The Swelkie

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

In claiming you, they’ve taken everything. I have nothing more to give. No stake to play. There are no trades yet to be transacted. All I valued is now theirs, and the abundant life the ocean sustains on this planet falls short of equitable return.

 Old tales tell that the Swelkie brings salt to the seven seas, and salt is life, but I would forego all the saline on this middle earth for 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, high on life. Together, we watched the squall, as far behind us, the golden sun dipped below Ben Loyal. Salt spray smacked our laughing faces, as the grasping gale took each breath. While the wild wind whipped words away, love’s unspoken warmth remained.

On seeing their storm frustrated by love’s shield wall, Ran and Egir’s daughters flew out from the Swelkie, smashed against the mighty cliffs below and spat their spume skyward. In mirth, we disdained their futile effort.

On the cusp of an early winter gloam, you smiled at me, and I ever so reluctantly uncoupled our fingers to go activate the light, a much-sought beam that steers unplotted mariners clear from the grasp of Swelkie’s whirlpool. My hand, freed from yours so briefly, ached as frigid air assailed my palm. You stood, perfectly silhouetted against the darkening Northern skies with arm outstretched, fingers raking the icy gale, anticipating my return. How I longed to intertwine 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.

Held fast by Swelkie, lost Viking souls cried up to you. Their guttural plea fought hard the storm, beseeching to be heard through fifty fathoms. After a millennium in the cold black, the men of the fjords await the raven’s return to guide their longships back to land and life once more.

 Their forlorn voices are soon adjoined in choral cacophony by the sunken sailor, marooned merchantmen and eight hundred ratings of the Royal Oak.

For one precious second, four thousand years of lost fisherfolk and curtailed explorers in coracles railed harder than the very sea. Spurred on by your radiance, their frenzied wraiths fought hard the gale. They escaped the claws of the Kraken and fled the house of the sea god. The ferrous, rust-encrusted funnels of the Kriegsmarine, dragon’s heads prows, pudding fenders and lost trawlers of the Orcadian Herring fleet, rose and broiled. Spectres in a tragic skink.

Egir, stirred from slumber by your tempest, woke to a mighty deception. For, unknown to him, his wife kept another lover. She knew the revelation could never be consoled in her husband, but her tryst with Njord was built on aeons of necessity. That which may rent her Asgaard-forged marital bond was now perhaps the only force that would save their suzerain grip over the beloved sea.

 Showing her back to her man for the first time in ten thousand turns of Yggdrasil, Ran called out her Paramour’s name across all nine worlds.

Betrayed, Egir raged harder than ever, as Ran’s infidelity became pale in the realisation that each of his nine daughters’ also rose, crested and crashed to the feet of the wind god.

 Njord raised his arms high, and Egir 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 will stripped them of their kelp garb.

 Now bereft of all but the wind god’s power, the ten female sea gods reach climax in unison. In a tidal tower of pleasure, they spiralled high into the starless, raven-black night.

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

 In a worldwide arc, wind-driven grasses, stubborn trees, and the racing clouds above, all turn and gravitate toward you. Even the Swelkie seems resigned to giving up its long-held treasure.

Neither the wind nor the sea hate: not in any sense a human would understand. Yet they stand strong in opposition to the surface world. With each airborne grain of sand and pebble-smacked wave of erosion, they incrementally reclaim what was once theirs.

 So, loath they be to return that which is now held firm.

Egir watches all he cherishes surrender their hearts to the wind. Cursing love, he turns his animus 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. Through furious tears, he extends his hand. If his love be tainted, then our purity can’t stand as an anathema, high on the rocks above his head, taunting on the tiny isle of Stroma.  Rocks that pierce the sea like a stake through the heart. A geological reminder of his pain.

He pauses for the merest moment, swathed in empathy for those who have lost their loved ones to the storm.

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 galaxy is dimmed by the illuminance level that is lost while an exo-planet transits a distant star. This change, imperceptible to the human eye, is all an angry god needs.

 Egir’s vengeful fingers snatch and tip you over the balustrade, where you fall into Njord’s open hand. Was it a Kindness or malign act that led him to raise you back up, so you hung inches from my face? Your apologetic eyes met mine, and we transfer a hundred years of loss in just one tear.

“I love you,” you whisper as Ran’s screaming daughters, lost in taboo ecstasy, now gleefully drag you down to Swelkie.

I lower my fist. Fall to my knees. The knowledge that I’m not the first to rail against the wind, to curse the cruel sea, is scant comfort. No… no, it’s no comfort at all.

But would I know that I was to be the last to lose a love to Swelkie, then there may be some small blessing. 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 its tousled mat stands fast against the wind.

I held your love, though all too briefly, yet I knew the power would abide.

 When the frothing nostrils of your mount broke the surface, it came as no surprise. The viking sea could never hold you fast. Egir sought to take you in place of that which he lost, but the time for gods had passed.

 You rose skyward, my Valkyrie, my world, my everything. Though freed from the clench of the Orcadian deep, held in your hand, my heart would cast no earthly anchor.

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 North wind to Valhalla.