The Seal Skin (Campfire Story)

This story comes from Iceland. From a place called Myrdal, in the south, where black cliffs drop straight down into the sea, and the WAVES come crashing in.

There was a man who lived there, and one morning, very early, before anyone else was awake, he was walking along the bottom of those cliffs. The tide was out. And as he came round a rock, he heard something he didn't expect. Music. And laughing. And the sound of dancing feet, coming from inside a cave.

He crept closer. And outside the mouth of the cave, piled up on the rocks, he saw skins. Seal skins. Dozens of them. And inside, in the gray morning light, there were people dancing. Young men and young women, laughing, whirling around in the cave.

Now, the people in Iceland always said that seals are not quite like other animals. They said that once a year, on one night, the SEAL folk come ashore and take off their skins, and for a little while they're people, and they dance. And the man knew that's what he was looking at.

He picked up one of the skins. It was soft and gray and spotted. And he took it home, and locked it in a wooden chest, and put the key in his pocket.

Then he went back to the cave. And by now the sun was coming up, and the dance was over. One by one, the dancers came out, and pulled on their skins, and slipped into the water. And they were seals again. SEAL. They swam away through the WAVES.

All except one. A young woman, standing on the rocks, searching and searching for her skin. And when she couldn't find it, she sat down on the sand and cried.

The man came down to her, and gave her his coat. And he took her home with him. She had nowhere else to go.

In time, they were married. And they were happy enough, the people said. They had seven children together. She cooked and she sewed and she raised those children, and she was a good wife and a good mother. But every chance she got, she would go down to the shore, and stand there, looking out at the WAVES. For hours sometimes. Not saying anything. Just looking.

And the man always kept that key in his pocket. Every day. Wherever he went.

Until one Christmas. The man went off to the Christmas service at the church, with everyone else from the farm. But his wife stayed at home. And he had changed into his good clothes for church. And he forgot the key. He left it in the pocket of his everyday trousers.

When he came home that night, the chest was standing open. And the skin was gone. And so was his wife.

She had found the key. And she had opened the chest, and there was her skin, just the way she'd left it all those years ago. And she couldn't help it. She had to go.

She said goodbye to her children, every one of them.

Then she went down to the shore, and pulled on her skin. And before she slipped into the water, she said these words, and they say people in Iceland still remember them:

'Woe is me. Woe is me. I have seven children on the land, and seven children in the sea.'

Because, you see, she'd had another family all along. A SEAL husband and seven seal children, waiting for her out under the WAVES, all those years.

And she went down into the sea, and she never came back.

The man grieved for her for a long time. But after that, whenever he rowed out to fish, a SEAL would come and swim around and around his boat. And it looked at him, and the people said there were tears in its eyes. And from that day on, he caught more fish than any other man in Myrdal.

And whenever the children walked along the shore, a SEAL would swim in close to them, keeping pace with them through the WAVES. And it would toss bright fish and pretty shells up onto the sand for them to find.

But their mother never came home again.