The Visitors (8 page)

I started doodling a selkie of my own. The lines that formed beneath my biro left a crude, crooked-looking thing. It was just a seal, really. I couldn’t feel any of Mutch’s ferocity towards the creature. Every story I’d ever heard about selkies said they were benign and peaceful, but it wasn’t something I knew much about. Then again, everything I’d heard about kelpies said they were evil to the core. That was very one-sided, so maybe that was wrong, too. Maybe kelpies were lovely things. Why was Mutch so blinded by the selkies in particular? I carefully circled his name on my notepad, and added a question mark.

I heard Izzy before I saw him, and returned both book and notepad to my bag. Huffing and gasping, he crested the sand and reached the scrub. He carried a massive piece of wood on one shoulder, bent halfway to double supporting the weight and grunting with each step. I jumped to help him, and took a few quick steps in his direction. With his head bowed, he glanced up, saw me and shook his head, droplets of sweat pinging from his hair. I backed off and let him pass, the pole trailing him by a metre or more. He passed his shack, paused, then hefted the wood from his shoulder to the ground. It dropped on one end, then landed flat with a thud that sent vibrations into the soles of my feet.

‘Hey, Izzy. Glad to see you’re still here. Worried you’d be next to disappear.’

Still bent double, heaving for air, he waved a hand. After a minute of steady breathing, he inched round and looked up.

‘Don’t joke about that,’ he said, grimacing. ‘You fed the fire. Good lass. I was worried it might go out.’

‘Just kidding. I don’t think there’s anything actually happening.’

‘Perhaps not, but that’s two of my pals gone missing. I’m worried about it, even if you’re not.’

‘Anders and Ronny are heading out tonight to have a look themselves.’

‘Anders is back, is he?’

‘Aye. Something to do with a football match. It all seemed very important.’

‘Well, good for them.’

Izzy stood up tall and leaned backwards, stretching his arms out and upwards. It was like the timber had squashed him flat, and now he unfolded to full size. He was built like a bear, tall and thickset. He must have been in his fifties, or older, but he worked hard and kept in good health. Framed by a thick straggle of grey hair, his face was angular but friendly.

‘This might be a stupid question,’ I said, ‘but were you carrying a telegraph pole?’

He grinned at me.

‘You’re right. That is a stupid question. It’s only half a telegraph pole.’

‘Where’s the other half?’

‘I’ll be back for that tomorrow,’ he said, wincing and putting a hand to the small of his back, ‘if the body lets me.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘MacKendrick’s farm. He wanted shot of it.’

I did a quick calculation.

‘That’s three miles away. You’ve come all that way?’

‘Aye, well. I might have stopped for a wee pint in the Bull.’

‘It is important to stay hydrated during exercise,’ I said sarcastically, sounding like my mother. I walked along the pole in careful steps, one foot before the other, feeling the warmth of the wood in my bare feet.

‘And obviously that was my thinking, doctor. My thanks for your concern.’

‘Where’s it going?’ I asked.

‘I thought I’d expand a little. A wee extension. You know me. I’m all about the accumulation of material wealth.’

‘I know you need a bath.’

‘And I shall have one, in the sea, when you’ve gone,’ he replied with dignity. ‘You whippersnapper. When are you going again? In fact, why are you here?’

‘I’ve come to ask you about stories.’

‘Stories, is it? Well, I know a few of them.’

‘Do you know any about selkies?’

Izzy closed his eyes, thinking, and chewed his lip.

‘Selkies? Aye, I’ve a few of them and all. Every shennachie worth his salt knows a selkie story.’

‘What’s a shennachie?’

‘A storyteller of the oldest sort. He collects stories as he wanders, and tells them from memory. He keeps them stored nice and safe up here,’ said Izzy, tapping his temple.

‘Well, there you go. And I thought you were a beachcomber.’

‘Oh, I’m a lot of things. Take a pew, lass.’

I went back to my upturned crate. Izzy had built himself a chair from driftwood, long ago, and padded it with old cushions taken from the tip in Tanno. He settled himself back into his seat and poked at the fire.

‘All right. What do you want to know?’ he said, looking up at me. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘It’s homework. We’re doing a report on Scottish folklore,
and I picked selkies. I’ve got a book already, but I thought I’d see if you knew anything.’

‘Books are a waste of time,’ he grunted. ‘No one remembers what they read in a book. People need to hear it, they need to be involved. That’s why we have campfire stories,’ he said, nudging the charred logs in their makeshift grate. As he rolled them over, they loosed a new burst of heat.

‘Selkies, selkies. All right. Are you ready?’

I drew my feet up onto the crate, hugging my knees.

Izzy started to tell a story.

Once upon a time, there was a poor crofter. He lived alone in his wee cottage on the shores of a windswept island. He kept chickens, and had a pig or two in the byre out back. He grew tatties and turnips. He fished in the river, and set nets in a tidal pool. He kept crab pots by the shore, and collected firewood from the beach. Every few weeks, he’d gather his surplus and take it to sell at market, returning with flour, cloth, salt and whatever else he needed to get by. By night he darned his socks or fixed his nets. The crofter survived, day to day, but his was a lonely, cheerless existence, and there was a sadness inside him that wouldn’t leave him be. It nagged at him like a sore tooth.

Now, there came a time when a travelling musician performed at the market. He played the fiddle most beautifully, and the crofter was transfixed. When the fiddle was upbeat, the crofter tapped his foot in time with the music, tasting the warmth of whisky on a hot summer night. And when the fiddle played a lament, the crofter felt the chill of midwinter, all alone in his wee cottage.

The crofter believed with all his heart that this wonderful music would cure the sadness caught inside him. He resolved at once to learn the fiddle for himself. He sold his mother’s old loom, some family treasures and two of his piglets, and bought himself a fiddle, the best he could afford. He took his instrument back to his cottage and he started to practice.

O, but how he practised. When he first woke in the morning, he played a little sitting up in bed. He came home for his lunch and played the fiddle while his broth boiled over on the grate. And then, every night, when he returned from the field or from checking on his crab pots, he’d build up his fire, ease off his boots, take up his fiddle and play and play and play. He played until his fingers ached, and his elbows turned stiff, then played until he’d worked them loose again.

After long years of hard practice, that crofter played second to no other. Each night, the sweetest music poured from the windows of his little cottage. He played the fastest dances, conjuring the wildest ceilidh from a few simple notes, and he played the slowest, softest, saddest songs you’ve ever heard.

The crofter had learned the fiddle as well as any man alive. But no matter how well he played, still that nagging sadness chewed at him, eating at his insides like a rat. He took to sitting on the foreshore every night, playing laments to his own loneliness, and the mournful music slid across the water softer than snowfall. He played until dark. The sadness sounded like night itself.

One night, a selkie swam past the island. She heard the fiddle, and stopped to listen. She was entranced by the music, and coveted the crofter’s skill with his instrument. She resolved to take it for her own. Stepping onto the shore, she emerged from her skin and took the form of a beautiful woman. She conjured her skin into the form of a shell, and hid it deep in a rockpool, then ran to the cottage, weeping that she was lost and alone. The crofter was a good man, and of course he gave her shelter. To protect her from the cold, he gave her his jacket and boots. To make her comfortable, he gave up his bed to the selkie woman. He fed her and cared for her.

As time went along, she bewitched him with her beauty,
and they became lovers. At last, the crofter felt that heavy sadness lifted from his spirit. As his love for her grew ever stronger, so his music became more wonderful, more entrancing. Invigorated by this new passion, he played his music to the selkie, and she found it more beautiful than ever. She begged him to teach her the fiddle and, of course, crazy with his love for her, he agreed. The selkie woman remembered every note he taught her, and soon she learned to play. She demanded more lessons, and longer lessons. The crofter was so in love that he forgot his duties. His pigs grew sick and died. His chickens stopped laying eggs and shed their feathers, and then the harriers came for them. He forgot to plant new crops. In his abandoned pots, the crabs starved and rotted. All he did, day and night, was teach his woman how to play the fiddle. With each day, he grew thinner and sicker, nourished only by his desire for the beautiful selkie. And all the while, she grew stronger, feeding like a tick on his love and the gift of his music. She gorged herself on all he’d learned, craving more, demanding more. The skill that had taken the crofter years to master was taken from him in a few short months.

He grew ever weaker, and the day came when the crofter was too faint to leave his bed. He called to his woman, his wife, his love, to repay his kindness, and to care for him in turn. Smiling sweetly, the selkie stepped out of bed, as lithe and strong as ever, and took up his fiddle. She began to play, making the instrument sing and dance as though it were alive – as though it were alive and had a voice!

She played fast and she played slow, she played loud and she played soft, she played the music of the heart and the music of the death. The crofter listened and watched from his bed, entranced at the skill of his wonderful bride, his eyes full of tears at how beautifully she played. She played and played for hours, and he felt the sickness overtake him. He called for
help, begging her for food and water, but she kept on with the fiddle. He tried to shout above the music, but his voice came out a rasp. Exhausted, he collapsed back on the bed. The selkie lowered her fiddle – for it was her fiddle, now – and laughed at the weakness of the crofter – at the weakness of all men.

She left the cottage, taking the fiddle, and returned to the beach. She retrieved her skin from its hiding place in the rockpool, and slipped back beneath the waves without so much as looking back. From his window, the crofter watched her swim away, only now understanding that she was a selkie, a seal-woman, and his heart broke twice – once for the loss of his beautiful bride, and once for the death of his music. He was a ruined, broken man. The old sadness fell upon him like a boulder, a hundred times harder than before. It pinned misery to the few days left to him, alone in the croft, starving and thirsty and cold.

Outside, his crops rotted in the fields.

The selkie returned to the sea, having stolen the gift of music from the crofter. She played the fiddle for her sisters, and they waltzed beneath the waves. This is why selkies are drawn to the sound of music, and why they shed their skins to dance. This is why drowning men hear the sound of a violin as their lungs begin to flood. This is why they hear a fiddle, the sound muted by the sea, playing laments as soft and sad as snow on water.

I blinked. Izzy watched the fire, his face lit ruddy. He reached down and tossed another branch of bony driftwood onto the embers.

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘Not what you were expecting?’

I thought about it. ‘You were different. It’s like you took on a character. It was like an act.’

‘I told you, I’m a shennachie.’

‘I thought selkies were good things.’

Izzy pulled a face. ‘They are and they aren’t. The stories change as they migrate. See now, up in the Faroe Islands, the selkie is a brutal creature, ambushing lone sailors as they cast their nets, and dragging them under. But off the Isle of Man, a selkie is more like a mermaid from the movies. And there’s every kind of selkie in between. That story I’ve just told you, that’s an old one, one from Shetland.’

‘I see,’ I said, thinking about how that would feed into my report. ‘Was there any truth in it?’

‘What? The story?’

I nodded. He looked at me like I was crazy.

‘It’s batshit, lass. Don’t be daft. Selkies don’t exist. There’s no such thing as seals that turn into people.’

‘But the way you told it,’ I said, frowning.

‘It makes for a good story,’ he chuckled, ‘I grant you that.
But that’s all it is. Stories. Plenty more of them up here.’ He tapped his temples again.

‘Any more about selkies?’

‘Aye. Three or four more. Maybe half a dozen, once I’ve had a think. But I’m thinking it’s a little late for you and your homework. Will you not be wanted home?’

He was right. It was getting on. The sun was dropping behind Ben Sèimh and the air had grown cool in the mountain’s shadow.

‘I’ll write that story up tonight.’

‘Hey there,’ growled Izzy. ‘No. I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘But I need to. It’s for my project.’

‘Write up the bones of it, if you must. Get the basics of it for your homework. But don’t write the whole thing like I told it you.’

‘Why not?’ I said, confused.

He huffed a bit.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘this might sound daft to you, lass. But my stories are about the telling and the hearing, not the writing and the reading. They’re all for talking out loud. They’re about this, and that, and this,’ he said, pointing haplessly at the sky, and the sea, and the crackling fire. ‘If you write them down, they’ll lose some of the magic.’