Storytelling

Sometimes the things that happened long ago happen again, as history is bound to repeat itself.

There was once fisherman who lived by the sea. He was very lonely and wanted a wife, but could not find one to suit him. Each day, he would go out fishing, sailing the boat close to shore. There came a day when the fishing was good, and time got away from him, forcing him to navigate back home as the sun sunk lower in the sky. The land looked unfamiliar - and he set his sights keenly on the shores to try to figure out his location.

The sea was calm and the night was clear. He saw on a rocky crag a glint of light from the rising moon. Then another and another until it looked like a whirl of stars upon the shore. Intrigued, he sailed over closer. In the dusk he could see bodies dancing - they were women's bodies - glistening in joyfully naked in the pale moonlight. He watched, as a man in search of a wife might watch -as the dance continued. What wild creatures must this be, he thought to himself, surely I must have one for my wife. Just as this thought crossed his mind he saw a pile of seal skins over near the shore. He tied up the boat and crept over and took one of the skins.

As the night drew on, the dancing continued until the first rays of dawn. The women, coming to the pile of skins, drew them on and became seals again, sliding like water themselves back into the sea. Until there was one woman left without a pelt. He approached her, carrying her pelt, saying that he loved her and wanted her for his wife. She begged for the pelt back, but he insisted that she come with him and be his wife. He had a kind face, and she felt something -for him, so she agreed that she would be his wife for seven years. Then if she chose to stay, she could, but he had to give the pelt back.

A woman's heart is a deep and complicated thing. In time she grew to love the fisherman and she gave him a son. The boy was marvelous and funny and she loved when he wrapped his arms around her neck and kissed her. The two of them would walk to the sea, inexplicably drawn. Her son knew that she was sad, but was too young to understand why.

As the years passed, and the time drew closer to give back the skin, the fisherman became more withdrawn and distant - pushing away the very wife he had strived to keep. The end of the seven years came - uneventfully. The woman knew that staying with the fisherman, in spite of how much she adored the son, would be the end of her. She could see the light going out from her own dark eyes, could feel the passage of time in her limbs and every night now she dreamed of the sea.

Another year passed, and her body continued to wither - as much from being out of the sea as withering from neglect. The fisherman no longer touched her as he once had, no longer kissed her nose or held her tight against the cold nights. She knew she was dying, so she confronted the fisherman. He had promised to cherish her and return her life to her, but when the moment came, he refused, saying she belonged to him and that she could never leave. And she wondered herself where she would go.

The boy overheard the conversation, and frustrated by his father's stubbornness, he went to the shoreline to think. Near the nets he saw a box which he broke open. There inside was a lovely pelt - dark and lustrous. He knew his mother loved him, and knew she wouldn't leave unless he helped her. Mothers are that way, they worry so much about their young that they forget themselves. He hid the pelt near a boulder at the shore and ran to get his mother. "Come let the sea comfort you", he told her.

When he brought her there, he could tell she had been crying. He handed her the pelt, made her promise to put it on and disappear into the sea. She held him close, smelling the scent of his hair, touching his sweet face, then she slipped into the pelt and back into the sea. The boy swam after her, finding himself buoyed by the other seals who had been waiting for her return.

As the water rushed over her, she began to heal, began to feel like herself again. She regained her strength and her will to live. Her father came to her and healed her wounds. He blessed the boy, giving him strength to live in the sea - he was part Selkie after all.

The boy eventually went back to land, but she was with him, or he with her and they were happy for the rest of her days. The boy lives in a little place by the sea, and has been known to sit for hours on a boulder by the sea talking to a Selkie and watching the seals frolic in the waves.