Who Stole the Selkie's Coat?

Take out your monocle and don your tweed, for I have something you must read. Gentle reader, beware, for this is a tale of epic twists and turns. It exists perhaps between the ethereal and the real. You may not believe it. I beseech you, though, to suspend disbelief (and judgment) until the tale is done. If you grant me this, as your humble narrator, I will mayhaps let you choose what ending befits you and the worldly sensibilities you have, no doubt, gathered from your experiences heretofore, before having chanced upon this tale...

The ragtag group of friends had known one another since college—a small liberal university with grounds set in the glittering mica hills of the Appalachians Mountains: Francesco Petrarch College. Now in their mid-thirties, they still honored a yearly tradition: to gather and make merry for New Year’s Eve together. Though each had (of course) taken many paths since college, resided in different parts of the country (or world, even), had families (and other friends) of their own, the tradition had held strong for going on its fourteenth year.

While in college, the friends had formed a sort of secret society of their very own; it was something a bit like their own “Dead Poets Society.” Each contributed and performed their bit; together they were a Gestalt composite, where all the pieces must be present for the picture to appear. There was Dante, The Artist. There was Sophie, the Poet. There was Hugo, the Actor. There was Rumi, the Dancer. There was Zoya, the Physicist. There was Sven, the Mechanist. There was Cali, the Philosopher. (Do note, these were not necessarily their respective occupations in life, out there in the world, but more like their archetypal occupations. It was also the way every person in group viewed one another. The years and distance had never changed that.)

This year they gathered at the coast. New Year’s Eve was on a Sunday this year; they had rented the beach house for the Saturday before New Year’s through the Tuesday after.

Saturday:

The house was ready at four P.M. It had sat vacant for weeks. It had not felt the breath of humans since the last tenants had left, an old couple from Nebraska. It sat with the dust motes until the cleaners had come again the day before (Friday) to drop fresh linen and towels, to perform a quick re-clean of the place, and to reset the door code—the new one that was unique and changed with each rental.

Not all of them arrived at once. Once everyone had arrived, they posted up in the kitchen, made dinner and drinks and the general merry-making commenced. They played board games. They drank too much mulled wine and bourbon. They ate too much charcuterie. They went to sleep exhausted and warm.

Sunday (New Year’s Eve):

“Can you put another pot of coffee on?” Cali groaned.

Sven flipped a half-cooked the blueberry pancake in the griddle and turned to nod and grin at her. “Sure you don’t want a little hair of the dog instead?”

Cali growled at him and hid her face in the crook of her arm. Sven turned to grind more coffee beans, then spatulaed the fresh golden brown pancake from the griddle to the top of the flapjack stack layered on the blue fish-painted platter to the right of the stove.

“Slap me another one of those flapjacks, Sven” Hugo winked and shoved his syrupy plate closer. The six of them sat at the bar island in the kitchen, the morning light shafting in through the windows in harsh hypotenuses.

They joked and reminisced over breakfast. They expounded upon highlights of their lives from the past year; they shared photos. When breakfast was finished, the kitchen cleaned and dishes put away, each brought out notebooks and pens. Hugo and Rumi (who married one another as soon as it became legal) dragged their chest of costumes and makeup into the living room. Dante brought out his easel, drop cloths and tubs of art supplies. Zoya and Sven brought out boxes of tools and fixtures. Sophie and Cali brought out anthologies and reference books.

“Hey actually maybe we should go for a walk on the beach first, get the juices flowing a little bit,” Dante proposed.

Everyone acquiesced and bundled themselves against the wind, deciding to walk against it. It was a remote beach, tucked away from the other mainland beaches and not peopled with tourists. Especially now that it was winter, the few houses that were there appeared to be shuttered and left empty by their snowbird owners. The fact their beach house had been available for rent seemed an anomaly given that they didn’t see anyone else walking or in sight.

There were few shells on the beach and the ones there were mostly broken. There was no shortage of black mermaids purses though, all of different sizes and states of decay. They crunched under their feet as they walked. When they saw a particularly shiny one, Zoya squatted in the sand beside it, placed it in her palm and muttered, “oviparous chondrichthyans.” Its scientific name. The wind picked up and clouds began to roil ominously on the horizon.

When they returned to the house, they lit a fire in the fireplace in the living room, went to their various “stations” and began to work. The process was that they would sit in silence, generating ideas and writing them down in their notebooks, not concurring with one another or influencing one another. After several hours they would begin the long process of exchanging ideas, eliminating some and keeping others, systematically working until there was a shared vision that would come together.

Sophie took the lead and started. “Ok, so a version of the selkie’s song. We start with the selkie living with her family, in the sea, on the rocks. Then one day an adventurer happens upon her in the wild, naked on the beach, hair flowing in the wind. He rushes to clothe her. She starts but allows him to lead her back to his tent. Over the course of days and nights they fall for one another. He asks her to marry him. She agrees and returns to his house to start their life, in a humble home by the sea. She loves him but of course misses her family and her former selkie lover. Every full moon night after her human husband goes to sleep, she goes out on the beach and cries seven tears into the sea so that her selkie lover can return to her. She then puts on her coat and transforms to be with him again, then returns early morning, returns to land and takes off her to coat, crawling back into bed beside her husband. One full moon night however, her husband feigns sleep and follows her to beach. Seeing her transform, he flies into a rage and waits for her return, then returns to their bed before she can see. He sees her hide her coat. The next morning, he takes the coat and locks it a box, throwing the key into the sea. The next full moon night, the selkie is frantic trying to find it and can’t. She does not go to the beach and her lover pines for her, his cries echoing through the waves. She spends the next several years trying to find her coat, longing for her lover and for news of her family. Eventually driven mad with grief, she walks into the sea without her coat, not to be seen again. Well, that’s the meat of it, anyway.”

The rest of the group sat stock still and silent, then dared wide eyed glances at one another. They nodded and murmured in agreement.

“Wait, so that’s it? No one thinks we should add or take away anything, change the ending, etc?”

Dante ventured, in a hushed whisper, “well, no it’s just weird cause I also thought of doing a song of the selkie.”

Everyone else murmured their consensus. In the years since they had known one another, it was the first time they had all had such a profound level of group mind at the same time that they hadn’t even thought of different ideas independently.

“Sure, but I also think she would hate it. Maybe,” Sven shrugged. “You know how much she hated everyone calling attention to her very obvious ancestral heritage.”

The rest of the group looked down in sad silence.

“Yeah well, maybe that’s what she needs,” Sophie said bitterly. “She left us, after all.”

The she, they are referring to here, was their friend Urs. Urs had been a part of their friend group and had died their senior year, over New Year’s. Well more like disappeared. Supposed to arrive at her Erasmus study abroad program in Italy that late December, early January, she never showed up. Gone without a trace. Her family had spent years tracking down false leads with Interpol. They finally had her declared dead over the past year, losing hope that she would return. Every New Year’s, they would meet and make something together that they hoped Urs would have enjoyed. It was their way of bringing her back a little bit. It was their way of holding out hope that maybe she would come back. Urs had had long flowing red hair. She was hilarious and had a gorgeous singing voice. Her trademark was that she did have a long, flowing white coat (that her Grandmother gave her, she claimed) with gold buttons that brought out the copper in her hair.

Nevertheless, they went through with their vision and made an epic production of “the Selkie’s Song” with Hugo and Rumi acting the parts of the selkie and human husband, Rumi wearing long flowing blue gowns and a coat. Sophie and Cali narrated. Dante made the props and painted a backdrop for the stage. Zoya and Sven brought fire, light and sound, making light and shadow dance apparently across their making stage and making ocean waves crash. It ended right at midnight. They popped champagne.

Standing in the kitchen, Cali turned to everyone with glass in hand, asked, “what happened to Urs’ coat anyway? Did she ever find it?”

Urs had apparently lost her coat shortly before leaving for Italy and was incredibly distraught about it. She had even considered canceling her trip. They had all assured her that that would be ridiculous. Italy had coats, after all.

“I don’t think so,” Sophie said.

Monday:

That night everyone had fitful dreams. They dreamt of Urs standing on the beach, her red hair flowing out behind her , with her turning to look at them. In some she was naked. For others, she had her coat, but it was different somehow. It would be grey or short or too modern. Some of them awoke with what looked like tears on the pillow next to them. Some of them awoke with gold buttons on the pillow. Some of them awoke with mermaids purses. Over breakfast, they were shaken but enthralled. Could she have made it back? But the eeriness was uncanny and they tried not to turn on one another, but somehow hurtful things were said.

“You always loved that coat! You must have taken it!”

“You were always secretly in love with her, you must have hidden it away because you knew!”

The myth set into their bones but they still hoped she would walk in through the door, out of the sea, somehow.

Tuesday:

They waited. They waited as long as they could before leaving to go back to their own lives.

Now reader, here are seven endings, as promised, for the seven tears of the sea:

1. The friends are seven fallen angels, waiting to be received back into the sky

2. The friends are seven fellow selkies, calling her back to the sea

3. They are seven fellow selkies all had coats of their own that were also taken -

4. They are seven fellow selkies, all with coats of their own, that they put aside for families on land and hid them to function in regular land society as humans

5. Someone took it, in particular

6. No one did and this is the magical thinking that can arise from grief

7. Who gives a damn, it’s just a coat