Song of the Selkies

by Cathie Dunsford

  As he watches her dive, he thinks how lucky he is to have won such a beautiful Nofin back to the sea. Her sleek, oily body skims the water as if she were made for this life instead of inheriting it later. Her fins fly through the waves and she swims with such skill it always holds him in awe. But it is her eyes that still captivate his heart. Deep blue and green and sometimes tawny brown, depending on the colour of the sea and the quality of the sunlight filtering through. Her eyes are knowing, intelligent, instinctive and full of tenderness, all qualities she lacked in her earthly existence.

  This leads Sandy to wonder. Maybe if they willed Morrigan back into the sea, she would assume her once gentle qualities. Or would she always have to be the woman warrior, the old Queen of the Orkneys, reigning in all others to her fold?

  [7]

  They arrive at the cottage in the hills above the Bay of Skaill and can barely get out of Morrigan’s old van, the wind is raging so harshly. The door flies back into their bodies three times before they are allowed out. But the view is worth it. The women look down into a beautiful bay, with breakers crashing into large sculpted rocks of slate and sandstone. Seaweed swirls in the swells, flinging its tentacles in the direction of each new wave, only to be flung back over its own arms again in a never-ending motion of dancing movement. To the left of the bay, a large peninsular lurches out into the sea, its headlands resembling a turtle, with a dark cave entrance showing through to the other side of the wild ocean, as if the eye in a rounded turtle head. To the right, rugged cliffs with layers of rock and ledges which the grey and cream wave-surfing fulmars have claimed for their homes.

  Cowrie scans the bay, noticing a few homes and farmhouses scattered about with land around them and a small cottage right on the beach. Morrigan’s home is an old stone croft, falling into ruins in places, and patched up with rusted corrugated iron she has found in abandoned building sites. It is part of a compound of dilapidated stone cottages with dry-stone walls also falling in around them and grass mixed with wildflowers, as tall as Cowrie’s thighs. She steals a glance at Camilla, who looks suitably horrified. This is not exactly the free seaside B&B she had imagined when Morrigan invited them over. The cold wind bites into them and urges them forward, though the cottages hardly look welcoming.

  Inside, they consist of the bare essentials. Old patches of carpet and walls different-coloured from free paint samples line them all. Some of the windows are boarded up and the saving grace is that almost every room has a fireplace. Cowrie wastes no time in asking where the wood is. Morrigan bursts into loud guffaws of laughter, barely able to contain herself. ‘How many trees did you spy driving here from Stromness, Cowrie?’

  ‘Well, I must admit, the landscape was noticeable for a lack of vegetation, apart from a few flax bushes and cabbage trees in some gardens.’

  ‘And do flax bushes and cabbage trees strike you as good firewood?’

  ‘Point taken, Morrigan. There’s stuff all trees and what there is ain’t the best firewood. So what d’ya use?’

  ‘Peat, peat and more peat. Lucky my relatives still own cutting rights. There are spades in the garden shed and you can all come peat digging with me tomorrow.’

  ‘Now, you really are kidding us, Morrigan. Even I know that peat has to be dried for months before using,’ laughs Camilla.

  ‘Aye, lassie,’ Morrigan assumes her native tongue, ‘but what yee dinnit ken is that for each bag o’ peat we take, we mist ulsa cut that much for the next bugger who comes along.’

  All the blood drains from Camilla’s face at this point. Not only is this not the guest holiday she wanted, but she will be forced into hard labour simply to keep warm. She shudders at the thought. ‘But I cannot cut peats with you. I have suffered for years from a bad back,’ she whimpers.

  ‘Well, then lassie, yee ken lift a saucepan or a tattie masher, right?’ Morrigan asks, handing Camilla a pan from the rough wooden shelf with her left hand and lighting the old gas cooker with her right hand. ‘The tatties lie in those mounds out there. Get Cowrie to help you dig a few tatties and turnips. I’ve a yen for some clapshot tonight.’ With that, Morrigan turns on her heel and heads for the sea, yelling against the wind that she’ll be back for dinner at six.

  Cowrie and Camilla eye each other suspiciously, but realise that it may come down to a case of them versus Morrigan if push comes to shove and maybe they had better make an effort to get along now. ‘She has certainly changed from the Ellen we met in Edinburgh, right?’ says Cowrie.

  ‘From the minute she told us her true name on the boat coming to Orkney, it was as if she assumed another identity,’ asserts Camilla. ‘And she certainly romanticised these huts we are supposed to live in. I will be checking out the B&Bs tomorrow for sure.’

  ‘Hang on, Camilla. This is supposed to be a communal sharing of storytelling we came for. It hardly matters where we live, so long as we have a roof over our heads. I reckon these cottages will be okay once we get some fires lit. Let’s get to it.’

  ‘It’s fine for you, Cowrie. You live in huts in New Zealand anyway. But I am used to a little more comfort.’

  ‘Please yourself, Camilla. But I’m off to the beach to gather driftwood to start a fire. I spied a heap of coal in one of the sheds and that can do until we beg, borrow or steal some peats.’

  ‘I can save you the effort. I saw some firelighters in the kitchen, so that can get us started. You dig the potatoes and turnips and I will get the fire going.’ Camilla makes for the shelf and then the fireplace. Cowrie walks to the shed to look for a spade. Inside, there are oars hanging from the ceiling and she wonders where the boat is kept. Old fishing nets hang down over the windows and lobster pots are stacked up the sides. There are black bags tied at the neck which she hopes will be full of coal. She opens one to see heaps of dried cow dung piled up inside. She closes it quickly, before the whiff pollutes her nostrils. She opens another. The same. Dried shit.

  Why on earth would Morrigan keep this like sacred potatoes, maturing in the shed? She tries a third bag. Dung again. The she notices one marked, ‘For Kelpie’. She unties the knot and sees a note inside. ‘I saved you some peats, my love. Yours, Morrigan.’ The bag is again full of dung. Then it suddenly dawns on her. This must be dried peats. No wonder they don’t smell too bad.

  Cowrie picks up a piece and tries to crumble it in her hand. It stays solid. She holds it up to her nose and is infused with the most wonderful fragrance of wildflowers and earth, smoked fish and the malt whisky Kuini sometimes drinks. She closes the bag for Kelpie and grabs another, determined this will be their fire tonight even if she has to cut wet peats all week to make up for it, and begins dragging it out to the door. Her elbow knocks against some garden tools and she remembers she has come in here to look for a spade.

  Once she has the peats in the house, she returns for the spade. It has disappeared. She looks everywhere, but cannot locate it. She reaches for a pitch fork instead, knocking over an old chest. Its contents lie sprawled over the earth floor. Some kind of animal skin, almost like her oilskin coat. Ugh! Cowrie stuffs it back into the chest but the oil from its fur stays clinging to her hand. She wipes it down her trouser leg, grabs the pitch fork and strides down toward the tattie patch.

  Morrigan watches from behind the third cottage, wondering why Cowrie is so long in her shed, thinking she must get a lock for it or dig a hole and bury the chest underground. She’d stolen back to get the spade, but Cowrie had returned again and she had to hide. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring these Nofins back to Orkney after all?

  [8]

  ‘What are the raised earth mounds, like a maze, on the left hill just above the beach?’ Cowrie asks, loading another serving of clapshot onto her plate.

  ‘Skara Brae. It’s a five thousand-year-old village built in the Stone Age, complete with stone furniture, hearths and drains,’ Morrigan replies, her mouth full of mashed potato and turnip.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ Camilla injects, reaching for t
he pepper.

  Morrigan takes no notice at all and the look on Camilla’s face shows she means business and will not give up until she has taught this heathen some manners. Camilla has begun to take on Morrigan as her main cause in life, as if to make up for the less than adequate accommodation, and has spent most of the afternoon cleaning up and getting the cottage into some semblance of order.

  ‘How come it has survived that long?’ asks Cowrie.

  ‘It was buried underground until 1850 when it was uncovered by a violent storm.’

  ‘Is it possible to see inside?’

  ‘If you want to give money to them down south, go by day. Otherwise, locals just scale the wall from the beach at dusk and take any visitors who are fit enough to go with them.’

  ‘I certainly will not be scaling walls by night,’ replies Camilla, offended at the thought of it. ‘You should be supporting Historic Scotland for preserving such sites by visiting in the conventional way.’

  ‘Stuff the lot of them. They’re from down south and are after our jobs and our money. They travel up here and start bed-and-breakfasts and fancy things for tourists and then they go for the plum jobs, leaving islanders on the outer. Next thing you’ll be wanting to move out of the cottage here and into one of their fancy bed-and-breakfasts.’

  Camilla blanches as she had intended doing just that once she had got Morrigan sorted out and the cottage in some fit shape for her to live in. Through a face full of tatties, Cowrie grins and winks at Camilla, then decides she should rescue her from further embarrassment. ‘So who lived at Skara Brae? Do they know much from the evidence of the village?’

  ‘It comprises domestic houses with furniture like ours, only much rougher, of course, and made from stone. Some say a community of women lived there. Two old women were found buried in the walls of one of the houses and that form of interrment was only ever given to highly respected elders.’

  ‘Fascinating. I’d love to look inside it. So amazing to see the remains of a Stone-age village right on the edge of such a wild ocean beach. Awesome.’ Cowrie offers the last of the clapshot to Morrigan who takes it all, then pushes back her chair and stands, telling them she will be away for the night and not to expect her until late the next day.

  Camilla and Cowrie clear up after dinner and survey their home for the next few months.

  ‘Well, ya can’t shoot through now, Camilla, after she said that,’ offers Cowrie, grinning. Camilla admits it would be difficult and in any case she has a full time job ahead getting the wretched cottage in a fit state. Cowrie suggests that she should stay and keep an eye on Morrigan and do just that while she tackles the second cottage in preparation for Sasha and Monique to come. She wants to make sure that she will at least be in the same house as Sasha to get to know her better. It’s still possible that DK and Uretsete, now lovers, will join them later after they have travelled up through Scotland and visited Iona, which Uretsete was keen to do, so they can have the third cottage. ‘How do you know DK and Uret — whatever her name is?’ asks Camilla.

  ‘Both were students when I was teaching while completing my doctorate at the University of California in Berkeley. DK was the young radical and Uretsete was niece of my lover, Peta.’

  ‘You never struck me at the festival as a doctoral type,’ admits Camilla.

  ‘So what’s a doctoral type? We don’t play into all that Oxford and Cambridge upper class crap back home. It simply means, in my case, you have a passion for words which you want to pursue with further reading.’

  ‘Yes, but you need intelligence and perseverance to complete the work, Cowrie.’

  ‘So you don’t reckon I have those qualities, eh, Camilla?’

  Camilla blanches, then her face reddens. ‘I didn’t say that, Cowrie.’

  ‘You didn’t need to. It was written all over your face,’ retorts Cowrie, with a grin. ‘C’mon Camilla, it’s no big deal. I recall touring once doing readings and two twinset and pearls ladies from the bookstore in Palmerston North came to collect me. They expected some kind of bespectacled touring author with a PhD and they got a wild Hawai’ian Maori in jandals. I walked right by them to see if they would pick me. There were only eight of us disembarking from the plane. I sauntered past them, went to the loo, buggered about a bit buying postcards and collecting bags, then decided I would put them out of their misery, so I bowled up and introduced myself. D’ya know what they said? “But you don’t look like a doctor”. By which they meant not thin, tall, intellectual airs and pakeha.’

  ‘What’s pakeha?’

  ‘White, euro, brit, you know, pale-face.’

  Camilla blanches again. ‘Well, it’s true. You don’t look like a doctor.’

  Cowrie gives up in disgust and changes the topic, asking Camilla if she would be interested in finding out more about the Stone-age village of Skara Brae and suggesting they visit the place sometime. Camilla agrees it would be very educational and besides, she has a visitor’s pass to all British and Scottish castles and monuments administered by Historic England and Scotland.

  ‘No wonder you didn’t want to scale the wall,’ exclaims Cowrie. ‘You crafty old witch, Camilla.’

  Camilla drops the cup she is drying. It crashes onto the floor, shattering into several pieces. She faces Cowrie front on, assertively. ‘Do not ever, ever, ever call me a witch. That is no joke. It is evil and heathen.’

  Oh, no. She’s some kind of Christian fundamentalist, thinks Cowrie, amazed at her reaction. She considers telling Camilla that witches were merely wise women whose knowledge the societal leaders wanted to silence, then realises this debate could take them into the wee hours and she is very tired after the long journey up from Scrabster. Safer to change the subject. ‘Okay, so where do you think Morrigan is all night?’

  ‘Are you suggesting she is a witch?’ asks Camilla incredulously.

  ‘No. More like she has a lover.’ Cowrie remembers the message to Kelpie written on the note inside the bag of peats.

  ‘Nobody would sleep with anybody this untidy,’ asserts Camilla, picking up the shattered china and dusting the top of the fridge with the edge of her tea towel.

  ‘Then that’s settled. I’m off to bed and I assume you are happy to sleep here alone tonight in Morrigan’s cottage?’

  ‘I’m certainly not afraid of ghosts, if that’s what you mean.’

  Bloody ghost would be afraid of you, thinks Cowrie, smiling to Camilla and suggesting she lock the door once Cowrie has left. As she heads out into the night breeze, she hears the lock crunch down and furniture sliding across the floor. She is not sure whether Camilla is keeping her or the witches at bay. Maybe, to Camilla, they are one and the same.

  Cowrie walks across the stoney earth, noticing that it is still light at half-past-nine and the sun is setting over the sea, sending an orange-pink glow into the sky above the dense layer of clouds. The billowy shapes hovering on the horizon depict a seahorse, a kina, a whale and a seal. Another patch of clouds shows a witch riding a broom. She hopes Camilla is looking out the window and is suitably impressed. In the foreground, one of the standing stones on the farm nearby suddenly starts to move. It walks with a determined stride. She could swear it was Morrigan, but Morrigan has been gone too long to be that close by. Cowrie dismisses the thought and opens the door of her cottage to find a wildcat has sprayed all over the floor. She considers returning to Camilla, but decides the cat pee is worth the freedom. Even the lumpy old mattress looks inviting when this tired. She leaps onto the mattress, fully clothed, and is asleep within minutes.

  [9]

  A rusted spade, its handle broken and a box of old farm implements are held up for all to see. ‘Tenner, g’me a tenner. Five, a fiver. Two. Two pounds for the box lot.’ A fellow in the front row with a fag hanging out his mouth and clothes that are glued to his body with soot, raises one eyebrow. ‘Three. I have three quid. Goin, going, gone for three quid, to Squiddy Lamefoot.’ The auctioneer’s hammer goes down on the table and a red-faced man i
n blue overalls hands the man a ticket to claim his prize. ‘Good on yer, Squiddy. Bloody nice hoe in there,’ he mumbles and winks. Squiddy Lamefoot nods in reply and eyes the next lot being wheeled into the arena. It is a beautifully carved desk and a murmur of interest ripples through the room. Bids start at only five pounds, but an antique dealer from down south raises the odds and it eventually goes for eighty pounds. ‘Bloody rip-off. Would’ve been a goner for forty had the pom not been there,’ mumbles Morrigan.

  ‘Reckon so,’ agrees Cowrie. Then the wardrobe and dresser they have been waiting for is trundled in.

  ‘Number 263, wardrobe and dresser. Open her up Timmy.’ The auctioneer gestures to Timmy, who holds the long cabinet with one arm and reaches around to prise open the door with the other. It creaks, groans, then falls off with a loud thud to the floor. Collective laughter. The auctioneer manages to keep a straight face for a few seconds, then grins. ‘Who’ll give a tenner, a tenner for both, and I’ll throw the door in for free.’ More laughter. ‘All right, a fiver, a fiver. Who’ll give a fiver?’ Cowrie begins to raise her hand but Morrigan grabs her wrist and holds it down. ‘Two quid. A quid each for the dresser and the wardrobe.’ The silence is unbearable. The auctioneer is about to order the goods off stage when he suddenly notices a bid. ‘Two quid. Gone for two quid!’ His hammer crashes onto the table in relief, and Blue Overalls approaches them, handing a ticket to Morrigan.

  ‘How on earth did you do that?’ asks Cowrie.

  ‘It’s the nose,’ laughs Morrigan, twitching her nose like a seal.

  ‘But how did he know you were bidding and it wasn’t just an itch?’

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ is all Morrigan says, and she gestures Cowrie to move toward the door.