A Stranger Came Ashore Read Online Free PDF Page B

much was true in Old Da’s stories, and how much was made up. He was still curious to know more about the selkie dancing, however, and so he asked,
    “But
how
can they cast off their skins and change like that?”
    “You’ll have to put that question to a wiser man than me,” Old Da told him, “for the only answer I can give you is that selkies are a lot more than they seem to be. They are not animal creatures at all, in fact, but a kind of folk that have been doomed to live as selkies – a strange, gifted folk, who have powers
we
do not understand.”
    Robbie considered this, still feeling a bit doubtful. “What kind of folk?” he asked. And solemnly Old Da answered, “Fallen angels. Angels that sinned against Heaven, when Heaven was shining new; and for their sins, were cast out from all that glory.”
    “Oh!” said Robbie, feeling a shiver run up his back at this. “Oh,my!” And he shivered again, still not knowing what to believe, for it was hard to think of all these inquisitive creatures around the boat as fallen angels. And yet, when he looked at the wise, and somehow sad expression in their great dark eyes, he was more than half-persuaded that Old Da was speaking truly after all.
    “You’re forgetting to feather,” Old Da reminded him; which was true. And what with the way this had allowed the boat to rock, the seals were all beginning to dive out of sight.
    Old Da chuckled to see them scatter like this, and began to sing again in his quavery, old man’s voice,
    “I am a man upon the land,
    A selkie in the sea –”
    “What’s that song?” interrupted Robbie.
    “An old one that tells about the Great Selkie,” said Old Da; but of course, this only brought another question from Robbie.
    “Who’s the Great Selkie?” he wanted to know then, and Old Da told him, “Ah, well now. That’s another story, Robbie! He’s the King of all the selkies, he is; which means he’s the great bull seal that has his home deep, deep down in the deepest sea. That’s where the selkies’ own country is; and that’s where he rules, from a palace that has walls of crystal and floors of coral, with sea anemones for jewels, and a roof of waving golden weed. Or maybe the roof is made of waving golden hair – the hair of drowned girls. Nobody knows for sure, for people can enter that country, but they cannot come back again.”
    “Why not?” asked Robbie, staring fascinated at Old Da. “Why can they not come back?”
    “Because the Great Selkie will not allow it,” Old Da told him.
    “And the drowned girls?” Robbie asked. “Who were they?”
    “Well,” said Old Da thoughtfully, “they do say that every now and then this Great Selkie manages to tempt some poor lass to enter his kingdom. And when she tries to escape back to her own kind – as shemust sooner or later always want to do – that is what happens to her.”
    “I don’t believe that,” declared Robbie, deciding that Old Da was just making it up after all; but Old Da just laughed at this, and went on with another story.
    All this was long before that particular summer, however, and most of Old Da’s stories were dim in Robbie’s mind by then. He was not a bit less interested in the selkies themselves, all the same, and so Old Da patiently taught him a little more each day about the true life of these creatures.
    “You know how they come ashore each year when their pups are due to be born,” said he, on one of these occasions. “Well, believe it or not, Robbie, these same pups are all four weeks old before they even start learning to swim. Yet, for all that, they still grow up to be the most travelled of any sea creatures.”
    “Where do they go?” Robbie asked curiously.
    “Out into the Atlantic Ocean,” Old Da told him. “And if they are bull selkies, they spend the whole of the first seven or eight years of their lives wandering all the seas of the world before they come back here to rejoin their own kind.”
    Robbie sat watching