The Curse of Seewiif Strand, page 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
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THE CURSE OF SEEWIIF STRAND
Copyright © 2025 V. S. Holmes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher below.
Amphibian Press
www.amphibianpressbooks.com
www.vsholmes.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-949693-27-0
Books by V. S. Holmes
THE LIMNUS CYCLE*
BLOOD OF TITANS
REFORGED
Smoke and Rain
Lightning and Flames
RESTORED
Madness and Gods
Blood and Mercy
AWAKENED
Dagger’s Dance*
STARSEDGE: NEL BENTLY
Travelers
Drifters
Strangers
Heretics*
SHORT FICTION
“The Curse of Seewiif Strand” (We Bite Back)
“Starfall” (Vitality Magazine)
“The Tempest” (Out of the Darkness)
“Disciples” (Beamed Up)
“Familiar Waters” (Love and Bubbles)
“Mere Primordium” (poem, Mystic Blue Review)
*forthcoming
To those who longed for a new beginning.
THE CURSE OF
SEEWIIF STRAND
It’s Sjoerd’s spear that brings her down. A whistle as it cuts the salty air then all our lives are irrevocably changed in a burst of sea water and blood. We don’t know yet, of course. He hauls the catch in, hand over cracked, calloused hand. We gather, jostling, joking, around the mess in the bottom of the skiff.
“Wodan,” Sjoerd swears, crouching. “Look at her,” he bids us, as if we can look at anything else.
Gleaming grey-green mottles her back and the writhing length of her eel tail, twice the length of the rest of her narrow, boney body. The white of her breast gleams pearlescent under splashes of bright blood. Sjoerd’s spear juts from her flank, bobbing each time she gasps in our too-thin air. But it’s her eyes I can’t look away from.
Black, overlarge, and fathomless like the frigid depths from which we hauled her. They glisten each time the clear membranes of her inner eyelids blink. Her face isn’t a woman’s, not really, though I see echoes of us in her, faint as the echoes of wolfblood in our scrappy hunt hounds. Gripping the iron nail hung around my throat for protection, I lean closer to peer at her. Sjoerd knocks me back.
“She’s mine.” He lifts the creature up by her kelp-laden hair, enough that he can meet her glare. Hundreds of needle teeth part in a hiss.
Why doesn’t she bite him? It’s a traitorous thought, because he’s the strongest fisherman, and we need to eat, but never has our catch looked at us with hatred. Fear, surely, and desperation as they flop about the bottom of our boat. But hatred is a human weight.
“You going to toss her back?” Sjoerd’s brother asks.
Sjoerd doesn’t answer, still staring at the creature in his grasp. His chest is heaving, arms trembling a bit and maybe it is just the exertion of fighting such a catch. Her body writhes, and Sjoerd stumbles, almost falls. I grab the sweat-damp back of his shirt before he tips over into the waves. They’re bigger now, slapping against the wood in warning.
“That wound isn’t fatal,” Koen tries again. “Let her go. Those clouds look—”
“I’m keeping her,” Sjoerd interrupts, lips twisted as he shoves the creature into the pile of suffocating fish and turns back to the rudder. “Rinus, keep look-out, we’ve enough for the day.”
I cast a glance at the day’s catch before scrambling back to my perch at the bow. It’s true, we have a good haul. But with the clouds building above us, it might be days before we can sail back out, and we don’t have enough for the village to ride out the storm. Even if Sjoerd plans on eating her. Something tugs in low in my belly at the thought, an ancient feeling akin to fear. It’s the same sensation I got when she met my eyes, stunned and bloodied at our feet. I shove it aside and set my attention to spotting any rocks looming from the depths below. Thunder rolls in the distance by the time we’re dragging the skiff up the sticky clay of the strand and when I look up to the sandy ridge above the marshes, I think I see someone standing there. Watching.
Sjoerd jerks the creature up again, eyes wide and pupils blown as if he’d taken henbane. A yank and the hooked spearhead tears free of her flesh. Rid of the crippling iron, she shrieks. We all drop, clapping our hands over tortured ears, yet Sjoerd seems unaffected. The scream burns through my bones, rattling my skull until I can think of nothing else.
A thump, and it ceases. Sjoerd’s fist is bloody, and so is the thin crest of her cheek. Though her body itself is small, her eel tail is twice my height in length, and we struggle to shove its wriggling mass into a carry net. Between her snapping teeth and long grasping fingers we’re all sporting bloody scratches by the time we’re through. The breeze picks up, chilling my exposed skin and I shrug deeper into my jacket.
The rest of the catch is divided amongst our netted packs. Sjoerd hands me the lightest one with a sneer. “Careful,” he mocks, “It’s heavy for you.”
I should be grateful they let me come at all, but fury boils in my gut. Eth’s witch named me a man last spring, no matter what anyone else argued, and as arrogant as Sjoerd is, he’s not stupid enough to balk at Hekse Inken. But out here, away from the witch’s watchful gaze, he can be as nasty as he wants. Even with the beard I sprouted after drinking those tonics our hekse made, even when I sing our history deep as Wodan’s own baritone, it’s not enough for Sjoerd. I wasn’t woman enough for him before, so I suppose it’s little surprise.
I shoulder the net of fishes and set off before he can say something else. The hike through the salt marshes is long and winding, changing with every tide, and disappearing altogether when the floods swell, turning every terp into an island. I like the floods. I’ve always been an island, battered by the waves of a town that never felt like home. Dark clouds have swallowed the sullen winter sun by the time we reach the town.
“Look what I bring to Eth!” Sjoerd strides up the single packed dirt street to the well at the town center, shouting. Black blood splatters his arms as the wounded creature writhes in the dust at his feet. “For the honor of our village, I caught her, and for the honor of my name, I will marry her. Folks will come from Fief Toer to the north, and the tribes to the south, and they will lay coin at her feet in worship, until Eth’s streets can be paved with it, until we’re the richest on the sea!”
My heart drops to my salt-splattered boots. Marry her? I stare at the creature. Palest pink muscles bunch beneath translucent skin, the blue netting of vessels pulsing through the thin membrane. I knew Sjoerd wasn’t for men, even men like me, but this?
“Sjoerd?” Elke, the miller’s daughter, appears around the corner, skirts in her hands and hair tugged loose by the wind. Her smile flickers, fades, replaced by something else as she sees his catch, dragged up on the packed clay path. “Sjoerd?” this time it’s a whisper.
I don’t like Elke, particularly, didn’t even before she caught Sjoerd’s eye in a way I knew I never could. But right now? I see her. I know that look. I know the pang when hopes tear away from reality. Sjoerd’s gaze slides over her, the way it did when we argued in the boat. Weakly, the creature’s three-fingered hands scrabble at his grip, the webbing leaving behind pearlescent mucus. She cries out, the sound weak against the rising wind. Already the smooth green-black flesh of her tail dries to brittle grey. Scales scatter on the dirt.
“Fools.”
The voice slips between anger and scorn the way it moves between a young girl’s bright tone and a hag’s coarse bark. Hekse Inken, wardwitch of Eth, shuffles to a halt beside the well. She leans on her cane, gold eyes narrowed on our group of fishers.
Sjoerd’s grin is still sharp with victory, grip tight on the net, heedless of how it cuts into the creature’s flesh.
The hekse’s age-spotted lip curling in a sneer of her own. “She will be the death of you. She’s of Nehalennia’s issue; ‘tis not been so long since the gods walked this world beside us for you to have forgotten them.”
Sjoerd scoffs, but there’s a tightness about his eyes that maybe only I see. Well, me and the hekse. “These are Wodan’s hills. And I will make this Sjoerd’s kingdom.”
“You return her, Sjoerd Lokkson and pray the goddess doesn’t take your blood in debt.”
He holds her gaze as long as he can, but even I feel the chill rolling from her body, and when lightning snaps through the clouds we all jump. “Koen, pull out the best mead. We’ve a wedding to celebrate.”
Hekse Inken stares at him a moment longer, then, wordless, retreats to her hut at the forest edge.
The drinking and dancing lasts long into the night, louder than usual, as if they’re trying to drown out the storm, and the strange, fel scent rolling in from the sea. I’ve l
•
That night, I dream of the sea, brackish and black. It fills my mouth, stings my eyes. I can’t breathe, can’t fight the crashing waves. I come to hacking, my hand muffling the sound in the common room all us young men share. My palm comes away bloody. A burning itch crawls across my forearm where the creature clawed. I roll from my furs and dress quietly, boots in my hand as I creep through the bedrolls to the door.
Outside, the air is bitter. Tiny flecks of hail skitter over the packed clay as I struggle into my boots, head pounding. The storm howls across the salt marshes. Far across the fields, I see the light of Inken’s hut, small beneath the black sky. It flickers rhythmically, and for a moment I catch the sound of her voice, raised in prayer. Or perhaps it’s the wind. There’s no moonlight through the knotted clouds, but I don’t need it as I cut behind the houses clustered on the terp and to the rear of the Lokkson’s barn.
I smell her already. The wash of brine and clay laden pluff mud.
I ease the barn door shut behind me. The sheep bleat and scatter, terrified of the creature slouched in the large mead barrel in the barn’s center. I don’t blame them. Even wounded and bound, the sight of her makes me want to run too. They’d the sense to put her in water, at least, though they hadn’t removed the net. Raw, red lines mark where the rope abrades her tail and belly. It’s not hair, but lank black bladderwrack tangled around her narrow shoulders. Her scent is heady, overpowering the familiar smells of hay and dung. Despite the humming of the nail around my throat, I inch closer.
“You know what’ll happen?” I ask her, standing just out of reach, in case she breaks free.
She hisses, straining against the rope. “You know what will happen?” she mimics my voice exactly, right down to the tremor of fear. The entangled tail thumps against the wooden side of the barrel. Each time her smooth mottled skin brushes against the iron in the stave nails, the water sizzles.
“They’ll keep you here, even now they build a tank for you. They’ll charge coin for others to come see you, and Sjoerd plans to marry you, bind you to him with an iron ring.”
Her mouth opens, all teeth. How does Sjoerd think to make her a bride?
“Iron, like this.” I fumble out the ward nail and raise it close to her. She shrieks, bloody water frothing with her efforts to escape. I slam a fist against the barrel to get her attention. It’s sticky, and smells rank. She lunges; I snap my hand back. I’ve listened to the tales. I know not to go into the forest after dusk. I know not to answer anything calling my name or speaking with my voice. I know to wear my ward nail, the one we’re each given on our naming day, and if I meet a stranger off the path, not to sup with them. I tell you this so you understand how little I care about Eth. My skin might not burn against the metal, but I know being trapped. “I don’t want that for us.”
“Us,” she mimics.
“The hekse on the hill, she says you’ll bring ruin to this town for wounding you. But maybe you’ll spare someone, should they help you.” I offer my hand, ready to jerk it back should she attack again. “Freedom for freedom?”
Her touch is bone-cold, the seas on a winter day, and her skin is too, slick, only scaled at the knuckles of her three fingers. She’s beautiful in the way of a storm. In the way of death. I feel her voice—hers, not borrowed—ringing in my bones.
“Life for life.”
I grab the net, keeping clear of her mouth, regardless of whatever truce I just struck. Wincing, I sling her over one shoulder. She’s heavy. My jerkin is soaked where she rests upon my back. I stumble from the barn and down the mounded earth of Eth’s terp. The storm has begun in earnest now, stinging rain and ice pelting from the clotted clouds. Below, the sea rises, the twisting marsh grasses swallowed in churning water. I can barely make out the path, but I renew my grip and drag her farther. She’s thrashing again, the movement doing little to further our progress and jerking my already exhausted muscles. I’ve gone numb from the cold, my feet like blocks of stone at the ends of my legs, and my fingers frozen around the coarse rope.
I stagger to a halt only when I’ve reached the strand, staring at the thundering tide. We’re below the ridge, out of the worst of the wind, but now I can hear it. It’s singing, maybe, or screaming. A wail that undulates from the waves, high, then higher still. Through the sheets of rain I think I see lights, blue and white, blooming beneath the waves. I’ve loved the sea since birth, yet there’s nothing I want less than to dip a single toe tonight. Finally, I wade in just far enough to shove the net and its terrible cargo into the surf.
A wave sweeps over us, lifting my feet from the ground for a breathless moment before dropping me back down. The knots in the net have tightened with our journey, so I fumble my knife free from its sheath and begin to saw. My fingers are too numb and slip, the blade slicing my palm wide. Blood burbles from the wound, burning hot. “Wodan curse it,” I mutter. A last yank, and the fibers part. She’s gone in a blink and I’m left bleeding over an empty, ruined net.
I stagger my way back up the path, even as it’s chewed away by the flood. She promised freedom, I remind myself as I flee. Eth is lost to the darkness far above, but I force myself up, up the crumbling ridge. The water chases after, wailing as it comes. I stumble a dozen steps into the town, gasping, before I’m driven up the sail of the grist windmill by the encroaching sea. Across town there’s the flood bell. I could ring it, warn them all, if I could reach it. If I wanted to.
Instead, I climb. The hail stings my skin and my cut palm burns as I drag myself higher and higher. I stop only when I can go no farther, and wrap my arms around the tip of the conical roof. Voices rise on the wind again, but now they scream. Flashes of light snap through the roiling water as it laps up the walls of the houses. Three fingers hands press against doors, holding them shut even as the townfolk pound from within. Hekse Inken was right.
Wood cracks below. Again, and an axe blade splinters the shutters of our sleeping hall. I watch as Sjoerd emerges, clinging to the overhanging rafters as he helps his brother free. Arse he might be, but a coward he was never.
Koen shrieks and the water darkens around him. He sinks for a moment before his body bobs back to the surface, ribs jutting where thousands of teeth ripped his belly open. Sjoerd shouts, still holding his brother’s limp hand until the body is tugged beneath the waves. Then he looks up.
“Rinus!”
I make no move to beckon him, but he comes anyway, striding against the drag of the water, axe in one hand. Something whips past him and he snarls, swinging wildly. A thunk, an inhuman shriek, and he grins. He’s a faster climber than I, and in a matter of moments he’s clambering up beside me, panting. Before, I would have admired the way his muscles move under the drenched wool of his shirt, and helped him up, if only to have the excuse to touch his hands. But now all I can think of is the torn flank of the creature he wounded, and how many times I was the victim of his sport.
I grab Sjoerd’s shoulder and shove. He’s shouting again and his hands are clammy and shaking when they latch onto my arm. Sjoerd’s eyes roll in terror. I think it might be the first time he’s ever met my gaze.
“Don’t let me go,” he begs. “You saw what happened to—please, for the love of all gods,” he stammers some more, words swallowed by the gale.
“I’m sorry, Sjoerd. It’s too heavy for me.” My body is so cold, and my thoughts so still compared to the roiling water surrounding us. I jerk my arm free. He falls, dragged beneath the blackness by tails and fins and grasping claws. Rending gristle. A burst of blood. Then his beautiful head is wrenched from his body.
Despite the frigid weather, I’m drenched in sweat. My windmill roof island shrinks, the floodwater ripping houses apart and swallowing what foundations still stand. The Lokkson’s barn drifts past, followed by a flotsam of bloated sheep carcasses. Water crashes over the rooftop, tumbling me feet over arse. Even the thick wool of my clothes is soaked through and drags me deeper. Sparks flash across my vision as the waves slam my head against the gristmill wall. I think of Sjoerd’s stoved-in skull and blink against the stinging salt. Silt and clay are so churned up I can’t even see my frantic arms before me. I reach, trying to find the surface, find air, but it’s as if the surface has gone entirely, and I’m left to the merciless depths.
