The Seal Queen

by Sandra Saidak

  But the image kept nagging her. Every time she looked at her baby, she thought of some other mother’s baby wasting away, alone and terrified, all because of her carelessness. It was nonsense. But before the sun had set, Briah stood outside her cave, trying to gauge the best way up to the snares.

  She was at least able to walk steadily by now. And the rain had stopped. Those were the only things in her favor, Briah saw. The climb would be slippery and she could suffer dizziness at any time. Just as she was about to leave, the baby began to cry.

  “Oh, no, I can’t leave him here! Some animal—even gulls could be dangerous. But if I’m just gone for a short time...”

  Finally, Briah put on her tattered dress, and wrapped the baby in it. “I must be mad,” she muttered climbing the path.

  She made slow progress and came close to losing her footing several times. In her exhausted state, she didn’t notice the snake until she stepped on it. They both bolted: the snake into a hole, and Briah, nearly off the ledge. Finally, she made it to the snares.

  All three were empty.

  Laughing for the first time since the birth, Briah returned to her cave.

  Her milk came in the next morning.

  ****

  Seven days after her son’s birth, Briah ate the last of the stored food. The medicine was long gone, but mother and baby were both doing fine. She found the knowledge that they were going to live a better analgesic than any herb.

  It was time to leave the cave. Not just to replenish her supplies, but because today was her child’s naming day. That required a proper ceremony—and a proper feast—even if Briah would be the only one to enjoy it.

  If Briah had ever doubted that magic was real in this place, her son’s naming day put the last of those doubts to rest. The entire day was filled with gifts. The weather was mild; plump white clouds filled an azure sky and the sun peeked in and out of them playfully all day. Her snares caught both a rabbit and a squirrel, and shellfish seemed more abundant than ever.

  Fishing, she realized, was going to be a problem—the first of many, Briah was to discover. She was unwilling to leave her baby unattended on the shore, but couldn’t imagine how to swim out to the rocks with him. While she stood there, torn by indecision, a fish smacked her on the side of her head.

  “What the…?” Briah looked down. It was a mackerel, larger than any she had caught since she’d arrived here. Then another landed by her feet. It was big and fat, a deepwater delicacy such as Briah could only dream of. She had to jump back to avoid being struck by the next one. “Flying fish? Is this some kind of—” Then she saw the seals. With their mouths they were tossing her fish, some still alive, a few a bit the worse for wear, but all extremely welcomed. The fact that this was impossible, she decided to put aside for the moment.

  Delighted with the food—and the good fortune it boded—Briah set about preparing her finest meal yet. Normally, this night called for the mother to wear her best clothes, and a white rabbit skin for the child. Rather than offend the gods with her rotting clothes, Briah chose to wear nothing but a necklace of seashells she had made. No one would see her, and it made her feel closer to the powers whose favor she sought.

  The ceremony began just as the winter sun set.

  Briah had thought long and hard about a name. Among her people, a child might be named for the plants and animals that the people depended upon: Ash and Holly and Rowen. But those names would mean nothing here; Briah wouldn’t even be able to show her son what he was named for.

  Most of the words she knew to describe this land she had learned while a slave. And no tongue learned in slavery seemed a suitable place to find a name.

  Babies were named for ancestors as well. She would not, of course, use any name from his father’s tongue. But the thought had come to her that she might use her own father’s name. After all, he was dead now, and it was right that he be remembered.

  So at last she decided.

  Taking the baby from his blanket, Briah held him above her head. “Kamin,” she said as her son howled with a sudden gust of cold wind. “His name is Kamin. I brought him into this world alone. But I promise to teach him all I remember of the man who taught me so much of what matters. I call the sun, the moon, the four winds and the mountain to witness this naming, and forever watch over my son.”

  She tried to continue, but as Briah returned her child to his blanket, then held him close to warm him, she knew that something was wrong. The mountain she called to was far away; what did it have to do with Kamin? And while the sun and moon were certainly worthy spirits, they were different here.

  That was just it. Everything was different here. The climate, the plants, the ocean, the seasons. Soon after she had been taken from her home, Briah had begun to doubt the faith she had been raised with. After a while, she had stopped thinking of spiritual matters, hardly realizing that only pain and fury had taken their place in her soul. Now, as she gazed at her son, Briah realized that something else had to fill that void—for her son’s sake as well as her own.

  Briah had never been one to understand the ways of spirits. She was the daughter of a simple farmer, never showing any special talents, except possibly for healing. She certainly never had any aspirations to become a priestess or wise women. But if she was going to make this sanctuary into a home, she was going to have to learn its gods.

  For a moment, the task seemed so crushing that Briah nearly staggered. Then the wind shifted, bringing the tantalizing smells of her cooking fire. As her stomach growled, Briah laughed. “If you want to find great truths,” she said. “Better to search on a full stomach.”

  All day long she had enjoyed cooking a full sized feast. She had cooked all the fish she’d been given, and brought nearly half of it out to the beach. But when the last of it was arranged, in baskets and on platters, the size amazed even her. There was roasted squirrel and braised rabbit. Smoked fish and fresh greens. Mussels, oysters, cockles, crab, and shellfish she did not even have names for. What had she been thinking? Kamin couldn’t eat any of it, and there was no one else but her.

  Briah had lived without the presence of another human being for nearly an entire cycle of the moon. Tonight, the emptiness hit her all at once. She staggered to her knees, keening a loss that seemed as great as a death. Greater, for even after a death, the mourner usually has the comfort of others. For so long, Briah had thought only of survival. Now loneliness stabbed her.

  It was her son’s cries that finally broke through her pain. She was not alone, and the needs of her newborn child soothed her. She gave him her breast, and the powerful feelings caused by his nursing made her feel better.

  When Kamin was through, Briah decided she was hungry enough to eat the entire spread after all. But then she saw the seals, and realized there was another way to have guests at Kamin’s feast. After all, they had contributed. She took about half of the fish and spread it on the sand at the edge of the water. Cautiously, the bolder seals began to investigate.

  Soon, a noisy party was in progress, with the seals eating the seafood, and Briah enjoying the meat and greens, with only the tastiest fish to round it out. Kamin sucked his fingers and looked on.

  When the food was gone, most of the guests left as well, but a few seals stayed near the humans to play awhile. They seemed to take an interest in Kamin. Briah was careful around them, for they were large and powerful creatures, but she was pleased with their attention, remembering her own interest in their young at their first meeting.

  She cleared away the remains of the meal, but did not return to her cave. One part of the ceremony remained. She carried Kamin to her favorite sitting rock and settled down to tell him a story. The quarter moon frosted the black waves with silver and a powdering of stars seemed to turn the night sky into lace. Because she knew where to look, Briah could see the tunnel that brought her here, now half submerged. It seemed fitting that she could see it while she spoke. She felt the world around her go silent as if the ocean and everything
in it listened.

  No matter if they did, she thought. They weren’t going to interrupt her, and it was probably the first time in her life that Briah could say that.

  “I was born in the village of Eaborn, across an ocean and far to the east of where you were born, Kamin. Your people lived in that place since the time of your great great grandfathers—maybe longer. Your grandfather’s name was Kamin. Your grandmother’s name was Hetah. They had three sons and one daughter. Your grandfather was a farmer and master wood carver. If he were here, you would have a magnificent cradle....”

  Briah trailed off. This was the time to boast to her son about the greatness of her ancestors, but there was only one deed of her father’s she would speak of tonight, and she dreaded it.

  “The reason you came to be born here, in this land so far from your kin is this. It was just after the harvest. Many villages had gathered together for trading and games and marriages.

  “We were camped near a deep forest, far from our own hunting runs. The children were warned not to go there. But I was eleven winters, and hardly a child, I thought. My friends felt the same way. One morning, three of us rose early and went into the woods to look for mushrooms.

  “I still don’t know how it happened. One moment we were laughing and joking about who we would marry and how many children we would have—the next, a group of strange men jumped from behind the trees and grabbed us.” Briah remembered the hard callused hand over her mouth; the scar on the face of the man that held her friend Sirah; the sour stink of bad meat and stale beer.

  “They dragged us deeper into the forest. All three of us fought, but I bit my captor’s hand so hard he dropped it. Then I let out a yell that was surely heard across the world. The man hit me so that I nearly fainted, but not before I knew my cry had been heard. Men rushed from our camp—my father among them. We fought and screamed, anything to slow them down. There were only three of them, and they couldn’t run while dragging us. Surely, we thought, they would release us and flee back into the forest.

  “We did not realize how many more were hidden among the trees. More men than I could count rushed out. They had bows drawn and knocked with arrows tipped with metal. Our men had stone arrowheads—and smaller bows. While our captors dragged us farther away, the other men sent a hailstorm of arrows at our men. I saw my father struck in the stomach. That was the last look at him I had.”

  Briah was silent for a long time. She remembered that final look into her father’s face, and the endless question returned: why did I have to cry out? My shout changed nothing for me or Sirah, or Fennah. All it did was kill my father, and who knows how many other good men...

  At last, the distant call of the sea brought her to the present. She looked down at Kamin, who gazed contentedly up at her, still sucking his fingers. “After that... after that, I don’t remember for a while. We were taken to a town—the first I had ever seen. There I was sold to a man who bought all the other little girls available. He took us to Lir’s stronghold, where I was a plaything for Lir until I became a woman. Then I was sold to a man traveling west. By then, you were inside me. We traveled west to the edge of the world—and then across it. That is how we came to this land.

  “And when another man would have taken you from me, I killed him and fled. That is how we came to this shore.”

  Briah sighed. That was the most she had spoken in over four years. But it was not only the act of speech that made her sag with exhaustion. She was back again to that morning nearly five years past, as she had been a thousand times before. The sight of her father falling. And always that voice inside her crying, “If only I hadn’t screamed, he would still be alive...” As always she saw his eyes, filled with pain and accusation, and felt the guilt that would surely swallow her...

  Except that this time, she saw something different. Now, as Briah looked into her son’s eyes, she imagined someone trying to take him from her. And the rage that followed was so great it allowed no other feeling for a very long moment. And for the first time, she knew what Kamin had felt from the time he saw his daughter being dragged away until he died. Not anger at her, nor regret at leaving his other children, nor even awareness of his own death. Only a kind of blind determination to protect his child. And, perhaps, in the end, regret for his failure.

  She remembered the moment when she killed Agor. That was minor compared to what she felt now. This protective urge, it wasn’t something forced, it was something you felt—or didn’t. Her father had felt it. Now Briah could too. She knew quite simply that if anyone ever tried to take her son from her, she would get him back or die trying—but Kamin would not be responsible. To blame him would be absurd.

  Very slowly, a knot inside her so tight and so deeply buried that she could not remember a time it wasn’t there, began to come undone.

  Briah was suddenly very tired. She made her way back to her cave. Strangely, it seemed warmer and cozier than she remembered. She slept a deep, dreamless sleep that night, waking only partially when Kamin cried, and then drifting off again while he nursed, so sweetly, at her breast.

  CHAPTER 10

  From the moment she had arrived on the beach, Briah had dreamed of raising her child here. In this tiny place between land and water, she had found shelter, food, protection and healing. Surely, she prayed this bounty would continue. Surely it would not be too much to ask that one woman be allowed to raise a child alone, and keep him safe from the all the harm that had come to her. While Briah had never actually heard of any woman raising a child in total isolation, if it were possible, this would be the place.

  She pictured herself strolling along the beach with her son, enjoying a spectacular sunset; teaching him to count stars as they lay side by side in the sand. She would teach him to walk, to swim, to fish and forage and all the other things Briah had learned in her fifteen years. She imagined singing him to sleep at night, and telling him all the stories she had loved in her own brief childhood. Sometimes, she even fantasized about them swimming with the seals, and riding on the backs of dolphins.

  Well, Briah had to admit, some of those things really did happen in their first few moons together. Much more of it would come in the seasons to follow. All she had to do was live to see it.

  What Briah had not thought about in her musings were the nights she spent without sleep, while she nursed, changed, rocked and held Kamin more than she thought was humanly possible. She knew, of course, that babies cried, and needed to be fed at night. But did any of the infants in and around her farmstead ever awaken this often? Or scream this loudly?

  There were times he cried for no reason that Briah could fathom, but there was no one to turn to for advice. No one to take over while she took a swim or caught a few hours sleep.

  There were nights when Briah walked up and down the beach, singing to a baby who could not be comforted. At times she thought about flinging him into the waves. “Just for tonight,” she begged the sea, half joking, half desperate. “You can throw him back to me in the morning, when he’s quiet and I’m rested.”

  Of course, there were also nights that Kamin slept almost without waking at all. Those were the nights that his mother lay awake, fearing he had died, worrying about what she would do in a real emergency, and wondering how long a person could live without sleep.

  One night, when Briah sat up with a fussy baby, she heard a sound she had never heard before. It seemed to be birdsong, but the kind of birds who lived on this shore were not exactly the sweetest of singers—and this music was exquisite. Besides beauty, it had a human quality and words she could almost understand.

  She picked up Kamin, who had begun to calm down as soon as the music began, and went outside. The stars were brilliant in a clear black sky, silvering the dark waters and tossing shadows everywhere. The singing continued, so beautiful that Briah hoped it would never stop. Then, for an instant, something green as an emerald shimmered out in the water. She caught sight of a nearly human face, with a long scaly body, ending in a fi
shtail.

  Then the music stopped, and the creature vanished into the waves.

  “I must be going mad from lack of sleep,” Briah thought. But when she returned to her bed, Kamin was sound asleep, and both of them slept through the night. That night Briah dreamed of magical beings and golden castles beneath the sea, and woke up feeling, for the first time since Kamin’s birth, truly refreshed.

  After that, the nights became much easier. It was now daytime that brought the most serious problem. And that was the matter of how to gather food with a baby in tow. While pregnant, climbing, diving and swimming were challenging, but at least possible.

  Briah had longed for the day she would have her slim, graceful body back. Now she had it, but the problem of what to do with Kamin while she did all the things that had to be done left Briah paralyzed. Everywhere she had lived women managed these jobs, often with many children clinging to them—but there were always other women around to help. Briah had no one.

  Digging for shellfish, at least, she could do. She set Kamin’s cradle on the sand beside her, or on the rocks nearby, and could usually gather enough for the entire day. Kamin seemed to enjoy watching the waves or clouds or shadows when the weather was fair. When it rained, which was more often, Briah set a woven cover over his cradle, while the sound of the rain clearly delighted him. She herself was so used to the rain by now it didn’t bother her, and she no longer believed her mother’s warnings that it would bring sickness.

  The daily climb to the cliffs above her cave could not be missed, since her snares—after several improvements—began catching rabbits and squirrels fairly often. After that first crazed climb when Kamin was two days old, Briah was reluctant to bring him with her. After a few days, when he could be trusted to sleep long in the afternoon, Briah would leave him in his cradle and do her upland foraging. Later, she devised a special carrying pouch for Kamin, so he could travel on her back, leaving her arms free for climbing and gathering.