand. I’ve been here for months now, and I don’t see whatever it was that made my family restrict land legs. The humans all seem so much like us. Sure, I know there’s a history of some... not so great stuff...” She shuddered, thinking of the exhibit in the aquarium with information about seal hunting. After she saw that one the first time, she never went back. “But they made laws to protect seals, not to mention all the other sea mammals. They’ve come so far.”
Olly slowly put a piece of fish down in one of the containers, crunching thoughtfully. “Fear is powerful, little one. I’m surprised they even send Scouts to watch the humans.”
Adella shook her head. “They didn’t used to. It took a lot of convincing from a lot of the population, and a lot of them still want their legs back. But it’s a step.”
“How do I say this nicely?” Olly said.
Adella cringed, but he continued without seeming to notice.
“Your parents may have had the best intentions, but hiding from scary things isn’t the way. You’re right... the humans have changed. And I hope you’ll be the one to convince your parents that it’s time to leave the past in the past.”
With that he picked the fish back up, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation. Adella sighed, going back to the bowl of fruit, and they finished their mischievous midnight snack with lighter topics, like why the new seal was so quiet and distant, making up life stories for her like they did for all the new seals.
Once their bellies were full, they closed everything up and slid it back into the fridges as if they’d never been there. Though, Adella was sure someone would eventually notice they were short on the food.
She lay back against the wall, patting at her full belly with a flipper. “Thanks, Olly. Do you think we ought to head back?”
Olly peered through the window toward the sea. The horizon was only the faintest bit pink, signaling that dawn was coming, but the humans always arrived long after the sun had risen.
“I think we have time for one more adventure,” he said. “Feel like having a little fun?”
She burst into a smile. “Do I! What did you have in mind?”
Olly held up the key ring. “Ever hear of an Easter egg hunt?”
***
ADELLA AND OLLY spent the rest of the night hiding the security guard’s keys in different odd places around the aquarium. Her favorites were at the bottom of the turtle tank, in the mouth of a plush seal in the gift shop, and on top of that machine that pressed shiny pennies into souvenirs. Then, they left the empty key ring at the guard’s booth while he made the rounds.
Olly was letting her back into the seal enclosure just as the sun was peeking up over the water, a bright point of orange light that illuminated the rocks and edge of the beach. He scurried away, back to whatever secret path he’d taken earlier to win the race to the enclosure.
Adella turned back to the enclosure, looking for the perfect spot to welcome the sun and take a morning nap, when something bright and pulsing with blue light at the water’s edge caught her eye. She flopped across the sand toward it, her stomach in knots as she approached.
It was a bubble from home. A message from one of her parents. And that could only mean a couple things: either they wanted a report or they were recalling her.
She slowed to a stop next to the bubble and lowered her head to touch her nose to the shining, glowing surface. A seal’s face appeared in the air within, a piece of magic she didn’t understand.
“Dad,” she said softly. “What’s up?”
She almost cringed at how casual it sounded. Her heart raced in her chest, afraid to hear the words she’d dreaded for the long months she’d been here.
“Adella,” he said, a smile touching his face that she couldn’t help but return. “Adella, it’s time. You will close any loose ends and catch the evening tide home. It’s at 10:32 tonight. Don’t miss it!”
She swallowed. “You’re recalling me.”
Her father’s head bobbed in the bubble, and he gave her a long-suffering sigh, though his words were soft and full of compassion. “Your mother misses you. There’s nothing left for you there. It’s time for you to come home. We will see you in the morning.”
She held back her sigh, hoping her breaking heart wasn’t clear in her eyes. She forced a smile. “Yeah, of course. See you in the morning.”
He smiled at her. “Love you, little one.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”
And then the bubble popped.
It was over. She had one chance to say goodbye, to watch the humans for one more day. Then, it was riding the tides back to her family, back to her parents watching her every swim.
She was going home.
ALL MORNING AFTER the bubble had arrived, Adella did her best to stick to her Scout objectives: observe, report, hide. It was the only distraction she really had. Other than that, it was just blending in with the seals or obsessing over the inevitable end of her trip. She spread out on a sun-warmed rock, letting the summer heat cook her until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to dive into the chilly saltwater of the enclosure. She gulped down the few fish that one of the aquarium employees—not Will or Isabella—brought for her. She tried to play with the rubber ball, her favorite way to kill time when no one was around. She even tried talking to the seals, though as usual, they flopped away when she approached. And, as always, the new seal just stared at her, keeping her distance in every possible way.
But for all her attempts at a normal day, she was failing. She couldn’t pay attention enough to make good observations for her final report, and her heart wasn’t in anything else. All she could think about was Will and Isabella, impatiently waiting for the moment they arrived so she could give them a goodbye they wouldn’t understand. They probably wouldn’t realize she was leaving until she was long gone.
But the day dragged on, and she wished more than anything else for her friends, her chest aching and eyes burning with tears her seal form couldn’t cry. If only she had her magic to walk among them, to find her friends and spend one final day with them, really with them. As an equal. Not for the first time, resentment at the protocols built in her chest, squeezing her heart until she wanted to cry. Her heart was breaking, and she was expected to do nothing.
Finally giving up, she tapped the ball with her flipper, popping it into the water, and collapsed onto the sand. She felt flat, deflated, almost wishing the beach would just swallow her up. It would be just as useful as anything else she could do.
She must have dozed off in the afternoon heat, because when she next opened her eyes, the sun was low in the sky and the gate on the far side of the enclosure creaked open. She bolted upright, ready to charge as fast as she could toward her friends, but she froze with a single swing of her head in that direction.
It wasn’t Will or Isabella. Instead, it was the older woman who fed them when Adella’s friends weren’t scheduled to be there. And she held Will’s bucket with the silver fish.
They weren’t coming.
Instead of flopping toward her dinner, she put her head back down and stared out at the ocean, where the tide marched ever closer.
***
AS SOON AS the older woman left, Adella dragged herself across the enclosure to one of the only secluded spots, a small overhang in a pile of black rocks, right by the edge of the water. The other seals mostly left her alone when she was there, and for that she was grateful.
She closed her eyes, the sun warm on her face as it descended to disappear behind the boardwalk. It wouldn’t be long before the sun was gone and the stars were out, but while she usually looked forward to that time, when she didn’t need to watch and report anymore, it held little meaning tonight.
“Kid?” came a raspy voice from somewhere up the beach.
Adella blinked her eyes open and lifted her head, squinting into the last rays of the sun. A dark form hulked on the beach, nothing more than a shadow against the light. “Yes?” she said, voice hesitant.
The shadow lunged forward, sliding down the sand to come to rest next to her. It was the old seal that had joined the enclosure recently, and Adella blinked in surprise. As the woman came closer, she could see this was no ordinary seal. No, this one had to be a selkie, like her. The magic fizzled around her, popping against Adella’s skin like bubbles in the waves.
The selkie settled in next to her. “You’re really close to the young humans, aren’t you?”
Adella, still surprised the old seal was talking to her, blinked again. All she could do was nod.
“Adella, is it?” The selkie chuckled as Adella leaned back in surprise. “Yes, I know your name. I hear what they call you. You can call me Nin.”
“Nin. Okay.”
Nin almost smiled. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I needed to be sure... you wouldn’t give me away.”
“What do you mean?” But even as she said the words, the realization swept over Adella like a wave.
Nin. The legendary selkie mage. The kind who could conjure things out of nothing. Who had retreated from selkie society long ago when her magic was seen as an abomination to the selkie people. Who could grant a selkie their sealskin without the aid of the Scouts or the elders.
Who had been feuding with Adella’s father as long as she could remember, and who her father had finally banished without her magic several years ago.
“You’re a Scout, right?” Nin said, seemingly oblivious to the thoughts tumbling through Adella’s head.
Adella peered at Nin with new eyes. What would the old mage want with her? “What does that have to do with anything?”
Nin did smile this time. “I’ve seen how you yearn to walk among the humans. I’m guessing you haven’t earned your sealskin yet. Correct?”
Adella narrowed her eyes, unsure if she should be offended or worried. “What of it?”
“I thought as much.” Nin hesitated, the smile gone from her face. “And without a sealskin, you’re stuck here... unless someone comes to let you out.”
Adella didn’t respond this time, though her heart raced. So Nin knew of her desire to be free. To be fully selkie. To be away from the Scouts and truly independent.
They both had secrets, and if Nin kept hers, Adella could keep the mage’s secrets, too.
“I’ve seen Olly, too. But I know you can’t go looking for... Will and Isabella. Not in your current form. And I also know you’re not supposed to. But that you want to, more than anything. That you are supposed to go home tonight, but you don’t want to leave without saying goodbye. That you don’t want to leave at all.”
“What does it matter?” Adella snapped, dropping her chin back to the sand. “It was nice talking, but this really seems pointless. And don’t worry, if you don’t want me to report that you’re here, I’m sure I don’t need to.”
And with the level of magic Nin was supposed to have, there was no reason to risk it. But she didn’t say that part.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Nin said. She hesitated long enough that Adella lifted her head and looked back at her again. “But... if you want it, I’d like to help you.”
Adella straightened up. “How can you help me? And why?”
Her heart began to pulse faster. There was one thing she knew Nin could do, if the stories were right. But did she dare hope?
“If you are willing to find what I need, I can give you a sealskin.”
The world seemed to slow around Adella. A sealskin? Could it really be that simple? After all the time she’d spent working for the Scouts and doing everything she was told, after all the time she’d spent bonding with Will and Isabella and watching the world of the humans from afar?
She could finally see everything firsthand. And, even more important, she could find her friends. Maybe talk to them, actually talk to them, for the first time.
“What do you need me to find?” she said, her intense gaze on Nin’s odd, smoky-gray eyes.
Nin smiled. “Something I lost. It was taken from me, really. I’ve been looking for it for ages, and I finally tracked it to this very pier.” Her smile faded. “But I’m old. Tracking things down is young selkies’ work.”
Adella looked away, weighing the options. Nin could help her, but what could she possibly be looking for in a human settlement, and why?
Nin seemed to sense Adella’s hesitation. “If you’re worried that it’s something dangerous, don’t. It’s a pearl.”
“A pearl? Can’t you just find another one somewhere?”
“Not like this. It’s a very special pearl. So what do you say?”
She gave it a few more moments’ thought, but she couldn’t see a downside. After all, what harm could a pearl do? And if Nin had tracked it all the way here, then it must be very important to her. If Adella lost something important, she hoped someone would help her, too.
And this might be her only chance, her last chance, to spend time with the humans. To bid her farewells before moving on as she’d been instructed.
She studied the older selkie for another long moment, but she couldn’t sense any deception or malicious intent. And Adella was a pretty good judge of character, if anyone asked her.
She took a deep breath, then met Nin’s eyes. “I’ll do it,” Adella said. “How do I find this pearl?”
Nin smiled. “Wonderful. After you transform, I’ll give you a spell. Once you’re close, you will feel it. And when you see it, you’ll know it’s the one. There are no other pearls like it.”
Adella nodded, a little uneasy now. A pearl like no other? “Okay... What makes it so special?”
Nin hesitated, then said, “I am about to give you a great gift. Wouldn’t you want me to share my magic with everyone?”
Adella gazed at her, unsure how to respond. She didn’t know enough about magic to really understand what Nin could mean by that, but perhaps that was a problem for after she found Will. And if Nin meant what she thought... then she agreed. The Scouts and the elders shouldn’t hold everyone’s magic hostage until they proved themselves.
Selkies were meant to be free. And maybe... maybe if Nin had her magic, she could help Adella convince her family that it was time to release them all.
“Prepare yourself,” Nin said, breaking Adella’s thoughts.
There was no time to prepare, though. Before she even had a chance to take a breath, a sensation like a cold ocean wave swept over Adella. It was almost like the feel of the moonlight on her skin, only... different. It tickled her skin like the rising of bubbles in the surf, like the magic she’d felt around Nin earlier.
But more than that, something changed within her. She could feel herself splitting, becoming something made of two distinct natures. The seal she knew. It was the form she’d carried for her entire life.
And then there was the second form, one that felt long and lithe like kelp instead of swift and strong like a current.
Light burst behind her eyes, and she suddenly felt the two somehow merge, like the seal was only one piece of her, a mask. Like she could step out of her seal form any time she wanted to don a different mask.
The light faded, and the evening crowded back in around them. Adella blinked as if with new eyes, every sensation the same, yet stronger, like there was an entire side of herself that had simply been locked away.
“Try it,” came Nin’s voice, clearer and stronger than it had seemed before. “Step out of your skin.”
Step out of her skin? What did that even mean?
Yet even as she wondered, she somehow knew, like it was some inborn instinct that she just needed to remember.
Adella rose up, propping herself on her flippers while pulling herself away from the seal mask. Slowly, she felt her limbs shift into that smaller form, and she stood on spindly legs, the sealskin pooling around her feet.
Nin cocked a half smile at her. “You did it.”
Adella looked down at the skin on the ground around her. It was a soft mottled gray, the same skin she’d worn her whole life. Even disconnected from herself like this, it was still her. Still a part of her. Still precious.
What did she look like now?
Adella leapt over the folds of skin and darted for a calm tide pool nestled in the rocks. She leaned over, trying to see herself in the mirror-like surface, even in the fading light. She touched her face with slender fingers, feeling her nose, her lips, the curve of her chin. Bright blue-gray eyes stared at her, her own eyes, the ones she’d always known. But the rest of her... she knew it was her, but long, wavy hair fluttered darkly around a pale face speckled with freckles, a smattering like stars or bubbles across her nose and cheeks.
Her gaze moved down to her hands, the fingers splayed without webbing, dexterous and quick. And her body was athletic, keeping all the training she had done as a seal, despite the lazy days in the enclosure. And two feet, right there, ready to walk her straight to the boardwalk, to find her human friends, to be like them.
She really was human.
“Now, mind you, you’ll have to be very careful where you store that while you’re in your human form,” Nin said, breaking through Adella’s wonder as she gestured to the sealskin on the sand. “And you’ll want to find some human clothes to wear before you go into public.”
She looked down at herself again. Of course. Clothes. But maybe Olly could help her with that. Right?
“And one more thing,” Nin continued. “There is one... condition of this spell.”
Adella’s gaze snapped up to the mage. “Condition?”
“This isn’t permanent. You must find the pearl and bring it to me, or the spell ends.”
“It... ends?”
Nin nodded. “I can make it permanent with the pearl, but the way the Scouts locked up your abilities... There is only so much I can do like this. And... there is a chance that if you do not find the pearl, you will lose your ability to transform. Forever. So hurry. Find your friends. Find the pearl. You should have until sunrise.”
Adella blinked. Sunrise. It seemed like not enough time, but sunrise was long after the tide that was supposed to take her home.
She’d have to be even faster.
Her heart thudded in her now-human chest. One night. She had one night to find her humans and the mage’s pearl.
She shuddered to think of the consequences if she failed. Or if she missed the tide.
ADELLA QUICKLY TUCKED her sealskin into a crevice in the rocks, weighing it down with stones and disguising it with clumps of seaweed while making sure no one was watching, including Nin. After all, she’d only just met the mage, and the warning still rang in her head, though to be honest she wasn’t quite sure what would happen if someone got her skin. Between the natural rocky colors of her coat and the camouflage, she was almost convinced her skin would be safe.
Then, she turned back to the mage, offering her hand to the seal. The next spell was quick and simple, much different than the spell that allowed her to transform. Her hand simply grew warm for several moments, then a symbol appeared to glow on her palm, something that looked like an orb surrounded by text she couldn’t read, all glowing with bright gold light. After the initial spell, though, the light faded, leaving nothing but the faintest white line in the shape of the symbol on her hand.
Adella held it up in front of her, studying the marks the spell had left, turning her hand, trying to understand. But she knew it was futile. She didn’t know the magic Nin had, and neither did any other selkies.
“Remember,” Nin said, “it will tell you when you’re close. Don’t get distracted now. Eyes on the prize, as they say.”
As if to punctuate her words, a bell rang on the boardwalk. Adella didn’t quite know what it meant, but it felt... right.
She nodded at Nin, then turned toward the gate. Instead of waiting for her friend, she would meet Olly this time, ready for his help to blend in with the humans.
The sun dipped below the boardwalk, casting the seal enclosure into shadows, and Adella tucked herself in to wait while the aquarium went to sleep for the night.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Adella had barely been sitting near the gate for a few minutes when Olly appeared at the top, reaching a shining tentacle down toward the lock with the key he’d stolen from the security guard. But as his eye fell on Adella’s human form, he froze, the key comically half in the lock. The big golden eye facing her narrowed, and the tentacle slowly withdrew.
Adella almost giggled. “Olly. It’s me.”
The eye widened. “Adella? How?”
Adella looked back toward the mage, but Nin was sprawled on the sand, facing the rising moon over the waves. “Magic.”
Olly snorted. “Well, duh.”
This time she did laugh. “I have a mission. Do you want to come with me?”
She could almost see him shrug. “Sounds better than what I had planned. What’s first?”
Adella hopped the gate and looked around, eyes resting on the boardwalk for a moment. Then she looked down at herself.
“I think the first thing is clothes,” she said. “The humans always wear something over their skin.”
Olly reached a tentacle toward her, and she leaned down, letting him climb onto her shoulder. He wrapped one tentacle around her upper arm, then said, “I know where we can get some clothes. And the humans found most of the keys, so I can even get us in!”
From his perch on her shoulder, Olly directed her toward the aquarium’s outer door. She peered through the glass, but as he’d explained, the lights were already off. That meant most of the employees had left for the day.
Olly pulled another key from the folds of his skin and passed it over to Adella. She marveled for a moment at her human fingers, the way she grasped that small piece of metal, how easily she could twist it and move it. Then, she pushed it into the lock and let them back inside.
The interior was surprisingly loud for an empty building, but the hum of the pumps and the generators filled the space like they had entered some sort of hive. Two wall-sized tanks flanked the doors just inside, and schools of large silvery fish pressed their noses to the glass, staring at Adella and Olly. Did they recognize her from all her trips inside with Olly? Or was she just another human to them now? Adella gave them a quick wave, then padded down the carpeted hall, the texture rough and warm on her new feet.
They followed the twisting path of the exhibits, meant to keep tourists moving forward and through, and before long, they made it to the closed and locked gift shop.
“I don’t suppose you have a key for this one, too, do you?” she asked, hand on the bars across the storefront.
The jingling of metal echoed loudly in the open space, and then Olly passed her another key. She unlocked the gate, then followed his instructions to lift the gate and let them in.
The gate protested every movement, groaning and shrieking. Adella’s heart fluttered. The security guard had to have heard them! She darted inside and pushed it closed again, heart pounding now as a door slammed and echoed down the hall.
He was coming.
She looked back and forth for a place to hide, finally settling on a rack of plush aquarium animals. It was tall, its shelves thick with the furry creatures, and it would be easy for her to hide behind. She ducked down low, behind the most crowded of the shelves, and pressed one hand to her head. Her pulse pounded in her ears so loudly she almost couldn’t hear the guard’s footsteps outside the gate. The steps stopped, and a beam of light brushed across the surface of the objects all around her. For a moment, it rested on the shelf just next to her, and she feared he’d seen her, heard her, something. Her heart raced, and she held her breath, fighting the impulse to squeeze her eyes closed. If he was coming in, she wanted to see him.
But then the beam clicked off. The gate rattled a few times, then the footsteps retreated.
Adella let out her breath, and Olly slid to the floor. She pressed a hand over her heart, waiting for her pulse to calm again. That was close. What would he do if he found her in here? She couldn’t exactly tell him she was one of the exhibits.
“Look at this,” Olly said, tentacle pointed at something hanging on the wall.
Adella followed his gesture to a pastel-colored painting on the wall, nearly half her height. But she immediately understood why he’d pointed it out.
It was basically her. A young woman held a speckled gray seal skin over the front of her body as she stood in the foaming waves, the sea stretching out behind her to disappear in a cotton candy sunset and her hair blowing in an invisible wind.
Adella stepped forward, running her fingers along the bumps in the paint as she felt the sea air in the painting, as if she were there.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
Something soft hit her in the back, and she reluctantly broke her gaze away from the painting. A small plush seal sat on the ground at her feet, and she smiled, reaching down to pick it up. She held it in front of her eyes, smiling at her own reflection.
“Check this out!” Olly said.
Adella turned to see him posing like a heavy, metal octopus on one of the shelves.
“I should have been a model, right?”
Adella laughed. “Definitely. You’re a natural!”
A door closing echoed down the hall again, and Adella’s smile vanished. They were here on a mission. She couldn’t let herself get distracted with all the toys and decorations placed like traps just for her.
It was only a few more hours until the tide.
Adella crossed a section of books to the small rack of clothes. Large sweatshirts and baby clothes hung on the wall behind her, but she needed more than a shirt. Though, maybe if there was nothing else, she could make one of the largest shirts work.
But there was no need. As she started flipping through the rack, one single dress caught her eye, the only dress on the rack. Maybe even in the entire store. It was a sundress, long enough to reach past her knees. Most of it was in a seafoam color, though splashes of darker greens and blues reminded her of the waves and seaweed. She immediately felt a fondness for it, like it was a human skin made just for her.
She bit her lips and pulled the dress from the rack, holding it up to admire the way it flowed with each movement, like the tides. Then, before even showing Olly, she pulled it from the hanger and over her head, letting the thin straps settle across her shoulders as the bodice held her chest and ribs and the skirt draped toward the floor. She gave an experimental twirl, enjoying the feel of the soft cotton against her human body.
“Hey, you found something!” Olly appeared near her feet. “You’ll definitely blend in wearing that. A lot of the humans wear those!”
Adella nodded, but she didn’t much care how well she’d blend in. Either way, this was her new skin for the time she wore legs.
Her hand suddenly pulsed, as if reminding her of her missions. Right. She had things to do.
“Ready?” she said.
Olly climbed up and settled on her shoulder, blending in like one of the plush animals on the shelves. “Ready.”
Adella let them back out of the gift shop, then followed Olly’s directions from the aquarium and to where the humans congregated at night.
She stepped onto the boardwalk, each board warm underfoot from the day’s sun even though the daylight was fading. Darkness couldn’t invade, though, as strings of old-fashioned Edison bulbs crisscrossed the boardwalk between light posts and buildings. The buildings stretched forward on their left, away from where the aquarium sat at the very end of the boardwalk, and the ocean crashed down the beach to their right, past the light posts and benches and railings.
But the sound of the ocean was completely drowned out by the life milling about in front of them: humans of every shape, size, and age crowding the planks, music from stores and games filling the air, the hum of conversation and cries of seagulls, lights flashing and glimmering into the approaching night. The lights filled Adella’s eyes like stars, an irresistible pull toward a frontier she’d never gotten to experience before.
“So where do we start?” Olly said.
Adella’s blissful bubble burst. Where indeed? She glanced over her shoulder at the aquarium again, thinking back to all the conversations she’d had with her human friends. What could they possibly be doing on their day off?
What if they weren’t even nearby?
She tugged at her dress nervously, sniffling. She couldn’t dwell on that. She had to find them. So what did she know about them? Where might they be?
And if she couldn’t find at least one of them... what if she couldn’t find the pearl, either? And what if they didn’t recognize her? What if they didn’t realize they knew her and this was all for nothing?
Adella swallowed, her heart fluttering like the fins of a fish. The tide’s deadline suddenly seemed so much closer, her task so much more than it had before. Her shoulders drooped, and where the excitement of the boardwalk had made her happy only moments before, now it just felt overwhelming.
“Adella?” came Olly’s soft voice. “You okay?”
She turned her head slightly to him and forced a small smile. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He didn’t look convinced, but thankfully he dropped it. “Where do you want to start?”
She tapped her chin, reevaluating the boardwalk. She’d only ever heard Will talk about the aquarium, but he was friends with Isabella, right? And Isabella had a fondness for ice cream and Skee-Ball. She talked about them all the time.
Whatever those were.
She looked at Olly again. “Ever hear of ice cream?”
ADELLA WANDERED AWAY from the aquarium and to the first of the stores. Her steps were soft on the rough planks of the boardwalk, still warm from the summer sun, and they vibrated and bounced underfoot with the milling of the people around her. This first building had big, wide windows with bright light streaming out from a white and pink interior, and a sweet, syrupy smell drifted around it like mist on the surface of the waves. Every time someone opened a door, a blast of chilled air hit her, blowing her new human hair back from her face and ruffling the folds of her dress. Something was written on the door in curling pink script, but it was then that her biggest oversight struck her: she couldn’t read any of it. If she was going to figure out what “ice cream” and “Skee-Ball” were, she was going to have to explore and ask around. And what better place to start than this sweet-smelling, brightly colored store?
Plus, there was something in light blue and pink deep inside the store that looked like clouds at sunset, something she’d only dreamed about when she’d seen children carry it past the seal enclosure: cotton candy. And another thing: a plate holding brown and white squares that carried more of that sweet smell, only this time mixed with chocolate, something Isabella frequently carried around and adamantly told Adella she couldn’t share.
“I want to go in,” she said, wide eyes staring at pastel and neon sculptures in the window.
“Really? Here?” Olly said, glancing between her and the window. “Why here?”
Adella shrugged a shoulder. “How else are we going to find ice cream if we don’t investigate a little?”
She didn’t wait for his response before pulling the door open, the cold air rushing past her again as a little bell tinkled overhead. Tiny bumps raised along her arms as the warm, humid sea air was replaced with the dry, cold air of the interior, so much like the air inside the aquarium. And then she was surrounded by the cloud of scents, the happy giggles of children, the low murmur of conversation, so much calmer than the crowds outside. A light, cheery melody played in the background, almost like the music from the other buildings on the boardwalk, only calmer.
Her eyes weren’t big enough to take it all in, her senses unable to separate out all the things there were to experience here.
And this was only the first stop on their journey. The night was young, and she may only get these next few hours to live as a human.
Slowly, Adella made her way through the store, meandering past towers of swirled lollipops—another treat Isabella was fond of carrying around—and boxes of other confections. One entire wall was covered with canisters filled with small pieces of sweets in every possible color, shape, and texture. She couldn’t resist running her hands along each and every item she passed, admiring the ridged and gummy textures of the various treats.
Finally, they made it to the counter, a tall case holding more of those sweet, chocolaty squares along with chocolate shells and circles. None of that could be ice cream, could it? She knew what ice was, of course. There was plenty of that back home, floating in the waves as clear as crystal or as bright white as the puffiest cloud. But it was the cream part that confused her. Cold cream? What would it look like?
And besides, this case wasn’t nearly cold enough to hold ice, at least not without it melting. It seemed barely cool enough to keep the chocolate from melting.
A tall girl in a light pink shirt that matched the décor walked up to the other side of the chocolate case with a smile. “Would you like a sample?”
Adella’s eyes flicked up to the girl, and she couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “Oh, yes, please.”
The girl reached under a glass dome on top of the counter and pulled out a brown and white swirled cube, skewered on the end of a small wooden stick. “This one is our marble fudge.”
“Fudge,” Adella said as she took the cube, trying out the word. Slowly, she put the fudge in her mouth, chewing slowly as it melted smoothly across her tongue, much like the word itself. “Mmm.”
The girl smiled wider. “Can I get you a sample of anything else?”
Still chewing, Adella looked over the counter again. Racks of the cotton candy sat here, covered in clear plastic and wrapped around paper cones. The girl followed her gaze to the cotton candy and pointed, raising her eyebrows questioningly. Adella nodded.
The girl glanced over her shoulder at one of the other pink-shirted humans behind the counter. “Normally, I couldn’t do that. But it just so happens we made a new batch and have only a tiny bit leftover. I can give you a piece of that?”
Adella smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, please!”
“You got it!” She ducked behind the counter, emerging only a moment later with a small paper cup holding a wisp of light blue, as bright as the sky and soft as the clouds.
Adella took it reverently, thinking of how long she’d dreamed of this moment. How many times she’d seen the bliss in the eyes of children and adults alike, the wonder it seemed to evoke.
She put the piece on her tongue, savoring the candy, when suddenly it disappeared. Her eyes widened in surprise, but all that was left of the sugar cloud was drops of the sugar itself.
“Oh,” she said, voice full of wonder.
“Ahem,” came a tiny voice from behind her. “Ice cream, remember?”
“Oh, right!”
“Hmm?” the girl said, her attention on Adella again.
“I’m looking for ice cream,” Adella said. “Do you have that here?”
The girl’s smile faded somewhat, confusion clouding her gaze. “No, not here. But I’m sure you must have passed about a dozen places that sell it. They’re all over the boardwalk.”
No wonder the girl was confused. Ice cream must be a common commodity. She looked back out the window at the slowly darkening bustle outside. How could she explain herself?
She cleared her throat. “Oh, yes. Right. But...” She looked back at the girl. “Which one is your favorite?”
The girl’s expression cleared somewhat, though she still seemed a bit puzzled by Adella. “Oh, sure. That would have to be Mako’s. They have some of the best soft serve on the beach. Lots of flavors for swirls, too.”
Adella didn’t know what any of that meant, but she did her best to hide it. “And where is it?”
“Just head back toward the Conch Street entrance. You can’t miss it. They have a huge ice cream cone on top of their building!”
Adella laughed lightly, trying to cover how lost she still felt. “Oh, right. Of course. Thank you!”
“No problem!” the girl said, turning away.
Adella turned too, hurrying away from the counter and toward the exit. She still didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but now at least she had a location.
If she could even find that, not being able to read this human language and all.
“Real smooth,” came Olly’s voice behind her.
“Oh, quiet, you,” she muttered under her breath. “Like you could have done better.”
“I wouldn’t have been lured by the siren call of sweets, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Adella pushed the door open and stepped back into the evening, momentarily surprised by the abrupt change in the air, as if the sugar made her forget it was a hot summer night. After being inside for as long as she had, the outdoors felt heavy and damp. And with the return of the summer heat came the weight of all the people around her. Exciting, yes, but also terrifying and confusing. Was she really ready for this, even after her last year observing?
No, probably not. How much could she really learn as a bystander rather than a participant?
But then a flash of bright blue hair caught her eye: Isabella!
Adella lunged forward, squeezing her way through the crowd and calling after the seal caretaker. But it seemed Isabella couldn’t hear her through the din.
And then she was gone, as if she’d never been there in the first place.
Adella’s shoulders slumped, and she blew out her breath in a huff, coming to a standstill in the middle of the boardwalk.
“What are you doing?” Olly said into her ear, stabbing a tentacle in the direction Isabella had disappeared. “She went that way! Follow her!”
Adella lunged forward, pushing through the crowd as best she could, but her human form was not very large. The gaps opened and closed quickly, ebbing and flowing like the tides. Suddenly, Adella found herself on the other side of the crowd, next to a weathered wood railing and a couple of fully occupied benches. On the other side of the rail, the beach stretched toward the dark ocean, the crashing of the waves silenced by the buzzing of the humans around her. The moon had risen just enough that the dark water sparkled with its light, like stars on the crests of the waves.
Adella caught her breath, leaning forward and propping her hands on the railing. She’d never seen it from quite this angle before. It was like the human eyes, the human environment, everything that made her less seal had changed her view.
That was her home. And her home was gorgeous.
“Adella?” came Olly’s voice again. “We’re going to lose her.”
Adella sighed and turned around, facing the crowd again. “I think we already have.”
“So we’re back where we started.”
She shrugged the shoulder he wasn’t resting on. “I don’t know. We still have the ice cream lead. Maybe she was headed that way, right?”
She scanned the crowd, examining the humans’ hands for any clues. Some of them had the fluffy mounds of cotton candy Adella had finally gotten to sample, but most of the treats they munched on were foreign to her—things she’d seen from a distance but never been able to name before. Twisty, bready, salty snacks; hot sticks of something that sounded crunchy and had a warm, savory smell; more sugar; and yet more sugar.
There was no choice, right? Either she had to go to every stand, or she had to start asking people.
She took a deep steadying breath, then stepped toward a girl around Isabella’s age on the bench next to her. In the girl’s hand was one of those brown, bready braids. It didn’t seem icy, but she had to start somewhere.
“Excuse me,” Adella said. She pointed at the twist. “What is that?”
The girl snorted, popping a piece she’d torn off into her mouth. “You’ve never seen a pretzel before?”
Adella shook her head, her stomach sinking, as heat rose to her face. Of course she didn’t know, but every time she had to ask something the humans found obvious, they gave her the same confused, almost condescending look.
The girl gave her that very look, then ripped off another piece. “Here.”
Adella reached for it, taking it cautiously between her fingers. It was hot and soft on the inside, but smooth and glossy outside. She popped it in her mouth, biting down gingerly, testing it. It was chewy and savory, heavy and salty.
And delicious.
“Wow,” she said around the bite.
“Good, right?” the girl said, smiling. Adella couldn’t be sure if the smile was friendly or mocking, but she didn’t much care anymore. The pretzel really was delicious.
“Thanks!” Adella said, then raised a hand and pressed back into the crowd.
So the twisty things were pretzels. Not ice cream. Maybe she’d do better asking for directions to the ice cream again?
But then Isabella reappeared in the crowd, something tall and white in her hand. Before she could lose the human again, Adella ran through the milling people, straight toward the girl.
“Isabella!” she called, like she had before.
This time, Isabella paused, looking around her. Adella called again, and they locked eyes even as she pushed through the people to reach Isabella. The human girl looked uncertain and confused, and it took several more steps for Adella to remember that Isabella had no idea who she was—to her, Adella was a seal, and this human before her was a stranger.
She slid to a stop in front of Isabella, suddenly unsure what to say, opening and closing her mouth in confusion.
Isabella raised her eyebrows. “Yes? What is it?”
“I... um.” Adella took a breath, willing her heart to stop its sudden frantic beating. She felt so out of her element here, suddenly exposed.
Isabella tilted her head, waiting, and took a bite of whatever was in her hand.
“Is that... ice cream?” Adella said, pointing at the food instead of saying anything remotely helpful.
Now only one eyebrow was up, climbing toward Isabella’s forehead with something like irritation. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Focus. She’d found Isabella, but she wasn’t done. And from the looks of things, Isabella didn’t recognize her like she’d hoped. And she still had to find Will and the pearl. Her heart thrummed, and the pressure of the coming tide made her chest tight with anxiety.
Suddenly the crowds and the music and the lights all seemed like a lot. It was too loud, too bright, too much.
She turned her eyes back to the girl. “Can we talk?” she yelled. “Maybe out of the way somewhere?”
Isabella studied her carefully for several long moments, suspicion in her eyes, mixed with a touch of confused recognition that made Adella’s chest bloom with hope. “Do you want an ice cream, too? They have some tables that might be free.”
Adella nodded enthusiastically, smiling before she could stop herself, then froze. Money. She needed money for that, right? That’s why she couldn’t have anything but samples at the candy shop.
Isabella seemed to recognize something else in Adella’s gaze and her face softened. “It’s okay. My treat.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she still followed Isabella back through the crowds toward a building that had a sculpture on its roof that looked almost identical to the thing Isabella held.
Ice cream.
They waited in a line of humans for several long minutes while Olly poked her in the neck, urging her to talk, to say something helpful to Isabella, to ask questions. But Adella couldn’t make the words come, not now that she had found one of her friends, even if Isabella didn’t know that. Somehow, it was different before. She had felt bolder as a seal. Less vulnerable.
Why? She’d never been shy before. Was it something about her first experience as a human? The warning Nin had given her about protecting her sealskin?
Or was it fear... fear that she’d fail to find Will, fail to find the pearl, maybe embarrass herself in front of the humans she cared about so much? That she’d miss the tide or her family would find out about all the rules she had broken—and was continuing to break?
They reached the front of the line, and Isabella ordered her something called a swirl in a waffle cone. She handed a flat, shiny card to the cashier, and the machine on the counter beeped a few times before Isabella took the card back. Then, Adella watched, mesmerized, as the cashier turned and grabbed a cone covered in wells and ridges and held it under a machine. Something white and brown looped into the cone, mist rising off it like from the surface of the ocean on a foggy morning.
Adella took the cone when it was offered, and Isabella led her to the only empty table near the stand.
They sat, and Isabella said, “So. Care to talk to me now? Why do you know my name, and what do you want?” She took another bite of her ice cream, but there was something softer in her gaze now, rather than the hard suspicion of earlier. No, now it was more like curiosity.
Adella held the waffle cone between her hands, feeling the cold of it creep into her fingers. She took a breath, calmer now that they were out of the heavy stream of people. “Isabella. I know you because...”
She hesitated, and Olly tucked a tentacle around her shoulder. Isabella’s eyes drifted to the appendage, but Adella continued before she could comment.
“Because you feed me my dinner.”
Isabella gave a huffing sort of laugh. “I wouldn’t call ice cream dinner.”
“No, I mean... at the aquarium.” Adella lifted her eyes from the ice cream. “Fish. In the seal enclosure.”
Isabella paused, thinking for a moment. A drip of white ice cream landed on the table between them. Then her brows knitted together. “No one is allowed in the seal enclosure except aquarium personnel.”
“And seals.”
Isabella snorted again. “Well, duh.”
Adella held her gaze, not saying anything.
Isabella lowered the ice cream. “Wait. You’re not saying... you’re not... a... seal?”
She nodded. “I am. I’m Adella.”
Isabella couldn’t seem to find words, and Adella raised the waffle cone to take a bite of the soft, swirled ice cream. It was as cold as its name implied, and her eyes flew open as the sugar hit her tongue, so similar to the fudge, but somehow lighter and smoother. Then, she took a crunching bite of the cone, closing her eyes in bliss as the flavors mixed.
Isabella finally seemed to find her words. “There’s no way.”
Adella sighed, lowering the ice cream. “There is, though. I’m not exactly... a seal. I’m a selkie.”
“Selkie. Yeah, right.” Isabella stared at her for a long moment, her eyes as cold as the ice cream. “You know what I think? I think you happened to overhear someone talking about me and Adella and decided to play a trick and get a free ice cream out of it.” She began to stand, stepping back from the table.
Adella jumped up with her, holding out one hand in a sort of “stop” motion. “No, wait! I... I can prove it!”
Her pulse fluttered again, the warning ringing in her head. She could show Isabella the sealskin. But what would that mean? What would happen?
What choice did she have?
But there wasn’t much chance to say more, to think of another possibility. Olly chose that moment to climb up onto Adella’s shoulder. Isabella’s eyes narrowed, her expression changing to fierce in the time it took to blink.
“You think this is just some game?” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m done. And so are you. We’re taking that creature to the aquarium, and security will call the police.”
She grabbed Adella’s arm, rougher than Adella expected, fingers clenched so tight they’d leave bruises, then started dragging her back down the boardwalk toward the aquarium. The people parted around them with one look at the girl’s face. And every single one of Adella’s words went unheard.
They were only a few feet from the door of the aquarium, and Adella could already see the guard sitting at the front desk inside, reading a magazine, when she blurted out the one thing she immediately wished she could take back.
“I’ll show you the sealskin!”
Isabella froze, turning to study her for several long moments. “The sealskin.”
Adella nodded. “I hid it. I can’t transform right now, not exactly, but I do need help. And if I’m lying... then turn me in.”
Isabella considered the words for a moment, then slowly released Adella’s arm. “Okay. Show me.”
“ADELLA, ARE YOU sure about this?” Olly whispered from the top of Adella’s shoulder.
Not that the whispering would matter. It wasn’t like Isabella could understand him.
“Not really,” Adella said, her stomach sinking. But she didn’t know how else to convince Isabella. At least, not in the time that was left. She glanced over the edge of the boardwalk toward the ocean, noting the water line.
There wasn’t much time left. Maybe only minutes.
Isabella let them into the seal enclosure, shoving the last bits of ice cream into her mouth. “Don’t try anything funny,” she said around the huge bite of cone. “I mean it. These seals are like family.”
Warmth filled Adella at the words, followed by a chill. It was an odd mix of feeling cared for and loved with feeling threatened.
She scanned the enclosure, noting where the other seals were—not that it really mattered. None of them cared about sealskins. They were just seals.
Except Nin. But she had been the one to warn Adella about protecting her sealskin in the first place, and there was something about the older selkie that Adella knew she could trust, some kinship, a longing for more than the Scouts could ever provide.
And a chance to convince her family to change things for good.
Adella stepped forward, her bare feet sinking deep into the sand. Isabella followed close behind, and she could physically feel the dagger-like glare of the other girl on the back of her skull. She forced herself to keep her own eyes forward, picking her way first along the sand and then over the rocks. It was harder now that the sun had disappeared, but the big, round moon overhead was enough to guide her. The salty wind caught in her hair, brushing it out behind her with the cool air from the water. Here, separated from the boardwalk, it was quiet again, and despite the pressure from Isabella, the pressure of trying to convince the human of what she was, she felt like she could breathe again. As much as she loved being around the humans, it was a lot to take in for her first time out.
She reached the small nook in the central boulders where she’d stashed the skin, and she knelt to pull the seaweed and smaller rocks back. The tide had risen, and it just barely tickled her toes as it rose up through the cracks between the rocks. But Adella knew it wouldn’t go any farther than this. The skin was safe here.
Ah, there it was. She pulled it free and turned to hold it up for Isabella to see.
“I told you!” she said.
But instead of the look of comprehension she expected on the other girl’s face, Isabella looked horrified. “Where did you get that?”
Adella knit her brows together, confused. “I told you. It’s mine.”
Isabella shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what seal you killed—”
“Killed!” Adella gasped, and stepped back. “No! I... Just... just watch, okay?”
She backtracked to the sand, her heart suddenly pounding. Did she really want to get herself trapped back in that seal form? Or, maybe worse, now that Isabella was watching, what if Nin’s magic wouldn’t allow her to change back to herself?
She pulled in a shaky breath of the salt air. And then, before she could think too much more, before she could scare herself out of it, she stripped out of the dress (again to Isabella’s horrified look), and stepped back into her second skin. It stuck to her like glue, like it had missed her, re-forming itself around her as she merged with her other form. The magic glowed a light blue, like the bioluminescence of the plankton that graced the waves, and then her old familiar self was back.
“See?” she tried to say to Isabella. But all that came out was an indignant bark.
For several long moments, Isabella stood motionless, a hand over her mouth and her eyes as wide as a full moon. Then, she took a cautious step forward. And another. Until she was right in front of Adella, crouching down so they were eye to eye. Isabella searched Adella’s gaze, as if trying to find some trick, but there was no denying what she had seen.
“It’s really you,” she finally breathed, her voice barely a whisper against the crash of the waves.
Adella bounced a little on her flippers and barked again, since she couldn’t talk.
“I... I’m sorry,” Isabella said. Her voice was still breathy. She half laughed. “But you have to admit... I never could have guessed selkies were real.”
Adella bobbed her head.
“I... I’ll help you. I will. I... I know you, Adella. Can you change back?”
She caught her breath. Could she? That was the question.
But before she could even try, a wave crashed, loud in the stillness, and she jumped. Then, a fleck of blue caught her eye, and she turned to see another bubble floating toward her from the water, a message glowing in the center.
Oh, no. That couldn’t be good. She looked from the sky to the ocean, recalculating.
She missed her tide. And now, apparently she’d have to answer for it.
Swallowing, she made her way across the sand to the bubble, hoping Isabella would stay back and out of sight. She bumped the bubble with her nose, and her father’s face once again appeared within.
She tried to give him a smile. “Hi, Dad.”
But the look he returned to her was stormy. “Adella. The patrols near you say you aren’t on the tide like we’d agreed. What happened? Where are you?”
She swallowed, trying to find the words. How much of the truth might convince him? “Um. Well, I still had a few loose ends.” That was technically true. “And I miscalculated the time.” Completely true.
His eyes narrowed at her, then flicked to something over her shoulder briefly. She fought the urge to look behind her, still hoping he couldn’t see Isabella. If he saw a human nearby, probably watching everything that was going on, what would he do?
“I’m coming for you,” he said, his voice not betraying what he knew or didn’t know. “I’ll be there by sunrise. Close your loose ends, Adella. This is your last warning. You will be leaving with me in the morning.”
She nodded and swallowed again, afraid to say anything. She’d been granted more time, but now her father would be coming. She had to finish her goodbyes, find the pearl, and make sure Nin stayed out of sight, before he arrived. If not, he would be mad. And when he was mad, he made rash decisions.
Like prohibiting all selkies from visiting the humans.
“Sunrise, Adella,” he said again.
“Sunrise,” she repeated.
The bubble popped, and she closed her eyes, taking a few breaths to calm herself. It was going to be okay. She could do this.
“Adella?” came Isabella’s voice. “What was that?”
Adella’s eyes flew open and she flopped around to face the human again. She began to bark an answer, then cut herself off, closing her eyes again. She had to change back.
She focused on that feeling again, the one she’d had when Nin told her to step out of her skin. At first, nothing happened, and her heart fluttered. She couldn’t be stuck in this form, not again, not after the promises she made. Not with the threat of her father looming and all she had left unfinished.
But then the magic warmed in her core, the same feeling sweeping over her. The seal form fell away, and she rose to her feet. Her human feet.
It worked. At least until sunrise, when her father would arrive.
Isabella grabbed the dress off the ground, holding it out. “You should probably put this back on.” She turned slightly, giving Adella some privacy.
Adella took the dress and did as she was instructed and tucked the sealskin back into its hiding place. “Okay.”
Isabella turned back toward her, shoving her hands into her pockets. “So what was that?”
Adella hesitated for a moment, torn about how much else to tell her, but then she caught the look of compassion in Isabella’s eye, and the story came pouring out of her like a flowing current. The recall notice, the missed tide, her father’s arrival—and his prejudice against the humans.
And that she needed to say her goodbyes now. Maybe only for now, but maybe forever.
Isabella took a breath when she’d finished. “Wow. That’s... a lot to deal with. But we’ll figure it out. We’ll find Will and the pearl, and maybe we can even convince your dad that the humans aren’t so bad. That a lot of us have changed. I mean, there’s all kinds of laws now, and most people wouldn’t harm a seal.”
Adella almost smiled. “I know.” The smile faded. “But you don’t know my dad.”
Isabella tucked a strand of electric-blue hair behind her ear. “No, I don’t. Let’s... let’s do what we can and cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?”
Adella took a deep breath. “Okay. Any ideas where Will might be?”
“My guess is the arcade.”
“Arcade?”
“To play games. We can go check.”
Isabella took a deep breath and froze when Olly climbed up onto Adella’s shoulder. “Uh, hi?”
Olly waved a tentacle at her, pointing toward the boardwalk.
“I take it he’s coming?” Isabella said, smiling at him tentatively.
“Seems that way,” Adella said. She took a step toward the boardwalk. “Lead on!”
***
THE ARCADE TURNED out to be a dark building with bright, flashing neon lights, vibrant electronic music, and the laughter of kids and adults alike. Adella immediately fell in love with its energy and life.
As they crossed the threshold, Adella’s hand prickled, then grew warm, distracting her from the bright lights and games in front of her. She raised her hand, and the symbol Nin had left on her skin glowed with a pulsing gold light, neon in the darkness, just like the lights around the arcade.
The pearl. It must be nearby. But where?
“Where do we start?” Isabella said loudly, her voice barely audible over the chaotic noise inside. Then her gaze dropped to the glowing symbol. “What’s that?”
Adella pulled her eyes away from her hand and peered into the darkness. Now there were two things she had to find here. “The pearl I have to find. It’s close.”
Isabella laughed. “Two birds, one stone, I guess.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
Isabella led them deeper inside, and they began walking up and down the rows of games, ranging from standing units with flashing screens to other games that had seats for players to ride pretend machines to even more that had long lanes for throwing or rolling balls. Anyone would be able to find something they liked here.
Adults and children of every age dodged in and out of the aisles, appearing and disappearing in a blink as the lights flashed and the room constantly changed. As much as Adella liked it here, the chaos was starting to make her head hurt.
Then a flash of something familiar, a swath of hair that looked like Will’s.
“Will!” Adella called.
But the arcade swallowed up her voice, then swallowed Will. She darted forward, lunging around a game in the direction he’d disappeared, but the row ahead of her was full only of strangers.
Her hand prickled again, and she yelped, the feeling more like a sharp shell poking her in the underbelly than of a gentle notice. She clutched her hand to her chest and looked up, scanning the row in front of her. But all she saw was more games and, at the end, a girl at a register in front of a bunch of shelves with toys in it. Under the register, a glass case glowed, holding more items that Adella couldn’t quite make out from here.
She wandered forward, closer to the case and the shelves. Maybe the pearl was hidden somewhere in there? But no sooner had the thought floated into her mind than a gleaming, ethereal sphere sitting on a bright red pillow in the display case caught her eye. It was larger than a normal pearl, easily big enough to fill the palm of her hand, and gave off a soft white glow. Her hand burned now, the signs no longer subtle.
That was it. She’d found it.
“What’s up?” Isabella said, coming up behind her. “Did you find Will?”
Adella jumped, placing a hand over her heart. She took a deep breath before responding. “I thought so, but I lost him again. And then I found this.” She pointed toward the pearl. “But I don’t know how to get it.”
“Oh.” Isabella took a few steps closer and leaned forward, reading the small piece of paper in front of it. “Ohh,” she said again, her voice now laced with trepidation.
“Oh? Oh what!”
“We could get it. Maybe. But it’s expensive.”
“Expensive?”
“Like, twenty-thousand-tickets expensive.”
“Tickets?”
Isabella half laughed, but it held no mirth. She gestured at the games around them. “We have to earn tickets from playing the games. Then, with the tickets, we purchase the pearl.”
“Oh.” Adella looked back at the counter, where a younger girl was examining the pearl. “How long will that take?”
Isabella sighed. “A while. And a good chunk of change, I bet. It depends on how good we are at the games.”
Adella bit her lip. “Can we just... buy it? With money?”
Isabella shook her head. “No. Believe me, plenty of people have tried to buy the prizes. But the only way to get them is the tickets.” She craned her neck around, searching the crowds. “If we can find Will, he’s fantastic at these games.”
Adella’s heart was beating faster now, partly because of the girl who had a bit too much interest in the pearl and partly because they still needed to find Will. And now she had to decide: which one was more important now, in this moment?
But when Adella turned to ask Isabella, she was already walking away and toward a tall gray box with a small screen and slots.
Adella hurried to catch up behind her. “What are you doing?”
Isabella barely glanced over her shoulder, her hand in her pocket. “Getting us tokens.”
“Tokens?”
“So we can play the games. I might have enough, if we’re careful. If we’re good. You go find Will, and I’ll start on the games I know I’m good at.”
Adella nodded and turned back to the room, heart still pounding. The younger girl wasn’t at the counter anymore, which made her breathe just a little easier, but that didn’t mean they were in the clear. They could lose their chance at any time.
The rune on her hand pulsed with heat again. Right. She couldn’t lose this chance.
She took a deep breath and turned back to the room. First things first: Will. She peered around the machines and crowds, looking for that familiar form again amidst the chaos. Her heart pounded, chest tight with the pressure of all she had to do and how little time she had to do it. And with every second that passed by, the pressure only increased.
ADELLA WANDERED THROUGH the center of the arcade, searching for Will for what felt like an eternity. She couldn’t exactly tell time like the humans, though, so in reality she had no idea how much time had passed.
Only that it was passing, bringing her closer to her deadline.
There! A flash of the color he’d been wearing when she’d seen him earlier. She twisted through the crowd as quickly as she could, contorting to avoid elbows and bodies, ducking through small openings, keeping herself on course to reach him. Only, when she got to the place he had been, he was gone again.
She hissed through her teeth in frustration, but spun in a circle, again trying to see him. But the crowd had grown too thick, and the people around her were too tall.
Her eyes landed on the machine next to her, one with bumps running up the side to the top. A perfect vantage point to scope out the entire arcade.
Without giving it another thought, she scrambled up the side of the machine and over the edge, sitting primly on the cold metal as she surveyed the arcade with a flying fish’s view.
“Anything?” Olly said behind her, his voice almost completely drowned out by the hum of the conversations around and below.
She squinted, as if that could help her see through the people any better. Then, she stabbed a finger into the air toward the row on the other side where another flash of that bright shirt greeted her narrowed eyes. “There!”
“Hey, you can’t be up there!” came a voice from below.
Adella dropped her gaze to see who she could only assume was an employee, a man standing below her with his hands on his hips.
“Get down right now, or you’re banned!”
Banned? That sounded bad.
“Okay,” she said, holding up a hand while trying to get one last look at where Will was going.
Once her feet were on the ground, she pressed into the crowd again.
“I’m watching you!” the employee called after her.
But it didn’t matter. She’d gotten what she needed. And this time, when she reached the place she’d seen Will, he was there, sitting at a game where he was dropping a hook into an ocean to draw up sunken treasure—with a lot of success. Already a long ribbon of tickets was looping across the floor at his feet.
“Wow, you’re good at that,” Adella said breathlessly as she stumbled to a stop next to him.
He didn’t even glance up, only nodded in acknowledgment. Right. He only knew her as a seal.
She sighed and dropped onto the seat next to him. Needing to explain her selkie nature to her friends was starting to become tiresome. She cleared her throat, and this time Will did look over at her.
Olly climbed onto her shoulder, clinging with cold tentacles to the strap of her dress, and Will’s eyes widened as they followed the octopus’s movements.
She gave him a tentative smile, breaking his focus on Olly. “I’ve been looking for you all night!”
Will’s eyes drifted to hers, still distracted from his game. His gaze locked with hers, and she watched as his expression cycled from surprise to confusion to... recognition. She smiled at him again, softly this time, hopeful.
“Do I... know you?” he said.
Her heart did a flop, and she nodded, her smile brightening about a thousand watts. “It’s me! Adella!”
He narrowed his gaze, searching her eyes as if to test the veracity of what she said. She could almost see the thoughts running through his head: Adella was a seal, so how could she also be the human standing before him?
The rune pulsed on her hand, a sharp heat that cut through her so suddenly she gasped and clutched her hand to her chest. The glow illuminated the hard edges of Will’s face, and his eyes dropped to it before widening.
“What is that?” he said.
And before she could take another breath, before the pain from the reminder had faded, the story spilled from her lips while Will listened, enraptured.
***
“SO YOU’RE A selkie?” Will said when she’d finally finished her story.
She nodded.
“And you only have until sunrise to find this... pearl.”
She nodded again.
“When your dad shows up and maybe takes you away forever?”
“Yes!” she said, relief and fear mingling. Her eyes burned with the force of the emotions. He believed her. He actually believed her!
Her relief was short-lived, though. There was still so much to do. “We should probably go find Isabella. She’s already working on the games.”
“Isabella’s here too?” His head snapped around as he jumped to his feet, and he searched the crowd as if she were hiding just behind the next game. “Where? Why?”
“Why?” she said. “To help! Though, she took a lot more convincing than you. But now that she knows the truth... well, she bought the tokens and got right to work while I came to find you. Isabella is so nice.”
He looked away, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s really nice of her. She is so nice.”
Adella stared at him as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot in front of her. He seemed embarrassed for some reason.
And then it hit her.
“You like her.”
His head jerked back to her. ‘What? No!”
But as soon as she said it, the truth settled in like an old friend. She could see it written all over his face, feel it in the way he responded to Isabella’s name, to her offer of help.
Adella smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell her.” She glanced nervously toward the glass doors to the outside. The horizon over the ocean was the faintest hint of lightening purple against the black night. “But do you think we can put all that off? I don’t have much time left.”
Will broke his awkward shuffling and followed her gaze out the glass door. “Oh. Right. We should get going. How many tickets do we need?”
“Between the three of us?” Adella tried to remember what Isabella had said, pursing her lips as she stared up at the ceiling. “Twenty thousand.”
“Oh, jeez,” he said, running his hand through his hair. He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Looks like we’ve got about two hours until official sunrise. I’m sure I can get about ten thousand tickets in that time, but you’ve never played any of these games before. And I have no idea how good Isabella is at them.” He flushed again. “It’s not like we come to the arcade together all the time.”
Adella looked around them, letting her gaze rest on each game for a few seconds. He was right. She’d never played anything like this. But maybe she’d observed enough humans to give it a valiant attempt. If nothing else, she could say she tried.
She steeled her resolve, pushing her shoulders back so that Olly gripped her tighter. “Well, I don’t have much choice. Let’s play some games.”
The next few moments were a blur of people and noise and lights as Will dragged her across the arcade floor to the same token machine Isabella had been at earlier. Isabella herself was nowhere to be seen, but there was no time to wonder. Hopefully the other girl was watching the clock and would find them before it was too late.
Will turned away from the machine and handed Adella a plastic card smaller than her palm.
“What’s this?” she said, taking it from him.
“Game card,” he said. “You scan it in. They don’t do actual tokens anymore. Here, I’ll show you on the first game.”
He moved over to a long machine with ten red cups set up in a triangle shape. He tapped the card against a small screen to his left, then the music changed, the lights flashed, and a bunch of lightweight white balls bounced toward him. He picked up the first one, aimed it toward the cups, then started throwing one after another, so fast she could barely follow what was happening. Ball after ball fell through the cups, and the machine lit up with each one, ringing cheerfully until all the cups were illuminated and the game gave a triumphant bellow. The lights dimmed, and a long ribbon of tickets began spooling out from under the screen where Will had tapped the card.
He turned slightly to her as the tickets kept coming. “Piece of cake. Right?”
“Right,” she said, eyeing the tickets.
How was she ever going to get that many of them? Her heart gave a huge lurch, and she bade Will goodbye as she went to find a game of her own.
Hopefully one she was good at.
She didn’t have too long to look. She found another machine, longer than the one Will was playing at, with several rings marked with point values at the far end of a slanted ramp. The girl at a duplicate of the machine next to her squealed something about Skee-Ball, and Adella watched as she skillfully rolled fist-sized balls up the ramp and into the rings, one after another.
Seemed easy enough.
Adella tapped her card on the reader, and nine shiny brown balls rolled down the slot on her right, clicking soundly as they came to a stop. She picked one up, hefting it in her hand a couple of times to judge the weight and admiring the cool wood against her very human skin. None of the driftwood she’d encountered had been this smooth, this perfect. Then, with a glance at the girl, she copied the even underhand release.
The ball sailed up the ramp then through the air—smacking soundly against the back wall of the game before rolling into the trough at the bottom. No points, and just a smidgen too hard.
Heart pounding, Adella took a breath. She could do this. Just a little less force, and she’d be getting ribbons of tickets in no time.
She released the next ball. This time, it went into a ring marked with a big, bright fifty. The machine dinged and flashed in response, and she couldn’t help the smile that overtook her face.
She could do this.
Adella released ball after ball, finding a stride and making it to the bonus rings faster than she thought she’d be able to. A glow filled her stomach as she watched the tickets spool out of the machine one after another. How many was she up to? A hundred? Two hundred?
And then her heart sank. They needed twenty thousand. How was she ever going to get that many?
She could only hope the others were doing better than she was.
***
ADELLA KEPT PLAYING Skee-Ball and another game where she could spin a wheel for a larger number of tickets for what felt like hours. In reality, it had to have been much shorter, as she kept an eye on the dawn outside the window. A fist seemed to squeeze her midsection as the sky grew brighter and she still seemed so far from having enough for the pearl. And to make things worse, once they had the pearl, she still had to get back to Nin before the sun rose.
And then her card was out of tokens.
She closed her eyes briefly, taking another steadying breath, and bent down to retrieve her latest string of tickets. It was time to find Will and Isabella. Hopefully, between the three of them, it was enough.
It didn’t take long to find her friends; by now, the arcade was almost empty. Her arms were full of the snaking ticket ribbons, spilling out over the edges to trail along the dirty carpet, but her tickets were nothing compared to Will’s and Isabella’s. Neither of them carried their tickets so haphazardly, instead all of them neatly folded into long stacks that were too large to fit in a single hand.
Maybe. Just maybe it would be enough.
“What do we do now?” Adella said, still eyeing the stacks of tickets.
“We go to the ticket counter,” Isabella said, already turning toward the prize area.
The ticket counter, it turned out, was a machine where they inserted each stack of tickets one at a time while it counted each and every one. It seemed to take ages, and Adella anxiously looked between the machine and the brightening horizon out the door. Tick, tick, tick.
Finally, the last of the tickets pulled through the machine, and the indicator gave them a number: nineteen thousand nine hundred and one. They were ninety-nine tickets short.
She looked outside again, the horizon over the waves almost orange now. Would there be enough time to get the last tickets?
Tears burned her eyes as a fist squeezed her chest. She had to at least try.
Will and Isabella were already checking the balances on their cards. Between the two of them, they had enough for one more game.
“Let me,” Adella said. “Let me do it.”
They both looked out toward the ocean, like she had.
“Are you sure?” Will said, his eyes worried. “I think one of us could get enough. You’re pretty new to all this.”
She glanced over at the Skee-Ball machine again. “I don’t know. But this is my problem, right? I think I should be the one to do it. Besides, I’ve let other people give me instructions my whole life. This was my first night truly in charge of myself... and I liked it. I want to do everything I can on my own.”
Isabella and Will traded another look, then handed her their cards.
“Hurry,” Isabella said. “And... if it doesn’t work out... we’ll always be your friends.”
Adella smiled at them grimly. “At least until my dad drags me away.”
“Unless we can... help convince him?” Will said.
Adella paused, half turned to run to the game. “How could you possibly do that?”
Isabella grinned, flashing deep dimples. “Did you forget we work at the aquarium and teach people about conservation every day? I bet we have a ton to share that he doesn’t know.”
Adella bit her lip, afraid to hope, but there was no more time to ponder. She gave them each a shaky half smile, then ran over to the Skee-Ball machine one last time. She tapped the cards in succession, and the balls rolled toward her with that satisfying click, the machine already flashing and singing to greet her.
This was it. One more game for everything.
Her heart pounded, and she could feel pressure behind her where Will and Isabella stood to watch, ready to run to the prize counter as soon as she’d earned enough to win the pearl. It was almost worse having them there to support her—before, no one had been able to see her failures. Now, the two people she cared about most in the world were there, watching her every move. The good and the bad.
She shook her head lightly and took a breath. Focus. This was about her, not them.
She pulled back her arm and released the ball.
THE BALL SAILED up the ramp smoothly, smacking into the back of the game like Adella’s very first throw. Her heart lurched, and she winced.
It was okay. Really. She had eight more balls. A hundred tickets was doable... if she could hit the bonus ring at least once.
Adella grabbed the next ball from the slot, taking another breath to re-center herself before letting it fly. This one was better, but the pressure was still breaking through her attempts at calm, and it only fell through the ring labeled with a five. Two measly tickets spit out of the machine.
She had to do better.
Adella glanced out the door again. The sky was bright now, the night almost gone. It was now or never.
She turned back to the machine, determined, and focused only on the feel of the ball, the mechanical movement she needed to maintain for the optimal throw. Her next three balls all went into the high scoring rings, then a mix of high and mid rings.
Then she was down to her last ball. She still needed that bonus ring to get her the last tickets. If she missed... well, she was out of time.
But she had it down now. She had the flow. She knew the patterns. She could do this.
She released the ball with her breath, watching as it sailed up the ramp one final time, toward the smaller ring in the back corner. It bounced once... twice...
Then fell through!
The machine rang and sang its praise as her final score flashed across the screen overhead and the last of the tickets spooled out toward them. They waited anxiously for it to stop, then grabbed the tickets and ran to the counter, shoving them into the machine to add to their previous tally.
Twenty thousand and one. They had enough!
Will grabbed the cards and raced to the prize counter and the bored employee standing behind a register, Isabella and Adella right behind him. Every movement the employee took to accept the tickets and get them the pearl seemed to last fifty more years, but finally the pearl sat in Adella’s hand, warming as it came in contact with the runes. The runes pulsed, almost happily, but there was no time to spend thinking about it. The sun’s rays were almost over the ocean now.
Almost as soon as the pearl touched her skin, Adella raced from the arcade and down the boardwalk. There was no time to admire the peace of the quiet boardwalk morning, the cool salty air and lingering scents of kettle corn, the breeze caressing her skin. There was only time to make it back to Nin.
She could hear Will’s and Isabella’s footsteps pounding behind her, Olly’s frantic voice in her ear as she sprinted along the planks. She’d found her friends, expecting to leave them at the arcade, but they were still following her?
What about her father?
The gate to the outdoor exhibits was still unlocked from earlier, and she pushed through, bolting down the hill toward the entrance to the seals. Where was Nin? She scanned the seals on the sand as she ran, trying to chart her path before she got there, trying to save herself as much time as possible.
There! In the middle of the densest pack of sleeping seals, Nin snored loudly.
Adella burst through the gate, trusting one of her friends to close it behind her, and picked her way as quickly as she could through the sleepers. She dropped to the sand next to Nin, pearl clutched in one hand, and shook the older selkie with the other.
“Nin!” she cried. “Nin, I have it!”
Nin’s eyes fluttered open, too slowly, as the first rays of the sun flashed across the water. She came awake quickly, sitting up and reaching for the pearl with one flipper.
Except before she could take it, a huge wave flowed in from the sea, over the enclosure, carrying a large seal along with it. As the wave receded, the seal form faded, and a man stood, holding a sealskin around him. His beard was the color of the fur, a silvery gray, and was tangled with seaweed and shells. There was no hair on his head, only a gleaming crown of pearls—none of them as large or as magical as Nin’s, but still glowing in the early morning sun as if they were.
“Adella!” his voice boomed over the crash of the waves.
Adella pulled her hand back, cupping the magic pearl to her chest as if she could hide it from her father. “Dad!”
Her father’s face was stormy, but it began to clear when he saw his daughter... at least, for a moment. Then his eyes flicked over her shoulder, and she flinched as she heard the very human feet pound across the sand behind her.
“What have you done?” he said, so softly that she could barely hear him. “After everything I taught you.”
“Dad, it’s okay,” Adella tried, her heart thudding against her ribs. It was now or never. “The humans aren’t all bad. They’ve changed!”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “How could you—”
Then his head snapped to the side, and his intense ocean gaze landed on Nin.
Oh, no.
Nin let out an angry snarl, her gray eyes glaring right back at him. Adella caught her breath. This was all her fault. Nin wasn’t that bad, not really. Definitely nothing like the villain her parents made her out to be. No, she was so much like Adella. She only wanted freedom, both for herself and the rest of the selkies under Father’s rule.
Her father raised a hand, and the seawater in the enclosure began to foam and bubble, churning up sand and shells, whipping into a frenzy.
He was going to kill Nin! And Nin was absolutely powerless to stop him, to protect herself.
“Adella, the pearl!” Will called from behind her.
Of course! She’d almost forgotten in the chaos. She turned toward the selkie mage and prepared to throw it, just like she was throwing one of the Skee balls.
Nin caught the motion out of the corner of her eye. She grabbed it easily out of the air in one flipper, making it seem effortless. As the pearl touched her skin, the flipper morphed into a hand—nothing like stepping in and out of the sealskin like Adella had to do to transform. The benefits of being a sea witch.
Nin rose to her feet—human feet—as the pearl pulsed with light, surrounding her in a bright cocoon as she transformed into an old human woman, beautiful and strong. Where the seal’s body had been weak and frail, this human form was vibrant and alive, as if the pearl itself had held her life force. And unlike Adella when she transformed, Nin was fully clothed in a dress that looked like ethereal sea foam.
But Father was still stirring up the water, preparing to hurl it with everything he had at Nin.
Nin quirked a smile, raising a hand. “Now, let’s not do anything rash, shall we? I haven’t done anything. I’m still in exile.”
“You’ve contacted my daughter,” he snarled, curling his fist as the waves climbed in height behind him. “Corrupted her mind. You’re attempting to destroy our way of life.”
“Daddy!” Adella couldn’t help shrieking, shocked. “You think Nin is the one who taught me to think for myself? Who challenged me to question what I didn’t understand? To find the truth?” She laughed. “That was you and Mom.”
But her words only seemed to make him angrier, and he snapped, “Let me handle this, daughter. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
Her heart sank. He wasn’t listening.
“Dad, no!”
He whirled toward her, ready to yell again, but he was losing control of his own magic. Instead of washing toward Nin, a funnel of water picked up and sped toward Adella. Two pairs of hands grabbed her, pulling her into an alcove in the rocks as the water sailed overhead, drenching her and her human friends. She half smiled at them as the water spout vanished.
“Thanks,” she said softly, her smile fading as her fear grew, “but you really should stay out of the way. My father... he...”
“We know,” Isabella said. “But we can make our own choices.”
“And we choose to stand by you,” Will added.
Her heart warmed, but then the crash and roar of the foaming water halted with a jolting abruptness, and her father’s voice rose over the sudden quiet. “Adella?”
She took a breath, touching her friends’ arms lightly in reassurance. Then, she stepped out to face her father.
The wind whipped around her, tugging her dress and hair, but she stood solid as a rock, staring him down despite the water dripping off of her—water from his own misdirected attack.
“And you think the humans are dangerous?” she said, again softly. “You could have killed me.”
Father’s hand dropped to his side, clutching at the skin around his waist.
Adella took a step toward him. “Nin didn’t do anything like that. Instead, she helped me. She gave me legs so I could see my friends one more time before you forced me to go home. Without even asking me if I was ready or if I wanted to, I might add.”
“I... Adella...” he stuttered.
She held up a hand and took another step. “The humans didn’t do anything, either. No, when you lost control, they thought fast and pulled me to safety. You should be thanking them.”
This time he didn’t bother trying to speak, but his throat moved as he swallowed. He was actually starting to look... ashamed?
“Things have changed, Dad. A lot. You didn’t want to believe it, though. And now, when we could be learning from the humans and working together, you still want nothing to do with anyone who isn’t a selkie, not even Nin, who could have done so much for our people!”
“Adella...” he started again.
But he stopped, as if he knew his words would never be enough. His gaze, so full of fury only moments ago, now seemed sad and full of remorse. He looked at Adella for several long minutes, then moved on to Nin and finally the humans. Each time, he studied them with the intensity of a scholar, and she could almost see the thoughts as they passed through his mind.
Could it be? Was his opinion actually... changing?
And all it took was almost killing Adella by accident.
She reached up to Olly where he still sat on her shoulder, holding a hand against his damp skin, and he reached a tentacle around, comforting her as they waited for what seemed like a thousand years.
Finally her father spoke. “Perhaps... perhaps I have been too harsh.” He looked at the humans again. “And maybe things have changed.”
Adella’s pulse fluttered. She was afraid to hope.
He looked back at her. “Maybe it’s time we... reevaluated things.”
She held her breath, waiting.
His eyes glimmered with unshed tears. He really was ashamed, as he should be after that display. “Adella, how would you like to be a liaison to the humans? At least... at least for now. Until we decide how we can best move forward... together.”
Adella’s face split in the biggest grin she’d ever had. “I’d love that.”
Will and Isabella walked up on either side of her, flanking her in front of the king of selkies.
His gaze traveled to the two of them. “And you... You will teach her whatever she needs to bring back to us?”
“We will,” Isabella said as Will nodded.
Father nodded back. “Very well. Then, there is just one other thing.” He turned toward Nin, his expression almost pained. “Nin. You were once a friend. And both of you were right at least once. You never did break your exile, and you aren’t the one who almost hurt Adella. That was me.”
Nin stared at him wordlessly.
“Nin, would you stay here as Adella’s advisor and guard? She will need another selkie to teach her how to use the human form. And... maybe a little magic.”
Nin’s eyes flicked toward Adella with a sparkle. “I would be honored to advise such a bold young lady.”
Father nodded and cleared his throat, turning back to Adella. “Well, then. I guess... I guess you’re staying here and I’m going home.”
Adella smiled, stepping toward her father to wrap her arms around him. “Thank you.”
He hugged her back, and she breathed in the warm smell of salt and seawater. “I’m trusting you, but... I think I haven’t given you enough credit until now. I’m sorry.”
She stepped back. “I know. And I know it’s hard, but I think this is the best way. I’m... I’m proud of you, Dad.”
He smiled down at her with more warmth than he’d shown since arriving.
Then his face blanched, and he ran a hand through his beard, eyes clouding as he turned back toward the sea. “What am I going to tell your mother?”
And then he was stepping back into the ocean, his seal form coalescing around him, and he was gone. The ocean waves pounded the shore like they always had as the seagulls cried overhead. And Adella stood in the sand, surrounded by friends she’d found herself, a team that had convinced her very stubborn father to rethink his ideas.
And it had worked.
Nin smiled down at Adella as she walked closer. “You did it!”
Adella smiled back tremulously. “I did. Whatever it is.”
Nin laughed, a bright musical sound. “And you beat the deadline. Your power is secure. You are your own selkie, I suspect for the first time in your short life.”
Tears burned Adella’s eyes again as gratitude surged. “Thank you.”
Nin nodded and began to walk away, toward the waves, still smiling. “There’s more to life than the Scouts, you know. I meant what I said to your father. I am honored to be your advisor. Your teacher. You could be like me, eventually, if you wanted.”
Teach her? As in... Adella could become a sea witch, too? And maybe help other selkies the way Nin had helped her.
The idea was a tremendous one, one that struck a chord that rang truer than anything else she’d ever known.
She smiled at Nin. “I’d love that.”
Nin grinned back. “Perfect. Then, let’s go for a swim.”
Adella turned and reached out her hands toward Isabella and Will, and Nin rested a hand on her shoulder next to Olly. “Thank you. All of you. And... I’m so glad I don’t have to say goodbye. At least, not yet.”
Neither of the humans answered that one. Instead, they stepped in, enveloping her in a hug like she’d never experienced before. Olly climbed from Adella’s shoulder to Isabella’s, and the humans stepped back.
She looked to Olly. “Olly. You were my friend when I had no others. And... you deserve to be free, too. If you want.”
Olly’s huge golden eye roved from the humans and back to Adella. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen the others in my family. Felt the waves.”
Adella offered a smile along with her hand—a gift she’d been afraid to offer before. He climbed away from Isabella and pulled himself back onto her shoulder.
“I suppose a visit wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
Adella patted his soft skin, and her gaze lingered on the humans a moment longer. She stepped back toward the rocks, retrieving her sealskin from its hiding place. She draped it over her arm, looked back at them one more time with a sad, but excited, smile, then turned toward Nin.
“We’ll be back soon,” she tossed over her shoulder.
Will and Isabella each raised a hand in response, their smiles bright and eyes twinkling.
“We’ll be waiting,” Will said.
The older selkie stood with her back to them, her face raised to the sky as the wind blew her long gray hair out behind her. Adella joined her, stopping just at her side as she clutched the sealskin to her chest, Olly pressed tightly against her shoulder.
“Are you ready, little selkie?” Nin said, eyes still closed. “There’s a whole world waiting for you.”
Adella wiped away the last of her tears. She never thought a day like this could come, a day she was free of the expectations of the Scouts, a day she could truly learn about herself and the world around her in the way that was best for her. A day she could bring her people together again to the land of the sun.
And she could feel it now like she never had before. She was indeed ready.
Adella slipped her hand into Nin’s. “Let’s go find it, then.”
