The Girl with the Peacock Harp

by Michael Eisele

  She remembered hitting out—but there was something strange, incomplete about the memory. A feeling of surprise, that was it, that her arm was so . . . thin, so pale and weak. The image of a great russet brown wing flashed before her eyes, a powerful driving force which should have obliterated her adversary. The memory of her dream, of all the dreams rose up suddenly, but had they been dreams, really? Or was she the dream, this fearful shrinking creature, unable to provide for herself, defend herself?

  ‘Get out of my head!’ she screamed suddenly, her voice deadened by the acoustic tiles, a feeble piping when it should have trumpeted forth, vibrating in her massive chest. This room, that was the trouble, she thought dazedly, so small, so close and confining. She stumbled to the door and wrenched it open, ignoring the inquiring glances of the people at their desks, the pale people, the little people . . . up, that was the answer, she must go up!

  She ignored the bank of elevators in favour of the door marked ‘Exit’. Luckily the company offices were on the sixteenth floor, for the inadequate body was struggling for breath as she drove it relentlessly upward until finally, gasping, she hung on the lever marked ‘For emergency use only’ and by sheer weight she pulled it down and pushed until the heavy steel door opened.

  She half fell into the sudden brightness of the roof-top restaurant, only a few staff about making ready for the lunch time rush. She saw the open air, searching, searching for a way out, and finally a door, leading out into the open and she stood feeling the good free wind tear at her dress and hair, and behind her several men in the blue uniforms of security guards rushing from the opening elevator, and weak piping voices shouting ‘There she is!’ and ‘Hold it, miss, don’t move . . . !’ But it was all so distant and unimportant and she spread her arms and they were no longer thin and weak, but great russet brown wings, and she lifted her head and screamed in defiance, seeing the great stone towers of her people rising out of the red sandstone of the canyon walls, and she leaped over the steel railing and out into the void.

  It was the impact of a heavy body falling that woke her, that and the dawn light which was even now spearing through a gap in stone peaks. She shifted on the perch and her eyes snapped open, seeing before her the bleeding carcass of one of the large Groak as her people called the great tusked pigs of the forest. A dangerous prey indeed, she thought in surprise, lifting her gaze to the young male, her mate, who had noiselessly settled to perch opposite and sat staring at her with, she decided, entirely justifiable arrogance. I will provide, his stance announced, and she nodded, aware of the life already developing within her, thinking of the weeks ahead when she would be too occupied with keeping the eggs warm, and then afterward, when they would both have to work unceasingly to feed her hungry brood. I will provide. She was content; she had chosen well.

  She had no thought to spare for the ridiculous sleep vision she had been having, of being pursued through a low roofed cavern of endless confining chambers, and in a few moments even the memory faded and was gone.

  GLORIA AND THE SELCHIE

  You can look at a stranger’s face anywhere you may be and behind that face is a story, their own story that is like no other. It may be a happy tale or sad beyond the words to tell it, but their own story it will be, and it would be wrong to look at people anywhere and think that you know all there is to know about them just because of what you see. The most ordinary and humdrum looking folk may be hiding a secret that would take you clear out of any sort of world you might have imagined and into a tale such as this one.

  On a beach, say, what could be more ordinary? What sort of people will you imagine you might find here lounging on their beach chairs perhaps while the little ones play in the surf? Take the couple you see over there, she with the curly blond hair that she was never born with, he with the hat worn low down over the grim face of him . . . shall we meet them, would you think? Well, it is only a story I am telling you, so why not? Gloria Murphy and Frank her husband they are and those are their two children playing about in the waves down below.

  Well, but you wouldn’t be knowing, would you, that her name wasn’t always Gloria when she was born plain Mary Murphy in Dundalk? Still less would you be knowing that Frank her husband was not always called Frank . . . but that is letting the horse run away with the wagon, for theirs is a strange story and nothing at all ordinary about it.

  Mary Murphy as she was then always had in her a hunger for the bright lights and excitement of the cities, so it was to Dublin that when she was of age she went, and left behind her the misty mountains and the great river that runs down to the sea there in Dundalk and her old Granny that was all that remained of her family after the war took her Da, and her Ma pined away with the grief of it.

  She went up to Dublin on the train did Mary Murphy, and it was in Dublin that she became Gloria Murphy and exchanged her dark curls for the bright brassy hair of a city girl, and very happy she was then. Still, every so often she would get to sighing about her home in Dundalk and back she would go there for a week-end it might be, to stay with her old Granny until the slow pace of things would begin to tire her, and then again she would board the train back. She would go to her flat in Dublin and gay nights out with her girlfriends from the office where she worked as a typist.

  It was on one such visit to Dundalk that Gloria happened to be walking on the strand there one night when the moon was full, late one night it was when all the people had gone home and she could not sleep for the restlessness that was on her. So there was nothing for it but to borrow her Granny’s runabout and drive down the coast to park and walk for a bit and gaze at the moon on the water. Now you might be forgiven for wondering why it was that a young woman like Gloria with a name like that and hair the colour of gold would be walking by herself on the strand when the moon was full as it was that night. Well the truth of it was that there were fellows she fancied and fellows that fancied her but something always came between, hard to say what, but she was a modern young woman and as Gloria herself would say, ‘I know my mind and I speak my mind and for those that don’t like it they can leave me alone.’ And so they all did in the end.

  Now Dundalk is an old, old place, and the wise fellows in the University will tell you that folk have been living here time out of mind, and you can even see great dolmens that were put there by the stone age people who worshiped at them, the heathens; in any case it is an old queer place and queer things have been known to happen there when the moon is full as it was that night. There is a place where there are rocks along by the sea, and Gloria was walking there and admiring the way the moon was keeping pace with her, one long stripe of brightness as it might have been a road on the stillness of the ocean, when she saw movement, and something broke the bright moon road on the ocean and Gloria said to herself, why, it is four seals coming out of the water, and she hid herself behind one of the great rocks to see what they would do.

  What they did was like nothing any natural seal has ever done, for the first thing was that all four stood up on their tailfins and the skin came away from them and they were four people standing there, all naked in the moonlight. Two men and two women they were and Gloria knew in an instant that the tales her granny had told her of the Selchies, the seal people who were humans on land and seals in the sea, were all true. Of course in the stories her Granny told it was always of the female Selchie who was imprisoned on the land by the taking of her skin, but it stood to reason as Gloria said to herself that there would be male Selchies as well, or how else could there be any in the first place?

  Now the four picked up something from the sand that was light and like that which a snake will leave behind it when it sheds the old skin and they took what it was and hid it among the rocks, each in a different place, and one of the four was a man tall and well made, and Gloria marked especially where it was his skin was hidden for a memory had come to her from the tales her Granny told that a Selchie if you took its skin away with you was bound to follow after and do anything you sai
d, so long as you hid the skin where the Selchie would not find it. And wouldn’t it be a fine thing to have such a fellow as that one who would do what he was told and never answer back? So Gloria said to herself and smiled to herself in a way that was not entirely pleasant to see, but then there was no one about but the four Selchie people who did not know she was there.

  What the Selchies did next was to join hands and begin to dance, which you may think is why they came up on land in the first place, to have legs and feet at the end of them, and prance about in the moonlight which was a strange thing to see, there being no proper music at all but only the small breaking of the waves on the beach and the calls of the night birds. That was in the beginning, but as the dance went on one or another or it might have been all four together began to sing, and if the gulls in the morning and the wind in the sea grass and the sound a whale makes when it is deep under the ocean are music, then music it was and they danced to it. Gloria when she saw that they were away with their dancing crept forward ever so carefully, and ever so carefully she took hold of the skin of the one she fancied, and bundled it close to her and so took herself back behind the rock and waited ’til the dancing should be done.

  The Selchies danced for what seemed a long time, and Gloria felt her eyes getting heavy, but at last when it was near moonset everything grew quiet, and there was a splashing in the surf, and then there sounded a call such as a seal will make, again and yet again, and then more splashing and all was still. Gloria came out from behind the rock and there he stood, tall and well made and handsome enough I suppose, but in a kind of daze, as if he could not make up his mind what to do.

  Then Gloria, hugging the stolen skin to herself so he should not see, came up to him and called out whatever was the first thing came into her mind, and that was, ‘Hello my name is Gloria. You look as though you might be lost there.’ The man turned then and saw her and left off what he was doing, which was nothing more than staring out to sea in a kind of trance. Gloria’s heart was thumping with excitement for he was quite an eyeful seen close up, even with the desolate lost look on him, so she said a bit more sharply, ‘I said my name is Gloria; would you be telling me yours?’ The Selchie said, kind of frowning, ‘I’m sorry . . . Gloria did you say? . . . I can’t seem to remember . . .’

  So Gloria knew then that the stories were all true, and she smiled up at him and said, ‘That’s all right then, I know who you are, your name is . . . Frank, that’s what it is, and what have you done with your clothes then, Frank?’

  The poor Selchie looked down at himself and shook his head as if to rid it of some cobwebs that he’d run into. ‘Frank am I? I guess that is right if you say so, and it does seem as though I was wearing something. . . .’

  Gloria smiled even more then and took his cold hand in her own, and said, ‘Well you can’t stand around here all night, you’ll catch your death. The best thing will be that you come along home with me and I’ll find you something to wear.’

  The Selchie, not knowing why it was that he must follow the one who had taken his skin went with Gloria back to her car, where she draped him in a blanket she always kept in the boot ‘just in case’. By the time she got to her grannie’s place she had a whole story in her head about how she found this fellow wandering on the beach, who may have had a boating accident and hit his head which was why . . .’ but she no sooner got the first words out of her mouth when her old Granny looked the Selchie up and down and held up a hand for her to be still.

  ‘There are some old clothes of your Grandda down in the coal shed I was fixin’ to take to the charity one day, so show the poor soul where it is, child, afore he’s catching his death here.’ When the Selchie was busy putting clothes on himself her Granny sat Gloria down in the kitchen with a mug of tea and heaved a great sigh. ‘Child, child, child,’ she said, ‘what is it you think you are doin’?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Gran,’ said Gloria, meek as milk, ‘I’m only after helping the poor man ’til he gets his wits back.’

  ‘An’ I’m Jimmeny Fookin’ Cricket,’ said her Gran and tapped the bifocals she was wearing, ‘Old I may be but I have the Sight still! Yon’s no natural man at all and there in that bag you are carryin’ I s’pose you have got hid the skin off him?’ She had no need to wait for an answer, for it was written plain on her granddaughter’s stricken face. ‘Did you no pay heed to the stories I was tellin’ you, back when you was plain Mary Murphy? Did you not learn how perilous ’tis to be goin’ with one of the Seal People?’

  ‘I learned fine how as long as I have his sea-skin he has to go where I go and do as I say!’ Gloria flashed back, her temper rising to match. ‘Where’s the harm to me in that, I ask you!’

  Her Gran sat back in her chair and shook her head. ‘Where it is you learned such hardness of heart is a mystery to me,’ she said, ‘ ’Twas never off me nor yet from your poor dear Ma, god rest her. Can you not know how he suffers, the creature, to be separated from his own kind, his own true home? No,’ she said, seeing her granddaughter’s face set, ‘That won’t reach you, will it?’ She put her old wrinkled hands on the table and sighed again. ‘Well, then, whatever happens will not happen under this roof, my girl. Off you go, as soon as you can, but mind me!’ She looked hard at her granddaughter with eyes like flints. ‘Hide it well, my clever girl, and hide it safely; for ’twill be bad for him should any ill befall it, and the worse for you if he should find it. Remember!’

  So then Gloria and the Selchie she had named Frank went up to Dublin town by the next train, and wasting no time Gloria put in for a license that they were to be married as soon as might be. It was a wedding the poor man who performed it will long remember, and it was a near thing as he told his wife afterward that he didn’t phone down to the Garda for it seemed the poor lad had taken drink or one of them new drugs, for all he did was to stand there like as he’d been hit on the head and say ‘yes’ and ‘I do’ when he was told.

  To her friends Gloria explained that it was indeed a sudden thing but that Frank had just ‘swept her off her feet’, and her friends were quick to congratulate her and say wasn’t it just too romantic but among themselves they would say that never in life could they imagine the man named Frank doing any sweeping unless it was the floor he was cleaning, for Gloria kept him at home doing all the household tasks while she went out to work. She kept her maiden name too, and did not object when people began to refer to Frank as Mr Murphy.

  It was cramped for the two of them in Gloria’s little apartment, but it seemed that in some mysterious way having the Selchie by her brought good fortune to Gloria. Within the month the head of the firm that employed her called her in and told her she was to become Office Manager, with a fine big office of her own and all the women in her section now to be under her. It was put about that the promotion was for her ‘leadership qualities’, which was a fine way of saying she loved to boss folks about, so it was said when her back was turned.

  No matter to Gloria, who now could afford a proper house in the suburbs, and after a year or so the other girls were saying it could be seen that there was nothing poor Frank could not be ordered to do as the children were born, boy and girl just as Gloria wished it to be.

  So things went along, and went along, and Gloria had the life she had always wanted, and she did well at her job and there was talk of further promotion which was a fine thing, for there was never a problem with her if there was business to be done late into the night, or if she wanted a drink with the girls after, for wasn’t the Selchie there at home keeping all neat and clean and looking after the children and having a meal ready for her whenever she should arrive? Then there were weekends, and to drive down to the seaside with the children, who loved the ocean like nothing else in life, which you might say was natural enough considering; only Frank never seemed to like going there, which was a thing Gloria could not understand, but even so he would go if she told him to as always, even if he did sit there huddled in a beach chair and looking mi
serable.

  So there you have it, and that is Gloria’s story and you might see why she is reclining on the beach chair smiling to herself while the children, eight and nine years by now, are down there playing in the surf like seal puppies. Only that is but half the tale, and it tells why poor Frank or whatever his name might be is sitting there with his coat pulled up to his chin and his hat down over the grim face of him, but what would you suppose is going on in his head?

  It is no easy thing to be guessing what the thoughts of a Selchie might be who has lost his skin and all memory of who he was. You might imagine that he would be living in a sort of grey twilight with no way to know his proper name or what had been taken from him, and you would be right in thinking that, or that the only real thing in his head would be the voice of the one who had the keeping of his skin telling him what he must do, and you would be right there too.

  Picture to yourself if you will what it would be to be lost in a fog, not knowing the worth of a single step whether you were miles from anywhere or but a few feet from your own front door, and out of the fog came a voice telling you how to get to where it would be safe, well, that is a little what it was like for the Selchie. The only other thing he had to cling to was the sea, how he hated and feared it for it seemed to him that the sea was forever calling him so that he could never be free of the calling, and that made him afraid because he could not see how a man such as he knew himself to be could ever enter into the sea unless it was to be drowned there.