S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

"It said that the Holder should be more careful, and warned you that not only humans want to possess a cloch na thintri, especially Lamh Shabhala."

Jenna turned. O'Deoradhain stood on the bank, his hand extended to her. "Come out of the water," he said. "I'll start a fire, and we can get you warm and dry."

She didn't move. Waves lapped at her waist. "You understood it?"

"Her, not it. And aye, I understood her." He stretched out his hand again. "Trust me, Holder. I will explain."

She ignored the hand. "I thought I knew you," she said.

His mouth twitched under the beard. "Not all. Come out of the water, Holder; I don't know if that creature will be back."

She took a breath, shivering. Then she reached for his hand. "Then tell me," she said as he helped her from the lough. "Tell me why the seals come to you."

He nodded.

I was perhaps four or five when I realized that my mam was. . strange. I woke up one night in the bed I shared with my younger brother. I don't know what it was that woke me-maybe the sound of a footstep or the creaking of the door. I managed to get out of the bed without waking my brother. Our house was small: my sister-the youngest of us at the time-slept in her crib in the same room, beside my parents' bed. I could hear my da snoring. The moon was out and the sky was clear; in the silver light, I could see that where my ma should have been, the blankets were flung back. I called out for her softly so I wouldn't wake the others, but she didn't answer. I went out into the other room, but she wasn't there, either. The door to our cottage, though, was ajar.

My da was a fisherman, and we lived just above a rocky shingle of beach on the southern coast of Inish Thuaidh not far from the island of Inishfeirm where

your family lived, in the townland of Maoil na nDreas. Sometimes, when the day was clear, we could even see Inishfeirm like a gray hump on the horizon to the south. But that has nothing to do with this story. .

I walked out of the cottage. I could see my father’s boat pulled up on the beach and hear the waves pounding against the shore. I thought I heard another sound as well, and I padded down toward the water. The wind was brisk, and the breakers were shattering on the walls of our little cove, splashing high on the cliff walls that rose out like arms on either side. In the bright moonlight, I could see seals out there on the rocks several big ones, and they were calling loudly to each other, occasionally diving awkwardly into the surf and pulling themselves back up with their flippers.

These seals, I noticed, were different than the small harbor seals that I usually saw. They shimmered in the moonlight, their fur sparkling with blue highlights. I watched them for a while, listening to what sounded like a loud conversation. One of the bulls noticed me, for I saw him turn his snout toward the beach and bellow. A few of the other seals looked toward me too, then, and one lurched from the rock into the sea and I lost sight of it. I watched the others, though, especially that old bull, who kept roaring and staring at me.

"Ennis. .?" 1 heard my mam call my name, and she came from around da’s boat to where I was sitting on the beach. She was soaking wet and naked, and water dripped from her hair as she crouched down by me, smiling. Her eyes were as dark and bright as a seal’s. "What are you doing out here, young man?"

"I woke up and you weren’t there, Mam," I told her. "And I came out and saw the seals and I was watching them." I pointed at the old bull and the seals gathered around him on the rock. I laughed. "They sound like they’re talking to each other, Mam."

"They are talking," she said, laughing with me.

She had a voice like purest crystal, and she seemed entirely comfortable in her nudity, which made me comfortable with it also. "You just have to know their language."

"Do you know the language?" I asked her wonderingly, and she nod-ded, laughing again.

"I do. Would you like me to teach you sometime?"

"Aye, Mam, I would," I told her, wide-eyed.

"Then I will. Now, let's get you inside and back into bed. It's cold out here." She lifted me up, but I struggled to stay.

"I'm not cold at all. Mam, what were you doing out here?" I asked her, staring up at her face, her hair all stringy and still dripping water from the ends, a bit of seaweed stuck near her ear. "Aren't you cold?"

"No, Ennis. I was. . swimming."

"With the seals?"

She nodded. "With the seals. Maybe, someday, you can swim with them, too, if. ." She stopped then, and a smile curled her lip. She rubbed my hair. "Come now. Back to bed." She led me back to the cottage door and stopped there. "Go on in," she said. "I'm going to swim a bit more. ."

She kept her promise. She taught me how to understand the language of the blue seals. And, once or twice a year, she would leave our house late at night to "go swimming with the seals." I don't think my siblings ever noticed, but I did. I would see her slip out of bed and follow her. I think she probably knew that I was watching her, but she didn't seem to care and never paid any attention to me at all.

She would stand at the water's edge and take off her night robe, standing naked under the moon with the seals all wailing and moaning and calling to her.

She'd run toward the water, diving into the surf. Somehow, though I looked, I never saw my mam after that-she would vanish among the bodies of the seals and emerge hours later as light began to touch the sky, dripping wet but some-how not cold. If I were still there asleep on the beach, she would wake me and take me back to the cottage with her.

I asked her, the first time, why I never could see her after she went into the water and she told me I might understand one day. She also told me about the blue seals-that there was but one small group of them left in all the world here at Inish Thuaidh, but that soon a time would come when they would return in greater numbers, and that she hoped I would be part of those days…

Aye, my da knew. He seemed troubled by his wife's occasional forays into the ocean, but did

nothing about them, or perhaps it was just that he'd learned over the years that this was simply part of her-he didn't speak to her about the seals, or her 'swimming' at night, or mention any of it to us.

"Your mam must do what she must," was all he would say the one time I dared to bring up the subject with him. "And if you're lucky, you won't share her curse and find yourself out there swimming in the moonlight." Then he turned his back to me as he mended his fishing net.

I didn't think of my mam as cursed, though. I saw the joy in her face as she came from the water. I saw the cavorting of the seals and the way they flew through the water and thought that it must be wonderful to be able to do that. I listened to their talk and sometimes tried to speak with them, though our throats aren't made to speak their words, and they would laugh at my poor attempts and answer.

And, one day after my body had started to grow hair and my voice had gone deeper, I did swim with them…

You're…?" Jenna breathed, and O'Deoradhain nodded solemnly. "I thought… I mean I've heard of changelings and such, but I'd always believed they were only tales."

"Not only tales. And not only me. Wasn't your grandmother mysteriously rescued by seals? — or maybe she unconsciously, under the stress of nearly drowning, tapped a part of herself she didn't know was there."

The fire O'Deoradhain had built while he told his tale crackled, and Jenna snuggled close to the flames, letting the welcome heat sink into her still-damp clothes. She glanced back at the waters of the lough half-expecting to see the seal again, but it was gone. "Are all the blue seals. .?"

O'Deoradhain shrugged. "Some of them are changelings, aye, but not all and almost none can change at will. Most of those who can change are water-snared, nearly always a seal but changing for a few short hours a year into human shape. Somewhere, back in my family's past, a many times great-mam must have met a bull in his human form and loved him, and that blood manifested itself in my mam-she said that her sisters and brothers weren't that way, just as my siblings also weren't affected. But the blood occasionally shows to create the few Earth-snared ones like me or my mam, who feel the call of the water-part of us only rarely."