Chapter Text
“It was two-hundred years ago,” I began. It is always two-hundred years in the old tales.
“There is a creature that lives on the coasts of Scotland. In English they are called seals, but in Scots they are called silkies. Silkies are magic creatures. Most of the time they look like sleek water-dwellers, but they can change. They can remove their silkie skin and walk the shore like men and women. They’re very beautiful when they are people, and the humans love them very much. If you find a silkie skin, you can keep it and that silkie will be tied to you for all of her days- she will be your wife and the mother of your children, and she will cook and clean and care for you.
“And so, there was a silkie woman, two hundred years ago. She had a life in the sea- a husband who was, like her, a silkie, but she took off her skin one day to walk on the land, and when she went to look for it, she could not find it, and so she was forced to remain there, for all she wanted to return to the sea and all of the things she knew, and her husband, and her life.
“The silkie woman met a man, however. A man nearly as beautiful as the silkie men, with red hair and beautiful blue eyes, just like yours my darling. He protected her when she did not know how to live on the land and cared for her as she was so very afraid. He fell in love with her and she, in spite of her silkie husband in the sea, fell in love with him back.
“But the day came that she was forced to tell him the truth- that she was a silkie who belonged in the sea, but that she did not have her skin to return to the sea. Without telling her, he found her skin and offered her a choice- to return to the sea and her husband and all of the things she knew, or to stay with him in the air and never swim again, for if you burn the skin of a silkie, she can never return to the sea.
“The silkie did love him so that she chose to stay and asked him to burn her skin. And they lived together happy for a long time.
“But then war came to the world of the land, and the red-haired man was forced to fight. But he did love his silkie wife so much that he wanted to keep her and the baby that she was to bear him safe, so he gave her back her skin, which he had kept without telling her, and told her to go back to the water and her silkie husband, where she would be safe.
“But it is the curse of the silkies that they can never return to their husbands on land once they have gone back to the sea. And so the silkie wife wishes for her red-haired husband from the land, even though she is back in the world to which she was born.”
I looked down at the tiny, pink face against the white pillow on her cot. She’d fallen asleep within moments of my starting, but I had to finish the story.
I always did.
“But you are worth it, my darling. You always will be.”