The Selkie Bride

by Melanie Jackson

  Herman jumped up and hissed. His hair stood on end and he would have looked comical, but as the cat was habitually calm, even in bad weather, this display alarmed more than amused me. A dozen ridiculous thoughts ran through my head as I sat frozen—among them that the Devil had come to call on Fergus Culbin—but at last good sense prevailed and I seized on the most likely explanation to flit through my mind: A fishing boat from another village had perhaps been driven ashore and the fishermen, not knowing the path to the village, had headed for the nearest shelter. They had seen the light in my window, and it had guided them to the cottage, which was the closest building.

  I put Fergus Culbin’s journal aside slowly and laid another book atop it. Then I took up the lamp with a hand only vaguely troubled by tremors and forced my reluctant feet to move.

  I had a welcoming if insincere smile pasted in place when I pulled back the heavy bar and opened the ancient door, but it faded very quickly as I surveyed the creature on my doorstep. He was male—oh, definitely male—and quite the most beautiful being I had ever seen. But there was also something about him that seemed sinister and made me feel very weak and insignificant as I stood before him. Perhaps it was the fierce black eyes or the alabaster skin, or the long hair that fell in a sleek cascade to below his shoulders. Or perhaps, most alarming of all, it was how not a drop of rain seemed to cling to him—not to his hair, not to his skin, not to the old-fashioned sark and kilt he wore most sloppily. A drop of blood ran down the side of his face, and he had an odd fur coat slung over his back.

  “Co tha seo?” The voice was deep, the eyes compelling, and I thought of the entry about water demons I had just read. “Nach eil thu ‘gam aithneachadh?”

  He was speaking Gaelic. My grandmother had sometimes spoken the language, and my husband had used it with his few friends, so I recognized some of the stranger’s words. The man was asking who I was and if I recognized him.

  The voice was a bit like a rusty razor that was perhaps not often used but capable of cutting deeply if needed. Against my will I answered. “Is mise…Megan. And I don’t know you.” I gasped the last bit, and it sounded something like laughter—hysterics, though, not girlish giggles meant to attract a man.

  The stranger inhaled deeply. His eyes widened and his pupils expanded, blotting out the dark irises and then even the whites. All the stories about Fergus being in league with the Devil came rushing back at me, and I did something I had never done before: I put a hand over my heart and fainted.

  As the world went black, I remember seeing arms reach for me, and I felt a small measure of relief. Not because someone was there to break my fall and catch the lamp before it started a fire, but because I momentarily had my legends confused, and my last thought was that this man couldn’t be the Devil, because he had passed over my doorway without an invitation. It was only later that I recalled this idea and realized that I was confusing vampires with devils. The Devil may come and go as he pleases. And anyway, if gossip were to be believed, the Devil had already been invited into the cottage by its former owner. He didn’t need my permission to enter. This was a definite down side to living in a cottage old enough to recall the Dark Ages.

  When I awoke sometime later, it was to an empty cottage and the first light of dawn toying with the sky outside the uncurtained window. I might have assumed that I had been caught up in a nightmare, but it was obvious that someone had been in the cottage. I knew that I had not hallucinated the event, because peat had been added to the fire and there were a pot of tea and a mug on the table at the left arm of the settee where I was lying with a blanket from my bed draped over me. Of my strange visitor there was no sign.

  Herman was sitting on the hearth looking unruffled, and I envied him his peace of mind. I was still thoroughly alarmed by the trespass. Especially when I looked to the front door and found it closed but unbarred.

  A quick search revealed that Fergus’s journal was gone. So my mysterious visitor was a thief—but perhaps a kind one, since he had bothered to make up the fire and drape me with a blanket. He also felt enough at home to make a pot of tea before departing. Not that anything would induce me to drink it. I could think of no reason why this stranger would wish to poison me, but in my uneasy state I was not prepared to take chances. I felt suddenly very young and inexperienced.

  The loss of the journal annoyed me, and I seized on this emotion since I liked it better than fear and bewilderment. The book was nonsense, all of it. Flesh-eating water demons and fallen angels? What rot! I hadn’t read such nonsense since my days of childhood fairy tales. But the book did belong to me, and might have been a nice addition to the local tales of sea monsters that I had been collecting. If the stranger came calling again—and I sincerely hoped he didn’t—I promised myself that I would demand the journal’s return.

  Chapter Three

  Houses will build themselves, And tombstones re-write names on a dead man’s grave.

  —Andrew Young, “Culbin Sands”

  Fear is paranoia’s chief handmaiden, and therefore sometimes an evil influence on even the most rational mind. I had calmed considerably by the time I made porridge and brushed out my hair. It takes patience and time to add the oats little by little to boiling salted water. I don’t care for lumpy porridge, and it is my experience that alarm can only be sustained for a short period of time in the absence of any new threats, especially when doing something so prosaic as whisking oatmeal on the stove with a cat looking on. Still, I was a long way from being completely at ease in my thoughts as I prepared my meal.

  I didn’t need to light the kitchen fire since the embers were still glowing, a further confirmation that my visitor had felt free to make himself at home. However, by the time I had stirred the oatmeal into something nearly edible, my thoughts had turned from tales of devils to stories of night visitors of the amorous variety. Legend had it that the area was once populated with sleagh maith, the local Gaelic term for fairies, notorious for seducing humans. The thought of my alarmed reaction brought the first smile of the day: If my guest wasn’t of the Satanic persuasion and had indeed come looking for a bit of carnality, then I must have seriously alarmed or offended him by fainting. There was no way that my reaction could be mistaken for any kind of coquetry. My faerie would not come calling again.

  Feeling much calmer after this brief flight of silliness, I nonetheless decided to walk into the village to see if there were any reports of boats washing up on shore, or anything else that might reasonably explain why a strange man would be abroad on such a terrible night. I thought that perhaps I would even meet my guest again, since it seemed likely he would have sought out help for mending his boat as soon as the storm abated.

  The day was sunny but the wind brisk, so I bundled up well before leaving the cottage. I thought of taking the iron key that turned the rather stiff lock on the door, but decided against it. No one in the village locked their doors in the daytime. In spite of my nervousness at the invasion the previous night, I decided to observe the custom. After all, sandstorms blew up without warning and a neighbor in some dire straits might require shelter in the cottage. I wasn’t on the best of terms with the other villagers, but I certainly would not begrudge protection to anyone in need. I also left a shutter and window ajar so that Herman could come and go as he wished. I had made the mistake of shutting him in once and found an ample expression of his displeasure waiting for me right inside the door when I returned.

  But in the village, instead of reassurance for my paranoia, I found the uneasy populace gathered in the street around a visitor I learned was from Keil. A quick look assured me that this elderly and heavily bewhiskered man of the cloth was not my uninvited guest.

  “Who is this? What has happened?” I asked softly of Mistress MacLaren, one of the few women in town and a gossip. She and her husband ran the general store and post office where the more-or-less weekly ferry made deliveries of goods and mail. She was what the locals call a carlin of ugly mein, just what children ima
gined when they thought of a wicked witch. I tried to wear my bitterness at life’s disappointments lightly and not inflict my unhappiness on the world, but not so Mistress MacLaren, and her perpetual anger had warped her expression into something unpleasant.

  “ ’Tis Reverend MacNeil,” she whispered back excitedly. I could smell whisky on her breath. This was not uncommon. “The De’il was seen abroad last night and Callum was sent tae fetch him o’er. He’ll hae some idea of what tae dae aboot this.”

  “The Devil?” I repeated, the reassurance in which I had wrapped myself falling away like silk in a violent wind, not because I was afraid of the Devil—not in the cold light of day—but because such strongly articulated ideas are more dangerous than casual notions kept to oneself, and actual belief—especially of the religious kind and especially in a crowd—is most dangerous of all. History has shown us that belief can make otherwise reasonable men do things that are vindictive or even insane. There had been a lynching in our town when I was a child, and I feared I was about to again see something of that nature. “But…what can he do? If it was truly the Devil?”

  “Listen,” Mistress MacLaren instructed, and I reluctantly did.

  The minister had a fine voice, one that would have done splendidly upon the stage but I suppose suited him as well in the pulpit. His choice of material was rather grim, though, and I found myself feeling oddly offended, both that he thought his audience gullible enough to believe that his brand of religious witchcraft would do anything practical against intruders and the contradictory though equally strong belief that if my night visitor had been of the supernatural persuasion, that he would be immediately driven off by this man without even an inquiry into his purpose for visiting. It seemed unneighborly to me and even a bit shocking, given that by tradition the visitor seeking shelter in Scotland is sacrosanct.

  “Brethren, be sober! Be vigilant! Because yer adversary, the De’il, goeth aboot as a roaring lion, seeking wham he may devour.” The minister looked heavenward as he continued. “O unquiet spirit, who at thy release from the contagion of flesh chooseth tae remain earthbound, hear the words of exhortation and admonish now addressed tae thee!”

  The Roman exorcism rang strange when delivered with a Scottish accent, but it was still terrifying, and looking at the mesmerized faces around me, I suddenly felt a bit ill and wary of my neighbors in a way I never had been before. There is something horribly inflexible about religious passions in a mob that frightens outsiders. It wasn’t that I desired to have unwanted visitors about, perhaps getting up to mischief and stealing books, but surely strangers in the night weren’t as damaging as, say, termites, or as vicious as the midges who came out at sunset; and trying to cast a person out into the spiritual void for making a late-night call seemed drastic. Even if he were a book thief.

  Not that I believed in the nonsense the reverend was speaking. His were just silly words that couldn’t really hurt anyone. But still. Mobs, having no infirmity of purpose when aroused by fear and a seductive voice, are known to inflict more than spiritual ill will or exorcism on strangers. In many ways, the mindset of this village was still quite medieval.

  “I exorcise thee by the element of salt, by the Almighty God who, by the hand of Elijah, the prophet, mingled thee wi’ the earth, that the barrenness of the land might be healed. Receive this salt from which the spirit of evil has been cast out, for the eternal rest of thee and of all the faithful, that there may be vanished frae this place every kind of hallucination, wickedness, craft and de’ilish deceit.” Reverend MacNeil lifted up a candle and a piece of bread. “I carry here the symbol of Christ, the light of the warld and the food of the angels.”

  Unable to stand any more, I backed away. I wanted answers about the night visitor, but this wasn’t the moment to ask questions of the frightened crowd, which was clearly ready to embrace any kind of superstitious gobbledygook and perhaps do something violent. I did not want them invading my home looking for devils if their fear turned in my direction. I had not forgotten that not so many years ago Scotland was in the habit of burning witches, werewolves and other creatures of that ilk.

  I meandered among the dunes, heading for the shore at a slow trudge, where I could hear waves pounding away with more than usual vigor against the shallow sea caves that were filled except at low tide. At ebb tide there is a thin bar of sand and rock that allows one to cross the headlands and remain dry-shod almost all the way to Kiel. One must use caution, though, because the mats of sea wrack on the shore can hide pools that will turn and even break ankles. I was not used to such highs and lows of tidal waters, and the water can turn quickly. At high tide a small boat may pass safely over the bar, assuming the water is not so violent with storm that it dashes the craft upon the rugged cliffs; then it is deep enough to drown a tall man.

  The jetty stood at the south end of the cove in whose arms Findloss sheltered. It was an old structure in the shape of an E, its long spine thrust out straight from the island. On the shorter arms, the largest boats were moored. Smaller boats were often pulled up onto patches of sand between the gullies cut into the cliff face; these few scattered beaches were safe from most high tides. It is said that a cave lies below the bottom leg of the pier, which was partly quarried stone and part the cliff face itself, whose lowest shelf had been smoothed into a sort of table and then expanded with the need for more pier. This cave is accessible only at the lowest of spring tides. I have never seen it, but would like to because it is supposedly inhabited by several species of colorful anemones that can be seen nowhere else in Scotland. People who described it to me had made it sound like a fairyland.

  I was feeling more annoyed than forlorn at that point, but was aware of a growing melancholy trying to possess my mind as rapidly as sand filled my shoes. There is no shortage of sand on the plateaus where the village sits, and with the wind in the west there were enough dunes for the Sahara desert. This low mood threatening me was in part due to the returning clouds that promised more rain, but also the recurring suspicion that I had made a terrible mistake by coming to live among these strange people, and that a winter in Scotland might be more than I could stand.

  Anxious to distract myself from this avenue of pointless thought, I let my brain return to the mystery of my visitor and how he had gotten to my cottage. At one time there had been a sort of road to Findloss. I gathered that it had not been a real road or even a path as most people back home thought of it; the trail had been a sort of zigzag switchback affair, a series of a dozen traverses some sixty feet apiece and rather steep, which climbed the far side of the hills that ringed the village. The natives had shunned it, both because it was built by the British—for the purpose of more efficient tax collection and also chasing down Jacobite rebels—but also because the gravel had hurt the unshod ponies’ hooves as well as the bare feet of the villagers. (Yes, I lived in a place where shoes were once—and not so long ago—considered an effete and foreign invention, a modern convenience that eroded the moral fiber of the inhabitants.)

  In any event, the road is gone now, the hills having reclaimed the space with marron grass, and the village is again what I once heard described by my solicitor as “inaccessible from without and not to be left from within.” So, my stranger was most likely to have come from the sea rather than by road, and probably not from the north since the currents were tricky, and if you sailed incautiously into the marshlands or stony shoals during dark, you were likely to end up adding to the collection of derelict boats whose broken ribs were bleaching in the rare sun at low tide. But if he had come from the south, where was his boat now? It must not have been badly damaged if he had taken off again as soon as the storm abated. Of course, if he were still about somewhere, perhaps trying to mend his vessel, then it was my duty to warn him of what was being said in the village.

  I topped a sandbank and looked out at the empty patch of shore between two spits of rock and then back up at Fergus’s cottage hunkering in the dunes well up from the ancient shoreli
ne, whose edges were fringed with sea grass that had somehow survived a half century buried in sand. I put up a hand to shade my eyes from the sun that was still on the incline and bright enough to burn the eyes when it peered around the clouds. None of the cottage windows were visible, just the roof. Though the stranger was taller than I, how on earth had he found me in the dark if he came from the shore?

  I turned back to the ocean, still searching for the stranger or his boat, and as I watched the more peaceful water and listened to some distant seal’s plaint, an entirely comforting thought occurred to me. My visitor had probably been a friend of Fergus. A normal, human friend. He probably hadn’t heard that Fergus was dead—or perhaps had heard and assumed the cottage would be empty and that he would be able to pass the night there, when the storm came on suddenly and he was caught away from home. Doubtless he had visited many times and knew the tides and where it was safe to stow a boat. And he had even used the kitchen before, because he was human, subject to the cold, not a devil or a sea monster who had no need for tea. And he had come at night because of the stupid villagers who were so hostile to strangers. Look at how they still treated me! Findloss was necessarily hermetic given its geography, and while not inbred in any physical sense, it was unusually xenophobic and superstitious. Perhaps because the people who had chosen to inhabit this haunted place had no claim—legal, historical or moral—to the abodes they had appropriated, they always feared being removed if anyone in authority ever found them. Though, who would desire this land I couldn’t guess. No one else wanted to live here with the sand and curses.