The birth of a silkie

The sea murmured and flowed, soft among the outer rocks. The night was calm and mild: the moon, a fingernail of pale light low on the horizon, was reflected across the gentle swell in a shimmered line which lay straight into the cove. A glissading breeze lifted from the wave sides to whisper among the dried weeds and water-softened wood on the high drift bank left by winter’s storms. Among the grey and dusty pebbles a mass of dried whelks’ eggs shifted and pittered on the slope.
Awake in the cave, Merrin heard the slight sound and tensed. She was reacting too acutely, she knew, but she felt vulnerable, like an egg whose soft shell was only a single tight layer of skin. She was not strong enough, impervious enough, to protect the life within. The baby moved inside her and she grunted at the discomfort, moving heavily to find relief from its weight. Her time was very near and, over-reacting again; tears fell, although she would have called herself happy. She had waited so long for this and now was apprehensive: nothing must fail. Her fears, unusual among the maidens of the folk, disturbed her mother and Borry came to her, furtive in the slanting shadows, to give her the charm.
Fat Borry, folds of flesh at wrist and elbow, squatted at her daughter’s side, breathing noisily.
‘Take it, take it,’ she panted. ‘Keep hold of that, for it won’t be long now, and you’ll be sure to come through as clean as that shell. I’ve put words in it. There’s nothing to worry you, my pretty. Nothing to worry.’ She stroked Merrin’s cheek, smoothed her hair, fondling its curls. Then, pressing palms into her chubby knees levered herself upright. ‘Won’t be long now.’ She smiled bravely and waddled away. Her visit had frightened Merrin more than ever.
She looked slyly at the monster shell in her fist, smoothed and clean, the opening pink and full-fleshed. Like lips. She covered it quickly with her hand, ashamed of her thoughts. Like the other maidens she had laughed and joked recently, pulling winkles from their dark shells intact. Every whole creature promised a successful birth they said. She wished her fingers had proved nimbler.
She shifted again in her sleeping hollow, trying to ease the ache in her back, but it gripped suddenly tighter, groping deep into her groin. Her heart jumped and flexed as if it would swim up, out of her ribs: was this what she had been waiting for so long?
The young moon had set into the west when she gave her first joyful cry. It was certain: her babe was ready in its time of borning. Mothers and nans hurried round her, wide-eyed little maids watched, fingers to their mouths.
‘Outside! Outside!’ Everyone was calling and laughing, helping her to her feet, supporting her in the ritual. Out of the cave, out of the womb into the world, the world of water and of air.
She had prepared the place days before in the shelter of a leaning rock just above the tide line. The flood was running now, close beside the rock. Soon all would be complete. She stumbled a she walked but loving hands reached out, arms held her, and she lay back at last catching the rhythm of it as the sea lapped close around her, calling the child.
It seemed as if, one after another, master waves drummed on her body and their undertow tugged deep within her. She breathed, shallow gasping breaths, whenever she was able. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the sea roar in her ears. She remembered the shell and thought she was listening to its convoluted call, deep down. Deep. Down. With one wilful effort she arched her body, reached for the surface once more, and it was done. Eased into the world on a sigh, her baby was born.
Borry and an old nan took it up, lifted it away into quiet waves for washing. Maids of her own borning helped Merrin to her feet. Weary but triumphant she slid into the smooth sea and waited to be clean. Then proudly carrying her little daughter she led them all back up toward the slumbering cave.
Out on the skerries the seals called, watching suspiciously the activity on the pre-dawn beach. The womenfolk turned and looked back. Colour was drifting into the sky once more, another day waiting to be born.
‘What is coming for you?’ Merrin whispered to the infant in her arms, gazing into the folded face and rubbing dry the downy fur on shoulders and arms. ‘What lifetime of new days here among your folk, measured out by the rise and fall of the sea, your home?’
It was not thinkable that a girl-child would ever leave the home beach.