The Swelkie

Held aloft by the craggy cliffs of Stroma, I stand defiant, raging at the Pentland gale. Stoic, yet distraught and bitter, pointless fist raised, I curse the gods of the cold grey sea.

By claiming you, they’ve taken everything. I have no more to give. I’ve no stake to play and there are no trades that are yet to be transacted. All I treasured is now yours, and the abundant life you sustain on this planet is no return.

 Norse legend would have it that the Swelkie brings salt to the seven seas, and salt is life, but I would forego all the saline on our island earth for just one more day with you. Calm the storm. Quiet Mysing’s quern stone, Reverse the Orkney tidal race and bring her back to me.

Yesterday, we stood, side by side, high on the lighthouse lantern floor and high on life. Together, we watched the storm as far behind us, the golden sun sunk below Ben Loyal. Salt spray smacked our laughing faces, The gale stole our breath, but it couldn’t reduce the warmth we held. Ran and Egir’s daughters flew out from the Swelkie, smashed against the mighty cliffs, and shot skyward. In mirth, we disdained their futile effort.

With the early Winter evening approaching, you smiled at me, and I ever so reluctantly, released your hand to go activate the light that steers mariners clear of the raging North Atlantic whirlpool. My hand, freed from yours so briefly, ached, as the frigid air assailed my palm. You stood, silhouetted against the darkening Northern skies with arm outstretched, fingers raking the icy gale, anticipating my return. How I longed to intertwine our fingers once more.

I cranked the cold steel switch and one million candles of halogen photons flooded through Fresnel glass. The intermittent beam reached out to the fishermen far and wide. Yet no artificial light would compare to the warm illuminance that radiated from you. You were the beacon that the sea gods feared. Viking souls held fast in Swelkie cried up to you now. Their guttural gralloch fought hard the storm, beseeching to be heard through fifteen fathoms of raging whirlpool. A thousand years in the cold black, the men of the fjords waited for the raven’s return to guide them back to land, to shores new, and to life once more. Their voices adjoined in choral cacophony by the sunken sailor, merchant marine and Bismark’s forlorn fleet. For one precious second, five thousand years of fisherfolk lost, and curtailed explorers in coracles ang gallowglasses, railed harder than the very sea. Spurred on by your glow, their frenzied wraiths fought hard the zephyr and escaped the claws of the Kraken. The ferrous, rust encrusted funnels of the Kreighsmarine, dragon’s heads prows, pudding fenders and lost trawlers of the Orcadian Herring fleet, rose and broiled like spectres in a tragic skink.

Unknown to Ran, his wife Egir had another lover. She knew the revelation could never be consoled in her sea god husband, but Egir’s tryst with Njord was built on many millennia of mutual necessity. What may destroy her Asgaard forged marriage was now the only force that would save their suzerain grip over their beloved sea. Turning her back on her man for the first time in ten thousand circumnavigations of the sun, she called her Paramore’s name.

Betrayed, Ran raged harder than ever, as Egir’s infidelity became pale in the realisation that each of his nine daughters’ also fell to their knees before the god of the wind. Njord raised his arms high and Ran watched as first his wife, followed by the daughters of the sea, writhed in arousal, higher and higher in their illicit lover’s control. His wind stripped them of their kelp covering. Now naked of all but Njord’s power, the ten female sea gods reached climax in unison and in their tower of pleasure, spiralled high into the starless and bible black night.

Electricity courses back through me when our longing fingertips unite. In flooding me with electrons, my fusion core reignites as you turn and smile. For one long second, your mastery of my heart is extended across the universe. The sun’s gravitational well foiled, Jupiter and Saturn orbit you alone. Andromeda’s billion-year dash is now to your arms, and your nuetrino’s flow through each and every object created in the big bang. In this brief ephemeral epoch, all creation know’s that it has been loved.

 In a worldwide arc, wind driven grasses, stubborn trees, and the racing clouds above, turn and gravitate toward you. Even the Swelkie seems ready to give up it’s long held treasure.

Neither the wind nor the sea hate. Not in any sense a human would understand anyway. Yet still they stand strong in opposition to the surface world. With each airborne grain of sand and pebble smacked wave of erosion, they slowly reclaim what was once theirs. Loathed they be to return what is now held firm.

Ran watches the only things that he has ever loved as they lose their hearts to the wind. He curses love then and turns his animous landward. He sets his gaze atop the cliff where love’s beacon shines brightly. Clenching fists and gritting the teeth that wrecked a thousand craft, he climbs the menage of writhing bodies and through furious tears, he extends his hand. If Ran’s love be tainted, our purity can’t stand as an anathema, high on the rocks above his head, Captured on the tiny isle of Stroma. Rocks that pierce the sea like a stake through his heart. A geological reminder of his loss. For the merest moment, Ran feels empathy for all of those on land that have lost their loves to the sea.

Watching your gloss coated lips part, I lean in to meet your open mouth. It’s a kiss that will change time. Nothing in this crazy quantum realm will ever be the same. You will be mine, I’m already yours, and the universe is destined to be ours. I breathe the air you breathe. The tempest that circles us, rages impotently in your light, but in the fractional moment your radiance enters me, the universe is dimmed by the miniscule illuminance level that it bears, while an exo-planet transits a distant star. A change, imperceptible to the human eye, is all an angry god needs. Ran’s pruned fingers snatch and tip you over the balustrade where you fall into Njord’s open hand. Was it a malign act that led him to raise you back up, so you hung inches from my face, where your grey eyes met mine and we transfer a hundred years of loss in just one tear.

“I love you,” you whisper as Egir’s screaming daughters, still in taboo extasy, gleefully drag you down to Swelkie.

I lower my fist and fall to my knees. The knowledge that I’m not the first to rail against the wind, to curse the cruel sea, is no comfort. Would I know that I was to be the last to lose their love to Swelkie, there mey just be some small blessing, but seldom has a hope been so futile. In a day, a week, a month or even one long century, the tears of a steerage class wife or a pelagic daughter will once again soak the course Orkney grass. Four thousand years and four thousand sets of tears have fed the truculent turf, and now only it stands fast against the wind.

Yet I knew our love, though all to briefly, and it’s clear a love like ours could never die. Not really. When the frothing nostrils of your mount broke the surface, it came as no surprise. The Northern sea could never hold you. Ran sought to take you in place of that which he lost, but the Norse God’s time has come and gone. You rise skyward, my Valkyrie, my world, my everything.

 Yesteryear’s Norse deity, Ran, stands desolate beside me on the cliff top. He watched as his love succumbed to Njord’s all-encompassing artic breath. His pain brings me no joy. For though I know the Orcadian tidal race could never hold you fast, I watch as you pull on the bejewelled reins, and your eyes, all too briefly set my way, look skyward now. The mare’s head turns, and my love leaves on the cold wind to Valhalla.