The Selkie

by Steve Bates

Grievous thunder shattered the skies hour upon hour. So stridently did the storm attest its fury that Harris nearly did not detect the mild tapping at his door. Setting down his pipe cautiously to ensure that he spilled not one fiber of his precious tobacco, he lingered in his favorite chair, which was molded to his ample form by ages of indolence. Who would be abroad amid this tempest?

The tapping resumed, not urgent, yet with a firmness suggesting that it would not desist. As Harris rose and ambled to the door, he failed to notice that the storm had subsided from a howling maelstrom to a steady drizzle and then pure calm. His attention was fixed on the ancient glass pane that offered a contorted view of his visitor, whose gaze seemed fixed upon the lonely north. That it was a woman with exceedingly long, ebony hair trailing in furious curves down her slick backside was all that he could discern. The door seemed stuck, as if it knew what fate lay on the other side.

A sturdy tug later, the door yielded. Before him was a woman yet not a woman, unclothed yet not truly naked, for her breasts and loins were without feature. Tall she was, boasting dark, oily skin from head to foot. Misshapen lower extremities bore traces of pale brown sand, and flaccid webbing linked stubby fingers. Her face was remarkably smooth, yet few bred in these parts were spared a gaggle of wrinkles and pockmarks by the age of twenty-five. Her eyes were shaped like almonds and as black as a watery abyss. A flat nose and thick lips only added to the mystery of her presence.

He had heard the tales, for sure. Anyone who set foot in the Pub even a single evening was regaled with fantastic stories of selkies. The yarns varied from teller to teller, but they had one thing in common. The creatures could change their appearance, change from seal to human and back again, change quicker than one can strike a match or bait a hook, change by donning or removing that unnatural skin.

Old Man Douglas had initiated Harris into the circle of believers when Harris was but a wee thing sitting on his father’s lap in the Pub. Douglas would shout and stomp his feet at one moment and whisper with breathless doom the next while describing epic encounters with the odd beings.

Curiously, Harris’s father never spoke of selkies. Harris’s father never spoke of a lot of things, such as why Harris’s mother went away, or why Harris had to be a fisherman like his father and his grandfather.

In recent years, Pub regulars Duncan and Hamish would open up when the conversation lulled, their red-rimmed eyes misty and floating to the ceiling, their arms twisting like storm-driven whitecaps, as they spoke of selkies snatching infants from their screaming mothers’ arms or enticing grown men to hurl themselves into the hopeless deep. Some claimed that selkies avoided humans except when a burning need abided within. However, when the creatures chose to enter the province of man, legend had it, they would take whatever they wished.

Harris lifted his eyes beyond the visitor. Only then did he realize that the world was gone.

Maybe fifteen feet of his front yard remained, the rutted path ending in a mist the shade of day-old spilled milk. A few ragged shrubs struggled to retain a foothold in the meager soil. Two garden gnomes maintained their mischievous vigils, each one a gift from someone long forgotten. Tangled fishing nets cradled ancient knots. Beyond this, nothing. No sand. No sound. No sea.

“What manner of spell have you conjured, stranger?” Harris inquired.

A slight smile emerged from her face, though Harris could not begin to divine the thoughts that she sequestered. The selkie raised her ungodly palms to the solemn sky. “There is no spell. Merely a gentle adjustment of perspective.”

“Why bring you such dark magic to my home? I have done you no wrong.” Harris shifted anxiously on bowed legs.

“I would ask a favor. I am no longer young, and my opportunities for bearing a child diminish by the day. If you would see your way to bed me, so that I birth a healthy offspring, I would return your world to you, and gladly.”

“A child? What manner of woman — or demon — asks such a thing?” Harris wondered if this creature could know that he and his wife had never been able to produce a child, if she could fathom the festering grief that this failure had imposed upon them, month after month, year after year.

The selkie’s smile widened as if to say: There is a kernel of demon in all things.

Harris continued: “Think you not that I have a wife, or possess no need of one?”

“I have watched you these many years. The woman ran off and the dog, as well. No grieving did I spy in you.”

“Aye,” he replied, casting his face downward, “’tis true enough.”

Solitude suited Harris like a rich man’s tailored coat. A regular dose of avoidance immunized him from neighbors and strangers alike, with their poking and prodding into his manner of life. To be sure, he would nod and bid a man good morning when passing him in the lane. And he would clasp the hand of a longtime acquaintance or raw newcomer on occasion. These rituals left no residue of emotion; they merely greased the machinery of getting through the day, through the year, through it all.

When Fiona had declared that she was leaving, he had wanted so badly to cry or to grieve. Alas, feelings remained trapped inside a murky cistern, as if releasing even a drop would unleash a flood that would swamp the house with tears. That no child had come was his fault, he believed. Fiona never stated whether she shared that opinion, at least not in words. But looks never lied. When she could no longer abide the smoldering ash that was their life together, she abandoned the crucible.

And now this creature, this fiend, brought those wounds to the surface, forcing him to relive the pain and anguish that he had hoped lay buried like so many gutted fish in a compost heap. He knew with rock-hard certainty that if he refused her request, she would wrench his heart with a persistent agony like summer thunderheads that consume the sky yet refuse to burst open and wash the world with relief. He sank within his own depths, to a place where anything could be endured, where he could plant himself like a desiccated seed in uncertain soil, waiting, waiting, for the time to awaken.

And so it came to pass that the selkie was admitted to Harris’s cottage, humble and spare as it was, the scent of dried fish clinging fiercely to every table and lamp, faded paper peeling languidly from every wall. As the weeks passed, she cleaned and cooked in silent detachment, though Harris could in no way imagine where the food came from.

Time passed as if in a dream, with clinging clouds and sluggish breezes never permitting a shaft of golden sunlight or a spot of azure sky to manifest. Occasionally, he thought that he heard the practiced growling of that worthless dog amid the gloom, but it never showed itself. All the mutt had ever done for him was sink its blackened teeth into his arm for lack of a treat.

By winter’s first blast, the selkie’s shape had changed enough for Harris to recognize that she was with child. Even her magical skin could not hide this development, though she would shed the disguise at night after Harris’s snoring began to rattle the rafters. She neither reveled in nor despaired of her condition, seemingly finding it as natural as the wandering of the seasons or the cries of a gull.

Harris wished that the selkie were Fiona. At times he even imagined that she was. Perhaps this intruder had placed a new spell upon him, locating and magnifying the dregs of what had once passed for affection, if not love, in his breast, and unleashing new methods for assailing him with his own monsters.

Like his father before him, Harris endeavored to avoid demonstrations of emotion, particularly regarding women. “It only makes ye weak, lad,” his father would state, spitting on the floor for emphasis. Nevertheless, at times, Harris had been tempted to express his appreciation for Fiona’s hard work and her willingness to overlook his many flaws. Perhaps he had even mumbled such sentiments in her direction once or twice. Now, he wondered if the selkie’s pregnancy could be a sign, perhaps even an absolution, after all these years, offering him a chance to turn away from isolation’s wintry chill. But when he saw the witch staring at him, probing what remained of his soul, he realized that this thing and this child would never be his, that he wanted no part of them, and that the sooner she could birth the brat and depart, the better.

Harris lost count of the times he strode in one direction or another, seeking to prove wrong the selkie’s suggestion that the world was gone. Upon each venture, after completing five long paces or six short ones beyond his door, Harris found himself in a fog, deeper and more troublesome than any natural vapor. He could see neither ground nor sky. He could feel neither wind nor rain. He could smell neither salt nor smoke. He could hear neither bird nor wave. No matter how far he paced, and upon which course, he could detect no one and no thing. Only when he resigned himself to the absence of all else did he spy his home once again, columns of soot escaping from the cracked chimney, lights flickering through occluded window panes.

The winter passed in frozen gasps. Though he was a man of few wants, Harris lamented lost nights in the Pub. Oh, some of the fellows rasped his nerves from time to time, so much so that he might not appear before that blazing hearth with a mug in hand but once in a week’s time. Duncan would become mighty morose, as oft as not, complaining about some ancient injury or the time he nearly was snagged in his own net and dragged to Davy Jones’s Locker.

And what can be said of Hamish, that salty old fart who couldn’t help but pinch every female under the age of 90 just to try to get a rise out of them. Many were the times that he bragged about seducing a selkie when any reasonable man would conclude that the other way around was far more likely.

These crusty companions on the road to dissolution could tell a fair tale, mind you, and the less believable the story the more entertaining. But would any of them help out an old mate like Harris when he was short on food or fuel? Would any speak a truth when a fib was so much easier to chew, digest, and shite? And would any concede for a moment that half a lifetime of sharing adjacent chairs and hearty laughs established anything akin to the true bond of friendship?

Now that he thought on it, might it be that he made his way to town merely once a month, when his larder was beyond bare and he could no longer remain ensconced in his soft cocoon? His memory was a fickle friend, taking its leave at precisely the moments when he was in greatest need of its comfort.

However, strange visions filled the dusty attics where recollections once slept. Many were the empty hours when he sensed that he was entrenched in the Pub, terribly late at night, with that peculiar feeling that no one, himself included, ever entered or left the establishment. As if the owner and the barmaid and the patrons had been auditioning for some master dramatist’s play since the angels first bestowed the curse of time upon the earth.

It was during one of the first teasing mild mornings, with spring drawing desperately near, that Harris hatched his plan. While the selkie slumbered in naked human form on his bed, he grasped her unholy skin and raced beyond his door and into the void. He marched and marched, turning frequently to determine if there was pursuit. None did he see, and long did he wander, until at last, exhausted beyond measure, he flung the skin as far as he could manage. “Away an’ bile yer heid!” he screamed, but he experienced no catharsis.

Harris found himself opening his cottage door with trembling fingers. Before him stood the selkie, clad in the very same skin and holding an infant. The spawn was hairless, wan, and deathly still, its black eyes smirking with the wicked wisdom of generations of bastard progeny like itself, no doubt born with the genius for humiliating any member of the human race unfortunate enough to encounter it.

The older selkie’s expression betrayed neither anger nor surprise at Harris’s actions. She stated simply: “You have upheld your part of the bargain. I will take my leave now.” Whispering to the child in a guttural tongue, she passed through the open door.

“Where will you go?” Harris called out as she traversed the crooked path. His relief was commingled with a startling sense of loss.

“Where I always go,” she responded without looking back. “To the sea.”

With that, she melted into the fog. It took several minutes for a faint breath of wind to stir and commence to vanquish the gray veil. Harris’s long-lost world began to reappear, so hesitantly that he wondered if he were imagining it, or if it ever really had been there. Yet the sand proved moist and yielding under his feet, and the waves caressed the shore with loving strokes.

Many were the acquaintances who remarked upon Harris’s countenance. He seemed younger, said some Pub regulars. He had aged markedly, claimed others. Yet, as always, the conversation soon reverted to the sea and its spiteful reluctance to yield the prizes that constituted their livelihood.

Aye, there were evenings when Harris was prepared to tell his tale. After a pint and a pipe, and maybe a dealing of cards or a tossing of darts, with dense smoke and feisty lads all around, his mood often became light. But beneath all the joking and the laughing lay deeper truths, truths varnished over and sealed off from conscious minds, as a prisoner denies his sentence and an addict refuses to admit her affliction. Perhaps the deepest truth is that few men can accept — let alone manage — their fate.

And, to be honest, who wanted to hear another yarn about a selkie? All the boys know how the story ends.