REMARKABLE REVELS
An untold story from There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
By DAVID M. BARNETT
I first see them by the light of the tower, that shines every night, because the light never goes out. The keeper told me that; in fact, all the keepers have told me that, last three or four that I remember since I was a young pup, anyway. The new keeper – I call him new, but he’s been here, what seven years now? Eight? – is called Martin Burney. They have two names, the humans. Sometimes more. I suppose that’s because there are so many of them, at least compared to seals. I only have one name. Martin Burney gave it to me. It’s Bruce.
So the light never goes out, and it shines across the black Welsh water, sweeping over Bethan’s Reef, where the rest of my colony sleeps. We sleep a lot, Atlantic Greys. When we’re not swimming and hunting and sporting in the shallows. The others don’t talk, not to humans. Only I do that. They say there’s nothing a human could say that would interest them, unless it’s to say there’s a shoal of fish heading our way, or maybe a shark.
I know sharks. Got the scars to prove it, haven’t I? That’s why the keeper, Martin Burney, gave me my name. Something to do with a film.
I had no idea what a film was, so Martin Burney told me. This is why I talk to humans. The other seals think they’re mundane and boring, but they sometimes tell you about strange, wonderful, magic things.
And this light that never goes out, it shows them to me, this night, this special night. I know this night. They call it Noson Gyflaith. Sometimes they also call it Christmas Eve.
Humans never give a thing one name if they can give it two.
Sorry, I’m getting distracted again. That happens a lot. You want to know what the light of the tower shows me. It is the white horses.
Sometimes people call the foaming crests of the waves white horses, and I suppose they do look a little like that, if you squint and they’re far out to sea. That’s not what these white horses are, though. These are actual white horses. Galloping across the dark sea, jumping the rising waves, their hooves splashing in the brine. And on their backs, riding them?
Dead people.
I suppose I should set the scene a little more. Martin Burney told me that, when he was talking about his book. He’s writing a book, see, though he seems to be not writing it more than he’s writing it. And I had to ask what a book was. It’s a story, apparently, but one that you set down, in words, on paper. I’m not sure I hold with that. I like stories, as do all seals. But stories are meant to be told. And in the telling, they shift and ebb and flow and rage, like the sea. You tell a story one day, then tell that story another day, it’ll never be the same story. If you write it down, in words that never change, you make that story as immutable as the land, not as changeable as the sea. The story can’t grow.
Not true, said Martin Burney. Stories you write down do change, but subtly. It depends on who’s reading it. One person’s reading of a story might be different than another’s. Books are subjective, he said.
So. This Noson Gyflaith, this Christmas Eve, this 24th day of December , it is a dark, clear night, as black as the deeps, and the Manx Shearwaters are crying their eerie cries, and the trees are shaking their leafless limbs in a cold, Atlantic wind that blows in from far away. The light is shining and the seals are sleeping and in the tiny window near the top of the tower I can see the silhouette of Martin Burney, writing his book, or not writing his book, or more likely, thinking about that girl, Gayle. And this is when they come. The white horses bearing the dead people.
I know they’re dead straight away because they glow like effervescent plankton in the starlight, and their skin is pale, their colours washed away by years in the deeps, and some of them have seaweed in their hair and barnacles on their cold flesh.
They seem to be heading over to Ynys Dwynwen, the island on which the tower stands, so I plop quietly into the water and swim to the little beach there, to await their arrival.
They thunder ashore, twenty or more, their horses steaming from the exertion in the cold air, and the leader, a bearded man in a peaked cap, leads them on a gallop around the island, the dead men whooping and cheering and causing an almighty fuss. I glance towards the tower, where Martin Burney’s outline still hunches over his typewriter, surprisingly oblivious to the rumpus.
After circling the island, the men arrive back at the beach, and their leader leans forward on his horse, looking down at me in the shallows.
“Seal,” he says, his voice all creaking timbers and taut ropes. “You see us.”
“I do,” I say. “I’m Bruce. I see you often, down there in the deeps, with your wrecks. But I’ve never seen you up here on the surface.”
The bearded man dismounts and the others follow suit. A couple of them I recognise, having spoken to them down in the darkness, on my search for Martin Burney’s father. Like him, all these men have been lost at sea, over many human lifetimes. The man squats on the shingle beach and says, “I am Captain Frost, late of the Artemis. Bound for Dublin and then New York, she went down with all hands lost in 1876. It is true that we don’t often come back to the surface, for it is too painful to walk on the land that gave us up to the cruel sea, save for this special night.”
“Noson Gyflaith. I’ve heard humans speak of it.”
He nods, and another dead man, little more than a boy in ragged, baggy trousers and a vest, hands him a stone, narrow-necked jar. Captain Frost tips it to his white, bloodless lips and puts back his head. He takes a long, long drink, and then raises the bottle, and beams a ghostly smile, and shouts, “Noson Gyflaith!”
The men all cheer, and more bottles and vessels appear, passed around them. A drumbeat sounds from somewhere, though I can’t see anyone with an instrument, and then a flute, and a harp, all colliding together like hot and cold air above the sea to create not thunder but a tune that gallops along like did the horses, now gathered to one side, grazing on the shore winter grasses.
“All of us who have been lost to the capricious sea ride up each Christmas Eve on white horses and hold our remarkable revels,” says Captain Frost. “Before the main business of the night, when we gallop to the homes of those who will be lost to the sea themselves in the coming year, and sigh upon their windows.”
“Martin Burney will be most pleased to see these revels,” I say, nodding towards the lighthouse. “He’s a writer, you know, and I expect he’ll find it most entertaining.”
Captain Frost laughs. “He’ll not see us, unless we choose it. And we do not choose it. We merely borrow this sacred land, this island, this Ynys Dwynwen, to host us this night.”
A thought strikes me, an alarming one. “You’re not here to sigh on Martin Burney’s window? He’s not to be lost at sea, like his father, this coming year?”
Captain Frost glances towards the tower, as the dead men begin to dance, linking arms and clashing their bottles and roaring with laughter and a snatched night of almost-life. They turn and twirl and spin to the music, wherever it comes from. Captain Frost says, “Maybe we will sigh upon his glass. Maybe we won’t. That’s for us to know and you to keep your nose out of, Bruce the Seal.”
“So why here? Why this year? I’ve not seen you before.”
The Captain shrugs. “The magic of Ynys Dwynwen pulls us. The light shines our way. It is as good a place as any for our remarkable revels, before our horses carry us away to flit through the troubled dreams of those who next year might join us on Noson Gyflaith.”
Then the Captain joins the throng, and a woman takes his side, with dangling earrings and seaweed braided into her long, wavy hair, her clothing silks and cottons, flowing as if to some underwater current they had brought with them. She sees me and winks one of her dark eyes, flashing a gold-toothed grin. As the music gets faster and louder, so loud I’m sure Martin Burney will look out of his window at the ruckus whether the Captain wills it or not, the woman detaches herself from the spinning mob and walks over to me, her bare feet crunching on the shingle.
“Seal,” she says, patting my head. “Our revels keep you awake.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I breathe. “Who are you?”
She stands up straight, and I imagine her at the prow of her vessel, a ship that sails the black flag. “My name was Ann Riley, an anonymous little nothing of a name. Until I took to sea, and they called me the Red Annie, the pirate queen of the Spanish Main. For a dozen years I plied my trade in those blue waters, until the Navy brought me home to stand trial, and managed to sink themselves in a storm off the coast of Anglesey, taking me with them.” She feuds me with her piercing stare. “I’ve seen you around, little seal. In the depths. Asking questions. What do you look for?”
“Not a what, a who. The father of Martin Burney, the keeper of Ynys Dwynwen. Lost at sea many years ago.”
Red Annie turns to the lighthouse, fixing it with her once-dark stare. “The keeper, eh? Is he a handsome man?”
I shrug. “I’m no judge of human beauty. He’s kind, though, and a writer.”
Annie gazes towards his tiny silhouette. “Maybe I should sigh upon his window, and he can come down to the deeps with me, and tell me stories forever.”
“Martin Burney has only one story to tell,” I say, barking a laugh. “And that is the story of Gayle. I’m sure that would pale before long, pirate queen.”
“Red Annie!”
I hadn’t noticed the music had stopped, and that the dead men had mounted their white horses again. Captain Frost hails the pirate queen again. “Red Annie! Our revels are done and we must away, to the business of this Noson Gyflaith.”
“Will you be back next year?” I say.
“Perhaps,” says Captain Frost. “Perhaps we go to somewhere other than Ynys Dwynwen.”
“I’ll keep watch out for your keeper’s father,” says Red Annie. Then she mounts her white horse, reining it in next to Captain Frost’s.
Frost raises his hand and turns his horse, the other dead men falling in behind him. Red Annie opens her palm and blows a kiss towards me, then follows suit. The sound of the pale horses’ hooves is deafening as they gallop across the island and then straight on to the black water between Ynys Dwynwen and the Llyn peninsular, flowing across it, their dark business ahead of them.
I raise a flipper to catch Red Annie’s kiss, that lands like the softest sigh upon me.
