Shoal Water
Shoal water is a treacherous place to be. Not in deep water, and not on land, it is a place in between, full of unexpected hazards, of submerged sandbars, diffracted waves, and counter currents.
The story follows Kate’s passage out of dependence into self-possession. It is a compelling story of navigating dangerous waters and gaining the power to redeem loss and find forgiveness and belief in the unimaginable.
Excerpt: Chapter 1
AUGUST 1936
Slate Harbour, Nova Scotia
The dark, forbidding clouds closed in, the wind, its high-pitched universe.
Basil Tannard turned and saw the rogue, its steely wall of water topped by foam just before it pitched him from his Cape Island boat. Hurled into the Nova Scotia sea, he reeled, his body churning through cold swells, his eyes wide open in the briny bubbles.
After some minutes, the angry sea coughed him up from its depths like a derelict buoy.
He floated on his back watching the sky, and fought off the panic swallowing him. Seawater sloshed in the hollow of his ears.
Yet he could feel something towing him through the black heaving ocean.
Half his body was numbed from cold, while the other half grew warmer from something slick moving alongside him.
This must be dying, he thought.
He hadn’t been a very good Christian. He drank too much, but he’d worked hard all his life and never was unfaithful to Ellen.
Pain ripped down his back and he realized he couldn’t be dead. Wasn’t pain kept for the living? Strong, fin-like arms worked their way under him, dragging him over razor-edged slate. A fleeting image of a woman’s face.
Basil woke up wedged in a small salty space of black rock. A circle of light lay at his feet and he heard the hiss of the incoming sea. His cheek was slashed against the stone but he could not lift a hand to soothe it. Seaweed tangled beneath him and his lips tasted of blood. I’m alive, he thought. A sensation of warmth radiated from his back as if a large heavy blanket was rolled up beside him, hard and breathing. But he was too stiff to look around. Salt water dripped in cold pinpricks on his skin, and Basil drifted in and out of sleep while the sound of waves heaved through the still air of the cave.
He woke again to a cold hollow in his left side. The blanket that breathed had moved away and he longed for its return. Suddenly a piece of raw fish was shoved into his mouth and Basil swallowed, choking on the mix of grit and bones. He glanced up to see black eyes and thick whiskers in the sea light. He knew then that he was in the care of a seal.
Basil recoiled. Seals raised havoc in his nets, attacking fish, and he often had to shoot them. He was not a superstitious man. Some said if you shot a seal, it would bring you bad luck.
The creature turned and shook the folds of its half-dried coat. For a long time, it moved around him, tending to his bed of eel grass and cleaning the mackerel.
Basil grew stronger day by day. Once, when his fingers fell on the silver fur of the seal’s neck, it seemed to peel back from its head and shoulders. Startled, Basil watched the seal leave the cave and move out onto the reef. Sun blazed through the sea air, and the seal licked itself on the rocks. Waves foamed over, and the seal stretched and arched its tail.
The seal seemed to know that Basil was watching. Prying its fur coat from its head and shoulders, the seal unsheathed the breasts and hips of a woman. Her nipples were firm and deep red. The wind lifted long black strands of matted hair so that Basil could see the features of her face, the watercolor wash in her skin. And then he heard her sing. She sang through the push of the tide that swirled around her, long low notes that rang through the cave.
Basil clasped his hands over his ears, and the rock spun around him.
Later when he woke, the seal was beside him, black eyes heavy with light and sorrow. He smelled the cool salt in her fur. He remembered the woman who sang. She might have kissed him. He might have touched her nipples with his fingertips.
Basil had heard the stories about fishermen finding selkies in their nets or on the beach, but he’d never believed them. He’d heard about their long strands of hair and brilliant blue eyes and exquisite beauty, and how a human spirit could enter the skin of this creature capable of existing in the deep regions of the sea, human above the waist, and seal below, their sea dresses allowing them to travel from one world to another.
When he touched her, her skin was smooth.
Suddenly he found himself lifted up and shoved outside the cave. Daylight blinded him. The seal rolled him over the reef, pushed him with her nose across the slate and into the icy water. With her fin, she clasped him to her. Moving at a supernatural speed, just under the waves, the seal took Basil to the opposite shore.
When he opened his eyes, he recognized the cliffs of Skerry Point. The rocks were hard beneath him, and he sat. The sun was behind the bank, the shore in shadow. Stunned, he stared into the ocean’s vacancy. When he stood up, he was surprised to find his strength had returned, his clothes were dry, and his body showed no injury.
He looked again toward the reef, where the sea shimmered.
There was no sign of the seal.
Would his wife Ellen ever believe him?
Song by Stanley Greenthal
Lyrics by Stanley Geenthal & Kip Robinson Greenthal
