The Girl in the Bay

I still remember so clearly...

That day, Da was sure the water was warm enough to take a dip, but Mum was convinced it was going to rain—so they compromised, and I stood on the rocky shore in a swimsuit, raincoat, and big pink wellies.

Da was distracted, talking to Mr. Coleman From The Hardware Store. Mum had been convinced we’d be the only ones out on the beach, but there were a few other families scattered along the shore. Da had nudged me toward one of the deeper tide pools and told me to “get practicing”. He was convinced I should have learned this years ago.

Sullen, I kicked a stone into the water with a somewhat less than satisfying bloop. I pouted at the ripples, then sighed and crouched to tug my wellies off, wincing as the chill water touched my bare toes. Cautiously, I waded out into the pool; the water barely reached my knees, but I was still shivering.

Practice, he’d said. Practice how? I pouted over my shoulder in the grown-ups’ direction, convinced, in the way that children are, that if I was angry and distressed enough, he would magically sense my predicament and turn his attention back to me.

But of course he didn’t. After what felt like hours of sulking, I gave up and returned to nudging stones with my toes. The chill no longer bit into my skin, but I still shivered with every breeze that swept in off the Bay.

The Bay. It has a name, of course, a proper name, but none of us knew it then, not when we were children. Our home was just Town, and it sat butted up against the edge of those shallow cliffs that overlooked the Bay. It was a sullen sort of place, though I didn’t realize it until I was older; even on the clearest, sunniest days, the Bay was a gray and brown and choppy, hints of pale green or deep sapphire just occasionally shining through. The day we met was one of those rare hints-of-blue days, despite the solid bar of gray looming ominously toward the horizon.

Looking back, I wonder if that’s true. Maybe it was as gray as any other day. Maybe it’s just the memory that’s hints-of-blue. Maybe it’s her.

I didn’t see her until she was almost to the shore, and even then it was the salt-rough giggle that caught my attention first, rather than the dark head that poked above the choppy almost-waves lapping at the stone.

Crouched beside the tide pool, I twisted awkwardly to try to find the owner of that laugh, searching the beach before I turned my attention to the water. And then it just seemed impossible that I hadn’t noticed her before, like looking at anything else would have been near blasphemous.

She giggled again when she realized she’d caught my attention and waved, splashing backward into the water. It was hard to tell, she was further out than I’d ever seen the other kids swim, but I thought she winked—which of course made me instantly envious. Another thing I hadn’t yet learned to do.

Beaming, that dark head popped up above the water again, followed this time by a hand, waving me out into the Bay. I pouted, drawing my lips and my brow towards each other in that way Mum did when she was thinking real hard on something. I knew I probably shouldn’t, but…

A glance back at Da, still chatting away as though I didn’t even exist, and my pout morphed into a determined frown. Fine then. I’d just go ahead and drown, and that would show him.

With a sharp, self-righteous huff, I flounced to my feet and strode toward the water, chin high and thin shoulders back. I was sure I must look like Boudicca herself, striding into battle.

Then my toes touched water and I froze, glancing down. My confidence wilted and I prodded the lapping salt water with one toe, then glanced back out toward the Girl in the Bay.

“Can’t you come in?” I called. My voice sounded thinner than I thought it should.

The Girl tilted her head, bobbing gently with the swell of the almost-waves. “Why?” Her voice was a salt-rough as her laugh, warm against the chill of the wind. “Cantcha swim, lass?”

I pouted and kicked another rock. This one skipped twice before sinking beneath the water, which any other day would have been cause for immense celebration on my part. “…No.”

“Oh.” The Girl blinked. Then her smile was back, and she floated a little closer. Close enough that I could see she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. My eyes widened, and I thought for a moment that I should probably look away, but I couldn’t seem to make myself do it. The Girl smiled as she stood waist deep in the water, all that seaweed-dark hair plastered to her skin. “That’s okay,” she giggled, swishing her hands idly over the surface of the water. “I can teach you!”

My grandda used to say that the best teacher when it comes to riding is a horse. If that’s true, then it seems fair enough that the best teacher when it comes to swimming is a seal.

The Girl wasn’t a girl for long, not once I’d waded out to stand before her. She grabbed my hands and swayed us back and forth a few times, asked me my name, told me hers was Nuala—Nuala, I can still taste the salt on my lips when I say it, Nuala—then suddenly she ducked beneath the water and swam away from me, a dark shape beneath the dark swell.

When that dark head surfaced again, I was looking into the whiskery, smiling face of a seal. She barked playfully and slipped beneath the water again, and I felt a nudge against my leg.

I laughed, surprised and delighted, and at another insistent nudge I crouched to put my head beneath the surface, squinting through the water.

The seal circled me, sleek fur brushing against my arms, then swam away. I followed clumsily, popping back up to gasp ungainly breaths every few seconds. Slowly but surely, we made our way out into the Bay, my feet barely touching the rocky seafloor, then not touching at all.

I treaded water, panting and laughing, and Nuala swam beneath my kicking feet, then suddenly she was a girl again as she exploded out of the water beside me, showering me with silver droplets. I squealed in delight and splashed her back, earning one of those wonderfully rough giggles.

I don’t know how long we played like that, just the two of us out in the Bay. I just know the sun was setting by the time Da called me back in—or maybe he’d been calling me in for a while and I just hadn’t noticed, I’m not really sure.

I cast an irritated glance back toward the shore, then looked back to the girl floating easily in front of me. “Well…bye then,” I mumbled with a sharp, dramatic sigh. I managed to smile at her though. “Thanks for teaching me to swim.”

Nuala smiled, then suddenly darted forward and kissed my cheek. I blinked, eyes wide, but before I could react she slipped beneath the water once again. I watched the seal zip away beneath the gray-green swell, then turned and fumbled my way back to the rocky beach.

“Who’s your new friend?” Da asked as I picked my way over to him, shivering violently. Once out of the water, the cold was biting into my bones again.

I shrugged, snuggling gratefully into the towel he wrapped around my shoulders. “A girl,” I replied. Now that I actually had his attention, I suddenly didn’t want it anymore. “Her name’s Nuala." I waited a moment, then said carefully, "Sometimes she’s a seal.”

Da laughed and ruffled my hair. “Is she now? That’s nice.”

He said it in that way that grown-ups do when they don’t really believe you, but they don’t want to tell you you’re wrong. But that was okay, I didn’t mind if he didn’t believe me. That meant Nuala was a secret. It was exciting to have a secret.

I watched the Bay out the back window of the car as we clunked along down the little road back to Town. For a while it was a flat gray slate beneath the pulsing gray sky, then it was a ribbon, then it was gone.

I saw Nuala a lot after that, whenever the beach was empty or nearly so and I dared to swim out into the deeper, chiller waters of the Bay.

But then Da got a new job and we had to leave Town; packed up and moved, just like that.

I didn’t get to tell her, didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I remembered that’s what made me most upset, triggered the most meltdowns and tantrums in the days and weeks leading up to the move. Finally, Mum snapped and told me that I needed to grow up, forget my imaginary friend that I played with at the beach.

I tried. For a while it worked. I went to school, I grew up, and I forgot. For a long time, I forgot.

Then we went back. Grandpa had died, and we went back to Town for the funeral. Of course I knew the name by then. But I still call it Town, because that’s what it is.

The funeral was more boring than sad. I missed Grandpa, and I knew I always would, but he was gone, and the priest’s droning wouldn’t change that, wouldn’t fix it. Didn’t make me feel better.

I stayed as long as I had to, but once I was sure no one would miss me I slipped away.

I hadn’t been to Town in over ten years. Longer since I’d been to the Bay.

It was dusk, I remember so clearly. Purple-gray sky touching green-gray water. I picked my way down the steep path set into the cliffside that all the grown-ups told the kids was too dangerous to take, but we all took anyway. It was simple, natural, like remembering a forgotten lullaby.

Almost cautiously I approached the water. The wind was cool, but after a long day of out-of-season sunshine the water itself was surprisingly warm. Still not really warm enough to swim in, but pleasant against my bare toes, my shoes tossed somewhere behind me on the pebbly sand.

“Hello.”

I can still feel the way my heart jumped and my breath caught in my throat, fear and excitement and something else, something unnamable. Eyes wide and lips parted, I stared out over the water, the stars reflected on its surface.

She was there. Just standing there, like she’d been waiting. I felt myself sway toward her before I managed to catch myself and planted my feet more firmly in the sand.

“Hello,” I replied cautiously.

She smiled and my heart clenched. I’d missed that smile. Without a care for my thick black skirt and sweater, I started wading in.

“You don’t come around much anymore,” Nuala noted once I was closer, both of us standing about waist deep in the water.

I shook my head. “We moved,” I replied softly. “I wanted to tell you, but we left too fast…”

She smiled again and moved toward me, reaching out to hold my cheek. I leaned into the touch unthinkingly, felt her thumb brush against my cheek, smearing something wet. I chuckled and sniffed a bit, pulling away from her to swipe my sleeve across my eyes. “I sorta thought I made you up, y’know. I mean, a seal girl and everything…”

A selkie. A story from Grandpa, not something you really saw.

Nuala giggled, and I closed my eyes a moment to just listen.

“You didn’t,” she noted playfully. I started to smile.

“I’m…really glad,” I laughed a little nervously.

Her eyes reflected the stars like the water around us, black as her hair. She took my hand and led me further out into the water. I shivered, but I didn’t feel the cold.

“I missed you,” she murmured, reaching up to stroke wet hair off my forehead. I nodded.

Her lips were salty, but warmer than I’d expected. Somehow she kept us both afloat easily, cool water surrounding us as though part of the embrace. Fingers tangled in hair, breath meeting breath, heart pounding against heart.

I got scared. I pulled away from her, babbling something incoherent as I floundered my way back to shore. I remember gathering the damp weight of my skirt in my hands, choking on saltwater as I ran for the cliffside path. My shoes were left behind in my hurry.

I’m sorry.

I think she would have told me it didn’t matter, or it shouldn’t have mattered. She would have been right, I know that now. But I was scared.

I’m so sorry.

I left Town after that. For good, I thought. I went back to school in Dublin, got my degree, lived my life. I was so far from the little fishing village where I grew up, it was almost possible to forget.

Almost.

I got married. Had two children. Boys, both, and I loved them to pieces. My husband less so. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, and we got along fine. But he wasn’t a seal girl with eyes like the night sky.

Eventually we split up. After the boys were grown, of course. Neither of them seemed too shocked about it—though Dinny, the younger, didn’t joke about it the way Garrett did.

Of course I love your Da, I told them so often. We just aren’t in love anymore.

Neighbors talked. Of course they did. After a year or so of sideways looks and whispers behind hands, I decided maybe it was time I leave the city. Just for a while, I told myself, just to…figure out what came next.

So I went back, back to the place I’d thought I’d left behind.

Loving a selkie is an exercise in futility. No matter what you do, how strong your love, you will never be all she needs. You can never be the sea. And nothing on land will ever be her.

That’s what Grandpa always said, at any rate. I still remember the stories, told with me perched on his knee as the rain pattered against the foggy windowpane. Maybe that’s why the words were running circles round in my head that day, when I heard a knock on the door, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I blinked and dragged my eyes away from the rain-streaked window, then sighed and pulled myself out of my chair with a sharp, quick groan. My bones creaked. I’m getting old.

The knock came again.

“Alright, alright, I’m comin’,” I grumbled as I strolled toward the door, pulling my woolen sweater a little tighter around my frame. Mum had filled out when she got older—not me, I was as stick thin as ever. Felt like the wind cut right through me with every little gust.

Muttering under my breath—because who could it be, really, other than the boys? And shouldn’t they have the decency to call first?—I reached out and yanked the door open.

“Hello.”

Nuala smiled as I just stared at her, dark fur coat held tight around her frame. Crows’ feet lined her eyes and mouth, she was a little frailer than I remembered, but those eyes still held the night’s expanse in their depths.

“Can I come in?”

I nodded, mute, and stepped aside to let her through the door. Carefully, she picked her way over the threshold.

Her eyes met mine, locked on them, as she let her coat slip from her shoulders and slowly, determinedly, handed it to me. She smiled again. “Mind if I stay a while?”

I couldn’t stop grinning, even as salt water trickled down my cheeks.

I am so much luckier than most humans who have loved a selkie.