Writing prompt 1.3: The Selkie

The selkie

When I was very young, I heard the legend of the selkie, and it captured my imagination. I don’t remember where I heard it from, but this is the version i remember and told my children:

Once, in a small town nestled between the jagged mountains and the frothing sea, lived a simple fisherman. Every day he went out to the waves, climbed on his boat, and set out to catch his limit.

One day, the ocean boiled beneath gunmetal clouds filled with torrents of rain. The fisherman stayed in his hovel next to the sea; he was watching the storm.

Before his eyes, a form washed up on the beach. The fisherman ran out into the piercing rain, ducking his neck into his slicker, trying to stay dry. It was a young lady! She had washed up on the shore in the storm.

He picked her up and brought her into the house. Over the course of the next few weeks, he nursed her back to health. During this time, he fell in love with the beautiful maiden.

One night, returning from fishing, he asked the woman if she would be his wife. She agreed, because she loved him as well. But she did say, gazing out at the sea, “One day, I will return to my home, as the land of my birth is my first love, and you could never follow me there. For the journey is impossible for one such as you, dear husband.”

The fisherman was overjoyed. They became married. The next day he went out to sea again, as was usual. But his new wife begged and pleaded for him to stay. “Dear husband! Please do not go! My loneliness will overwhelm me and I fear what will happen. “, she explained.

He attempted to calm her fears. “Look here, my beautiful wife! We must fish if we are to live. I know no other way. Now, I will return in the evening. ” He kissed her tenderly and departed.

The fisherman returned after a hard days work, weary and eagar to see his new wife. But the home was empty, and the wind blew through the hovel, wailing and sobbing.

The fisherman ran out of his house, and looked everywhere for his bride, but every where he looked, she was not. She was gone. He wept bitterly and cursed himself for a fool.

The next day, the sea raged beneath a sullen sky, a storm had blown in during the night. The fisherman went out to fish anyway, saying, “What does it matter, should I lose my life? All that I loved is gone.”

While fishing, his boat was capsized, tossing him hopelessly into the ocean. He breathed deep of the cold water, praying for oblivion. As he drifted toward the bottom, a beautiful, sleek seal pulled him to the shore, saving his life.

As he lay gasping in the surf, the sleek seal changed into his lost bride before his eyes, her brown seal skin falling away like a cloak.

“Dear husband! Though I love you with all my heart, we can never be. For I am a selkie, and my home is the sea.”

The fisherman was heartbroken, but he knew what must be, must be. Now, every day as he returns home, he scans the horizon for his lady love, dancing among the waves in her cloak of seals.