Special Edition II: The Selkie Who Swam
Stories are medicine...and this original tale came through me for you.
Stories are medicine.
Stories do not require that we do, be, act anything–we need only listen.
Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life.
Stories are far older than the art and science of psychology, and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes.
Most old collections of fairy tales and mythos existent today have been scoured clean of the scatological, the sexual, the perverse, the pre-Christian, the feminine, the Goddess, and initiatory, the medicines for various psychological malaises, and the directions for spiritual raptures.
Fairy tales in books have somehow been starched and ironed flat until much of their vigor is depleted.
But they are not lost forever.
(Sentences snipped from the introduction of Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, pages 14-20.)
Dear Readers:
This is indeed a special edition. Somehow I managed to be in the right mindset, with the right soul space, with the right number of solitary hours at my writing desk, and this story came to me. Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls this “trance telling” and says it is “one of the oldest ways of telling.”
I found a story-seed, planted it in my mind, watered it with written words, and watched it grow, then climb, then blossom right before my eyes in a matter of days. While writing, when I reached for a detail to include, El Duende, the wind messenger, sat on my shoulder and whispered it to me. This is one instance “where a story is ‘attracted’ to the trance-teller and told through her.”
I offer this tale to you as fresh and definite as a drifting snowflake or as fresh and fragrant as hot bread from the oven, because this story came how it is and it is how it came. Academia taught me to polish, polish, polish my prose to a high-shine, but polishing a snowflake or a loaf of bread is ridiculous and ruinous. I know enough to let it be.
I offer this story as some “soul vitamins, some observations, some map fragments, some little pieces of pine pitch for fastening feathers to trees to show us the way, and some flattened underbrush to guide the way back to el mundo subterráneo, the underground world, our psychic home.”
I offer this story to you as “soul-making.”
May the wind messenger blow your way and bless you, too, my friend.
Kate
Once upon a time, there was a pod of selkies who lived close to the ocean, but not in it. The beautiful, curved women knew they loved to gather together on the rocks in the sea spray under the sun, but the knowledge of the sea was long lost to them. So they lived on the sandy shore as women, mingling with men, who loved having the selkie-women with them always.
****
There were old tales of selkies: ocean seals who could shed their skins and stand as women on the shore, and tales of men stealing selkie skins to keep the beautiful, wild women land-bound forever.
But, no one ever found any such seal skin. It was dismissed as an old, outdated myth told by foolish people.
Everyone knew that women lived on land, and that a woman’s best life was lived as a wife with many children!
****
Sometimes, a woman would wander too far and never return to tell her tale. The emptiness of her lost story seemed strange and dangerous. Women were told not to wander far. There is safety on the sandy shore and safety with a family and village.
But, in spite of warnings, young women would still sneak to the rocky shore in the moonlight, splashing each other and laughing. Only to quietly return home, no one the wiser.
****
One day, a young woman named Naiama decided to explore more on her own. She couldn’t quite name her discontent, but she knew she needed something different, something that was not on land, something that was far away…
and her heart told her to look towards the ocean.
****
She walked far along the shoreline, beyond the sight of the village pod. When the wind, the waves, and the chattering of seagulls was all she could hear, she turned towards the ocean and carefully climbed the high, sharp rocks.
On the other side, she saw a small cove carved into the rocky shore by the ocean below. Picking her way down, she found a tide pool nestled at the base of the black cliff.
What wonders lay captured in that little stretch of water! Crabs of all sizes, an orange starfish, clear blue rocks, four tiny flashing fish.
****
As she sat beside the pool, trailing her hand in the water, absorbed in her observations of the sea creatures, the ocean waves slowly reached for her, again and again, until it was lapping at her toes. The water came higher and higher, and she watched until each wave offered the fish a way back to the ocean.
Her heart lifted as she watched the fish escape the small tide pool in one wash of a wave and go back to their home in the wild deep.
****
Naiama came four times to her secret tide pool in the small cove, and the fourth time she came by moonlight. It seemed right, with the world coated in silver and silence, to be by the ocean she was learning to love more than fear.
This time, she walked past her tide pool to the edge of the rocks, and looked down into the deep black of the watery drop-off.
****
The night was still hot from the scorching sun, and she was curious. Finding a perfect hand-hold in the rock, she eased her body into the delightfully cool water.
With no solid place to plant her feet, she naturally started kicking. The water swirling around her legs felt foreign, and also familiar…
When she looked down, her feet were fins! I must be dreaming! she thought, and, with her curious nature, her next thought was: I wonder what else I can do in this dream?
****
She had often wondered what the fish saw in the water. So, still holding on to the rock, she took a deep breath and dunked her head under.
When she opened her eyes, the salt water stung at first…and then, it was soothing. It seemed that her eyes grew large, adjusting to see the moonbeams dancing in the dark water. Her dark hair floated around her face, air bubbles caught in the strands, like pearls.
She found she could hold her breath for a very long time!
****
She finally surfaced with a huge smile and secret delight. Her excitement gave her courage, and her cove was small and familiar, so she took another breath and let go of the shore-rock.
She floated at first, suspended in the caress of the water. When she started to move, she found swimming to be the easiest thing in the world! The freedom from gravity was glorious, the softened sounds were soothing, the water nourished her skin and her hair and her soul. The depths. The ocean. Her home.
****
She swam all night, easily surfacing to grab a breath of air before diving again to explore her dream land with the coral shapes and the fish shadows and the waving sea plants.
****
When morning light shone through the waves, she finally pulled herself up onto the rocks. Wringing the water from her hair, she was exhausted, but she was laughing to herself because that couldn’t have been a dream at all!
The stories were all wrong!
****
Walking back to her other home, buoyant with self-discovery, dripping with sea water, she saw a young man walking towards her. He was tall with broad shoulders. His arms were well-muscled, and his hands were large and capable. His skin was deeply tanned from the sun, making his sky-eyes glow clear blue. He smiled gently at her, and her heart skipped a little. She could see he had a good and kind heart, this Son of the Sun.
And he saw her, a beautiful wild woman, sparkling with water droplets and secret laughter.
They walked together back to the village and met together often after that. She showed him her tide pool. He showed her his fishing boat. They lay on the sand and watched the stars. She found that her head fit perfectly under his collarbone in the dip of his shoulder, close to his heart.
****
After a year of meeting every day, they married, found a house, and started having children. They started building the familiar and expected land-dream.
And, life was steady.
They had three children: The oldest boy was strong and kind with curious hazel eyes. The second boy was gentle and playful with large, sensitive sky-eyes. The third, a girl, was long and graceful with deep brown eyes and a strong spark of creativity.
****
But, shore life grew heavy for Naiama.
For 12 years, she cared for her husband, she cared for her three children, and she cared for her mother, who was in very poor health. She did not have time or energy to visit her tide pool or swim in her secret cove–so, she did not care for herself.
But, she did her best to deny the dryness, the grit, the daily grind. After all, how could she be ungrateful for her home with her kind-eyed man and her beautiful children?
How could she be ungrateful for the fulfilled land-dream?
****
Still, if she let herself, she grieved for the deep solitude of the water.
She thought other village mothers might understand. She tried to talk to them: How do they tolerate the dry days and time crumbling through their fingers? Is there a way to keep fresh sea water on the sand? What if it wasn’t a seal skin they needed, but swimming lessons? How do they keep from becoming brittle and broken without water?
Some looked at her in shock.
Some looked at her with pity.
Some looked at her in fear.
Some looked at her with impatience.
And, she realized, they had never swam. They did not know.
So, she carried her grief alone.
****
Eventually, though, her pretense failed. Although Naiama was still young, her joints began to creak, the skin on her hands and heels started to crack and bleed, and her eyes were always bloodshot and dry. Her energy seemed to seep into the sand as soon as she stood up in the morning, making her body feel heavy–too heavy. So, she started hiding in her hut, keeping to her bed, unmotivated and exhausted.
The sky-eyed man diligently worked his fishing boat every day for his family. He did not know where his wife’s sparkle had gone or how to help her.
****
One day, a hurricane reached their village: winds tore at man-made walls, rain swept rubble back and forth, solid trees tumbled into twisted piles, and her family ran inland for protection.
In the aftermath, Naiama’s mother moved far away, and her family looked for a new house and a new community. They claimed a spot on the edge of the next village, not far from the rocky shore, but still close enough for the children to attend school on the sand.
****
The day Naiama sent her youngest to school for the first time, she cried. Not as other mothers did (because her children were not with her), but because the two brothers walked on either side of their sister, holding her tiny hands as they walked over the dune to the schoolhouse. She saw that her children were good and kind and would take care of each other.
Her chest seemed to open in a rush of relief as their little heads vanished from sight. She was relieved of her care-burden, at least for a little while! She looked toward the ocean on the horizon, remembering that she wanted to go, but her body was still too heavy, and her bed called to her, and she went back to sleep.
She slept like that everyday for a year.
****
The next year, Naiama was well enough to walk slowly along the rocky shore in her precious hours of solitude. There she met other edge-of-the-village women.
She met a mother-maiden: a brown-eyed woman who became a mother too young.
She met a mother-witch: a purple haired woman practicing everyday magic.
She met a mother-crone: a soft woman entering her wisdom years.
And,
She was mother-Naiama: the curious one who explored before.
They started meeting regularly on the rocks in the sea spray under the sun, and they started wondering and talking about the long lost knowledge of the ocean, of themselves.
****
Naiama showed her friends her secret cove, and this became their place.
They often sat on the rocks there, shoulder to shoulder, swinging their feet in the water over the deep ocean drop-off.
The mother-maiden shared her insight.
The mother-witch shared her magic.
The mother-crone shared her wisdom.
The mother-Naiama shared her curiosity.
And, they each shared and reflected back to each other their soul-searchings and yearnings while hardly noticing their dainty feet turning into half-fins…
****
“I can’t live on shore anymore,” the mother-crone said one day as they were sunning themselves in the cove. The friends looked at each other in a knowing way and nodded. They had felt a change coming. “My children are grown, my husband can manage without me, but I feel that I will die an early death in this sand trap!” she exclaimed.
Without another word, the friends took the mother-crone by her hands and helped her into the deep water. “Don’t let go!” she said in breathless excitement as she bobbed shoulder deep in the cove. “We won’t!” the three women laughed.
Then, with the first flick of her full fin, her face lit up with joy. “I…I think I can do it!” she said, and let go herself.
****
Naiama’s heart was bursting with joy and excitement as she watched her dear friend’s amazement at her own strength, her natural capabilities, her freedom and solitude–all blooming in the environment where she belonged.
And the memory of her first swim flooded her mind and her senses.
****
With excitement and trepidation, Naiama returned home. She thought of her friend, safe in the ocean cove, healing and resting and exploring her new found strength. She longed for it herself, and the time had come for her to say so.
That night, while she rested her head under her husband's collarbone, in the dip of his shoulder, close to his heart, she said: “Dearest, I love you and our children so much, but I am dry and weary. I don’t think I am like other land-women. I need time away, time to swim, time in the water–longer than an afternoon or an evening, I need four days.”
The sky-eyed man was worried, equally at how unwell his wife had been and at the uncertainty of letting her go. But, he was not a controlling man and trusted her. “Of course you can go for four days,” he said, kissing her forehead, “the children and I will be here when you return.”
****
On the appointed day, the three friends met at their cove and waved to the placid seal sunning itself out on a small rock island beyond the cove. The seal slipped into the water and then its beautiful seal head surfaced, gentle eyes waiting for her sisters to join her.
The three women eased into the water, found their fins, and joined their friend in the deep sea.
****
For the selkie who swam, four days came and went all too quickly. But, Naiama did return to shore, rested and exhausted, peaceful and wanting.
And so, Naiama lived forever after with one foot on land and one fin in the sea,
with her soul wrapped around her seal sisters and her heart wrapped around her family.
The balance between two worlds as natural as the tide,
which comes and goes, but always arrives.
Because she will never again neglect her nature.
Visit katewebbwrites.com for more information and free resources. Thank you for your readership!