The Lass and the Firth's Pilot

A young woman, the man she's hired, and less than a day to execute a theft.

Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash

In the cold hours of first light she waited. Wrapped in an ill-fitting coat, sitting beneath a lamp fixed to a whitewashed tavern wall. She stared out ahead at the Firth of Merei cloaked in morning’s blue fog.

Small boats lined the grimy bank. Fishing nets hung like drapery. Behind her slumbered the village of Suiby. To her right and far up the lane stood the great barn-like shape of the processing mill, waiting.

The sooty lamplight shined out against the gloom. The firth gargled upon submerged boulders, their stony spines visible just above the surface here and there. The mist soaked her dark hair but her deep brown eyes remained fixed on the pier — the only pier in Suiby, built for but one craft, soon to arrive. She waited.

First she heard voices. Then she saw the lights. Then she smelled the dreadful cargo. The bow, jib, and mainsail of the sloop collected out of the fog.

The sloop hove to and berthed at the pier. Shadows of men leaped off and caught mooring lines. Gangplank clattered. Crates were hauled onto the pier. Green foam whose scents spake of the mysterious ocean quivered against the pier’s beams, cowering from the ship and its crew’s dark industry.

From the processing mill, a horse with stockings of mud pulled a sled of five foot width to where pier met bank. Four burly sailors carried long sacks slung over their shoulders. They dropped these on the sled and wiped the residue of death from their arms.

By the sloop, a single lantern swung in the gloom held by a tall, broad-shouldered man descending the gangplank. Through the intervening gloom his eyes met hers, ghost greeting ghost.

He raised his lamp and let it fall. Twice. Thrice.

In response to this she stood, tucked her dark hair back behind her ears, and walked toward the pier. She tried not to look at the sacks on the sled, but the bodies looked back at her — for bodies they were. Black and half-open eyes, wet black noses running with red, whiskers bent, mouths ajar and white teeth showing, gray mottled pelts punctured with leaky, wine-dark wounds. Souls as things. The smell of blubber and blood. She tried not to look.

She stopped by the pier’s edge. Thirty paces away he signaled her again, raising his light and illuminating his face: younger than the others, stubble profiling his sharp jawline. Eyes uncorrupted, suggesting mirth where otherwise would be cruelty. The vision arrested her momentarily, a thing of beauty — perhaps even kindness — amid the carnage.

“Callum!” someone on the sloop called to her signaler. “Callum!”

He looked back at the ship, then at her.

She would have to get it herself.

He flashed her a grin, two parts handsome and one mischief. Then with his opposite hand he made the faintest gesture toward an oaken trunk at his feet, perhaps two feet wide. Then he turned to answer the voice.

She took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the pier.

Past one crewmember, then another. She reached the trunk, scooped it up — ‘twasn’t heavy — and turned back toward the town. Subtle as a fish through a net.

“Oy, wench!” someone behind her shouted.

Her breath caught, but she maintained her pace as though she hadn’t heard him. He yelled twice more before she found the designated spot, affected a small jump of surprise, and dropped the trunk behind a pile of crates by the pier’s edge.

The sailor marched upon her. “What are you about, wench?”

Her dark eyes fell, but she was looking toward the cold water beside the pier.

The sailor came closer, rank breath and rotten teeth. “You daft? Clear the piers when we’re about!”

“Now now,” said another dreadfully familiar voice, “surely it’s a mistake.”

She jumped, for this man stepped out from behind her. A seal-skin cloak swung slowly from his shoulders and about his knees suggesting considerable thickness and weight. His beard was finely trimmed and his blue eyes glowed with a childlike innocence.

She knew those eyes, and wanted to scream. Her foot came out and touched the trunk.

“Captain,” said the sailor, “I’ve caught this wench skulking. She should be punished.”

The Captain spoke to the sailor as if she weren’t even there. “And what happens to our outpost when the embittered locals report us to the Greve’s men? ‘Twould be disastrous, mhm? Remember your place, Jaggi, and leave the girl alone.”

He frowned and only then looked down at the young woman.

“Though I haven’t seen you before… you’re not from Suiby?”

He was about to step around her. He would see the trunk.

“Don’t mind her, Captain!” shouted the young man who’d signaled her. “This is…” he waved his hand in faux recollection, then plucked a name from the vapor. “Mette! We’ve known each other years.”

“Have you now, Mister Callum.” The structure of a question, but not the tone.

“Aye! She was sweet on me once. And I on her… afore I found her tart.” He flashed her a devilish grin. She didn’t return it.

The sailor named Jaggi stepped forward again. “Well lass,” he leered, “be you tart, there are others aboard who might want a taste…”

Before another word was spoken, the one called Callum stepped between them and shoved Jaggi back.

The lass put her foot against the trunk and pushed it over the pier’s edge.

No splash.

In an instant Jaggi’s knife was out and against Callum’s neck. Callum’s jaunty attitude was gone and his eyes were hard even with steel resting against his throat.

Something clicked nearby. From his cloak the captain had produced a short matchlock firearm with flared muzzle and rested it on his shoulder.

“Mister Callum,” the Captain stared at the sailor but addressed the young man, “were you among my crew, I’d have you flogged for brawling.”

“Aye Captain, but I’m not. And if your crew harries these folk again then you’ll have to find a new pilot who can navigate this brume.”

The Captain considered this. “Well then. Stand down, Jaggi. And lass, I suggest you abandon this dock post haste. Dogs as these go feral at the bitch’s scent.”

He looked into her dark eyes again. She dropped hers, and nodded.

***

In the next several hours the sun rose, and in its faint warmth the fog shrank to tendrils that clung to the waters like a cold boil. The crags and hills that enclosed the firth gathered light, and in the fresh sky at the mouth could faintly be seen the eternal line of the ocean’s horizon. A light but cold breeze, a prelude of winter.

He met her among the coves out of sight of Suiby and the sloop. He pushed the skiff ashore, the same skiff that had been hiding beneath the pier and had caught the falling trunk. “Your plan worked!”

“You needn’t have smirked so,” she said.

He smirked again. “I had to get your attention somehow. With the fog, you might have traipsed right past me, Mette.”

She stared at him.

“No? So Mette isn’t your name either? Then what is it?”

She ignored the question. “I told you to be inconspicuous.”

He removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, then put his hands to the boat rails and pulled it over the rasping gravel. “Have some clemency, I’m a slow learner.”

“I didn’t ask for your intervention.”

“And what of you, dropping those alluring eyes for the Captain?”

“I did no such thing.”

“I jest, lass. But have more caution! That man’s the Fiend himself.”

“I know. We’d met before.”

He stopped and looked at her. “You knew him?!”

Her jaw tightened.

“You could have been recognized!”

She made a wry laugh and went to the skiff. “Nay, there was no risk of that.” She lifted out the trunk and carried it to a large, flat rock nearby.

Callum approached, ran his hand over the trunk’s top, touched the iron lock. “I don’t suppose you’ve a key–”

She picked up a large stone and, in two hands, began to violently bash the top of the trunk.

“By God’s beard, are you an otter?!”

She ignored this, continuing her attack until the lid was riven and bright splinters lay everywhere. When she could see inside she pried away the bits, reached in, and withdrew its contents: a seal pelt of unblemished white. She held it before her to study its shimmer, then turned it over to inspect the underside, raw and pink and slightly sticky. She removed a speck of salt rubbed there for preservation.

“And there it is! See lass, I told you–”

“‘Tisn’t it.”

He stopped. “Surely it is.”

“Nay, not this one.”

“Lass, you paid me to help acquire the white seal skin. Lo.”

Her eyes were squeezed shut.

“Lass… what’s wrong?”

“Are there other white seal skins?”

“... Aye, there was one other, but it was smaller, so I got you this one.”

“Then I’ll have to go back.”

“These white ones are rare, and fetch handsome prices. You haven’t much time. The crew will be processing all day and night at the mill. Come midnight they’ll take inventory and find the trunk missing. Then they’ll be after you like hounds on a hare.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going back. And I would ask for your service again, pilot. I’ll pay you with this skin.” Despite her hesitation, she folded the skin with a solemn respect, replacing it in the broken trunk.

“I’ve small use for an uncured skin.”

“Then I’ll go alone.”

“Bosh. I would’ve helped you even without payment.”

“Why?”

“Well… you look wounded.”

A chill wind blew. Gulls screamed somewhere along the firth.

“I meant no offense, lass.”

“Here’s an order, Pilot Callum: don’t risk yourself for me again like you did this morn.”

“Defending lasses of uncommon fairness is in my nature! To refrain from doing so is an order for which I might require compensation. What say you tell me your name as payment? Otherwise, I’ll just have to—”

She picked up the broken trunk, dropped it to the ground, and shoved it toward him with her foot.

He stared at it a moment. “I’ll do my best.”

***

They spent the rest of the day walking the town, skirting the small, one-storey stone houses.

Her eyes were locked ahead.

He trudged alongside like a puppy. “Sorcha!”

“No.”

“Thebe.”

“No.”

“... Jana.”

“No.”

“Sooth? You look a Jana.”

“Please stop. You’ll draw attention.”

“From whom? Nobody in Suiby is about when the hunters are here.”

It was true. With the sloop’s topmast watching above the thatched and mossy roofs, Suiby’s residents remained indoors and silent like hens avoiding a hawk. No children ran the streets, no fishermans’ boots muddied the tavern’s threshing, no wives washed garments in the stream.

But the processing mill was alive with activity.

Wood was being carried inside for the purging fires. The wide doors were shut, but the sailors could be heard within. Occasionally one would emerge with a seal slung over his shoulder divested of skin and blubber and looking a stillborn version of its former self. These carcasses were being loaded on the sled to be dumped in the firth. A pack of village dogs harried the sled, and when a strip of flesh or fat would fall and they would set to fighting over it until the driver dispersed them with a cudgel. Single gunshots reported periodically from somewhere around the water. The Captain was taking some recreation to the doom of the local birds.

A few odd crates and barrels of salt were still loaded outside the doors.

From behind a stone wall next to a hut at the village’s edge, the lass and the pilot watched the crew loading the sled.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you allow this here? You don’t even consume the meat.”

He was about to answer when an old woman hobbled out of the hut. “Callum!” she shouted, blinking. “Callum, is that you? How’s your ma?”

He quickly shushed her and bade her return inside on the promise that they would stop in for ale, but when he turned back the young woman was gone.

“Lass! Lass!”

He watched in horror as she departed the village, headed straight for the mill’s doors. Beside a small tower of crates sat a trunk — the trunk with the other white pelt — alone and unguarded.

He ran forward and threw his arms around her to drag her back. “Lass, no!” She began to scream but he covered her mouth and pulled her back behind the wall. He looked to see if they were followed when she bit his finger. He whispered a curse and let go.

“Don’t ever touch me!” she snarled.

“Look at this, you’ve drawn blood!”

“I said don’t ever touch me!”

He shook his hand and inspected the wound again. Her eyes were leaking through her glare and her breath was ragged.

“I’m sorry, lass…”

“The trunk was right there! I could have gotten it!”

Just then they heard a commotion from the mill.

The sled was back, covered in blood, and a cat had been chased onto it by the dog pack. The dogs snarled and dashed back and forth but wouldn’t leap onto the sled for fear of the driver’s cudgel.

The Captain, just returned, saw the stranded cat and told his men to hold. He brandished his gun, carefully loaded it, took aim, and blew the feline away.

Flesh burst where the pellets struck. The horse leaped in fear and the dogs cowered and the gunsmoke hung in the cold, wet air.

The Captain wiped residue from the matchlock’s powderpan and continued on.

Callum put out a hand to pull her away from the vision, then stopped. “Here, lass. Follow me. Please.”

***

They went to a shack on a nearby hill overlooking Suiby where he kept a few belongings of his trade. Various sounding lines hung on the walls marked by strange knots or colorful ribbons. A small bed lay in the corner.

He shut the door and turned, but she spoke first:

“The trunk was right there! I could have gotten it!”

“Aye, and then what?”

“‘Twould’ve been mine! I’d have been finished!”

“And they would have been searching everywhere.”

“I’d be gone before they found me!”

“Aye, but we wouldn’t.”

“That’s not my concern.”

He stared at her. “I thought better of you than this.”

“Why should I care, when you and they accept the hunters’ payment to hide their affairs from the Greve and maintain this slaughter.”

“Accept you say?! You think we have a choice?” He walked to the window and unlatched the shutters, then gestured at Suiby sprawled out by the water’s edge. The sloop and the mill towered over the village like overseers. “I remember a time before the mill was there… before the hunters. We’d no use of seal blubber or the Captain’s compensation.” He set his jaw. “And every time I guide that damned ship into Merei I consider misleading it, of letting it founder on the shoals.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Fear.” He looked at her. “Perhaps you’re braver than I.”

She thought of the Captain’s terrible gaze, and knew that she was not.

“I’ve small right to ask this, but if we steal that trunk then let’s do it in a way that won’t implicate the village. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I know what Suiby’s been through. They don’t deserve such fate.”

His eyes were on her, and they were soft and kind, and their softness and kindness were terrible things. They bit to her heart, to the deepest places she’d kept hidden away and wished would die.

She nodded.

“Thank you lass. Now I’ve a plan, but first…” he lowered his head to almost a chuckle. “Damn my boots, but still I’m fain to know your name.”

“I’m fain not to share it.”

He sighed in defeat, but smiled nonetheless.

***

Night fell, and so did sleet. Shafts of light shot from the doors and cracks in the mill’s wall planking, occasionally interrupted by the activity therein.

She hurried to one of the large doorways with her coat pulled across her. The sleet left clumps of melting snow in her long hair and her vaporous breath poured in and out. Her heart punched against the inside of her chest.

She peeked inside.

Diced chunks of gelatinous blubber were being fed into slavering iron cauldrons. Shirtless men skimmed the surface with ladles and flicked their catch upon the fire below. Flash and angry hiss. The other half of the mill was packing the stretched skins into brine to be reloaded onto the sloop in a few hours. Through the night the crew toiled, ragged and wrathful and fueled by some unspeakable hatred. Perhaps for their own enterprise. Perhaps for themselves.

The Captain sat against the far wall cleaning his gun. The second trunk sat nearby. Behind him was a wall where the finished crates of brined skins were being stacked.

“Captain!” Callum shouted thence.

The entire mill stopped and turned their heads.

“Captain, come look, quickly!”

A splendid performance. Even the crewmembers manning the blubber stations headed toward the inventory rooms.

She slipped through the doors and into the putrid miasma beneath the infernal light.

“What is this?!”

“I don’t know!” answered Callum as he stepped toward the back of the crowd. “‘Tis as I found it.”

They were looking at the bludgeoned trunk, which now appeared as though it had been broken there rather than hours ago on a secluded beach.

With the crew turned away, she stole to where the Captain had sat and snatched up the trunk. The Captain’s back was turned and as he stared down at the busted trunk she could see his hand coiling around the gunbarrel in his hands.

She was only a few steps from the door when someone turned around.

“Captain! Captain! The thief!”

She ran. Out the door and into the chill air as their voices carried after her. Straight down at the water was the skiff where she would be safe. But they were getting closer.

A hand grabbed her from behind. The sailor named Jaggi, shirtless and enraged. “I’ve got you, wench! Now–”

Something struck Jaggi over the head and he fell facedown in the mud. It was Callum, who’d left the mill out the other side and run around to her. “Give me the trunk.”

“What? No!”

“No time, lass! They’ll catch you, but I can outpace them. Give me the trunk and you take the skiff! I’ll find you!”

“You don’t understand. I need this! I need it!”

“Trust me, lass. For the love of God, trust me!”

She did, and let go.

He tore off toward the hills with the crew baying after him. She fled toward the firth. Down the hill and to where the craft bobbed on the water. She leaped inside, grabbed the oars, and made a few tugs. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. The skiff moved away from the bank.

A large black figure stood at the water’s edge silhouetted by the mill like a shadow puppet. The figure’s shoulders rose and its heavy cloak rose with it. A light briefly illuminated a serene, almost innocent pair of eyes and the matchlock cracked.

The air came apart and lead sizzled past her cheek. She dropped an oar then picked it up again. Her forearm was burning. She couldn’t tell if she’d been shot there.

“I pray I’m not misunderstood,” the Captain said to her. “I don’t enjoy this.”

She could hear the swipe of his thumb over the pan, the tumble of powder into the barrel — a pause, then a little more.

She pulled harder on the oars. Her breathing was erratic. Her forearm was burning.

“You see, to avoid the Greve I need this outpost,” he said. “Were I to pay his seal-hide tax, those skins would only return four krunes apiece. I could get the same selling herrings and hake.”

Against the mill’s light his shoulders rose.

Light and violent clap. This time he hit her.

Her shoulder seized with sizzling pain and despite herself she screamed. She grabbed the oar again but now her shoulder wouldn’t work so she had to twist her whole body with each stroke.

His diminishing visage stood in a cloud of gunsmoke. His powder horn was in hand. He measured out her dispatch grain-by-grain. “But Lysois — Lysois is part of Gulterland — Lysois has no such taxes. Last year I sold sixty hides for a lumen… I love Lysois.”

He chuckled as he rammed down the shot. Deep in the gun’s gullet she could hear it tamp.

“Have you ever seen a gold lumen? No, of course not. But the skins would rot before we got far enough south to escape the Greve’s navy. Thank God for this mill in the firth. Without it, we’d never make a profit.”

His shoulders rose a third time.

She leaped overboard as the gun went off. The thwart exploded where she’d sat and the frigid water swallowed her.

Her wounded shoulder was tight as a day-old corpse and her coat worked against her motion but she kicked and kicked and kept down as long as she could. Not long enough. Her head rose above the surface and she gasped.

Another gunshot. The water exploded next to her.

She fell below again, but kicked free until she bumped into something the size of a log. She surfaced and tried to get an arm around the object for support but it was supple and spun away. Then another object bumped her and she realized it was the seal corpses.

She could not scream. The water was around her taking everything and the air crackled with another shot. She kicked and kicked and kicked out away from the mill and into the dark.

***

Frozen water and frozen air. Lightless. The susurrus of wind. Heavy rain upon the rocks. Firthwater feeling out upon the stony shore.

She lay curled in the cove where she’d broken open the box. Shivering. Dying.

Thoughts and images flowed through her mind of a life remote and forgotten. A world that once was but would never be. The cold clung to her. Her shoulder burned. Her fingers and limbs burned. Somehow her heart perdured.

Through the thickening cold she heard a voice. Then saw lanternlight.

Someone she knew spoke to her. She couldn’t hear. He said he was sorry. Then he picked her up and bore her away.

Through the darkness they passed, then out of the rain and onto something soft. A small room. Rafters above. Sounding lines draped on wall pegs. Lanternlight dim lest they be found.

He pulled away the ruined coat, looked at her shoulder, and winced. “Lass…”

Water. Clean cloth. Poultice. He assembled these.

Blue lips quivered and eyes fluttered. “Callum…”

“Stay, lass. I’ll care for you.”

He removed the wetness and wrapped her in a warm, dry blanket. Her breathing was shallow and skin chilled as he studied the blue, distended marks along her clavicle each with its own thin tear stream of blood where the Captain’s gun had buried its shot pellets.

Callum’s knife was above her skin when her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “No.”

“Lass, it’s alright.”

“No… please. I’m scared.”

With his opposite hand he carefully unpeeled hers, then brought her frozen fingers to his lips and placed a kiss there.

“It’s alright,” he said. “Trust me.”

Over the next hour he carefully removed each lead ball. She winced a little. He touched her cheek. Then he put the poultice on each and sighed. “There, lass. You’ll be well.”

He made to get up, but she caught his hand again. “Stay.”

“I can’t...”

She barely heard him, but brought his hand to her heart. “Stay, just for a spell. Stay.”

He sat. She laid her head on his leg. He stroked her hair.

***

When she woke a few hours later he was gone.

The rain had stopped. It was still dark outside. The candle was out and the room lay in shadows. She rose from the covers, and in the cold ambience saw the white pelt folded at her feet.

Ignoring her burning shoulder she crawled to it and gathered it into her hands. First she felt the fur, then turned it over to study the underside: raw, but unlike the first this one showed no signs of decay or rigor.

In the darkness there she allowed herself a moment to bury her face in the perfect pelt. Aye, this was it.

She never thought she’d hold it again.

But where was Callum?

Wrapping the blanket around herself, she rose and went to the window. Suiby lay in darkness. The mill stood dark and silent. But the sloop was just disembarking.

She squinted, and saw him: a bound figure on the deck with a noose around his neck.

***

The sloop moved across the firth. Cold mist scudded in and enveloped the craft like a cave. A sailor lay on the bowsprit with a lantern dangling from one hand, desperately searching for shoals like a man who’d lost something.

On deck, a sailor knotted his fist again and dug it into Callum’s gut. Callum gasped and he stood on his toes to keep from suffocating, for he dangled by the neck from a rope tied to the end of the mainsail’s gaff boom, suspended over the deck. His eye was swollen shut and his lip split and his whole face was turning pale from the noose.

The Captain was sitting apart from them, loading his matchlock with ritualistic solemnity.

“Larboard!” shouted the man on the bowsprit with a note of terror. “Larboard rocks!”

They turned the rudder, and the boom went with it. The crew watched Callum’s toes dance to keep his head up, the planks slick from the volumes of blubber that had spilled when they’d carried it below deck. The ship turned gently. The boom shifted back, pulling Callum with it. The crew laughed.

The Captain rose and walked to the prisoner, then raised the flared muzzle until it sat beneath Callum’s chin as though offering him a drink from it. “That’s the last of the rocks I believe. We’re over the firth’s deep point now, methinks. See, pilot? We’ll make it to the ocean without you. We don’t need you.”

Callum choked and gasped. His time was nigh, but if he hadn’t offered himself they’d have torn Suiby apart. He knew he’d die when he’d submitted himself. These were agreeable terms.

“I already killed that accomplice of yours. Tell me where the white skins are and I’ll drown you here in your home. Refuse and I’ll haul you down the keel.”

“Starboard!” shouted the man at bowsprit. “No wait, not a shoal… ‘twas a—”

His words cut short. All they heard was a splash and his light went out.

Several men went running to the bow. They swung their lanterns and called to him.

Toward the stern another shriek, but it was curtailed and another man hit the water.

The Captain thumbed his gun’s hammer back.

Callum was choking and his one eye rolled up toward the topsail high aloft when she appeared before him, barefoot with that old coat pulled over her, hair sopping wet and dark eyes alight. A beautiful, fiery thing. Over her shoulder lay the white seal pelt.

He sputtered.

She put a finger to her lips. Then she set down the lantern she’d stolen, reached up with a knife, and sawed away the rope around his neck.

He hit the deck at the same time the crew began shouting.

“Run! Run!” she said, driving him to scramble away though his hands were still bound.

He tried to ask where, then saw water and fell into the darkness.

“Stop!” the Captain ordered.

Barefoot she stood on the gunwale, lantern in one hand and seal pelt in the other. She turned slowly to gaze at her nemesis and his crew.

“I know not how you got here,” the Captain said, “but surrender the skin and I won’t shoot.”

Her chin rose.

“I shan’t miss from this distance.” He aimed the gun in one arm. Its flanged lips gaped at her. “The skin. Now.”

She tore off her coat and threw it at their feet, and they exclaimed to witness her barren defiance. But following the coat she hurled down the lantern, igniting the spilled blubber which raced below deck and roared instantly into an inferno.

Then, leaping for the water, she pulled the white skin around herself and transformed into a seal.

Down into the depths she shot quicker than a dart as the sloop burned and glowed above her and the surface went white with the sailors leaping into the frigid water. She found Callum drowning near the silty bottom far away from the flames and light, and sloughing the skin from her torso she locked her lips upon his and gave him life.

***

Winter came and winter left. The first warm spring breeze blew in from the ocean and touched the mouth of the Firth of Merei, where his farm stood.

Each evening he sat at the sandy beach. The waves rolled in and out, and he thought of a lass he’d known, or perhaps had only imagined so fantastic was the tale.

The tide came in and touched his foot. He sighed and got up to leave, then turned as he saw something white emerging from the waves.

She rose and stood. As beautiful as he’d remembered her, smiling at him in the evening light. Out of the surf she stepped with bare feet impressing on the sand and white fur wrapped around her like a robe. She walked up and stood before him so closely. She stared at him and was smiling and his breath was gone.

“Lass…” he said, but she kissed him and made him forget his words.

“What’s my name, Callum?”

“Selkie.”

Thanks for reading! If you liked this story, you might also like this story I wrote:

Wyrmslayer

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