Selkie's Song (Fado Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

down the stairs.
    “Ah, Mr. Sloane, I’m just now wettin’ the tea. Would ye join me?”
    Though food and drink were tempting, he craved solitude. “No, thank you very much, but I’m going to take a bit of a ramble…see what there is to see.” Suss out if there are truly selkies about.
    “Sure now, watch your step. The rocks are slippery with the seaweed when the tide is out.”
    “Thanks for the word of caution.” He reached in his pocket for his sunglasses. “I’ll be back after supper, I think. Do I need a key?”
    “Ah, no. We don’t lock our doors here in Ballinacurragh.” Mary approached and whispered as though the walls had ears. “It’s said that on rare occasion, when the tide is low and the sea is calm with little wind to stir it, you can still hear her singing.”
    ****
    Curiosity pulled Tynan by invisible threads across the brilliant green expanse toward the sea. A rock barrier separated the sheep paddock from the road and a well-worn path to the cliffs. When the trail forked, he followed the most trodden. He crossed the wall using a stile where the stones had been worn slick by years of use and ambled along the track, humming a tune that came to him unbidden. The words tickled the back of his mind. A poem by Yeats. How did it go?
    And someone called me by my name:
    It had become a glimmering girl
    With apple blossoms in her hair
    Who called me by my name and ran
    And vanished in the brightening air.
    The sea shone silver in the noon sunlight. Tynan felt the magnetic pull toward the edge of the sheer limestone drop. He knelt and then lay stretched out on his stomach and let his eyes scan the striations in the rock. Using his jacket as a pillow he rested his head on the fragrant turf. A horseshoe-shaped strand lay below. The incoming tide curled and caressed the megaliths that stood like sentinels at either edge.
    Tynan’s eyelids felt heavy. The guillemots and grey-backed gulls called from their homes in the caverns and ledges and lulled him into a jet-lagged stupor.
    He woke to a soft intonation. It must have been the wind. Through sleep-blurred vision, Tynan caught a glimpse of a seal frolicking beyond the waves that licked like lazy tongues at the beach. A dark brown head would appear and, just as quickly, be gone. Ty thought he imagined it. But it was not unusual to observe the graceful pinniped with a friendly face in this part of Ireland.
    This must have been a young harbor seal, as the pelt was dark, almost black. He was mesmerized as it swam closer, into the shallows. Ty’s body was exhausted but he didn’t want to give in to sleep and miss the playful aquatic ballet.
    Stealthy fingers of mist blurred and teased his vision. His mind begged for the healing balm of slumber. He fought the overpowering need to close his eyes.
    A voice awakened him from a sleep so deep it left him disoriented. The sweet notes of a song hung in the salt air. This tune he’d not heard before seemed to come from a dimension beyond the bounds of earth.
    A sleek nymph, born of the waves, swam with languid strokes toward the sandy rim of the sea. She stepped as lightly as a cat onto the shore below, caught his gaze, and shook the water from her limbs. Sable eyes were guileless as she licked salt water from her lips.
    Ty’s heart pounded against the earth beneath him, and he feared a tremor would loose the rocks of the headland to tumble into the sea. He held his breath as she stripped her ebony skin from pale appendages. She at first appeared to have tendrils of seaweed, brown strands clinging to her shoulders and down her back. Dark Sargasso strands reshaped into tangled tresses, thick and wet with salt and sea.
    He expected her to flee, be frightened by this mortal spying from his high refuge. But a timid beastie she proved not to be. Is this how a selkie lured a man to follow her? Would she transfigure and show her seal face only when he had drowned in the cold brine of the Atlantic?
    She stood motionless,