Read Chapter 7: The Songline

The ringing in Tam’s ears had finally stopped, but Isla could see the residue of the seizure still moving beneath his skin—a shimmer, like light through shallow water, that came and went with his breath. He sat on the edge of the cot in the field station’s main room, wrapped in a wool blanket Morag had brought from the village, and he was humming.

Not the frantic, half-remembered fragments from before. Something structured. Something with intention.

Isla had her phone out before she realized she’d moved. She pressed record and caught the tail end of the melody, a descending series of notes that felt like stepping down into cold water. Tam stopped when he noticed her, blinking as if surfacing.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “That—what was that?”

He shook his head slowly, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know. It just came. Like it was already there, waiting.”

She played back what she’d caught, and the sound of it made the hairs on her arms stand. Seven notes, maybe eight. A pattern that looped once and cut off. She played it again, and Tam winced.

“It burns,” he said, tapping his chest. “Not the skin. Deeper. Like something pulling.”

Isla set the phone down and sat across from him. The pendant was in her pocket—it had been warm all morning, a dull heat she’d grown almost used to against her thigh. She didn’t take it out. Not yet.

“Can you hum the rest?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. For a long moment, nothing. Then his lips parted, and the melody came again—fuller this time. More complete. Isla recorded it in one take, her hand steady even as her pulse climbed.

When he finished, Tam opened his eyes and looked at her with something close to fear. “I know what it’s for,” he said. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. It’s a song for calling water.”

---

Fiona at the archive confirmed the first part before Isla even finished explaining. She’d sent the recording over WhatsApp and received a reply in under a minute: *Bring Morag. Now.*

Morag MacLeod was sitting in the archive’s back room, a cup of tea cooling in her hands, when Isla and Tam walked in. Fiona had the recording playing on her laptop speakers, the melody thin and reedy through the small device. Morag’s face had gone the color of old bone.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, though her eyes were on Tam.

“He hummed it,” Isla said. “After the seizure.”

Morag set the cup down with a clatter. “That’s the seal-wife’s lament. The lost one. The song that summons the tide.” She looked at Fiona, who nodded slowly. “My grandmother knew the first six notes. She said the rest was taken from the world when the last seal-wife left Taransay—taken back to the deep where it belonged.”

“Summons the tide,” Isla repeated. “That’s a myth. A song can’t—” She stopped. She’d seen a ring of fish spiral itself around Tam’s bed in the night. She’d heard a lullaby from a hundred yards out to sea. “Okay. Hypothetically. What does that mean?”

“It means he’s calling something,” Morag said. “Or something’s calling through him.” She leaned forward, eyes sharp on Tam. “Did you mean to sing it, boy?”

Tam shook his head. “It came out of me. I couldn’t stop it.”

“Like a sneeze,” Fiona muttered. Morag shot her a look.

Isla stepped between them. “The song—what happens if it’s finished? If someone sings the whole thing?”

Morag’s jaw tightened. “The tide rises. Not the normal tide. A tide that doesn’t go by the moon.” She paused. “The last time the full lament was sung, the water came up past the churchyard and stole three men from their boats. That was before my time, but my grandmother saw it. She never sang again.”

The room went quiet. Tam’s hands were gripping the blanket around his shoulders, knuckles white.

“I won’t sing it again,” he said. “I swear.”

Morag looked at him with something close to pity. “That’s not how it works, lad. The song isn’t yours to hold.”

---

By afternoon, word had spread. Isla didn’t know how—a village as small as Taransay had its own nervous system, and Morag’s silence after the archive visit had apparently been loud enough. She was restocking the station’s first-aid kit when the knocking started.

Three men stood on the gravel outside, Angus MacNeil at the front. His face was wind-burned and grim. Behind him, the other two—brothers, Isla thought—held their caps in their hands like they were at a funeral.

“Dr. MacRae,” Angus said. “We need to talk.”

Isla stepped out, closing the door behind her. “He’s resting.”

“Good. Keep him resting. And then send him away.” Angus’s voice was low, careful. “I hear he sang something this morning.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Morag’s cousin. My wife. It doesn’t matter.” Angus looked past her at the station’s window, where the curtain had shifted. “We all saw the scales on him, Dr. MacRae. We all heard what Morag said at the ceilidh. He’s not a man, and the longer he stays, the worse it’ll get.”

“He saved a life,” Isla said. “He washed up on my shore and I pulled him out. He’s not a threat.”

“The sea doesn’t send threats,” Angus said. “It sends debts. And that one—” he nodded toward the station, “—that one is either payment or promise, and I don’t intend to be on this island when the sea comes to collect.”

The brothers muttered their agreement. Isla felt the pendant warm in her pocket again, a pulse of heat that matched her heartbeat.

“He needs to find his skin,” Angus continued, quieter now. “That’s the only way this ends clean. He finds it before the full moon, puts it on, goes back to the water—maybe the debt’s paid and we’re all free of it. But if he doesn’t find it—” he shook his head. “The sea will stop asking. That’s what she told me, that night I pulled her from the net. She said, ‘When my kin stop asking, they start taking.’ And that’s what we’re afraid of.”

Isla stood very still. *She said.* The woman in Angus’s net, twenty years ago. The one he’d freed.

“What did she look like?” Isla asked.

Angus blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“The selkie woman. Twenty years ago. What did she look like?”

He hesitated, and something flickered in his face—uncertainty, or memory. “Young. Dark hair. Green eyes that weren’t right—too bright, like sea glass in the sun.” He paused. “She had your chin.”

Isla’s breath caught.

“That’s coincidence,” she said, too quickly.

“Is it?” Angus held her gaze for a long moment, then turned and gestured to the brothers. They walked back toward the village without another word.

Isla stood on the gravel, the wind off the water biting at her cheeks, and tried to remember her mother’s face. She couldn’t. She’d only ever seen photographs—her mother had died when Isla was two, and her father had burned most of them in a grief-drunk rage a year later. The one she’d kept showed a woman with dark hair and pale eyes, smiling at the camera, a blur of sea behind her.

*Too bright. Like sea glass.*

The pendant was nearly hot against her thigh now. She pulled it out, cupping it in her palm, and the spiral pattern seemed to shift in the light—turning, always turning.

Tam appeared in the doorway. His face was pale, but his eyes were clear. “What did he say?”

Isla closed her fist around the pendant. “He said you have a week.” She looked up at him, and she could feel the shape of the question forming in her chest, too heavy to hold. “Tam—do you know who your mother is?”

He stared at her. And for the first time, she saw something in his face that wasn’t confusion or fear.

It was recognition.