Chapter 18: A Selkie's Skin
The story is, that a young fisherman, walking home one night, chanced across a group of beautiful girls dancing naked on the beach near a pile of seal skins. When they saw the fisherman the girls screamed and ran for the skins, each transforming back into a seal when they put the skin on and fleeing into the sea, but the fisherman was too quick for one of the girls and he got to the last skin before her. The girl pleaded with the young man for her skin but he refused, instead he walked home with the skin and the girl followed. At his home the man gave the girl some clothes to wear, and fed her some dinner, and while she ate it he hid the skin. Though the girl pleaded with man, he would not give her skin back, but he treated her well, and over the days the girl came to love the fisherman, and the following week they were married. It was a happy marriage, and over the years the girl bore him several children, and she was mostly very content, except for when summer came round and she would look longingly out to sea and, whenever her husband was out, search the house high and low for her skin. Then one year her youngest daughter found the skin and told her where it was, and the selkie gathered her children together, told them she loved them, and left for the sea. That evening, as the fisherman was rowing his boat ashore, a seal poked its head up out of the water and looked at him long and hard with eyes that seemed to communicate a world of regret, and then was gone forever.
I woke up in hospital late the following day. Apparently I was pulled from the water by some of the SAS men. Bauer came to his senses in time to radio them and let them know what was happening. Nobody else saw the Viking longboat. Of Selkie, there as no sign.
The police, backed up by the SAS, arrested the Black Goat when they tried to leave the forest and head back north. Over half of them were shot resisting arrest and there is an enquiry about that ongoing to which I was called to give evidence but only about the incident at the nightclub in Bedford, the rest of my involvement with the affair, the rest of the affair it seems, was hushed up. The surviving druids were charged with public order offences and I understand most of them were sectioned and are now held at various secure units. Wilhelmina Pfinnenwicken was never charged and has returned to her home in Whitton. I have not seen her since.
I occasionally still see Lord Lepusstrom. He retired properly shortly after and bought a property on the Suffolk coast near the mouth of the Deben, and now spends a lot of time walking up and down the seafront. I visit him less than he asks me to, his is a sad house, and he spends too long looking wistfully out to sea and talking of his daughter. He told me Weatherby is now the Witch Finder General and Cholderton is his full time deputy. Bauer ended his secondment early and went back to MI5.
Me, I still have the same job, the same flat, the same flatmate. He got a really good position doing something for the County Council shortly afterwards but then quit six months later saying he could not hack the pressure. I'm back to lending him the rent this month.
Corner came round once, I don't know how he got my address. He arrived on a trike at the head of a dozen roaring motorbikes that quite frightened the neighbours. Briefly they had me worried that maybe that he might blame me for Selkie's loss, but they just wanted to take me down the pub. Corner is showing his age a bit more these days, and though he still has it, he doubts he will ever get back on the motorcycle. He proudly displayed half a dozen deep and very ugly scars across his belly and said it was a miracle none of his vital organs were cut, at which point one of the other bikers pointed out that he only had one spleen now, to which Corner just laughed and I never gathered if it was true or not.
These days I do not worry too much about being lonely, I've stopped staring wistfully out of train windows and daydreaming romantically about girls sitting across from me in the carriages. I have not quite reached the stage of talking to them yet, but I do live life a bit more in the moment than I used to.
A few months ago there was a report of a seal seen in Richmond lock. Most weekends now I go down and walk by the river, sometimes with a fresh fish in a bag to feed it, but I have not seen it yet.
