My mother came to us from the sea.
My father, Murray McClane, was a sea-faring man. Granny used to say it was where he came alive. He was tall gaunt and excitable, with tousells of jet-black hair and pale blue eyes. He had great big sailor hands, his fingers springing out in all directions- perfect for tying knots, carpentry, and making sudden gestures. By the time he was 20, he had built himself a boat- which he named Joyce, after his late father. When he took his boat ricocheting onto the pulsing sea, he swore he could hear music. He sprung to life out there, humming along with the ocean waves, as the wind drummed and whistled against the sails. The wind gave out soft omissions of sound, whispering on his neck like a moaning woman. As the mast crackled and the belly of the boat slapped the skin of the sea, he was lulled into a thoughtless trance. He always returned with a glazed look on his face, as if he’d just witnessed an illicit, secret orchestra.
Granny used to tell me that we all came from the sea, and worked our way out til we made it to the Otherworld, a magical land of eternal youth. Aunt Mable hated it when she said this.
“Stop filling that poor child’s head with your nonsense superstitions. We all end up in Heaven or Hell.” she would snap, her beady eyes darting across the room frantically, as if a priest was about to burst through the door.
The summer my mother arrived was paranormally hot. The sun cast a sticky fatigue over the village of Carrickfergus, heating up the stone walls of the cottages, and fragmenting light onto the surface of the sea. The shore receded out as far as the eye could see leaving an ominous blanket of dead fish scattered across the beach. My father had no use for his boat, so took to walking across the shoreline, collecting their twinkling silver bodies in a sack. When he could carry no more, he stripped nude and ran into to ocean, greeting it as an old friend. The sharp corners of the town blurred from his vantage point, and all he could see was the golden water, warm beneath the sunset. He had the peculiar feeling that he was being watched, and it wasn’t long before his suspicions were confirmed. He was soon accompanied by a herd of seals, their black heads breaking the surface of the ocean. They formed a circle around him, bobbing hypnotically. He was eye-level to them, only four feet away, their great black eyes gleaming back at him. His fisherman friends used to warn him about getting too close to seals- they had been known to attack intruders, but Murray wasn’t one to heed or even remember warnings. The only thing he seemed to recall at this moment were the bedtime stories his mother told about the shapeshifting seal people. His eyes met that of the seal closest to him, its eyes as dark and clear as obsidian stones, appearing to reflect the entire ocean. As he stared, he didn’t notice his body floating closer and closer, as if he was being beckoned into the kaleidoscopic reflection of the sea blinking back at him. Entranced, he felt as though these eyes contained another version of the ocean, with deeper depths and stranger songs. He almost wanted to be swallowed by them, ached to reconcile with this foreign creature, to disappear into its perception. At that very moment, he disappeared into a crease in the time-space continuum and completely lost consciousness.
It was dark out when my father awoke, his heavy body stinging on the sand. He ran his hands across his body in a panic, checking for any injuries. There were none. He had no recollection of how long he had been there, and when he arose to look for his clothes, his eyes fell on a neighboring, sleeping body. A woman lay naked across the sand, her waxy, porcelain skin gleaming under the night sky. Her shoulders were swept in a long mane of thick, leathery hair- so black it was almost blue. Her entire body was smooth and unblemished, and the mounds of her milky breasts reflected the light of the moon. It was the first time he had ever laid eyes on a naked woman, and the sight was so beautiful he stood completely still, awe-struck as if he were witnessing a religious apparition. When he summoned enough courage, he dressed and hobbled over to her. He knelt over her shiny body, his hands shaking as he wiped her silky hair off of her face. As soon as he touched her, her eyes shot open. The same massive black bejeweled eyes he had seen from the seal in the sea peered back at him. She inhaled deeply, swallowing a great big breath as if it were her first. With all the strength he could muster, he tried to prop her up, emptying his burlap sack of fish and shielding her body from the night air. The attempts to get her to stand on her own were in vain. Her wide hips swayed back and forth until her knees gave out and she toppled back onto the sand. To his surprise, she broke out into a laugh- issuing the strangest chortle he had ever heard- akin to a wheezing dog’s bark. She looked up at him smiling, her legs sprawled out on the sand, caught between her thick tendrils of hair. Her eyes flashed mischievously and he couldn’t help but smile back. Any attempt he made to converse with this strange creature about her whereabouts or how to help her was met with a vacant dreamy grin.
Eventually, Murray lifted her into his arms, her legs flailing giddily in the air as she peered up at him. He carried her inland, returning home as she caressed his chest, her wet fingers clasping his arms. Murray knew, out of all the women in Carrickfergus, his mother would be the only one equipped to handle such strange circumstances.
My grandmother was an herbalist, quietly forgiven for her eccentricities by the rest of the village for her ability to cure almost anything. She had married a well-respected landowner, giving birth to my father first and my aunt second. When he died, most of the land was seized by the English military, but my grandmother retained a handsome house, stable, and garden she would eventually turn into an overgrown library of plants. She had a kind, gentle face, paranormally protected from the ravages of time and circumstance. She spent most of her days hobbling around a boiling pot above the fireplace, concocting strange soups, elixirs, and tonics. The house had a rotating door for visitors- varying from all walks of life. Weeping women who were pregnant out of wedlock came to be administered concoctions of herbs, extended out on the kitchen table. Irish rebels came to have their wounds nursed in secrecy. Even Father Bernard, the parish priest, begrudgingly arrived in the wee hours of the night to be administered her miracle elixir for baldness.
That night, Murray followed the column of smoke emerging from the chimney of his mother’s home, arriving with the strange woman swaddled in his arms. My grandmother recalls that she had dreamt about that very moment so many times, that by the time Murray and the woman who would eventually become my mother arrived, she was relieved rather than surprised. My grandmother and aunt were by the fire. Aunt Mable dropped the bowl of soup she was carrying on the floor and gasped in horror, motioning the sign of the cross in midair. My grandmother, without needing to utter so much as a word, went scrummaging through her cabinets and draws, producing a warm tonic within minutes, offering up her own seat by the fire.
Much to my Aunt’s dismay, it was decided that the woman would stay. My Granny gave her the name “Alva” and offered her the attic bedroom, with a window facing the sea. It wasn’t long before she learned to walk, and my father spent hours teaching her English and Gaelic in my grandfather’s old study. It was there, in the cobwebbed corners of the study, that they began to fall in love- inching closer together with each passing page of Murray’s dictionary, their eyes fluttering over each other like butterflies, looking for a place to land.
Alva was paranormally beautiful, with creaseless, silky skin and bulging black eyes. Her hair, when brushed and washed, glimmered an eerie dark blue, as if doused in watercolors. It was strikingly obvious to anyone who looked at her- that she was not of this world. She moved slowly, as if wading through water, almost more myth than woman. After a great deal of persuasion from Aunt Mable, it was decided that at some point, they would have to account for the mysterious guest they had housed. Before rumors circled, attempts were made to cut her hair and powder her body, in an attempt to conceal her strange beauty. The attempts were made in vain, as no powder could conceal the iridescent gleam of her porcelain skin, and her hair appeared to grow back longer within hours of a haircut. Nevertheless, it was decided she was to be introduced as the daughter of a distant associate and integrated into village life.
Alva borrowed a dress from Aunt Mable, and my granny braided her hip-length hair in preparation for Sunday mass. Her braids, as thick and long as woven tree trunks, cast an indigo halo around her. The family weaved past the incriminating stares of the congregation, who were unclear if the mysterious woman in their midst was an angel or a demon. The townsfolk dared not gossip under the prying eyes of the priest, but it didn’t stop them from staring. Aunt Mable held her breath throughout the entire sermon, her clenched fists turning white at the thought of what people must be thinking. Granny, who had long been immune to the opinions of townsfolk, sat embroidering next to Murray, who wasn’t listening to the sermon at all, but watching the light from the stained glass window refract onto Alva’s hair.
After mass, members of the parish hastily approached the McClade family, continuing to gawk at their foreign visitor. Father Bernard, the parish priest, hastily introduced himself- and even Mrs.Brading, their pompous neighbor - invited her round for tea and soda bread. People were hypnotized by Alva, forming a circle on the church steps. Too enamored by her fairy tale beauty to notice her fragmented English and imperfect motor skills, they all interpreted her lack of responses as shyness.
Thus, the various gifts, letters, and care packages addressed to Alva began to appear at the gate of the McClade residence. Various admirers would send wildly provocative poems and cards, as well as petitions for her hand in marriage- fine lace, flowers, and chocolates. Alva of course, didn’t care for chocolate. She ate a strict diet of granny’s salmon and seaweed soup, and in all the ways she was beautiful- she drank it like an animal- gulping it down between intermittent wheezes and splashes, flapping her elbows from side to side, much to the amusement of my father.
She exhibited equally peculiar behavior before taking a bath. She would stare at herself in the mirror as if she had never seen one before- initially attempting to walk past the person staring back at her. She spent time examining the craters of her pale stomach and the curvature of her breasts as if inspecting a foreign object- contorting her body into strange positions, looking at herself at every angle. Getting her into the bathtub was an uphill battle that only granny had the tenacious dedication to attempt- and it was through a grueling process of trial and error that they discovered she would only bathe in salt water. Granny sat behind the bathtub, detangling her hair with a pearl comb, which sometimes took hours- while she happily waddled her legs in and out of the water, splashing everything in sight. When brushed, her hair haloed around her, giving the appearance of a blue underwater plant. When she emerged, she retained the same pungent smell of sea breeze, salt, and coconut cacti. Even when she was dry, she glistened.
The evenings were to be looked forward to when Murray would return home from the docks and beckon her into his father’s study to read. They had long graduated from reading dictionaries and moved on to romance novels and adventures. They read stories about the miracles of saints, princesses imprisoned in ivory towers, gnomes fairies, and goblins. They decoded the sacred book of Kells, laughed at limericks, and discussed the fate of Blackbeard the pirate. They read and read until Murray’s voice was coarse and Alva was fluent in every fabled tale that existed in the Emerald Isle. They inched towards each other, their knees grazing under the wooden desk, the candle between them flickering in Alvira’s orb-like eyes. Murray’s soul swooned at the sight of her, her soft curls clasping the curvature of her neck like tendrils of seaweed, beckoning him to touch her. He dared not, for in those days, unions had to be sanctified by a priest.
As they took turns reading aloud, a secret third language was spoken between them. Not of the earth, nor the sea- but of the spirit. It was soundless but louder than anything they had either heard, as if an invisible and telepathic cord had formed between them, extending out into the heavens and ricocheting back into each of them, landing in the deepest and most exclusive layers of the soul.
Aunt Mable was born immune to the inherited traits of the McClade family. She had no proclivity towards rule-bending or mischief, nor the vivid imagination categorical of her relatives. She inherited none of her mother’s intuition, despite her numerous attempts to teach her to read tea leaves or playing cards. Instead, she had the devotion of a catholic missionary and the tight-lipped bitterness of someone who had been deeply wronged. She looked older than she was and moved with the ephemeral volatility of someone late to their own funeral. Her face was angular and she wore her hair in a painfully tight bun that only added to her austere appearance. Granny blamed the nuns that had educated her, and the absence of the natural Irish language from her education. I always speculated that she had once known love and lost it, and her heart had hardened in the process. Or perhaps she had been a changeling, secretly belonging to a family of stiff conservative politicians. Granny did her best to love her unconditionally just the same and found her practicality useful in a domestic sphere where the laws of physics and logic didn’t always apply.
Aunt Mable was pathologically charitable, not out of the goodness of her heart, but in fear of the eternal damnation that had been so vividly depicted to her by the nuns of her schooling. She performed acts of relentless devotion to the downtrodden, in the hope that her sacrifices were being tallyed up in heaven. She volunteered her time at convents and mills, eventually securing a poorly paid job as a factory seamstress. Granny could spend all day in her starched petticoats, humming as she reeled over her boiling pot. She would entertain by reciting anecdotes and stories, her sing-songy voice rising and falling like an Irish mountain. Aunt Mable would return home and scurry around her with a broom, sneering at her superstitions, casting her austere expression on the floor and headboards. She hastily cleaned up the remnants of the concoctions that flew out of Granny’s babbling pot, as if she thought the ingredients could spring to life if left on the floor.
When Alva arrived, Aunt Mable’s disdain and disapproval for her eventually turned to affection. Aunt Mable, with her track record of self-sacrifice, enjoyed having someone to supervise. Sensing her brother’s feelings for her, and ever fearful of public ridicule, she vowed to help Alva become an acceptable, mannered young woman. While she would never admit it, she found Alva’s incompetence endearing. She felt as though she had finally found a purpose, and quit her job as a seamstress, choosing instead to wait on Alva hand and foot. Aunt Mable taught her etiquette and eventually how to expand her seafood diet to oatmeal, soup, bread, cheese, and tea. She took her to the stable, to familiarize Alva with the cow and horse. After cowering behind hay bales, Alva’s curiosity finally outweighed her fear, plucked up the courage to hesitantly approach and formally introduce herself. She was astonished that they could not reply in the language she had so recently mastered, so took to communicating with them in grunts and swoons. She learned to extract milk from the pendulous teets of the cow, using her strange sounds to lull it into docility. Once comfortable around the horse, Alva tried to mount it in the same fashion she had seen Murray, swinging her legs over the horse’s back, her dainty arms hugging its neck. Aunt Mable, repulsed by her masculine mannerisms and ever fearful that she could fly off, prohibited her from riding.
Aunt Mable began to view Alva as a life-sized, porcelain doll, the kind she had never had. She pampered her and spent her days sewing dresses far more extravagant than her own. Granny dyed them with rhubarb and beets, giving them rich red and pink hues- in hopes that the colors would ground her into the earth. Alva learned how to sow and embroidered the dresses with beaded shells, fish, and coral, making a magnificent tapestry of creatures from the sea.
In those days, she refused to walk down to the sea. Instead, she would stare at it longingly from the attic window, letting out a strange cry, which sounded like a mixture of a hymn and a moan. She would bundle herself up on the floor of her attic bedroom, binding her legs together. Swaddled in quilts with only her face visible, she slept on the ground, thrashing around her room. Aunt Mable’s nightly recitals of the rosary were interrupted by the sound of her rocking across the attic floor.
Alva had no cerebral memories of her existence before her arrival on the shore of Carrickfergus that fateful evening. If she recalled anything, it was felt somatically, in her senses, and emerged in an animalistic angst when she was frustrated. The nature of her aquatic origins was seldom the topic of conversation, for Aunt Mable was afraid to discuss such nonsense, and Granny was too certain in her convictions. Even Murray, who was so enchanted by her presence, couldn’t conceive of her existing anywhere but by his side. But it was privately obvious to all three of them, that she was a selkie- borrowed from the sea.
Granny taught her how to garden, which she was good at,- and harvest weeds for tinctures. She frolicked between fields, collecting yew branches, violets, and baby’s breath, anointing every corner of the McClade residence in bizarre bouquets and wreaths, infusing the rooms with pungent scents. She learned of the spirits of the air, the water, and the earth- and how to cleverly make miniature altars for them behind the guise of saintly statues. She was adept at locating thin places in the village, sensing the invisible borders between this realm and others. She drew Granny’s attention to spiritually charged locations that could be anywhere from a neighbor’s barn to a far-off hilltops, usually affirmed by circles of stones. When Aunt Mable was fast asleep, they took nocturnal excursions to such locations- petitioning the spirits of the land to protect them from poverty and political unrest.
Before long, she was well-versed in all the domestic arts suitable for a young woman. When Aunt Mable was assured that her strange behavior would no longer be the target of local gossip, it was decided that the time had come when it was permissible for her and Murray to marry. Murray, eager to relinquish Alva from his sister’s domineering grasp- knew that to marry, he had to set out and secure a fortune of his own. He was afraid that Aunt Mable’s attempts to civilize Alva would rob her of the animalistic and mystical qualities he had grown to love. This, of course, would have been impossible- but he worried just the same. He planned to acquire the means to wed and build a separate house on the bones of their old stable. With great reluctance, he sold his boat and joined the ranks of a merchant ship, set to move forth into the foreign tides of Italy, France, and Greece.
It was a vast and handsome ship, carved from sacred oak, boasting cloud-like canvas sails and enormous masts. Navigated by Captain Orkney and his crew of burly, adventurous men- it was a rebellion against the steamboats and coal-driven cargo ships of Belfast. Captain Orkney was a superstitious man and believed that the technological advancements of ships were betrayals against the wind and sea, destined to bring about disaster. Preferring an old-fashioned approach to travel, he painted old Celtic symbols onto the belly of the boat, and named it “Brigid”, in hopes that the old gods would recognize his efforts and provide smooth-sailing passage onto foreign terrain.
Although Murray was half the size as Orkney’s crew of monolithic, hairy men, he had proved himself worthy of joining their ranks. He had a speedy and skillful way of navigating adverse weather and maneuvering the ship’s mechanics- and of course, a noble reason for going abroad: Alva. With the prophetic approval of his mother’s cards and strange astrological maps, Murray packed his trunks. Aunt Mable was happy to have Alva all to herself, but poor Alva was devastated. When he told her the news, she threw herself into Murray’s arms, running her hands along his face and body, eager to memorize every inch of him. They shared the first of many kisses, passionate and painful, melding into each other like Celtic knots. They desperately embraced until they were both wet with tears. They bid each other a bittersweet farewell, Murray vowing to be safe, Alva vowing to remain patient.
Alva watched his silhouette recede onto the shore from her attic window until he disappeared from view. The first week of Murray’s absence, she refused to eat. She returned to her nightly routine of wailing out the window, which washed such a devastating raucous that the windows and doors flew open. The lamps went out and curtains swam across the old wooden floors, which creaked and ached with each passing hour. That week, the clouds grew heavy and the sea churned a violent grey. Gusts of wind charged at the stone walls, shrouding the residence in distant, otherworldly moans. The downstairs kitchen sink sprung a leak, and the bathtub overflowed seemingly of its own accord.
When Granny finally knocked at her door in desperation, she found her ensconced on her bed, like a ghostly mermaid, her weeping eyes transfixed on the shoreline. Granny sat down next to her, lifting up her starched aprons, gently stroking her blueish hair. “My dear,” she whispered, “You are disrupting the sea itself. You must channel these feelings into other mediums, or else you’ll make his journey harsh and long.”
When Alva finally turned to look at Granny’s kind, ageless face, she found her holding a warm cup of tea. She gazed into it, seeing that it’s contents were brimming out of the cup, forming a tempest in her orbit. Several deep breaths and minutes later, the whirling liquid in the cup became calm and still.
Animated by such powerful longing, Alva had unlocked new escalons of power. She was not alone in this, as Murray uncovered his own secret powers, after experiencing his first brutal week at sea. As he and his crew navigated the swelling waves, the surging froths of ocean breast, panting beneath the fierce wind, he felt Alva’s pain. He heard her wails in the pit of his stomach and the deepest chambers of his heart. Love, of course, is the most powerful precursor to psychic ability, and when two entangled people cannot be near each other- their spirits often find bizarre and unusual ways of remaining in contact.
It was that night, after the ocean’s bloats had reached a steady calm, that Murray took to writing Alva letters. Aware that there was no post office in the ocean, he was overtaken by a surreal sense of urgency. Setting a pen to parchment, he poured his burning love onto pages of prose, divulging his most secret desires, dreams, and wishes. In his elegant calligraphy, he omitted that he had displayed godly strength in the shaded corners of his father’s study, that he had wanted to run his hands over Alva, plunging into her deepest waters. He told her that he had never loved a woman before, and was certain, in his soul, that he would love no woman after her. He wrote of his plan to return wealthy enough to ensure the remainder of Alva’s days were comfortable and curated to her liking. How he wanted savagely protect her, worship her, and drown into her. He wrote of her sleeky blue hair, her magnanimous eyes, the sways of her hips, and the supernatural shine of her skin. He wrote of how his conviction of her was stronger than that of his sisters to the church and his mothers to the stars and spirits.
When his hand was weary and the rest of his crew was fast asleep, he crept upstairs to the deck. He tore the letter into three perfect pieces, and the blue of the sea opened up like a wide gaping mouth. He dropped his letter into the ocean as if puppeteered by a madman, strong in his convictions that the sea would ensure that Alva received his correspondence.
Alva awoke to the squawking of seagulls in the newly clear sky, consoled by the sound of a calmer wind. She indeed, had Murray’s correspondence had been salvaged by a dream. In the dream, the letter was read aloud by a silver salmon, who assured her that he was relaying a message from her lover- and it was not he, the salmon, who would omit such obscenities to an earth-bound creature. Elated, she replied by means of scribbling her own letter and allowing it to soak in one of her lengthy baths. And thus, a secret medium of messaging was discovered. From that point onward, Alva knew what part of the ocean Murray was traversing, as the fish relating his messages would change form. When he was in Iceland, they were read by an Atlantic cod. In Greece, a sea bream told her of his recent findings in various coastal coves. She received poems from jellyfish and erotic liturgies from a noticeably uncomfortable Italian branzino.
