The moon shone through veils of ashen fog, bathing the shores in a cold light, betraying the hoar-frost that hung about the air. This was when the fishermen were returning home, bones aching and legs taut with the constant back and forth of their vessels. All the pains were composed from a single day spent out on the vicious waves of the sea. As the horde of fishermen came about, past the cliffs and toward the harbor, a solitary boat left the docks, skimming the hyaline black of the bay. Nicholas Firth steered his boat and passed the others by, waving jovially as he went. He received no waves in reply, but looks of suspicion, for he was known as the fisherman who took to the waters at night. Saner men chose to spend those hours in the safety and comfort of their homes among family. Nicholas would spend his days ashore, but once the sun began to dip into the riptides he would ready the boat. As the others docked he would set off into the cove. For 15 years, night after night, without interruption, without explanation.
The village was held together by superstition and old wives’ tales. It was said that only those with a death wish would brave the waters in the dark. The mist resulted in a series of strange things being seen, some men claimed to have witnessed the shrieking corpses of lost fishermen crying out to them from the depths. Then, the bodies were said to leap up and over the boats in attempts to force the men to share their fates. Yet, despite the constant mumbling of his madness among the neighbors, Nicholas would laugh; calling all who cautioned him “Old hags,” and “Old fashioned, held back by tales of monsters and bumps in the night.” After all, he never claimed to be sane; he did claim that he was sharp enough to know something of fish. However, it was not as if the villagers were unaware of why Nicholas chose this time to fish, but he liked to refer to it as a secret, it gave him a feeling of superiority. Knowing that the fish moved into shallow waters to avoid freezing in the night; and in the heat of the day how they retreated into the deep to stay the boiling rays of the sun. It was a constant cycle that shifted as the seasons did, one that Nicholas liked to utilize. Though his family was well aware of the potential dangers that awaited Nicholas, they rarely worried or complained. If anything, they were content to trust him. After all, they were never without food and had practically every comfort a fisherman’s family could afford.
One night, Nicholas’s luck shifted out of his favor. It was particularly cold on the waters when he pulled in the nets. His lashes felt as if they had been frosted with a delicate layer of ice, caused by the watering of his eyes as the wind sliced through his clothes and skin. The discomfort would be worth it in the end, it always was. Giving the rope another heave, the net was hoisted into the air, hovering a few feet off the surface of the deck. His heart stopped, it felt as if it had plummeted from his chest to his feet and right through the sturdy wood and into the bleak that kept his boat buoyant. The nets. They were empty. They did not wriggle or fight. There was no flashing of silver scales in the pasty light of the moon. There was nothing. His breath faltered, coming out in a single arid puff of smoke, his secret had failed him. In the 15 years he had been doing this, it had never failed him, not even once.
“Perhaps it’s a mistake, I could have done something wrong, or maybe there are no fish to be caught tonight.”
He nodded perhaps tonight was just not right maybe the water was too warm for the fish. The sun had been glaring down onto the bay with a great deal of intensity; signifying the start of an early summer. Nicholas followed the fish like any other fisherman, during the summer he always ventured out. With that thought in mind, he weighed anchor and made his way out to sea, passing the safety of the cliffs, as he plunged his small vessel into the denser fog that hung about the mouth of the harbor.
Once he departed the safety of the cove, Nicholas could feel the temperature drop as the wind seemed to double its attempts at cutting him to the core. Ignoring the shaking in his hands, he steered the boat further out, until the fog concealed the cove. When he felt the location was right, he pulled down the sails, dropped anchor, cast the nets, and waited for what seemed to be hours.
He pulled in the nets, and there was nothing. Any sounds of fish fighting the net were replaced by some disembodied splash a little distance away from the boat.
So, he went further out, so far that he couldn’t even hear the waves thrashing against the rocks. Except for the creaking of his boat, the lapping of the water, and the muted howling of the wind, as if all this empty noise was the harbinger of a night composed of desolation. It was silence.
Again, he cast out his nets, and again, he caught nothing.
His watering eyes surveyed the net, taking in the reality of the situation. Nicholas could no longer fool himself into thinking that it was the weather or the waters. Something had gone dreadfully wrong in all this, and he was powerless to fix it. Taking a deep shaking breath, he made attempts to calm himself, “one more time, just one more.”
Nicholas couldn’t afford to come back empty handed. Even one night without a good catch would result in his wife, Hilda, worrying. If the fish weren’t catching, then she would try to convince him that perhaps going out at night was no longer beneficial. Not to mention the amount of ridicule he would get from the other fishermen and the villagers. They were always lying in wait, ready to pounce on the off chance he might make a mess of thing, and come back to the docks with an empty net. He could practically hear them in his head “Perhaps this is a sign Nicholas, perhaps God has seen fit for you to join us normal folk in fishing by sunlight.” Oh yes, they would like that, they would like to see themselves as right after all these years of warning him away from fishing on the bay during the night.
With a prayer to God aimed through the salt brushed heavens, Nicholas cast out his net one last time. He let the net sit for longer than necessary, watching the waters, his eyes aching as he squinted into the depths, praying to see the merest trace of the sliver scales. Clenching his teeth, he drew in the net, his callused hands going raw against the rope, while his knuckles cracked and bled as the wind bit into him. At long last, he could see the top most part of the net. For a moment, his heart fell, it appeared empty.
Suddenly, the net shook and began to fight him. Whatever it was, it tussled about in the net, and did so without pause. But even then, Nicholas could feel the slack in the ropes, as he pulled it out of the maw of the sea. Hearing wet skin smack the hull of his craft, and cries of indignation sounded, an enraged huff could be heard, but after a while all of it was accompanied by an air of exhaustion. The net hung as it always did, full as to be expected, but not with the usual catch. At long last, Nicholas found himself looking into a pair of seemingly iris-less eyes, cold in their surveillance of him, dark as onyx, reflecting the night sky. Its pelt was slick with cold water, just then the moon broke through the clouds, resulting in the catch’s fur shinning silver. The creature was not unfamiliar to Nicholas; seals were indeed quite common in these parts but this was no harbor seal this was one of the great greys. Not unlike their harbor cousins, they were still deemed a nuisance among the fishermen. “So, you’re the one who has been stealing my fish.”
The greys were always called selkies, for they were not seals at all, but humans in disguise. At least, that’s what local hags in town said. The greys were said to possess eyes of knowing and at night, they were known to come to the shores, remove their pelts, revealing themselves as humans, and they would dance before great bonfires until the sun rose. Then they would return to the water and don their pelts, becoming seals once more, to dance on the waves. As always Nicholas dismissed these stories as silly old wives tales, even when his children would come home bubbling with excitement at the words of the old women. They babbled away about how sometimes great seal lords would come to shore to woo the daughters of fishermen, Maisey and Paisley; Nicholas’s two and only daughters, were particularly fond of those stories. Nicholas would merely shrug off the tales, and roll his eyes playfully at his sons, Gavan, Alec, and Gunnar, who would chortle, causing bits of their dinner to fly across the table. That is, until Nicholas’s wife, Hilda smacked all four over the head for rudeness and asked the girls to continue their stories.
He walked around the net, taking in how the seal followed him. This had never happened to him before. It happened to other fisherman. Just last month, a man by the name of Jacob Griffith had been pulling up dry nets through most of the morning. That is until he netted a fat grey. If it had been a one of the brown harbor seals, he would have killed and skinned it for the pelt without a second thought. But Jacob was like the villagers; those seals were off limits for hunting, so he let it go. So far, he did not have any more trouble with empty nets. If anything, Jacob became almost as successful as Nicholas. Some fishermen said that the selkie had been sent to test Jacob, and his mercy towards the selkie had resulted in it providing him with luck. It was all hogwash as far and Nicholas was concerned, selkies, honestly, they are as real as those shrieking corpses that the village so scared.
The creature continued to watch his every move. “And I thought that my secret had been failing me, but it was only you, just a simple minded seal.”
At this, he plucked the net. Laughing to himself, for how he panicked, of course his ways hadn’t failed him. The problem had been so unassuming, so easily solvable. For a moment, he could have sworn that the animal had glared at him; obviously it did not like being referred to as simple minded. “Maybe not so silly, you’re smart. Seals usually hunt during the day out here, not so often at night.”
He laughed again, grasping his stomach to hold the cramping of his side. He then pointed at the seal. “You must’ve been watching me, got jealous of my catch, I bet.”
It continued to watch him, never removing its glassy glare from his person. Nicholas sighed, and shook his head, pulling his work knife out of the sheath that hung about his waist. Advancing on the seal, he gave it a pitying look. Its eyes seemed to widen, brought to life by the glint of the blade. “I’m sorry pretty one, but I can’t have you hanging about my boat, it’s bad for business. I’ve got to feed the family, you understand?”
It retreated further causing the net to swing back forth. Relinquishing a panicked cry, its dark eyes began to swivel about in terror. Raising the knife, the fisherman prepared to strike, only to pause. The seal folded in on itself, never taking its eyes from the blade. This is cruel, he thought, there was no way he could dispatch the creature quickly enough to where it would not feel the pain. He was not inhuman; he would prefer that the creature not suffer.
Turning his back on the net, he looked about the boat, trying to find something heavy enough to crush the seal’s skull. It would be best to kill it in a single quick blow, slitting the throat would result in the creature waiting for death as it bled out. At last, he found something of use, a large stick, left on the boat by his youngest son. The bark splintered at his touch, and the wood began biting into the scale like calluses of Nicholas’s hands. It would do. His grip tightened and he spun, bringing the stick down on the seal, feeling his stomach churn with the sea as the appalling crunch of the seal’s skull reverberated off the waters. He felt sick as he watched those wide onyx eyes turn to clouded glass, and then to slits. It was dead.
He dropped the stick, and went about separating the seal from the net. His fingers worked at the ropes delicately, as making a new net would be time-consuming. At last, Nicholas managed to untangle the creature. He laid it out on the deck, noting how its pelt seemed translucent. The water was slowly crystalizing along the strands of fur, glittering like diamonds as the warmth of the body halted with the freezing of the seal’s blood.
Nicholas thought of skinning the creature, seal pelts were worth something. They were well insulated, and rich folk would pay a pretty penny for looks and functionality. It would also make up for a wasted night of fishing, the seal owed him that much. He went about prepping his knife, but as he knelt at the animal’s side the fisherman felt himself growing ill. Even in death, it was as if the creature was looking at him through those dark slits, eyes watering as if it had been crying just as he struck it. It felt as if someone had managed to rip through his chest and take hold of his heart.
Pushing aside the churning of his stomach and dismissing the tightness of his breast, Nicholas forced the blade of the knife into the dead seal and went about parring the skin from the body. The blood of the seal washed over his hands in macabre waves, tinting his fingernails the color of Scotch ale. His stomach had ceased its roiling and he sliced away until the pelt sat out before him stretched to its limits, with streams of gore reaching through the grains of the deck. The beautiful white grey of the pelt slightly soiled with strands of red, rimming the edges.
He stood up, taking in the mess of his hands. Sighing, he walked towards the edge of the boat and dipped them into the icy waters, noting how the sea bit into his skin and bore away the blood. Suddenly a splash could be heard and Nicholas looked up from where he had dipped his hands. There was something bobbing along in the water, observing him. Pulling his hands out, Nicholas leaned against the railing of the boat, his eyes narrowed, trying to make out the creature that was spying on him. At long last he identified it. It was another seal, grey as the one he had skinned, but smaller by comparison, it was just a pup. It drew closer keeping the majority of its face in the water, and then it froze. As if it sensed something, lifting its nose into the air the pup’s slit like nostrils opened and it took a deep breath. It stopped, and looked about the waters, calling out “Maa!”
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