What are you?

“Can you keep a secret?”

The four year old pre-schooler I was babysitting looked like she would burst. What would make a little girl with a turned up nose and pointed little chin light up like that?

I was making a little extra during reading week at university by taking care of a professor's child while a group of them had gone on a ski vacation.

“Of course, I can keep a secret.” I was curious.

“Come with me,” she slid out of my lap, where I’d been helping her dress for the snow. We were going to build a snowman. She grabbed my mitten covered hand with hers, the bright pink hidden trustingly inside my black one.

She reached up to open the door to the back yard, and I was surprised at her strength. The brass trimmed oak door swung back with ease, and I had to dodge to avoid a hit to my chest. The storm door went without much protest in spite of the three inches of heavy wet snow. I sighed. I’d have to make sure to shovel off the deck before it froze. I didn’t like the idea of having to break an icy crust in the morning.

“We have to hurry,” Elise grabbed her toy shovel and bucket. The toys looked out of place in the white winter wonderland, but she insisted on carrying them. “Bring the big shovel too!” She pointed to where it was leaned up against the railing.

“Look, it’s almost buried,” Her voice took on a piercing tone, designed to get attention.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn’t stop running. I flipped the shovel behind me dragging it along with the curve down.

She dashed ahead of me toward the drooping branches of the Douglas fir windbreak at the back edge of their yard. Turning around she shouted, “Hurry up. Daddy knows where they are, but I have to show you.”

What on God’s earth was she talking about? I slogged through the drifts trying to keep her multi-colored jacket in sight. She slid over and embankment and down toward water I heard running. Gasping I caught up to see rapids through broken shelves of ice along the edge of a creek.

“Elise, no, you’re going to drown!” She was jumping up and down on a fragile sheet of pristine clear frozen water.

“Watch, they’re here, they’ll hear me!” Her face glowed in anticipation. She was staring through the mirror like surface, pointing into the rushing water underneath.

At first, I thought it was a shadow. The sun had broken through deep grey clouds. Snow sparkled and icicles broke the light into tiny rainbows where they dripped from leafless branches.

The the bright eyes of a perfectly formed seal bobbed along under the ice.

“Oh no, I forgot the clothes, they’re by the back door.” She knelt on the ice and knocked. The little seal stopped, pressing his nose to the spot.

“I’ll be right back, Galdar.”

She dropped the bucket with the little yellow shovel and ran.

“Elise, what are you talking about?”

I tore up the slippery tracks we’d made trying to keep up with my tiny guide.

“Go back and make sure Galdar can get out of the water. We have to break open the ice near the edge. His home is under the water, it’s nice and warm, but he comes out to play with me all the time.”

Why would a seal need to get out of the water? And what was a seal, and ocean animal, doing in a creek in the middle of a small college town forest? Elise came back carrying a sweater, tee shirt, and a pair children’s ski pants. Obviously too big for her, she had them under one arm, and they were dragging along the snow as she trotted back toward the creek.

“Come on, help me break the ice!”

Elise jumped on the clear pane again.

I could see it vibrating, and I bent down, scooping her up and putting her back on the higher bank.

“I’ll use the big shovel,” and I took it from the drift where I’d jammed it before trying to chase her down. Figuring the steel handle would do a better job of putting force in a concentrated area, I motioned for the little seal to back away. How surreal, he moved back under the bank, and I could see his black eyes reflecting the sun through crystal clear water.

Grabbing the shaft of the shovel in both hands I brought it down with everything I had, and a spider web of cracks appeared. Two more solid blows and the entire piece shattered, tiny floes disappearing swiftly into the rapidly flowing creek. Before I could blink the little seal lifted himself onto the shore ice and began to elongate.

Right there, as Elise waited patiently and I stood with my mouth gaping, its flippers turned into furry feet, and a boy, perhaps six inches taller than my charge emerged from a pelt that fell around those hobbit toes. His hands stayed furred as well, and Elise handed him clothes which he pulled on with the ease of long practice.

I gawked like I was watching a circus sideshow act. I couldn’t have been more gobsmacked if I’d seen a set of conjoined twins trying to move in the same direction back to back.

“Cute, aren’t they?”

I dissolved into a heap in the snow. I woke shivering to a shower of snow and ice crystals hitting my face. Galdar and Elise had their hands full of more to drop on me but stopped when they saw my eyes open. Let me tell you, if I’d opened them any wider, they would have popped right out of their sockets.

The woman on the bank was outrageously beautiful. Chocolate brown waist length hair, and a face that reminded me of Elise’s little stubborn chin. She stepped into clothes, which came from a waterproof rubber bag on the shore. She wrapped the two pelts into compact bundles, stuffed them back into the deep blue bag, and stomped her feet into winter boots. Her toes and fingers were long and elegant, no sign of hairiness like the boy’s.

“W-w-w-what ar-ar-are you?” I was stuttering, shivering, and scared almost witless.

“Sorry, I’m Elise’s mother, she didn’t inherit the silkie genes. Our son did.”

“Silkies?” I must have sounded like a dolt. “I’ve never heard of silkies.”

“Oh, we’re a rare offshoot. Fresh water types like myself, are almost unheard of. We’ve been living in the the creek bank since I fell in love with her father back when he was visiting Scotland after he finished his studies.”

I shook my head; this was the stuff of legends and myths. The professor I was babysitting for, was teaching Scottish folklore and myths. His books on the subject were world renowned. Now I knew why.

“Silkies are legends,” I sputtered.

“And legends have a grain of truth in them, they have to start from something seen, if unbelievable,” she countered with a wide smile.

“Why does Galdar have fur on his feet and hands?” I clapped my hand over my mouth as soon as the words were out. I could have asked her anything else, but that dumb question popped out.

“He’s a boy. When he becomes a man, it will disappear as surely as mine did when I grew up. But now that you have been so kind as to break the ice over our creek and give us an exit, we can go up to the house.”

“Does Elise visit you under the water?” I was thinking about how she’d said her little friend had a warm place to live.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t do that to her. We’re warm enough Galdar and I, but when we’re in the water or close to it, we stay in our silkie form. It insulates from the worst of the cold and we don’t feel it. But as it is right now, let’s start walking. We do get cold without our pelts on.” She began the trek along the path Elise, and I had made on our way down.

Galdar and Elise were well ahead of us and this goddess sprung from the water followed her children with long strides. I slipped and skidded as I tried to quit gawking at her.

She turned to see what was keeping me and grinned again. Her face alight with amusement. And then as the sun danced away behind a cloud, her visage grew pensive, and hardened. As I think about her years later, I understood the underlying threat veiled in her next question. I knew as sure as I was breathing, she’d finish me if I didn’t answer correctly.

“Can you keep a secret?”