The Seal Queen

by Sandra Saidak

  The one thing she could find no solution to was how to swim across deep water to fish. While all humans spend the first nine months of their lives breathing water, that skill is somehow lost when they leave the womb. And no amount of coaxing or prayer on Briah’s part could convince any knowledgeable spirit to help Kamin get it back. Neither did the seals repeat their miracle of fishes from Kamin’s naming ceremony. And while she learned over time that he was sturdier than she first thought, he showed no sign of learning to swim in his first few moons. Reluctantly, Briah gave up on fishing for the time being. She had little enough time to notice its absence.

  Learning how to survive in this new realm seemed a small thing compared to learning about Kamin. Briah was amazed at how much of her time such a small person demanded. Yet the time she spent nursing, bathing, cuddling and crooning to him gave so much back to her in good feelings that Briah hardly minded when the stew was a little thin, or she no longer had warm furs at night nor usable clothes.

  And, Briah had to admit, Kamin helped her to solve some of her blanket and clothing problems. As winter deepened, and rain became an almost daily occurrence, Briah found it especially enjoyable to sit by the fire with Kamin on her lap while she worked on her various handcrafts. Now that the rabbit skins were piling up, it was even possible to begin work on a blanket for herself. It would require at least fifteen hides, which Briah would not have for a while yet, but she enjoyed watching the blanket grow, and planning new ways to make clothing out of the other small skins available to her.

  As she thought about making large necessities out of small supplies—something the people of her village never had to worry about—-her mind began to dwell on feathers. While ridiculously small individually, they were soft, warm—and readily available in large quantities. Early on, Briah used feathers to tickle her baby, for she loved hearing him laugh. And, as winter deepened and food became scarcer, the thought of food on the wing became more attractive. Unlike where Briah was from, the birds here did not disappear in the winter. So, with a pile of good round stones, Briah began to learn the art of flinging a stone hard accurately enough to bring down a bird.

  It was not easy. In fact, after the first few tries, Briah had to move her practice field farther down the shore to make sure Kamin wasn’t hurt. Except for the times when she had to dodge quickly to keep from being struck by one of her own missiles, Briah did nothing but feel silly. She flung stones into whole flock of birds without so much as causing a disturbance. And they looked so close.

  “Maybe if I could make a sling,” she said one night, while Kamin nursed and Briah rubbed warm fish oil into her sore shoulders. “I saw a man use a sling once at a harvest festival.”

  But she hadn’t really paid much attention to how it was made, and it surely took more leather than she could get from a rabbit. Besides, as her arms grew stronger, the problem was not force but aim. And that could only be helped by more practice.

  Meanwhile, shellfish and rabbits kept the little family fed, and the rock shelter and fire kept then warm.

  Winter ended, but it was hard to recognize spring. On the coast, it seemed no different from winter—except there were more storms. “This is not how spring is supposed to look,” Briah explained to Kamin one morning as she hurried to gather wood and clams, while clouds gathered above. Kamin lay on the sand, sucking his toes, showing no concern about the coming storm. “First of all, the snow should be melting—only there’s no snow here! Then, everything should be turning green! Not green like the water is now, but grass and leaves. And the sky should be blue, not gray! And we should be able to smell new mown hay and honeysuckle and clover and... Briah stopped to hurl a stone at a low flying gull. Her aim was improving, at least.

  “Of course, if we were back in my village right now, there would be so much work to do, we’d hardly have time to enjoy the season. I admit, I like having the time to sit by the fire and watch the waves—and you, my little joy.” She pressed her nose against Kamin’s and felt his soft skin against her cheek. She sang him a lullaby she had made up herself, to match the tune of rain falling on the rocks above their shelter. “True, this place is different from anyplace I’ve known. But it has a beauty beside which all else pales.”

  Briah loved the sea in all its moods. Sometimes it was blue and placid, with gentle, creamy waves. Sometimes it was as green as the meadow she used to play in, yet deep with a mystery the meadow never had. Sometimes it was gray and pouting, nearly still on the surface, yet grumbling below like a man whose anger has grown cold and dangerous. And often, like a man so angered, the sea would afterwards explode into a rage, pounding furious dark waves against everything in its path.

  The storms Briah lived through that spring amazed her. Never had she seen the fury of nature so concentrated into one spot. She feared the waves would reach her little cave. The winds were often fierce enough to drive in rain to douse her fire. When that happened, Briah would crouch in the very back, with Kamin nestled close, getting all he could of her warmth, for there was no starting a fire again when all the wood was soaked.

  Sometimes the waves and wind changed the layout of the entire beach, and Briah would wake to find her home redecorated. Yet this force of nature enthralled the woman who lived on its edge. Not even in the longest and loudest storm, soaked to the skin, while the cliffs above her trembled, did Briah consider leaving.

  And the storms that held her captive for days at a time often rewarded Briah for her patience. So many fish and fowl lay dead or stranded in the wake of the storms that Briah did not need to search for food. She used the brief periods between rains to smoke and dry as much food as she could then used the days of rain to process the skins, bones, feathers and shells.

  She made a new fur blanket for Kamin, and completed one for herself. It smelled sweet from the herbs she used curing the fur, and was softer than anything she had ever owned. “But not for long,” she told Kamin. “See, look what I’m doing with all these feathers. I’m sewing them into long ropes then weaving the ropes together. I’m making... feather cloth!” she exclaimed, grinning with pride at creating something so new; something no one else had thought of.

  It was a task requiring great amounts of time, but time was something Briah had plenty of just now, and the job consumed her. The thought of making something just from an idea thrilled her. Each feather was unique, yet binding them together gave Briah a chance to be an artist. White, gray, brown and black she wove them into a pattern that was particularly pleasing.

  The cloth was nearly finished when she ran out of feathers. Fearing she had stripped the area, and would have to abandon the project, Briah set out the next morning with no small amount of frustration, hoping she would have enough time to find a new nesting ground and return with feathers before the next storm hit. She had barely walked a dozen paces when she spied a large bundle of feathers tucked beneath one of the tumble of rocks that jutted out of the surf. Had they been the black and gray she was used to, Briah might have missed them. But the iridescent blues and greens of these feathers spoke of exotic birds in a distant clime—and were quite impossible to miss.

  Hesitantly, Briah picked up the bundle, half expecting to be transported to some faerie court the moment she touched it. But nothing happened, other than the delight she felt at the luxurious feel of the rare feathers. “Fish is one thing,” she said to the waves. “But no seal did this. Do I dare use them?” Briah stared at the ocean, waiting for an answer, but only felt the first drops of the next storm. “That’s answer enough,” she said. “Thank you, whoever you are, for the lovely gift. I hope one day I may thank you in person.” As she hurried back to her cave, Briah wondered if that was really a wise thing to hope for.

  Over the next few days, she created a truly beautiful piece of cloth, all bordered in blue and green and lined with a layer of down. When the cloth was finished, it served Briah as both a cloak and a blanket. It was softer than any fur she knew and warm enough so that just it and a fire kept her comf
ortable on the coldest nights. Yet it was surprisingly light. On rainy days she could wear it outside and not get wet. Once inside, the feathers shed water like a duck (which made sense, when she thought of it) and dried quickly enough to serve as a blanket by nightfall.

  Under her cloak, Briah finally had a new set of clothes, although not nearly as fine as her prized feather cloth. She had carefully stitched tiny pieces of squirrel hide, along with a few precious rabbits, into a sort of patchwork skirt. For a shirt she wore a halter out of the same material, intended simply to support her milk-swollen breasts while she walked or climbed. A pouch of squirrel skin leather filled with stones completed her outfit.

  Catching her reflection in a still pool one day, Briah laughed. The skirt barely reached her knees, and the shirt covered only her breasts. “It’s the kind of thing Nisa would probably love to put on her girls,” Briah told her son. “But I suppose I shouldn’t worry. No one can see me—and if anyone could, modesty would be the least of my problems.”

  The storms continued throughout the season, while Kamin grew and Briah watched both with interest. For Briah, her son was a world unto himself. Everything he did delighted her. The day his eyes began to track a shell she was holding; the first time he rolled from his stomach to his back; the first time he remained upright when she sat him on his bottom—these were more important to Briah than anything she could remember. The first time he smiled at her, she wept and laughed all at once.

  And while Kamin filled a place in his mother’s heart that she hadn’t even known was empty, the storms brought things to Briah’s shore that opened her mind to wonderings she had never thought herself capable of.

  Much of what washed ashore was familiar: fish, wood, kelp, and sometimes the body of a seal or dolphin. Some of it however, was clearly from far away. She found birds with brilliant plumage and oddly shaped beaks, and at once recognized the bright feathers that she wore in her cloak. Bits of wood that hinted of trees unlike those she knew, but their scent, even after who knew how long in the water, made her long for the woodland smells of her mountain home. “Flowers,” she told Kamin one day. “Of all the things I miss from my old life, I think I miss flowers the most.”

  The next day, she found a branch twined with scarlet blossoms. The fragile, sweet smelling buds made her long to see the entire tree and taste whatever strange fruit would grow there in summer. And of course, she couldn’t help wondering if this were yet another gift from her strange admirer.

  She was fairly certain the large dead animals she found were not gifts. Once she found the body of an enormous beast, larger than a cow, but shaped like a seal, except for the huge rolls of fat hanging from it, and the strange white teeth that grew outside its mouth. Briah finally broke off one of the tusks, but not until later did she realize it was ivory. She had seen the smooth shiny stuff in the markets and knew it was highly prized by merchants and artists. Her chief concern however, was how to get rid of the rotting corpse, which began to stink unbearably after a few days. Fortunately, another storm came and took the animal as violently as it had deposited it.

  That next storm brought Briah a gift of great value. A large tortoise washed ashore, dead, but with its lovely shell intact. The flesh was even tastier than Briah had heard, and the fine shell made a much better stew pot than any basket she had been able to weave. More appropriate, she thought, than an ox hide would have been, now that she ate out of the ocean’s hand.

  But of all the things to wash upon her shore, it was the objects that bore the mark of human hands that most intrigued her. There were no islands out there, no distant shore appeared even on the clearest days. Yet bits of carved wood, planed lumber, pieces of thatch, even scraps of cloth and leather appeared at odd moments, like greetings from distant places. It was strange, Briah thought. She had no desire to return to the world of men, yet the things she found sent a restless longing through her; a desire to know what was out there and embrace it all. The salt waters seethed with mystery, and lent a glamour to all they touched.

  Then, just as she felt ready to leap into the water and swim until she reached those magical places, her son’s cries or her belly’s hunger or a chill wind would call her back to the mundane concerns of real life.

  And those mundane concerns were cause for celebration as well, she reflected. In addition to the joys of seeing Kamin grow, Briah could take pride in every night that she and her son went to bed warm and fed. Living alone in the wilds as the sole support of another life required a resourcefulness she had never before imagined. So when she finally made her first kill with a stone, Briah felt yet another rush of pride.

  It didn’t go quite the way she expected, after all that practice. First of all, it wasn’t a bird she killed, but a wild pig. And it wasn’t really the stone that killed it, but rather the fall from the cliff it had been standing on. Still, Briah reflected, the pig never would have fallen if it hadn’t been hit on the head with her rock—-and thirty paces ahead and above her at such a small target was probably a fairly impressive shot.

  The meat, roasted over the fire, was delicious. Kamin, who was old enough to begin solid foods, got his first taste of pork. The fat, she rendered into soap, as she had helped her mother do so many times. Living on the shore allowed her to wash often enough, but with the soap, Briah could enjoy a level of cleanliness she hadn’t known since leaving home. She had tried to introduce soap to Lir’s stronghold, but no one had been interested.

  The hide made Briah a sturdy pair of shoes—which she hoped would soon get lots of use. She had actually gone barefoot since the boots from her slave days had worn out. On the sandy beach, shoes were more bother than help, and her feet were tough enough to take the mountain paths without much pain. But if she ever wanted to explore her home, or even scale the nearby rocks which led to other sections of beach, Briah needed shoes. With the leather that remained, she made a better pouch for carrying stones, and was never without it.

  And now that she had the new shoes and pouch, it seemed quite suddenly to be time for Briah to begin ranging further afield. There were other factors as well. Summer was in full flower. “Or should that be ‘full sky’?” she asked. There were few flowers in sight, but for the first time since she arrived, a wide blue sky stretched overhead, and went days at a time without rain or clouds. The days lasted longer too, and Briah knew that Midsummer Eve would soon be here.

  After more than eight months of being content—no, grateful— to stay on one tiny spot of land, Briah was restless to see where the shore went when it passed from her view. The land to the east was difficult to reach because of the steep cliff that jutted into the water near her home. It was also the direction from which she had fled. But westward, the shore continued gently. West for Briah was the direction of the unknown—and of safety, for it had brought her here.

  On a bright summer morning, Briah set Kamin into his new carrier on her back, slipped her arm through the handle of a large collecting basket, and set out towards the west. The going was easy, and despite several stops to gather food and nurse Kamin, Briah’s home was lost from view before noon.

  They climbed a small rise to rest and eat a midday meal. Kamin, who was beginning to crawl, played happily in the sand, while Briah enjoyed the food and the view. The sea, she decided had an infinite number of faces and moods. It was nice to simply lie on the sand and watch them.

  As they continued west in the afternoon, the land began to change. The cliff dropped off to nothing but low, rocky hills, then finally disappeared altogether. Briah found herself in a land where the beach led directly into low, scrubby woodlands and bogs. The sun was slanting low in the sky; it was time to think about going back. They had passed several caves and sheltered niches on their journey. One of them, she felt, would gladly shelter them for the night. Briah liked the idea of camping out just for fun. It was one more thing she would never have thought of before coming here.

  She hiked up the small rise to view one last stretch of land—-then froze i
n horror.

  Less than a hundred paces away, four men were pulling a pair of boats from the water. Briah crouched behind the tangled willow scrub on the hill and watched in silence. The men unloaded the boat. Three of them carried fish in baskets and nets. The fourth gathered up the remaining nets and all their gear. Then they all trudged up the sand and disappeared into the trees.

  Briah was surprised that the boats were simply left overturned on the strand. She considered taking a closer look at them, but decided it would be too risky to go out in the open like that. The woods, on the other hand, offered good protection. If there were people living less than a day’s journey from Briah’s home, she needed to know more about them.

  The village was easy to spot: the path the men had taken was well worn, and a ragged column of smoke rose from just inside the trees. Kamin was asleep on Briah’s back, and she prayed he would stay that way until she was finished.

  Briah followed the trail for about forty paces, and then, slipped behind a tree. Parting the branches, she saw a cluster of huts made of straw and mud. People moved among them, doing chores that were at once familiar and foreign to Briah. The fishermen gave their catch to a group of women who began splitting and cleaning them. Younger women then strung them on lines and hung them over acrid smelling fires. Two boys leaned against a hut and mended a fishing net. An old woman with a loud hacking cough plucked feathers from a waterfowl.

  A quick inventory told Briah that everything in this village was made here. Though it was but a few days away from Finool, it was likely that no one here had ever been there. If anyone saw her, they would probably not know her for a murderess or an escaped slave. But she wasn’t willing to bet her life on that guess.

  She watched for a few more minutes. The whole place seemed dreary and gray. Flies buzzed over a midden of fish guts and other refuse. When the wind shifted, Briah nearly gagged—and not just from the midden. Despite living so near the shore, these people apparently did not bathe very often, and had clearly never heard of soap.