Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie - the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels - it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
The fisherman’s wife was soft-spoken and rarely looked up. When she walked, it was with small, unsteady steps, as if every singe pace hurt her feet. No shoe made by any mortal cobbler suited her, and she protected her feet with sheepskin and birch bark.
Children mocked her, and called her “Strangewife”. And her husband drubbed them for it.
She paid them no heed.
All she did, it seemed to the rest of the village, was go to the lake and feed the swans. She would sit by the shore, hour upon hour, from dawn til dusk, watching their graceful paths with longing eyes.
And in the rain, she would weep as she handed pieces of bread to the swans.
On one day, as the sky darkened, the Queen of the Swans came to her and whispered, “Come swim with us, we will cheer your sorrows.”
“I cannot,” said the Strangewife, and turned away for her home.
On the second day, the Queen of the Swans did not wait for evening. She came straight to the Strangewife and whispered, “Come swim with us, you have nothing to fear from our kind.”
“I cannot. I can not swim. I will surely drown.”
And just as the Queen of the Swans was about to object, the Strangewife threw the rest of her bread in a scatter and ran as fast as she was able, sobbing all the way.
Yet, on the third day, she was back. The Queen of the Swans laid her head in the Strangewife’s lap and whispered, “I am sorry I upset you. We can teach you to swim. We will not let you drown.”
“I cannot,” said the Strangewife. “And you cannot. For my husband stole and hid my sealskin. If I venture into deep water, I will die.”
The Queen of the Swans felt a great fury rising inside her, but knew better than to yell near the poor Strangewife. She had enough sorrows. “Selkie woman, much wronged,” she whispered, “Leave you a trail of bread behind you as you go to the fisherman’s house. We will take care of the rest.”
For the first time since anyone could remember, the Strangewife smiled.
She did as she was told, and the Queen of the Swans and all her subjects followed the trail all the way to the fisherman’s home.
Dawn came, and swans covered the ground, the roof, and the boat like snow. They blocked the doors and the windows.
You may know, my dearies, that swans sing a lovely song when they are about to die. What you may not know is that, while they live, a swan has a terrible, terrifying voice should they speak above a whisper.
Imagine, if you will, a thousand and more swans, more than you could count, with their voices raised in one will.
“FISHERMAN! WHERE IS YOUR WIFE’S SEALSKIN?”
Some say he gave it willingly. Some say he tried to fight. Some say that the swans found it by themselves. Nobody knows for certain. The fisherman could not tell it, there was no trace of him to be found. The Strangewife could not tell it, for she took back her sealskin and vanished. And the swans will not tell it. They keep their secrets well.
But if you find the little village where no fisherman dares take a Selkie’s skin, nor comes near a swan for fear of his life… there, in a lake, you may see a seal swimming happily with the Queen of the Swans.
