What frightened me is that I almost believed him. Almost, but not quite. Was he dragging me down into his delusions? Was I beginning a spiraling descent into madness? I could not deny his intensity, his desperation. Whatever the truth was, he honestly believed that I was this selkie creature, and he honestly believed that I was in some kind of danger. There was part of me that liked the simplicity-- that wanted to believe what he was saying. After all, that meant that my mother was still out there, somewhere. I wasn’t an orphan. I wasn’t really alone. And, if what he said was true, then she hadn’t really meant to leave me, she had to—had been compelled by the sea—to leave. I rubbed my throbbing head. My thoughts were tangled together and jumbled, skittering off in all directions. I had to sort things out. What if it were true? After all, weren’t fairy-stories only created to explain what we couldn’t understand?
