To the Sea Read online

  He cooked on the fire and they sat at the table eating the crispy fish and drinking cold water. It was a feast. They talked long into the evening. Ornice talked about her childhood mostly, saying next to nothing about her marriage and her life with Lorcan. She was full of questions and Connery answered those he felt inclined to.

  He was from the north. He did not name the place but it hardly mattered to Ornice, she knew none of those faraway places anyway. He travelled widely in the small wooden boat. He was from a large family but he had no wife or children. He knew this coast of Ireland well and had been coming here for many years. He did not live on the island. He stayed here when he was in these waters. Others, who felt themselves to be in his debt, maintained the cabin and supplied it. He came here usually no more than once each year.

  He was an intriguing man. His face was as smooth as a boy’s. His thick arms, like his chest where she could see it above his blouse opening, were hairless and smooth. Now that she could look at him closely, Ornice thought he was a young man still. But his voice was old. His eyes were bright animations, a dazzling blue and slanted up high almost to the tip of his pale eyebrow. They darted like an animal or settled to a soothing stillness.

  When it was time for sleep, Ornice stood and went to the fireplace. She told Connery that she would smoor the fire. Connery did not know this word and he came close to her to watch. His concentration was on her as she raked the white ash over the red coals and lay fresh turf on top of the ash to keep the coals alive through the night. She drew the symbols in the ashes with the poker, chanted the old prayers and moved her hands above the ashes in the signs of the blessings.

  When she was finished, Connery continued to watch her. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body. She turned away from his gaze. As the cabin was one room, Ornice went out into the cold night to prepare herself for bed. When she came back inside, the candle was out, the fire was dark and she could feel but not see that Connery was in his bed. She climbed under the fur rug on her own pallet and wished him a safe night. He replied in his own language and Ornice took comfort from the strange words. She fell into a peaceful deep sleep.

  Ornice was up early the next morning but not as early as Connery. She could not see him but she could hear him outside singing. The fire had been stirred to life. She hummed along in tune with his singing while she stirred oats over the fire. They sat out in the sun on the soft grass eating their breakfast. It was a beautiful spring day. Warm and fragrant. They talked of the day, the sea, the little band of seals chattering below them, the wildflowers covering the island and everything and nothing.

  Late in the morning, Connery asked her if she would like to go swimming with him. It was such an odd request Ornice did not know how to answer. She had not played in the water since she was a child splashing with her brothers and baby sister while their mother watched over them. The day was not hot and she and Connery were not children. She had not played a game of any kind in many years. But she felt it would be hurtful to refuse his offer.

  She thought they would swim in the water near the pebbly beach of the inlet. But when they got to the beach, Connery took her hand and led her out along the rocky edge onto the long black outcrop at the end of the inlet. The water out there was deep. Ornice was afraid but tried to keep a smile on her face. She had faith in Connery. When they got to the end of the land, he stepped out of his clothes. His nakedness was careless and natural. Ornice noticed, before she turned away, that his body was smooth and hairless everywhere. He was a strange and beautiful creature. She removed her dress but would not remove her underdress. Connery made no comment. He dived off the rocks, spearing the water with his sleek body. He was under for some moments and then his head appeared near the rocks at Ornice’s feet. He held out his arms and called her in. This was not any game Ornice knew. He smiled up at her and called her name again. She trusted him. She jumped.

  Ornice swam around on the surface and as close to the rocks as she could. She had not been out this deep before. Connery dived under and around her and stirred the kelp washing against the rocks. She kept moving to stay warm. After a short while, she was tiring. She was still weak. She tried to climb up on the rocks to get out but they were too steep and too slippery. She panicked. Connery swept up beside her and took her in his arms. He cradled her like a child. He told her to breathe in and he dived. He dived deep. Then they darted quickly upwards until they were not far beneath the surface and she could see the sunlight dancing on the water above their heads.

  He surfaced briefly; just long enough for them both to breathe again and for him to rearrange Ornice so she was lying on his back with her arms and legs wrapped around him. Again he dived and they moved smoothly through the cold green water. She held him tightly as they dipped and rose, speeding through the water. He again surfaced just enough for Ornice to stretch her neck and breathe deeply. He hardly lifted his face at all. This was a game like no other.

  After what seemed like they had crossed an ocean, they stopped. Ornice was afraid. The island was a long way distant. She could not possibly get back there without Connery. She began to doubt that he would have the strength to get them back. She had been content to drown once but the prospect of it now terrified her.

  Connery shifted her off his back and held her in his arms. She gripped his neck tightly. He lowered his white head to her and nuzzled her throat softly with his hot mouth. Ornice’s whole body pulsed with its heat. They sat motionless out in the water with just their heads and shoulders breaking the surface of the sea. Their bodies slowly rocked together as he kept them both afloat effortlessly. They did not speak.

  Her body began to chill. Connery told her to breathe and again they dived and were speeding through the water. Back at the island, he lifted her high and she placed her cold feet back on the land. He leapt up out of the water, a spray of golden water splashed against the land. He pulled his dry clothes on and, while his back was turned to her, Ornice removed her wet underdress and put on her sun-warmed dress. They walked back to the cabin and on a small outside fire they cooked two of the small fish left over and some oatcakes. They sat out on the grass eating the meal and looking out across the water.

  Ornice had so many questions for him but she held her tongue. She lay on the grass in the warm sunshine as he told her a story about the huge white bears that lived in the north so far away that few men ever saw them. It was their furs which lay on the floor of the cabin and the beds. It was a tale as fantastic as any she had heard from the roaming storytellers who visited the cove from time to time. Connery’s voice had the fall and rise of the sea. As she lay in the sun with her eyes closed, listening to his quiet deep voice, she could see him fighting the ferocious bears, his flying hair as white as their fur.

  She woke late in the day. The sun was gone and so was Connery. The grass was cold beneath her and the wind was chilled. She went into the cabin and found it just as she had the day before. This time she was not afraid. He would come back. They would eat a meal together. They would talk and spend the evening in front of the fire. She closed the cabin door and shutters and settled in for the evening. She happily stirred the fire to life and began to prepare some bread. She felt more at home than she ever had in Lorcan’s rough cabin.

  Connery returned at nightfall and this time he had some lobsters and crabs in his little hand net. He looked pleased to find her waiting for him and his cabin warm from the fire and filled with the aroma of baking soda bread. They chatted as they prepared the food, and she heard herself laughing at his nonsense, for he talked a lot of nonsense. They sat together on the white bear rug in front of the fire after their meal talking and then Connery told her a story which took them late into the night. This was to be their pattern for the days and nights to follow.

  During the day, Ornice looked forward to the night-time tales. She knew his stories were true. She didn’t think Connery knew how to make things up, to create something from nothing. He was too solid. Too real. He was amazed tha
t Ornice could simply weave a story from ideas that came to her as she spoke. She sometimes told the old tales, legends that she had known all her life but that Connery had never heard, although just as often she started with something that had happened to her and then followed her thoughts along the path of a new story. He would weigh her words up. He understood that they would not always be true, but Ornice was a good storyteller. She knew a story must always ring true no matter where it might lead and who may appear in it. She never spoke of her real life. She had almost forgotten it.

  But Connery’s stories were different. He told her tales as he recalled them. Sometimes he would go back and change something as he remembered how it had truly happened. Sometimes his corrections were less than the original. No storyteller would ever do that. No man she knew would ever correct a story to make himself appear less heroic.

  When he told her the story of the black mountain, in the far-off frozen Issland, which exploded in fire with boiling red rock pouring down its heaving side, he reassured her that he’d watched from a distance. And even though he and those with him could feel the water warm as the hot insides of the mountain rolled into the frozen ocean, he was far from danger.

  If any of the men in the cove had told that story they would have said they’d been close enough to touch the boiling rock, their boats and lives would have been imperilled. Somehow, by their doing, all would have been saved. The mountain would have been at their command. Or sea people would have leapt from the frozen sea and saved them, but in Connery’s story, it was all about the mountain. The wonder of such a thing. It was story enough. The way he told it, he was there to see it so he could tell Ornice about it.

  One night, she began to tell Connery her little brother’s favourite tale.

  Connery listened, alert, as Ornice told of Angus Ruadh the seal killer and the stranger who came to his cabin late one stormy night. The stranger tricked Angus into riding with him to meet a man who would pay Angus handsomely for one hundred seal skins. Angus was easy to trick because his greed blinded him to the truth about the stranger. The stranger was a selchie.

  Here, Connery looked at Ornice and indicated that he did not know the word.

  Ornice was surprised. Of all the tales, the one that every child knew, and one of Ornice’s favourites, was the Selchie Wife. That would be tonight’s tale.

  At high tide on a full moon on the shore of a lonely island, a woman dances and sings in the strange musical language of the people of the sea. She has shed her sea skin and in her new glowing golden skin, she dances naked under the moonlight, delighting in her human form. From behind a rock, peers a lone fisherman.

  The fisherman knows who the beautiful dancing woman is. He knows the heartache that awaits one who falls in love with her, but still he falls. He must have her. She will fight the fisherman with all her strength and all her wiles to get back to the sea. The fisherman knows this but now that he has seen her, he can know no other happiness than a life with the beautiful dancing woman.

  To capture her is but part of the challenge. He must have her sea skin. If the dancing woman can get to her skin, she will slip back into it and disappear into the sea forever.

  The fisherman plans his moves and seduces the woman into his arms and away from her shed skin and the sea. She is a woman, after all, and delights in all the pleasures of her new form.

  The fisherman captures the selchie woman; she is bound and gagged so she cannot call to the sea people to rescue her. Many a fisherman has been lost at sea following a desperate fight with the sea people.

  The fisherman hides the selchie woman’s skin and she becomes his wife. She cooks and cleans and raises their beautiful raven-haired children. She retains her beauty and is faithful and adoring and an exhilarating lover. She is the wondrous wife of which all men dream. The fisherman’s first infatuated love of her never fades. And his nets and those of all the fishermen in his village are never empty.

  But when seven years have passed, the selchie wife yearns to return to her real home and her people. Her love for her land husband and children lingers but becomes more elusive with each passing day. She gives less of herself and is lost to her sea dreams. She spends all her waking hours searching for her skin. The fisherman cannot destroy her skin or take it too far away from her or his beloved will wither and die. She knows it is close.

  The fisherman saddens as his wife slowly fades away. He knows he is the cause of her misery but he cannot let her go. But their great love, her adoration for her husband, fades into nothingness and his life fades with it.

  The silent struggle continues until one day she finds her skin. One of her daughters, who can no longer bear to see her mother’s suffering and isolation in the world, brings her the sea skin, unwittingly giving her the freedom to leave.

  As soon as she has her skin, the selchie wife is gone. She gives no farewell or explanation to her heartbroken children. Her husband is bereft. The true love of all their lives has abandoned them. Their lives are long and empty forever after.

  The tale was a long time in the telling. It was late when Ornice finished and the fire had died down to a layer of glowing embers. Connery lay still in the dim light with his hands behind his head, looking up into the darkness. He said it was a fine story and he looked forward to hearing others she might have about the selchies. He said that he had liked the sound of the story she had started to tell him about Angus Ruadh. He was keen to hear of Angus’s adventures another night.

  Connery asked her if she believed in selchies. Had she ever seen one?

  She replied that she thought she had, but it was very hard to tell a seal man from a real man.

  What makes a man real? he asked.

  Ornice could not answer.

  The evening was over. As Connery stood up, he lightly brushed against her. His lips skimmed briefly past her ear and he spoke to her, a sound that was little more than a sigh. A word, she was sure of it. Koma. She could not catch it cleanly and in an instant he was standing and the moment had passed. Ornice stood in front of the hearth and could feel Connery watching close behind her as she smoored the fire. This evening ritual was already an intimacy between them.

  She went outside and when she returned the cabin was in darkness and Connery was in his bed. She went to her pallet and, while she was still sitting on the side, he spoke to her in the darkness. She was recovered and he would take her home as soon as she wished. He had twelve more days he could spend on the island before he must return to his home, but she need not stay that long. She must say what she wanted.

  The thought of Lorcan and her wretched life back in the cove destroyed Ornice’s evening. She wished Connery a safe night and lay down, pulling the soft rug over her. He said the familiar words in his language and then the cabin was silent. Ornice lay awake for a long time. There was no peaceful sleep for her that night.

  She woke the next morning not knowing what to say to Connery. She did not want to go but she did not know how she could stay. She wanted Connery to tell her she must stay with him forever.

  They spent that day and several more in the same manner as their first swimming day. Connery was teaching her how to dive and swim under the water. They dived from the rocks and spent as much time in the sea as Ornice could bear before the cold brought her ashore. Connery dived from the high cliffs above the waves. Ornice loved to watch his long body arched against the blue sky as it fell from the cliff top. She found herself waiting for him to lower his head to her each day but he did not. She watched his mouth closely when he spoke, remembering the heat and the softness of it on her neck.

  On the fifth night since he had spoken to her in the dark about her leaving, it was Connery’s turn to tell the evening tale. As was his way, he told a tale about himself.

  Three summers ago he had travelled down the west coast of Ireland. He came into a sheltered cove just on dusk and saw a beautiful young girl on the sandy shore. She was a slight wisp of a girl with white skin and long black ringlets hanging all
the way down her back to the gentle curve of her buttocks. She was standing looking out to sea and Connery could hear her calling. She was calling him. It was her calling that had brought him into the small cove. He came closer and looked into her dark sea-green eyes. She looked sad and would not look at Connery. He watched her for the hour that she stood alone on the little beach. When it was dark, she walked back to a little stone cabin clustered with others on a grassy rise back from the shore. He stayed in the cove for three days watching her as she moved around with others and he waited for her to come each evening down to the shore where she would stand or sit on the rocks, waiting until dark before leaving. Connery could stay no longer than three days but he was sad to leave the beautiful girl and sad that she would not see him.

  Two summers later, he came back to the cove. The girl had drawn him back. He waited two days before she walked down to the rocks late in the gloaming of a sunny day. He was shocked to see the sadness in her face which, despite her pain, had grown even more beautiful in his absence. He saw a purple bruise on her arm and two older yellow bruises on her bare legs. She sat on the rocks crying. Only after night had settled did she leave. This time she walked down the length of the beach to a lone cabin at the far end of the cove. He watched her stop for a long minute at the door of the cabin before she entered. He heard a man’s loud voice through the open door. She did not return to the water’s edge for the four more days Connery was in the cove but he watched her outside the cabin collecting turf, washing clothes and sitting on a small stool looking out to sea.

  Connery was afraid for her. And he knew then that he loved her.

  He followed the girl’s call back to the cove the following year during a Perigean tide. He did not see her at all for two days. And then late at night, on the eve of the tide, he saw her. She came out into the ferocious storm, tore her rag-dress from her body and stood in her naked beauty sobbing and screaming into the night. He answered her and she heard him. She calmed. After washing her pale body and black hair she entered the cabin. Connery waited.