There Are Selkies on the Salish Sea

An old man walks down the beach with a young boy, his grandson. It is Christmas and they are wet and cold. An icy wind blows off the Salish Sea and soaks them through their fleeces. Still, the young boy bounds about the wet sand like an elk calf at his first snow. He is a desert child—raised by juniper and ocotillo, new to this world of cedar and saltwater. He does not yet know the ocean ebbs in his blood. And the old man, who smiles at the young boy as he chases the retreating waves, is brought home by the driving wind and the spray of the sea. Though always present, it brings to the top of his mind those distant shores where his own grandfather would take him walking and impart on him the stories of their people. The old man remembers. He remembers bloodlines and fairies, hawthorns and the gray Irish coast. All the old tales dwell in his heart and when the Pacific wind whips through the air, he feels the Atlantic rise in his lungs. 

But the young boy does not yet know this or much of anything else. He is still growing into his senses and newly meeting the Pacific and the lush woods that hold tight to her shores. He is still working out the tug of waves, the scent of Sitka spruce, the bruising of his skin. He has not yet learned that everything, from himself to the ocean he chases after, are so much more than water, and wood, and bone. All he knows in this moment is the drape of waves over his toes and the bloom of an old sort of love.

Then the old man calls to him. The young boy stumbles out of the surf and she reaches for him as he goes.

“Aren’t ya cold?” The old man asks. When he speaks you can still hear Dublin despite the decades of America sitting heavy on his tongue.

“No, not even a little.” The young boy says through his chattering teeth.

“Come on, let’s walk for a while and get the heat back in your feet.”

They walk a mile or so, towards a headland jutting out into the waves. Alongside them is an ancient rainforest that hosts the most magnificent creatures the young boy has ever seen—gnarled red cedars, whose fine, drooping limbs beckon to him like the old trees have stories to tell. The young boy weaves between water and the woods, caught by two harmonizing voices. 

The old man walks in a straight line, eyes on the ground, and thinking. As with many immigrants, he has watched his family fade into America. The McGintys haven’t spoken Irish for generations—stolen, as many tongues were, by the British—but now even the accent is gone. None of his children remember the old stories either, they traded them instead for Johnny Appleseed and Daniel Boone, for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. He likes those stories, too, but they are not enough. He has watched his children mourn something they cannot name but still, acutely, feel the loss of, and so he is determined the young boy will not face the same. He will know where he comes from. He will know who his people are.

So they come to a place where the sandstone cliffs stand close to the water’s edge and the exposed roots of Sitka spruce weave between earth and air high above. The beach is mostly gravel and the cliffs wrap around it, so sound bounces in a peculiar way. The young boy spends his first few minutes marveling at how loud the waves are in this place and shouting to hear his own voice amplified, then staring at the density of trees that stand so tall above him. Something about the vibrant darkness of that understory calls to him and he wonders for a long time what might be inside. The old man selects a smooth log of driftwood to sit on, and thinks to himself that this would be an excellent place to tell stories.

He clears his throat, but the young boy is already running off to the ocean, whose own voice is so much louder. The old man remembers a time when he was much the same, and so he smiles and watches the young boy as he toes a matte of kelp and charges into the tide. After a few minutes, though, he calls out to the boy, who looks up from a squatting search for seashells. He sprints to his grandfather’s side and sits in the sand at his feet, panting.

“What’s up, Papa?”

“You really like the ocean, don’t you?”

The boy nods his head with vigor. His pants are soaked with saltwater and caked with sand. The old man has been considering for a long time what story to tell, but the boy’s joy at meeting the sea has inspired him. It’s an old legend, from County Donegal where the McGinty clan first emerged.

He says to the young boy, “Well no wonder, you’re nearly a sea creature yourself.”

The boy looks at him puzzled and says, “What?”

The old man leans in, “Well don’t you hear it? The call of the sea? Listen for a while, won’t you?” And they do. The gentle waves of the Pacific ocean hum a timeless song that echoes off the walls of their little cove. The young boy hears it, nearly stands to his feet to join the water once again, but is stopped by the return of his grandfather’s voice. “I hear it too. It’s only natural, boy, it’s in our blood.”

“What d’ya mean, Papa?”

“Hmm, well, its genetic—the same reason you have that brown hair.”

“It is?”

“One and the same. You see, in Ireland, there’s a creature that swims in the coastal waters but can just as easily make their way on land. They take the form of a seal, but can shed their seal skin into a cloak and change shape into a human being.” He pauses for a moment to study the young boy’s face. He’s told the story to many of his own kids and knows well the look of a child humoring their elder, but the young boy’s mouth hangs open in awe. Eagerly, the old man continues. “They’re called Selkies, and they’re a beautiful creature. In the water, they’re the handsomest seal you ever saw, but out? Out they’re gorgeous. No man or woman can compare to a Selkie. And the thing of it was, a few lucky Irish men would take Selkie brides. Their children would get their mother’s dark coloring, her fabulous beauty, and her love of the water.” 

The young boy looks at his hands with wonder. “Am … am I a Selkie, Papa?”

“No no, I promise your mother doesn’t have a seal skin cloak hidden from you back at home. But legend has it that more than a few McGintys had Selkie brides or were Selkies themselves. We’re descended from them. That’s where you get that dark hair of yours and your attraction to the ocean.”

“Whoa,” is all the young boy can say. He is gazing out across the waves and imagining seal-folk walking out of the Pacific. Eventually, he stands and waddles to the shifting edge of the water. There, he sits on his heels and slips his hands beneath the surface. A new world has opened to him and he is trying to work out how a story can be a part of his body, how it can attach him to the sea. When the water retreats, he stands and watches the rhythm of Pacific waves.

The old man watches too, but his eyes are misted by memory. They see different oceans.

This time, the young boy returns on his own. He follows the advancing waves up the beach and takes a seat by his grandfather once more. 

He looks up at him and asks, “Are there any other creatures like the Selkies, Papa?”

The old man beams. “Why yes, yes there are. In Irish they are called the Aos Sí, meaning ‘the people of the mounds,’ because they’re said to live in all the old fairy forts and burial tombs. Mostly, though, we called them ‘the good people’ to make sure we stayed on their good sides. They’re powerful spellcasters and most of them can change their shape, like the Selkies do, so we treated them nice and left out saucers of milk for them to curry their favor.”

“Will you tell me about the E- ees she, Papa?”

“Of course, I’d be happy to.” And so he does. He tells the young boy about music heard on the country roads at night followed by a parade of little people emerging from the mounds. He tells him of a fairy called the Pooka that takes the shape of a horse and will magic you to its back and go tearing through the countryside if you were fool enough to climb on—always sure to dump you in a patch of nettles when all was said and done. And he tells of a fairy that inhabits the hawthorn tree. The plant is sacred, he says, and you’re never to harm it, lest all the wrath of the land come down upon you. He pours out the contents of his heart and the young boy before him listens.

Ach, but there is something missed, something fundamental. When the old man speaks, he imagines ancient fairy rings, rolling emerald hills, and a spectacular, white-flowered tree. He tells stories of a world the young boy does not know. And when the young boy listens, he does so because those legends runs through his veins like blood, but he cannot imagine the land they belong to. Instead, in his mind, little people march from the split boles of ancient evergreens. The Pooka takes him charging down a beach along the Salish Sea. And the only sacred tree he can muster are those gnarled red cedars with their beckoning boughs. He swears to never do them harm. 

They sit in their two separate worlds. The old man shouts across the ocean, and the young boy does his best to understand.

But soon, the young boy begins to feel like he is being watched. He turns to the dark forest on the high cliffs above and swears he can see two sets of eyes in the undergrowth. 

“Papa,” he interrupts, “Are there ees she in America?”

The old man laughs. “No, no. They are the spirits of Ireland.”

“They didn’t follow you when you left?”

“Hmm … No, I don’t think so. They might’ve. So many Irish have left Ireland and sometimes you’d hear stories about the good people wondering where all the families they’d known had gone to. But they weren’t to come with. For months before we emigrated, my mother had us crack all the shells from any hard-boiled eggs we ate. The story goes they could use them as boats to follow us if we left them large enough.” He breathes a moment. “And it must have worked. I haven’t heard stories of any in this part of the world.”

The young boy feels a very far away ache and the cool breath of a very close ocean. “Why couldn’t you bring them with?” he asks.

“Well, this land has stories of its own, and we didn’t want them muddling things out here. Or leaving Ireland, I suppose.”

“Do you know any stories of America, Papa?”

“Like Lewis and Clark?”

The young boy shakes his head. “No, like, um, stories like the Aos Sí.”

The old man gives his grandson a sad smile. “No, son, I’m afraid I don’t. I can give you the stories of your people, but not of those of the land you were born to. Those belong to the natives of this place. You’ll have to listen and learn from them if you want to know the spirit of this land.”

He will. The young boy needs to know the stories of his people, but unlike his grandfather, the stories of his ancestors and the stories of his land are not the same. And though he does not yet know the tales of the earth he was born to, he knows they exist. How can they not? Though they may be buried beneath the impositions of a nation, he can feel them in the immensity of cedar and the tug of the waves. They run through the soil like roots, like veins, like the legends his grandfather has told him. They have to, because the sea is calling to him, and he knows the world is so much more than water, and wood, and bone. And he knows it is mournful—to still know nothing of a land, but to love her unconditionally all the same. So the young boy will learn.

But for now he sits with his grandfather. The old man tells him of the home country, and they wait for the tide to reach them.

High above, on a headland jutting into the sea, where roots weave through the air, a coyote and a raven watch an old seal, far below, telling a pup of a land that they no longer belong to. They do not know what to make of these strangers now washed up on their shores. They do not know what to make of them, but the coyote and the raven are fond of stories. They settle down on the forest floor and listen to the old seal telling and the long drumming of waves.