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large and formidable looking, though they were quite harmless if one knew how to handle them. It was these that Adelia approached. Seizing one of the creature’s tails, she swung it up on a wooden chopping block alongside and took one of the cleavers from its bracket on the wall.
    “Well?” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Meg. “Grab a cleaver. There’s room for two on this block. The eel pots should have been set at first light. What are you waiting for?”
    “I…uh…” Meg stumbled over her words. Chopping up horseshoe crabs to bait the eel pots had never bothered her before. Now even the slightest injury to any creature that lived in the sea was repugnant to her. Uncle Olwyn had harvested the crabs along the strand after the spring mating and brought the females up to lay their eggs in the sandy floor of the shack, where they grew and hatched and molted until they were mature enough to kill for bait. She’d done it many times. She’d even come at sundown and fed the creatures worms and mollusks to fatten them up for the eventual kill. But now she could not force her hand to reach out for that cleaver in its bracket beside the door. “I…can’t,” she murmured, shaking her head wildly.
    “What?” Adelia cried. “Have your courses come upon you again that you act so peculiar? Silly chit! You’ve never been squeamish about chopping horsefeet up for bait before, my girl. What ails you?”
    Meg ignored the first of that, though it gave her a new worry. What if she were with child? Simeon had certainly reached far enough inside her to plant his seed. She rubbed her belly absently underneath her cloak. No! She couldn’t think about that now—not with Aunt Adelia standing slack-jawed, cleaver suspended over the wriggling horseshoe crab. Clawlike feet churning, the poor creature was trying to right itself with its spinelike tail, which served it as a rudder for just such occasions. Meg couldn’t bear to look.
    “I…I’ll fetch the eel pots,” she said, darting back outside to where the semicircular traps of wood and wire mesh were stacked alongside the shed. As long as she didn’t have a hand in the slaughter, she could bear it. What was happening to her?
    The sound of the cleaver slicing through the horseshoe crab’s hard shell ran her through as if the blade had struck her as well, and she took a moment to compose herself before returning carrying several of the eel pots. Two more trips and they began baiting the traps with pieces of the horseshoe crab and loading them into a wheelbarrow.
    “Hurry with that,” Adelia snapped. “And do not forget to bring back yesterday’s yield. ’Tis market day. We will be set upon by mainland folk as well as our own before the sun reaches the zenith. Our customers want fresh eels, niece, and you know they will not come near the Isle once the sun begins to sink. Enough there! Come. I will help you load the skiff.”
    Meg pushed the barrow. “The pots should be set at night,” Adelia grumbled, waddling alongside. “But I cannot risk putting you to the hazard out in that bay after dark, and I am too old to do it. Until your uncle returns, this is how it must be. The markers are hard to find at night, and besides, there are other dangers…creatures of the deep that frequent these waters. Women are not safe alone at night on the bay, let alone beyond the sandbar in the ocean, where the best pots are laid.”
    Meg’s heart leaped in her breast. Her aunt had brought up the subject herself. It was more than she could have hoped for, and she pounced upon it.
    “You always speak of the seal people…the selkies , is it, that frequent these isles?” she said. “You can’t believe that all the seals we see sunning themselves out on those rocks are such shape-shifters?”
    “Aye, I do,” Adelia said. “The males are great seducers. They come ashore—especially during the full moon—shed their skins, and revel on the beach, fornicating and dancing their