by Ross Lawhead
Up and Dance, for light is dawning,
Night will turn to day;
Dance because the world is turning,
And we cannot stay.
Hear the sounds of stars revolving,
Sweeping night away-
Sing a song of dark resounding,
For we cannot stay.
See, the sky at last is lightening,
The sea will soon be grey;
Weep my friends, for dawn is breaking,
And we cannot stay.
The burning orb of fire is rising,
laugh, and music play;
The cover for our fun is fading,
And we cannot stay.
Why this cruelty, Brightness shining,
Why this price we pay?
Why should unclothed flesh need shaming?
Why, I cannot say.
Curse the sun and keep on dancing,
Grab my hand and say,
“Dance the night, and dance in darkness,
Come, I cannot stay.
“Life is short and pleasure fleeting,
Grab what sin you may.
Morning brings our deeds’ discovering,
Thus we cannot stay.”
Someday perhaps, we’ll need not hiding,
Light and law decay;
The day the sun his house not biding
Will be the day we stay.
Until that hour we must keep moving,
Blow the pipes and play!
Dance with me and dance to morning,
For we cannot stay.
Gretchen stood, watching, and somehow the orbit of the dancers grew, and the cold blackness of the night shrunk so that the orange dancers were the only created thing in the universe, and she was standing on the outside edge. They spun before her, those who passed closest would hold their arms out to her when they saw her. A few of them even grabbed her briefly, but she never let herself be drawn in. Even so, she found herself jostling awkwardly in the path of the dancers, drawn into their orbit. There seemed to be more of them now. Perhaps more of the seals had slipped their skins off and joined in. She felt doubly out of place now-even more unattractive and clumsy in the context of such beauty and grace of movement.
There was a strange elation to being here, with them and among them, and it was with a warm flush of embarrassed excitement when she realised it was because they all seemed to want her here. It was such a profoundly unfamiliar feeling, and it felt so achingly good. .
Was she under a spell? She knew she should feel more anxiety than she did. She knew she should try to escape, but only in a vague and abstract way that brought no compelling emotion or immediacy.
Ron was suddenly at her side. “Drink this,” he said, and placed a shell containing a clear liquid in her hands. She took a sip and felt her mouth burning.
“What is it?”
“We found a few casks of whiskey bobbing in the ocean and brought them here.”
Gretchen didn’t need her great grandmother to tell her of the stories of seals playfully leading sailors and fishermen astray and causing general havoc. Those were told by almost everyone. “Found?”
“Aye, found. The ship had landed upon rocks somehow. Drink up. Slainte.”
Gretchen tipped her shell up and drank. The contents did help to warm her, but she didn’t think that she should have any more. However, another shell was placed in her hands almost immediately.
“Go ahead, drink it. Slainte.” He tipped his back again.
Gretchen didn’t drink hers, but tipped her shell and let it pour out while his head was tipped back. “It’s good,” she said.
“Isn’t it? Let’s dance.”
“No, thank you.”
“It’ll warm you up better than the drink.”
“I’m too tired. Let me rest. Maybe later. When are you going to take me back?”
“Back where?”
“To where you found me.”
“You don’t want to go back there.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because I live there.”
“You live on the beach? Why not stay here with us?”
“I’m a human. I don’t belong here.”
“I’m not taking you back.”
“I’ll swim.”
He shrugged. “It’s your choice.”
At that moment a redheaded female came and pulled him playfully by the arm. He allowed himself to be tugged away, flashing Gretchen a devilish smile as he went.
She left the circle of dancers and warmth and crouched down against a rock that sheltered her against the cutting sea wind. The selkies continued dancing and singing, but the mood had changed-it was now quieter and more languorous. They were moving less complexly, and they were touching each other more. They were touching each other a lot, in fact.
“You’re not one of them, are you?” asked a voice beside her.
Gretchen turned and looked into the face of a girl about her age, but unclothed, like the rest of them.
“What did you say?” Gretchen asked.
“You’re not a selkie, are you? I can tell. They can go all night like this. I get tired after a while. They don’t seem to.”
“So you’re not a selkie either?”
“No. I’m Lucy. They brought me here. . Gosh, I don’t know how long ago now. I fell out of a boat. Feels like just a couple nights ago, but I think it was longer. It’s fun, isn’t it? Nothing to worry about. . long nights of fun and excitement. .”
Lucy was shorter than Gretchen and her eyes were big and brown, almost too big for her face, it seemed. She had matted, sandy-yellow hair and an eager manner. “Where did you get the skin from?” she asked.
“I was lent it.”
“You’re lucky. I wish I had one; then I could go swimming in the sea with them. They said they’d make me one. I’ve never seen any of them make anything, though. All they do is swim and dance. And sleep, in the daytime. I guess there’s no rush, though. I like dancing and sleeping too. Can I borrow your skin?”
“Are you cold?”
“No. I just want to go swimming.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I put it on, I would turn into one of them and I could go swimming with them. You think this dance is amazing, you should see what they do in the water!”
“Would it work for you?”
“Of course. I’ve seen them use one another’s. They don’t usually, they like to keep their own skins-I would if I were one of them, which I’d like to be. If you don’t want to be one of them, then they ignore you and stop feeding you and you die. I’ve seen that happen too.”
“You’ve seen other real people here?” Lucy was staring at the dancers again.
Lucy looked at Gretchen as if seeing her for the first time again. “Oh yes, lots. They’re always bringing people back here. They like the company. There’s always at least one new person at a dance, sometimes several. I’ve seen a lot of them arrive. How many, I wonder. .”
Her brow furrowed in concern, trying to work it out, and her eyes wandered and she looked at the dancers, and a smile gradually came back to her face.
“Lucy?” Gretchen asked.
Lucy turned fresh eyes on her once more and looked her up and down. “If the newcomers put up too much of a fuss, then they kill them. It’s not nice. They eat them, pick the bones clean, and throw them into the ocean.” She paused, shivering and gazing longingly at Gretchen’s skin. “Was that a no, then? About the skin?”
“Sorry,” Gretchen said. “It’s just that I’m really cold, and kind of wet. .”
“I understand. Let me know if you change your mind. I really want a skin of my own. And think about staying. If you don’t, I might eat you. Ha ha! It was nice talking to you.” Lucy pushed her way into the dancing circle again, soon lost in the shuffle, leaving Gretchen alone with her thoughts.
It was quite dark now, and some of the selkies had wandered off, alone or in pairs. Ron Glass didn’t come back for he
r, but she did catch sight of him as he waved to her from across the fire pit. He was very quickly led away again, this time by a short woman with long, kinky hair.
Gretchen shrugged the skin higher up on her shoulders. She knew now what she had to do, but it was going to take patience and courage to carry it out. She just needed to stay awake and pick her moment perfectly.
The singing had died off, gradually, becoming lost in the arrhythmic shush-ing of the water around the island. The selkies left by twos, threes, or fours into the night. The embers in the pit had ceased to spark and now only burned with a low, deep red, which would shortly be mirrored in the sky’s southeastern sunrise. There was just a single dancer left now: Lucy, who swayed in a vague, dreamy fashion in short steps around the fire pit. She held out arms that Gretchen suddenly noticed were very thin; her whole body was emaciated, in fact. It looked like she was starving.
Then even Lucy became tired and wandered off to find somewhere to spend the night. Gretchen waited for what she judged to be ten or fifteen minutes. She gathered her resolve and rose quietly. Moving around the rock, she picked up all of the seal skins that she could find lying on the rocks and among the forms of the selkies sleeping in their naked, human forms. Apparently they didn’t feel the cold or hardness of the rock.
The skins were littered here and there, like discarded clothes in an untidy teenager’s bedroom. Each one weighed an absolute tonne, though, and she could only carry two or three at a time. It was quite difficult to sneak around the small island with its uneven and wet surfaces, and she had to move quickly as well as quietly.
She brought the skins back to the centre of the island and lobbed them in a heap, close to the fire pit’s edge. After about forty-five minutes, she’d found all that she could and heaped them into a gigantic pile next to the fire. They looked like an enormous pile of fur coats.
Now came the moment of truth. Taking a breath, she lifted a foot and kicked at the pile until it gradually tilted forward, toward the fire pit, and then, by ones and threes, they fell into the hot embers below. There were so many, and they were so heavy, that for long, terrible minutes she thought she had smothered the heat by putting them all in at once, but then she spied a thin curl of smoke, illuminated by the sliver of a new moon. More of them started to smoulder and blacken, throwing off a stinky, oily smoke, and then a few tiny flames appeared.
It was coming along nicely. Pretty soon all of them would be burning merrily.
All of them, except for the one she had been given.
She hurried back to the shallow bay area where they had arrived. The tide had risen while she had been here but was ebbing now. She stood on a slippery outcropping of rock that hung above the modulating sea and wrapped the skin fully around herself, first making sure her feet were covered, and then tossing the flap that hung down her back up and over her head.
Her heart chilled.
It wasn’t working.
The suit completely covered her, but it didn’t join together where she pressed it. She kept it around her and wriggled about in it, but nothing happened-she just got tired holding up the heavy skin.
With a gasp, she threw back the hood. Realising that she’d based her escape plan solely on the information of a young and possibly very deluded young girl, Gretchen was about to sit down and await her fate at the judgement of the beasts. Her consolation was at least they’d all be marooned on this lifeless rock until they could make new skins for themselves-and she might be able to see how it was done. It was small consolation, however. She’d likely have been long-eaten before new skins were created.
It was hot and uncomfortable in the skin, so she tried to push it off of her. That was more difficult than she expected. It seemed to be sticking to her hands and face. She brought one hand up to her forehead to see what the problem was and found that she had raised a fin. Then it struck her-the selkies had all been naked-it would only work on her exposed skin.
Gretchen pulled her hand out of the skin and with a wet sucking sound it emerged. She laid it aside. Then she timidly started to peel off her school jumper. She felt ridiculous as she folded it and put it in a neat pile near her feet.
She had almost unbuttoned her shirt when she heard the first scream of anguish from the selkies who had discovered their burning skins.
Now she couldn’t claw her clothes off fast enough. They would kill her as soon as they found her, and it was a race against her stripping down completely and any one of them discovering her in the small cove with the only remaining selkie skin.
There were more screams now, rising in angry chorus. Everything became heightened, and her hands moved like blurs. Her skirt was off, and she rolled her stockings down with it. She pulled her panties down and quickly started fumbling with the bra clasps behind her back. She cursed it over and over.
And then that was it, she was naked-exposed.
There was a shout from behind her, piercing shrilly through the wall of wailing.
“There! There she is! She’s kept one for herself!”
Another shot of adrenaline coursed through her body. She bent down and grabbed the skin, pulling it up over her. She heard a scrabbling on the rock behind her and in fear and desperation leapt into the dark and freezing waves of the night ocean.
Her leap was short and brought her nowhere near safety. Her feet were no longer separate now-they were joined at the ankle, it felt. Turning to look down at what had caught them-she thought it might be one of her pursuers-she found that the skin was working. She felt it cling tightly to her body as it wrapped itself completely around her hips, her belly, her back and shoulders, and her arms-enveloping her in flabby seal softness. It grafted to her face and encircled her eyes. She was now in the body of a seal, and she turned her head and flicked her tail but found that the water was far too shallow for her to swim in. She turned around and found herself staring into a swarm-practically an army, in fact, of angry, naked people who were fast closing in on her.
She flipped and floundered as hard as she could, gradually inching into deeper water. The closest selkies had their heels in the water now and were splashing quickly toward her.
The water was completely covering her and she started to swim using odd, full-bodied flipper movements that she was very unused to making. The cold hit her like an anvil, and for a moment she was winded and disoriented. The waves buffeted and spun her under the surface, and then she opened her eyes-her new, seal eyes-and saw the course through the rocks around the island, which she manoeuvred in and out of with surprising deftness.
And then, finally, she was in the open sea. She was free of the island and her pursuers. Her body quickly adjusted to the chilly aqueous environment and she swam for a time, losing herself in the currents, wondering where land lay. Then the sky started to lighten and within an hour the sun broke the horizon, giving her a bearing of east-southeast, and a vague direction of home. She started confidently toward it.
It was awkward, obviously, because she was living in a skin that was not her own.
But then, it was no less awkward than she usually felt in her own skin.
VII
Daniel sat in his cell, gripping the edge of stone plinth that served as a sort of bed and bench, fighting desperately to stay awake. He had tried everything he could think of-walking or running around the cell, pinching, hitting, and slapping himself, repeating his lucky words, doing mental arithmetic-but it was no use. The darkness and the exertion of the last days and hours, in particular, had drained him past human endurance, and he found himself sinking into sleep.
Although “sinking” was putting it mildly. “Plummeting” was more accurate a description. Plummeting into a terrifying, swirling blackness that was like the raging waves of a tempestuous sea. He would nod off and feel himself falling swiftly away and then force open his eyes. It was like being pulled out of a fall and having his feet placed on firm ground. But then no matter what he did, soon the flying darkness would pull at him, bent on taking him down.
Consciously, he knew he was still in his cell. In fact, he could feel the stone slab beneath him, but even that was fading away, becoming abstract. He told himself that it was all just in his head, the extreme feelings just a reflection of the extreme dark, but try as he might, he couldn’t convince himself that he was anything more than a tiny particle of fully conscious fear lost in a horrific void, and falling, falling, always falling. The cold stone beneath him, slick with sweat, seemed immaterially thin, more of a concept than an object, and then it was gone. . His surroundings had finally dissolved away.
Points of light started to appear around him. They moved fast, arcing past him and vanishing into the distance. He was hallucinating, obviously. But it was so persistent. . What could he actually trust as real? He let loose a long groan, but even his own voice was lost in the dark tempest, swallowed by the void. The number of lights grew, and trajectories started to alter, and the stars danced erratically around him.
Shutting his eyes made no difference at all-what was happening around him penetrated even his eyelids.
He didn’t know how long he could bear it all. He felt that at some point, something had to give; either the whole display would have to stop. Or what? Madness? Death, even? How long could his tiny consciousness survive while tumbling through the cosmos?
In the tumult, he noticed that two points of light remained fixed. One was a speck of bluish-white, the other a small speck of yellow. He flung out his arm-visible only as a black silhouette against the strobing stars-to reach them and found that he was able to draw them nearer, or himself toward them, whichever it was. At last, he thought; some aspect of his situation that he could control.
As he came closer to the stars, he was surprised to find that they were two mostly human forms. They were riders on horses, galloping away from him, tearing across the sky like comets. One was golden, like the sun; the other silver, like the moon.
As they galloped away, they also came closer to him, within the altered physics of his dreamscape.
The riders reared and he saw their full figures, every sparkle of light that shone from every edge of their armour. The golden figure’s armour was roughly burnished so that the colours of red, orange, and yellow swirled and mixed across it, seeming to produce light and heat. The other’s was buffed and reflected a luminescent, ghostly gleam of blue, white, and grey.