I was not always a creature of the water.
Once, long ago, I was simply a good dog who knew where every warm hearthstone in the house was, and which cupboard the scraps were hidden in. Then the ground heaved, water roared up through the floor, and everything I knew became bubbles and darkness.
But she survived.
My Liban.
Half girl, half salmon my whole heart.
Naturally, I followed.
And now here I am, Conn is my name and I am the first madra uisce, part-otter, part-dog, wholy-chaotic , making my way down the River Bann with her, as I have done for what feels like forever. I am loyal. I am brave. I am sleek … and I am very tired of kelp.
Still, I swim at her side.
Because she needs me.
And because someone has to stop the humans from drowning every time she starts to sing.
I keep something in the pouch under my forearm, most otters keep a favourite stone there, but I am no ordinary otter, and this is no ordinary treasure.
It is a pearl.
Opalescent, milk-white, and glowing faintly in moonlight.
It formed in the mussel beds that grew over the stones of our drowned home.
If you hold it to your ear, you can hear her Liban’s humming.
I have never let Liban see it.
Because if she touched it to her tongue, she would breathe air again for a night.
She could walk the land on human legs.
She could go where I could not follow. so I guard it.
For her sake, I say.
(But perhaps also for mine.)
On the morning we reached the Skerries off Portrush, Liban was in the sort of good mood that makes seawater fizz. She rose up on a rock, hair shining like wet kelp, and sang one of her long, glad to be alive songs.
Now, I love her voice.
But humans? Humans cannot hear it safely.
Her singing is beauty at full strength, and beauty, especially hers, costs something.
Birds spiralled in midair, caught like seeds in amber.
Whales surfaced, sighing dreamily.
The waves themselves listened.
And then I saw him.
A fisherman, rowing from the East Strand.
Drawn like a moth into flame.
“Oh for fuck’s sake .. not again” I muttered, and dove.
I surfaced near the boat and tried to shout, “Turn back!”
But I am an otter. And otters are not meant to speak to humans.
The words scraped my throat like gravel.
“Man!” I wheezed. “Don’t go closer. She’ll sing you under the waves to your death.”
He blinked at me.
Did he heed me?
Of course not. He rowed harder.
Humans.
Lovely creatures, but do not have the sense that the creator gave limpits.
I felt panic rise in me like a tide. I could not lose another to her voice. I would not.
So I made a decision.
The kind that hurts all the way down to the bones.
I scrambled up into his boat, soaked, indignant, shimmering with bit of stray wrack and rummaged in my pouch.
Oisín stared as I held out my pearl.
The pearl I had carried since the day the house drowned.
The pearl that hummed with Liban’s mother’s voice.
It glowed so brightly that his eyes widened, and the music of Liban’s singing slipped from his ears like water.
“Take it,” I said, my voice cracking.
“Just go home … PLEASE!”
He did.
Greed, curiosity, fear, I don’t care which carried him back to shore.
He left alive.
Liban’s song faded.
And I slipped overboard, heart heavy as an anchor.
I had given away the last echo of her mother.
And she would never know why.
Humans say he changed after that.
That he could hear whales speak from the depths of the North Channel
That he could hear seals laughing underwater.
That sometimes he woke at night hearing a woman’s voice humming a lullaby from somewhere impossibly deep.
They say he became a strange sort of man.
Quiet.
Listening to things no one else could hear.
Good.
Let him learn what it is to carry a song.
Liban noticed I was quiet as we swam north.
She kept brushing her hand over my head, gentle as tide foam.
“Are you hurt, little one?” she asked.
Only my heart, I thought.
But I only nuzzled her fingers.
She did not press me.
That is her kindness.
We reached Rathlin in a dusk of purple water and wheeling gulls. While Liban basked on a warm black rock, I dove for mussels, out of habit more than hunger.
And there, in a cradle of sea-grass, I found it:
Another pearl.
Larger. Brighter.
Humming not with her mother’s voice…
…but with mine.
I brought it to her at once, unable to contain myself.
She pressed it to her ear and laughed, bright as bells under the waves.
“Conn,” she said.
“It sings of courage. Yours.”
And she gathered me close, her cheek warm where it touched my fur.
In that moment, I understood:
Beauty costs.
But courage is repaid.
Always.
We swam on together through the darkening blue, her song soft now, safe, drifting over the water like a promise.
And me?
I kept the new pearl in my pouch, of course.
A proper otter must have a treasure.
But this time, I showed it to her.
And she smiled.
Which was worth more than any pearl in the sea.