Tales of Wonder (14 page)

She stepped high out of her skin, and her hair fell sleek and white about her shoulders and hid her breasts.

Merdock fell to his knees behind the rock and would have hidden his eyes, but her cold white beauty was too much for him. He could only stare. And if he made a noise then, she took no notice but turned her face to the sea and opened her arms up to the moon. Then she began to sway and call.

At first Merdock could not hear the words. Then he realized it was the very song he had heard in his head all that day:

Come to the edge,

Come down to the ledge

Where the water laps the shore.

Come to the strand,

Seals to the sand,

The watery time is o'er.

When the song was done, she began it again. It was as if the whole beach, the whole cove, the whole world were nothing but that one song.

And as she sang, the water began to fill up with seals. Black seals and gray seals and seals of every kind. They swam to the shore at her call and sloughed off their skins. They were as young as the white seal maid, but none so beautiful in Merdock's eyes. They swayed and turned at her singing, and joined their voices to hers. Faster and faster the seal maidens danced, in circles of twos and threes and fours. Only the white seal maid danced alone, in the center, surrounded by the castoff skins of her twirling sisters.

The moon remained high almost all the night, but at last it went down. At its setting, the seal maids stopped their singing, put on their skins again, one by one, went back into the sea again, one by one, and swam away. But the white seal maid did not go. She waited on the shore until the last of them was out of sight.

Then she turned to the watching man, as if she had always known he was there, hidden behind the gray rock. There was something strange, a kind of pleading, in her eyes.

Merdock read that pleading and thought he understood it. He ran over to where she stood, grabbed up her sealskin, and held it high overhead.

“Now you be mine,” he said.

And she had to go with him, that was the way of it. For she was a selchie, one of the seal folk. And the old tales said it: The selchie maid without her skin was no more than a lass.

They were wed within the week, Merdock and the white seal maid, because he wanted it. So she nodded her head at the priest's bidding, though she said not a word.

And Merdock had no complaint of her, his “Sel” as he called her. No complaint except this: she would not go down to the sea. She would not go down by the shore where he had found her or down to the sand to see him in his boat, though often enough she would stare from the cottage door out past the cove's end where the inlet poured out into the great wide sea.

“Will you not walk down by the water's edge with me, Sel?” Merdock would ask each morning. “Or will you not come down to greet me when I return?”

She never answered him, either “Yea” or “Nay.” Indeed, if he had not heard her singing that night on the ledge, he would have thought her mute. But she was a good wife, for all that, and did what he required. If she did not smile, she did not weep. She seemed, to Merdock, strangely content.

So Merdock hung the white sealskin up over the door where Sel could see it. He kept it there in case she should want to leave him, to don the skin and go. He could have hidden it or burned it, but he did not. He hoped the sight of it, so near and easy, would keep her with him; would tell her, as he could not, how much he loved her. For he found he did love her, his seal wife. It was that simple. He loved her and did not want her to go, but he would not keep her past her willing it, so he hung the skin up over the door.

And then their sons were born. One a year, born at the ebbing of the tide. And Sel sang to them, one by one, long, longing wordless songs that carried the sound of the sea. But to Merdock she said nothing.

Seven sons they were, strong and silent, one born each year. They were born to the sea, born to swim, born to let the tide lap them head and shoulder. And though they had the dark eyes of the seal, and though they had the seal's longing for the sea, they were men and had men's names: James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, and Tom. They helped their father fish the cove and bring home his catch from the sea.

It was seven years and seven years and seven years again that the seal wife lived with him. The oldest of their sons was just coming to his twenty-first birthday, the youngest barely a man. It was on a gray day, the wind scarcely rising, that the boys all refused to go with Merdock when he called. They gave no reason but “Nay.”

“Wife,” Merdock called, his voice heavy and gray as the sky. “Wife, whose sons are these? How have you raised them that they say ‘Nay' to their father when he calls?” It was ever his custom to talk to Sel as if she returned him words.

To his surprise, Sel turned to him and said, “Go. My sons be staying with me this day.” It was the voice of the singer on the beach, musical and low. And the shock was so great that he went at once and did not look back.

He set his boat on the sea, the great boat that usually took several men to row it. He set it out himself and got it out into the cove, put the nets over, and never once heard when his sons called out to him as he went, “Father, fair wind!”

But after a bit the shock wore thin and he began to think about it. He became angry then, at his sons and at his wife, who had long plagued him with her silence. He pulled in the nets and pulled on the oars and started toward home. “I, too, can say ‘Nay' to this sea,” he said out loud as he rode the swells in.

The beach was cold and empty. Even the gulls were mute.

“I do not like this,” Merdock said. “It smells of a storm.”

He beached the boat and walked home. The sky gathered in around him. At the cottage he hesitated but a moment, then pulled savagely on the door. He waited for the warmth to greet him. But the house was as empty and cold as the beach.

Merdock went into the house and stared at the hearth, black and silent. Then, fear riding in his heart, he turned slowly and looked over the door.

The sealskin was gone.

“Sel!” he cried then as he ran from the house, and he named his sons in a great anguished cry as he ran. Down to the sea-ledge he went, calling their names like a prayer: “James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, Tom!”

But they were gone.

The rocks were gray, as gray as the sky. At the water's edge was a pile of clothes that lay like discarded skins. Merdock stared out far across the cove and saw a seal herd swimming. Yet not a herd. A white seal and seven strong pups.

“Sel!” he cried again. “James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, Tom!”

For a moment, the white seal turned her head, then she looked again to the open sea and barked out seven times. The wind carried the faint sounds back to the shore. Merdock heard, as if in a dream, the seven seal names she called. They seemed harsh and jangling to his ear.

Then the whole herd dove. When they came up again they were but eight dots strung along the horizon, lingering for a moment, then disappearing into the blue edge of sea.

Merdock recited the seven seal names to himself. And in that recitation was a song, a litany to the god of the seals. The names were no longer harsh, but right. And he remembered clearly again the moonlit night when the seals had danced upon the sand. Maidens all. Not a man or boy with them. And the white seal turning and choosing him, giving herself to him that he might give the seal people life.

His anger and sadness left him then. He turned once more to look at the sea and pictured his seven strong sons on their way.

He shouted their seal names to the wind. Then he added, under his breath, as if trying out a new tongue, “Fair wind, my sons. Fair wind.”

The Bird of Time

Once there was a Miller who was named Honest Hans because he never lied or gave false weight. He had an only son called Pieter, whom many considered a fool.

Pieter often sat long hours looking steadily at the sky or a bird or a flower, saying nothing and smiling softly to himself. At such times he would not answer a question, even if someone asked him the time of day or the price of a sack of flour.

Yes, many considered Pieter a fool. But his father did not.

“Pieter is a dreamer,” he said. “He knows beyond things. He understands the songs of the birds. And if he prefers the company of dumb plants and animals to that of people, perhaps it is a wise choice. It is not for me to say.”

But the people of the village felt it was for them to say. They said so many unkind things about Pieter that the miller grew sad. At last Pieter said to him, “Father, I will go and seek my fortune. Then, perhaps, both you and I will have peace from this ceaseless wagging of mischievous tongues.”

And so Pieter made his way into the wide, wide world.

He had traveled only two days and three nights into the wide, wide world when he heard a weak cry. It sounded like a call for help. Immediately, and without a thought for his own safety, Pieter rushed in the direction of the sound and found a tiny brown bird caught in a trap. He opened the trap and set the bird free. But the bird was so weak from lack of water and food that it only had time for a few faint chirps before it folded its tired wings and died.

However, since Pieter could speak the language of the birds, those few chirps were enough to tell him something of great importance. He hurried off to a nearby tree, where a nest lay concealed in the topmost branches.

In the nest was a single egg, gleaming like marble, white and veined with red and gold. Pieter picked it up. He thought about what the dying bird had told him: “In the egg lives the bird of time. When the egg is broken open, the bird will emerge singing. As long as it continues to sing, time will flow onward like a river. But if you should hold the bird and say, ‘
Bird of time, make time go fast
,' time will speed up for everyone except yourself and those you hold until you loose the bird again. And,” the dying bird had continued, “if you say, ‘
Bird of time, make time go slow
,' time will slow down for everyone around. And you and those you hold will run through time like the wind through leafless trees.”

Then the little brown bird had shivered all over. “But never say, ‘
Bird of time, make time stop
,' for then there will be a great shaking and a great quaking, and time will stop for you and those you hold forevermore.”

With that, the bird had cried out, “Good friend, goodbye,” and died.

Pieter was awed by this. But not overawed, for he was a dreamer, and dreamers believe in miracles, both large and small. So he put the egg in his cap, his cap on his head, and journeyed farther into the wide, wide world.

He had hardly been gone another night and day when suddenly there came a second cry for help. This time it was not a little cry, but a great weeping and a wailing and a terrible sobbing that filled the entire kingdom through which he was traveling.

Once again, without a thought for his own safety, Pieter ran toward the sound. Soon he came upon a large palace. Before it was a crowd of men and women and children. They were all crying and moaning, twisting their kerchiefs or stomping on their caps.

“What is the matter?” asked Pieter. “Is there something wrong?”

“You must be worse than a fool,” said an old man. “For even a fool could see that we weep and cry because the wicked giant has just now stolen the king's daughter dear and carried her off to Castle Gloam. And none of us is brave enough or smart enough or strong enough to rescue her.”

“Well, then, I must,” said Pieter.

“Indeed you
are
a fool,” said another man. “For if we, who are the people of the mightiest king in the world, are not brave enough or smart enough or strong enough to rescue the princess, then only a fool would try.”

“Fool I may be,” said Pieter, “or worse. But I think you are more foolish than I if you will not try at all.”

And off he went with not a word more toward Castle Gloam to rescue the king's beautiful daughter.

Pieter walked and walked seven days and seven nights to Castle Gloam, which teetered on the edge of the world (for in those days the world was flat). At last he found the castle and pushed through the enormous door.

It was nearly dark inside the castle, and cold. A single light shone dimly at the end of a long hall. It was toward that light that Pieter walked. When he came to where the light began and the hall ended, he saw the king's daughter. She was sitting on a golden throne in a golden cage and weeping as though her tears could wash away the bars.

“Do not cry,” said Pieter when he was quite close to the cage. “I am here to bring you home.” He spoke bravely, although he had no idea how to accomplish what he promised.

When she heard him, the king's daughter looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears. And when she looked at him, Pieter felt her gaze go straight to his heart; he had never seen anyone so beautiful. He knelt before her and took off his cap. And the egg, which had been hidden there, nestled in his hair.

Just then he heard loud footsteps and a giant voice shouting.

And before Pieter could move, the floors shook and the walls trembled and the giant of Castle Gloam stomped into the room.

Pieter turned around to stare at the giant. And as he turned, the egg, which had been nestled in his hair, fell off his head and broke upon the floor. A little brown bird arose singing from the broken egg and alighted on Pieter's hand.

Pieter stood up. Reaching into the cage, he took the hand of the king's daughter gently in his. Then he said, “
Bird of time, make time go slow.”

Immediately the little brown bird began singing a very slow, measured song. And time, which had been flowing along like a swift river, suddenly became muddy and slow for the giant. And he moved awkwardly through the air as though it were water.

Without letting go of the princess's hand, Pieter quickly opened the cage with a golden key he found hanging nearby. The king's daughter ran out. Then hand in hand they raced out into the countryside, like the wind through leafless trees. There they danced and laughed. And Pieter threw his arms up into the air with joy, and the bird of time was loosed.