One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“This is lovely, but my children are still missing.” Dianda pushed away from the dock, flukes unfurling in a swirl of green and purple. “Connor, come on. I’ll need you to help show our guest around the knowe.”


“Um. Right,” said Connor, and dove, fully clothed, off the dock.

That made me think of something I hadn’t thought of until that moment: “Hey, what the hell happened to my pants?”

“Among many other excellent questions,” said Dianda. She offered me her hand. “Come along. I’ll pull you.”

“I appreciate it,” I said. I couldn’t figure out how to take her hand without crushing the webbing between her fingers—or between my own—and so I grabbed her wrist, holding tight.

“Don’t hold your breath,” she advised, and pulled me under.

The strange lightness under the waves remained, making it almost easier to see below than it had been above. Dianda’s scales cast their own faint, luminous glow. Even if she hadn’t been pulling me, I wouldn’t have lost sight of her. Smiling encouragingly, she tugged me forward, away from the dock, into the open sea.

Splashes from behind us signaled the remaining Selkie archers entering the water. In a matter of seconds, the sea was alive with harbor seals, their silver-and-charcoal coats turning them into virtual ghosts. I couldn’t pick Connor out of the throng. I’ve seen him in seal form dozens, if not hundreds of times, but all the swimming Selkies looked alike to me. Anyway, I was preoccupied by the effort of keeping up with Dianda, something that got harder when I tried to think about what I was doing. It was like my body knew how to swim, but my brain complicated everything by insisting I was doing it wrong.

Thinking too much also had the unpleasant side effect of making me realize that I wasn’t actually breathing. Gills just aren’t the same. Finally, I stopped thinking and let myself go, trusting Dianda to get us where we were going. Things got better after that.

I’m no oceanographer, but I know enough to know that it’s supposed to get darker as you go deeper. That wasn’t happening here. Instead, we swam through a series of small temperature changes, wafting, diffuse things that would signify the transition between the mortal and fae worlds if they appeared in a land knowe. The fish swimming by got flashier, all bright colors and flamboyant patterns of the sort I usually only saw on the Discovery Channel. The Selkies wove a complicated pattern around us, acting as escort and guard. And in the middle of it all swam Dianda, cutting through the water with me firmly in tow.

Ahead of us, the Selkies began to vanish. Nothing was taking them, and they weren’t swimming away; they were swimming forward, and then they were gone, moving into some other sea. Dianda looked back, nodding her head toward the place where the Selkies disappeared. I nodded, bracing myself as much as I could while still swimming faster than a man could run. Dianda smiled and put on a burst of speed, towing me into a patch of water so cold it was like liquid ice. The world twisted—

—and we were through, entering an ocean full of moonlight. I thought it was easy to see in the mortal ocean. I was wrong. It was easy to see here, where the light clung to everything and the shadows were all but nonexistent. Even the saltwater tasted sweet, with no trace of pollution or modern industry. We were in the Summerlands sea.