Song of the Selkies

by Cathie Dunsford

  ‘She uses lobster creels, not nets. And besides, that does not explain the intimate words she whispered to the seal. I found that strange and weird.’

  ‘Maybe she knew the seal in its human form?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just what I said, Turtle.’

  ‘So that might explain why she is being so secretive about it?’

  ‘Maybe, or simply that she does things her way. That would be typical of Morrigan too. Now let’s leave her to her work, unless she asks for our help, and let her be. I think our energies will be better spent exploring this fascinating land and working towards the storytelling festival.’

  ‘Too true.’ Cowrie cuddles into Sasha and they perch on the edge of a stone seat, looking out over the awesome remains of the broch and into the wild currents swirling about in the Eynhallow channel and sweeping by Rousay. ‘I wouldn’t like to be caught in a kayak in that whirlpool of currents,’ admits Cowrie.

  ‘Me neither,’ replies Sasha, folding her arm around Cowrie’s shoulder and warming her against the cold wind blowing in from the sea and ruffling the once calm waters off Gurness.

  After the others have explored Gurness to their heart’s content, they walk around the rocks to the sands of Evie. Here, a sandy beach stretches out as far as the eye can see. Sasha presses her fingers tight around Cowrie’s hand. ‘Just like Aotearoa, eh Turtle?’

  ‘Except for the weather,’ jokes Cowrie and they slowly start gathering empty spoot shells lying in abundance amidst the seaweed and driftwood piled up on the sand. Soon all are finding new shells to absorb them and there is a surprising abundance of brightly coloured shells in amongst the ever present large limpets. Orange and yellow and brown spiral shells, purple sea eggs worn down by the waves so that their once spiky outsides are just round ridges, tiny black and purple mussel shells, smaller than they have ever seen, a conical shell with brown swirls around the sides leading up to a perfect tip.

  ‘Turtle, come here. You won’t believe what I have just found.’ Sasha holds up an elongated shell as tiny as a fingernail, creamy white with grooved ridges around. She turns it over to reveal a line of teeth leading into a mysterious interior, hidden from the naked eye. It is a minute cowrie shell, smaller than she has ever seen and totally different from the rich brown turtle-shell markings of the Pacific cowries, covering over a bright purple interior shell. Cowrie turns it over in her hand marvelling at the beauty of this small and distant cousin to her own shells, too tiny to put up to your ear and hear the murmurings of the sea. Sasha had found it under a pile of tangle, so they search under more seaweed and find a total of nine cowries, all of them as minute. The others gather round and Cowrie hands the shells out to them.

  ‘What’ll you do with the others, Turtle?’ asks Sasha.

  ‘One each goes back home for Mere, Kuini and Maata. The last one is for Morrigan. When she returns from fishing,’ she adds, looking over to Camilla, and thinking that Morrigan might need all the protection afforded traditionally by the cowrie shell. She hopes she’ll be able to sing her waiata through this cowrie, bring the Orcadian woman back into her true self and love, whatever that is, as she did with young Sahara.

  Infused with a new challenge, and inspired by the final breaking through of the sun, Cowrie flings off her layers of clothes with ostentatious pleasure, much to the shock of a few English birdwatchers, replete with binoculars and very heavily clad in winter woollies themselves, and runs into the waves. She dives and takes in a gulp of seawater, her body shocked at the icy cold. Camilla averts her eyes and Monique watches in awe, but Sasha, DK and Uretsete, taking this as a challenge, throw off layer after layer of clothing and rush to be next into the ocean, screaming with glee as they hit the freezing waters.

  The English couple try to ignore them, focusing on the oystercatchers trying to dig for spoots, but they cannot pretend it is not happening once three more bodies dive naked into the sea. The woman leans over to her husband, whose binoculars are now pinned on the large, luscious naked bodies, his eyes bulging in secret behind his glasses. ‘Really, Reginald, I have no idea why these young women have to flaunt themselves so eagerly. It’s disgusting. It’s time we moved on.’ She gathers her thermos, scarf, binoculars and camera and heads for the Volvo parked by the road.

  Reginald, far from wanting to move, murmurs ‘yes, dear’ and focuses his binoculars more clearly so he can see the bulging breasts of these brown and cream Botticelli bodies playing in the surf like mermaids. ‘Go for it. Enjoy your youth while you have it,’ he mumbles to himself. ‘Reginald, come immediately,’ yells out Mrs Reginald from the car park. ‘You have the keys and I cannot get in.’ Reginald sighs, rubs his penis unobtrusively, as if it were once a living organism, and obediently returns to the car.

  Oblivious to this pantomime, acted out all over the once powerful Empire on various stages and in various guises, the mermaids frolic and play, diving and leaping around in the water, none wanting to be the first to scramble up the beach for the protection of warm clothes again. Cowrie is the first in and the first out. She rushes across the sand and in the distance, notices a silver Volvo taking off from the carpark with rapid motion. ‘Great,’ she yells, ‘we have the beach to ourselves and the sea creatures.’ She turns around to wave to the others and notices a lone seal out on the horizon, hovering in the waters, its head looking inland as if searching for someone.

  [26]

  Fiona waits tensely flicking her tail back and forward in the shadow of the rocky ledge as the great white shark skims past her in pursuit of Sandy, who has disappeared around the edge of the rocky outcrop. She dare not move for fear of being seen by the shark, yet she wants to distract his attention from Sandy. She notices a few squid in the upper waters and wonders if she can reach them in time. When the shark circles around, moving with his back toward her, she darts out and up, grabbing a squid in her mouth. Immediately it squirts a jet of blacky blue ink at her and she dives toward the shark directly. Just as the squid prepares to squirt her again, she thrusts it in front of the shark, clouding his vision for a moment. She darts down toward Sandy, but he has already gone.

  The shark emerges from the mist and turns toward her, slashing his tail maliciously. She swiftly swims back toward the ledge. He pursues her with all the force of his large and strong body, more than three lengths her size. He opens his huge jaws ready for the crunch. Terrified, she slips in under the ledge just in time and he wraps his jaws around a jagged rock covered in oysters which rip the sides of his mouth. He turns away, flicking his tail angrily and sending a school of mackerel darting for a quick escape in all directions. His mouth is bleeding and his body is rigid with anger. Oyster scratches are the most painful shellfish cuts of all, especially about the mouth area. He surges back in the direction he was pursuing Sandy, going three times the speed the fittest seal could manage. Fiona’s heart pounds in her stomach, sending shivers out to the very tips of her fins. She has done all she can to divert the great white. It is up to fate from now on. All she can do is send vibrations through the water to warn Sandy.

  [27]

  The purplish-black mussels sizzle on the peat fire, opening in the heat and drizzling their juices down onto the cockles cooking below. Eager mouths wait as Cowrie cooks the last batch of seafood on the flames and hands it round in clay bowls for all to sample. Camilla has made a delicious mustard and cress salad with sliced cucumber and Monique added a blue cheese sauce dripping lusciously over mushrooms at the top, spiced up by a few purple wildflowers she’s found in the field on Morrigan’s land. They feel magnificent after a day out in the fresh air and a shockingly cold but refreshing swim off the sands of Evie.

  Later in the afternoon, they’d collected mussels from the rocks on the way home and dug for cockles and for razors. The spoots had mostly eluded them, only a few falling victim to their backward steps over the flats, and they’d felt it worthy of a feast in honour of the citizens of the Broch of Gurness, who’d revealed treasur
es from their lives by leaving behind monuments that would stand the test of time for future generations to see. Monique begins a game of suggesting what, from their own disposable culture, would be around 5000 years later, like Skara Brae, and in the span between the Iron Age and now.

  ‘A midden of smashed computers,’ suggests DK. ‘And I doubt if Bill Gates’d be the first to dig holes in ’em to hollow out a space for his new stone house.’ They laugh, visualising the Skara Brae building methods used with modern rubbish heaps.

  ‘A thousand inflated condoms tied together would make an excellent roof,’ suggests Camilla, delighted to be relaxed enough to offer a joke rather than shunning theirs. They grimace at the thought but enjoy the madness of it too.

  ‘I’d go for the traditional shellfish middens, myself,’ offers Cowrie, tucking into a second helping of sweet fresh cockles tasting of peat smoke and sea salt. ‘I could live inside that midden and simply use the old shells to build the next house on top, like the women of Skara Brae.’

  ‘Reckon I’d come and join you.’ Monique has never been into shellfish much in Frankfurt and has discovered she loves it fresh from the sea, and that her West Indian ancestors probably feasted on it in Trinidad too. Her grandfather had come to Germany in the First World War and stayed to marry a Frankfurt woman. Their relationship had broken many taboos at the time and she recalls her grandmother telling of how she wheeled Monique’s mother in a pram as a baby and was spat on in the street.

  She’d grown up with West-Indian/German parents who tried to assimilate as much as possible after the Nazi regime and who talked seldom about their relatives back home in the West Indies. She’d had to press them for information and longed to visit her cousins one day to see for herself the heritage and country she came from. She grew up as a black German, a breed apart, with no status, rights nor respect, unlike the American Blacks who’d fought for their freedom and at least won some token respect.

  One night she’d shared this with the group and it had been the first time she had ever voiced her desire to return to Trinidad. She’d never liked Germany but knew no other place she could call home. Now her English is good enough, she will make the trip for sure. Just tasting the shellfish reminds her of smells and sounds and tastes she’s had in her mouth since she was born and could never explain since she had never actually tasted the shellfish nor breadfruit nor watermelon before. Now she knows it is a memory ingrained in her, an inherited tradition she is being called to explore.

  ‘Monique, hand over the mussels, girl. That’s the third time I’ve asked.’ Sasha nudges her as she passes the shellfish, still inside her dreamspace. ‘I’d go for a broch made of pure, clean ice right now,’ continues Sasha, ‘and to the right of the hearth in the middle, I’d carve a hole in the ice to fish through. I’d haul up the fish and land them straight onto the fire. Now you couldn’t get fresher than that.’ She grins, enjoying playing on the stereotypically eskimo imagery that most people imagine when they first meet an Inuit person, even though she has grown up in huts rather than igloos and with fish from the local store rather than the sea, until her father taught her the ancient skills of kayak fishing.

  Camilla grimaces. ‘Well, it all sounds fine for you but horrible for the fish. I’d rather stay with my sprouts and beans.’

  ‘Howd’yer know they don’t hurt when you pull them out,’ ventures DK, playing devil’s advocate. ‘I recall reading about Mandrake Roots in early English poetry and how they screamed and shrieked when you dragged them out of the ground. Maybe sprouts have hearts too. Maybe they hurt when you force feed them all that water then munch them alive.’

  Camilla puts her hands over her ears. DK grins and says she is only teasing but Camilla can no longer hear her.

  ‘Okay, you two, give it up.’ Uretsete suggests instead that they settle into an evening of storytelling and starts off by telling them about how Hutash created the Rainbow Bridge so that the people on the Island of Carpinteria could walk across to the mainland of Great Turtle Island, once the population boomed, and how some looked down and fell into the waters below, turning into dolphins. Now everyone respects and loves dolphins, knowing that some of their relatives may be those swimming past today.

  Cowrie recalls her lover Peta telling her this story and how deeply affected she was by it, and remembers the dream where Peta fell into the water and became a dolphin, swimming off with another dolphin, and how it predicted Peta’s relationship with Nanduye. Now Sasha is descended from the dolphins too. Maybe there is something to this? Maybe it’s not so strange to think of Morrigan’s closeness to the seals. After all, it is Laukiamanuikahiki, Turtle Woman, who has offered Cowrie protection all these years, brought her back to Hawai’i in search of her lost roots and sent her out into the wild oceans to rediscover her own true wave-length.

  Camilla tells an enchanting tale about MacCodrum of the Seals which her Scottish grandmother told her, and for the first time they realise she has Scottish as well as English roots.

  It is a long story beginning with the King and Queen of the sea dwelling below the waves in happiness with their lovely sea-children, who had seaweed hair and played with the seahorses. ‘But the Queen died and her replacement was a terrible mother who was jealous of the children and turned them into seals, only allowing them one day on land per year. When they grew older, Roderick MacCodrum, roaming the shores, found a beautiful sealskin from one of the daughters and took it back to his house. The selkie followed him and he hid her skin and asked her to be his wife. She agreed, despairing of ever returning to her now beloved ocean.’

  Camilla pauses for a sip of red wine. ‘Her children grew up loving the sea and singing into seashells. One day, he was out a long time and a huge wind blew against the house, dislodging the sealskin box. Out flopped her skin and she bade farewell to her children and returned to the sea. Roderick was warned to go back when a hare crossed his path on his way to work, but he never took notice. He returned later that night to find the children weeping and his selkie gone forever. He never recovered, and it’s said that the sons of Roderick MacCodrum, and their offspring too, never lifted an oar to a seal thereafter. They became known as Clan MacCodrum of the Seals, a sect of the Clan Donald in the Outer Hebrides.’

  ‘Are they still around?’ asks DK.

  ‘According to my grandmother, you need to look closely at all the Donald clan as well as the MacCodrums. She says the selkie still swims in their blood. Even the girls are tall and dark and speak like men with bodies as strong as any seal you are likely to see.’

  Cowrie looks over to the picture of Morrigan on the mantlepiece above the fire. Her once-long, dark hair hangs over her face, her body drapes down over the chair like a seal, her tail fins close together on the floor. ‘Did any of them come to Orkney?’ she asks.

  ‘Likely as not, if you believe in these myths,’ explains Camilla. ‘Personally, I think they make great fireside stories, but I don’t believe a speck of it myself.’ She hands the tototoko, a carved talkingstick Cowrie had brought with her from Aotearoa, over to Sasha, who responds with another seal story from her Inuit tradition. Cowrie follows with the tale of the tsunami and Laukiamanuikahiki saving the small village hut and mural of Punalu’u Beach as it once was, with women shelling coconuts on the black sands and chiefs waving off a canoe to distant shores, maybe those of Aotearoa.

  They share food and talkstory late into the night, then retire to their beds, contented but exhausted. Cowrie notices smoke still smouldering from the chimney in the shed and she sends out all the healing energy she can muster to Morrigan and her seal, while settling in beside Sasha, glad she is warm and safe with this dolphin woman from the north.

  [28]

  Morrigan wakes with a start. Beside her, the seal is breathing heavily, snorting every few minutes, and now refuses even the fresh fish that Morrigan made Squiddy bring by while the girls were over at the broch. She’s sure that Cowrie, at least, has guessed what she is up to but she is almost beyond caring
now. She can barely open her eyes and the exhaustion of several nights without sleep has taken over and made her feel dizzy and spacy. Maybe the fight to keep life at all costs, bring back the dead into the land of the living, is not what nature intended. Maybe this one is meant to die?

  She looks down at the seal and his eyes look up to her but it is clear that he can barely register. There is a dullness behind the pupils, a lack of recognition and energy to live. Maybe he wants to die after all? Maybe I am prolonging his life unnecessarily? Perhaps he wanted to get caught? He’s a wiley old bugger and would not easily fall into a fishermen’s net. He knows this trap too well to be fooled. Maybe he came back to make me promise to look after his daughter, our daughter, and to see me for one last time.

  The thoughts swirl about Morrigan’s mind like seaweed in a storm, catching onto every small bit of debris, lurching to and fro as the swell drags them out and in again. She drifts into a fitful sleep and the seal twitches beside her then lies still.

  ‘It’s time to let go, Morrigan,’ the women say. ‘He’ll not come back. You’ve had the chance to talk again and make peace. But now you must let go.’ The words stream out from the walls of Skara Brae and across the sea and rocks, are flown on the wind, up and over the fields to the humble shed where Morrigan lies cuddled into the seal, trying to keep it warm and alive. She huddles closer to the mammal, folding her arms fully around the creature, even then not reaching the width of its girth. Just under the skin she smells the lobsters and crabs, the mackerels and halibut, the kelp and tangle the seal has eaten. Despite stoking the fire continually, it is still cold and she reaches for the oilskin to cover them both.