Seacliff

Chapter forty-three: A selkie's tale

1920

When her husband walked in with the breakfast tray, Saoirse was feeding her son at her breast and Sorley lounged in bed beside her. His daughter sat on the windowsill, fascinated by the glass pane and the view beyond.

"James!" Saoirse smiled up at him. "Good morning. You're just in time, Sorley was about to regale us with his tale."

Sated, the baby let go of her teat and she pulled her nightgown up her shoulder. The selkie woman came to take the child and James placed the tray on his wife's lap.

"Are you sure you want me to hear it?"

"Of course, James. You're my husband and we have no secrets. Or do we?" Her eyes narrowed playfully at him.

He shook his head. "No secrets."

"Lovely." She turned to Sorley. "We are listening."

He slid out of bed to talk to his daughter. She held the baby to her chest, his head resting on her shoulder. Sorley kissed them both before the woman scurried out of the room with the child in her arms.

"She may not be able to speak it," Sorley explained, "but my daughter can understand most of your language. She... need not sit through a story she has already lived."

"What is her name?" James enquired curiously.

Sorley hesitated. "Selkies do not have names. Those of us who do have received them from humans."

"So, what do you call her? How do you distinguish her from your other daughters?"

"She is an dara."

Saoirse frowned, her mouth full with beans and bacon. "The second?" she mumbled.

"Yes, she is the second of my four daughters."

Saoirse swallowed and licked grease from her lips. "Will she mind if we call her Dara, do you think?"

"I am sure she will not."

Sorley took his daughter's seat on the windowsill and James straddled the corner of the mattress.

"Where should I begin?" the selkie wondered.

"How about the night I found you?" Saoirse suggested. "How did you end up wounded, at sea? Without your sealskin?"

It sounded like his breath caught in his throat and he struggled to set it free. His fingers trembled, clenching into tight fists.

"I couldn't visit Auntie Aoife last summer, because my fourth daughter was with child, in human form. I stayed to protect her until she gave birth. Come autumn, my daughters and their mother decided they would like to join me on the trip here. I knew Auntie would be glad to see them, so I agreed. I shouldn't have..."

The journey from their secluded island in the tropics to the Selkie Stone in the Firth of Forth occurred without hiccups. The family enjoyed the exercise, the exploration of new waters, and the prospect of interacting with a friendly human.

The sea flowed into a network of caves carved into the Stone, allowing them to take refuge inside while still out of sight underwater. They emerged onto a sandy shore and shed their skins – Sorley used to tuck his away behind piles of rocks before heading out for the beach at Seacliff.

He was always cautious, always wary of the lighthouse keepers up top.

Normally, he would have never surfaced and risked meeting them. Humans could be vicious creatures, he'd learned, and he'd rather not provoke them. Except the mother of his daughters – his common-law wife by any other name – was feeling more adventurous than usual after being cooped up on an island for so long.

It must have been the full moon, Sorley reasoned. Like the swollen tide, selkies suffered from an overflow of feelings when the moon was at its fullest. Their senses, already sharper than humans', grew heightened and overwhelmed. Sorley's wife wanted to watch the moon from the top of the crag and feel the breeze on her body. He couldn't bring himself to stop her.

They exited the cave and scaled the cliff. It was a quiet, clear night. The birds dwelling there didn't mind them. The moon, majestic and solitary, shone over them. His wife was happy. At peace.

They relaxed on their rocky perch, but when they made to leave, the unthinkable happened. A scream tore through the night at the same time as Sorley sensed his third daughter was in danger.

Mother and father rushed to rescue their child, who'd been captured by one of the lighthouse keepers. Sorley dived in headfirst, with no regard for his own wellbeing. He was no fighter, however. Most selkies weren't. They were a peaceful people who, once upon a time, had preferred to go into hiding when humans had oppressed them, rather than use their physical superiority to fight back.

Sorley tackled the man to the ground to allow his wife and daughter to escape. They wrestled for a while, until the man no longer moved, and Sorley walked away. The man moaned in agony, but selkies only killed for food. And they did not eat humans.

"I should have restrained him somehow," Sorley mused in retrospect, wringing his hands.

Because after only a few paces, he felt a heavy blow on the back of his head, and that was the last thing he remembered.