WHERE THE RIVER MEETS THE SEA

Stars kiss the sky as the light begins to dim, the air, a raw bite, clawing at his exposed skin. Reeds and crickets brush against the sides of his boots as he dunks the rabbit skin into the water that chilled his snow-dried digits. A shudder rips through his shoulder, and with his off hand, he pulls the fur cloak tighter and shifts his position on the stone. Lying the chilled skin across the bank, dragging his fingers along the underside to remove the last vestiges of gore from the pelt.

Hanging on a crude rack fashioned from gnarled branches and old fisher’s rope, the rest of his kill swung loosely against the wind, and under his breath, a tavern song hummed like the grumbling of an old war horn.

From the babbling, rolling pool of water at his feet, movement works against the current. Something splashes, just beneath the surface. Too soft for a falling stone, too heavy for a fish. Lifting his head from the game, he furrows his fuzzy, shoe brush brows. Black beads searched the river for signs of movement, but nothing brought that sound again. The wind whistles over the cold muck, and river otters fight in the distance over muscles they’d found on the floor where the river and sea would meet. Rocks and muddy stones marked that bank before dropping short, but steeply into the pool that gave way to the shoreline.

The otters chitter, bang their catch on their stones like a drunk clattering for another beer, lie on their backs where the river’s tail dove into the sea, and for a moment, he wandered in the back of his mind.

At what point does the clean water become stained by the salt? Does it distinguish itself like a merchant in a tavern with its shiny jewelry and colorful coats, or does it blend into the mass and become so diluted that it’s as noticeable as a drop of lemon in a tankard of ale?

He didn’t know. Didn’t care to know. Knowing was a rich man’s game after all. Bears, he reasoned, were not in the habit of pondering. If it couldn’t be solved with a swing of his axe or a stern blow of his fist, it wasn’t his place to consider. He was not meant for such things. His place was to hunt, to do battle on the request of a fat coin purse. Aimless thought didn’t feed him; it simply left his mind hungry for answers that wouldn’t come.

Shaking his head, dismissing the intrusive thought, he stroked his thick fingers down the fuzz of his beard, which curled and caught on his nails like brambles, in an attempt to refocus on his task. He tucks his head down toward his weathered hands, clutching the skin of a creature small enough to fit in his monstrous palm. He shakes it once, then twice to free the chilled droplets from the fur hanging the poor remains of a rabbit with the reed stems onto the rope with the rest of his kill, while the meat remains in a basket below.

When his back was turned once again, he heard it. The loud sound is like someone swimming in the brink. But no fool would swim this time of year. The Winter wasn’t quite there yet, but the chill had come early. For all his fur, muscle, and fat, the bear couldn’t imagine sinking further than his wrist into that river. So who, or what, was making that sound?

Turning slowly to look over his shoulder, a black bead just barely peaking over the mane of fur that lined his cloak, he saw something. Like speckled gravel, or stones on the beach bleached by the tide and sun, something not quite white and speckled with spots. A tail. His surprise was palpable.

His practical mind, accustomed to the creatures of the wild, struggled to categorize the impossible sight.

Frosted breath plumed from his bearded lips, and he began the task of picking up his gear. He makes no sudden moves but draws the basket lid open, where the rabbit pieces lie, some still whole and cleanly butchered, while others are more sloppy from misplaced knife points. From the tied-up rack of game, his fingers pinch around an ear of the last rabbit to keep its skin, and he tosses it into the water. Five rabbits were enough for a stew; he reasoned to himself, losing one wouldn’t cost him.

The moment that the meat hit the water with a plop, he heard the splash again. When he turns this time, he sees just behind the rocks something akin to wet hair like spun rope, and eyes unlike any animal he’d ever seen. As blue as seafoam and for a moment his own dark beads narrow in recognition.

“Take it. It’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”

He grumbles out in a flat voice from the cold, shortening his patience.

In truth, he didn’t know for sure that the meat was what the creature came for, but he couldn’t imagine what else. If not for food, what else would drive out a beast that was too afraid to be seen?

Rising from the water with torso only covered by drenched hair, and where hips should’ve given way to legs instead, it was that tail again, spotted like the gravel stones that lined the beach, painting otherwise ivory skin with spots like a dappled hound. Similar splotches dotted her face like freckles, round yet appealing like one of those fluffy wild cats that liked to steal his game from him.

Yet, they don’t seem to care for the rabbit much, for she clung to a large river rock like a wall, a shield between them. The path cut just enough by the river that one wrong step and she’d be gone before his foot touched the water.

A woman? He questions until his eyes drift in a manner that makes his cheeks warm under his beard—a foolish question in hindsight.

“Selkie.” He corrected himself under his breath, answering a question no one asked. Noting the spots on her tail, the way she seemed far more filled out than any sailor’s art of merfolk or sirens. Yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to be wary of her. Just a profound, foreign curiosity that spat in the face of his more practical nature.

A sensible man should hesitate to sit so close to a creature the world knows so little about. Though for reasons that his mind couldn’t comprehend, he felt no fear. Foolish, he told himself, yet he watches her with the caution of seeing a doe in the thicket. His hand stayed quiet to avoid scaring her away. A pretty sight. One that almost hurt to kill. But the doe was food, he could justify spilling its blood. But this?

In a manner that betrayed his preference for willful ignorance, just as he’d pondered where the clean water met the brine, he looked down where her waist met her tail, and wondered.

At what point was she as human as he was? Or did the tail, the webbing between her fingers, and the spots that seemed to clothe her dictate that she was more beast than man?

Before he could truly linger on this thought, she looked up at him as though he were speaking moose, not man, but looked back at his gift and smiled.

It was a soft smile, like light peaking through the clouds. She does not speak. He wasn’t entirely sure that she could, but clawed webbed fingers clutched the skinned rabbit in a way that should’ve been grotesque but instead reminded him of a child who didn’t understand what they’d been given. There was a charm to her, in her own quiet way.

For a moment, he understood why the scholarly types who did not need to hunt for a living as he did might spend their lives trying to paint the faint glimpses they had of such a creature.

It seemed she wasn’t much for conversation, but in truth, neither was he.

He takes another breath, watching as she hides behind the frosted stones.

Turning his back again, he hauls his gear over his shoulder in a bag larger than his broad back, and the second he feels his fingers pick up his huntsman’s axe that splashes again.

Looking over his shoulder, she had tucked herself further behind the stone that divided them, acting as a barrier that seemed to shield her better than the tide of the river. He raised the handle slowly but strapped it to his bag, and he watched as her fear gave way to bewilderment.

What has the world shown her? He ponders in a way that feels like a violation of the divide between hunter and scholar.

Looking at her, he swore the slightest jerk of movement and she’d disappear back into the river, and somehow that notion bothered him.

What could he possibly say to ease her mind? Even if he had, he doubted she’d understand, but he looked back and, on a whim that felt foolish enough to make a tavern roar, he pushed his fat finger against his chest and, in a calm voice, tried to reach her. “Ursa.” He tells her.

She pauses, a beat. Maybe four before nodding and she pints her thing webbed finger of sorts to herself in mimicry, “Levy”. She replies in a voice that reminds him of the water rippling over the stones. Sweeter than a pear, and so soft he could tell her voice was scarcely used.

Levy.

He rolls the word in his head. Something akin to a name. Somehow, that satisfied his curiosity and bridged the silence plagued by thoughts he wasn’t smart enough to comprehend.

Without much else to say, he hoists the bag over his shoulder again with a jerk to trust it’s secure, and starts his walk back up the hill toward civilization.

The moon hadn’t quite touched the sky just yet, and the moment he crossed a certain threshold, she must’ve done the same because he heard the sound of diving as her tail slapped against the brink, and for a moment, he pondered. That bothersome hum of questions he had no answer to. Would she stay in the river? Would she know his name if he met her again, or would she run away and leave forever in that space that split the river and the deep?

After hauling his shed back to town, the last light of day finally left the sky, painting the horizon in a deep shade of indigo that was punched by the orange glow of the tavern’s lanterns in the distance and the torches that marked the village entrance as his boots rejoined the cobblestone path still stained with my hoof prints.

Tucking into his humble shack, sitting on his hand-carved stool, startin' to chuck the rabbit into a stew pot and lettin' his muck-soaked boots dry by the fire heat, the mud turnin' to clay as it dried. In another betrayal of his comfortable sensibilities, he began to wonder if he’d become just another old hunter in the tavern in ten years, raving about the Selkie he spotted by the river tonight. It was almost enough to make him smile. However, he was grateful to be alone with those thoughts. His axe hung over the fireplace, marred by scratches from spears and dents from being slammed into the armor of men he was commanded to push back while under the haze of a mushroom rage.

He had long taken pride in that axe as any good berserker should. To scrawny men who met him on a wartorn field, he was not a man. He was a monster. Known to fell men whose names and faces he did not know. It was natural, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. Such was the life of a bear. He wasn’t paid to think; he was the war axe that rich men swung at their enemies. A warhound whose purpose is and was to draw blood without question. Without remorse.

In this quiet, disturbed only by the warmth of rabbit stew roasting in the cast-iron pot and the crackle of coals in the fire, he allows his mind to drift like the water in that place where the river met the sea.

Thinking of that woman who was neither beast nor man was more peaceful in those few short breaths by the water than he was at his proudest moment. He brushes his thumb on the wooden handle of his carving knife, marked with the whittled face of a bear—a gift from one of his tavern buddies. His smile grows before relenting with a sigh and a chuckle that vibrated, burned in his throat like his favorite butter beer. And yet, in his encounter. Where some might have taken her as a trophy or run to the tavern to boast, here he remained. Quiet, reflective. A jest upon the image of the bear, the warrior, the man of Earth that he’d always painted of himself to be.