Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / Maren of Gull Point and the Selkie Who Sang at Dusk

Transcript

Maren of Gull Point and the Selkie Who Sang at Dusk · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello my dear, hello and welcome. Come a little closer
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: if you like, settle into whatever soft place you have
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: found for yourself, a bed, a sofa, a nest of
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: cushions on the floor, the back seat of a quiet afternoon.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Let your hands go loose, let your jaw go soft,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you have found your way to muggle snuggle. a small
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and gentle room made of voice and quiet built by
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Hustle Studios for ordinary people who would like, just for
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a little while, to hear a tale told slowly by
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: someone who is in no hurry at all. I am
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: your storyteller for this one. My voice may be new
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to you, and that is perfectly all right. I am
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the one who keeps the longer tales, the ones that wander,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the ones that take their time. If this is the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: first time we have met, hello and thank you for
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: being here. I am so glad you came. You do
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: not need to do anything, you do not need to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: remember names or follow every turn. You can let my
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: voice go on beside you, the way the sound of
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: rain goes on beside a window, and you can drift
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: in and out of it as often as you please.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And to those of you who have chosen to support
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: this show, the ones who make these longer, quieter tales possible,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I want to say a soft and heartfelt thank you.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: You are the reason this little room has a second
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: lamp lit in it. Because of you, there is a
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: place where a story can stretch out and breathe and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: be told in full, without any rush. To the regular
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: friends who return again and again, welcome back. I have
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: kept your chair warm. And to anyone who has only
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: just found the door, welcome. Come in. There is a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: blanket here with your name on it. This tale is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: made to keep you company. It is perfect to play
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: while you rest in the middle of the day, while
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you fold laundry or tidy a drawer, while you work
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: quietly at something that needs your hands but not your
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: whole mind, or while you lie down in the dark
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: at the end of everything. It is happy to play
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: in the background. It is happy to be listened to closely.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It is happiest of all if you fall asleep partway through.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: If you do, the story will simply keep walking along
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the shore without you, and it will not mind one bit.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Before we begin, one small and gentle request. Only if
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you feel like it. If these tales bring you some comfort,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: please subscribe or follow the show so that new stories arrive,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: without you having to look for them. If you know
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: someone who finds rest difficult, or someone who simply loves
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: a soft story, please share this with them. A kind
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: rating helps other tired people find their way here. That
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: is all. Now, Let us set the world down. Very
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: gently the way you would set down a full cup
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of tea and begin. Let us breathe together first. Breathe in. Slowly.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Through your nose. As though you were smelling the sea
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: on a cool morning. Let the breath come all the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: way down past your chest into your belly so that
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: your belly rises. A little like a small wave coming in.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Hold it there softly for a moment. And now let
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: it go. Slowly. Through your mouth. The way a wave
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: slides back down the sand, leaving it smooth and shining
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it once more. In through the nose, slow and easy,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the tide coming in, a gentle pause at the top,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and out, long and soft, the tide going out again.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Let your shoulders drop away from your ears. They have
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: been holding things up all day, and they may rest now.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Let your arms grow heavy. Let your hands lie open,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: palms up or palms down, whichever feels kind. Let the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: muscles of your face unknot, the little lines between your
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: eyebrows the tight place at the corners of your mouth.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Let your tongue rest loosely. Let your eyes be heavy
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: behind their lids. Feel your back sink into whatever is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: holding you. Feel your legs, long and tired, and let
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: them lie still. Feel your feet, and let them be warm.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Each time you breathe out, imagine the day being carried
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: away by a slow, quiet tide. The small worries. The lists.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: The conversations you are still turning over in your mind.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: The tide takes them gently. The way it takes driftwood
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: and old leaves. Out past the rocks. Out toward the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: open sea, where they become very small and very far away.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: They are not your concern right now. Right now, there
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: is only breathing, and resting, and listening. Right now, there
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: is only a voice and a story, and the soft
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: sound of the sea. Now, let me take you somewhere.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Picture a coast. It is a long coast, a rugged
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and gentle one, with gray cliffs that slope down into
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: green headlands, and green headlands that slope down into pale
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: sand and dark rock. The sea along this coast is
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: mostly calm, and when it is not calm it is
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: only restless, the way a child is restless before sleep,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: turning this way and that, sighing, settling again. Gulls drift
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: above it on wide white wings, small boats bob in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the coves, The air smells of salt and wet stone and,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: somewhere far off, of wood smoke from a chimney. On
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: this coast, there is a village called Lowen Harbor. It
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: is a small place, tucked into a curve of the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: shore like a sleeping cat curled in the bend of
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: an arm. The houses are whitewashed and blue-shuttered, built close together,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: along steep lanes that run down to a little stone cree.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: There is a baker. and a chandler who sells rope
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and lamp oil and tins of biscuits, and an inn
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: called the Mended Net with a crooked sign that creaks
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: in the wind. There is a small chapel with a bell,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and a schoolhouse with one big room, and a green
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: where the fishermen spread their nets to dry, and beyond Lowenharbour,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a little way along the shore, with a land narrows,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: into a long finger of rock pointing out to sea,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: there is a lighthouse, it stands at the very tip
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: of that finger, On a place called Gull Point, it
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: is a tall white tower, round and sturdy, with a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: red band painted around its middle and a black iron
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: gallery running around its top like a little railing on
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a balcony. At the very top sits the lantern room,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: all glass and brass, and inside the lantern room sits
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the great lamp, which has been turning every night for
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: longer than anyone in the village can remember. At the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: foot of the tower, sheltered from the wind, there is
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a cottage. It is low and white with thick walls
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and small deep windows and a roof of grey slate
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: weighed down at the edges with stones. Its chimney puffs
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: a thin curl of smoke into the sky almost every
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: hour of the day. Because the people who live there
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: like a fire and because the wind on Gull Point
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: has a way of finding its way into everything, there
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: is a small garden behind a low stone wall where
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: cabbages grow and a few stubborn marigolds and a line
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: of washing that flaps and dances in the breeze. In
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: that cottage lives a family. There is the keeper, a tall,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: quiet man named Tobias Hollis, with a grey-brown beard and large,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: careful hands that smell always faintly of lamp oil and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: brass polish. There is his wife, Annick, who is small
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: and quick and bright-eyed, who bakes bread every morning and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: mends the fishermen's nets every afternoon. and who sings under
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: her breath while she works songs with no words, only tunes.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: And there is their daughter. Her name is Maren. She
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: is ten years old, or very nearly, and she is
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the one this story belongs to. Maren Hollis has hair
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the color of wet sand which she wears in a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: single thick plait down her back, and which is forever
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: coming loose in the wind. She has a scatter of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: freckles across her nose. like the speckles on a gull's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: egg and gray-green eyes that change color with the weather,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the way the sea does. She wears a thick, knitted
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: jumper the color of oatmeal which was once her father's
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and which her mother has taken in at the sides,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and the sleeves still come down past her wrists so
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that she is always pushing them up. Her boots are
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: scuffed and salt-stained and very much loved. She is a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: quiet child though not a shy one. She simply likes
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: to listen. She likes to listen to the wind talking
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to the chimney, and to the gulls arguing on the roof,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and to the kettle as it begins to murmur on
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the stove. She likes to listen to the great lamp
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: at the top of the tower, which makes a soft
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: steady sound as it turns a sort of low hum
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: like a cat purring in another room. And most of all,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: more than anything in the whole wide world, she likes
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to listen to the sea. There is a place, just
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: below the lighthouse, where the rock slopes down in wide,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: flat shelves toward the water, like a giant set of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: stairs left out for someone to climb. At the bottom
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: of those stairs, a little way out from the shore,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: there is a cluster of dark rocks that sit low
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: in the sea. At high tide, they are almost covered,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and the waves wash over them in soft, white lace.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: At low tide, they rise up, black and shining, draped
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: with weed. and the water around them goes calm and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: clear and green. The people of Lowenharbour call them the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Hearthstones because they are round and close together, like stones
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: around a fire, and it is out there, beyond the Hearthstones,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that the singing comes from. It begins every evening at dusk,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: not before, never after. It begins in that soft blue
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: in between time, when the sun has gone down behind
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  Speaker 1: the headland and the sky is turning from gold to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: rose to lavender. and the first star has not quite
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: made up its mind to appear. Just then, just at
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: that moment, if you are standing on the rock shelves
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: below the lighthouse you will hear it. A voice carried
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: over the water, low and clear and wandering, not quite
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a human voice, and not quite the voice of a
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: bird or a seal but something in between, something that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: sounds the way the color of the dusk would sound,
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  Speaker 1: if colors could sing. Most people in low Harbor have
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: never heard it. The village is a little too far
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: along the shore, and the houses are a little too
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: full of supper sounds and clattering plates and voices calling
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: children in for bed. But Maren has heard it every
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: evening for as long as she can remember. She heard
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it as a baby, her mother says, rocked in a
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: basket by the cottage window. and she would stop crying
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: at once and turn her small head toward the sea.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: She heard it as a little girl, sitting on her
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: father's knee at the top of the tower, while he
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: trimmed the week and wound the clockwork. And now that
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: she is older, she goes down to listen to it
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: on her own. Every evening, when the supper things are
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: washed and dried and put away and her father has
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: climbed the long spiral stair to light the lamp, Marin
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: pulls on her jumper and her boots. and she slips
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: out of the cottage door, and she walks down the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: rock shelves one wide step at a time, to the
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: very bottom where the water laps against the stone, and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: there she sits, on a smooth flat ledge that has
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: been worn into the shape of a seat by a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: thousand years of tides, and she pulls her knees up
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to her chin and she wraps her arms around them
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and she waits, and the singing comes. It never comes
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: all at once. First there is only the hush of
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the water against the rock, and the cry of a
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: last gull heading home, and the creak of the lighthouse
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: door far above as her father closes it behind him, then,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: very faintly, there is a single note, so soft that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: it might be the wind finding a gap in the stones, then, another,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a little higher, a little closer. Then, the notes begin
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: to join hands, one after another, until they make a
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: tune that rises and falls like a boat riding gentle swells,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It is never quite the same tune twice, some evenings
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: it is slow and low like a lullaby for a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: very lodge and very sleepy creature, some evenings it is lighter,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: with little turns and skips in it, like someone humming
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: while they pick blackberries, but it always ends the same way,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: with one long note that goes on and on, softer
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and softer, until Maren cannot tell whether she is till
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: hearing it, or only remembering it. and then the first
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: star appears and the evening is properly begun. Marin has
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: never once tried to find out who the singer is.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Other children might have. Other children might have climbed down
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: to the water with a lantern, or rowed out in
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: a borrowed boat, or thrown pebbles toward the hearthstones to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: see what would happen. But Marin has always felt, in
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the quiet way she feels most things, that the singing
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is a kind of visitor, and that you do not
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: go poking about in a visitor's pockets, so instead she
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: simply keeps it company. She has her own small habits,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: which she has never told anyone about. When the first
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: note comes, she lays her hand flat on the cold
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: stone beside her, as if she were saving a seat
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: for someone. When the tune turns low, she lets her
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: eyes half close. When it turns light and skipping, she
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: taps one finger very softly against her knee, keeping time.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And when the long last note begins, she counts the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: sweeps of the lighthouse beam above her. One, and two
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and three, and sometimes as many as seven or eight,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: until the sound has thinned away into nothing. Then she
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: whispers so quietly that only the water could possibly hear.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Good night, and thank you. Some evenings she tries to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: guess what the song is about. A slow one might
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: be about a long journey across deep water. A bright
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: one might be about a shoal of silver fish, or
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a warm rock in the sun, or a good joke
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: shared between friends. A sad one, she thinks, might be
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: about missing someone, though she cannot imagine who a voice
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: like that could be missing, or why. Her mother, who
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: hums wordless tunes all day long over the bread and
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the nets, once told her that a tune without words
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: is like a window without curtains, anyone may look through
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: it and see their own garden on the other side.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Maren has always loved that idea, she thinks about it often,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: sitting on her ledge. When the singing is slow she
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: sees the inside of the cottage at night, the fire
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: banks low, her father's boots by the door. When it
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: is quick she sees the gulls tumbling over the headland
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: in a high wind. And when it is the long
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: last note she sees nothing at all, only a soft
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: blue darkness, very calm and very wide, like the sky
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: just before the first star. It is the most peaceful
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: thing she knows sometimes. Walking back up the rock shelves
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: afterward she finds that she is a Ming, the tune
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: herself under her breath, the way her mother does. And
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: she does not even notice until she reaches the cottage
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: door and hears her own small voice in the quiet
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: then she smiles and goes in and the warm kitchen
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: closes around her like a pair of arms. Let us
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: leave her there from the moment sitting on her ledge
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: with her chin on her knees and her plait blowing
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: gently in the breeze. Let us leave her listening. with
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse beam beginning to turn above her, sweeping its
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: long golden arm out across the water and back again.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Out and back, out and back. Slow as breathing, let
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: us breathe with it. In, as the beam sweeps out
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: across the dark sea. Out, as it swings back home,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: toward the land. In and out, out and home. The
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: sea is quiet. The sky is soft, the voice is singing,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: low and far away. And Marin is listening, the way
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: she always has, the way she always will. Life at
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Gull Point moved to its own slow rhythm, and that
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: rhythm was set by the lamp. Every morning, just as
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the sky began to pale over the eastern hills, Tobias
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Hollis climbed the spiral stair to put the light to rest.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: There were one hundred and twelve steps in that stair,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Marin had counted them many times, and they curled upward
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: around the inside of the tower, like the inside of
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a seashell. At the top, her father would turn down
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the flame, draw a soft linen curtain around the great
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: glass lens to keep the sun from harming it, and
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: stand for a minute at the window, looking out at
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the morning sea the way a farmer might look out
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: at his fields. Then he would come down again, slowly,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: one hand on the cool, curved wall, and he would
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: sit at the kitchen table, and Annick would put a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: bowl of porridge in front of him, with a spoonful
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of honey melting on the top, and a mug of
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: strong tea beside it. Marin would already be there, in
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: her nightgown and her father's old jumper, with her bare
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: feet tucked up under her on the chair, eating her
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: own porridge very slowly, because she liked to make the
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: honey last. The kitchen would be warm and smell of
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: oats and bread and the peat on the fire, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the window would be gray and silver with the dawn.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Did the sea behave herself? Anik would ask. Every morning
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the same question, and Tobias would answer. Every morning, in
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: his low, slow voice. She was gentle as a lamb,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: or sometimes. She was a bit restless, around the second watch,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: but she settled. Or once in a long while on
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: stormy mornings, she gave us a proper talking to, but
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the light held, and Annette would nod and pour him
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: more tea and Marin would listen, and feel the whole
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: cottage settle around the three of them like a quilt
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: being smoothed over a bed. After breakfast, Tobias would sleep
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: for a few hours, because a lighthouse keeper works through
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the night, and must rest in the day. While he slept,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the cottage became a very quiet place. Annick would bake.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: She baked every single morning, round brown loaves with a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: cross cut in the top and sometimes saffron buns, golden
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and sticky, and on special days a dark fruitcake heavy
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: with currants that had to be wrapped in a cloth
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and left in the tin for a week before anyone
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was allowed to tap. Maren would help knead the dough,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: pushing it away with the heels of her hands and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: fold it back toward herself, again and again until it
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: grew smooth and soft and springy, like the belly of
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a sleeping puppy. In the late morning, there were lessons.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The schoolhouse in Lowen Harbor was a long walk along
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the cliff path, and in the fine weather, Maren walked
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: it three days a week, with a satchel over her
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: shoulder and a wedge of bread and cheese wrapped in
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: paper for her lunch. On the other days, and on
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the days when the wind was too strong or the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: rain too heavy, her mother taught her at the kitchen table.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Annick knew a great many things. She knew how to
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: add up long columns of figures and how to spell
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: difficult words like necessary and harbor and beautiful and the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: names of all the stars that her father used to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: steer his thoughts by and the names of all the
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: fish that the fishermen brought in and which seaweeds you
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: could eat and which ones you could only admire. In
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the afternoon, there were chores. Marin would fetch water from
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the rain barrel and carry it in two tin pails, slowly,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: so as not to slop it on her boots and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: She would feed the six brown hens that lived in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a little coop behind the cottage, scattering corn for them
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: while they clucked and fussed about her ankles. She would
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: carry the oil can up the spiral stair to her
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: father when he woke, and hold the soft cloths while
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: he polished the brass, and watch as he wound the
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: great clockwork that turned the lamp. That clockwork was the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: heart of the lighthouse. It was a tall frame of
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: iron and brass, full of gears and wheels and a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: long hanging weight on a chain. and when it was
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: wound it ticked slowly and deeply like an enormous grandfather
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: clock and the lamp turned in time with it. Every
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: light on this coast has its own way of speaking,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: her father told her. once as they watched the lens
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: begin to turn some flash quickly some flash slowly some
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: flash twice and then rest our sweeps once and then
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: rests and then sweeps again one long slow sweep That
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: is how the sailors know it is goal point and
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: not some other place. It is our voice. Out there
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in the dark, it says, here are the rocks, here
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: is the harbor, here is home. Marin had liked that
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: very much. She liked to think of the lighthouse speaking
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: all night long in its slow and patient way to
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: boats she would never meet. And then at last came
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the evening. Supper was eaten at the long table, usually fish,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes stew, always bread with butter from the farm on
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the hill. The plates were washed in the big stone
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: sink and dried with a striped cloth and put away
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: on the dresser. Her father pulled on his heavy coat
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and his cap and took his lantern from its hook
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and climbed the stair to light the lamp. Her mother
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: settled by the fire with her bastet of mending and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Marin pulled on her boots and slipped out of the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: door and went down the rock shells to her ledge
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: by the sea to listen. Her mother and father knew
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: where she went. They did not mind. The rock shills
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: were broad and flat and dry in fine weather, and
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Marin was careful, and the lighthouse beams swept over her
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: every few breaths like a great gentle eye keeping watch.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: She is listening to her singer, Anik would say to Tobias, smiling,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and he would nod and say let her listen. Neither
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of them knew what the singing was. Anik thought it
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: might be the wind playing over the hearthstones, the way
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: it sometimes plays over the neck of a bottle. Tobias
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: thought it might be seals, which sometimes make strange low
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: calls to one another across the water, but neither of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: them had ever gone to find out. Some things, they felt,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: were better left to the person who loved them most.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Now on one particular evening in late summer something happened
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that changed everything. It was a very still evening, the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: kind of evening where the sea lies flat and glassy,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: like a great sheet of silk laid out to dry.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and every sound carries a very long way. Marin could
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: hear a dog barking in Lowen Harbor, far along the shore.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: She could hear the creak of oars from a small
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: boat coming in late. She could hear the soft, steady
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: tick of the clockwork at the top of the tower,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: which she had never been able to hear from down
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: on the rocks before. The sun went down behind the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: headland in a slow blaze of orange and pink, and
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the sky turned the color of the inside of a shell,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and Marin sat on her ledge with her chin on
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: her knees, and waited. The sinning began, one soft note,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: then another, then the tune taking shape, rising and falling.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: It was a slow tune that evening, slow and a
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: little sad, the way the end of summer is a
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: little sad, when you can feel the cool breath of
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: autumn waiting behind the warm days. Merritt closed her eyes
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: to listen. She let the tune wash over her. And
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: when she opened her eyes again, she saw something she
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: had never seen before in all her years of listening.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: There was a head in the water. It was just
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: beyond the heart stones where the water was deep and
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: dark and calm. A round, sleek, gray head, shining wetly
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in the last light, rising out of the sea like
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: a smooth stone, Maren held very still. She did not
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: even breathe. The head turned slowly. This way and that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and she saw two large, dark eyes, round and liquid
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: and gentle, and a soft gray muzzle with long pale whiskers,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and two small nostrils that opened and closed as the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: creature breathed. It was a seal, a gray seal, young
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and slender, floating upright in the water with only its
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: head showing, the way seals do when they are curious
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: about something. And it was singing. Maren could see it now.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: She could see the seal's throat move as the notes
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: came out low and clear and wandering, carried across the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: still water to her ledge. The seal was looking at
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the sky as it sang, at the place where the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: sun had gone down and then, very slowly it turned
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: its head and looked toward the shore, toward the rock shelves,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: toward the small girl in the oatmeal jumper sitting on
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the worn stone ledge with her chin on her knees.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Their eyes met. The singing stopped. For a long moment,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: neither of them moved. The sea was perfectly still. The
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: lighthouse beams swept out across the water, slow and golden,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: and passed over the seal, and for an instant Meron
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: saw it lit up clearly, every speckle and dapple on
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: its gray coat, every bead of water on its whiskers,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: its dark eyes shining. And then the beams swung on,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: back toward the land, and the seal was only a
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: dim round shape again, in the blue dusk. Marin found
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: that she had been holding her breath, and she let
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: it out very slowly so as not to make a sound.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: She did not know what to do. She did not
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: want to frighten it. She had seen seals before, of course.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Everyone on that coast had, lying on the rocks in
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the sunshine like great gray sausages, or Bobby in the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: harbor hoping the fishermen would throw them a herring. But
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: she had never seen a seal sing, and she had never, ever,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: had one look at her like this, steadily and thoughtfully,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: as though it were trying to decide whether she was
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a friend. So Maren did the only thing she could
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: think of. She began, very softly, to hum. She hummed
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the tune the seal had been singing. She knew it
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: by heart, or very nearly, because she had heard so
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: many like it. It was not difficult. It went low,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and then a little higher, and then curled back down
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: again like a wave folding over on itself. Her voice
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: was small and a bit wobbly because she was nervous
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and because she had never hummed to a seal before.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: but she kept going. She hummed the whole tune through, slowly,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: as slowly as the seal had sung it, all the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: way to the end, to the long last note, which
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: she held for as long as her breath would let her,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: until it faded away over the water. Then she was quiet.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: The seal looked at her. It tilted its head just
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: slightly to one side, its whiskers twitched. And then, so
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: softly that Marin almost did not hear it, the seal
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: sang one single note back to her, just one. low
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and round and warm like the sound of a bell
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: heard from very far away. It hung in the air
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: between them over the still water, and then it faded.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: The seal looked at her a moment longer with its
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: gentle dark eyes, and then it slipped beneath the surface
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: without a ripple, the way a stone slips into a pond,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and was gone. Meron sat on her ledge for a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: very long time after that. The first star appeared, and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: then the second, and then a whole scatter of them,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: like salt spilled across a dark blue tablecloth. The lighthouse
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: beam swept out and back, out and back. The air
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: grew cool, and she pulled her sleeves down over her hands.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: She did not want to go in. She wanted to
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: sit there forever, in case the seal came back. But
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: it did not come back that evening, and at last
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: she heard her mother calling her name softly from the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: cottage door, and she climbed the rock shelves, one wide
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: step at a time, and went inside. She did not
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: tell her mother and father what she had seen. Not
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: that night. She was not sure why. It was not
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that she wanted to keep a secret from them exactly.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It was more that the thing she had seen felt
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: so fragile and so new, like a bubble on the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: surface of the water, that she was afraid if she
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: spoke of it out loud it might burst. So she
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: only said that the singing had been very lovely and
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: her mother smiled and said she was glad and wrapped
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: her in a warm towel because her hands were cold
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and gave her a cup of milk warmed on the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: stove with a little nutmeg grated on top. Instead she
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: sat by the fire in the warm towel with a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: cup of milk in both hands and watched her mother mend.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Annick was working on a fisherman's net that evening. A
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: great brown heap of it spread across her lap and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: spilling down onto the rag rug. and her quick fingers
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: moved in and out of the holes with a wooden
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: needle nodding and pulling nodding and pulling so fast that
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Mering could hardly follow them, every so often her mother
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: hummed a few notes under her breath, and every so
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: often she stopped to hold the net up to the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: lamplight and look for the next tear, the fire ticked
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and settled the kettle sat at the back of the
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: stove not quite asleep, Marin watched the needle and listened
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to the humming, and found that she was comparing her
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: mother's tunes to the seal's tune without meaning to. The
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: way you might hold two shells side by side to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: see which was the prettier. They were not alike, not really.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Her mother's tunes were round and busy, like a hen
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: bustling about a yard. The seal's tune had been long
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and slow and far away, like the sea itself thinking aloud.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: But they had something in common all the same. something
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Marin could not quite name. Perhaps it was only that
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: both of them were sung for nobody in particular, and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: for everybody at once. Once, her mother looked up and
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: caught her staring, and raised her eyebrows in a small question,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and Marin only shook her head and smiled, and took
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: another sip of her milk. Her mother smiled back, and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: went on nodding. Arbuthem, through the thick stone of the walls,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Marin could just make out the slow, deep tick of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the clockwork in the tower. and she thought of her
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: father up there in the lantern room, alone with the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: great lamp, looking out at the dark water. She wondered
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: whether he could see the hearthstones from up there. She
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: wondered whether he had seen a gray head in the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: water just beyond them and thought it was only a seal,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and gone back to his polishing. The thought made her
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: feel strange and tender, as if she were holding something
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: warm that nobody else knew about. When the milk was finished,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: she carried the cup to the sink and rinsed it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and dried it and put it back on the dresser
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: in its proper place between the blue jug and the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: brown teapot Then she kissed her mother goodnight, on the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: soft place just in front of her ear. And her
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: mother said, the way she always did, sleep sound my
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: little gull. And Maren climbed the narrow wooden stair to
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: her room, with a candle in its holder throwing her
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: shadow tall and wobbly on the wall beside her, and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: every step of the way she could still hear, somewhere
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: inside her head, That single low note, round and warm,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: like a bell heard from very far away. That night,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in her small bed under the sloping roof, with the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: patchwork quilt pulled up to her chin and the lighthouse
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: beam passing over her window every little while like a
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: slow golden wing, Marin lay awake for a long time.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: She thought about the seal's dark eyes. She thought about
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the single note it had sung back to her. She
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: turned the memory over and over in her mind, the
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: way you might turn a smooth pebble over in your hand,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: feeling its weight and its shape. and she made a
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: small and quiet promise to herself. There in the dark, tomorrow,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: she would go back and she would be very, very gentle. Outside,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the sea breathed softly against the rocks. The lamp turned
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: in its tower, slow and patient. The wind murmured in
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the chimney. And somewhere out beyond the hearthstones, in the deep, dark,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: quiet water, Something gray and sleek and curious was floating
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: on its back under the stars, thinking about a small
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: girl with a wobbly voice who had sung its song
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: back to it, all the way to the very last note.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Let your breath be slow now like the sea that night. In,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and the water rises softly against the stone. Out, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: it slides gently away again. There is nothing to hurry toward.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: The seal is sleeping on the swell. The girl is
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: sleeping in her bed. The light is turning in its tower,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: sweeping its long golden arm across the dark, saying, Here
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: are the rocks. Here is the harbor. Here is home.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: The next evening, Maren went down to the rocks a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: little earlier than usual. She ate her supper so quickly
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: that her mother raised one eyebrow and asked whether the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: fish had done something to offend her. And she dried
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the plates so fast that one of them nearly slipped
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: out of her hands. And she was out of the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: door and halfway down the rock shelves before her father
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: had even reached the top of the spiral stair. But
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: when she reached her ledge, she made herself slow down.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: She sat very carefully. She folded her hands in her lap.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: She took a deep breath the way her mother did
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: before she sang and she let it out slowly. And
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: she waited. The sky did its quiet work. The sun
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: slid down behind the headland. The gold went to rose.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: And the rose went to lavender. And the lavender went
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to the soft deep blue of a mussel shell. And
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: just as the blue began, just at the moment when
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the first star was wondering whether it was time, the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: singing came. One note. Then another, then the tune, rising
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and falling over the water, and there, just beyond the hearthstones,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a little closer than the night before, was the round
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: gray head, with its gentle dark eyes, looking straight at
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: her mare and did not move. She did not wave
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: or call out or stand up. She only listened, with
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: her whole self, the way you listen to someone you
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: love telling you something important. She listened all the way
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: to the end of the tune, to the long last note,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and when it had faded away over the water, she
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: sang the tune back, softly, just as she had before.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Her voice was a little steadier this time. She did
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: not wobble so much on the high part. And when
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: she finished and held the last note as long as
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: her breath would allow, the seal sang one note back
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to her, then two, then a little curling phrase, like
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: a question. Marin did not know the answer to the question,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: so she sang the little curling phrase back exactly as
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: she had heard it, and the seal after a moment
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: did something that made her heart leap like a fish,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: it laughed, or at least. It made a sound that
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Marin could only think of as laughing, a soft, bubbling,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: snorting sound. And it ducked its head under the water
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and came up again with its whiskers dripping. And looked
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: at her with what she was quite sure was delight, then.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: It swam in one smooth, slow circle, all the way
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: around the hearthstones, and came back to the same place,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: and looked at her again, that was how it began.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Evening after evening through the last warm weeks of summer,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Marin went down to her ledge at dusk, and the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: seal came to the water beyond the hearthstones and they
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: sang to each other. At first it was only the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: tunes the seal would sing, and Marin would sing back.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Then the seal began to change the tunes a little,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: adding a turn here or a skip there and waiting
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to see if Marin would follow. She always tried. Sometimes
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: she got it right, and the seal would make its
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: bubbling laugh and circle the stones. Sometimes she got it wrong.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: and the seal would sing the phrase again, very slowly
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and patiently, the way a teacher repeats a word for
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a small child, until she had it. Then, one evening,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Maren decided to bring a gift. She thought about it
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: for a long time beforehand. What would a seal like? Fish, probably,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: but that did not seem quite right. It seemed too ordinary.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: And besides, the seal could catch its own fish far
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: better than she could. She wanted to give it something
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that said, I am your friend. I am glad you
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: are here. Thank you for the songs. In the end,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: she chose a ribbon. It was a length of blue
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: silk ribbon, the color of the sea on a bright morning,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: which her grandmother had given her on her last birthday.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: It was the prettiest thing Marin owned. She folded it
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: carefully and put it in the pocket of her jumper.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: That evening, when the singing had finished and the seal
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was floating beyond the stones watching her, Marin stood up. Slowly,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: very slowly, so as not to startle it. She walked
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: down to the very edge of the lowest rock shelf,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Where the water lapped against the stone, there was a small,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: flat rock there, just at the waterline, smooth and dark
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: and dry, at that state of the tide. She took
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the blue ribbon from her pocket and laid it on
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the rock, and weighed it down at one end with
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: a little white pebble, so that the wind would not
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: carry it off. Then she went back to her ledge
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and sat down and waited. The seal watched her the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: whole time, it did not come closer, it only watched,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: with its head tilted and its dark eyes shining in
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the dusk, Marin waited until the first star came out,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: and then the second, and then she heard her mother
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: calling softly from the cottage door, and she climbed the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: shelves and went inside. She did not know whether the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: seal would take the ribbon, or whether it would even
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: understand that it was meant as a gift. She lay
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: awake that night wondering. In the morning, before breakfast, before
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: her father had even come down from putting the lamp
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to rest, Maren slipped out of the cottage in her
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: nightgown and her father's jumper in her bare feet, and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: ran down the cold rock shelves to the edge of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the water. The ribbon was gone. The little white pebble
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: sat alone on the flat, dark rock, and beside it,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: placed very carefully, as if by a careful hand. There
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: was a shell. It was the most beautiful shell Maren
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: had ever seen. It was small and spiraled like a
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: tiny trumpet, and its outside was the soft pink of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the morning sky, and its inside was so smooth and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: pearly that it seemed to glow. When she held it
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: up to the light, it shone with every color at once,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: pink and green and blue and silver, shifting as she
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: turned it. And when she held it to her ear,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: she did not hear the rushing sound that most shells make.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: She heard very faintly, so faintly that she could not
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: be sure she was not imagining it, a few low
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: notes of the seal's song. Maren carried the shell back
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: up to the cottage in both her hands, as carefully
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: as if it were a baby bird. She put it
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: on the windowsill beside her bed, where the morning light
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: could fall on it. And she did not say anything
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to anyone, not yet. But that morning, as she ate
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: her porridge, her mother noticed that she was smiling to herself.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: A small and prided smile. And her mother did not
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: ask about it. She only smiled too. and passed the honey.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: After that, the gifts went back and forth. Marin left
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: a smooth green bead of sea glass she had found
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: on the beach in the spring. The seal left a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: tiny starfish, dried and perfect, the color of a pumpkin.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Marin left a sprit of sea lavender from the clifftop,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: tied with a thread. The seal left a long, curled
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: feather from a gull, white as milk. Marin left a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: small cake that her mother had made, wrapped in a
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: twist of paper. and felt a little foolish about it.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: But in the morning the cake was garn and the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: paper was folded neatly beside a round white stone with
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a hole worn through the middle of it. Maren looked
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: through the hole at the sea, and the sea looked
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: very far away and very bright. Like something seen in
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: a dream, her windowsill began to fill up. The pink
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: shell sat at one end, then the starfish and the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: gull feather standing up in a jar, and the stone
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: with the hole in it, and the little heap of
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: sea glass the color of bottles and lime peel in
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the summer sky. and a piece of driftwood, worn by
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the waves into the shape of a sleeping fox. Every
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: morning she looked at them before she got out of bed,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: one by one, and every morning they made her feel
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the same thing. A warm, quiet, shining feeling, as if
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: she had swallowed a small piece of sunlight, in the
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: daytime the tunes followed her about like a cat, she
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: caught herself humming them everywhere. She hummed them while she
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: scattered corn for the hens, and the hens tilted their
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: heads at her. As if they were trying to kill her.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: to learn the words, she hummed them while she carried
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the tin pails up from the rain barrel and and
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: found that if she kept time with her step she
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: slopped less water on her boots. She hummed them under
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: her breath at the schoolhouse, bent over her slate, until
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Miss Treloar looked up over the top of her spectacles
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and asked, kindly but firmly, whether the bees had got
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: into the classroom, and the other children giggled and Marin
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: went pink to the tips of her ears. On the
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: walk home along the cliff path, with the wind tugging
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: at her plait, she sang them out loud, because there
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: was nobody to hear but the sheep. and the sheep
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: did not seem to mind. She began to understand that
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the tunes had shapes, the way the coast had shapes.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Some of them climbed slowly and steadily, like the cliff path,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: up from the harbor. Some of them dipped and rose
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: and dipped again, like the swell under a small boat.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Some of them went round in circles and ended where
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: they began, like the turning of the lamp. She learnt
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: to feel the shape of a tune in her body
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: before she sang it, the way her father said he
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: could feel the shape of the weather in his bones
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: before it came. One, afternoon. Up, in the lantern room,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: holding the soft cloths, while her father polished the brass,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: she hummed one of the bright skipping tunes without thinking,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and her father stopped polishing and looked at her. That
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: is a pretty thing, he said. Where did you learn it?
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: And Marin said, truthfully, from the sea, and her father
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: nodded slowly, as if that were a perfectly sensible answer
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and went back to his polishing. After a while he
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: began to whistle the same tune himself, very softly and
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: not quite right, getting the turns a little wrong in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: a way that made Maren want to laugh. She corrected
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: him gently, and he tried again, and got it a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: little closer. They spent the rest of the afternoon like that.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Up at the very top of the tower with the
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: great glass lens glittering beside them and the whole white
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: sea spread out below the windows, polishing and whistling and
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: humming until the brass shone like a second sun. When
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: they came down for supper, her mother looked from one
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of them to the other and asked what on earth
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: the two of them had been up to, and Tobias
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: only said, mysteriously, music lessons, and winked at Marin across
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the table. And Marin hid her smile behind her cup.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: It was around this time that Marin's grandmother came to stay.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Her grandmother was Annick's mother, and her name was Winna Penrose,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and she lived in Lowen Harbor. in a tiny cottage
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: at the top of the steepest lane, with a blue
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: door and a red geranium in the window. She was
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: very old and very small and very wrinkled, like an
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: apple that has been kept in the cellar all winter.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: And she walked with a stit made of blackthorn. And
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: she had the brightest, sharpest, kindest eyes Maren had ever seen.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Every year, at the end of summer, she came to
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Gull Point for a fortnight, to help Ennick put up
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: the jams and pickles for the winter, and to sit
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: by the fire in the evenings, and to tell stories.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Grandmother Wenna knew more stories than anyone in the world.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: She knew stories about the fishermen who had sailed from
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Lowen Harbor long ago, and the storms they had weathered.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: She knew stories about the farm on the hill and
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the ghost of a gentle old horse that was said
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: to graze in the top field on moonlit nights. She
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: knew stories about the chapel bell which had been cast
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: from the brass of a shipwreck and which rang all
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: by itself once on the night that every sailor came
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: safely home. She knew stories about the sea. Oh, she
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: knew so many stories about the sea. One evening, after supper,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: when the fire was crackling and the kettle was murmuring
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: and Tobias had gone up to the lamp, Mirren sat
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: on the rag rug at her grandmother's feet with her
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: chi on her grandmother's knee and asked, as casually as
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: she could, Grandmother, do seals ever sing? Grandmother Wenna looked
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: down at her. Her bright eyes twinkled. She did not
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: answer straight away. She picked up her cup of tea.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and blew across the top of it and took a long,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: slow sip and set it down again on its saucer
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: with a soft click. Then she said, Some do. Some
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: do indeed. But the ones that sing, my love, are
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: not always only seals. Marin held very still. What do
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: you mean? Her grandmother settled back in her chair and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the firelight moved across her wrinkled face and her voice
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: went low and soft, the voice she always used for
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: the very best stories. When I was a girl, she said,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: no bigger than you, my own grandmother told me about
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the Selkies. They are the seal folk. They live in
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the sea, as seals, sleek and gray and quick. And
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: they swim and fish and lie on the rocks in
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the sun like any other seal. But sometimes on quiet evenings,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: when the sea is calm and the sky is soft,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: a Selkie will come up onto the shore. and slip
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: off its seal skin like you might slip off a coat,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: and underneath it is a person, a young man, or
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a young woman, or a child, with dark eyes and
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: dark hair and a voice like the sea, and they sing,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Merrin whispered. They sing, said Grandmother Wenna. They sing at dusk, mostly.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Some say it is because dusk is the in-between time,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: neither day nor night, and the Selkies are in-between folk,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: neither holy of the sea nor holy of the land.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Some say they sing to call their families home. Some
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: say they sing simply because they are happy and the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: sea is beautiful and the sky is beautiful. And what
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: else would you do with a voice like that but sing?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: She smiled and her eyes crinkled, always like that last
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: one best. Mirren thought about the gray head beyond the
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: hearth's stones. She thought about the dark eyes and the
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: bubbling laugh in the shell that sang. Are they kind?
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: She asked. The Selkies? As kind as anyone, said her grandmother.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Kinder than most, I should think. They are gentle folk, shy,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: they do not like to be stared at or chased
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: or caught. But if you are patient with them, and gentle,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: and you do not ask more of them than they
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: want to give, they can be the best friends in
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: the world. Then her voice grew a little more serious,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: and she put one knotted old hand on Marin's head
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: very gently and stroked her hair. But there is one
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: thing you must always remember about the Selkies, my love.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: One thing above all others. What is it? Their skins,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: said Grandmother Wenna. When a selkie comes ashore and takes
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: off its seal skin, it must leave the skin somewhere,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: folded on a rock or tucked in a cave. And
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: in the old stories, there were people, foolish people, greedy people,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: who would find those skins and hide them away because
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: a selkie cannot go back to the sea without its skin.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And so the selkie would have to stay on land
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: and be unhappy and long for the water every day
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of its life. She shook her head slowly. Those are
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: sad stories, and I do not like to tell them.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: But I tell you this so that you will know,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: if you ever find a seal skin folded on a rock,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: you must leave it exactly where it is. You must
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: never touch it, you must never move it, because a
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: friend that you keep by taking something from them is
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: not a friend at all. The only friend worth having
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: is one who is free to go and chooses to stay.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Marin was quiet for a long time. The fire crackled,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the kettle sighed, far above the lamp turned in its
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: tower and its beam swept over the window, golden slow.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Then she said very softly, I would never take anyone's
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: skin grandmother. I know you would not my love, said
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Grandmother Wenna and she bent down slowly with a creak
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: of old bones and kissed the top of Marin's head.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I know you would not, that is why I told you.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: That night Marin lay in bed and looked at the windowsill,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: where the pink shell glowed faintly in the passing beam
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: of the lighthouse. She thought about everything her grandmother had said.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: She thought about in-between folk and in-between times. She thought
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: about the seal's dark eyes, which had always seemed to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: her a little too thoughtful, a little too knowing, to
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: belong to an ordinary seal. And she held the promise
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: in her heart, the one her grandmother had given her,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and turned it over and found that it fit there perfectly.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: as if there had always been a space waiting for it.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: The only friend worth having is one who is free
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to go, and chooses to stay. Breathe with that now, softly, in,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and let it settle in your chest like a small,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: warm stone, out, and let your body grow a little heavier,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: a little quieter. The fire is low, the old woman
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: is dozing in her chair with her teacup on her knee,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the girl is drifting towards sleep with a shell on
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: her windowsill that hums very faintly of the sea, and
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: out beyond the heartstones. The water is dark and still,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and the stars are lying down in it, one by one,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the way tired people lie down in their beds. Grandmother
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Winna went home to Lowen Harbor at the end of
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: her fortnight with a basket full of jam jars and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: a new knitted shawl over her shoulders, and the cottage
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: felt a little emptier without her stories by the fire.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: The days began to shorten, the bracken on the headland
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: turned from green to rust, and the blackberries in the
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: hedges grew fat and dark and then began to wither.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: And the swallows that had nested under the cottage eaves
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: all summer gathered on the washing line, in long chattering rows.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and one morning they were simply gone. The air in
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the evenings had a crispness to it now, like the
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: first bite of an apple, and still every dusk the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: singing came. Maren went down to her ledge every evening
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: as she always had. She wore a scarf now, a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: thick red one her mother had needed, wound twice around
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: her neck and a pair of fingerless mittens, and she
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: sat on a folded sack to keep the cold of
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the stone from creeping up into her. The seal came
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: every evening too, they sang together, and the tunes grew
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: longer and more complicated, full of little turns and echoes,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: like two people telling a story by taking turns with
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the sentences, and the gifts went back and forth on
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the flat, dark rock at the water's edge. a bead,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: a shell, a feather, a stone. Then came an evening
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: in early autumn that Maren would remember for the rest
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: of her life. And it was a soft, mild evening,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: warmer than it had any right to be. The kind
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: of evening that seems to have wandered into autumn by
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: mistake from somewhere back in the summer. There was a
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: thin haze over the sea, golden and pink in the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: setting sun, so that the water and the sky seemed
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: to melt into one another at the horizon. And you
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: could not tell where one ended and the other began.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: The tide was very low, lower than Maren had ever
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: seen it, and the hearthstone stood up out of the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: water like a ring of sleeping animals, black and shining
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: and drept with weed. Between them and the rock shells,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: a whole new stretch of flat, wet stone lay bare,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: dotted with little pools that held the sky like mirrors.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Maren sat on her ledge and waited for the singing,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and the singing came, as it always did, one note
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: and then another, rising out of the haze. But it
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: was not coming from beyond the hearthstones this time. It
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: was coming from somewhere much closer. Marin looked and looked,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: and then she saw it. On the far side of
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: the largest of the hearthstones, on a flat shelf of
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: rock that was usually hidden under the sea, the seal
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: was lying half in and half out of a shallow pool,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: with its head lifted singing to the sky. And then
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: as Marin watched, holding her breath, the seal stopped singing
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: and rolled over onto its back. and did something very strange,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: it reached up with one front flipper, to the place
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: just under its chin, and it seemed to take hold
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of something there, a fold, a seam, the way you
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: might take hold of the collar of a coat, and slowly, gently,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: the whole grey speckled skin began to slide away, peeling
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: back from the shoulders and down the body like a
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: wet stocking being rolled down a leg, underneath where the
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: seal had been there was a girl, she sat up
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: on the flat rock, She was about Maren's own age,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: perhaps a little older, slender and brown-skinned, with long dark
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: hair that hung down her back in wet ropes all
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the way to her waist. She wore a simple shift
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of some soft gray cloth that seemed to shimmer faintly,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: like the inside of a muscle shell. She shook her hair,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and droplets flew from it, catching the last light like
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: little sparks. Then she took the sealskin very carefully, and
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: folded it the way Anik folded the good tablecloth after
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Sunday dinner, corner to corner and over again, until it
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: was a neat gray bundle, and she laid it down
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: on a dry ledge of the rock behind her, and
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: patted it once, jackly as if to say, wait for me.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Then she stood up, and turned, and looked across the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: stretch of bare wet stone, straight at Marin. Marin could
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: not move. She sat on her ledge with her mittened
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: hands pressed together in her lap and her heart beating
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: so loudly she was sure the girl could hear it.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: The girl looked at her for a long moment, with
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: those same large dark eyes Marin knew so well, gentle
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: and thoughtful and a little bit shy. Then she began
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to walk. She came picking her way across the wet rocks, barefoot,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: stepping carefully between the pools, with her arms held a
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: little out from her sides for balance, the way someone
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: walks who is not quite used to having legs. Once
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: she slipped a little on a patch of weed and
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: let out a small, surprised laugh, the same bubbling, snorting
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: laugh Maren had heard so many times from out beyond
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the stones. She stopped at the foot of the rock
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: shells just below Maren's ledge and looked up. Hello, she said.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Her voice was low and soft and a little husky,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: with a strange lilt to it, as if she were
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: singing the words rather than speaking them. It sounded like
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: water running over pebbles. It sounded like the wind in
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: the dune grass. It sounded exactly, Maren thought, like a
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: voice that had grown up in the sea. Hello, Marin
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: whispered back. They looked at each other. The girl seemed
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: almost as nervous as Marin was. She twisted a strand
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: of her wet hair around one finger and looked down
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: at her bare feet and then up again. I am Liss,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: she said at last. That is my land name, my
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: sea name is longer, and you could not say it
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: with a mouth like yours, I think. It is mostly
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: a song. But Liss is the short of it. My
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: grandmother calls me that. I am Marin, said Marin. Marin Hollis.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: I live up there. She pointed to the cottage at
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the foot of the lighthouse, where a warm yellow light
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: glowed in the kitchen window. My father keeps the light.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I know, said Liss and she smiled for the first time.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: It was a lovely smile, wide and sudden, with a
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: little gap between her front teeth. I have watched you.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Every evening you sit on that ledge with your chin
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: on your knees, and you listen nobody else listens. The
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: fishermen do not hear us. The people in the village
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: do not hear us, but you always come, and you
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: always listen, all the way to the end. She tilted
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: her head exactly the way the seal had always done,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and you sang back. Nobody has ever sung back before.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Marin felt her cheeks go warm under the cold wind.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Your songs are very beautiful, she said. I could not
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: help it. Liss laughed her bubbling laugh. Your seating is
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: very wobbly, she said, but she said it so kindly
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: with such warmth in her dark eyes that Maren could
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: not possibly mind, but it is getting better, much better.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: You have a good ear. You hear the turns, she hesitated.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: And then she reached up, and Maren saw that around
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: her wrist, wound twice and tied in a small, neat bow,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: was a length of blue silk ribbon, the color of
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the sea on a bright morning. I wear it always,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: said Liss, even in the water. It is the prettiest
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: thing I own. Marin slid down from her ledge, carefully,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and sat on the lowest of the rock shelves, so
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that they were almost at the same height. Liss climbed
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: up beside her a little awkwardly and sat down too
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: with her bare brown feet dangling over the edge, just
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: above the water. For a while, neither of them said
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: anything at all. They only sat side by side and
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: looked out at the sea, at the golden haze, at
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the hearthstone standing up in their ring, at the place
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: on the far rock where the gray bundle of the
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: sealskin lay folded and waiting. The lighthouse beams swept out
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: over them, and back, and out again. After a while,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Lys reached over, a little shyly, and touched the end
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: of Merrin's red scarf. She rubbed the wool between her
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: finger and thumb very carefully, the way you might touch
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: the wing of a moth. What is this? she asked.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: It is not skin, and it is not weed, and
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: it is not feather, but it is warm. It is
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: warm all the way through. Marin explained about sheep, and
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: about wool, and about how her mother spun it on
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: a wheel by the fire, and then knitted it with
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: two long needles, loop after loop after loop, until it
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: became a scarf, or a jumper, or a pair of socks.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Liss listened to all of this with her mouth slightly open.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: So your mother makes a second skin for you, she
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: said slowly. Out of the coats of other animals because
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: your own skin is too thin for the cold. Marin
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: had never thought of it that way before, but she
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: had to admit it was true, then Liss wanted to
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: see the fingerless mittens, and Marin took one off and
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: let her try it on, and Liss held up her
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: hand with the gray wool mitten on it and wiggled
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: her bare fingertips out of the ends, and laughed so
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: much that she had to hold onto the rock to
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: keep from sliding off. It is a mitten that has
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: given up halfway, she said. It is a mitten that
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: could not decide. Maren laughed too, and showed her how
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the open ends let you hold a pencil, or turn
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the pages of a book, or pick up a small
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: shell from a pool, without your fingers going numb. Liss
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: nodded seriously at this, as if it were a very
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: clever invention indeed. Then she held her own hand up
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: next to Maren's bare one, palm to palm, and they
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: looked at them together. Liss's hand was a little longer
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and a little thinner and very cool, and between her
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: fingers right at the base there was the faintest suggestion
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: of a soft fold of skin, like the very beginning
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: of a web. Her nails were short and smooth and
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: pale as the inside of a shell. Maren's hand was
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: warmer and squarer, with ink on one knuckle from the
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: morning's lessons, and a small scab on her thumb, where
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: a hen had pecked her. We are not so very different,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: said Liss, studying them. Five fingers each, two hands each.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Two eyes and one nose and a mouth for singing.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: And a grandmother each who tells stories, said Maren. And
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Liss looked at her with great interest and said that
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: she would very much like to hear about this grandmother.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: And Maren promised that she would tell her everything. Another evening,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: when there was more time. Liss gave back the mitten.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Maren put it on again and they sat for a
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: little longer in a comfortable silence. the kind that only
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: comes between people who already know they are going to
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: be friends. Can I ask you something, said Marin at last.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: You may ask me anything, said Lys. I might not answer,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: but you may ask. Why do you sing? Every evening,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: at dusk, always at dusk. Lys was quiet for a moment.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: She swung her feet slowly back and forth. Then she said,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Every autumn, my family swims south. All of us. My mother,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: and my father, and my two little brothers, and my aunts,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and my cousins, and all of our people. We swim
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a very long way. down the coast and out past
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the last headland and over the deep water to the
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: warm islands where the winter is kind and the fish
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: are fat we stay there until the spring and then
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: we swim back again and have our pups on these
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: rocks and the summer comes round and so on and
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: so on the way it always has been but you
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: did not go said marin slowly this year you stayed
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: i stayed said liz she looked out at the sea
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: my great-grandmother is very old, older than the lighthouse she says,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: though I think she is teasing, her name is Bryn,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: in the spring she hurt her flipper on a sharp rock,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: out by, the point that is been mending, very, slowly,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: too slowly for the long swim, if she had gone
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: with the others, she would have fallen behind, and been
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: alone in the deep water, and that is, no place
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: for an old one to be alone, so, I stayed
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: with her, to keep her company. and to catch her fish,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and to sing to her when she cannot sleep. When
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: her flipper is strong again, we will swim south together,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: the two of us, and find the others. Mirren thought
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: about this. She thought about how brave that was. To
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: stay behind when everyone else had gone, she thought about
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: how lonely it must be. And the singing, she said,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the singing is for my mother, said Lys simply. Every
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: dusk I sing to tell her that we are well,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Grandmother Brynn and I, that we are warm and fed
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: and safe and that we will come soon. The wind
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: carries it, a long way, all the way south, over
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the water to the warm islands. And at dusk my
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: mother goes to the edge of the rocks there. And
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: she listens and she hears me. She paused. At least
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I think she does. I hope she does. I have
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: to believe that she does. I am sure she does,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: said Maren, and she meant it with her whole heart.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: I am sure of it. Your voice carries all the
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: way to my window, I have heard it every evening
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: for as long as I can remember, ever since I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: was a baby, my mother says. Liss turned and looked
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: at her with her dark eyes very wide. Truly, truly.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Then it must carry to the islands, said Liss, and
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the smile came back to her face wide and bright,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: with the little gap between her teeth. if it carries
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: to you it carries to her, oh I am so glad,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: I am so glad you told me that. And then,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: quite suddenly and without any warning, she leaned over and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: put her arms around Maren and hugged her. Her hair
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: was wet and cold and smelled of salt and seaweed,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: and her arms were cool and strong, and Maren was
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: so surprised that for a moment she could not move.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: And then she hugged Lispak as hard as she could
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: in her red scarf and her fingerless mittens, there on
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: the rock shelf at the foot of the lighthouse while
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: the beams swept over them both, gold and slow, and
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the sea breathed softly against the stones. When they let go,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Lys wiped her eyes with the back of her hand
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and laughed. Grandmother Brynn will scold me, she said. She
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: says I must not come ashore too often, or I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: will forget how to swim, but I wanted to meet
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: you properly. With a mouth that can say words, I
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: have been wanting to for weeks. Will you come again,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: said Maren, tomorrow? Lys looked at the sky. Where the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: first star had appeared, small and bright above the headland.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: The tide will be low again tomorrow, she said. And
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the evening after that, when the tide is low and
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the sea is soft, I can come. When it is
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: high or rough, I will stay out beyond the stones.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: And sing. But I will always come at dusk. Always.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: That is a promise. She held out one hand with
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the blue ribbon tied around the wrist. and Maren took
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: an intermittent one. And they shook on it, solemnly, like
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: two fishermen agreeing on the price of a catch. Then
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Liss climbed down from the rock shelf and pit her
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: way back across the wet stones, between the pools full
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: of sky, to the far side of the largest hearthstone.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Maren watched her pick up the gray bundle. and unfold
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: it and slip into it the way you might slip
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: into a sleeping bed on a cold night, and then
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: there was only a seal again, sleek and gray and speckled,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: with a flash of blue silk around one front flipper.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: The seal looked back at Maren once, and made its
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: bubbling laugh and slid into the water without a ripple
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and was gone. Maren climbed the shelves slowly, her legs
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: felt light and strange beneath her, and her heart felt
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: so full that she thought it might float right up
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: out of her chest and drift away over the sea
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: like a paper lantern. The cottage door she stopped. And
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: turned and looked back. The tide was beginning to come in.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: The flat, wet stones were silvering over. The hearth's stones
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: were sinking back into the water, one by one, like
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: animals settling down to sleep. And out beyond them, faintly,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: so faintly she might have imagined it, came one low, round,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: warm note, like a bell heard from very far away.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: Good night, it said. Breathe softly now. In as the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: tide comes gently in over the flat stones, out as
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the last light fades over the headland. Let your arms
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: be heavy, let your eyes be heavy. The girl is
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: going in to the warm kitchen where her mother is
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: waiting with a cup of milk and nutmeg. The selkie
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: is swimming out to the deep water where an old
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: grey seal is waiting on a rock half asleep with
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: her mending flipper tucked against her side. And the light
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: is turning in its tower, slow and patient and kind,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: watching over them both. After that, the low tide evenings
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: became the best evenings of Merrin's life. Not every evening
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: was a low tide evening. Of course, the sea keeps
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: its own calendar, and it does not ask anyone's permission.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Some evenings the tide was high at dusk, and the
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: hearthstones were covered in soft white lace, and Merrin sat
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: on her ledge, and Lys floated out beyond the stones
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: as a seal, and they sang to each other across
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: the water the way they always had. Some evenings the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: wind was up and the waves were restless and gray.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Amarin's mother made her wear her oilskin coat, and the
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: singing came faintly, in snatches, between the gusts. But every
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: few days, for a little run of evenings, the tide
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: drew back at dusk, and the flat wet stones lay bare,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: and the sea went soft and calm, and Lys came ashore.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: They spent those evenings exploring. The bare stretch of rock
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: between the shelves and the hearthstones was a whole world
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Marin discovered. A world she had looked at all her
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: life without ever really seeing. Liss showed it to her.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: She knew every pool and every crevice, she knew where
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: the little green crabs hid under the weed, and how
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: to lift the weed very gently so as not to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: frighten them. And how to set it back down again
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: just as it had been. She knew which pools had
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: anemones in them, red and green and the color of
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: strawberry jam. which closed up like little fists when you
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: touched them with the tip of a finger and then
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: slowly opened again, waving their soft arms in the water.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: She knew where the Prahrans lived, almost invisible, clear as glass,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: so that you could only see them by the tiny
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: dark dots of their eyes and the faint shadow they
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: cast on the sand. She knew where the blennies hid,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: small brown fish, had big lips and worried expressions, who
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: would peer out at you from their cracks in the rock,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: as if you were very late for an appointment. She
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: knew the names of all the seaweeds, though her names
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: were different from the ones Enoch used. The long brown
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: ribbons that Enoch called oreweed, Liss called sea hair, the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: bubbly bladderwrack that popped when you squeezed it, Liss called
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: the sea's laughing weed, the fine pink fronds that grew
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: in the deepest pools. Lys had no word for it
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: all in Meryn's language. She only sang it, a little
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: three-note phrase, soft and rising. In return Meryn taught Lys
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: about the land, she brought things down from the cottage
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: in her pockets to show her, her pinecone from the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: little wood behind the farm, which Lys turned over and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: over in her hands, marveling at its scales and its
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: sticky resin smell, an acorn in its little cop, DeDryd
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: rose from her mother's garden which had lost almost all
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: its color but still smelled faintly sweet a hen's egg,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: brown and warm, which Liss held so carefully in her
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: two-cupped hands that she hardly dared breathe, and then handed
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: back with enormous relief. A candle stub which Marin lit
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: with a match, cupping the flame from the wind and
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: which Liss stared at in silence for a very long time.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: It is like a very small lighthouse, Liss said at last, softly.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: A lighthouse for a mouse. Then Marin brought food. Liss
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: had never tasted bread before. And the first time Maren
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: brought a wedge of her mother's brown loaf, still a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: little warm wrapped in a cloth Liss took one bite
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: and closed her eyes and sat completely still chewing very slowly,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: for so long that Maren began to worry something was wrong.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Then Liss opened her eyes and they were shunning, it
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: tastes like the inside of a warm cave, she said.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: It tastes like being held. After that, Maren brought bread
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: every time, and sometimes a saffron bun which Liss said
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: tasted like a sunset, and once, very carefully, a slice
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: of the dark fruitcake from the tin, which Liss ate
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: one current at a time, as if each one were
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a small, precious jewel. They talked about everything, Liss wanted
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: to know what it was like to sleep in a bed.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Does it rock? she asked. Does it move with the tide?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: And Marin laughed and said no, it stayed perfectly still
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: all night and Liz shook her head in wonder and
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: said that sounded very strange and probably quite boring. Marin
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: wanted to know what it was like to sleep in
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: the sea and Liz told her about floating on her
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: back in the swell with her nose just above the water,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: rising and falling, rising and falling with the stars wheeling
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: overhead and the whole ocean rocking her like a mother's arms.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: It is the best sleep in the world, said Liss.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Nothing could be softer. One evening, Maren found a long
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: straight stick of driftwood at the foot of the rock shelves,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: and she showed Liss how to write. She smoothed a
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: patch of wet sand in a little hollow between the rocks,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: where the sea had left a fine pale floor and
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: she drew the letters of her own name in it,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: slowly and carefully, one after another. M-A-R-E-N. Then she drew
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Liss underneath. L-I-S-S, with the two tall curling letters at
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: the end lying side by side like a pair of
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: sleeping eels. Liss stared at the marks in the sand
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: for a long time. That is me, she asked at last,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: in a small voice. That shape is me? And Marin said, yes,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: that was her land name, and anyone who knew their
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: letters could look at those marks and know that Liss
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: had been here. Liss took the stick, very carefully, as
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: if it might break, and tried to copy the letters underneath.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Her first attempt looked rather like a crab that had
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: been stepped on. Her second looked like a row of fishhooks,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: but her third was very nearly right, and when she
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: finished it she sat back on her heels and gazed
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: at it with such pride and such wonder that Maren
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: felt her throat go tight. Liss had an idea. She
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: took the stick again and drew something else beside the letters.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: It was not a letter at all. It was a long, looping,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: wandering line that rose and fell and curled back on itself,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: with little ripples along it like the edge of a wave.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: And that, said Liss, is my sea name, or as
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: close as I can make it with a stick. It
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: goes up here, where the song goes high, and down here,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: where it goes low, and round and round here, where
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: it turns. And she sang it. Softly following the line
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: with the tip of her finger as she went and
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Marin saw that the line in the sand was exactly
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: the shape of the song every rise and every dip
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: like a path across a hillside. They sat side by
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: side and looked at the two names written together. The
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: land one and the sea one while the light faded
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: around them. Then the tide began to turn. A thin
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: film of water slid in across the sand, silver and shining,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: and touched the edge of the loops, and then the letters,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: softening them, blurring them, smoothing them away. Marin made a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: small unhappy sound, but Liss only smiled. Now the sea
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: knows my land name too, she said. Now she has
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: read it, and she will keep it. That is what
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: the sea does with everything you give her, she keeps it,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: and they climbed back up onto the dry rock and
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: watched the hollow fill with water. until there was nothing
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: left but a smooth, bright pool holding the first star.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Liss wanted to know about school and Maren told her
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: about the long room with its rows of wooden desks
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: and the black stove in the corner and the teacher,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Miss Treloar, who wore spectacles on a chain and smelled
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: of peppermints and was strict about spelling but kind about
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: everything else. Liss thought school sounded rather wonderful. We do
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: not have school, she said. We only have our grandmothers.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: They teach us everything. Where the fish go in winter,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: how to read the currents, which songs are for weather
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and which songs are for sorrow and which songs are
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: for being glad. Grandmother Bryn knows a thousand songs. More
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: than a thousand, she says. When she dies, she will
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: become a song herself, and the sea will sing her forever.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Meryn wanted to know more about Grandmother Bryn. So, one
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: low-tide evening, Lys took her to see her. They walked
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: together across the bare, wet stones, Lissa in front, Marin behind,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: stepping carefully in Lissa's footprints, past the pools and the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: weed and the little scuttling crabs, all the way out
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: to the hearthstones. Marin had never been so far from
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: the shore before. The lighthouse looked very tall behind her,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: and the cottage looked very small with its single warm window.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: The hearthstones were bigger close up than she had imagined.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Great round black boulders slick with weed and crusted with
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: barnacles and tiny blue mussels, and the sea washed gently
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: around their feet. On the far side of the biggest stone,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: on a low flat shelf just above the water there
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: was a seal. She was very large, far larger than
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Lys and her seal skin, and very grey. A pale,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: silvery grey like the colour of old driftwood, and her
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: coat was dappled all over with darker spots, like the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: shadows of leaves. Her whiskers were long and white and
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: curled at the ends. Her eyes when she opened them
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: were the same dark liquid eyes as Liss's, but older,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: much older, deep and calm and full of a great
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: patient kindness. One of her front flippers was tucked close
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: against her side, and Marin could see a pale scar
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: running along it, healing but not yet healed. Liss knelt
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: down beside the old seal and laid one hand on
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: her head, gently, and sang something to her, low and soft,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: a little rolling phrase that went up at the end
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: like a question. The old seal made a deep, rumbling,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: grumbling sound in reply, rather like a very large cat
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: that has been woken from a nap and is not
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: entirely pleased about it. Then she turned her great head, slowly,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and looked at Maren. Maren did not know what to do,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: so she did what felt right. She knelt down, too,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: on the cold, wet rock and bowed her head a little.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: The way she had seen the fishermen bow their heads
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: to old Mrs. Kitto, who was the oldest person in
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Lowen Harbor and had been the harbor master's wife for
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: sixty years. Good evening, Grandmother Brynn, she said softly. I
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for letting
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: Liss be my friend. The old seal looked at her
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: for a long, long time. Then she made a sound
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Maren had never heard before. It was not a grumble
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: or a rumble. It was a low, warm, gentle hum,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: like a bee in a foxglove. Like the lighthouse clockwork
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: ticking deep in its tower, it went on for a while,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: rising and falling, and then the old seal stretched out
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: her neck slowly and touched her nose to Marin's forehead.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Her whiskers were cold and tickly and smelled strongly of fish,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: and then she put her head back down on the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: rock and closed her eyes and was asleep again almost
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: at once. Liss was beaming. She likes you. She whispered.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: She hummed you a welcome song. She has not hummed
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: a welcome song for anyone since my littlest brother was born.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: Maren did not have any words. She only knelt there
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: on the cold rock, with the touch of those cold
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: whiskers still on her forehead, and felt as if she
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: had been given something very precious and very old, something
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: she would need to keep safe for a long time.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: It was not long after that, on an ordinary gray morning,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: that Maren's mother found out. Maren had not meant to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: keep it a secret for so long. It was only
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: that every day it seemed harder to begin. How do
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: you tell your mother that you have made friends with
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: a selkie? How do you find the first word? She
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: had tried a few times, at breakfast with her spoon
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: halfway to her mouth, but every time the words got
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: stuck somewhere in her throat, like a fishbone, and she
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: swallowed them back down and said something about the weather instead.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: In the end, it was the windowsill that told. Annick
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: came into Marin's little room one morning to change the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: sheets on the bed, and she stopped. with the clean
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: linen folded over her arm, and looked at the windowsill,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: at the pink shell, glowing, at the starfish and the
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: gull feather in the stone with the hole in it,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: at the heap of sea glass and the driftwood fox.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: She picked up the shell and held it to her ear,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: the way anyone would, and she stood very still for
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: a long time, listening. Then she put it down, carefully,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: exactly where it'd been, and went downstairs, and did not
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: say a word. But that afternoon, while Maren was kneading
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the bread dough at the kitchen table, Her mother came
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and stood beside her, and put a hand on her
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: shoulder and said, very gently, in an ordinary sort of voice,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: I think your singer might like a loaf of her own,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: one of these evenings, a whole one. With a little
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: honey in it, perhaps? Marin's hands went still in the dough,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: she looked up at her mother. Her mother was smiling,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: the small, private smile that Marin knew so well, the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: one that meant she understood a great deal. more than
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: she was saying. How did you know? Marin whispered. I
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: did not know, said Anik, not for certain, but I
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: have lived by the sea all my life, my love,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: and my mother told me the same story she told you,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: and I have heard that singing every dusk, for twelve years,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and I have seen the way you come in from
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: the rocks at night with your eyes all shining and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: your cheeks all pink as if you had swallowed a star,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: she squeezed Marin's shoulder. You do not have to tell
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: me anything you do not want to. Some friendships are
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: for keeping close, but I want you to know that
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I am glad, truly glad. I now will bake the loaf, Marin,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: put her flowery arms around her mother's waist, and pressed
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: her face into her apron, which smelled of yeast and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: lavender and the sea, and then quite suddenly all the
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: words that had been stuck in her throat came tumbling out,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: in a great happy rush, all at once the ribbon
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: and the shell and the flat rock and the grey
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: head beyond the stones and the girl with the wet
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: hair and the gap in her teeth and the old
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: grandmother's seal with the scar on her flipper and the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: welcome song. Her mother listened to all of it, stroking
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: her hair and nodding and saying, Oh my love, and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: oh how lovely, and once, Oh the poor old deer,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: and when it was all told they finished kneading the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: bread together side by side in the warm kitchen while
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: the rain began to tap softly on the window. That evening,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: Annick baked a special loaf. It was round and golden
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: with a little honey in the dough and a sprinkle
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: of oats on the top. And she shaped the top
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: of it with the edge of a knife into the
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: wavy lines of the sea. She wrapped it in a
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: clean cloth, tied with string and gave it to Marin
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: at the door. Tell her it is from your mother,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: she said. Tell her any friend of my daughter's is
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: a friend of this house, Liss cried when Marin gave
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: it to her. She sat on the rock shelf with
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: the warm loaf in her lap, wrapped in its cloth
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: and the tears ran down her cheeks and dropped off
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: her chin, and she laughed at the same time, her
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: bubble-ball snorting laugh, so that Marin laughed too. My mother
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: would like your mother, Liss said, wiping her eyes. They
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: would sit on a rock together and sing and gossip
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: and never stop, and she broke off a piece of
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: the loaf and gave it to Marin, and broke off
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: a piece for herself, and saved the biggest piece, wrapped
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: in the cloth to take out to Grandmother Brynn. Let
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: your breath slow down again now and gently, like the
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: smell of warm bread in a kitchen on a rainy afternoon.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Out softly, like a hand stroking hair. Two girls are
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: sitting on a rock shelf at the foot of a lighthouse,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: sharing a honey loaf in the blue dusk. The tide
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: is low, the pools are full of sky. Somewhere on
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: a far rock an old grey seal is waking up
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: and sniffing the air and smelling something warm and sweet
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: and wonderful drifting toward her across the water. And the
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: lamp turns slowly in its tower. And all is well.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Autumn deepened, the days grew shorter still, and the evenings
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: came earlier. So that dusk arrived now while the supper
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: was still cooking, and Maren had to eat quickly to
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: be on her ledge in time. The bracken on the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: headland turned from rust to brown, the last leaves blew
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: off the little hawthorn tree by the garden wall, and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: it stood bare and twisted against the sky like an
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: old woman leaning into the wind. In the mornings there
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: was frost on the cabbages, white and sparkling. and the
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: hens grumbled about it, and Anik brought out the heavy
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: winter-clilts from the chest at the foot of the bed
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: and hummed them on the line to air. And there
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: came a night of fog. Fog was not unusual on
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: that coast in the autumn. It came in from the
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: sea on still evenings, low and white and soft, rolling
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: over the water like a great slow flock of sheep,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: swallowing the hearth-stones first, and then the rock-shelves, and then
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: the cottage, and then the lighthouse itself, until the whole
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: world shrank down to a small gray room with no walls.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Most of the time the fog was gentle. It muffled
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: every sound so that the sea seemed to whisper instead
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: of speak, and the gulls went quiet, and the drip
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: of water from the eaves was the loudest thing in
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the world. On fog nights, Anik lit extra candles and
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: made cocoa. and Marin liked to sit by the fire
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: and imagine the cottage floating in a cloud. But a
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: fog night was also a working night for a lighthouse keeper,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: because in thick fog even the great lamp at the
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: top of the tower could not be seen very far.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Its beam, which on a clear night stretched out across
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: the sea for miles and miles, would only reach a
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: little way into the whiteness before it was swallowed like
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: a lantern held up in a bowl of milk and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: so on fog nights. tobias did not only tend the
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: lamp he also rang the fog bell the fog bell
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: hung in a little iron frame on the gallery of
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse just below the lantern room it was big
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: and old and green with age and when it was
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: rung it made a deep round booming sound like the
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: voice of a very large and very patient giant the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: bell was won by a hammer and the hammer was
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: worked by a second clockwork smaller than the one that
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: turned the lamp with its own weight and its own
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: chain which tobias had to wind every little while through
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: the night One deep note, then a long rest, one
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: deep note, then a long rest. That was the voice
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: of Gold Point in the fog, it said. Here are
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: the rocks. Steer away. Steer home. In this particular night,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: the fog came in very suddenly, one moment the evening
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: was clear and cold and still, with a thin moon
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: rising over the headland and Marin was sitting on her
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: ledge listening to Liss sing from out beyond the stones.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: Because the tide was high and the next moment, it seemed,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: a long white wall was moving across the sea toward them,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: silent and soft and very fast, swallowing the moon, swallowing
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: the stars, swallowing the horizon. Lys stopped singing. Merrin saw
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: the seal's gray head turn to look at the fog,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: and then the whiteness soon over the hearthstones and over
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: the seal and over the rock shelves and over Merrin,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: and the world was gone. It was cold and wet
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: and very quiet. Marin could not see her own boots,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: she could feel the stone of her ledge under her,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: and the damp of the fog on her face, beating
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: on her eyelashes, and in the wool of her scarf.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Far above her, muffled and faint, she heard the lighthouse
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: door bang and her father's heavy footsteps on the gallery,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: and then after a moment the first deep note of
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: the fog bell booming out into the white, then the
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: long rest, then the second note. She knew she should
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: go in, her mother would be calling soon, but Just
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: as she was getting to her feet, feeling for the
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: edge of the shelf above, she heard something else. Very faint.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Very far off. Out in the fog somewhere beyond the
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: heart stones. The creak of oars. A splash. And a
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: man's voice. Calling thing and uncertain and a little frightened. Hello?
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Hello there? If anyone there? Maren froze. Someone was out there.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Someone in a small boat in the fog near the rocks.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: She heard the fog bell boom again, deep and round
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: from the tower above her, and she heard the man's
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: voice again. Closer now but confused. I hear the bell,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: he called. I hear it. But I cannot tell where
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: it is coming from. The fog is turning it about.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: And Marin understood. In thick fog, sound behaves strangely. It
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: bounces and bends and seems to come from everywhere at once,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: like an echo in a cave. The deep note of
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: the bell, booming out from the top of the tower,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: was rolling around in the whiteness and the man in
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the boat could hear it. but he could not tell
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: which way to row. She cupped her hands around her mouth. Hello,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: she called, as loudly as she could. Hello, you are
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: near the heart stones, gull point, the rocks are close.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: But her voice seemed to vanish into the fog almost
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: as soon as it left her lips, swallowed up, muffled
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: like shouting into a pillow. She heard the man call again,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: but he did not seem to have heard her at all.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: The creak of oars came again, uncertain, turning this way
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: and that, and then, out of the fog, close beside her,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: there came a voice. It was Lys. Not the seal's voice,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: but the girl's, low and soft and urgent, from somewhere
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: just below Marin's ledge at the edge of the water. Marin, Marin,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: are you there? I am here, Marin whispered Lys. There
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: is a boat. Someone is lost. I know, said Lys.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: I heard him. It is the young fisherman from the harbor,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the one with the red cap, the one who sometimes
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: throws Grandmother Brynn a herring. Jory, they call him. He
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: was out late at his lobster pots and the fog
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: caught him. A wet hand found Marin's in the whiteness
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: and held it tight. Lissa's fingers were cold as the sea.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: Listen to me, the bell is too deep. The fog
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: swallows deep sounds and turns them about, but it does
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: not swallow high sounds so easily. Clear sounds, sounds that
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: are thin and bright, like a thread, like singing, Marin
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: understood at once. Your song, she breathed. Our song, said Lissa.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: Both of us. If we sing together, from here, from
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: the shore, from the safe place between the rocks, he
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: can follow it, he can row toward our voices and
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: we will guide him in, past the stones, into the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: little cove below the cottage where the water is calm
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: and the sand is soft, but we must sing very
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: clearly and very steadily and we must not stop, not
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: for a moment, can you do that? Maren felt her
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: heart beating very fast. but she also felt Liss's hand
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: in hers, cold and strong, and she remembered every evening
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: on her ledge, every tune, every turn, every long last
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: note held out over the water. Yes, she said, yes,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: I can do that. So they sang. Liss began, as
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: she always did, with one note. It was high and
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: clear and bright, the brightest note Marin had ever heard
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: her sing, and it went out into the fog like
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: a silver needle pulling a thread behind it. Then Marin
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: joined her, a little lower, holding the same tune, steady
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: and true. She did not wobble. Not even a little,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: their two voices wove together. The girl from the sea
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: and the girl from the land and the tune they
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: sang was the very first one. The slow tune, from
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: the evening at the end of summer, the one Marin
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: had hummed back across the still water with her small,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: nervous voice it rose and fell. It curled and turned,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: and it went out into the fog and the fog
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: did not swallow it, for a long moment there was nothing,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: only the white, and the cold, and the boom of
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the bell above them, and their two voices going out
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: and out into the silent and then merry-fately Marin heard
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: the creak of oars again but different now, steady, coming
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: toward them and the man's voice calling out, with something
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: new in it, I hear you. I hear singing, keep
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: on whoever you are keep on they kept on. They
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: sang the tune through to the end and then Lis
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: began it again without a pause and Marin followed her
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: and the oars came closer. Lissa's voice changed. A little,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: she began to sing a little to the left, then
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: a little to the right, bending the tune, and Marin
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: understood that she was steering, guiding the boat around the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: hidden rocks the way you might guide a blindfolded friend
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: across a room with your voice. Marin followed every turn.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Closer the oars came, and closer. Then Marin heard a
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: soft crunch, the sound of a boat's keel sliding up
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: onto sand and a splash, and a man's boots stepping
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: into shallow water. They stopped singing. The fog was still thick.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Maren could not see the cove below the cottage, though
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: it was only a little way along the shore, but
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: she could hear the man down there, breathing hard, laughing
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a little the way people laugh when they have been
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: frightened and are not frightened anymore. Thank you, he called
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: out into the whiteness. Thank you, whoever you are. I
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: would have been on the rocks for certain, I could
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: not tell where the bell was. I could not tell anything,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: and then I heard singing clear as day, he paused.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: It was the strangest, loveliest singing I ever heard in
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: my life. Then there were other sounds, the lighthouse door,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: and heavy footsteps hurrying down the outside stair and a
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: lantern swinging, its light making a soft gold blur in
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the fog. Tobias's voice, calling, who was there? Is someone
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: in the cove? But the young fisherman calling back, It
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: is me, Mr. Hollis. Jory Pendley. The fog caught me
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: out by the pots. I am safe. I am safe.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks to the singing. And her father's voice startled. Singing?
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Liss squeezed Maren's hand once very hard. I must go,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: she whispered. He must not see me. Not like this.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: And Maren felt the cold fingers slip out of hers
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and heard a soft splash below the ledge. And then nothing.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: Only the fog and the drip of water and the
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: voices of the two men down in the cove. Maren
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: sat down on her ledge. She was shaking a little.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: All over. But not from cold, and not from fear.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: She was shaking from something much larger and much brighter
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: than either of those things. Something she did not have
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: a name for. She pulled her knees up to her
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: chin and wrapped her arms around them, and after a
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: while out in the fog from somewhere beyond the hearthstones,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: she heard one soft, low, round note, like a bell
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: heard from very far away, like a hand laid gently
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: on her head. Then it was quiet. Her father found
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: her there a little while later. He came down the
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: rock-shilts carefully with his lantern held high, calling her name,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: and when the gold blur of the light found her
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: sitting on her ledge, he set the lantern down and
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: sat beside her, his big body folding down onto the
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: cold stone with a creak. He did not say anything
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: for a while. He only put his arm around her
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: shoulders and pulled her against his side into the warmth
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: of his heavy coat. which smelled of lamp oil and
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: brass polish, and pipe smoke. Above them the fog bell boomed,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: below them the sea whispered. Yuri says there were two voices,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: her father said at last quietly. Two girls, singing. From
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: the shore, one of them he thought he knew, he paused.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: He thought it sounded a great deal like you. Marin
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: did not say anything, she leaned her head against his shoulder.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: And the other, said her father, even more quietly. He
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: said he had never heard anything like it in his life.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: like the sea itself had learned to sing. He was
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: silent for a long moment. Then he bent his head.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: And kissed. The top of hers. Through the damp wool
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: of her hat. I will not ask, he said. Your
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: mother told me. A little. A while ago. Enough. And
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: I will not ask any more than that. But I
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: want you to know that I am proud of you,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Maren Hollis. Prouder than I can say. You brought a
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: man home tonight. That is the whole work of a lighthouse.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: And you did it with your voice. They sat together
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: in the fog until the bell clockwork needed winding again,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: and then he took her hand, and they climbed the
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: shelves together, slowly, in the soft gold circle of the lantern,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: and went into the warm kitchen, where Annick was waiting
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: with three cups of cocoa and a blanket warmed in
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: front of the fire. In the kitchen, nobody said very
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: much at all. Annick did not ask a single question.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: She only peeled off Marin's damp scarf and her damp
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: mittens and her damp hat, and hung them on the
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: rail above the stove, where they began at once to
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: steam gently and smell of wet wool. She wrapped the
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: warm blanket around Marin's shoulders and settled her in the
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: big chair by the fire, the one with the sagging
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: cushion and the patched arms that was usually her father's,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: and she put a cup of cocoa into her hands
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: and folded Marin's cold fingers around it one by one
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: and held them there for a moment with her own.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Tobias stood just inside the door dripping, with his lantern
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: still in his hand, as though he had forgotten he
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: was holding it. Then he set it down on the table,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and hung up his coat, and took his own cup,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: and stood by the window drinking it, looking out at
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: the white blank as where the sea should be. Every
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: little while high above the fog bell boomed, and every
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: little while he glanced up toward the ceiling, listening, counting
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: under his breath, the way he always did. When the
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: cocoa was half gone he said, I must go up
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: and wind her again. and he touched Marin's hair on
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: the way past very lightly and went out into the fog.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: Marin heard his footsteps going up the outside stair, slow
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: and heavy, and then the clank of the gallery door.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Her mother sat down across from her with her mending basket,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: but she did not mend. She only sat, with the
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: basket in her lap and her hands resting on top
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: of it, and watched the fire. And every now and
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: then she looked across at Marin and her eyes were
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: soft and bright. The cocoa was sweet and thick and
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: very hot and it warmed Marin all the way down
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: to her toes. The fire crackled. The wool steamed above
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: the stove. The kitchen clock ticked on the wall, a small, light,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: quick tick, so different from the slow, deep tick of
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: the clockwork in the tower. Marin found her eyes beginning
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: to close. She thought of the oars coming closer through
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: the fog and the soft crunch of the keel on
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: the sand and Lissa's cold hand holding her so tight.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: She thought of the bright, high note going out into
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: the whiteness like a silver needle, She thought, we did it.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: We did it together. And the thought was so large
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: and so warm that it seemed to fill the whole chair.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: Sometime later, half asleep, she felt the chair creak as
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: her father came back in and sat down on its broad,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: patched arm beside her and felt his arms settle around
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: her shoulders, heavy and warm, smelling of lamp oil and
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: brass polish and wet wool. She did not open her eyes.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: She leaned into him, and her mother reached over and
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: took the cup gently from her loosening fingers before it
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: could tip And the last thing she heard, before she drifted,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: was the fog bell booming out across the water, deep
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: and round and patient. And beneath it, so faint she
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: might have dreamed it, one low, warm note from beyond
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: the stones. Breathe with me now, in. Slowly, like fog
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: drifting over still water. Out, softly, like a boat sliding
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: up onto smooth sand. Everyone is safe. The young fisherman
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: is walking home along the shore path with a borrowed lantern,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: toward a warm house and a worried mother who will
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: scold him and hug him and make him tea. The
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: girl is wrapped in a blanket by the fire, with
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: Coco in her hands and her father's arm around her.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: The selkie is floating beyond the stones, in the white
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: quiet beside an old gray seal who is humming to her,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: very low, the song for being glad, and the bell
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: booms gently in the tower, and the fog lies soft
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: over everything, like a quilt laid over a sleeping world.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: The fog lifted the next morning, as fogs do, rolling
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: back out to sea in long white curls and leaving
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: everything washed and glittering in a low gold sun. The
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: cabbages sparkled. The hens came out of their coop and
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: shook themselves and complained. The sea lay calm and blue
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: and innocent, as if it had never heard a fog
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: in its whole life. And down on the flat, dark
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: rock at the water's edge, when Maren ran down in
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: her nightgown and her father's jumper before breakfast, there was
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: a gift waiting. It was not from Lys, it was
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: a basket, an old wicker basket with a lid, and
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: inside it packed in wet seaweed to keep them fresh
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: there were six fat silver herrings and a note, written
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: in pencil on the back of a scrap of sailcloth.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: In large, careful letters it said, For the Singers. With
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: thanks from the Pangelli family, Jory, and underneath in smaller,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: rounder letters a different hand had added, and a little
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: something from his mother, and tucked down at the bottom
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: of the basket. Wrapped in a twist of paper, there
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: were two sticky gingerbread biscuits in the shape of fish.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Mering carried the basket up to the cottage, and her
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: mother read the note and laughed and pressed her hand
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: to her heart. And her father read it and nodded
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: slowly and said, good lad. And that evening, when the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: tide was low, Marin carried the basket across the bare
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: wet stones to the hearth stones, with Liss walking beside her,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: and they gave the herrings to Grandmother Brynn, one at
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: a time, and the old seal ate every one of
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: them with tremendous enjoyment and a great deal of grumbling,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: and then lay back on her rock and sighed. A long, deep,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: contented sigh, like a kettle being taken off the boil,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: and the two girls sat side by side and ate
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: the gingerbread fish, nibbling the tails first, and laughed until
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: their sides ached, the days that followed were golden. It
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: was one of those runs of weather that sometimes comes
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: in the late autumn, a last gift before the winter,
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: when the wind drops and the sky clears and the
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: sun is low and warm and the sea goes still
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: and silky for days on end. Marin and Liss had
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: more low tide evenings in that fortnight than they had
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: had in all the weeks before. They explored every pool.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: They sang every song they knew and Liss taught Marin
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: a dozen more. The song for calm water. And the
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: song for a good catch. And the song for the
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: first star. which was very short and very sweet, only
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: a handful of notes. Like someone saying hello. Marin taught
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Liss a few of the songs her mother sang while
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: she worked, and a skipping rhyme from the schoolyard, which
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: made Liss laugh so hard she nearly fell into a
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: rock pool. But Marin noticed something. In those golden days,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: she noticed that Grandmother Bryn was moving more. In the
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: early autumn, the old seal had lain on her rock
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: almost all the time, with her hurt flipper tucked against
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: her side, only sliding into the water to fish, when
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: she was very hungry. But now, she swam out beyond
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: the stones every afternoon, slowly, steadily, in long circles, and
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: came back looking pleased with herself. Her flipper was no
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: longer tucked away. She used it now, stroking through the
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: water with it, and the pale scar along it had
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: faded to a thin silver line, like a crack in
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: old porcelain that has been mended with gold. And Maren
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: knew what that meant. She did not want to know,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: but she knew, Lys told her, on an evening at
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: the very end of that golden fortnight. The sun was
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: going down behind the headland in a blaze of copper
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: and rose. The tide was low, and the pools were
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: full of fire. The two girls were sitting on the
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: lowest rock shelf with their feet dangling, sharing the last
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: of a honey loaf. And Lys was quiet, quieter than usual,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: turning a piece of bread over and over in her
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: fingers without eating it. Grandmother Brynn is strong again, she
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: said at last. Her flipper is mended. She swam all
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: the way out to the point and back, this afternoon
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: without resting once. She says she has not felt so
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: well since she was a young seal of only a hundred.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: Meryn did not say anything. She looked down at the water.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: We must go soon, said Lys softly. South. To the
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: warm islands, to my mother and father and my brothers
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: and everyone. The winter is coming and the sea here
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: will turn cold and rough and the fish will go deep,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: and it will be hard for an old one to sit.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: If we wait much longer, the winter storms will come
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: and the long swim will be too dangerous. We must
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: go while the sea is still calm. Groundmother says the
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: morning after next, with the outgoing tide, Maren felt her
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: throat go tight. She had known this was coming. She
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: had known it since the very first evening on the
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: rock shelf when Liss had told her about the long
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: swim south. but knowing a thing is coming and having
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: it arrive are two very different things. Like knowing that
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: winter will come, and then waking one morning to find
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: the first snow on the windowsill. I am Vlad, she said,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: and her voice wobbled, the way it had wobbled on
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: that very first evening, when she hummed back across the
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: still water, I am bad grandmother Bryn as well, and
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: I am glad you will see your mother again. I
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: am truly glad. I am only... She stopped. She did
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: not have the words, I know, said Lys, and she
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: leaned her head against Meryn's shoulder. Her damp dark hair
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: against the red wool of Marin's scarf. I know. I
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: feel it too. The way the down to my whiskers
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: they sat like that for a long time watching the
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: copper drain out of the sky. The lighthouse beam began
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: its slow sweep. The first star came out and Liss
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: sang the song for the first star very softly only
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: a handful of notes and Marin sang it back. And
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: then Liss sat up and wiped her eyes. and said
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: in a firmer voice, but I will come back, in
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: the spring, we always come back in the spring, all
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: of us, to these rocks, to have our pups and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: lie in the sun and fish the summer shoals, that
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: is how it always been, and how it always will be,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: when the swallows come back to your eaves I will
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: come back to the hearth stones, I promise, truly, truly,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: and until then I will sing to you, every dusk,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: from the warm islands the way I sang to my
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: mother from here, The wind will carry it if it
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: carried my voice all the way south. It can carry
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: it all the way north again. And you will go
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: to your ledge at dusk and listen, and you will
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: hear me. I know you will. Because you are the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: one who listens. You are the one who always listens.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: All the way to the end. Mera nodded. She could
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: not speak. So she did the only thing she could
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: think of. She reached into the pocket of her jumper
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: and took out the thing she had been carrying there
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: for days. ever since she had first noticed Grandmother Brynn
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: swimming out beyond the stones, because some part of her
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: had known this evening was coming. It was a small
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: brass bell, no bigger than a thimble, on a loop
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: of strong waxed thread. Her father had given it to
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: her years ago. It had come from the old clockwork
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: in the lighthouse, a little warning bell that had once
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: rung whenever the weight needed winding, before he replaced it
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: with a newer one. It was polished and gleaming, and
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: when you shook it, it made a tiny bright silvery sound.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: like a star might make if a star could ring.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: It is from the lighthouse, Merrin said. From the clockwork,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: from the very heart of it, so that you can
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: take a little bit of the light with you to
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: the warm islands, so that you do not forget the
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: way home. Lis took the little bell in her two
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: cupped hands, the way she had once held the hen's egg,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: so carefully that she hardly dared breathe. She shook it,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: very gently, and it rang. tiny and bright, and her
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: face did something complicated, crumpling and shining at the same time.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: Then she tied the thread around her wrist, beside the
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: blue silk ribbon, and shook her wrist. And the bell
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: rang again, and she laughed through her tears. I will
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: never take it off, she said, never, even in the
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: deep water. Every time I swim, it will ring, and
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: I will think of you, and the light, and home.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: Then she said, I have something for you too, but
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: it is not a thing you can hold. It is
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: a song she sat up very straight on the rock
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: shelf and closed her eyes and took a deep breath,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: the way Anik did before she sang. And then she
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: sang a tune Marin had never heard before. It was
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: slow and low and very gentle and it moved like
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: the tide coming in and going out, coming in and
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: going out. In the middle it rose up, high and
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: clear and bright like a gull lifting off a wave.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: And then it came down again, softly, like a feather settling.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: And at the end there was a long last note,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: held and held, softer and softer, that did not fade
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: away into silence but seemed instead to turn, at the
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: very end back into the first note again, so that
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: the song began over without ever really stopping. Like a circle,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: like the beam of the lighthouse sweeping out and coming home.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: When she had finished she opened her eyes. That is
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: the song for going and the song for coming home,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: she said. They are the same song. That is the
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: secret of it. Grandmother Brynn taught it to me, and
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: her grandmother taught it to her, and back and back,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: all the way to the first seal that ever swam
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: away from a place it loved. It is the song
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: we sing when we leave, and it is the song
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: we sing when we return, because every leaving is the
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: beginning of a coming home. That is what grandmother says.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: She took Maren's hands. Now you sing it. So Maren
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: sang it. She sang it badly the first time and
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: better the second, and on the third time she sang
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: it all the way through without a single wobble, the
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: tide coming in and going out, the gull lifting, the
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: feathers settling, the long last note turning back into the first,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: and Lis sang it with her, their two voices weaving
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: together the way they had in the fog, the girl
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: from the sea and the girl from the land. And
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: far out on the hearthstones, Grandmother Bryn lifted her great
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: gray head and joined in, low and deep and rumbling,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: like the voice of the sea itself, The day in
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: between was a strange, quiet, in-between sort of day, and
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: Miran did not quite know what to do with it.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: She woke early and lay in bed looking at her windowsill,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: at the pink shell and the starfish and the gull
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: feather and the driftwood fox, and touched each of them
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: in turn with the tip of one finger, as if
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: she were counting them to make sure they were all
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: still there. At breakfast, she could not finish her porridge,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: and her mother did not make her. In the morning,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: she helped with the baking, and her mother said without
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: being asked that they would make the honey loaf together,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: the special one, for the journey. So they did. Miran
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: measured the flour and the oats. Her mother warmed the
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: honey in a little pan on the stove until it
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: ran thin and golden. They kneaded the dough between them,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: taking turns, pushing it away and folding it back while
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: the rain that had threatened all morning held off and
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: the sun came and went. behind fast white clouds. When
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: the dough was resting in its bowl under a damp
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: cloth by the fire, Annick sat down at the table
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: and pulled Maren onto her lap, though Maren was really
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: much too big for laps now, and held her. It
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: is all right to be sad, her mother said quietly
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: into her hair. Being sad when a friend goes away
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: only means the friendship was a good one if it
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: did not matter. It would not hurt. You may be
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: glad and sad at the same time, my love. Most
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: of the best things are both. Maren thought about that
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: for a long while, with her cheek against her mother's shoulder,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: watching the cloth over the bowl rise very slowly as
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: the dough breathed underneath it. In the afternoon she went
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: up the spiral stair and sat with her father in
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: the lantern room, while he worked. He did not say much,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: he gave her the brass to polish, the small fittings
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: around the base of the lens that she was usually
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: not allowed to touch, and she rubbed them slowly with
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: the soft cloth until she could see her own face
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: in them, small and serious and a little blotchy around
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: the eyes. Out through the great windows the sea lay
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: calm and wide and shining, all the way to the
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: edge of the world and far down below on the
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: hearthstones she could see two grey shapes lying side by
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: side in the thin autumn sunshine, very still, rest on
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: up their strength. It is a long way south, her
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: father said at last, following her gaze, but the sea
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: is kind this week, I have watched her, she is
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: as gentle as I have seen her all year, they
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: have chosen their weather well. and somehow, coming from her
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: father who knew the sea better than anyone, that made
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: Maren feel a great deal better. That evening the tide
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: was high, and Lys did not come ashore, but she
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: sang from beyond the stones, and Maren sang back, and
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: they went through the song for going, and the song
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: for coming home, three times over, until the stars were
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: thick overhead, and Anik came down with a lantern to
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: fetch her in. The morning after next, Maren woke before dawn.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: She did not need anyone to wake her. She pulled
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: on her clothes and her boots and her red scarf
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: and crept down the stairs and found her mother and
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: father already in the kitchen, dressed, waiting, with a lamp
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: lit on the table and a honey loaf racked in
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: a cloth. None of them said anything. They only went
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: out together, the three of them, into the cold gray
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: light and down the rock shelves, Tobias holding his lantern,
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: Annek holding Maren's hand. The tide was going out. the
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: sea was calm and gray, and still, like the inside
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: of an oyster shell. And out on the hearthstones. In
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: the first faint light, there were two seals, one very
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: large and silvery gray dappled like leaf shadows, one small
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: and slender and speckled, with a flash of blue silk
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: and a glint of brass around one front flipper. They
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: were lying side by side on the flat rock, Looking
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: toward the shore, Maren walked down to the very edge
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: of the lowest shelf, to the flat dark rock at
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: the waterline, and laid the honey loaf on it, for
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: the journey. Then she stood up, and filled her lungs
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: with the cold salt air, and began to sing. The
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: song for going and the song for coming home. And
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: out on the hearthstones, the small seal lifted her head,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: and sang it with her. Then Grandmother Brynn slid into
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: the water slow and stately, and the small seal slid
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: in after her, and they swam once, together in a long,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: slow circle around the hearthstones, as Lys had done on
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: the very first evening. The small seal swam over to
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: the flat rock and lifted the honey loaf gently in
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: her mouth, and looked up at Maren one last time,
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: with her dark eyes shining, and Maren heard, very faintly,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: the tiny silver ring of a brass bell, and then
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: the two grey heads turned south and swam out past
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: the stones, out past the point, out into the pale
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: wide morning sea, smaller and smaller, until there were only
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: two dots, and then one, and then none. Marin stood
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: at the edge of the rock with the tears running
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: down her face, singing, until there was nothing left to
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: sing to. And when she stopped, her mother's arms were
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: around her from one side and her father's from the other,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: and the three of them stood together on the rock
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: shelf at the foot of the lighthouse as the sun
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: came up over the eastern hills and turned the whole
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: sea to gold. Breeze softly now, in like the tide
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: going out, slow and sure. like the long last note
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: of a song that turns back into its beginning nothing
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: is lost here nothing is broken a friend is swimming
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: south toward her mother with a little bell ringing on
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: her wrist a girl is standing in the sunrise wrapped
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: in the arms of the people who love her and
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: the light high in its tower is resting now behind
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: its linen curtain waiting for the evening so that it
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: can begin again Winter came to Gull Point the way
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: it always did, slowly at first and then all at once.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: The golden days ended. The wind swung round to the
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: north and grew teeth. The sea, which had been so
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: soft and silky, turned grey and heavy and restless, and
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: threw itself against the rocks and long white plumes of
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: spray that rattled against the cottage windows like handfuls of gravel.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: The rain came sideways. The hens refused to leave their coop.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: Tobias spent long nights in the lantern room, polishing and
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: winding and watching and came down in the gray mornings
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: with frost in his beard and his hands so cold
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: that Enoch made him hold a hot cup of tea
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: in each one before he was allowed to speak. And
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: every evening, at dusk, Maren went down to her ledge.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Not every evening, perhaps. On the very worst nights, when
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: the waves came crashing up over the lowest shelves and
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: the wind was strong enough to lean on, Her mother
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: would not let her go further than the cottage door.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: On those nights, Marin stood in the doorway, wrapped in
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: her oilskin and her red scarf with the warm light
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: of the kitchen at her back and the wild dark
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: sea in front of her. And she listened. And then
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: on the quieter nights, which were more than you might think,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: she went all the way down and sat on her
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: folded sack on her worn stone seat with her chin
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: on her knees and waited for the dusk. The singing
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: did not come every evening. Some evenings there was only
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: the wind and the sea. and the cry of a
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: gull blown off course. But on many evenings more than
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: Marin had dared to hope, when the wind came from
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: the south, soft and damp and smelling faintly of somewhere
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: far warmer it carried something with it. A thread of sound.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: So faint that she had to hold her breath to
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: hear it, so faint that she could never be entirely
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: sure it was not her own heart humming in her ears.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: a slow tune, low and gentle, coming in and going
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: out like the tide, rising once in the middle like
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: a gull lifting off a wave, and ending with a
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: long last note that turned softly back into the beginning.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: The song for going, and the song for coming home
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: and Marin, on her ledge, would sing it back. Into
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: the wind, toward the south, clear and steady, without a
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: single wobble, and she would imagine her voice going out
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: over the gray winter sea, past the point, over the
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: deep water, all the way down the long coast to
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: the warm islands, where a girl with dark hair and
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: a gap in her teeth was sitting on a sunny
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: rock beside her mother, with a little brass bell on
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: her wrist, listening. Winter in the cottage was cozy, the
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: way winter in a small, warm house by the sea
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: can only be. The fire was never let go out.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: The candle was always murmuring. Anik baked even more than usual.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: because baking warmed the kitchen, and the smell of bread
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and cinnamon and saffron filled every corner of the house.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: In the long dark afternoons, Marin sat at the kitchen
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: table with her mother, and they knitted together, Annick teaching
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: her how to turn the heel of a sock, which
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: was the most difficult and most magical thing Marin had
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: ever learned to do with her hands. Her father, when
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: he woke in the afternoons, read aloud to them from
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: an old book of sea voyages, his low, slow voice
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: rolling through the strange names of faraway places while the
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: rain drummed on the roof. And midwinter, Grandmother Wenna came
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: to stay again, carried along the cliff path in the
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: Pignelli family's pony cart, wrapped in three shawls and a blanket,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: with her blackthorn stick across her knees and a fruitcake
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: the size of a cartwheel and a tin on her lap.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: Jory Pengelly drove the cart himself in his red cap,
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: and he stayed for supper, and he told the story
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: of the fog night at the long table, with his
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: hands waving, and his eyes very wide, and the strangest,
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: loveliest singing he had ever heard. And Grandmother Wenna listened
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: with her bright sharp eyes fixed on Maren the whole time,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: and said nothing at all. But later, when Jory had
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: gone and the others were washing up, she beckoned Maren
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: over to her chair by the fire, and took both
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: her hands and her knotted old ones, and looked at
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: her for a long moment. You left her skin where
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: it lay, she said softly. It was not a question.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: I never touched it, said Maren. Not once, not ever.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: And she went, said Grandmother Wenna, when it was time.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: Free as the tide. She went, said Maren, and she
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: promised to come back. Grandmother Wenna smiled, slowly, so that
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: every wrinkle in her face seemed to join in. Then
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: she will, she said. The ones who are free to
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: go my love are the only ones who ever truly
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: come back, and she pulled Maren close and kissed her
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: forehead and held her there for a long time, rocking gently,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: while the fire crackled and the wind sang in the chimney.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: Through the rest of that long dark winter, Maren kept
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: a book. It was an old copy book from the
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: schoolhouse with a marbled cover and only a few pages
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: written on at the front, which Miss Treloar had let
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: her take home. On the clean pages, in her best handwriting,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Maren wrote down Everything she could remember. She wrote down
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: the tunes not in proper notes because she did not
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: know how, but in long, looping lines that rose and
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: fell across the page, the way Lys had drawn her
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: sea name in the wet sand. She wrote down the
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: names of the seaweeds, Annick's names, and Lys's names side
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: by side, sea hare and oreweed, laughing weed and bladderwrack.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: She wrote down the song for the first star, and
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: the song for calm water, and the song for a
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: good catch. She drew the hearthstones as best she could,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: a ring of lumpy circles with wavy lines around them
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: and a small seal on the biggest one with a
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: bow drawn on its flipper. She drew Grandmother Bryn, very large,
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: with enormous curling whiskers that took up half the page,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: And on the evenings when the singing came faintly on
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: the south wind, she came in afterward with her cheeks
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: stinging and her fingers stiff, and sat at the kitchen
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: table under the lamp, and wrote the date in words
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: at the top of a fresh page. And underneath it,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: very simply, heard her tonight. Sometimes she wrote more, sometimes
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: she wrote little letters which she knew she could never send,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: because there is no post office at the bottom of
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: the sea. Dear Les, the hens have stopped laying and
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: father says it is the cold. Dear Liss, Jory Pengelly
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: gave us a whole crab and mother made it into soup.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: Dear Liss, I learned to turn the heel of a
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: sock and it is the most magical thing. Dear Liss,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: I hope the warm islands are warm. I hope your
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: mother was glad to see you. I hope grandmother Bryn
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: is lying on a sunny rock and grumbling about something.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: I am listening every night. Her mother saw the book
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: sometimes lying open on the table and never read it
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: unless Maren held it out to her. Her father one
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: evening came down from the lamp and found her asleep
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: with her head on it, and lifted her very carefully,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: and closed the book, and set it on the dresser
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: beside the blue jug before he carried her up to bed.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: Grandmother Wenna before she went home from her midwinter stay
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: asked if she might see it, and she turned the
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: pages slowly, one by one, holding them close to her
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: bright old eyes, and when she came to the end
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: she sat for a long time without saying anything. Then
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: she said, This is how stories are kept my love,
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: this is exactly how, someone remembers, and someone writes it
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: down and someone tells it again by a fire one
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: night to a child who is listening. And she handed
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: the book back to Marin as carefully as if it
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: were made of glass, the winter turned, the way all
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: winters do. One morning the wind was a little softer,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: another morning the light came a little earlier through Marin's window,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: and fell across the pink shell on the sill, and
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: made it glow. the first snowdrops pushed up to cold
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: earth by the garden wall, small and white and brave.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Then the primrose, pale yellow, in the shelter of the hedges,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: then the gorse on the headland burst into flower all
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: at once, a great blaze of gold that smelled on
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: warm afternoons exactly like coconut, the hens began to lay again.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: The sea grew calmer and bluer, and on the still
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: days it lay quiet against the rocks, breathing slowly, as
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: though it too were waking from a long sleep. And
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: one morning, at breakfast, Maren heard a sound outside the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: kitchen window, a high, quick, twittering chatter. She dropped her
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: spoon in her porridge and ran to the door in
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: her nightgown and her bare feet. And there on the
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: washing line, in a long, chattering row, were the swallows.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: They had come back to the eaves, they were swooping
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: and darting round the corner of the cottage, in and
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: out of the old mud nests under the roof. calling
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: to one another in their quick, bright voices, as if
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: they had never been away at all. Maren stood in
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: the doorway with the cold morning air on her bare
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: feet and her heart going like a drum. When the
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: swallows come back to your eaves, Lisset said, I will
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: come back to the hearthstones. She could not eat the
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: rest of her porridge. She could not concentrate on her lessons.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: She kneaded the bread dough so hard and so long
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: that her mother finally took it away from her, laughing,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: and sent her out to feed the hens, where she
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: scattered the corn so wildly that half of it landed
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: on the roof. The afternoon lasted about a hundred years.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: The sun crawled across the sky as slowly as Grandmother
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: Bryn crawling up a rock. And then, at last, at
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: long last it began to sink toward the headland, and
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: the gold began to turn to rose, and Meryn was
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: out of the door and down the rock shelf before
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: her mother could even say the words supper. She sat
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: on her ledge. She pulled her knees up to her chin.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: She wrapped her arms around them. And she waited. The
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: tide was low. The hearthstones stood up out of the
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: calm water in their ring, black and shining, draped with
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: fresh green weed. The pools on the bare flat stone
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: were full of the evening sky. Edo was soft and
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: mild and smelled of salt and gorse and the very
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: beginning of summer. The rose went to lavender. The lavender
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: went to blue. And just as the first star was
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: wondering whether it was time, Marin heard it. One note,
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: low and clear and wandering. Then another, a little higher,
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: a little closer. Then the tune, rising and falling over
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: the water, coming in, and going out like the tide.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: Rising once in the middle, like a gull lifting off
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: a wave, the song for going and the song for
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: coming home. And with it, so faint and so bright,
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: a tiny silver sound, like a star might make if
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: a star could ring. Marin stood up on her ledge,
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: and she sang. And out of the blue dusk, beyond
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: the hearthstones, the seals came. Not one, and not two,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: but many. A whole family of them, sleek gray heads
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: rising out of the calm water one after another, like
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: smooth stones surfacing on a pond. There was Grandmother Blin,
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: enormous and silvery and dappled, swimming slow and strong with
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: both her front flippers, There were two small seals, round
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: and bouncing, who could only be Lissa's little brothers, tumbling
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: over each other in the water like puppies. There were
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: bigger seals, aunts and uncles and cousins, all of them
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: turning their gentle, dark eyes toward the shore. There was
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: one tall seal, sleek and graceful, swimming a little apart,
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: with a weight of holding her head that Marin had
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: seen before many times on a smaller seal. And there,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: in front of them all, swimming straight toward the flat
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: rocks as fast as she could go, with a flash
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: of blue silk, and a glint of brass on one
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: front flipper, was Liss. She came up onto the far
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: side of the biggest hearth stone and shrugged off her
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: sealskin in one quick motion and folded it so fast
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: and so badly that one corner stuck out. And she
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: did not even care. She came running across the bare
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: wet stones, barefoot splashing straight through the pools without going
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: around them her long dark hair flying out behind her
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: laughing her bubbling snorting laugh, and Marin came scrambling down
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: the rock shelves to meet her, and they met in
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: the middle of the flat stones and threw their arms
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: around each other so hard that they both nearly fell
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: over into a rock pool full of anemones, and they
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: did not care about that either. You came back, Marin
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: said into Lissa's wet hair, you came back. I told you.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: said Liss, laughing and crying at the same time. I promised.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: When the swallows came back, and you heard me all winter,
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: you heard me. I know you did. I heard you
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: sing it back. On the south wind, every time, she
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: pulled back and held Marin at arm's length and looked
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: at her. You have grown, she said accusingly. You are
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: taller than me now. That is not fair at all,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: they laughed until they had to sit down right there
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: on the whetstone. And then Lys turned and waved, and
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: from out beyond the hearthstones, the tall, graceful seals swam
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: slowly closer. She came up onto the flat rock beside
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: Grandmother Brynn, and she, too, slipped off her sealskin and
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: folded it neatly and laid it down. And there was
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: a woman, tall and dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a gentle
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: face and a smile that had a little gap in
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: the middle of it. She walked across the stones toward them, carefully,
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: with her arms held a little out from her sides.
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: And behind Marin, coming slowly down the rock shelves with
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: a lantern in one hand and a honey loaf wrapped
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: in a cloth in the other, was Anik. The two
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: mothers met at the foot of the rock shelves. They
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: looked at each other for a long moment. And then
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: Lissa's mother held out both her hands, and Anik set
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: down her lantern and took them, and neither of them
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: said anything at all. They did not need to, and
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: then Anik laughed. And Lissa's mother laughed, a low, warm,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: bubbling laugh. And they sat down together on the lowest
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: rock shelf side by side. And Anik unwrapped the honey
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: loaf and broke it in two and gave half to
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: Lissa's mother. And Lissa's mother took one bite. And closed
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: her eyes and sat perfectly still for a long time,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: chewing slowly. And then she opened her eyes and they
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: were shining. It tastes like being hells, she said. Above them,
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse door opened and Tobias came out onto the
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: gallery to light the lamp. And stopped and looked down
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: at the rocks low at his wife and a stranger
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: from the sea sharing bread on the rock shelf like
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: two old friends. It is daughter and a dark-haired girl,
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: sitting in the middle of the flat stones with their
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: arms around each other, at the ring of the hearthstones,
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: crowded with seals, great and small, gray and silver and speckled,
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: all of them lifting their heads and turning their dark
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: gentle eyes toward the tower. He stood there a long time.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: Then he went in and lit the lamp, and the
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: great beam swung out over the sea, slow and golden
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: and passed over all of them, everyone, and swung back
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: home toward the land. and that night, under the first
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: stars of the spring, the seals sang. All of them together,
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: on the hearthstones, and two girls and two mothers on
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: the rock shelves, and an old gray seal leading them
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: all in a voice like the sea itself. They sang
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: the song for going, and the song for coming home.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: It rose up over the water, and over the cottage,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: and over the lighthouse, and it drifted along the shore
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: to Lowen Harbor, where the windows were lit. and the
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: suppers were eaten, and the children were being tucked into bed.
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: And in many of those houses, that night, the children
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: lay quite still under their quilts, and listened, and smiled,
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: and did not know why, and fell asleep. And that,
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: my dear, is the tale of Maren of Gull Point
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: and the Selkie who sang at dusk, It is a
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: long tail and a gentle one, and it ends just
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: where it should with everyone home and everyone fed and
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: everyone loved. If you are still awake, let your body
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: sink a little deeper now. Let the pillow hold your head.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: Let the blanket hold the rest of you. Breathe in
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: slowly like the tide coming in over smooth sand. Breathe
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: out softly like the long last note of a song
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: turning back into its beginning. Every leaving is the beginning
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: of a coming home. Every dusk is the beginning of
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: a song. Thank you, truly, for spending this time with me.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you to every supporter whose kindness keeps this second
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: lamp lit, and to every listener who came in and
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: curled up and stayed. It means more than I can
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: tell you. Muggle Snuggle is made slowly and with love
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: by Hustle Studios for ordinary people who like a little
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: wonder in their day. If this tale brought you some rest,
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: please subscribe or follow. Share it with someone who could
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: use a softer evening, and leave a kind rating if
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: you feel like it. And please, keep it playing softly
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: in the background while you rest, or work, or drift away.
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: It is very happy to keep you company. For as
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: long as you like. Rest well, my dear. The tide
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: is calm. The swallows are home, the light is turning,
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: slow and kind in its tower by the sea, and
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: all is well.