Sea Change Read Online Free PDF

pad of paper and a black oblong box to make room. Then I began to read.
    It was the high summer of 1650 when Captain William McCloud, a Scottish pirate sailing to the Caribbean, discovered what is today known as Selkie Island.
    The book went on to explain that Captain McCloud’s crew had mutinied and dropped him in a dinghy off the coast of Georgia. The pirate was half mad from starvation when a beautiful green-eyed mermaid with a red-gold tail steered him to land. There, the mermaid, named Caya, shape-shifted into a woman. Captain McCloud promptly fell in love with her, married her, and named the island Selkie—the Scottish word for a creature capable of transforming from a seal into a human. Captain McCloud and Caya had several children, who, like their mother, became merfolk when they submergedthemselves in the ocean, but lived as humans on land. And, according to Llewellyn Thorpe, these merfolk descendants still populated the island.
    I laughed to myself, amused, but I kept on reading.
    Merfolk such as Caya have been a universal element of lore. The ancient Assyrians told of Atargatis: half-woman, half-fish. And in his Metamorphoses, Ovid gave us Glaucus, the lovelorn merman. Many dismiss mermaid sightings as a sailor’s misinterpretation of a manatee or a dugong swimming beneath the waves. But in his journals, Christopher Columbus wrote of spotting Sirens off the coast of Hispaniola, and Henry Hudson swore he witnessed a woman with the tail of a porpoise swimming by the side of his ship. It is on and around Selkie, however, that the greatest evidence of merfolk life exists. The native Selkie merfolk are as much a part of the island as the Spanish moss and the marshes.
    Selkie merfolk are usually recognizable by a few key features, such as: a lush, sensitive beauty; a predilection for the colors red and gold; kindness toward visitors and explorers; and homes close to the shore. They can sometimes be spotted at night, when venturing out to—
    A sudden, shrill scream came from outside the house. I jumped in my chair, knocking the book off the desk, and leapt to my feet, my pulse thudding in my ears, louder than theocean. Every inch of my skin was awake, my nerve endings on alert.
    The scream came again, and I pressed a hand to my damp collarbone, taking a deep breath. Calm down. I recalled the Sea Islands Wildlife website I’d skimmed before leaving New York. I was probably hearing the call of an American oystercatcher, a bird native to the area. That was all.
    What is with you, Miranda?
    I glanced at where Llewellyn Thorpe’s book lay, several of its pages loose and scattered. It was the silly book that was spooking me. I looked up at the portrait of Isadora, who stared back at me—her foolish granddaughter, shivering in a swimsuit. Who else, besides me, had come into the study late at night only to find A Primer on the Legend and Lore of Selkie Island ? Had Mom? Had her siblings? Had Isadora herself? Had any of them fallen for Llewellyn Thorpe’s words?
    There was an irrational part of me that wanted to continue reading, to find out more. But I knew that was a bad idea, that there was nothing useful to be learned from the book. And I needed to get some sleep; Mom had said we’d have a big day of cleaning and sorting tomorrow, and there was that Heirs party.
    I stuffed the pages back into the book and returned it to its place on the shelf, feeling my usual rationale return as well.As I shut off the light and left the study, I felt my heartbeat slowing down. Even the mariner seemed benign as I hurried past him now. I made my way to the kitchen, got a glass of water, and carried it upstairs, hoping the moaning of the steps wouldn’t wake Mom.
    In my room, I drew the drapes and quickly changed into a blue tank top and my favorite pajama bottoms: They were white and printed with miniature blue whales. I’d purchased them at the Museum of Natural History when I’d interviewed there back in March. My friend Linda,