Everyone knows that Immortals cannot have children. At least we all assume that is true. What if they haven't been summoned by the right woman.
Yllvere waits here, where the wild ocean claims the stone-strewn land, as her mothers have waited from time-beyond-time. They long for the Selchie and true Magik to return to them once more. No woman has seen the creatures for seven times seven generations, and the Selchie have joined the other legends in stories parents tell their children. But the witch daughters of Anu remember. They have watched and counted as the moon kept its course and the years turned to dust. At last new moon, Yllvere had asked Anu to show her her own fate. She had cut a lock of her hair with her silver dagger and dropped the curling strands into the fire. There she had seen her hair blacken, felt the world fall away, and time turn in upon itself. In the smoke she had seen her own figure walking, alone in the moonlight, on this lonely and rocky shore near the Isle of Lindesfarn. Her husband, lord of the land, sleeps tonight in his own soft bed, but all of Yllvere's past and future wait for her on ths wild shore. Her children, unborn souls in the waves, wait for her here, and the last Selchie that will ever come to these shores waits in the deep sea for her to summon him.
Intently Yllvere watches the ocean as the setting sun turns the water to molten gold, and sets sparks dancing in bubbles of the breaking waves. Slowly now, as if in a dream, she walks to the end of an outcropping of rock. She raises the small silver dagger in her right hand and a whisper escapes her lips as she makes the sign of summoning in the air towards the horizon. She repeats the sign twice more, at sharp angles to the first, still in the direction of the ocean, and once more toward the land completing the circle that will protect her. Then she sits,legs curled under her, waiting.
Past, present, and a future of hope seem now to blur together, and anticipation fills her as she peers into the growing darkness. But it is not yet time, the moon not yet precisely as high as she has seen in her vision, and she keeps her seat, watching, waiting, singing to herself. Step by step the moon mounts the stairs of heaven's dome, growing more silvery and distinct. The Lady smiles down on earth and ocean, turning the rocks white and filling the water with reflectant shimmering brilliance, sharpening the sense of mystery in the strange transient light. As the waters rise with the rising moon, and the waves break themselves to bits on the rocks, the bubbles begin to look like heads and the roaring of the souls in the sea mixes with the roaring in her ears. The water takes on a strange texture as of the skin of a living creature.
There. She sees something. Just there, beyond the rocks. Heads. Sleek heads. Great, earless heads with great gleaming eyes. The water is alive, black with the heads of the Selchie.
Yllvere springs to her feet. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she begins to sing a strange chanting song. Her voice, flute-pure, is luxurious, full of warmth and beckoning, sorrow and longing. It vibrates across the waves, and the Selchie turn toward the sound. She senses fulfillment is near, and she pours her soul and the will of her mothers into her voice. The air is charged with enchantment. Forgotten, her shawl falls from her head and shoulders. The wind catches her hair, whirling it in tendrils as if it floats on a current of its own. She shimmers. From head to toe she is colored silvery white by the moonlight, her white dress flapping around her legs. The Seals, lured by the song and enchanted by the magiks that hang in the air, see a slender pulsing shaft of moonlight on the rocks. Closer they come, and closer. Caught by the spell. One of them swims closer still, as if carried toward the shore. Borne by the moon path on the water and the clear sweet tones of the human voice, sensuously, sinuously, the huge body carves a serpentine path through the sand and rocks. Riding on breaking bubbles, filled with magic and moonlight and summoned by the pure song, the Selchie comes ashore. Yllvere calls to it lovingly, longingly, promising everything. She bends toward the creature, shining white , curving white in the darkness, the spun silver of her hair like a halo around her face. Slowly, painfully, the Selchie makes its way, changing its form as it comes. It watches her, its great black eyes held by her song. It crawls now, heavy on hands and knees. It is nodding its long tapering head in time with the lilting chant. And the head begins to change, now more and more manlike. It has a mane of hair like Yllvere's own, but totally white, more white than the bone white that is a moon's trick. Exhausted by the effort of will and spent by the magick of the changing, the man lies now on the beach near to the mound of wood that has been set.
Yllvere stops her song. The other seals, set free from enchantment, dive back under the skin of the ocean and swim away. She releases the magicks in the air. Liberated from the timelessness of the moment just passed, she runs quickly down the outcropping of rock toward the beach where the large man-form of the creature now lies. Pausing once she reaches the place, she lights the Yule fire. Then Yllvere then reaches to touch the skin of the creature she has lured to her. It feels like her own but its color is that of someone browned deeply by the sun. He is so much bigger, taller than the men she knows. She rolls him over on his back. There is seaweed around his shoulders and body and clasped in his hand, and small shells caught in his coarse white hair. The cuts and scrapes on his body, made when he dragged himself over the rocks are healing now. The little sparks of silver lightning leave his skin smooth, unbroken. He opens his big gentle eyes. There is no fear in them, and they glisten softly, deep and wild.
Yllvere, witch daughter, full of victory, laughing in triumph, reaches forward to embrace her vision.
--Helen Peterson
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last revised--6/5/97
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