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I tried not to listen to him whimper as I pulled them from the wood

Ghassan handed over the rubbery skin with a grin on his sparsely whiskered face “A pleasure, prettiest of girl-slips Farewell—I don’t iain” He pocketed the bark and strode back over the darass

I pressed the skin to my heart and hid it beneath my bed when I came home for supper—I breathed its salty, watery scent dozens of times before I reached my own door How proud I was! When I lay down to sleep I pulled it out again and held it to ht on my own skin

It was such a slass, a rapping at the as startled as a sparrow to look up and see two huge, gray eyes looking through the pane atman, no older than I, with dark hair and skin so pale it seemed bloodless

“Please,” he said, “let me in”

“Certainly not,” I whispered, so as not to wake a father already suspicious of every suitor’s knock But I unlatched theand opened it, just the smallest of cracks The youth looked at the skin clutched in my arms

“Miss, I’s to me”

“And what’s that?”

“The skin It’s mine”

“I see plenty of skin on your bones as it is This is olden scales”

The youth shook his dark head sadly “You bought it from a beast and a thief, who stole it froy rock I am a Selkie, and that is my skin”

I tightened randfather for this It will grow back, I knoill, but I oughtn’t to have done it and if I lose the skin then I will have done it for nothing This is the only thing that is mine, and not my father’s or my mother’s or my sisters’ or my brothers’”

“It is not your father’s or your mother’s or your sisters’ or your brothers’ It is o hoive it over”

I did not want to cry, but the tears pricked all the sairl, and I knew all manner of tales “Wait a moment—what is your name?”

“I am called Shroud”