The brides of Rollrock Island

On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings--and to catch their wives.

The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment.

Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire, despair, and transformation. With devastatingly beautiful prose, she reveals characters capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also unspoken love.

Daniel Mallett "The old witch is there," said Raditch, peering over the top to Six-Mile Beach. "Well settled with her knitting." "It's all right. We're plenty," said Grinny. "We're plenty and we have business," James said with some bluster--he was as scared of her as anyone. He shook his empty sack. "We have been sent by our mams. We're to provide for our families." "Yes, we've come all this way," said Oswald Cawdron. "We have." And down the cliff we went. It was a poisonous day. Every now and again the wind would take a rest from pressing us to the wall, and try to pull us off it instead. We would grab together and sit then, making a bigger person's weight that it could not remove. The sea was gray with white dabs of temper all over it; the sky hung full of ragged strips of cloud. We spilled out onto the sand. You can fetch sea-hearts two ways. You can go up the tide wrack; you will find more there, but they will be harder, drier for lying there, and many of them dead. You can still eat them, but they will take more cooking and, unless your mam boils them through the night, more chewing. They are altogether more difficult. Those of us whose mams had sighed or dads had smacked their heads for bringing that sort went down toward the water. Grinny ran ahead and picked up the first heart, but nobody raced him; hearts lay all along the sea-shined sand there, plenty for all our families. They do not keep, once collected. They can lie drying in the tide wrack for days and still be tolerable eating, but put them in a house and they'll do any number of awful things: collapse in a smell, sprout white fur, explode themselves across your pantry shelf. So there is no point grabbing up more than your mam can use. Along we went, in a bunch because of the witch. She sat some way along the distance we needed to go, and exactly halfway between tide line and water, as if she meant to catch the lot of us. She had a grand pile of weed that she was knitting up beside her, and another pile of blanket she had already made, and the end of her bone knitting hook jittered and danced at her shoulder as she made more, and the rest of her looked as immovable as rocks, except her swiveling head, which watched us, watched the sea, swung to face us again. "Oh," breathed James. "Maybe we can come back later." "Come now, look at this catch," I said. "We will gather them all up and run home and it will be done. Think how pleased your mam will be! Look at this!" I lifted one; it was a doubler, one sea-heart clammed upon another like hedgehogs in the spring. "She spelled Duster Kimes potty," he whimpered. "Kimeses are all potty," I said. How like my dad I sounded, so sensible, knowing everything. "Duster is just more frightenable than the rest. Come, look." And I thrust a good big heart into his hands, sharp with barnacles to wake him up. The ones that still float are the best, the most tender, though the ones that have landed, leaning in the wet with sea-spit bubbled around them, are fine, and even those that have sat only a little, up there along the drying foam, are still good. The other boys were dancing along the wrack up there, gathering too much, especially Kit Cawdron. He was only little and he had no sense; why didn't Raditch stop him? We would have to tip most of that sack out, or half the town would stink up with the waste. "They'll not need to go as far as us," said Grinny at my elbow. I dropped a nice heavy-wet heart in my sack. "We could get them back down here, to walk along with us, maybe." No sooner had I said it than Grinny was off up the beach fetching them. He must have been scareder than he looked. I busied myself catching floating hearts without sogging my pants hems. Some folk ate the best hearts raw, particularly mams; they drank up the liquor inside, and if there was more than one mam there they would exclaim how delicious it was, and if not they would go quiet and stare away from everyone. If it was only dads there, they would say to each other, "I cannot see the attraction myself," and smack their lips and toss the heart skin in the pot for boiling with the rest. If you boiled the heart up whole, that clear liquor went to an orange curd; we were all brought up on that, spooned and spooned into us, and some lads never lost the taste. I quite liked it myself, but only when I was ailing. It was bab food, and a growing lad needed bread and meat, mostly. Anyway, the wrack hunters came down and made a big crowd with us. Harper picked up a wet heart and weighed and turned it, and emptied his sack of dry ones to start again. Kit Cawdron watched him, in great doubt now. "Why don't you take a few of these, Kit," I said, "instead of those jawbreakers? Your mam will think you a champion." He stared at the heart glistening by his foot, and then came alive and upended his sack. Oh, he had some rubbish in there; they bounced down the shore dry as pompons. His brother Oswald was dancing in and out of the water-edge, not caring what Kit gathered. I picked up a few good hearts, if small. "See how the shells are closed on it? And the thready weed still has some juice in it, see? Those are the signs, if you want to make mams happy." "Do they want small or big?" Kit said, taking one. "Depends on her taste. Does she want small and quicker to cook, or fat and full of juice? My mam likes both, so I take a variety." And now we were quite close to the witch, in the back of the bunch, which was closer, quieter, and not half so lively as before, oh no. And she was fixed on us, the face of our night horrors, white and creased and greedy. "Move along past," I muttered. "Plenty on further." "Oh, plenty!" said Misskaella, making me jump and stiffen. "But no one wants to pause by old Misska and be knitted up, eh? No one wants to become piglets in a blanket!" Her eyes bulged in their cavities like glistening rock-pool creatures; I'd have wet myself, if I'd had anything in me to wet with. "We're only collecting sea-hearts, Misskaella," said Grinny politely, and I was grateful to him for dragging her sights off me. "Only!" she said, and her voice would tear tin plate. "Only collecting!" "That's right, for our mams' dinners." She snorted, and matter flew out one of her nostrils and into the blanket. She knitted on savagely. The bone's rustling in the weed sent my boy-sacks up inside me like startled mice to their hole. "That's right. Keep 'em sweet, keep 'em sweet, those pretty mams." There was a pause, she sounded so nasty, but Grinny took his life in his hands and went on. "That's what we aim to do, ma'am." "Don't 'ma'am' me, sprogget!" We all jumped. "Move along, all of you, and stop your gawking," spat the witch. "What's to see? You think I'm ugly? Well, so are your dads, and some of you yourselves. Look at you, boy-of-Baker, with your face like a balled fist. So I'm out alone? What of it? You think all women are maundering mere-maids like your mams, going about in a clump? Staring there like folk at a hanging--get out of my sight, before I emblanket you and tangle you up to drown!" Well, we didn't need her to say it twice. "You can never tell which way she'll go," murmured Grinny as we scuttled on. "You did grand, Grin," said Raditch. "I don't know how you found a voice." And Kit, I saw, was making sure to keep big Batton Baker between himself and the old crow. "Sometimes she's all sly and coaxy? And sometimes she loses her temper like now." "Sometimes all she does is sit and cry and not say a word or be frightening at all," said Raditch. "Granted, that's when she's had a pot or two." We collected most efficiently after that, and when we were done we described a wide circle around behind Misskaella on our way back to the foot of the path. "From behind she's not nearly so bad," I said, for she was only a dark lump down there like a third mound of weed, her hook end bobbing beyond her shoulder. Misskaella Prout Yes, Misskaella, seals. See? She loves them! The seals gleamed in the sunshine. I tried to crawl to them, but Bee held firm to my ankle, and I could not go. Pink flowers on long stems nodded about my ears. I did not even have enough of a mind to know that the cliff dropped away there; I thought that the seals lay on the ground right in front of me, that they were seething worms or caterpillars, sleek and soft-looking. I thought I could catch up a handful of them, and understand them as I understood everything, by putting them in my mouth. Ann Jelly carried me down the cliff path, back and forth in a tipped-steep world. As we went, I saw the seals more truly. They were grown-up-people-sized; they were bigger even than that. Still I reached for them. I leaned out from Ann Jelly's shoulder, and when she turned I leaned across her face. Look, she's not at all afraid, she said. They would roll on you and crush you, Missk, for all their big friendly eyes. How they smell! Oh, the king of them down there, fighting off those ones, isn't he the ugliest thing you ever laid eyes on? I did not even see the king, for all the mothers so close to me, for all the seal babies that roamed and moaned over them. I did not find their smell foul; it was all one with their fascination. The mothers looked warm; I wanted to crawl over their hills, so much softer than those rocks and sharp periwinkles I had explored before, so much freer than being clasped tightly to Ann Jelly's side and not carried where I wanted. Why did we hang back so? Why did she not put me down, so that I could crawl to them and climb among them? Why did Bee turn us back, when we had only strolled once and distantly along the edge of the herd? Why must we climb away to the seal-less parts of the world? We might touch them! They might like to be patted, as dogs and cats did. Their babies might approach and speak to us! I pushed myself high against Ann Jelly's shoulder and watched the seals sink away. I would have cried at the loss of them, if I'd not been so busy being surprised by them, a flap of life here, a surge there, a head lifting to regard us. We went home, and tea and bread happened as always, its clatter and talk held in by the kitchen walls, so different from the flying world outside, the wind and sun. I was tucked in between Tatty and Grassy Ella, behind my towering teacup. And you should have seen Missk with the seals, Mam, down at Crescent! Lorel said across the table. I raised my face hopefully from my bread. Sometimes when they talked of me, Mam lost her sharp look. She even smiled on me now and then. I should? Mam poured and put down the pot. She looked at me, and Lorel's words went in and pinched her face tighter. I watched her around my cup with one eye and then with the other. She couldn't keep her eyes off them! said Bee, out of sight of me. She wanted to crawl in among them. Of course we did not let her. She sounded nervous now. She must have caught sight of Mam. It's true, she was very interested, Ann Jelly apologized. I have never seen her so fixed on anything-- Strange, Mam said. Was anyone else about, at Crescent Corner? There was a pause full of worry at Mam's loud voice, then, 'Twas just us six, Bee's voice came timidly. Just us six, and a thousand seals, said Grassy, poking over her bread all unawares. Good, said Mam. Watch her near those things. She watched me hard herself. And don't tell anyone else of this, that she loves them. No one needs to know that. Do you understand? We were all quiet. Grassy looked down at me. My face tried a squashed-feeling smile at her, but she did not smile back. Yes, Mam, said Bee. Nanny Prout's house smelt of the ages, and was gloomy from all those years holding only Nanny. She had never wanted company, said Dad, but had shut herself away from everyone, even us her family. She would still have been shut away if she'd had her choice, but because she was so ill Aunt Baxter and Aunt Roe could busy their ways in and interfere. It was they who had told us to come; this was the last time Nanny would be fit to see us, they'd said. Aunt Roe had put us in the chilly parlor. The dead fireplace was hidden behind a screen; a dark dresser loomed against the wall. Mam and Dad sat on the edge of the strange sideways couch. The pin in Mam's shawl sucked all the light from the room, so that the rest of us must sit in dusk. Her hair, freshly tidied, left her face out in the cold, unsoftened. I wore a dress newly handed down from Tatty, and I felt blowsy and floaty in it, not held together properly; cold air crept in under the skirt. I clambered up between Mam and Dad, and drew some warmth off them. Nobody spoke; that was alarming. No girl whispered, so Billy had nothing to snipe at. We all listened to the sickroom, the clinks and footfalls there, the murmuring aunts, the silence from the bed. We hardly knew Nanny Prout, any of us children. Ann Jelly remembered her outside Fisher's, windblown, shouting (She didn't even seem to know I was a relative!). Billy and Bee and -Lorel had seen her in an armchair--perhaps that armchair, with the brown flowers on. I had no idea who she was, what she looked like, whether I should like her or be afraid. But her dying must be tremendously important; look at us waiting about so warily. The whole house, with the whole day and town beyond it, leaned in over her bed, preparing itself. What would it be like? Was a near-dead nanny awful to look upon? I feared so, from Mam and Dad's silence and stillness either side of me. Excerpted from The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.