Tales of Wonder (13 page)

Much to her surprise, the inside of the cave glowed with an incandescent blue-green light that seemed to come from the cave walls themselves. Darker pockets of light illuminated the concave sections of the wall. Pieces of seaweed caught in these niches gave the appearance of household gods.

Mairi could scarcely breathe. Any loud sound seemed sacrilegious. Her breath itself was a violation.

And then she heard the moan-song again, so loud that it seemed to fill the entire cave. It swelled upward like a wave, then broke off in a bubbling sigh.

Mairi walked in slowly, not daring to touch the cave walls in case she should mar the perfection of the color, yet fearing that she might fall, for the floor of the cave was slippery with scattered puddles of water. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, she explored the cave. In the blue-green light, her sweater and skin seemed to take on an underwater tinge, as if she had been transformed into a mermaid.

And then the cave ended, tapering off to a rounded apse with a kind of stone altar the height of a bed. There was something dark lying on the rock slab. Fearfully, Mairi inched toward it, and when she got close, the dark thing heaved up slightly and spoke to her in a strange, guttural tongue. At first Mairi thought it was a seal, a wounded seal, but then she saw it was a man huddled under a sealskin coat. He suddenly lay back, feverish and shuddering, and she saw the beads of dried blood that circled his head like a crown.

Without thinking, Mairi moved closer and put her hand on his forehead, expecting it to burn with temperature, but he was cold and damp and slippery to the touch. Then he opened his eyes, and they were the same blue-green color as the walls, as the underside of a wave. She wondered for a moment if he were blind, for there seemed to be no pupils in those eyes. Then he closed the lids and smiled at her, whispering in that same unknown tongue.

“Never mind, never mind, I'll get help,” whispered Mairi. He might be a fisherman from the town or an RAF man shot down on a mission. She looked at his closed-down face. Here, at last, was her way to aid the war effort. “Lie still. First I'll see to your wounds. They taught us first aid at school.”

She examined his forehead under the slate-gray hair, and saw that the terrible wound that had been there was now closed and appeared to be healing, though bloody and seamed with scabs. But when she started to slip the sealskin coat down to examine him for other wounds, she was shocked to discover he had no clothes on under it. No clothes at all.

She hesitated then. Except for the statues in the museum, Mairi had never seen a man naked. Not even in the first-aid books. But what if he were
hurt unto death?
The fearsome poetry of the old phrase decided her. She inched back the sealskin covering as gently as she could.

He did not move except for the rise and fall of his chest. His body was covered with fine hairs, gray as the hair on his head. He had broad, powerful shoulders and slim, tapering hips. The skin on his hands was strangely wrinkled, as if he had been under water too long. She realized with a start that he was quite, quite beautiful—but alien. As her grandmother often said, “Men are queer creatures, so different from us, child. And someday you will know it.”

Then his eyes opened again and she could not look away from them. He smiled, opened his mouth, and began to speak, to chant really. Mairi bent down over him and he opened his arms to her, the gray webbing between his fingers pulsing strongly. And without willing it, she covered his mouth with hers. All the sea was in that kiss, cold and vast and perilous. It drew her in till she thought she would faint with it, with his tongue darting around hers as quick as a minnow. And then his arms encircled her and he was as strong as the tide. She felt only the briefest of pain, and a kind of drowning, and she let the land go.

When Mairi awoke, she was sitting on the stone floor of the cavern, and cold, bone-chillingly cold. She shivered and pushed her hand across her cheeks. They were wet, though whether with tears or from the damp air she could not say.

Above her, on the stone bed, the wounded man breathed raggedly. Occasionally he let out a moan. Mairi stood and looked down at him. His flesh was pale, wan, almost translucent. She put her hand on his shoulder but he did not move. She wondered if she had fallen and hit her head; if she had dreamed what had happened.

“Help. I must get help for him,” she thought. She covered him again with the coat and made her way back to the cave mouth. Her entire body ached, and she decided she must have fallen and blacked out.

The threatening storm had not yet struck, but the dark slant of rain against the horizon was closer still. Mairi scrambled along the rocks to where the coracle waited. She put on her mac, then heaved the boat over and into the water and slipped in, getting only her boots wet.

It was more difficult rowing back, rowing against the tide. Waves broke over the bow of the little boat, and by the time she was within sight of the town, she was soaked to the skin. The stones of Sule Skerry were little more than gray wave tops then, and with one pull on the oars, they disappeared from sight. The port enfolded her, drew her in. She felt safe and lonely at once.

When Mairi reached the shore, there was a knot of fishermen tending their boats. A few were still at work on the bright orange nets, folding them carefully in that quick, intricate pattern that only they seemed to know.

One man, in a blue watch cap, held up a large piece of tattered white cloth, an awning of silk. It seemed to draw the other men to him. He gestured with the silk and it billowed out as if capturing the coming storm.

Suddenly Mairi was horribly afraid. She broke into the circle of men. “Oh, please, please,” she cried out, hearing the growing wail of wind in her voice. “There's a man on the rocks. He's hurt.”

“The rocks?” The man with the silk stuffed it into his pocket, but a large fold of it hung down his trouser leg. “Which rocks?”

“Out there. Beyond the sight line. Where the seals stay.”

“Whose child is she?” asked a man who still carried an orange net. He spoke as if she were too young to understand him or as if she were a foreigner.

“Old Mrs. Goodleigh's grandchild. The one with the English father,” came an answer.

“Mavis' daughter, the one who became a nurse in London.”

“Too good for Caith, then?”

Mairi was swirled about in their conversation.

“Please,” she tried again.

“Suppose'n she means the Rocks?”

“Yes,” begged Mairi. “The rocks out there. Sule Skerry.”

“Hush, child. Must na say the name in sight of the sea,” said the blue-cap man.

“Toss it a coin, Jock,” said the white-silk man.

The man called Jock reached into his pocket and flung a coin out to the ocean. It skipped across the waves twice, then sank.

“That should quiet en. Now then, the Rocks you say?”

Mairi turned to the questioner. He had a face like a map, wrinkles marking the boundaries of nose and cheek. “Yes, sir,” she said breathily.

“Aye, he might have fetched up there,” said the white-silk man, drawing it out of his pocket again for the others to see.

Did they know him, then? Mairi wondered.

“Should we leave him to the storm?” asked Jock.

“He might be one of ours,” the map-faced man said.

They all nodded at that.

“He's sheltered,” Mairi said suddenly. “In a cave. A grotto, like. It's all cast over with a blue and green light.”

“Teched, she is. There's no grotto there,” said blue-cap.

“No blue and green light either,” said the map-faced man, turning from her and speaking earnestly with his companions. “Even if he's one of them, he might tell us summat we need. Our boys could use the knowledge. From that bit of parachute silk, it's hard to say which side he's on.” He reached out and touched the white cloth with a gnarled finger.

“Aye, we'd best look for him.”

“He won't be hard to find,” Mairi began. “He's sick. Hurt. I touched him.”

“What was he wearing then?” asked blue-cap.

The wind had picked up and Mairi couldn't hear the question. “What?” she shouted.

“Wearing.
What was the fellow wearing?”

Suddenly remembering that the man had been naked under the coat, she was silent.

“She doesn't know. Probably too scared to go close. Come on,” said Jock.

The men pushed past her and dragged along two of the large six-man boats that fished the haaf banks. The waves were slapping angrily at the shore, gobbling up pieces of the sand and churning out pebbles at each retreat. Twelve men scrambled into the boats and headed out to sea, their oars flashing together.

Three men were left on shore, including the one holding the remnant of white silk. They stood staring out over the cold waters, their eyes squinted almost shut against the strange bright light that was running before the storm.

Mairi stood near them, but apart.

No one spoke.

It was a long half-hour before the first of the boats leaped back toward them, across a wave, seconds ahead of the rain.

The second boat beached just as the storm broke, the men jumping out onto the sand and drawing the boat up behind them. A dark form was huddled against the stern.

Mairi tried to push through to get a close glimpse of the man, but blue-cap spoke softly to her.

“Nay, nay, girl, don't look. He's not what you would call a pretty sight. He pulled a gun on Jock and Jock took a rock to him.”

But Mairi had seen enough. The man was dressed in a flier's suit, and a leather jacket with zippers. His blond hair was matted with blood.

“That's not the one I saw,” she murmured. “Not the one I …”

“Found him lying on the Rocks, just as the girl said. Down by the west side of the Rocks,” said Jock. “We threw his coins to the sea and bought our way home. Though I don't know that German coins buy much around here. Bloody Huns.”

“What's a German flier doing this far west, I'd like to know,” said map-face.

“Maybe he was trying for America,” Jock answered, laughing sourly.

“Ask him. When he's fit to talk,” said blue-cap.

The man with the white silk wrapped it around the German's neck. The parachute shroud lines hung down the man's back. Head down, the German was marched between Jock and blue-cap up the strand and onto the main street. The other men trailed behind.

With the rain soaking through her cap and running down her cheeks, Mairi took a step toward them. Then she turned away. She kicked slowly along the water's edge till she found the stone steps that led up to her gran's house. The sea pounded a steady reminder on her left, a
basso continuo
to the song that ran around in her head. The last three verses came to her slowly.

Now he has ta'en a purse of goud

And he has put it upon her knee,

Sayin', “Gie to me my little young son

And tak ye up thy nourrice-fee.”

She shivered and put her hands in her pockets to keep them warm. In one of the mac's deep pockets, her fingers felt something cold and rough to the touch. Reluctantly she drew it out. It was a coin, green and gold, slightly crusted, as if it had lain on the ocean bottom for some time. She had never seen it before and could only guess how it had gotten into her coat pocket. She closed her hand around the coin, so tightly a second coin was imprinted on her palm.

An' it shall pass on a summer's day

When the sun shines het on every stane,

That I will tak my little young son

An' teach him for to swim his lane.

An' thu sall marry a proud gunner,

An' a right proud gunner I'm sure he'll be.

An' the very first shot that ere he shoots

He'll kill baith my young son and me.

Had it truly happened, or was it just some dream brought on by a fall? She felt again those cold, compelling hands on her, the movement of the webbings pulsing on her breasts; smelled again the briny odor of his breath. And if she
did
have that bairn, that child? Why, Harry Stones would
have
to marry her, then. Her father could not deny them that.

And laughing and crying at the same time, Mairi began to run up the stone steps. The sound of the sea followed her all the way home, part melody and part unending moan.

The White Seal Maid

On the north sea shore there was a fisherman named Merdock who lived all alone. He had neither wife nor child, nor wanted one. At least that was what he told the other men with whom he fished the haaf banks.

But truth was, Merdock was a lonely man, at ease only with the wind and waves. And each evening, when he left his companions, calling out “Fair wind!”—the sailor's leave—he knew they were going back to a warm hearth and a full bed while he went home to none. Secretly he longed for the same comfort.

One day it came to Merdock as if in a dream that he should leave off fishing that day and go down to the sea-ledge and hunt the seal. He had never done such a thing before, thinking it close to murder, for the seal had human eyes and cried with a baby's voice.

Yet though he had never done such a thing, there was such a longing within him that Merdock could not say no to it. And that longing was like a high, sweet singing, a calling. He could not rid his mind of it. So he went.

Down by a gray rock he sat, a long sharpened stick by his side. He kept his eyes fixed out on the sea, where the white birds sat on the waves like foam.

He waited through sunrise and sunset and through the long, cold night, the singing in his head. Then, when the wind went down a bit, he saw a white seal far out in the sea, coming toward him, the moon riding on its shoulder.

Merdock could scarcely breathe as he watched the seal, so shining and white was its head. It swam swiftly to the sea-ledge, and then with one quick push it was on land.

Merdock rose then in silence, the stick in his hand. He would have thrown it, too. But the white seal gave a sudden shudder and its skin sloughed off. It was a maiden cast in moonlight, with the tide about her feet.