Saltwater in the Soul: Book 1 in the Saltwater Series

By Susan Sowerby

Book 1 of 3
What happens when we discover our world is not as we believed?

When Finn escapes alone to a windy isle in the Hebrides, his mother reveals the sinister brute he thought was his father is not his father, yet she keeps the identity of his real sire shrouded in mystery. Reality takes on a paranormal twist when he begins to suspect his father was not human. The bizarre discovery that he was from an ancient nation beneath the ocean, finally surfaces.
As Finn struggles to balance the blood of two contrasting cultures with very different values, he begins to understand the origins of his craving for the sea and the compelling call of music. He stands on the brink of making the painful decision of whether to join his ancestors below the waves or seek a perilous justice for the death his father above them. When he realizes his saltwater relatives believe he is their prophesied hero, he fears they have the wrong guy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Sowerby
• Release date: May 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476177731

Susan Sowerby

Susan Sowerby lives, sculpts and writes in the West Australian surfing town of Margaret River. She is best known for her sculptures of sea-drenched mermaids and mer-men, but also sings and paints. She has written and illustrated several children's books. 'Spring forgot to Come,' with its colorful illustrations is free on her website.Susan is the author of 'Saltwater in the Soul,' the first novel in a series of three. She is fascinated by myth and legend which she sees as a way to understand more deeply the human condition. For this reason, she includes some myths in her fantasy novels. She holds the firm belief that our stories mark the progress of our civilizations.Susan has three grown sons and lives on a conservation property near the south-west Australian surfing town of Margaret River, in a little cottage surrounded by various forms of wild life. She is in love with Mother Earth and will always remain so.

Book preview

cover.jpg

While all characters in this book are fictitious,

the places described in this story are real. Also

the legends included are those the author heard

and read while living in the Hebrides.

Contents

Chapter 1: The Strange Visitor

Chapter 2: Echoing Voices

Chapter 3: The Legend of the Selkies

Chapter 4: Who was the Father?

Chapter 5: A Dark Ally

Chapter 6: The Mystery of Staffa

Chapter 7: A Journey into Legend

Chapter 8: Revelation and Rage

Chapter 9: Tragedy

Chapter 10: A Gift from the Sea

Chapter 11: A Mystery Explained

Chapter 12: Contact

Chapter 13: A Glowing Pearl

Chapter 14: The Seven Sisters

Chapter 15: The Swan

Chapter 16: A Bird in the Nest

Chapter 17: The Silver Serpent

Chapter 18: The Land Under Wave

Chapter 19: A Close Call

Chapter 20: The Seed grows

Chapter 21: The Verdict

Chapter 22: The Challenge

Chapter 23: A Twist of Fate

Chapter 24: Loss and Gain

Chapter 25: An Invisible Threat

Chapter 26: A Serious Plan

Chapter 27: Fox-Hunt

Chapter 28: Burial and Rebirth

1

The Strange Visitor

It was 1999, and I’ll never forget that night, the night the strange visitor came to my door. I won’t forget the way the sea roared around the island, or the passion with which I loved its refusal to be tamed. The sea for me has always been like the lover I can’t quite reach, a ceaseless, painful yearning. I’ve always been tormented by something wild, something fathomless down inside. On that night, the storm matched my mood.

At the time, I didn’t know what drove me to this bleak hillside in the Hebridean Isles that lie off the west coast of Scotland, though I was painfully aware I needed to escape my family. Most guys of sixteen wouldn’t find comfort retreating to a fisherman’s croft, alone on the barren, windy Isle of Erraid. Few could stand the isolation when they’ve just come from a full-on city scene. I know many would have been afraid of the raw power that howled around the eaves and shook the very foundations of my cottage that night, but I’m fundamentally different, somewhere, somehow. I knew that – not that I liked or understood it.

It was mid-night. Seductive sounds of the elements enfolded me, whispering in the sweet lashing of the sea, in the bellowing of the thunder, the lightning, and the hissing torrents of the rain. All was music to my nameless longings, the night the visitor called.

There’s no electricity here. I could say there was plenty bouncing off the rocks and knolls that night, but none captive, so all I had for light was a hurricane lamp, a flash light and a few candles. I remember a God Almighty crack of thunder shuddering down my spine, then the door blew open and a sheet of sleet soaked me to the skin. It also tore the light from the lamp and extinguished the candles. The instant a sharp flash flickered, I thought I glimpsed a small figure, not five feet tall just standing there in the rain. Afraid I might be imagining things, I fumbled around for my flash light but couldn’t locate it.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. The reply was silence, which made the hair on my head creep. I thought I’d seen a little person with very long dreadlocks hanging down over naked shoulders all the way to bare legs gleaming with rain. A child in trouble perhaps, but I couldn’t locate the damn torch! Then the door blew shut, and I felt a cold presence slide past. The spook was in the room, and I couldn’t see! The smell of the sea came with it, and I felt the chill of fear as I groped around the hob of my fireplace in search of the matches I keep there.

Relieved, I found them and struck one. It lit up a small female face with two huge round eyes that fixed on the mantelpiece where I display relics I bring from the sea. Those eerie eyes riveted on my pride and joy, an unusual shell I’d stolen from my stepfather’s belongings the night I escaped. It emitted a subtle glow in the dark that intrigued me.

Those strange eyes, which seemed to glow like a cat’s in the dim light, were fixed with such intensity they looked as though her life depended on my shell. The spooky eyes then moved to the side and stared at me without turning her head. She stayed that way as I lit a candle. They were eyes full of fear and curiosity, but the look just wasn’t human. Highland stories of fairies, and otherworld creatures, crowded my mind. In those tales, they aren’t sweet harmless little things, but powerful, dangerous beings in their own right—something mortals must treat cleverly and be wary of.

Of course, I told myself I didn’t believe in fairies. This one was human, perhaps retarded, poor thing. If she was short of a few cards in her deck, she’d certainly lost her way, impossible, really, because she’d have had to swim across the Narrows from Knock-Vologon in this violent weather just to get to the island. I knew the ‘Neap,’ or little tides running at that moment prevented anyone from walking across from the Isle of Mull to Erraid, though I knew it could be done on occasions during the more extreme Spring tides. The first lesson I’d learned when I came here was about the tides, so this spun me out. Nothing made sense.

I decided she must have been freezing.

‘Are you cold?’ I offered a blanket from my couch. She danced away from me, looking terrified, but at the same time, appeared to be held to the shell by some invisible thread. I was at a loss.

I finally located my flash light and flicked it on. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

She looked alarmed at the sound I’d made, and obviously didn’t understand. Her hand shook a little as she pointed to objects in the room. The fingers appeared very long, and I thought the flickering candlelight must have distorted the image for they looked as though they ended in short, curved claws. Perhaps pointing was her way of conversing, or rather, distracting me. The face was so chilling in its beauty; my spine tingled. Was the stark loneliness of winter on Erraid getting to me already? Was I losing my mind? True, past events had been stressful, but this was downright weird!

To show her I meant no harm, I forced a tight smile. To my relief, she mirrored it, but then I gasped with shock! Her teeth were pointed like a kitten’s – tiny dolly’s teeth, yet sharp with a little fang on each side. I stepped back, dumbfounded. Then, like lightning, the spook made her move. She darted towards the mantelpiece. Grabbing my shell, she dived for the door. I leapt out of my stupor and intercepted her. She wasn’t going to steal my already stolen treasure! Careful not to touch her, I took hold of the shell and tugged hard. It was then that she emitted a bone chilling noise, startling loud for someone so small. Penetrating would be a more accurate description, for it made my muscles spasm as though an electric shock was jangling them. The shell slipped from my grip. Like a flash, she was out the door and away, clutching it to her heart.

I took off after her, yelling, ‘Stop! You can have it if you want, please, please just stop,’ to no avail. She flew at lightning speed, veering back from my croft, around Cnoc Mhor, Erraid’s highest ridge, past the lookout and straight for Seal Bay without faltering or stumbling once. She must have had the eyes of a cat to see in the blackness of that night.

It wasn’t an easy run for me. Though I had the flash light, I still barked my shins and turned my ankles on Erraid’s hidden mossy rocks as the slippery rain drenched down on us. I thought I could catch her, she was so small, but it wasn’t that easy. In the bobbing flash light, her hair flew back, caught by the wind, and I saw she had the figure of a full-fledged young woman, nipped at the waist and broad at the hip. The creature could certainly run, but her gait appeared peculiar. She seemed to swing from the hips as though her legs didn’t belong to her. As she reached the drop at Seal Bay, I thought she would be forced to stop, but to my horror she kept right on over the brink, plummeting down a thirty-foot drop. In a lightning flash, I saw her lift her arms and leap – a graceful swallow dive, out and down with a sleek, fish-like flick of her spine. I glimpsed my glowing shell tied in the tangled dreadlocks of her hair as she dropped through the darkness like a falling star. It wasn’t the loss of the shell I found disturbing; it was the loss of life I thought I was witnessing. Was that beautiful girl indeed, mad? What the hell was going on?

As I searched the sea with my flash-light, the rain beat down and waves crashed on the rocks below. I knew anything human could not have survived. I skidded down the cliff, shaking, clinging with hands and slipping on sodden sand shoes in an effort to get as close as I dared to the fury of the sea. Still, I caught no sight of a head bobbing amongst the churning white foam.

Confused and defeated, I climbed back up the treacherous slope, wrestling with the thought I should report the incident to the police in the morning. The truth was I wanted to avoid them in case they betrayed my whereabouts to my parents. Besides, they’d probably think the strange boy from Erraid had ‘gone off with the fairies’ if I described the truth. I decided to wait and see if there was any report of a missing person in the area. If there wasn’t, then perhaps I’d better commit myself to an insane asylum.

Because I was more than alarmed, I decided to take a long circuit home through what is known as The Haunting Valley to see if I could settle my nerves. Some might think of it as an odd move, considering the name of the place and the fact I was soaked. Rain still pelted on my face like stinging darts, but I’m in love the strange way sound echoes in that valley. Thunder ricochets off the hills as though they’re answering each other in rumbling troll-like song. Music is my second love, close on the heels of the sea. I sat there and listened as nature’s harmonic orchestra worked wonders to restore my shaken nervous system.

On another whim, even though my body was a mass of shivering muscles, I turned around, and in squelching shoes, jogged up to the lookout once used to signal lighthouses. From my island perch, though visibility was poor, I noticed another strange phenomenon – more than strange, actually. Dubh Arteach lighthouse looked as though it was in the wrong place! It’s only about fourteen kilometres south-west of Erraid, perched on a violently windy rock. I often watched its light, so I was aware of its position. On a dangerous night like that, I knew Dubh Arteach would definitely be operating. It was automated a few years ago, and it should have been turning and flicking like every good lighthouse. So why would the light appear to be still? Was it an illusion due to cloud formations in the storm? How could it look like it was beaming out from the wrong spot near the Torrin Rocks?

The light glowed pearly pink, changing several times through blue and white, and then towered like a monster into the sky. I’d never seen anything like it. A little later, I caught sight of the real light winking away to the left of my eye. I could hardly believe the other huge signal would have been made by ships, especially not in those treacherous waters and no distress flare could have shot so high or hung for so long. Its location seemed to be just past the southern tip of Iona, Erraid’s sister Isle. Skerryvore lighthouse is somewhere in that direction as well, but it’s too far over the horizon to see unless its light bounces off clouds. Maybe I saw a freak mirage from Skerryvore magnified by the storm? The spectre was still hovering in the sky when my shivering body forced me to turn for home. I hoped the phenomena had been caused by some sort of explainable optical illusion, perhaps from a city. If no one else had seen it, this second riddle made me feel as though my grip on reality was slipping, and I probably did need help.

That little episode gave me a decent chill and almost landed me in a hospital. I was sick for days, which is very unlike me. Normally, when it comes to water and being wet, I have the constitution of a sea lion. I’ve concluded my immune system must be rather more vulnerable when I’ve been shaken and frozen at the same time.

Because there’s another group of people on the little isle of Erraid, I’d made it clear by actions rather than words that I wanted to keep to myself. Truth is, I was lucky they were there. They’re from a community on the east coast of Scotland who care-take this island for a rich Dutch guy who sells cigars or some such thing. A small group of the community’s members inhabit the eight stone cottages that were originally constructed to house the hundred and twenty worker families who built Dubh Arteach and Skerryvore lighthouses. The members say it’s quiet here in winter, but in summer swarms of visitors infest the place like a plague of fleas. Erraid is tiny and obscure, only a half mile long and a half mile wide, but they still manage to find it. When I heard that, I hoped I’d have sorted myself out and have gone by summer. That proved a formidable task as I struggled with my anger and confusion every day.

Over the next few days, I became so ill I was delirious. Luck was on my side when, by some sort of sixth sense, one of the community members came knocking on my door, and asked if I was all right. Being ‘off my face,’ and unable to think straight at all, I told her to get lost. In my delirium, I thought she was a spy, watching and noting all my movements and that she had called for subversive reasons. I knew nothing about her group.

My rescuer was a girl of about twenty, who had an obvious Irish accent and introduced herself as ‘Bridget.’ It didn’t take much to see I was in a bad way, so she returned with some vegetable soup and a few more community members.

They discussed whether I might have pneumonia and tried to force me go to the hospital. Scared of being discovered by my stepfather, I was stubborn and foolish enough to refuse, so, for each of the five days I lay in a stupor, they came and brought food and finally a doctor who administered penicillin. I can’t remember much about it, but the truth is, I might have died alone there, without their timely interference. I knew I would be obliged to be civil from then on. Now that they knew my name was Finn and that I came from Edinburgh, I hoped my stepfather wouldn’t track me down just because the community members heard me raving when I wasn’t all there.

2

Echoing Voices

My mother. Oh my God. She’s another strange story. She was an Olympic swimmer who swam the English Channel – more than once I might add. In fact, I heard she just about lived in the sea before she married my stepfather. Now she won’t go near it. Why, I don’t know. Her original passion for it was reborn in me, but in my youngest years she would not allow me near salt water. I’m fulfilling my desire for the sea now as I revel here on my beloved island where the ocean meets and crashes from every side.

I’ve had a confusing upbringing: My stepfather hates me while my mother adores me. Two weeks before I left, my mother held me tight and whispered, ‘He’s not your true father.’ She’d kept that secret all this time! After experiencing the first incredible relief, I could not make my mother tell me who my real father is. I think she owes it to me – in fact, she knows she does after what I’ve been through with my step father, but she still won’t bend. Why? What can be so bad about my real father that my mother can’t bear to tell me? She sees it’s eating me alive, destroying me, but every time I confront her, she gets upset, runs off and locks her bedroom door, leaving me furious and defeated.

My mother is a flame-haired, white skinned Celtic beauty. She was my sword and shield against my stepfather when I was little, but I was the only thing she’d stand up to him about. She seemed as brave as Queen Boedicea in my eyes, which didn’t really help because it made him hate me more. I was like an animal caught in a trap. No matter how I moved, it hurt. I felt for my mum, but I’d had enough, and I couldn’t bear the situation any longer. Between them, they created a horrible pain which is why I had to retreat and try to deal with it far away.

A few weeks ago, when I left, I felt compelled to take the shell with me. I suppose it was a way to get back at my stepfather. I decided that something so beautiful shouldn’t belong to one such as him, so I risked life and limbs to get a hold of it. ‘Alf,’ as my stepfather has been baptised, always kept it locked away, but I caught a glimpse once when he opened his drawer, unaware that I stood behind him. I was only four-years-old at the time, but even then, I decided that one day the glowing shell would be mine.

How like a fairytale this next portion of my story is, but I tell you, it will get even stranger. Before I left, I was obliged to steal the key to his drawer from under his pillow while he snored loudly on top of it. He always guarded that key jealously, keeping it in his pocket or under his pillow at all times. Very weird. I knew something precious must be hidden in that drawer. Nothing would surprise me about Alf Webster, though I didn’t for a moment realise it could have been the shell that was so important.

I took nothing else, no documents, no money, just the shell. Why did he guard it with such venom, for venom it was. Of course, nicking it could only be a silly move on my part because I endangered myself more, and that made me feel paranoid. I knew taking anything of his would make him twice as determined to come after me.

My mother did everything that foul creature asked. It made me want to spew. Why did she bow to his every whim? I didn’t think it was her true nature. It made no sense because I could feel she despised him as much as I do, and I could see part of her dying slowly before my eyes. Why did she pick that bullet-headed freak when she could have had any man in Britain? I smelled a sinister rat. Blackmail maybe? Something was twisted and very, very wrong. Anyway, I couldn’t live in that atmosphere any longer. I had to get out. Now you know as much about my origins as I did back then. Enough said. I’ll return to the strange happenings on Erraid.

By the time I’d clawed my way back to health, I realised I needed to make money to survive, so I got myself a job at the Argyl hotel on the Isle of Iona. If the big brooding Isle of Mull on east side can be seen as little Erraid’s mother, then Iona in the nor-west is her big sister whose green slopes and white buildings are easily visible across the Sound.

Since I’d applied for a job in the off season sliding into winter, I was lucky to get one. My work consisted of only a couple of hours each morning, occasional afternoons and the odd evening, so sometimes I had to fill the hours between at the library, taking a snooze in the Argyl’s smoking room or when the weather permitted, wandering Iona. It’s a place so magical I didn’t mind. I found exploring it exhilarating.

At the hotel, I did every job from waiting and cooking breakfasts to cleaning and making beds. I liked it, mainly because the limited human interaction stopped me from being too much of a hermit. I didn’t want to become any more weird than I felt I already was.

Getting to and fro between Erraid and Iona proved nerve-wracking in bad weather. The recent addition of a barge ferry between Fionphort on Mull and Iona made the journey far easier than it would have been before. I’ve been told everybody used to be forced to rely on just one grumpy boatman for transport who’d quit whenever the weather turned meaner than he was. That said, I still had to row myself back and forth between Erraid and Fidden jetty on Mull in all kinds of weather, sometimes before light or after dark. Because of this, I was sometimes forced to sleep over at the Argyl. The proprietors wanted me to stay on a permanent basis and could not understand why I would want to brave the elements just to get back to Erraid each day. Truth is, I love the elements. They are in my bones.

During that particular winter, the extra work happened to be unusual for the Argyl because the hotel usually closed down over the darkest months. That year, some interesting activity caused it to remain open. Apparently a ‘scientific’ study group planned to arrive at regular intervals throughout the winter. What they were studying was all hush-hush, as though they enjoyed appearing mysterious. That set the highland hive buzzing of course. Everyone talked about them.

By the look of the first contingent, they were a motley bunch of amateurs from all over Britain, with one native of Brittany. The visitors book told me that. I didn’t get the feeling they were serious