Kristen VanBlargan

My son, my storm child, kneels on his bed and traces the rain’s path down the window. His finger follows a droplet until it merges with another. As the stream slips past the frame, his hand reaches the windowsill, where he picks up a pair of wooden figurines, seals swimming among a menagerie of carved creatures: otters and mackerel, sharks and sea turtles, whales and white-billed divers.

I stroke his black hair against his cloud-white skin. “It’s time for bed.”

“Tell me the story of the storm,” he says, his eyes bright like the sun he has never known. It has rained every day since he was born.

“Again? You’ve heard it so many times.” But he will not sleep without the tale, so I begin.

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Past ice-carved cliffs slouching over the sea like giants, there once stood a lighthouse as grand as you’d ever seen. Its scarlet walls were so tall it made the Keeper dizzy to descend the stairs some days. Once a week, he went down all two hundred forty-three steps and walked a mile into town to fetch oil for the lantern. Chatting with the villagers about their lives was the highlight of his week. Most days he didn’t talk to anyone. 

Instead, he watched. Watched the ships groan as they passed, watched the sleepy smokestacks crawl up from villagers’ homes, watched the seals glide through the waters below. He was good at it, too: no ship had ever sunk under his watch.

One day, a hunting ship arrived in the rock-hugged harbor. Its sails danced, its bow sliced the cold water. The hunters poked their harpoons over the edge of the ship and thrust them into the seawater. In and out, out and in. Then their blood-stained spears pulled out two seals, male and female. After loading the carcasses onto the deck, the hunters readied the ship for sail.

But then the storm came. The Keeper had never seen anything like it: one minute the skies shone blue, the next they were gray and full of fury. He jumped up and sounded the fog horn. In the beam of the turning lantern, he saw a seal gliding through the water. As the creature slid onto the algae-covered rocks below the lighthouse, the beam caught its black eyes—full of grief, more human than animal. The light turned again, and the seal slipped into darkness. 

Splash, crunch. Between the claps of thunder, he heard metal writhing against rock, wood against wood. Through the rain-clouded window, he saw the ship sinking into the black water. He grabbed his coat and dashed down the staircase. By the time he reached the bottom, his lungs felt like they would cave in. 

But before he could catch his breath, he saw the ship, or what was left of it. Its hull belly-up, its pieces scattered on the rocks and the water. There was no sign of the hunters. He thought about jumping in, but the waves were so high they would’ve grabbed him in an instant.

Yews flapped their branches against the night. The Keeper looked over again at the mound of rocks. The seal was gone.

While buying oil the next morning, he heard one villager say to another, “They say he let the light go out.” Without the villagers’ respect, he grew even lonelier. Skirting their prying eyes, he walked through fields dotted with hyacinth and heather, making his way towards the coast. The waves were kinder now, and quieter. He walked to a cove lined with pines and filled with shallow turquoise waters.

As he reached the cove, he felt a cold drizzle tapping his shoulders. Lifting his head up to the gray sky, he caught sight of the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. She stood in the center of the cove bathing her body with saltwater.

The Keeper crept out of sight behind a pine, and he did what had grown so accustomed to doing: he watched. Watched as she wrung water from brown hair that tumbled past soft hips. Watched as her long legs moved through the water, calm except for the pitter-patter of the droplets. Watched as she turned to reveal her parted lips and her long eyelashes.

He saw that some of the droplets were her tears, which flowed from her black eyes. Where had he seen those eyes before? Tiptoeing forward, he grabbed a tree branch, and his hand landed on something wet and smooth.

A seal skin.

He jerked his hand away, and the hide slipped off the tree and fell onto the shore below. The woman’s gaze caught his, and he realized where he’d seen her eyes before.

He’d heard the legends from his mother, old wives’ tales. In these waters live animal enchantresses who control the wind and waves, who take vengeance on the hunters who kill their kin. They have the bodies of seals but the eyes of humans. When they come to shore, the enchantresses shed their skins and become human. And without their skins, they cannot return to the sea.

He grabbed the skin and ran—across the fields, through the village, over the headland where the lighthouse stood. Panting, he thrust the door open and hid the skin within its chambers. Then he heard a pounding on the door. He opened it and saw the seal-woman, who stood unashamed of her bare body. 

“My skin,” she said. “Where is it?”

“You won’t find it,” he said. “Become my wife and I will return it in seven years’ time.”

Water dripped from the woman’s face as wind whirled specks of sand around her. “Keep my skin safe and I will marry you. But each day I am away from the sea, the waters of my grief shall fall from the sky.”

He agreed, and they were wed the next day.

###

“Then she grew to love him,” my son yawns.

“Yes,” I say, biting my lip.

“So why does it rain every day?”

“Because she is still far from the sea. The waters remind her of home. But she is happy. She has a husband and child she loves.” I have given a happy ending to this child born of grief.

But I have never loved the Keeper. The day he captured me, he threatened to burn my skin in the flames of the lantern if I looked for it. I was young then, and irascible; I could have conjured a storm so wild it would have torn through both our bodies. And what did I care for my life? I had lost my home, my body, my parents: the hunters had murdered them in front of me, and I would’ve drowned them, left their bodies clothed in kelp. 

Yet in his eyes I saw not cruelty but the despair of desire, the madness of solitude—and I pitied him. Perhaps two desperate, lonely creatures could learn to love each other. Perhaps I needed to escape from the cold waters.

After we wed beneath beneath storm-shrouded skies,, the Keeper left the lighthouse and moved us into the mountains, away from the village, away from the sea. Every day I stared out of the rain-fogged windows towards the distant waters where my kin swam. When the rain turned to snow and the air stiffened with cold, my child was born. I carved figurines of my seal-parents from wood, the first reminders of the sea that I made.

My son now puts the wooden seals back on the windowsill. “Good night, seals,” he says and turns to me. “Good night, Mama.”

I wipe tears from my eyes and kiss him on the forehead. “Good night, my love,” I whisper as he falls asleep.

I hear heavy footsteps and turn to see the Keeper holding my skin in his hands. “Are you sure?” he says. He is not an unkind man; he has been a generous partner and devoted father.

But I long for the sea, for its waves and brine, for the joys the land cannot give me. I long for my own kind. “Yes,” I say, and his face is warm with tears when he hands me the pelt. I feel its smooth contours, its soft fur. I drape it over my son and crawl into bed next to him.

In the morning, I hug my child, my only comfort in these seven years, as he sleeps. I rise from bed and place another wooden seal next to the figurine of my parents. I hope he will treasure it long past the days of his youth, will hold onto it when he has abandoned his other toys in a heap. I hope, then, that he will understand.

After giving him one last kiss, I replace the pelt with a blanket, then open the door to the cottage and walk onto the path. It cuts through the woods, past streams and lichens and damp undergrowth. Blackcaps warble, swallows sing. I reach the foot of the mountain and walk to the sea, where earth becomes sand and salt thickens the air.

 The rain lightens with each step I take towards the waves. When I slip into the skin, the skies fall mute. Streams of light break through the clouds, the droplets cease, and the sun illuminates the water as I dive into its depths.

I break through the surface and look back at the mountain. My son will be awake by now. My storm child, you shall not know your mother again. But you shall know the sun. Its light will baptize you, its warmth will caress you. This is my final gift.