About the Buoy
About the
Buoy
Charles, never Charlie even when he was young, stood on the shore
and listened to the mournful dolling of the bell on the buoy. The early morning
sea mist hid the distant float, but could do nothing to muffle the sound. The
longest day would shortly dawn, and old Charles would mark it as he had done
since his own grandfather had dragged him from bed at the age of ten.
Fifty-eight solstices he has witnessed since then, come rain or dry, come joy
or grief. Born and raised in Dunwich, there was a special joy in being the
farthest east and so the first to witness the spectacle.
The solitary buoy marks the tides both lugubrious and
tumultuous as surely as it marks Charles’s solitude, whether contented or
despairing. The tolling of the bell has commended the souls of his entire kin,
gone on before him. What few friends he ever had have likewise departed for the
unseen western shore. A loveless and ill-judged marriage sank into the mists of
memory, now so insubstantial that the colour of her hair escapes him. Only the
shrillness of her unfulfilled voice caws as clearly as the gulls.
As the pre-dawn light stirs the water, it seems to form the
pattern of a shape. His shape. The lad whose name Charles never dared find out.
A face, a form seen only on one single day five decades ago, bringing in the
catch from a returning fishing boat, and yet still he comes more clearly than
so many others. He has returned so often, at the strangest of times. In
darkness, a dream figure with the sweat running down the nape of his neck, the
torn shirt sleeve revealing a glimpse of tattoo on bicep. The nameless
fisherman often appeared to him when walking his late dog in the woods, when
praying in church, even when filing writs and writing wills. There had been
others since then, men who had stirred his heart with yearnings he could never
admit to nor act upon. Yet now, when age and a lifetime of respectability made
him acutely conscious of the approaching grave, it was that fire-haired stranger
with the hyacinth eyes that drifted back to him. A smile was all he’d received,
but how he’d made a lifelong feast of such a dry morsel!
Charles’ polished boots crunched along the pebbles of the
beach until he came to the familiar flat-topped boulders where he liked to
perch. It had been his favourite place to come during the lunch break from the
tedium of the solicitor’s office, and though now retired still he would sit an
hour or so each day and just watch the waves. The head broke the surface of the
waters and watched him back, as it did on many days. Not all, but often enough
for the old man to have a hopeful expectancy of seeing the seal. Charles
wondered if it was the same creature every time, or if different members of a
colony took it in turns. He had the comical idea that they gossiped about the
strange human keeping a lonely vigil amongst themselves. The sun crested the
low lying cloud bank, intense golden fire at the centre of a spreading band of
rose light. Charles drew in his breath – it had always been a beautiful sight,
but this year it seemed more vibrant than ever.
Medieval Dunwich was somewhere out there, on the ocean bed
with fish swimming between the mouldering houses. Crumbling coastlines had long
since done away with the original Dunwich. Legend had it that the old church
bell could be heard from beneath the waves on stormy nights, but Charles had
only ever heard the buoy.
As the full sphere rose above the mist, it cast a red-gold
path across the sea reaching to the shingle. The seal head bobbed along the
path of sunlight closer to shore, till it was close enough for Charles to
clearly see the beautiful brown eyes. On impulse Charles patted his pockets in
search of the bread rolls he always brought as a midsummer offering to the
gulls. Did seals eat bread? He had no idea. Fish presumably, but they might
like to try something different. Breaking one of the rolls in two, he gently
walked the water’s edge trying hard not to alarm the creature.
Far from being disturbed the seal swam close enough for the
old man to toss the half roll to it, which was quickly eaten. The seal barked
and swam closer. Charles was about to throw another half when he saw the seal
emerge higher from the ocean, rearing up to a height no seal ought to be able
to reach. It moved strangely, the old man watching bewildered as to what was
going on. Wading into the shallows, silhouetted against the dawn sun the
darkened shape seemed no longer like the animal he had been observing. Human
arms emerged from the shifting bulk and reached up to the seal’s neck, moving
like a man shucking off a hooded cloak. As the sealskin fell away, Charles
realised he was staring in shock at a brawny young man with the same liquid
brown eyes as the being he had been just a moment before.
“What are you?”
“You must know what I am,” the voice was deep with an accent
Charles couldn’t place.
“A selkie? But they’re creatures of myth. The priest says you
can’t exist.”
“He’d say the same of you, if he knew.”
“Knew what?” Charles backed away up the shingle as the
seal-man waded towards him. The sun rose a little higher and made the handsome
features plain.
“What you cannot confess to yourself, you will never confess
to a priest. How long have you been alone, Charles?” The strange creature
stopped just shy of dry land. Aside from the sealskin flung over one shoulder
he was quite naked.
“Am I going mad?” He reached out a tentative hand, though
whether to test the reality of the phantasmal creature, to ward it off, or simply
to touch so beautiful a being Charles himself did not know. The sea bell tolled
seven times, yet the waves did not seem especially choppy.
“My kin are calling Charles, I must return. Will you come
with me?”
“I can’t swim!”
“Then walk upon the red-gold path of the sun. Trust me and I
will be with you for as long as you want.” The selkie was already wading slowly
back along the road to the east. “Have you anything to stay for, any reason
left to hold back? The church beneath the waves is empty, the pulpit long since
rotted away.”
“I’m too old!” Charles cried plaintively, feeling every one
of his sixty-eight years and then some. “I’ve always held back… what’s the
point of changing now?”
The man from the ocean continued to walk for some way before
pausing, now just a head and shoulders bobbing above the waves. The voice, when
it came, felt as if the selkie were standing alongside him.
“What do you fear most Charles, venturing forth or staying
put?”
“Wait!” the old man cried out as the head disappeared beneath
the brine. “Don’t leave me! I want to come, I want to!”
Better to drown in the ocean than to drown in loneliness – at
least the end came quicker. Charles dropped his walking stick and lurched into
the shallows, salt water forever excoriating the shine on his patent leather boots.
His voice grew hoarse as he called and called, wading deeper along the fading
roadway of sunlight. The coldness of the sea shocked his breath away as the
seabed suddenly dipped and the water came up to chest height. The selkie
emerged inches from him, great brown eyes as fluid as the ocean. A hand on each
shoulder stilled him and for a brief moment Charles noticed the webs between
the fingers and the claws where nails should be. Then the selkie leaned forward
and kissed him, salt upon his lips. For all the cold, his heart blazed like a
furnace.
Charles reached out his own hands to clasp the velvet-furred
shoulders and saw not the gnarled, veined hands of an old man but the hands of
five decades ago.
“I’m young again!” he declared, pulling a single hand away
from the muscled shoulder to caress the firm, smooth skin of his own face. He
recalled a tall tale of his grandmother about the blessed waters of midsummer
restoring people to their youth. A small waves broke across his face, filling
his mouth with brine but instead of choking he found himself laughing
hysterically. It tasted wonderful. “And quite insane!”
“There is neither sanity nor insanity in the deep, just above
and below. You may visit the land once a year when the sun lays down the
drawbridge at the summer solstice, if you wish.” A webbed paw cupped Charles’
face, sending a burning blush throughout his entire body. The cold left him
entirely, and the once-old man became aware of how uncomfortable his clothes
felt against his thickening, furred skin. His spectacles had fallen off
somewhere in the sea, but Charles knew his eyes were becoming so large now that
he needed no aides with to see anyway.
“I don’t think I will ever want to go back again!” The
selkie’s hands pulled at the tweed jacket and sodden shirt, and Charles dived
below with the nameless creature.
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