Tales of Wonder

by Jane Yolen

  Without thinking, Mairi moved closer and put her hand on his forehead, expecting it to burn with temperature, but he was cold and damp and slippery to the touch. Then he opened his eyes, and they were the same blue-green color as the walls, as the underside of a wave. She wondered for a moment if he were blind, for there seemed to be no pupils in those eyes. Then he closed the lids and smiled at her, whispering in that same unknown tongue.

  “Never mind, never mind, I’ll get help,” whispered Mairi. He might be a fisherman from the town or an RAF man shot down on a mission. She looked at his closed-down face. Here, at last, was her way to aid the war effort. “Lie still. First I’ll see to your wounds. They taught us first aid at school.”

  She examined his forehead under the slate-gray hair, and saw that the terrible wound that had been there was now closed and appeared to be healing, though bloody and seamed with scabs. But when she started to slip the sealskin coat down to examine him for other wounds, she was shocked to discover he had no clothes on under it. No clothes at all.

  She hesitated then. Except for the statues in the museum, Mairi had never seen a man naked. Not even in the first-aid books. But what if he were hurt unto death? The fearsome poetry of the old phrase decided her. She inched back the sealskin covering as gently as she could.

  He did not move except for the rise and fall of his chest. His body was covered with fine hairs, gray as the hair on his head. He had broad, powerful shoulders and slim, tapering hips. The skin on his hands was strangely wrinkled, as if he had been under water too long. She realized with a start that he was quite, quite beautiful—but alien. As her grandmother often said, “Men are queer creatures, so different from us, child. And someday you will know it.”

  Then his eyes opened again and she could not look away from them. He smiled, opened his mouth, and began to speak, to chant really. Mairi bent down over him and he opened his arms to her, the gray webbing between his fingers pulsing strongly. And without willing it, she covered his mouth with hers. All the sea was in that kiss, cold and vast and perilous. It drew her in till she thought she would faint with it, with his tongue darting around hers as quick as a minnow. And then his arms encircled her and he was as strong as the tide. She felt only the briefest of pain, and a kind of drowning, and she let the land go.

  When Mairi awoke, she was sitting on the stone floor of the cavern, and cold, bone-chillingly cold. She shivered and pushed her hand across her cheeks. They were wet, though whether with tears or from the damp air she could not say.

  Above her, on the stone bed, the wounded man breathed raggedly. Occasionally he let out a moan. Mairi stood and looked down at him. His flesh was pale, wan, almost translucent. She put her hand on his shoulder but he did not move. She wondered if she had fallen and hit her head; if she had dreamed what had happened.

  “Help. I must get help for him,” she thought. She covered him again with the coat and made her way back to the cave mouth. Her entire body ached, and she decided she must have fallen and blacked out.

  The threatening storm had not yet struck, but the dark slant of rain against the horizon was closer still. Mairi scrambled along the rocks to where the coracle waited. She put on her mac, then heaved the boat over and into the water and slipped in, getting only her boots wet.

  It was more difficult rowing back, rowing against the tide. Waves broke over the bow of the little boat, and by the time she was within sight of the town, she was soaked to the skin. The stones of Sule Skerry were little more than gray wave tops then, and with one pull on the oars, they disappeared from sight. The port enfolded her, drew her in. She felt safe and lonely at once.

  When Mairi reached the shore, there was a knot of fishermen tending their boats. A few were still at work on the bright orange nets, folding them carefully in that quick, intricate pattern that only they seemed to know.

  One man, in a blue watch cap, held up a large piece of tattered white cloth, an awning of silk. It seemed to draw the other men to him. He gestured with the silk and it billowed out as if capturing the coming storm.

  Suddenly Mairi was horribly afraid. She broke into the circle of men. “Oh, please, please,” she cried out, hearing the growing wail of wind in her voice. “There’s a man on the rocks. He’s hurt.”

  “The rocks?” The man with the silk stuffed it into his pocket, but a large fold of it hung down his trouser leg. “Which rocks?”

  “Out there. Beyond the sight line. Where the seals stay.”

  “Whose child is she?” asked a man who still carried an orange net. He spoke as if she were too young to understand him or as if she were a foreigner.

  “Old Mrs. Goodleigh’s grandchild. The one with the English father,” came an answer.

  “Mavis’ daughter, the one who became a nurse in London.”

  “Too good for Caith, then?”

  Mairi was swirled about in their conversation.

  “Please,” she tried again.

  “Suppose’n she means the Rocks?”

  “Yes,” begged Mairi. “The rocks out there. Sule Skerry.”

  “Hush, child. Must na say the name in sight of the sea,” said the blue-cap man.

  “Toss it a coin, Jock,” said the white-silk man.

  The man called Jock reached into his pocket and flung a coin out to the ocean. It skipped across the waves twice, then sank.

  “That should quiet en. Now then, the Rocks you say?”

  Mairi turned to the questioner. He had a face like a map, wrinkles marking the boundaries of nose and cheek. “Yes, sir,” she said breathily.

  “Aye, he might have fetched up there,” said the white-silk man, drawing it out of his pocket again for the others to see.

  Did they know him, then? Mairi wondered.

  “Should we leave him to the storm?” asked Jock.

  “He might be one of ours,” the map-faced man said.

  They all nodded at that.

  “He’s sheltered,” Mairi said suddenly. “In a cave. A grotto, like. It’s all cast over with a blue and green light.”

  “Teched, she is. There’s no grotto there,” said blue-cap.

  “No blue and green light either,” said the map-faced man, turning from her and speaking earnestly with his companions. “Even if he’s one of them, he might tell us summat we need. Our boys could use the knowledge. From that bit of parachute silk, it’s hard to say which side he’s on.” He reached out and touched the white cloth with a gnarled finger.

  “Aye, we’d best look for him.”

  “He won’t be hard to find,” Mairi began. “He’s sick. Hurt. I touched him.”

  “What was he wearing then?” asked blue-cap.

  The wind had picked up and Mairi couldn’t hear the question. “What?” she shouted.

  “Wearing. What was the fellow wearing?”

  Suddenly remembering that the man had been naked under the coat, she was silent.

  “She doesn’t know. Probably too scared to go close. Come on,” said Jock.

  The men pushed past her and dragged along two of the large six-man boats that fished the haaf banks. The waves were slapping angrily at the shore, gobbling up pieces of the sand and churning out pebbles at each retreat. Twelve men scrambled into the boats and headed out to sea, their oars flashing together.

  Three men were left on shore, including the one holding the remnant of white silk. They stood staring out over the cold waters, their eyes squinted almost shut against the strange bright light that was running before the storm.

  Mairi stood near them, but apart.

  No one spoke.

  It was a long half-hour before the first of the boats leaped back toward them, across a wave, seconds ahead of the rain.

  The second boat beached just as the storm broke, the men jumping out onto the sand and drawing the boat up behind them. A dark form was huddled against the stern.

  Mairi tried to push through to get a close glimpse of the man, but blue-cap spoke softly to her.

  “Nay, nay, girl
, don’t look. He’s not what you would call a pretty sight. He pulled a gun on Jock and Jock took a rock to him.”

  But Mairi had seen enough. The man was dressed in a flier’s suit, and a leather jacket with zippers. His blond hair was matted with blood.

  “That’s not the one I saw,” she murmured. “Not the one I …”

  “Found him lying on the Rocks, just as the girl said. Down by the west side of the Rocks,” said Jock. “We threw his coins to the sea and bought our way home. Though I don’t know that German coins buy much around here. Bloody Huns.”

  “What’s a German flier doing this far west, I’d like to know,” said map-face.

  “Maybe he was trying for America,” Jock answered, laughing sourly.

  “Ask him. When he’s fit to talk,” said blue-cap.

  The man with the white silk wrapped it around the German’s neck. The parachute shroud lines hung down the man’s back. Head down, the German was marched between Jock and blue-cap up the strand and onto the main street. The other men trailed behind.

  With the rain soaking through her cap and running down her cheeks, Mairi took a step toward them. Then she turned away. She kicked slowly along the water’s edge till she found the stone steps that led up to her gran’s house. The sea pounded a steady reminder on her left, a basso continuo to the song that ran around in her head. The last three verses came to her slowly.

  Now he has ta’en a purse of goud

  And he has put it upon her knee,

  Sayin’, “Gie to me my little young son

  And tak ye up thy nourrice-fee.”

  She shivered and put her hands in her pockets to keep them warm. In one of the mac’s deep pockets, her fingers felt something cold and rough to the touch. Reluctantly she drew it out. It was a coin, green and gold, slightly crusted, as if it had lain on the ocean bottom for some time. She had never seen it before and could only guess how it had gotten into her coat pocket. She closed her hand around the coin, so tightly a second coin was imprinted on her palm.

  An’ it shall pass on a summer’s day

  When the sun shines het on every stane,

  That I will tak my little young son

  An’ teach him for to swim his lane.

  An’ thu sall marry a proud gunner,

  An’ a right proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be.

  An’ the very first shot that ere he shoots

  He’ll kill baith my young son and me.

  Had it truly happened, or was it just some dream brought on by a fall? She felt again those cold, compelling hands on her, the movement of the webbings pulsing on her breasts; smelled again the briny odor of his breath. And if she did have that bairn, that child? Why, Harry Stones would have to marry her, then. Her father could not deny them that.

  And laughing and crying at the same time, Mairi began to run up the stone steps. The sound of the sea followed her all the way home, part melody and part unending moan.

  The White Seal Maid

  On the north sea shore there was a fisherman named Merdock who lived all alone. He had neither wife nor child, nor wanted one. At least that was what he told the other men with whom he fished the haaf banks.

  But truth was, Merdock was a lonely man, at ease only with the wind and waves. And each evening, when he left his companions, calling out “Fair wind!”—the sailor’s leave—he knew they were going back to a warm hearth and a full bed while he went home to none. Secretly he longed for the same comfort.

  One day it came to Merdock as if in a dream that he should leave off fishing that day and go down to the sea-ledge and hunt the seal. He had never done such a thing before, thinking it close to murder, for the seal had human eyes and cried with a baby’s voice.

  Yet though he had never done such a thing, there was such a longing within him that Merdock could not say no to it. And that longing was like a high, sweet singing, a calling. He could not rid his mind of it. So he went.

  Down by a gray rock he sat, a long sharpened stick by his side. He kept his eyes fixed out on the sea, where the white birds sat on the waves like foam.

  He waited through sunrise and sunset and through the long, cold night, the singing in his head. Then, when the wind went down a bit, he saw a white seal far out in the sea, coming toward him, the moon riding on its shoulder.

  Merdock could scarcely breathe as he watched the seal, so shining and white was its head. It swam swiftly to the sea-ledge, and then with one quick push it was on land.

  Merdock rose then in silence, the stick in his hand. He would have thrown it, too. But the white seal gave a sudden shudder and its skin sloughed off. It was a maiden cast in moonlight, with the tide about her feet.

  She stepped high out of her skin, and her hair fell sleek and white about her shoulders and hid her breasts.

  Merdock fell to his knees behind the rock and would have hidden his eyes, but her cold white beauty was too much for him. He could only stare. And if he made a noise then, she took no notice but turned her face to the sea and opened her arms up to the moon. Then she began to sway and call.

  At first Merdock could not hear the words. Then he realized it was the very song he had heard in his head all that day:

  Come to the edge,

  Come down to the ledge

  Where the water laps the shore.

  Come to the strand,

  Seals to the sand,

  The watery time is o’er.

  When the song was done, she began it again. It was as if the whole beach, the whole cove, the whole world were nothing but that one song.

  And as she sang, the water began to fill up with seals. Black seals and gray seals and seals of every kind. They swam to the shore at her call and sloughed off their skins. They were as young as the white seal maid, but none so beautiful in Merdock’s eyes. They swayed and turned at her singing, and joined their voices to hers. Faster and faster the seal maidens danced, in circles of twos and threes and fours. Only the white seal maid danced alone, in the center, surrounded by the castoff skins of her twirling sisters.

  The moon remained high almost all the night, but at last it went down. At its setting, the seal maids stopped their singing, put on their skins again, one by one, went back into the sea again, one by one, and swam away. But the white seal maid did not go. She waited on the shore until the last of them was out of sight.

  Then she turned to the watching man, as if she had always known he was there, hidden behind the gray rock. There was something strange, a kind of pleading, in her eyes.

  Merdock read that pleading and thought he understood it. He ran over to where she stood, grabbed up her sealskin, and held it high overhead.

  “Now you be mine,” he said.

  And she had to go with him, that was the way of it. For she was a selchie, one of the seal folk. And the old tales said it: The selchie maid without her skin was no more than a lass.

  They were wed within the week, Merdock and the white seal maid, because he wanted it. So she nodded her head at the priest’s bidding, though she said not a word.

  And Merdock had no complaint of her, his “Sel” as he called her. No complaint except this: she would not go down to the sea. She would not go down by the shore where he had found her or down to the sand to see him in his boat, though often enough she would stare from the cottage door out past the cove’s end where the inlet poured out into the great wide sea.

  “Will you not walk down by the water’s edge with me, Sel?” Merdock would ask each morning. “Or will you not come down to greet me when I return?”

  She never answered him, either “Yea” or “Nay.” Indeed, if he had not heard her singing that night on the ledge, he would have thought her mute. But she was a good wife, for all that, and did what he required. If she did not smile, she did not weep. She seemed, to Merdock, strangely content.

  So Merdock hung the white sealskin up over the door where Sel could see it. He kept it there in case she should want to leave him, to don the skin and go. He could have hidden it o
r burned it, but he did not. He hoped the sight of it, so near and easy, would keep her with him; would tell her, as he could not, how much he loved her. For he found he did love her, his seal wife. It was that simple. He loved her and did not want her to go, but he would not keep her past her willing it, so he hung the skin up over the door.

  And then their sons were born. One a year, born at the ebbing of the tide. And Sel sang to them, one by one, long, longing wordless songs that carried the sound of the sea. But to Merdock she said nothing.

  Seven sons they were, strong and silent, one born each year. They were born to the sea, born to swim, born to let the tide lap them head and shoulder. And though they had the dark eyes of the seal, and though they had the seal’s longing for the sea, they were men and had men’s names: James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, and Tom. They helped their father fish the cove and bring home his catch from the sea.

  It was seven years and seven years and seven years again that the seal wife lived with him. The oldest of their sons was just coming to his twenty-first birthday, the youngest barely a man. It was on a gray day, the wind scarcely rising, that the boys all refused to go with Merdock when he called. They gave no reason but “Nay.”

  “Wife,” Merdock called, his voice heavy and gray as the sky. “Wife, whose sons are these? How have you raised them that they say ‘Nay’ to their father when he calls?” It was ever his custom to talk to Sel as if she returned him words.

  To his surprise, Sel turned to him and said, “Go. My sons be staying with me this day.” It was the voice of the singer on the beach, musical and low. And the shock was so great that he went at once and did not look back.

  He set his boat on the sea, the great boat that usually took several men to row it. He set it out himself and got it out into the cove, put the nets over, and never once heard when his sons called out to him as he went, “Father, fair wind!”

  But after a bit the shock wore thin and he began to think about it. He became angry then, at his sons and at his wife, who had long plagued him with her silence. He pulled in the nets and pulled on the oars and started toward home. “I, too, can say ‘Nay’ to this sea,” he said out loud as he rode the swells in.