Once.
In the north lands,
Where in Winter the day masquerades as night and in Summer the night masquerades as day,
The coy alluring sea recedes in seasonal tides, unveiling her wide wet margins to the land.
Inlets and outcroppings
Groves of tangleweed and pristine pools teeming with life
Fleshy anemones, sea stars, rock-clinging mollusks, sand darters, jellies and crabs moving in and out of the lucent green sea lettuce, sea grass, purple dillisk, kelp and carageen.
When the tide is slack, Dylan comes in his gumboots with his bucket and his shears in his practiced hand, cutting the kelp stipe above the holdfast, trimming the sea greens above the bud, so the shore is trimmed but not stripped.
Dylan spent his boyhood at sea, in the company of his father and boat men, coming and going from the land in the darkness and marine mist, so that first and last light were over the open ocean. His first legs were sea legs. He knew the swells and the changing currents. More than once he knew the terror of a deep trough when the water walled out the sky and the sea wanted to swallow him. More than once he knew elation when the wind whipped the wave crests into white mare’s manes galloping on the surf.
Once he saw the Sámi men in their low, sleek, hide-bound boats, darting swiftly in and out the troughs. The ‘Fin Folk’ his father called them.
“Stay clear of them, lad,” his father said, “they’ll ruin your catch.”
His father hated the sea. Hated that he needed the sea. Hated that the sea was so moody and that he had no choice but to take whatever mood she gave him. Hated that he could not live without the sea but that the sea could easily live without him.
“We cannot fathom the darkness below us,” he said, “but the dark fathoms us. So treat the water with respect, boy. But pray to Christopher to guide you safe back to land.”
Dylan’s mother was a fisherman’s wife. On good days she carried her 4 stone creel to market for coin, a bit of bread, and sometimes apples. On a bad day she sat staring out at sea in silence. One day, she was gone.
After that, Dylan carried his mother’s creel, and took to the margin of the sea, in sight of land, harvesting the sea groves.
His father’s dying request was to be buried inland, far from sight of the sea, in some farmer’s field, where the water had no salt, in the ‘dust from which we were made.’ And so it was.
One midsummer, in the long light, when the scandalous sea revealed her widest margin, Dylan came down to harvest.
That day, out in the wet sands, he saw a pair of slender footprints, coming from nowhere, going nowhere. In a nearby pool, he found, among the honeymare, strange weeds. But he knew them at once. ‘These are selkie weeds,’ he thought, ‘and these are her prints.’ He knew about the selkie people. How they would peel off their sealskins and take to land at a whim, to dance and play as though they were human. He knew, also, that they could not return to sea, return to their seal forms, without their skins.
So he took it where he found it and hid it with the honeymare.
And when he hung the seaweeds to dry, he tucked the selkie weeds into a barrel bottom, beneath the dried dillisk.
Then he lit a fire and lit his pipe and sat upon his 3-legged stool and waited.
‘Let’s she if she comes calling,’ he said to himself.
And in the long light of midsummer night, when the tide was at the flood, she came.
She stood at his door, wrapped in seaweed stipe, fronds and fans.
“Look what the sea cast up,” he said.
She dropped the wet weeds before him and he saw her naked dripping form.
“And what am I to call you?” He asked.
“Alaria,” she said.
“That’ll do,” said he. “And I’ll be Dylan.”
“You are welcome here,” he said. “I have gifts for you.”
So she stepped into the half-light of his hearth.
But he did not give her back her skin. Instead, he gave her something else, something he thought she wanted.
He clothed her and fed her, and shared with her his bed.
He kept her skin hidden in his harvest and kept her in his service,
gathering weed from the shore, and caring for his half-dark hearth.
He thought he loved her, but in truth, he loved having her.
In time, her womb began to swell with a coming child.
On the stormy night her babe was born, the midwife came.
When the midwife saw her, she said “You’ve done this before. Where are your children?”
She moaned “In the sea.”
“Ah,” said the midwife, misunderstanding, “it’s too common, the tragedy of drowning.”
So a boy was born to Alaria and Dylan. In the way all men are born,
From broken waters with a coil of flesh wrapped round him.
The midwife knotted the cord to hold it fast, and with her sharp shears and practiced hands she cut the cord above the knot and gave the boy to his mother’s arms.
And they called him Finn.
And in the long days and nights that followed they raised their child.
In the gloaming Alaria told Finn stories as Dylan sat by the hearth, mending nets and sharpening shears.
She told of Dame Ragnell who became ugly and uglier until she gained her sovereignty.
She told of Narcissus, who did not know himself.
One night she told of an ogre who kept a maid in thrall in a ruined castle by a stormy sea, until…
A young prince, the youngest son of seven, set out to seek his fortune.
He came to the ruined castle by the craggy coast where he found the captive maiden.
Together they learned the ogre’s secret: he had no heart in his body.
So it was that the ogre could be strong and deathless.
The heart, they learned, was hidden far away and deep.
So the prince set out. For a year and a day
Until he came to the great lake,
in the center of the lake he came to an island,
on that island he found a church
in that church a well and in that well a duck and in that duck an egg and in that egg, the hidden heart.
Returning with the heart in hand, the prince confronted the ogre and challenged his power.
The ogre pleaded for his heart.
But the prince crushed it and the ogre fell dead.
So it was that maid could not be free until the ogre’s heart was broken.
So it is with many women, said the selkie wife, kept by heartless men.
So it was with my own mother and my mother before her and so it is, she said, staring fixedly at Dylan, with me too.
For the first time Dylan saw her pain and anger.
“I am not heartless,” he said.
He went to the barrel of dillisk weed hiding her skin.
Returning with it he said “Tell me, if I had given you your skin that night, would you have stayed?”
She answered, “we’ll never know.”
“I have seen the mountain hare in winter change her coat to white to hide in snow.
Is that why you change your skin? Your hide? To hide?
Are you here hiding or going to hide?
I have a heart.
It is filled with you and our child and does not want you gone but will no longer make you stay.
Take your changing skin.
Choose what you will do with it.
But tell me if you can,
How can I change my skin?”
What justice is it that you come and go freely from the sea while I am bound to earth?
He followed her to the water’s edge.
Turning, she said
“You do not know who you are, or where you are from.
You tell yourself you were fashioned of ash and dust,
Clay shaped by a craftsman.
Your story binds you to the land.
But change your story and you may find your changing skin.”
She slipped into her skin, into the sea, and was gone.
In the years that followed, Dylan taught their son to love the sea.
And in the long dark of Midwinter days, they sat beside the hearth telling stories
of sea and land
of woman and man
and the unfathomable depths of the heart.
Always he left his door open, to listen to the sea.
Martin Waugh’s creative uses of high-speed photography make it possible to capture the smooth and
effortless curves of liquid. By varying the size, speed and position of drops, as well as the color,
viscosity, and surface tension, Martin creates a panorama of color, movement and intrigue. Martin
received his B.S. degree in Physics from Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. His work can be found in
museum, corporate, and private art collections. He lives in Portland. Visit www.liquidsculpture.com to
learn more.
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