(Therianthropy: the mythological ability of human beings to metamorphose into other animals by means of shapeshifting)
Kindy drop off done she walks across the sand – waves lap – bemused by her daughter’s request. I need to check your back. Tone imperious. Wary. A baddy might have stolen my mummy and be zipped inside her skin.
What stories has she heard, sitting quiet, legs crossed, in the neat semicircle around the teacher’s chair?
She’s been so careful, not yet tales of warning, riddling fairies, magic mirrors, svelte-pelted beasts.
Not yet stories of shape shifting lustful gods, ravaged mortals, the terrifying bestiary of swans, serpents, stags, quail and gadfly, none of the ocean dwelling tribes, merpeople, nymphs and selkie.
Once, seems long ago now – her life before this child – she’d lived too far from the sea. Scanned the horizon daily yearning for the promise of shimmer. Wrecked shoes splashing through puddles cradling tubs of greasy chips just for their sea-side tang. She’d dreamed of a seal skin, lying crumpled, waiting, at the foot of her bed.
Smiling, she wades into soft ripples remembering that old parched self, her solace on endless winter nights a horded trove of tales of therianthropy.
The selkies her favourite, skin luminous in the moonlight, dancing naked – until spent – donned their seal skins to dive back down down to their pearl encrusted realm.
But for one, her pelt stolen, hidden by a man who desired her. Husband she called him, came to love him and their child, yet yearned, and loved, and pined until, close to death, she found the skin and swam away.
The woman wades deeper, still smiling. The cache of tales has served her well. No one has stolen her skin. Her daughter will learn these lessons too, it’s not too soon to know to be wary of crystal eyed princelings concealed traps, dancing shoes and avaricious kings.
Pausing a moment, where palest cerulean laps a sudden thought. Just perhaps, the group on the shore, struggling to close the zips of their neoprene suits, tanks waiting beside them to be hauled onto their backs, are trapped seafolk. Pined away for so long they’ve forgotten this isn’t home. After tugging on this skin they’ll glimpse something precious, something – something –
She wades a little further out and floats.
Flying Poems
1 The family stood on deck, all they possessed stowed in the hold (even their little green car.)
Watching as all those they loved waved – waved – waved – until the streamers snapped.
Steamed west across the roaring, heaving ocean under the belly of their country to a distant city perched on harsh coast at desert’s edge.
Queuing (at anchor in the shipping lane) passengers sticky in the stifling morning air gathered on deck. Waiting to enter the harbour. Extolling the vast blue dome of sky above. Marvelling at as-far-as-the-eye could see stretches of white sand fringing the land.
The mother watched. Silent. Knowing the settlers who’d arrived just a century before her birth (promised the Hesperides) dubbed this a place of sand, sin, sorrow and sore eyes.
No one knows what became of her tears. Some say phosphorescent shapes , paisley shaped – swirl and skim the waves breaking on both the shore she left and here on the glittering swell of this place her children call home.
She wades, the shore break fizzing round her bare legs late on sultry nights, eyes to the sky yearning for flight.
2 This mother, a gentle woman a brave woman took refuge from the searing heat late in the cool of night sewing for her husband, her little girls, her boy. Crisp mounds of poplin gingham seersucker –wafting, promising fresh, clean – for sun frocks shirts shorts nighties, and snug piles of vyella for winter pyjamas.
Her machine whirred long after the cicadas slept, unsure why her heart leaped as she pinned paper patterns on soft vyella (tear-drop paisleys darting, dancing) unaware she stitched in (tight) her dreams of flight.
3 If two sisters in pale blue pyjamas (the paisley print whirling) were to jump – jump – jump on the bed arms flapping until they could flap no more they must one day surely! take flight.
Jenny Hetherington has been writing for as long as she can remember, although only occasionally decides to send something out in the hope it may be read by others who love words as much as she does. She has had short fiction and poetry published in Westerly, Indigo and Cuttlefish.