The captain fished him from the waves herself, hauling him onto her ship, her prized vessel - the Harp. The crew clucked and hustled about, making room as she laid the man out across the deck and at once sank to her knees, listening for a heartbeat. When she found none, she at once began to press against his chest, alternating between compressions and breaths. The captain never surrendered to death without a fight.
Nothing. His waterlogged lungs would not yield. His heart remained stubbornly still.
Press. Breath. Press. Breath.
Just as she turned away, defeated, crestfallen - the stranger gasped.
She instantly swung back, held him as he coughed up harsh saltwater, drew in a great, heaving breaths, shook the water from his eyes and hair, and slowly, almost fearfully, surveyed the audience with narrow grey eyes.
“I’m Captain Chance Muirenn.” she murmured. “You’re on the Harp. You’re safe now.”
“Humans?” rasped the stranger. He was still gasping softly, as though unsure how to take in air.
Captain Muirenn raised one pale eyebrow.
“What else?”
In response, the stranger shuddered once and hesitantly, almost fearfully, touched the captain’s cheek.
She made an odd sight - a slender, small woman, skin ghostly-pale even after her many years at sea, hair steadfastly white-blonde, eyes as dark and lovely as onyx. Though almost deafened in a childhood accident, her sense of smell dazzled even the most hardened sceptic - it was said that she could sense whirlpools and storms days in advance, and perhaps this was true - certainly, her crew and ship had never endured the trials of most sailors, but nothing was for certain on the seas.
She was notable, experienced, and still quite young when her watchman spotted the stranger. She sniffed. It was odd - there was no ship in sight (or smell), and yet, here this man was, found all-but-dead on the sea. She could have let him be. It was a wide ocean; no one would need to know what they’d seen. Perhaps he was even a monster in disguise. They were on their fifth voyage to the Northern Seas, and could fall behind schedule easily, a fatal mistake in the harsh climate of the North.
She leapt into the sea herself to haul him up.
… … …
Sailors are a practical bunch. The man needed to recover. They could use an extra hand - and were too far along now to turn back.
The mysterious traveller became a part of the crew.
And a strange man he was, too. Tall, strong and angular, his face strangely shaped, he moved as though unsure where and how to place his limbs. He was a hulk of a man, carrying out the most laborious tasks with ease, but when he spoke, it was with surprising eloquence and insight. He knew nothing about the politics, fashions, and customs of the day, yet understood the ways of the sea more than the captain herself. His eyes remained narrowed, an odd shade of grey, and his teeth were sharp. When he smiled, it was as though he clenched several small knives in his jaw.
He claimed to remember nothing.
The Captain pried him again and again, attempting to help him remember, but he could not. The only sensations that came to him, he reported, was a flash of pain at his neck, and indeed, he bore a jagged scar there, not unlike that of a spear-mark. The crew grew to respect him, the man with no name and no past. The captain liked him - the two of them, both different, set apart, both drawn to the sea by something intangible, something deep in their soul, the calling irresistible. She told him of herself, of her vow - to always return to the sea. While he enjoyed her company, and the crew, he was lonely - horribly lonely, certain that his own kind were far, far away - and he could not remember, could not return.
Sometimes, the captain heard him cry out in the night.
“I am lost,” he wept. “I am lost!”
Within two months, the Harp had reached the Northern Seas, and within a third, they, too, were lost - in a far more geographical sense of the word. The crew faced ice demons, beasts of all sorts, pressed on against the bitter chill, until their final challenge struck - starvation.
No food could be found.
Slowly, the crew began to fall ill. Not long after that, the first were dead.
The Captain did all she could. She herself had not eaten for days. But there was no food to be found. Anything edible had been consumed. In spare moments, she huddled in the Crow’s Nest, surveying her beloved sea, frozen tears caking her face. Her love had abandoned her. They would all starve.
Then, she froze. A distinct odor wafted through the chill air, slow, leisurely, into the Captain’s magnificent nose. Something that smelt of salt and distance oceans and blood and -
Meat.
Food.
In a moment, she was down from her perch, staggering past her hollow-eyes crew, towards the front of the ship. There appeared to be some sort of disturbance - shouts of triumph and terror echoed down, and when she drew closer, she could make them out-
“SHARK! SHARK!”
She burst through the crowd, spear in hand, eyes hard, ready to make the kill-
And froze, genuinely shocked.
The stranger - her crewman, her friend, balanced on the rail of the ship. Below him, in the frigid water, lurked an enormous, dead-eyed shark.
“Get back!” she rushed forwards once again. “I’m going to-”
Then she saw his face.
His strange, blunted features had relaxed, his life-toothed smile flashed in the watery sun, and his eyes - they were whole once more, no longer occupied by the pressing agony of amnesia.
He had remembered.
His hand, elongating, slipped towards the waiting shark.
The captain could contain herself no longer.
“Move!”
She thrust the spear forwards-
“NO!”
The man turned, and no longer was he gentle - head down, teeth flashing, he charged towards her, arms spread. “No, don’t hurt him-”
He barrelled into her as the crew scattered, but Captain Muirenn had always been slight and agile. Twisting elegantly, she rammed him aside and drew back one arm, aiming for the eye-
“NO! NO-”
She drew back one arm, eyes bloodshot, eager with the rabid look of a starving animal. Food, food, food-
“NO!”
The stranger hurtled into her, just as she released the spear. violently moved by the impact, it plunged not into the eye of the circling beast, but the throat.
The shark gave an echoing roar, and began to thrash. Within moment, that icy sea was crimson, and the magnificent creature slowly began to bob, spear still embedded in its throat.
Triumphant, Chance Muirenn turned.
The stranger crumpled to his knees. For a long moment, there was no sound but of his gasps. Then, growling low in his throat, he raised his dark eyes. They burned with fury.
“What have you done.” His voice was garbled with fury. “What have you DONE?!”
Muirren, flushed, opened her mouth to answer - and gasped.
The stranger’s head morphed.
It pointed, his mouth widening, teeth expanding, eyes shooting to either side of his head - until in a horrific sight, a shark-headed man locked eyes with the captain.
Muirenn’s dark eyes widened. Her spear hand shook.
She had made a terrible mistake.
“Captain Muirren.” The stranger’s head had shrunk back into its human form. She could not bear to look at the scar across his throat.
“I was trying to save my crew.”
“As you saved me,” he murmured, voice grating. “You saved me from death and accepted me as one of your own, despite my oddities. You understood me. But-” his gaze darkened, staring past her to the dead shark.
“You have killed one of my own. I had found myself - had remembered who I was, found my kinsman - and you ripped him from me. You have murdered my brother. I cannot allow you to remain unpunished.”
Muirenn reached for him, then drew back, aware of the knife-like teeth.
“My friend-”
“You can no longer be a friend to me.” The creature bowed his head sadly. “You were a sister in my time of darkness. But now, we must part as foes.”
Her voice shook. “My crew has done no wrong. Leave them be.”
“I shall.” The shark-man extended one elongated hand. Captain Chance Muirenn barely had time to relish her last moment of humanity before a great heat washed over her. She gasped, then cried out, and then was lost in the crash of pain and swell of the sea, her beautiful sea..
She awoke to gasps and screams.
Captain Muirenn was now a small creature, snow-white, with two furry front flippers and back flippers sealed together into a tail. She brushed her snout and found dark whiskers. The crew gaped at her eyes and nose, as dark as onyx in the night. Her sense of smell had been magnified, but the next words of the shark man were the last sound she would ever hear.
“I am a Dual - a beast with the power to shift between this form and my true self. I was hunted, by a ship much like yours, and in an attempt to survive, transformed into a humanlike creature. You and your crew found me, saved me, and cared for me. For this, I reward you. You shall, as you wish, approach the land to give birth, to rest. But once your task is complete, you will always return to the sea - for this, Captain, is where you truly belong. You will live in the place you belong.
“But for the price of my brother, we shall from this moment forth be enemies. My kind will kill yours, if we can, whenever we meet. You have made an enemy of sharks from this point forth, my seal captain. Be wary. This ocean is not, and shall never be, your paradise.”
He bowed his head.
“Good-bye, Captain Muirenn.”
Muirenn’s hearing fell away into nothingness. Her crew gawked. She cast one last glance around her beautiful ship, remembered her life. If a seal could have cried, she would. Then, with a brave face, she turned and dove, into the frigid waters of the north that so called her - never to be seen again.
The shark-man waited until nothing could be seen of the former captain before addressing the crew.
“You may feast off my brother - it is my final gift to you. Chose a new Captain, and leave here as soon as you must. We shall be enemies next we meet, but now, I wish you peace. May you live to see land, and tell this tale.”
With a last jagged-toothed smile, he turned and, like Muirenn, plunged into the sea, elongating until a fierce shark bobbed alongside the sinking dead one. He glanced back once, then vanished into the bloodstained waters, until only a sharp fin could be seen above the water - then, even it was lost.
With the gift of the dead shark, the stunned crew managed to sail successfully to the closest port, where they first began to spread their tale - of a man who was in truth a lost shark, a devoted Captain who thought of only her crew, only to make a fatal mistake and pay the price. Though their words were originally doubted, they soon were acknowledged as true, for the shark has long since been both a predator to humankind and seals alike. And while the Captain Muirenn has never been seen again, an agile, white-and-grey seal with black eyes inhabits the gelid seas of the North, dipping and diving, utterly deaf yet surpassing humanity with its sense of smell. In time, they were named, named for the prized ship of the first seal of its kind - the Harp.
The Harp Seal, upon noticing humans, grants them a dark-eyed stare. It is as yet unknown whether their eyes plead for a return to humanity, or merely observe - for perhaps they are happy as can be, in their new life in the endless sea.