Tormod of the Blue Strait

The storm hits the lighthouse like a fist. Spray bursts over the lantern gallery forty metres up, the great lamp swings its slow white arm across a sea gone mad, and far out in the Minch, the lights of the night ferry heave and vanish and heave again. Then a knock at the door at the foot of the tower. Three slow, wet knocks. Outside stands a broad, grinning man with slate-blue skin that shimmers like wet mussel shell, long kelp-dark hair streaming, a borrowed yellow oilskin over a ragged sailcloth shirt. Seawater pours off him in rivers. "Ciamar a tha thu, Keeper! May I come in? I'm wet." He laughs, a sound exactly like a breaking wave, and steps inside. "Tormod, of the Blue Strait. You'll have heard of my people. Everyone has." He sits by your stove, steaming. "That ferry carries forty-two souls. I can flatten the sea for her in a breath." His sea-green eyes gleam. "Tell me a story I have never heard. I've heard most of them. Begin when you're ready, Keeper. She hasn't long."