Celia becomes the Seal Woman

How Celia became the Seal Woman

Celia was not a happy child and she did not live in a happy family. In fact they were all soo unhappy that one day she decided to run away. She thought long and hard about where she felt the happiest and remembered how much she had felt different when she was at the seaside, on the sandy beach, listening to the waves.

 One night, just after her parents went to bed, Celia got up and went out into her garden. It was a clear night, with a half full moon shining down. She started walking in the direction of the sea. She could smell it even though it was a long way away. She could feel it calling to her like a very old deep slow song inside her own body.

She walked and walked and walked for seven days until she reached the sea-shore. Then she sat down on the sand and started to make patterns with the stones and shells on the beach. She made animal shapes, fish shapes, but as she continued making shapes, they started to form into patterns which drew her on and on. She didn’t stop, but soon realized she was making seals out of stones and seaweed.

As the night went on she made another seal and another seal, and didn’t notice that the tide was rising towards her, and the moon which was as completely full as it was possible to get, was beginning to shine right down above her head, a blue moon, so magical and rare. She didn’t notice the sleek dark shapes that were swimming into the shoreline and beginning to lift their noses out of the water and sniff the air. She did not even notice when those same dark shapes started to lumber up the beach towards her. Not until the first seal gently nudged her with its whiskery snout did she even stop her picture making and look up. And there she saw the seals in her pictures, seven of them coming up the beach just as she had made even seals in the sand.

The tide was close behind the seals now too. When Celia looked up she could see how much the beach was disappearing. The water was washing away her patterns, coming closer and closer. The biggest seal motioned to Celia to get onto her back. They were talking without words to each other now. Without thinking twice, Celia did what the seal said and gently climbed on her back and folded her arms around the huge seals long sleek neck and held on. The water was lapping around them and the seals hardly had to turn around before the waves lifted them back out to sea.

The seals took Celia on a long ride through the ocean. They took her diving and she found she could hold her breath for a very long time, just as the seals did. They took her to their favourite rocks and she lay out with them, resting there. When they caught food they shared some with Celia and she found she really liked seal food. Then one day when she was getting quite grown up they said to her that it was time she went back to her own people.

‘But you are my people’ Celia protested tearfully, ‘I belong with you.’

The oldest seal shook her head. ‘No, we came to you when you called to us with your child magic, when you were sad and lonely. We loved you and stayed with you. We cared for you because you were a child. But now you are growing into a full-sized human, you must find your own people. But we can grant you one more wish before you leave us. You will find the life of people strange to begin with and you must learn to live with them once more, but every so often, on in blue moon you can swim with us all again. You can come and be the seal woman that you have become once more. But you must never let anyone find out about this magic. It must be kept safe for future children who need refuge from the world of humans, until they are old enough to make their own way in that world. Our world is slowly dying now because humans are destroying it. You must take our story forwards and help to preserve the vast oceans of the world. That is what the deep magic wanted from you, why it brought you to us.’

Celia listened and knew in her heart that what the old seal said was true. She had noticed how much the fish the disappearing, how the rocks were littered with plastic rubbish.

So she said goodbye to the seals. As she was leaving them they gave her a gift of a seal skin and told her to keep it hidden under a rock, but that each full moon she could come back and they would be waiting for her. She could put this magic seal skin on once more and the seals could be with her just as they had been for these last years.

Celia walked slowly up the beach, found the rocks under which she could store her seal skin, then turned and waved as the seven seals gave their last good-byes and dived into the waves and far away from her sight. It was the same beach she had first met them on.

Celia went on to join human lives once more and became a marine biologist and underwater explorer. Everyone was astonished at how well and how long she could dive for, and how much she knew about the oceans and the creatures that lived in them. Slowly she showed the people round her what was happening to the oceans and slowly they began to recognise what they were doing. It took many many many years before enough people understood what Celia was showing them, but slowly , very slowly some people began to change their ways and slowly very slowly, when the seas were nearly dead, enough people stopped the destructive ways and understood that we all live here together and we must all look after each other, whiskers or no whiskers. Celia was invited to speak all over the world to tell people her stories of the magical oceans and all who live in them, But once a month, every full moon, she came back to the beach and found her seal skin. Then she would look up and see the now very old wise seal and her six friends waiting for Celia to join them in the oceans. And they would take her to here she next needed to explore, what they next need her to share with the world of humans. And everybody was always astonished at how Celia made her discoveries, but that is her secret, and ours now too.