Prologue.
Collected tales of fey isle. ( A work in progress) Grand Mother’s stories.
It is a well known fact that rats will leave a sinking ship. Their tails wormlike, slithering wet across the deck. They know by instinct to get out when the going is good.
I was told of a storm that struck this Isle with such force that it is said that it lashed the shores and changed its shape forever. Waves that built their muscle and weight far out in the ocean, hit the shore with such a pounding that the Island seemed to creak and groan. The wind pushed and moaned at the wooden doors of the houses.
Branches scratched and clawed black fingers at windows.
Candles guttered, their flames sputtering in the wind sending out black puffs of smoke like distress signals as their small bright flames fought against the darkness.
Small children sharing a bed ,clung to each other beneath their quilts at the sound of the pounding wrath of the wind and rain; their faces lit up like small moons by the flashes of lightning.The waves worked hard, beaching great piles of seaweed and shingle, sculpting it into mountains of green sludge and stone. In the valleys lay giant bones of bleached driftwood, like dinosaur skeletons, scattered along the shoreline.
Then, the next morning , in the pale watery light when all was calm again, the shadows of the Islanders were seen, picking their way down to the sea. They searched the treasures of the deep, turning stones and scraping seaweed back from wood, examining the changes wrought by the storm. It was with this foraging along the shoreline in amongst the sludge and shingle that they found her.
She was curled around a stone, hugging it tightly to her chest. There was seaweed tangled through her hair and scattered everywhere around her were small delicate shells, looking for all the world like confetti strewn across her body.
Now it has been said that she was on board a ship that the Islanders themselves had tempted, brought to the rocks with great fires and wreckers greed. There were others who said the selchies must have brought her, that the seal people took pity and pushed and nuzzled her to the shoreline.
Others said that she was of the blood of the seal folk but they had lost her in the great waves.
Of course there were dark mutterings that she was a witch and that she survived the sea, it left her, spewed her forth like some unfinished meal, unable to swallow her devilish skin. There were those folk who did not comment nor mutter; they just stared at her in a daze of wonder. They thought she was a gift from the sea, a miracle of salt and wind.
After the shock of finding the girl lying amongst the stones and the seaweed, the Islanders carried her body to the only person on the Island who knew any healing. The general opinion was that she was dead anyway, her body was cold to touch and her skin had no glow of blood pumping beneath it. She was lifted and carried gently, by Calumn a local fisherman, who had claimed last year to have seen the selchie folk gathering on the rocks as he returned homewards at dusk.
He strode ahead of the little band of storm weary folk, the girls head lolling against his shoulder, her arms swinging loosely by his sides.
He watched her face closely as he carefully placed her on the wooden table and with great tenderness he asked if there was anything that could be done.
Strong hands took her from him, a voice told him to leave, but to come later with wood for the fire. He searched the gloom of the croft for the source of his instructions but could only see the dim outline of a small woman. As he left there looked once again at the girl where she lay, the miracle of the storm.
