And so while she hadn’t spent much more than a dozen afternoons by herself with her grandmother, and had only actually heard a small number of her great grandmother’s tales, every word of them were etched on her young mind. They were much more memorable than those of the battered children’s books with their toothless pastel colours and safe endings, or indeed any of the books she owned and read repetitively. But she could remember every phrase of her great grandmother’s stories-“The Orphan Girl and the Goblins,” “The Seamstress and the Tricksie Brownies,” “The Changeling and Its Sister,” “Bluebeard’s Young Bride,” and, of course, “The Selkie Mother.”
Yet even with those vivid warnings to deter her, here she found herself being pulled out to sea on the back of a changeling man. She could almost hear her great grandmother say, “I told you so.”
The sky continued to darken, but she could see something on the horizon. It was a grey lump that grew quickly into a black, rocky jag of a windswept island, probably not large enough to provide food or shelter for even one small sheep.
Which is not to say that it was empty. There were shapes moving along the top of it; she could see human silhouettes dancing on the island’s crest. As they drew nearer, Gretchen saw that there were also seals watching them, banging their flippers and tails in time to the beat of the music that now drifted out to them. It was a selkie ceilidh.
They circled the island, slowly coming in where the rocks dipped lower into the sea. As she glided by, she saw that they were all naked, just as the man, Ron Glass, had been on the beach. They danced with a rhythmic, primal swing and sang in a chorus to the accompaniment of pipes.
They came to a shallow inlet and her selkie scraped along the sand. He gave a wriggle and a flap, and then she was holding on to the man, the bit of seal skin flapping between them.
They scampered up onto the slippery rocks, the man rather gallantly helping Gretchen up. For the briefest of moments Gretchen was impressed by this, before she remembered that he had abducted her.
“There is just one fire on the island,” he explained to her as he led her up the rocks by the hand, “but you may not be allowed very near it on your first night. You may keep my skin tonight,” he said, reaching the top and flinging it over her shoulders. “I should not let you have it, but it will keep you warm on a cold night.”
She followed him up the rock and pulled the seal skin around her very cold and very wet body. It was soft, thick, and warm but no drier than her or anything else on the desolate and windy rock. But it was another layer between her and the elements, and it kept the wind off of her, and she was grateful for it.
She hunched her bulky, awkward frame even further inside the skin as she came nearer to the dancing selkies. They were beautiful-the most beautiful people Gretchen had ever seen. All were tall and lithe and perfectly formed. A large fire pit burned in the centre, and the flames and embers lit their skin with a warm red and yellow glow, making them luminescent and otherworldly. The girls were willowy and soft-skinned with wide hips and long, dexterous hands and feet that they twisted inward and out in time to the rhythm; their long hair, alternately straight and curly, swinging. The men were built similarly to Ron, but some were fair, some were dark, and one or two were red, all with fine, firm, and occasionally sharp, Celtic features. They were uniformly smooth and unadorned by any hair except that which grew on their heads.
They all wove around one another, frenetically spinning and twisting. They did not ever knock into another or trip one another up, but when someone crossed their path, they would reach out and grab that person, sometimes quite intimately, and swing them around and then let them go, and both would continue their whirling jig. Their dance mimicked the path and motion of the sparks that the fire threw up into the night sky.
No one took much of a notice of Gretchen. They were too busy dancing and singing their song.
Up and Dance, for light is dawning,
Night will turn to day;
Dance because the world is turning,
And we cannot stay.
Hear the sounds of stars revolving,
Sweeping night away-
Sing a song of dark resounding,
For we cannot stay.
See, the sky at last is lightening,
The sea will soon be grey;
Weep my friends, for dawn is breaking,
And we cannot stay.
The burning orb of fire is rising,
laugh, and music play;
The cover for our fun is fading,
And we cannot stay.
Why this cruelty, Brightness shining,
Why this price we pay?
Why should unclothed flesh need shaming?
Why, I cannot say.
Curse the sun and keep on dancing,
Grab my hand and say,
“Dance the night, and dance in darkness,
Come, I cannot stay.
“Life is short and pleasure fleeting,
Grab what sin you may.
Morning brings our deeds’ discovering,
Thus we cannot stay.”
Someday perhaps, we’ll need not hiding,
Light and law decay;
The day the sun his house not biding
Will be the day we stay.
Until that hour we must keep moving,
Blow the pipes and play!
Dance with me and dance to morning,
For we cannot stay.
Gretchen stood, watching, and somehow the orbit of the dancers grew, and the cold blackness of the night shrunk so that the orange dancers were the only created thing in the universe, and she was standing on the outside edge. They spun before her, those who passed closest would hold their arms out to her when they saw her. A few of them even grabbed her briefly, but she never let herself be drawn in. Even so, she found herself jostling awkwardly in the path of the dancers, drawn into their orbit. There seemed to be more of them now. Perhaps more of the seals had slipped their skins off and joined in. She felt doubly out of place now-even more unattractive and clumsy in the context of such beauty and grace of movement.
There was a strange elation to being here, with them and among them, and it was with a warm flush of embarrassed excitement when she realised it was because they all seemed to want her here. It was such a profoundly unfamiliar feeling, and it felt so achingly good. .
Was she under a spell? She knew she should feel more anxiety than she did. She knew she should try to escape, but only in a vague and abstract way that brought no compelling emotion or immediacy.