They call me hag, winter’s witch. Cailleach Bhéara, Cailleach Bheur, Anu, Didge, Beira, Cally Berry, Gyre-Carlin, Buí, Milucra, Biróg, Burach, Bronach, The Veiled One, The White Nun of Beara, The Storm Hag, Banshee. But I wasn’t always so.
In a time before you, your ancestors, your technology, cars, cities, roads, villages, modern conveniences—in a time before all you’ve ever known—I was a lone maiden in a desolate marshland. There was no distinction between sky and sea, no color but the silvery mist rising from the salt spray, no sound but the waves crashing and swirling in the tide. I came to be in this liminal space, cold and lonely, seeking, seeking, seeking.
I came to be in the north. I awoke one morning, my corporeal form made of mist, foam, sea spray, and considered this wild place. How cold, how lonesome, how bleak. And yet I felt a warmth somewhere below my limbs, a yearning inside my newly-beating heart. I rose from the clay, gathered a léine of sarsenet and sea-spun mist to drape across my body, wove a veil of moonlight and fog to shield my features from the elements, and began walking, my heart in the lead. With each footstep, the earth beneath my feet hardened, sage lichen and verdant moss sprouted, small hints of life. I walked in circles, leapt and danced, threw my body down and spread my arms and legs wide, marveling at solidity I created.
I roamed, learning the articulation of my limbs, spinning, leaping, tumbling, tracing what would become the jagged shoreline until I heard it: a faint whistle in the distance. It was musical, melodic, hypnotic. Taking great leaps and bounds, I followed. The whistle turned to a roar, elegant and strange, as I neared. And then, all of a sudden, him. Nevis, the North Wind, a man made of shards of ice and howling silver. His eyes, a cool winter’s morning. His mouth, made to send his song through the ether, enticing. He smiled, whistled, and reached for me. When our fingers met, the earth trembled and roiled beneath us. He beckoned me, and I realized that I loved him with the raw hunger of the first woman. I tried to catch him, to hold him, to keep him, but the wind was never meant to be held. So I had to let him go. And in the despair of that first monumental heartbreak, I fell to the ground, weeping, screaming, battering the clay with my fists until the earth rose up to follow him, reaching, reaching, reaching, hardening into the peaks of the mountains that now bear his name.
I rolled down the mountain, spread myself across the flattened valleys and steep-sided glens. Crawling on all fours, my long hair swept across the ground, calling starry saxifrage, arctic mouse-ears, and eyebright to sprout along the delicate gullies and chutes I carved with my fingernails. I carried on in this way for ages, crawling, sculpting, rolling, making fjords and gulches and lochs and vales and cirques and linns and whatever else struck my fancy until I saw something in the ocean beyond. A slick black form undulating with the tide. Lowered to my belly, I slithered along the clay, urging tall grass to conceal me, watching. I met his eyes, dark, soulful, calling up the depths of the sea below and around, and my heart stirred. We watched one another for some time until he approached. Once on the land I’d created for him, he shed his selkie skin and stood tall, immaculate, a body cut from the clay and sea foam that made me.
We touched. We embraced. I held onto him so tightly, for fear he’d slip away like the wind, slip away like the sea. We made a life together on the slanted shore. It pleased him to see me conjure peaks and salt marshes and crags with just a touch. We held each other and rolled about, in our congress we created veiny streams and rivers and pools for the faeries. I thought I could keep him. I wanted to keep him. I needed to keep him. I tried in vain to hide his selkie skin. I tried in vain to erect towering pinnacles to obstruct his path back to the sea. Despite my efforts, he found his way. I was again bereft, alone, just me and the Skye above and all around. In my fury, I wailed. I stomped the mounds of land I rose for his happiness, punched and scratched and remolded the Quiraing and the jutting cliffs and drew forth Storr from the black rock to lord over this place.
For a century, I searched for him. I lay atop the cliff, eyes on the sea. He never returned. I did not move, did not breathe. I lay as still as stone, my tears flowing so violently, they became the falls. I draped my arm over the edge. Then a leg. I teetered there for ages, crying, staring, watching for him. And then, one day, a stirring. A great hulk of a man far, far from me. His movement languid, languorous, liquid. I rose, gathered stones in my léine, and began walking toward him, leaving life in my path. With each step, he stretched further and further from me. It was incomprehensible that he existed across the North Channel. On what land if it had not been made by my touch? I saw glimpses of him, his body a deep, red iron-clay, his hair aflame, it shone so luminously in the grey sea fog, igniting a fire within me.
I threw the stones from my léine, my hands and feet suddenly molten, and crashed into the sea, reaching for him. I made great bounds with my firey feet. With each splash, the earth cracked and ascended into great interlocking hexagonal basalt columns. I carved the causeway and carved the causeway and carved the causeway in search of my giant. No matter how many thousands of pillars I laid, the sea was too deep, the current too strong, my beloved too far from reach. I heard his name in the wind, Fingal. It was all I had. All I’d ever have of him. I crumpled, wept. My léine of sarsanet, once light as air, was weighed down with the black dust of the basalt, the black dust of my despair. I hung my head, crawled on hands and knees from whence I came, and forged a cave in the side of the cliff. There I stayed for an eternity.
Absolutely love this!