“Child?” She tried to struggle free, appalled and aching with hurt and disappointment. If he wanted a mother for his children, he would have to find someone else and she couldn’t bear that thought. “Sean, I’m past all that. It may have escaped your notice, but a person doesn’t become a senior company officer until middle age. My body is just not-”
“Well, love, as long as we’re talking about what bodies are and are not, I think you should be aware of a thing or two about mine. So much has happened, I didn’t want to spring it on you all at once, but back in the cavern, when we were all joined with Petaybee, I knew …”
“Knew what? Sean? Scan!”
But he dove into the water, and as it sluiced over his skin, instead of the gray-brown ashy color subsiding, it deepened, blurring his skin so that she felt she was looking at him through mist. Sean rolled himself into a ball, dove under the water, and when he surfaced again, his silver-brown hair covered not just his scalp but his face-and his form had changed!
Before she could say anything, the seal who was Sean climbed back out, playfully flipped her with the water on his sleek hide, and unfolded once more into her lover.
She took one involuntary step backward, then stepped toward him. “What-exactly-happened there?”
“My grandfather did, as Torkel suggested, go a little far. Actually, a lot far. There are some special notes in his personal diaries, which I have hidden in a safe place. He was fascinated by old Native American and Celtic tales of men who could change their shapes to protect themselves and suit their environment-of course, these were magical tales, but he always maintained they were just an extreme form of adaptation. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to experiment on people at all-he didn’t realize at the time that the planet was already producing substantial adaptive alterations in us-but he did do a bit of manipulation on himself that has carried down in my chromosomes, so that I, at least, adapt-er, quite a lot more drastically-than others on the planet. I ‘adapt’ or actually, in most ways, transform, at times into the marine animal most suited for this climate. I’m what they call in the old Celtic folklore a selkie; a man on land, a seal in the sea, or in my case, in the water.”
“And your sister?” Yana asked. “Does she transform, too? I wondered why she bit my head off when I mentioned seal hunting.”
He shook his head. “Not that I know of, and I think she would have told me. She’s the only one who’s actually seen me change, except for you, though Clodagh knows. As you saw, the seal shape can be very useful when it’s necessary to navigate the underground riverine network.” He gave her a half-uncertain, half-rakish smile. “Clodagh and Sinead even seem to feel it makes me one of the more versatile individuals on the planet. But the woman whose opinion on the subject matters the most to me is you and-I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it, which is why I hesitated to make love to you the first time we came here, although I wanted to very badly. I meant to tell you all of this before we made love after the latchkay but …”
She laid her hand on his cheek, and he caught it and held it as if she were throwing him a lifeline. He took another deep, ragged breath. Obviously confiding this secret to her scared him as none of the dangers they had braved together had done.
“I-hope-that after what you’ve seen, you can see that it’s this dual nature of mine that gives me my particular special bond with Petaybee. And that because of it, when we were all joined with the planet, I sensed that within our common union there was an extra person present, the child you carry. Our child.”
“But I can’t have a child,” she said, still trying to absorb his astonishing revelation. A little dizzy with all the changes taking place, she leaned against his water-slick body, her cheek damp against his shoulder. “I can’t.”