The Selkie Woman

Prologue

The land belonged to them long before the ships sailed in.

The gritty rock and sand of the beach, the tangle of roots and tall trees, the snow-capped mountains and the midnight caves. It was all theirs to rule; they left their skin out in the sun, running on wobbly legs, their long hair waving in the wind like a banner. They built homes of dirt and timber by the mountains, or of leaves and wooden planks in the trees so they could touch the sky - the mysterious, blue dome that so enticed them from the depths.

The land was theirs, and there was no reason to worry; no reason to bury their skin in the sand, no reason to sleep in the sea's rocky crevices. 

Then, when the massive wooden beasts arrived, bringing with them hundreds of odd beings, they did have reason to worry.

These creatures were like them in many ways - they looked almost identical, with long legs that they stood upright on, flowing hair on their heads that framed similar faces, voices that called to one another in a different tongue. 

But what made them different was the fact that they had no skins. Some would step out in the cold water, heaving their smaller wooden beasts out to the sea; they wouldn't dare wade in it, climbing onto the creature as it extended long arms out to push forward. These new creatures, their hair pulled from their faces in knots and their feet covered in odd contraptions, were not selkies.

It was hard to comprehend that such a creature existed, so similar yet so different; they had seen these new creatures capture schools of fish with their large black nets, and more than once they had caught selkies in them. Before they had a chance to transform, these cruel beings killed them; they rowed back to shore, leaving not even a body for families to bury.

Fear overtook many of the selkies, making them hide among the rocks and caves lining the shore.
These were violent people, creatures that had taken their land and torn it down. They built new homes, and more beasts, and brought more people. 

Determined to live a life beyond the ocean waves, the selkies masqueraded as these new beings during the day, hiding their skin in the sand so it would not be lost. They were afraid that these new beings would kill them; they had seen what had happened to their own kin. The selkies slowly learned the creatures' difficult language, their customs and their traditions. 

The leaders of the selkie clans agreed that there should be a peace offering between them and these new creatures. If they gave them a beautiful gift, they would surely stop killing the selkies.

They offered their daughters.

If a man found the skin of a selkie woman on the shore, she was his to claim for his bride. In exchange for this, these creatures would leave the selkies alone; if one had been captured, they would be released back into the sea.

But the selkies did indeed remember to leave the women some way to escape; if she found her skin, then she would be able to return to her home - free to leave her husband forever.

So the women were very careful with their hiding places; some threw sand over them as they had done before. Some hung them on the high trees, where they could not be easily reached. And some of them left their skins on rocks far out to sea, and swam the distance to shore. 

And so the humans (as they called themselves) and the selkies lived side by side for hundreds of years; there was no human-inflicted death between the selkies, and the occasional marriage of selkie and human. 

But these two were certainly not equals. No selkie woman could walk on land without fearing she would become a bride. The homes that the selkies had known and loved were gone. And the trees, which had stretched so high, so close to the sky and the mesmerizing stars, had been cut down - the path to heaven destroyed.

It was hard to believe that this place, a lush forest turned to a loud, bustling village, had once been their own.