“Why can I not stop looking at you? Touching you? Everything about you? Oh yeah. Enchantment.”
“Enchantment,” said Flora, turning round to stare at him with those eyes, and he wanted to drown in them, to dive in, to live under the water, to call it home.
And she wondered, but only briefly: how long do spells last? When you’ve cast one, can you ever know?
Afterward, she slept. And as she slept, it came back to her.
Once upon a time, as ice threw itself against the windows, there was a boat traveling north, far up beyond the isles and into the widest blue seas.
And they came to the ice and the snow, and the season being spring, the icebergs were calving down from the poles and making the water treacherous, even though they were very beautiful and contained all the colors of the sea and the sky as well as white, and bubbles of air, and rocks and pebbles frozen perfectly inside them from a world no one could ever know.
But the girl—“Did she look like me?” Flora had asked, and her mother had smiled and said, “Yes, she was busy and noisy and had eyes the color of water, just like you,” and Flora had smiled, satisfied—was not happy. She had been quiet on the voyage and determined not to complete the trip, which was taking her where she did not wish to be; she had had no choice. Had felt herself carried along.
She watched the icebergs curiously as they passed, like tiny islands.
And the captain felt worried and strange as they went slower and slower so they would not get caught in the strange, beautiful, glittering sea of ice.
One morning the sun dawned early and they found themselves drifting, next to the largest iceberg they had yet seen. It was a mountain, a glistening high cathedral of ice. The wooden hull of the boat was scraping up against it, with a screeching and a tortured creaking, but the strong oak did not break.
The captain cursed and stood at the helm, praying that the ship would not founder and the hull would not breach. With a terrible twisting and straining of the keel, it moved on, past the great ice mountain and on into the open sea, and the captain, sweat popping at his brow, let out a fervent exhalation of deliverance.
Then he turned back to the sunlit deck, as one of his sailors shouted, and saw, to his horror, that the girl had simply walked—stepped lightly—from the boat’s side and onto the mountain of ice, and even now, as he turned his face in disbelief, she strode across the iceberg that would now be her home.
“TURN ABOUT! TURN ABOUT!” shouted the bosun; but now the wind picked up, and the boat tossed on forward, and when they managed to get her turned into the waves, the field of icebergs had glittered and merged, and search as they did until nightfall, they found no trace of the girl. And the captain said with bitterest regret when explaining his lost cargo, who could possibly live on such a place?
“Could you?” Flora had demanded, thinking how beautiful it would be to live in an island of snow and ice, and how very strange. “Did she live there?”
“You can live in many different places,” said her mother, stroking her forehead once more. “I would like to think you will step into many different worlds, many different places, and feel happy in all of them.”
“Even this one?”
“Even this one.”
And as Flora felt herself falling happily asleep, she asked one last question.
“What happened to the girl?”
“Oh, she’s still there. She shines,” her mother said, or did she, for the voice was growing fainter and fainter and drifting away. “She shines like the brightest moon, and she dives for fish, and she steers lost sailors home. Because we are selkies, my darling. And that is what we do.”
In memoriam, Mary “Moira” Colgan, née McCann, 1945–2016
Recipes
BANNOCKS
Bannocks are round, crusty, delicious flat rolls, best eaten warm and fresh. They’re not a million miles away from what Americans call “biscuits” (which aren’t actually biscuits, obviously, friends; a jaffa cake: that’s a biscuit).
You can either bake or fry them, and you can add fruit—blueberries are good, or raisins—or if you prefer a savory taste, some grated cheese in place of the buttermilk or even some chili and salt (skip the sugar for those obviously).
500 g self-rising flour 50 g butter
1 egg
250 ml buttermilk
250 ml natural yogurt Crumb the flour and the butter together. Add the egg, buttermilk, and enough of the yogurt to make the dough sticky.
Knead, adding extra flour, until the dough isn’t sticky anymore.
Roll out until it’s about an inch thick, then cut into whatever shapes you like.
Bake at 320 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes or sauté in a buttered pan until golden brown.
JAM
When I was growing up and would watch my mother making jam, it always looked like a kerfuffle with pots boiling and things bubbling over and a lot of steam in the kitchen. It isn’t at all! Jam is really easy. The trick is not to try and make too much at one shot. A couple of jars is fine; it only takes half an hour. And it’s lovely at the end of an afternoon bramble pick. If we don’t get enough brambles (blackberries), I just bulk it out with a couple of apples. Purists will balk, but I peel and chop the apples, add a touch of water, and bung them in the microwave for five minutes to soften them up.
The big thing is, kids want to help but it gets so hot that they really can’t. I make sure to buy stickers for the jars and send them off to decorate them while I’m doing the really boiling bit.
I use jam sugar, but I always add a touch of pectin powder at the last minute, for nerves. Also, running your jam jars through the dishwasher should sterilize them fine.
As much fruit as you’ve managed to collect plus apples if it isn’t much/the five-year-old has a suspiciously sticky face
Exactly the same weight of jam sugar, or slightly less
Lemon juice
A pat of butter
Rinse the fruit. Some people like to sieve out the seeds. I don’t—I like them, but I still have my own teeth, so maybe I’ll think differently one day.
Cook the fruit and sugar over a low heat, stirring constantly. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. As the mix comes to the boil, add a pat of butter to keep it glossy and smooth and to keep the scuzz down. Allow to simmer for ten minutes, stirring all the while. Skim off any fuzzy scuzzy stuff you get on top and wait for all the fruit to be completely soft.
Then bring the mixture to that most mellifluous of states: a rolling boil. You’ll know what this is when you see it: great big glorious bubbles popping. Keep like that for five minutes if it’s brambles, longer for strawberries. If you have a thermometer, it should be 225 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter—it’ll be fine.
Take off the heat for five minutes—long enough to cool but not long enough to set!—then pour into jars. Very, very carefully.
STEAK AND ALE PIE
Yes, I buy the pastry.
500 g stewing steak Butter for frying 1 onion
2 carrots