The Selkie
Melanie Jackson
LOVE SPELL 
NEW YORK CITY
The ancient door’s bolts were rusted; it took a bit of effort to unlatch and open, so she had a moment to take in her visitor through the growing crack before he strode over the sill on long, lithe legs, a fair stretch of which showed beneath his rumpled kilt.
“De tha thu ’deanamh?”
the man demanded of her, his bottomless brown eyes framed in the longest, silkiest lashes she had ever seen.
“What?”
“Ye’d be one of the sassanach women then,” he said, his deep voice shifting into heavily accented English that resembled the local Scots’ dialect. He stared at her palm for several seconds, clearly debating whether to take it.
“Aye, yer the one. There’s nae point in denyin’ it. I’ll dae my duty by ye, lass, and lay wi’ ye if that’s what ye wish. But I want my skin back first.”
For the
scribblus romanticus:
Lynsay and Susan and Lisa and Susan and Christine and Susan.
“O, cradle row, and cradle go,
and sleep well, my bairn within;
I ken not who thy father is,
nor yet the land he dwells within.”
And up then spake the gray selkie
when he woke her from her sleep,
“I’ll tell ye where thy bairn’s father is:
he’s sittin’ close by thy bed feet.”
“I pray, come tell to me thy name, Oh,
tell me where does thy dwelling be?”
My name it is good, Sule Skerry,
And I earn my living on the sea.
“For I am a man upon the land;
but I am a selkie on the sea,
and when I’m far frae ev’ry strand,
my home is in Sule Skerry.
“Now foster well my wee young son,
aye for a twelve-month and a day,
and when that twelve-month’s fairly gone,
I’ll come and pay the nurse’s fee.”
And with that weary twelve-month gone,
he’s come tae pay the nurse’s fee;
he had a coffer fu’ o’ gold,
and another fu’ o’ the white money.
“And now thou will pay a hunter good,
and a right fine hunter I’m sure he’ll be;
and the first shot that e’er he shoots
will kill both my young son and me.”
—
from
The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry
The water was cold and choppy, with a heavy tide starting to run. The sea had her moods, so she did, but they were no worry to a man who understood them. Ian wasn’t concerned with the thick dark or the strong tide. He had a deep keel on his boat, and a good sail as well as oars. It would take a full gale, or a whale, to overturn him.
He helped himself to another modest dram of whiskey, shuddering with pleasure as it went down. The fiery peat always tasted best when drunk at sea on a cold wintry day. Or night. He’d probably had a bit more of the drink than he should have, but it was difficult to maintain a rosy glow on a windy night in the northern isles. And he needed to stop the violent
shivering or he couldn’t man the oars, could he? And he needed the bloody oars to hold his place in the water.
At last! Something was glimmering down there in the inky sea. Ian quickly shipped the oars and leaned over the gunwale, hand extended.
The first time he’d seen her he’d thought she was a giant seaworm come to attack him. But he couldn’t have been more wrong. Her name was Syr. She was a finwoman and she was unbelievably bonnie. Her name was a bit heathenish, but after they were married he’d call her Sarah after his grandmother. His father would like that.
Ian smiled his welcome with blue-tinged lips and plunged his hand into the sea. But the face that rose out of the water was not his beloved’s. It was dark and saturnine, and half-hidden in a tangle of wild black hair. It also had something very wrong with its mouth and jaws, which seemed to have splinters of jagged bone embedded therein.
Finman!
Ian jerked back and gave a small gasp, which turned into a yell as the black thing crawled into the boat after him. It knelt over Ian’s prone and paralyzed body, and with what might have been a laugh it grabbed the gunwales with impossibly long arms and tipped them both into the sea.
The one sometimes called Ruairidh O’Uruisg came up onto the land and clambered up on
the stone above the tide’s highest reach. It was the ninth day, so he could easily leave his subaqueous home and walk upon the land as a man with no fear of lunar interference. He could remain here for a year and a day, or for however long he did not eat of land salt or run afoul of the tidal moon.
He did not plan on this being a long visit, though his extended pilgrimage ashore would come on May Day, as it traditionally did for his people; after Beltane, when the door to their oceanic abode would be opened to the world and the young men of his kind would go forth to find mates. His father said that he and his brother were ready to travel far inland and begin this most important of searches now, but Ruairidh preferred to honor tradition and wait. Anyway, being on land was uncomfortable for him. He would begin the annual search for a mate next Beltane eve, just as he had always done. It didn’t seem wise to break with tradition in a time when the People were disappearing.
For they
were
disappearing. One clan at a time, they were dying out; first the women, then the men. The People of Avocamor would emerge after the Season in Inundation, and word would come that another clan was gone. It was not surprising; with no females of their own they were left with problematic unions
with human women, which were unproductive as often as not. And those human females that had babes had to have their children taken from them and brought to the sea or else they would die when the change came upon them.
Carefully, Ruairidh blew a straight line in his fur from chest to navel and then slipped out of his skin. He laid it carefully aside and then, opening a bladder bag, took up the somewhat wet clothing he had brought with him and set about shaking it out. The dripping plaid was not a garment he cared for; it smelled of sheep instead of proper fur, and it was confoundedly heavy when wet. Which was often, as it always seemed to rain when he was ashore. Still, he could not walk the land of men naked in the light of day, so the covering was necessary.
He was bound for the home of one John of Taigh an Crot Callow. The old man had apparently forgotten his ancestor’s blood vow, taken after a father and two sons were spared drowning one stormy night when their boat overturned in the firth. The vow was that the fisherman, and all of his children and the children’s children who would live because of this act of mercy, would each swear on their eleventh birthday that they would forever refrain from hunting the People, or making a living from trading in their skins.
For four hundred seasons, a hundred years, the pact had held.
But now something had happened. Though he had sworn the oath himself, John had attempted to kidnap a selkie pup the week before, possibly to hold it for ransom, or mayhap so that he could steal its skin. The young male had been injured almost unto death before he escaped.
The People had striven to be sympathetic and resisted acting in haste. The poor man had gone quite mad with the recent death of his son, often standing at the sea’s edge, calling for the People to let his son’s soul free that it might go on to heaven. But, of course, that was impossible; the People did not have the boy’s soul.
Perhaps they had erred in returning John’s son’s body to land after the storm had taken him. It had seemed a kindness at the time; but many humans still believed that a drowned man who died with a red nose was the victim of water spirits, like the sorcerous finmen of the north, who were supposed to be able to suck a soul out of a man’s body and then keep it forever in a state of torment under an inverted urn inside a secret undersea cave.
It was rather annoying when humans confused the People with Others and their legends became mixed. Selkies had never taken a man’s soul. They would not know how. They were not
nixies or kelpies or even of the Tylwyth Teg. They were simply the People of the Firth. And their only tie to the finmen was their dependence on the sea.
Of course, the selkies’ only link to humankind was the land pilgrimage to find mates. This annual event was necessary for survival, for the People had no daughters, no women of their own now. That was the fault of the humans who, fearing to lose the daughters and sisters, hid the blessed women—the
NicnanRon
—or killed them outright, claiming they were vessels for demons.
Once they had had them. But no more. They were not even able to replenish their own women. Daughters born of MacNicol females bred true
NicnanRon,
females of the selkie kind who could live in the sea. But there had not been a MacNicol birth for more than a century. Not since the time the People had saved the fishermen of Taigh an Crot Callow. The clan of MacNicol was extinct in this territory, and other human women of childbearing years had likewise grown scarce. Selkie births were fewer every decade, though the recent human war might have made more willing women available through widowhood.
Some of the People believed that the recent scarcity of females was a judgment against them because they had interfered in the affairs of humankind
and allowed the fisherman and his sons to live. Their act had proven the selkies’ existence, and not being able to stay silent on the miracle of their deliverance, the human fisherman had told others, and the selkie persecution had begun—the hunting of seals in other places and the hiding away of the women.
Ruairidh shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts of this recurring concern. Being on land was always difficult at first. He felt disoriented and ungainly, and wished he could spare himself a day to practice walking and speaking the difficult human speech.
However, there was no time for him to acclimatize. He was an emissary and soldier from Avocamor. Whatever the old man’s intentions—kidnapping or murder—old John had to be reasoned with before he did irreparable harm and broke the truce. Man and Selkie had lived in harmony for a hundred years on this small stretch of coast. The People did not want to fracture the peace, but they would not tolerate a human making war upon their precious young, for it amounted to genocide.
Ruairidh’s task was to stop this—in whatever manner and by whatever means were necessary.
Scotland 1929
It was spring. In London the park benches were all occupied by lovers, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes or at the glorious moon. Those that were temporarily without mates wandered the well-groomed paths, staring wistfully at the soft and fragrant flowers. Or they went for rides in the country in their motorcars. Or they meandered down glittering night streets, thronged with well-heeled theatergoers. But they all looked at the moon.
Hexy Garrow had known that world, once upon a romantic time…
A single tear traced down her cheek and splashed the stone upon which she sat.
But where was
she
this year during the season of lovers? Sitting all alone on a cold rock in an unelectrified part of Scotland, staring at a sullen sea as the sun set into it. The only thing vaguely romantic about the scene was the distant and haunting tune someone was playing on a pennywhistle.
If her brother could see her now, he would grin and tease:
no successful siren she…
Of course, Rory Patrick was gone now, lost somewhere in the very sea she was looking at while questing after legends he hoped would bring great innovations of treatment to medical science. He would never say anything to her again, not even if she could somehow swim down to where his bones lay…
She had half an urge to do that. As children she and Rory Patrick had been drawn to the sea with an almost unnatural attraction. They had wanted to wade right out into the waves and see what treasures were beneath them: sunken ships, lost cities, pirates’ gold. She’d had no fear of sea beasts or tides then, and neither had he.
But that had changed. Now she was afraid. And alone.
Hexy shook herself, refusing to give in completely to melancholy. She might have what her
brother called
allergies,
a sort of catarrhal affliction that made her eyes tear against her will, but she would not weep real tears for things past. So her family was gone—many in Europe were in the same situation. War did that to people. And perhaps the loss was worth it, if they were right and this had been truly “the war to end all wars.”
The fact was, she should not be sitting anywhere. She had been sent down by Jillian Foxworthy to find the misplaced fur coat of the woman who insisted it was necessary for her comfort even though she was headed for Italy, where it would be too warm for sable. Jillian was a kind enough employer, but flighty, and sometimes irrational and demanding enough to make Hexy wish for escape. This was one of those times. Scotland always irritated Jillian’s nerves and made her pettish and superstitious. She strove mightily to remain sensitive to the feeling of those around her, but it went against her nature when she was in the north, and she lost the battle of manners more often than not. Jillian’s shrill voice could drill holes in steel.
Hexy sighed and sank a pretty chin onto her fist. A second irritating tear fell from her reddened eyes and her nose began to itch, tickled by phantom smells. Her allergies were annoying, but she was not yet ready to abandon her melancholy thoughts and return to Fintry. The
loss of another beau deserved at least an hour of mourning.
One had to be reasonable and not exaggerate the attachment, she told herself. London was not just the home of poets and courtly lovers; it had its share of romantic pretenders who looked lovely but were secretly full of selfish evasions and cynical practicality. When reality came up against romanticism, those poseurs were willing to choose an attractive bank account over an attractive face. The criterion of wealth was one of three impediments that James Wentworthy IV had held against her.
Her American citizenship was another. So the U.S. Senate had refused to ratify the Versailles Peace Treaty, and America had failed to join the League of Nations in a timely manner; was that really
her
fault?
Apparently so. Certainly, James had believed it to be. Or he decided that the evil of these two things in combination was somehow greater than the mere sum of their parts would suggest. And since she had inspired only bridled passion in his breast, he was now pursuing a wealthy English girl who did not work for her bread.
Probably the new girl had personally signed the peace treaty as well.
His third complaint against Hexy had been her name. Saddled with the ridiculous family
name of Hesiod, she had gone by Hexy since childhood. Neither name had suited James. He had demanded that she change her name to Helen and had introduced her to everyone by that moniker.
And the last problem—the
crux criticorum,
he had informed her—were her humble origins. Those were not corrigible. Her rudimentary knowledge of the upper-class English mind should have been sufficient to warn her of the impending doom of this relationship, but somehow she had managed to delude herself about the odds of their survival, and actually had felt something for Mr. Fourth.
Hexy sneezed violently, and two more hot tears tracked down her face.
Relationships, she decided, were senselessly complicated when one side was dealing in emotional currency and the other side was dealing in…well,
currency
. Frankly, she was baffled—and more than a little disgusted—by the modern transactions of man and maid. It used to be that a man worked to see a bit of a girl’s leg or bosom. Now he spent his time trying to see a girl’s bank account and her family’s politics.
Hexy smiled and suddenly slightly misquoted her favorite poet, Heine: “Ordinarily she is insane, but she has lucid moments when she is only stupid.”
Times were changing now that the war was
done, and so were standards. That was progress. The bad thing about changing standards was that suddenly there were too many of them about, and one never knew by which set another person might be playing. And many people changed them as convenience dictated. And when standards changed, sometimes a true diamond was overlooked in carelessness just because it didn’t come in the right velvet-wrapped package.
But the positive side of her era’s ever-changing morality, she reminded herself in an effort to be fair, was that she was also presumably free to choose whatever moral system she favored at any given moment, and the devil take the other party and their feelings!
Hexy said a bad word. Another pair of stinging tears escaped her enflamed eyelids, urging her to be aware of her surroundings, which included vast stands of cotton grass and some stunted yews that spewed yellow pollen into the wind.
“Stop maundering,” she ordered herself. “So you’ve a distaste for modern morals and find them indigestible. It isn’t as though your heart is broken. You haven’t been
defeated
by this defection. You are merely adding to your list of known stratagems that don’t work. Someday this knowledge of how
not
to attract men will prove useful. Perhaps you will grow a mustache
and become a poetess, and speak to the liberation of women from the bonds of love. You will have both fame and fortune then, and a whole string of lovers.”
The tide, slapping against her rocky perch, sighed over her petty worries and improbable ambition.
“Thank you,” she answered it politely. “It is kind of you to take an interest in my dreams.”
And they
were
merely dreams. She hadn’t even a sound notion of what men over here wanted in a face or figure, let alone a personality. Jillian Foxworthy was blond, had a peaches-and-cream face and an exuberant bust that defied any restraint, a nipped-in waist, and
haunches
. She was, according to the mode of the day, most unfashionable. But men seemed to love her. They raced after her like an iron horse held to a narrow track, their usual built-in emotional brakes apparently disabled by her aura.
Hexy looked down. She herself was auburn-haired, at last look that morning, green eyed, and built along slightly less belligerent lines. Except for her slightly pointed ears and the faint childhood scars between her fingers, she was exactly what the fashions called for. Yet men seemed to look right past her. At least they did when Jillian was around. And no one had
yet claimed to be driven beyond all control by either her face or body.
“And what are you describing?” she asked herself, blotting her eyes but missing a seventh tear, which joined the others on her rock to complete a perfect damp circle. “Are you talking about love, or a locomotive—Oh damn it! I am talking to myself again. I may as well be a spinster, for I seem to act like one so much of the time.”
The sea sighed once more. This time a little more loudly. The strange piping had also ceased. She was truly alone. It was just she and the teasing ocean that she couldn’t seem to make peace with but never found a way to move away from.
“Well, whatever the male population’s opinion, I am quite indispensable around here, at least for today. That is
quod erat demonstrandum
. I mean, QED! It wouldn’t do for anyone to suspect that you have a brain or education.” Hexy mimicked Miss Flattery from the employment office: “
Advanced education is unbecoming in a woman and completely inexcusable in a concomitant. Even a well-paid one. It is enough that you speak well and present a neat appearance. Do not rise above your station
.”
This was not a sentiment that sat well in an American girl’s ears.
The sea’s next sigh was a clear warning that,
though sympathetic, her seat was about to be overtaken by an anxious moon-driven tide.
“You are completely correct. It is time and past for me to be getting back to the castle. Jillian will have out a search party to look for me if I’m not back by dark. And then the villagers would start telling stories about me being carried off by mermen.” Hexy stood up and sneezed again. She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed at her nose. As an afterthought, she reached down and scooped up a small stone to toss at the sea. It was a ritual that her grandfather had taught her and Rory Patrick, and one which survived here among the locals. For some reason, casting stones at the ocean was supposed to keep sea monsters away. She hadn’t thought about it in years, but Jillian’s vague, half-amused warnings about skulking males hiding on the beach must have brought it back to mind. Really, Jillian’s late husband had done a wonderful job of filling her head with ridiculous stories of sea folk who seduced women, even Hexy herself was half-beginning to believe them!
“Though perhaps I am being hasty in driving any male away. Heaven knows that I have had no luck in finding an earth-bound sort that I can love,” she muttered. Then she cast the stone.
Ritual seen to, Hexy murmured: “Now, where
might Jillian have left that wretched coat? She said that she was sitting up on a tall, brown rock and watching a seal. Watching a seal—Ha! More like watching some handsome fisherman.”
Hexy turned about slowly and said another bad word. There were any number of tall, brown rocks to choose from, and as they were taller than she was, she would be obliged to clamber up all of them until she found the blasted coat.
“Damnation.”
She might be invaluable, but she was still an employee. Hexy selected a boulder and began looking for handholds.
Hexy stood in her damp shoes a short time later, the missing coat draped over her arm. As eager as she was to change, she still stood in Fintry’s hall looking at the soot-laden ceiling above its smoldering fireplace and shaking her head.
It was hard to imagine, but this relic of the Dark Ages was to be her home for the next several months. The thought was lowering. A prison couldn’t be more bleak.
She turned to examine the entire chamber. The one wall had been most insensibly paneled floor to ceiling in rich carved wood imported from Africa, which gleamed beautifully for the
lower six feet. The rest was an ashen gray that quite matched the rest of the stone of the other three walls.
Fintry was old, a relic from the days when Scotland still needed defensive fortifications. Jillian hardly ever visited it, except in summer months, when the drafts were not too terribly chilly and the weather not too hostile, and even then she stayed only for limited periods of time. Life here was not comfortable. The gas had never been laid on, and no one beyond the village had electricity. She probably would have rid herself of the place if she could have found a buyer, but none had yet offered themselves to the lovely but impoverished widow.
And, it had to be admitted, there was a certain cachet—especially among wealthy Americans, without whose backing her career would end—to mentioning that one was popping up to one’s castle for a fortnight. It made an impression on naive foreigners who had never had to care for a moldering ruin, and lent Jillian an air of breeding that other actresses did not have.
Ah well, the place would be getting a spot of titivation now. Miss Foxworthy had found one of P. T. Barnum’s favorite people and convinced him to cough up the money needed for some of Fintry’s more pressing renovations.
And lucky Hexy; she was getting the fun of
staying in Scotland to oversee the renovations instead of going to sunny Italy, where she might collect more material on how
not
to attract decent men.
“I should have enjoyed being seduced and rejected by a dark, foreign man. I believe that I am finally ready for a truly exotic lover,” she told the sullen fireplace, and gave a last small sneeze. Her violent allergic reaction was thankfully fading now that she was again indoors.
As was to be expected, when Hexy looked most ragged, the lovely Jillian came tripping downstairs, her stacked heels clattering loudly on the naked stone treads. Jillian changed shoes several times a day. She had a voracious appetite for all clothing, but especially footwear. She was, in fact, a shoe glutton.
Hexy went to meet her employer, her moss-stained palms tucked into Jillian’s fur’s delightful folds.
“Darling! You found it! How clever of you. I don’t know how I manage to lose things! Was it on the rock, like I said?”
“It was on a rock,” Hexy admitted, eyeing Jillian’s ensemble. “You are going out.”
“But of course, darling! You know this pile is just too dreary at night. Donny and I are going to dash over to the hotel and have a few gin and tonics and soak up some light and what passes for music around here.”