Song of the Selkies

by Cathie Dunsford

  Sasha pins her on the bed. ‘Watch out, Turtle, or I might repeat the kissing to see if it can wound the other shoulder as well.’ She grins and starts kissing Cowrie’s neck and up around her ears and then down her back, gently tonguing her way across the shoulder blade. Cowrie moans with delight. Sasha’s tongue gets hotter and hotter until she can barely lick. She runs it along the spine and returns to the wounded area. There is a heat emanating from within that is like hot lava swarming under the surface. Back at the spine, it is more like the sea swirling either side of a long rocky ledge.

  Her tongue returns to the shoulder and works its way down her back, as her fingers softly run over her hips. Cowrie moans sweetly as Sasha enters her from behind, her fingers parting the soft fur at the lip of her cave and moving tenderly along the shaft of her clitoris, until it swells and swells, like the sea moving a wave to its height. Cowrie moans into her pillow, feeling Sasha’s other hand move over her hardened, rising nipples, as she gently swells the waves below.

  She enters into dreamspace, as Sasha’s tongue slides down her back and slithers into the cave. She is floating on an ocean swell, her shell warmed by the sun, her belly fluid, her fins outstretched. The hot lava of Pele flows into the sea and surges towards her, entering her body and warming her insides. The rocking motion of the ocean awakes all her senses and water flows from her mouth into her belly, joining the fire midstream. Liquid tongues lap her juices and she sizzles as fire and water meet within her. She drifts in bliss, ripples entering her again and again and again, sending waves of pleasure through her body and out to the tips of her fins. The sea rocks her, rocks within her, mingling its salty water with tongues of fire. She surrenders fully to the seasurge and drifts out with the tide.

  Flames of fire surf down Sasha’s arm and into the cave. She floats on air, rising above the waves, flying through the waters as if in her kayak, then plunging back in again, diving to the depth of the cave and rising to surface to take air. Her whole body shakes as if an earthquake has erupted through the water, sending hot lava streaming through her veins. She reaches for the tip of the mountain, strokes gently, as it rises and rises, then explodes. Her dolphin tail surges through the water, powering her into the air, and she flies above, skimming the tops of the waves with her belly, finning, finning, finning her way to freedom. She rides the surf like a dolphin in flight, soaring at the top of the wave, surging down into its belly, to rise on the next wave, and surf its crest to the curve of its concave body, in tune with its motion, as one with the sea, with Cowrie.

  A shaft of sun shines through the stone surrounds of the window and lights up the naked bodies entwined on the bed. As farmers plough their fields, politicians debate in Kirkwall, mothers bake oatcakes and draw up policies, and seals gather in the Bay of Skaill, two creatures lie entwined in bliss, oblivious to the world around, deep within their dreamspace. They float above the waters, dive into the deeps, surge through the waves and fly into the night sky, their wings emblazoned with water. They enter volcanoes, shafts of fire, waves of water, and emerge unscathed, bathed in light, floating on air. They are two creatures melted into one, in tune with themselves and in tune with nature. In this state of grace, they are invincible, alive, fired with erotic energy, surging with sensual desire, body, mind and soul in perfect harmony. They could emerge from this state to compose a symphony or catch fish with their fins. They could talk to their ancestors, cause peace to fall upon the earth like gold dust from the heavens. In this state of grace, they can do anything. The choice is theirs.

  Sasha wakes first, rubbing her eyes, wondering where she is. Her limbs are entwined around Cowrie as if they are one breathing creature. She stays in this position, wondering if she dreamed this vision or if it really happened. Her body feels alive, energised, floating on air, yet sensual and soft. She remembers flying through the air, entering into volcanoes, diving to the ocean depths, being capable of anything her heart desires. Elation fills her, staying with her, as she recalls her mother talking about the dreamspace, that it was rare to reach this, but it could empower a person to live their dreams. Her eyes float down Cowrie’s body. She looks like an angel, her wings rapt around Sasha, her eyes still closed, her soft, rounded body flying out of a Botticelli painting, only a darker copper colour. She runs her fingers softly down Cowrie’s cheeks, waking her gently, making her murmur. ‘Sweet Sash, fin me forever.’ She then moves softly back into sleep.

  Sasha lies there another half-hour until Cowrie wakes. They gently untangle their bodies and prepare a bath together, running water heated from the peat fire into the old clawed bath. They share their memories of the experience and Sasha is blown away to find Cowrie also felt the same surges, the same awakening, also entered into dreamspace. It has inspired each of them similarly. They each rub the back of the other, marvelling at this shared magic, Cowrie recalling its beginnings with Peta on Great Turtle Island. Sasha is careful coming to the part of Cowrie’s back which held the pain. But she need not be. It has gone, disappeared, now lies deep in the pit of the volcano, burned to the core, releasing her back into pain-free health. Sasha rubs harder, to make sure the wound has gone. Cowrie does not wince, but bubbles over with ideas for their shared storytelling session, not even noticing the fingers pressing her shell.

  In the kitchen, Monique is rattling pots and shuffling papers. Exquisite smells start exuding from the old coal range, and soon the voices of DK and Uretsete are heard as they enter the house. Cowrie and Sasha dry each other, still elated, still soaring, and prepare to join them.

  ‘Wow! You look amazing,’ utters DK, as they emerge from the bathroom. ‘I bet I know what you have been up to.’

  Sasha winks and says, ‘You’d never guess, DK, not in a million years.’

  DK grimaces. ‘Obvious, sister. You can’t hide nuttin from me.’ She winks at Uretsete, who pretends not to notice.

  ‘We’ve been dreaming up a whale of a workshop,’ says Cowrie, noticing the mound of tomatoes, red peppers, mustard greens and chives next to a steaming cheesy omelette, the smells wafting into her nostrils. ‘We’ll tell you our plans over this feast.’

  The five of them tuck into Monique’s delicious brunch, savouring the taste of fresh free-range farm eggs and local Orkney cheeses. The Birsay tomatoes taste like none they have eaten before and they are amazed such delicious vegetables could grow on an island with this climate. It feeds their desire to work up a garden for Morrigan, as a koha for their stay, filled with herbs and vegetables to go with her beloved tatties and turnips. They move onto plans for the storytelling workshops with Sasha and Cowrie on a high, filling them with sensuous suggestions, each one a symphony of pleasure for the mind to play with, full of the possibilities enriched by their stay on these magic islands of light, where semi-darkness invades the land for only a few hours before letting in the light again. There is little chance for the darkness to take hold over the summer months, but winter, as Morrigan warned them, is another reality.

  [36]

  ‘Don’t yee know aboot the hoose on Sule Skerry?’ asks the woman in the knitted dress with seals and otters embroidered into the design. Some of the workshop participants, mostly the older ones, nod their heads, but most of the younger ones look blank.

  ‘Weel, oil tell thee then. Once upon a windy Skaill night, two fishers from the North Dyke area of Sandwick unhooked their dory from the noust in the Bay of Skaill and went oot fishin. The wind howled at them all night and whipped their boot way oot to sea. They thought they were doomed and the mists set in, then by dawn, they saw land rising from the fog. T’was the peedie island of Sule Skerry stuck out in the Atlantic off the coast of Orkney. They landed their boot and were taken aback to find a wee stoon cottage on the skerry. They knocked on the door and it opened and lo and behold theer stood the young Rowland lassie, who’d been amissing for quite some time.’

  ‘I know them folks,’ utters one of the children, delighted to recognise a name.

  ‘Sure enough lassie, they still
survive. Anyway, let me back to the story. She asked them in and they offered news aboot her kith and kin. She was happy to hear it n’all. Then they inquired as to how she arrived on the Sule Skerry. She said she’d been walking the shore at Leygabroo in the Bay of Skaill. She was after limpets and the like for bait. Her father had warned her never to turn her back to the waves. She forgot, and the moment she bent down, wet fins wrapped themselves aboot her peedie body an she was swept into the sea. The seal had taken her for his wife.’

  ‘How could a seal do that?’ asks young Ginger, his hair as aflame as his eyes. ‘Easy, laddie, easy. For this seal was a selkie and could walk on land as well as the sea. He wanted a bride from the land to live with him in the sea.’

  ‘So did she goo with him?’

  ‘The wee lassie had no choice. But she soon adjusted and true it be he was a good selkie, better than many a man she’d find on land. Aye, that’s for sure.’ The woman licks her lips and continues. ‘“Anyway,” she says, “I now live with this sealman and I like it, so tell my family I am safe.” At this moment, a large seal flopped through the door from the sea, wetting the stone floor and making his way to the end of the hoose. Minutes later, a tall man appeared.’

  ‘Was he the sealman?’

  ‘Aye, lassie, he was indeed. He bade them good will and was in good cheer that their boot had made it through the storm. T’was weather to make yer glad to be a seal, he added, with a grin at the men. They chuckled nervously. Nevertheless, they ate the best fish that night, caught by the selkie, no less, and he laughed and told them he’d snatched the fish from the men’s own hoose at Unigarth. They were amazed.’

  ‘Couldn’t they catch fish too?’, asks a peedie lad.

  ‘Aye, laddie, but not like the haddock this night. T’was the best fish they’d ever eaten, fresh and wriggling on the plate. Anyway, they bedded down for the night and woke to a glorious new dawn, and set sail to return to Sandwick to tell all the good folks at North Dyke aboot their adventures and the fate of the wee local lassie. Never a year had passed that this story was not told to their family and the sons and daughters since. So yee’ll never see the peedie folk turning their backs to the waves at the Bay of Skaill, now will yee?’ The woman sighs, picks up the hem of her knitted dress, making the seals and otters swim about the swirling seas of yarn and returns to her grassy seat at the workshop.

  She is swamped by questions from younger and older folk and she answers them with immense patience, explaining all about the selkies and their lives and how we must keep telling these stories and make them live, because they are, she says, ‘the lifeblood and soul of Orkney. Yee cannot have a life withoot stories. They are as much Orkney as oatcakes and peat-smoked salmon and Skara Brae.’

  Camilla announces lunch and the group breaks to bring their offerings to the large trestle table laid out in the open field near the Ring of Brodgar. Baked tatties with melted cheese, oatcakes, date scones, smoked haddock and mackerel, cheeses ranging from light yellow to burnt orange, a huge pot of steaming clapshot heated over a fire, stuffed tomatoes and a range of sandwiches alight on the table, alongside salads of spinach and lettuce and tomato. One woman has brought along a Scots hare soup called Bawd Bree, and another, a pile of corn cobs from the hothouse, which they bake in their skins over the fire then peel to eat. The result is a wonderful feast which all the storytellers have contributed to. They lie about the green grass, spiked with wildflowers, dwarfed by the ancient stones nearby, and discuss the morning sessions while they eat.

  Cowrie, Sasha, DK, Monique and Camilla meet for a brief moment to check all the workshops are running as planned. They are blown away by the richness of the tales told and the knowledge of their heritage that these Orcadians possess. Seldom have they held sessions where a large portion of people know stories about their own people and land, unless this is among indigenous groups who have kept this knowledge intact through extended family structures, where they have not been broken up and families split apart for survival. After assessing that all is going to plan, they return to their groups for the lunch and afternoon sessions.

  Cowrie noticed that young Shelley from the seafood farm in Finstown was present at the morning session and had looked distinctively uncomfortable when Lallie Isbister had told her story about the seals of Skaill. A few of the other ones had nudged each other and nodded toward her, as if she too could be a modern version of the missing Skaill lassie who was taken away by the seals. She approaches Shelley, offering her some smoked haddock. Shelley refuses, saying she has eaten so much fish in her time that she has turned vegetarian. Cowrie holds back a sudden desire to tell her she could be a turtle and not a seal if she wished, since they mostly survive on seaweed and other vegetarian delights. Then she realises she too is playing into the selkie myths which have dogged Shelley for most of her teenage years, and pulls back. She then tempts her with some delicious salad, which Shelley takes onto her plate.

  ‘How about some olives?’ Cowrie asks.

  Shelley looks askance. ‘Too much like Neptune’s necklace,’ she says, screwing up her face at the thought of eating anything as salty and so much like the seaweed that drapes itself about the shores of Orkney.

  ‘You always been in a fishing family then?’ asks Cowrie, knowing full well she has.

  ‘Aye. My dad was a fisher and my mum was a fisher’s wife. That means you cook the fish and serve it up to family and guests and have long nights alone while your husband is out at sea.’

  ‘Sounds like it can be a lonely life,’ says Cowrie, thinking of Morrigan and her pattern of living, how hard it might be to work around this for anyone wanting a regular existence.

  ‘Aye, it is. Especially if your dad loves his fishing more than his family, and other fishers more than his wife.’ Shelley glances down at her shoes and winces. ‘I shouldn’t’ve said that. Kelpie was a good man indeed. He never meant no harm.’

  ‘Kelpie. That name rings a bell,’ says Cowrie, immediately interested. Wasn’t this the name of Morrigan’s lover, whose name was on the message inside the bag of peats? She listens intently.

  ‘Aye, it’s a common enough name. It was also the name of his boot. He died in that boot. It still sits inside me mother’s back yard. She died a year later, from a broken heart.’ Shelley picks at her food, more interested in getting her story off her chest.

  ‘So where did you live after that?’ asks Cowrie.

  ‘Me mother’s family. They never thought Kelpie was a good influence on me or mother. So they took me in to bring me up right. I still live at the back of their cottage but one day I want to escape to Scotland. I want to play the fiddle at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I once knew a boy who went there. He said it was a different world.’

  ‘It is. We’ve just come from performing there, actually. I know a fiddle player who has a band of fiddlers. Maybe I could arrange for you to visit him. He’d also be interested in playing at the Orkney Folk Festival — so you’d have a bit in common.’ Cowrie bites into a tomato from her plate.

  Shelley pricks up her ears. ‘I’d love that.’ She looks over toward the ring and notices a lone figure staring out over the Loch of Harray and panics. She turns to Cowrie. ‘Can we talk aboot it after the session today? I have to meet someone.’ Cowrie agrees and watches as she walks back across the fields towards the Ring of Brodgar.

  After a luscious feast, full to the brim, they begin the afternoon sessions, where they have to invent new stories based on their knowledge of the old folklore and the myths they have heard. The groups are abuzz with ideas and the land beneath them vibrates with their energy. Cowrie looks over toward the Ring, wondering how many stories the standing stones bear witness to after all these years. As the sun moves around, the shadows lengthen and the ring looks like a giant sundial in the distance. There will be a break for dinner and then the night performances will begin, culminating in a celebration around the ring at sunset, at about nine-thirty. Cowrie looks forward to this time, as she has not seen the i
mpressive stone circle lit up by the setting sun lowering over the Loch of Stenness.

  [37]

  Morrigan looks up at the clock. It’s a half-hour since Shelley said she’d be here — maybe. Looks like she’s changed her mind. She edges off her seat at the inn and wanders over to Seafayre. A dory is tied to the dock unloading a haul of scallops. Damned fine ones too. She wouldn’t mind knowing where they dredge. She leans against the door and watches as the women launch themselves into the large salty ponds, bringing out nets full of Orkney oysters, scallops, cockles, mussels and spoots still spitting into the air. She recalls Shelley throwing her the spoot, knowing it’d piss into her face. Still, the kid has had a hard time all these years. Time she knew the truth.

  Moira from Cockle Farm looks up from her netting. ‘Hullo there, Morrigan. You in for some spoots, then?’ Clearly Shelley has told her the story. Moira grins.

  ‘Not today, thanks, Moira. I’m after Shelley, actually. Know where she is?’

  ‘Och, aye, lassie. She’s up at the Ring with half the township spilling stories aboot the past n’ fairies n’ trows n’ the like with those ferryloopers you brought back with yee from Edinburgh.’

  ‘They’re not into looping the ferry, Moira. They are here to find oot more about Orkney myths and legends and to run storytelling workshops for the local community education.’ Morrigan puffs on her pipe for good measure.

  ‘And a good deal more, some say,’ adds Moira, with a chuckle.

  Morrigan hates gossip and is annoyed by her response. ‘And what, pray Moira, else do yee think they’re doing here?’

  Moira is put on the spot and tries to wriggle out of it by concentrating hard on a spoot that has shot over the other side of the pool and is fast burrowing itself under a pile of cockles. Morrigan waits, silently, puffing on her pipe, until Moira can bear the silence no longer.

  ‘Weel, some say, and I’m never one to agree with local tittle-tattle.’ She takes a deep breath for this is always how she prefaces gossip. ‘Some say that they are the likes that prefer women, you know. Not that there’s nowt wrong with that, but they have strange ways, you know.’