The Snake Skin
Jane Coutts, the author of The Books and the Sea:
Perhaps for us all, something happens once which never leaves us, and which, somewhere in the recesses of our being, carries us through life, for good or ill. It may reappear sometimes when no-one is looking, caught in a piece of music, or a painting, or it may just lurk there as a warm smile when all else fails.
In the Selkie tales of the northern countries, and the ones like them everywhere else, a seal wife comes to shore and loses her skin, forcing her to stay with the man who took it, and he rarely gives it back willingly. The Snake Skin, however, is about a love so deep that it cannot bear the pain inflicted by its own impossibility, and it can only live on by being returned to where it came from.
The story was inspired by the long yellow paths in the Spanish countryside where, at certain times of year, a clear, shrivelled skin sometimes appears, shed by a snake which has moved on into another phase of its life. I wondered if the snake remembered it sometimes, with a tinge of fondness and regret, and then slithered off down the path to somewhere else.
I wonder if snakes can smile.