OD 2.3.2004 [11:42 p.m.]

three short stories by our very own jess.

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There Ran a Thread

A Selchie Story

This story begins with a girl possessed by the sea. She longed for it so deeply that people began to think her strange, and her friends could no longer understand her, although the best of them tried. And the longing had struck her from nowhere at all, and in all this longing was the image of a familiar dark-eyed man she had never seen before in her life. It came so that he became a part of her dreams. The dark-eyed man was never in the foreground, and when she turned to see him properly, in her dreams, he quickly vanished. The girl woke and thought she could hear the dim murmuring of a receding tide.

Now, the girl didn�t live in the middle of a vast continent, caged on all sides by land--but neither did she live that close to the shore. She couldn�t hear the sea; she could only long for it. One day, writing about this longing in her journal, the girl put down her pen to give her hand a rest, and she heard music. And in that music there was the call of drums, pipes, fiddles, haunting and joyful.

Now, she heard only one line of music, over and over and over, but the line was like the mer-folk�s version of a fishing line, and it caught her. There was nothing to do but follow the music, and there was nothing else the girl wanted to do. For a moment she hesitated at the door, thinking of her family who didn�t understand her, but whom she loved.

Then there was a great tug on the line of music, which was hooked, by this time, in her heart, and the girl left her house and her family, barefoot and without a jacket. For three nights and three days, the girl walked through valleys and over hills, until she reached the sea�s edge.

It wasn�t just any sea�s edge, either. It was a cove, all rocks and seclusion, she was drawn to, and it was full of the musicians -- wild selchies, all dark-eyed and dancing. The selchies, men and women both, turned to look at her, and their sad, dark eyes lit up. They drew her, this time with their arms and their strong hard fingers, into their midst, and those still playing music played an exultant reel.

It was a song that not many who have seen the selchies at play out of their skins (and there are not many of those at all) have ever heard, because it was the song they play when one of their own comes back to the sea after a long separation. In the girl�s blood there ran a thread of kinship to them from some ancestor or ancestress, long forgotten, and the longing in her at last took a form she could properly name. The selchies took the girl, then, down beneath the waves with them, to her own one true love, and her own lost family.

They left behind only a single drum, and the tide soon took that too.

The End

The Gold Shining Of

A Mermaid Tale

There once was a girl who longed for the sea. One day, she stopped writing to give her hand a rest and to listen to the sound of her heartbeat. The girl couldn�t really hear her heartbeat, which is why she decided to try and listen to it. But instead of her heartbeat, she heard a music calling to her, rushing into and through her veins, a compulsion unbreakable - but quite different from music others might have heard if they were called to the sea.

This music was the single, simple melody of a voice as full of longing as her own heart - but also so sad and old that it resonated in the bones at the same time it ran in the heat of her blood. If she didn�t follow the sound, her heart would have broke, and her heart was breaking even as she followed it. There was nothing else to do.

The girl walked, barefoot from her house, until she left behind blood in her footprints and blood in the glitter of broken glass - which, as you know, is mighty like the glitter of unshed tears, and the salty sea. At last, the girl followed the voice to a lonely, rock-strewn shore. And there she saw the mermaid. The girl saw the mermaid, more beautiful then a single star in a dark and lightless night, singing her down, spelling the girl to her. Entranced, the girl walked close enough for the waves to bite at her feet; for a long time the mermaid and the girl only stared at each other, and each ones eyes grew wider and wider.

The girl tried to speak to the mermaid, but the mermaid always answered in a language, lilting and musical as the sea, that the girl didn�t understand.

Admiringly, the mermaid reached out to touch a strand of the girl�s golden hair, and the sea-water that dripped from her long white fingers immediately darkened the hair where it fell. Then the mermaid said something in the language the girl didn�t understand, and splashed away, beckoning the girl into the sea to swim with her. It is hard to resist the invitation of a mermaid and the girl did not hesitate although the sea-water stung her raw feet. When the girl went into the sea the mermaid took her down, down beneath the waves.

And what the mermaid had said, in the language the girl did not know, when she touched the girl�s golden hair was, �the gold shining of the sun for the sea.�

The End

The Fin-man�s Wife

A story of the Fin-men

This story begins with a girl writing about her longing. Many stories do, and as she wrote about the sea (which she longed for) she felt it all. Her hand cramped as she wrote, and she put the pen down for just a moment. Then, in that moment, the girl heard a strange music, whose call she had to answer. Now, this music was neither joyful or sad, but insistent and haunting, like a question with an answer you know you�ve forgotten, but you equally know you had. The girl walked, barefoot and bareheaded, until she reached the sea�s cold edge.

And waiting for her, hideously ugly and ill-tempered, was one of the fin-men, and it was he who called her down to the sea�s cold edge, and it was he who smiled - not she. He grabbed the girl, who broke out of the spell and fought - to no avail, of course, and he pulled her struggling down under the waves to be his bride. And a most abusive, violent, brutal a husband the fin-man was. He was rough and often beat her merely for the reflection of himself in her eyes, or because he felt like it.

The fin-man�s wife longed and longed for the land, for the air, until all that longing for the air broke the enchantment that allowed her to breathe underwater, what with the water getting offended - and she drowned. The fin-man, being the kind of husband I�ve said, wouldn�t let her ghost go. And so her shade was trapped there in the harbor, where she appears, a sad figure, in glass reflections and mirrors, always appealing silently for aid.

And never getting it.