The Selkie

Written by Will Golec, Edited by James Thacher

leave the light on by Hannah Wool

The moon shines down over the soft, cool sea. The wind laps at my back and the snow on my bare feet gives them a soft chill. I love this time of year. No one wants to go swimming during the wintertime. The water will be a bit cold, but it doesn’t matter to me. 

I take off my bag and drop it into the snow. I dig through it, searching at the bottom for the reason I came here. I reach into the bottom of my bag and pull out my skin. When I’m at home, I pile books and warm clothing on top of it so if someone happens to come upon the bag and look through it, they will be less likely to find it. They never have, but I can’t help but be paranoid. Not even my husband knows about this, and I never intend to tell him. I discard the ratty old sweater and pants I wore up here, then slide into my skin. It's a large silvery, shining cloak. It looks like it’s made of fish scales, but it’s as soft as a blanket. I throw it around my shoulders like a towel, and I take my true form: a dolphin larger than a man.

I leap off the side of the cliff I stand on. The wind whips at my face as I dive for the water, the waves inviting me inside. I crash through the surface and float gently under the waves for a moment. Beneath the surface, I fully transform. 

The transformation feels like I’m taking off a coat made of iron, discarding my disguise. The ice-cold water to me feels as pleasant as a summer day. I feel so at home here. This is where I belong, where I would stay forever if I could bring everyone else with me. 

I leap out of the water and into the air. I look down at my reflection briefly, a dolphin with turquoise stripes along my back. I dive below the waves again and fly through the water. I move faster than anything else around me. The other fish move out of my way, and I let them. I dive all the way to the bottom of the sea, then shoot back up into the sky. I love the speed and grace I have down here. You can’t feel anything like this on land. It feels like I’m flying through the water, like I can go forever. I feel like I’m home.

I fall back into the water and keep moving forward. I’ve already gone miles into the sea, the cliff where I left my bag is far behind me. The lake near home is starting to ice over, but I can still come to the sea. This is perfect. 

Then the horn sounds. A spotlight cuts through the night and shines down at me. A handful of men pilot a small boat, two harpoon guns on the sides. 

          “They come at night to dance and play but come the light they will not stay,” recites the leading man, quoting the old legend from town about selkies – the giant dolphins who hold power over the ocean. It’s a poem I haven’t heard in a long time.

The man has a scraggly beard, and a thin, starved body. The others looked similar, with all of them holding harpoons or other sharp tools. I dive under the water and swim away as fast as I can. 

“Move! After it!” shouted one of the men. I tear through the water again, this time heading for the shore. I see one of the harpoons shoot clean through another fish just in front of me, the rusty metal and scratchy rope pulling the helpless thing out of the sea. I leap out of the water for a short breath of air, feeling another one of the harpoons strike the water near me. It stabs the water, and as I go back in I pull away from its path. The boat pulls up to my side. Everybody is yelling and screaming at each other, trying to get the harpoons back to take aim again. One of them nicks my fin, but it doesn’t stop me. The one that pierces my back does. I scream, but it doesn’t come out when I’m like this. The hunters drag me up to the main deck and turn me over. They don’t know that selkies are human, and I don’t think they would care if they did know.

          “Gut it!” one of them shouts. It’s a massive, hulking man with a hatchet smeared in fish guts. The fury in his eyes is apparent, the frenzied animalistic glint of a man whose remorse has been replaced with hunger. As he charges towards me, one thought runs through my head. My Husband is trying to kill me. He rolls me over and drags the knife across my back. 

But he turned me towards the edge of the boat. It was an accident on his part, and I take full advantage of it.

I roll through the railing and back into the water. Roars of frustration from the crew pierce the night as I swim away as fast as I can. I leave a trail of blood behind me in the water as I go. I tear off my cloak as I reach the shore hoping they haven’t seen me. Resuming my human form, I break into a sprint. The men on the boat try and see where I went, but the night covers my escape. I run away from the beach, heading for home. 

I burst through the door, cold and terrified. I shouldn’t have done that. Going out and swimming like that will only get me hurt. I should know that by now, especially in the winter. I need to go get the things I left on the cliffside. Maybe in the morning. It's well past midnight by now, and it’ll probably be a bit before anyone finds it. 

I sneak upstairs and hide my cloak in my floorboard hiding space beneath the bed, but the floorboard won’t sit flat. I grab a suitcase and stick it under the bed over the out of place floorboard, then cover that in a blanket. 

I change into a nightgown and head to the living room to start a small fire, draping a wool blanket over my shoulders. I won’t keep the fire going for very long, just enough to warm up. I wince as I feel the fabric of my nightgown run over the cut on my back. I can’t let my husband see it, he’ll know that something was wrong. Just as I think that, he walks in the door. 

          “Ariel? What are you doing up?” he asks as he walks inside. 

          “Couldn’t sleep.” I say, giving him a gentle smile. Even as he returns that smile, I can’t help but see the eyes of that desperate hunter. 

          “I went hunting tonight. Captain's still obsessed with finding a selkie. According to legends, you can use its flesh to lure fish right to you. We got close but didn’t quite get there.” I nod along. I’m well versed with his Captain's obsession, and I’ve never felt comfortable around the man. It’s a family legacy sort of thing. The Captain’s family had all caught at least one Selkie, but not him yet. The skin of a selkie can draw in fish from hundreds of miles away. That means no more long hunting expeditions for the rest of the winter. My husband pulls off his coat and sits down next to me by the fire. I lift the blanket, and he joins me under the wool quilt. He's bigger than I am, so strong and warm. “You don’t have to worry about that selkie, okay honey? We’ve got more than enough food to last the winter.” He says as he strokes my hair. I reach up and kiss his cheek, laying my head down on his shoulder as the fire slowly fades. He reaches over to pull me closer, but his hand brushes the cut on my back as he does. I wince and pull away as he runs his fingers over the gash. “What the-”

          “It's nothing,” I tell him. 

          “That's not nothing, it looks like someone stabbed you!” He cranes his head over to see the scar, looking horrified as he sees it. “How did this happen? Did someone do this to you?” he asks.

          “No, no, I just… had a bad fall. I was out walking, and I fell in the woods.” I say. My husband gives me a curious look. I don’t think he believes me, but he can’t think of any other good explanation for it.

          “Stay here, I’m going to get bandages,” he stands up and throws another log onto the fire. He walks into the kitchen and digs through the contents of the cluttered cabinets. 

          “They’re in the closet. I moved them last week.” I call from the living room. I hear his thundering footsteps move down the hallway and dig through the stuffed to bursting closet at the end of the hall. 

He returns to the living room and kneels beside me. I lift the nightgown and let him cover the wound in bandages. His hands are heavy, yet gentle and soft. I feel all the little cuts and imperfection in his hands; the nick in his finger he had gotten from cutting up fish for dinner, the cut he got recently when our son had gotten himself stuck at the top of a tree, and the calluses that come from working on the sea.

I really wish I had known about everything he did before I got attached and agreed to marry him. I hate that he’s a hunter. I hate that I don’t know what his reaction would be to finding out about me.

Maybe he would keep my secret. I’ve thought about leaving him behind, abandoning him and everyone in this town. It would be peaceful, living under the water for the rest of my life. But then we have moments like this, and I see our kids smiling up at us and I know I can never leave this place. 

          “Ariel.” He says, pulling me out of my trance.

          “Yes dear?” 

          “You can talk to me. I’ve seen you come home with these odd gashes, and it worries me. You can tell me anything. I’ll still love you. You know that, right?” I nod. The image of him and the other men eagerly trying to stab me makes me think otherwise. I had heard him join in on the captain's obsession, on his desire to catch a selkie. This is one thing I can’t ever tell him. 

As the fire slowly dies out, my husband falls asleep on the sofa next to me. I lie down on his chest, letting his soft breathing and the rise and fall of his chest bring me to sleep. I look up at a family photo that was sitting above the fireplace. Me, him, our eight-year-old son and four-year-old daughter, five years old tomorrow. 

I vow that I will never return to the water after tonight. I will throw my cloak onto a fire and live like a normal person with the family that I love so dearly. But I have made that vow to myself a hundred times. 

 I could never resist the call of the seas, the freedom I feel and the joy it brings me. I deeply, deeply hate it, but I know that I will be back to the sea very soon.