We took the bowls to the sink, together; and there we were, in the window, the candle throwing our images upon the black pane; two gaunt creatures, all pale and wan, dark-socketed, hollow-cheeked; ageless in the amber light. Cadaverous, but well-matched. We heated hot milk with honey (her whim) and whisky (mine). We sat in front of the fire, the wild night all around us. We are quite out of time. It could be the present, or any time in the last thousand years of the past. The wind whistled in the flue; the fire flickering and leaping, by turns enthused and unsure, but remaining alight. I loaded on coals. When the fire in a croft went out, she says, it meant the life was gone from that house. She says that it’s bad luck to whistle, to imitate the wind; she says that if a glass sounds a note when no one has touched it, it means a death at sea. I dipped my finger, ran it around my tumbler. She gripped my hand, harder than I have ever felt those strong cold fingers grip. ‘Don’t,’ she said. Then licked the whisky from my fingertip and laughed.
The wind battered at the door. She says that on nights like this, suitors come knocking. The selkie men looking for a dalliance; she says they’re always after the new brides. She says the seal-folk are beautiful, beguiling, and must be guarded against with charms, with a lock of her hair above the door; she says I’d best take care or they’ll come knocking, and lift the latch and let themselves in as if they’ve a right to shelter, however fast the door is barred. ‘Don’t let them take me into the water,’ she said, half laughing. What if he’s really attractive? I asked, trying to play along. A real catch-of-the-day. She snorted. She says if a woman wants a selkie man, she must cry seven tears into the tide and he’ll come. I said, I won’t allow it. He’s not taking you anywhere.
She says that while the selkies are gentle, the finfolk too are notorious seducers, but less kind; the tall, gaunt sea-farers with narrow faces and hard dark eyes, who rule the seas in these parts and will guide you safe, for a fee of silver. She says they come ashore sometimes, to seek new wives upon the land. And when they’ve had their fill, away they sail, back into the mists. But, she says, they always come back, to reclaim the little webbed daughters they’ve fathered on the land, to take them back to the sea-king’s realm; in the end, they’ll come back for their own. And she raised and splayed her hand. I laughed, uneasily, unsure if in some way she believes this. She says they don’t draw the same distinctions, here, between histories, stories and myths; she said this as if to an outsider, looking in.
And what are the women up to, while their men are out on the land, strewing their salty seed, I asked? ‘Ah, well,’ she said. ‘Do you want to hear a story? It’s my turn, I think.’ I do, I said eagerly. ‘Do you want to know what’s drawn the men from their homes, what it is they’ve let the fire go cold for?’
Like our neighbour’s, I said. There was no fire in that house. All these abandoned houses.
‘Right. Like that.’ She nodded. ‘Okay, so: here’s a story for your book.’ And she leaned against the sofa and reached for her glass. ‘This is a tale of Finfolkaheem,’ she said, her voice modulating to a soft, low lilt, traced with the trill and roll of the sea, that echo of her father’s accent; ‘this is a tale of the city beyond the sea’s brim, the home of the sea-king, and of the beautiful, cruel finfolk, who guard these waters jealously, and love silver.’ I arranged myself comfortably, filled our glasses – we were in need of the warmth – and she began, staring into the flames, as if reading the tale there.
There was, it seems, a crofter, a broad, bold, strong young man, honest of heart and innocent. Much like myself, in many ways, I suggested. ‘Innocent?’ she said, smirking, but would allow, it seemed, ‘young’; ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘One afternoon, when the harvest was lately gathered and the sun shining, this crofter – let’s call him, I don’t know, Donald? Will that do?’ And she fell back into the story, into the lull of her own voice. ‘This autumn afternoon, Donald went down to the rocky shore to look for limpets for his dinner. And when he’d nearly filled his bucket, he saw, holding fast to an outcrop jutting over the water, a cluster of mountainous shells bigger than any he’d yet collected, bigger than any he’d ever seen, and being of a healthy appetite, this brawny, brave lad, imagining the fat, fleshy bite between his teeth, he left his bucket at the base of the outcrop and scrambled up to lie full stretch upon it, to prise his prize from the rock, his face and his arms hanging over the edge.
‘And so intent was he upon the stubborn limpets, that he didn’t see the water below swirl and turn silvery until he became aware of a note, a note so profound it seemed to come from the depths of the sea and go right down to the depth of himself; it filled his heart, it sang like blood in his ears, so that he thought he’d faint – and just as his vision closed in, swirling down, down into that whirl of water, he saw two white arms reach out to him, and felt them grasp his shoulders, and was pulled under, into the water, and blackness.’ She took a gulp of whisky; I waited for her to go on; the crackling silence warm within, the storm outside.
‘When he woke, he found himself sprawled in the bottom of a wooden boat; opposite him, the sun setting behind her, a woman of prodigious beauty, naked, her shining hair hanging over her breasts, her white skin, and her belly glistening with the first of the silvery scales that covered her hips, and further down still’ – Good Lord, I said, Donald’s not shy – ‘poor innocent Donald, he couldn’t help but look,’ she said, ‘he’d never seen a woman without her clothes before … but this was no woman, for the curve of her hips formed the base of a strong silver tail, hanging over the side of the boat and propelling them on into the sunset. And turning to look behind, Donald could see no sign of the islands, no land rising from the darkening sea, and despite the mermaid’s beauty, despite her tender smile, he was afraid then, and wished only to return to his simple home and hearth, and he thought of his bucket of limpets left on the beach, and opened his mouth to ask her to turn, but found he had no words. And then she leaned towards him and kissed his open lips, and poured her breath like honey into him, and he was no longer afraid, because with that, he was in love.’
Like when you kissed me, I said. ‘You kissed me,’ she said. ‘But anyway, sh. Listen: she kissed him, and he wasn’t afraid any longer. And when she bent to unlace his boots, his good, sturdy boots that had seen him through the work of five summers, through five harvests and five long winters too, when she unlaced them and pulled them from his unresisting feet, when she tossed them in the water, he made no objection. “You must enter my home barefoot,” she told him, “if you care to come there with me.”’ She might have asked before taking his shoes, I said. ‘She knew he would come,’ she said. ‘She knew, by then, that he loved her.’ She looked into her glass, now empty, and held it out. I filled it obediently.
‘She looked to the stars; only then did Donald notice it had grown dark; and her eyes sought out the brightest, and glittered with its light, and she guided them beneath it, and all at once a whirlpool opened up in the calm sea’s surface and down they went, boat, crofter and mermaid all, in a great twist of water, and when they landed on the seabed Donald found, to his amazement, that he had no need to breathe. And before him was a vast, shimmering city of bones and pearl and silver, with sharks’ teeth topping the walls and a whale’s jaw for a gate. And the mermaid, who walked now on two feet, two legs fine and strong and supple, took him by the hand and led him through the gate into Finfolkaheem. And she led him through the silver city, and at its centre was a grand hall, a hall of crystal, hung with drapes that flashed and crackled like the merry dancers in the northern sky, pink and pale green and golden; and he was seated at the head of a long table with his new love, who was the Princess of that realm, and a great feast was served. And at the end, the sea-king raised the spiral shell he drank from, and blessed their union, and with that, Donald was forever betrothed to the sea-king’s daughter. And then the finfolk danced, and he loved them for their elegance, their stately, solemn movements, these tall, pale, taciturn creatures. And of them all, he loved
his new wife best, the most gracious and lovely of all.’ I know how he feels, I said; saccharine Richard. Nevertheless, she kissed me, and went on:
‘When the dancing was over, she led him to her bedchamber, and he swept each lock of her hair from her so that she lay with it spread all around her, and if he had been breathing then, he would have held his breath, as he slowly, slowly revealed her …’ She described the tickle and trail of her hair and her cool skin against him, this poor innocent virgin boy, how he felt her all around him, she said, and was lost in her for hours of breathless silence until at last he gave in to her with a soundless shudder … By now I confess I was pawing at her, at the trailing strands of her long hair, my breath, too, caught in my throat. And still, she went on:
‘And time passed, unnumbered days, for there is no day or night in Finfolkaheem; the water is permeated always with the glow of phosphorescence, and lit in streaks and flashes by tiny electric fish. Donald existed in a wash of bliss, of wine and feasting, and hunting with the powerful finmen and their packs of seals, riding their seahorses on the crest of a wave, searching out their prey through the vast forests of wrack, and returning always to her arms; he was lost to pleasure and love, enchanted by the strange, soft, melancholy music which sang always through the city, and he had quite forgotten his croft, his farm, the gathered harvest and the new crops left unsown, the sheep growing shaggy, the hearth long since cold, and his bucket of limpets left on the shore.’
And she smiled, and drained her glass, and held it at eye level thoughtfully. Is that the end? I asked. He doesn’t ever go back? ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was looking through that book you got from Mr Begg, and in that version there was some business with a black cat, sent by a witch, a spae-wife, to free him – I suppose they found his bucket on the beach and wondered what had become of him. The cat seizes his finger with its paws and makes him draw a cross on the mermaid’s brow and that breaks the charm. It’s all a bit silly.’ And what then? I asked. ‘He returns to his island, and marries the spae-wife’s niece, and is eternally grateful to her for releasing him and inevitably, so the story says anyway, lives happily ever after.’
Grateful? I said. But he truly loved the mermaid? ‘Yes.’ And was happy there, in Finfolkaheem? ‘Very happy.’ Then what right did the old witch have to spoil his happiness? And why did he allow it? ‘Some men don’t take kindly to bewitching, I suppose,’ she said. Some men, I said, are idiots, and don’t deserve to be bewitched. ‘Well, quite,’ she said. I prefer your version, I told her. ‘Me, too,’ she smiled. ‘That’s how I was told it.’
I asked, How do you come to know these stories? She shrugged. ‘I just seem to know them.’
Her father, telling her stories by the side of her box bed. It is perhaps absurd, how I resent him, for getting there first.
The night of her birth must surely have been one such as this; she can only be a child of a storm, of a wild tide. The tempest raging at the window, clamouring for her; her mother pale and grim. The tide smashing the shore, a full moon paling the clouds; the wind howling, stamping, clattering, baying for entry to snatch her away; she was surely meant for a changeling, some sickly wizened thing left in the place of this perfect, silver-bright and canny girl. But her father saw her safe into the world, and she bawled fit to beat the wind, I bet, or else merely wriggled and laughed.
And I, where was I? Impossible to know, now, what I was doing, unwitting, as my intended came into being. Far from the storm, no doubt safely inland, marking papers perhaps or reading, pencil in hand, resting a mug on the ring-stained arm of my one comfy chair. Is it possible that not even the faintest echo of her first cry reached me, that I didn’t feel some change, some quickening in the world run through my nerves?
Her father wipes the blood from her; from this moment on he has no eyes for her mother, lying hollowed out and papery as the skin of a snake. He sings her a song, a song from the sea in an old language; he spreads her little clutching hands and smiles. Feels her tiny webbed fingers grip his long ones. Strokes the silvery down on her head. And as her mother wastes and pales into sadness, cruelty and gall, he dandles her on his knee, feeds her when her mother won’t take her to her breast, stands at the window with her and points out to the sea – the winter storms, the fickle spring tides, the silvered summers. He tells her about the sea-mither, the goddess of the isles; quick to anger, unpredictable, fierce and kind and bounteous. He tells her of the finfolk and the selkies. Nothing can replace those first tales, which have coloured the cast of her thought, which have filled her nights with the sea, and which are at least as real to her as anything she’s learned of the world since. For all her brilliance – or perhaps this is the source of it – she is still that child listening quietly. Is that what she asked to come here for, to recover some lost tale, the sound of her father’s voice in the sea? Nothing I can tell her will ever sound in her so deep.
He teaches her words, and strings them into stories like sea-pearls. Then one day, vanishes.
She says the finmen always come back for their own.
Tuesday
Have you always been a sleepwalker? I asked over breakfast, as she squashed a bacon sandwich flat between her fingers. ‘What?’ she said. ‘I’m not.’ But … She gave me a funny look, quizzical, doting, dear senile Richard, and licked brown sauce off her knuckle.
‘You mean last night? I was awake,’ she said. ‘I saw a ship, a white ship. I was watching it.’ But … I stopped. You were awake? I said. ‘Of course. I talked to you.’ Yes, but … you said you saw a ship. You were dreaming of a ship. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I saw a ship. You were muttering in your sleep, it woke me up. I got up to get water and I looked out and saw a ship. You know, I can’t even remember what I dreamed.’ She frowned for a moment, shrugged.
But there was no ship, and if there had been, she couldn’t possibly have seen it in the darkness; the lighthouse illuminating nothing but the rain as it thinned.
I woke in the night from a half-dream of salt water filling nose and mouth and lungs; something twining round me, water filling every artery, pulsing blue brine; breathing water and stretching for the surface and waking with a gasp so familiar that I took it at first to be hers. But when I reached for her she wasn’t there and it was I that had been wrenched from the deep, this time, and she wasn’t there to comfort me; an empty sensation, like waking with hunger or cold. I called for her; she didn’t answer.
I crept from the bedroom, I listened at the bathroom door; no crack of candlelight and no sound of water. I said her name; no answer. She was not in the kitchen either; outside, the beach was dark; nothing to be seen from the window, only darkness where the sea must be, only the sound of it, the rain and the gale battering. Everything silent within but for the wind, creaking and creeping in, blowing cold draughts on my neck, my ankles. I found her at last at the sitting room window, reflected in the pane, and quite still. A monochrome world; the cosy homestead made unhomely, enchanted, a colour plate overlaid with tissue, made grey. She had a hand to the glass, just the tips of her fingers, I could see white at the knuckles where the blood was pressed out with the pressure. A silent gesture I couldn’t comprehend. The night was blustering at the window. I stood behind her, covered her hand with mine, pressed myself against her back; not wanting to wake her, but fearing that she’d catch a chill. I bowed my head and breathed warmth on her neck, my nose under the ridge of her skull. She was all bone, white and cold. She didn’t move, she didn’t turn, she didn’t speak. I strained to listen for her breath. I couldn’t feel it under me.
I said her name. I said her name into her neck. I prised her hands from the window and I turned her to me and her eyes were glass, dark-sheened; although she seemed to look at me, she didn’t see me, and it wasn’t to me that she spoke.
She said, ‘There was a white ship. Sailing on the path that the moon made on the water. I came to watch.’ But the hidden moon’s light was scattered by the scattering cloud, the sea was glinting with knives of it in th
e blackness, and there was no ship and nothing to see it by. I led her back to bed. She was unresisting, listless. She shivered and sighed and snuggled into the cave I made for her, the bones of her shins resting on my thighs, her knees pressing into my stomach. How long were you standing there? I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m cold,’ she said, with a spasm, drawing breath through her teeth. I know, I said. Your hands are like ice. She pulled them away and whispered ‘sorry’ and I gripped them, pulled them back, pressed them flat to my chest under mine until I thought my blood would freeze over as it pulsed out of my freezing heart. You were dreaming, I said. In the night, she didn’t deny it.
‘There was a ship,’ she said, ‘out at sea. Coming for me. I had to leave.’ Did you want to go? I asked. ‘I was meant to. I felt I had to. But I didn’t want to leave you,’ she said. ‘I wanted to stay …’
I want you to stay, I said. Why don’t we just stay. ‘Here?’ she said. Together, I meant. Anywhere, I said. With me. I heard her heave a breath and let it out again all ragged, fractured, as if she had been weeping, although I had heard no tears.
I don’t think I slept, the rest of the night. I listened to her breathe. A mutter, a sigh. I listened to the wind calming, the roar of it quieting to a low growl, stalking about the house as an animal crouching, hind-quarters tense and ready, waiting to pounce. By the time we rose, it was almost noon and the storm was in abeyance; the gloom beyond the window kept us to our bed, dozing, and sometimes not. She was snoozy and sweet all morning, at her most pliable. Eventually she suggested, as I nibbled at her knuckles, that if I was hungry, I should make us breakfast. ‘I’m ravenous,’ she said. ‘Starving. Practically malnourished. I could eat a pig.’ Bacon sandwich? ‘That’ll do, I suppose,’ she said.
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