An Excerpt from Novel 3: The Cliffs of Moher

They stood beneath O’Brien’s Tower at the Cliffs of Moher, Brian nearest the edge, Grace next to him, Annie and Louise a step back and holding hands, all standing past the signs that established the safe boundary. The winds were fierce on this cold winter morning but they found it exhilarating for they were dressed for worse. They stood together, alone with their thoughts, more than 600 feet above the Atlantic; the tower was built very near the highest point of the cliffs. The wind promised crashing waves but offered only an easy swell and modest chop of softly cresting waves below them and all up and down the shore.

They studied the cliffs’ face and shoreline north and south; the face of the cliffs spattered and splattered with white stains everywhere, from the great number of seabirds that perch and roost and nest in the cracks and on the small ledges the cliffs’ face provides. It was too early in the year for the nesting colonies of razorbills and guillemots to return from their winter range but the fulmar was a permanent resident and there were plenty of them, white and grey birds swooping and soaring and resting on this ledge or that.

It was Annie who saw them first, near a large rock, just off shore. She saw two of them, rising with the swell, falling with it, riding the waves around the rock as if playing, and she called their name to the wind. “Nibiinaabe.”

Grace heard the magic in her friend’s voice and turned and saw the tail end of two seals surface dive…but were they seals?

Louise heard Annie too but turned too late to see them and she spoke to Annie in their native tongue. “You saw man fish water spirit?”

Annie pointed at the rock, to the south. “Two. I saw two.”

Brian listened, smiled, and turned to Grace. “I’m thinkin’ we’re hearin’ a language never spoke here before…” but Grace wasn’t paying attention, she was asking her friends “Seals?”

Annie shook her head no. “I don’t know the seal. I saw Nibiinaabe.”

Like her mother Grace O’Malley loved learning and speaking the language of the Ojibway, but this was a new word for her. “Nibiinaabe?”

“Nibiinaabe is a water spirit. With the head and body of a man, or a woman, but no legs. Instead of legs, they have the tail of a fish.”

“I saw the tails, but that’s all. I thought they were an animal that lives in the oceans called seals.”

Brian was delighted. “Sure there are mermaids in these waters. But if you ask me it’s more likely what you saw was a selkie.”

“Mum told stories about selkies.”

Brian told the girls about selkies, creatures who lived in the North Atlantic waters around Scotland and Ireland. They took on the appearance of seals in the ocean but could remove their seal skins to live on land as humans. They carefully guarded their skins when they walked the earth, and often had families. And when they were human they had remarkable powers.

“Perhaps you saw selkies.”

Annie said to Louise. “I do not know the seal. I saw Nibiinaabe. Two of them.” And Grace understood.